While I am certainly delighted to have a meaningful championship game in the Big Ten tournament, there is one thing that has befuddled me all year and is now starting to rear its ugly head; Inbounding the ball under our own basket. While many coaches attempt to use these opportunities to get an easy basket off of set plays, we seem to be content with having one player come off of a screen into the corner, and then our plan B is a lob to either the top of the key or half court. There are many problems with this, and Ohio State definitely exposed them today. Once we get that inbound pass into the corner, Ohio State immediately trapped, resulting in 3 turnovers, and many more opportunities for them. Teams are going to see that and further expose it in the NCAA tourney. Also, plan B hasn’t worked quite so well recently, as that Caris LeVert to half court has gotten us 4 turnovers in the past 2 games alone. When neither of those options are available, we often waste valuable timeouts. My high school coach this year was persistent on inbound plays being important scoring opportunities so most of our plays from under the basket were to free up 1 shooter for an open three, 2 people for layups, 1 to go to the top of the key in case no one is open, and 1 person could usually be free to find and expose a weakness, and we did this with great success through multiple screens per play. Now don’t get me wrong, I realize how different it is at the collegiate level, but the concept remains the same, and I truly hate to see valuable timeouts wasted and turnovers committed due to sloppy inbounding from underneath the basket.
I agree - I know the last time this was brought up someone posted a “statistic” that said we’re actually pretty good at inbounding. But I don’t buy it. I trust my eyes more on this one. We suck at inbounding - even against full court pressure.
We had to call a timeout in order to setup a screen on a full-court press.
HIGH SCHOOLS can figure that out easier.
And underneath we don’t have any motion or good screening. It always turns into a lob to the backcourt.
Yes you’re right, even in bounding against a simple man to man press has given us some issues
Yes anything on the baseline we suck at! I don’t understand why our “offensive mastermind” can’t draw up a play to get the ball in bounded without causing a turnover. Heck Brad Stevens was known for that!
AND WILL SOMEONE TELL LEVERT TO PUT SOME SPEED ON THE BALL HE THROWS IN! YOU CAN’T THROW A LOB TO MAX WHEN THE PEOPLE GUARDING HIM ARE TALLER THAN HIM!
I’m going to be honest here, I didn’t watch most of yesterday’s game. Did we have any more turnovers on inbound plays?
I think we had one wolverheel. But in my opinion, that’s one too many. Not only was it a turnover but also a foul on Jordan Morgan at the same time, and because our bigs were in foul trouble from the get-go, it was a deadly combination.
I think we had one wolverheel. But in my opinion, that's one too many. Not only was it a turnover but also a foul on Jordan Morgan at the same time, and because our bigs were in foul trouble from the get-go, it was a deadly combination.
Was that the terrible lob ball that Levert threw up to JMo in a crowd Spartans? I couldn’t remember which game that happened in.
Yes sven, that’s the one. I believe Keith Appling reached the ball first (I don’t think he ever had possession) and Jordan Morgan bumped into him trying to get the ball. It was just a bad sequence of events.
I brought up this inbounding issue in the post that Dylan had a few weeks ago when he was asking for topics or issues to do threads on. I questioned if this was due to poor play design, poor execution or good scouting by the opponent.
It appears to me that it is mostly poor execution. Players not setting effective screens or making hard, quick cuts to get open.