Burnt Orange Nation: All Posts by Jeffrey Haley

Jaylen Bond to transfer to Temple

2013-05-19T18:33:02Z

Texas forward Jaylen Bond will transfer to Temple. On Friday, the 6-7 sophomore announced his decision via Twitter.

TEMPLE it is.
— BB_Jaylen (@J_Bond5) May 17, 2013

Back in March, Bond announced that he intended to transfer, electing to make his intentions known before Texas' final game against Houston.

The decision to play for Temple is not surprising. Bond is from Philadelphia, and had initially committed to play for Jamie Dixon at Pittsburgh. Pitt released Bond from his commitment when Dixon signed more recruits than there were scholarships for, and Bond ended up committing to Texas.

As a freshman, Bond appeared in all 34 games for Texas, averaging 15 minutes per contest.

Bond's sophomore season got off to a rough start. He sat out the first two games with an injury. In Texas' third game, a loss to Chaminade in Maui, Bond played five minutes before suffering another injury.

Bond ended up only appearing in 20 games as a sophomore for Texas, and only played 11 minutes per game.

With so many other young players in the Texas front court, extended playing time was going to be hard to come by for Bond at Texas.

Bond will sit out the 2013-2014 season, and then will have two remaining years of eligibility at Temple.

How the proposed rule changes will help college basketball

2013-05-13T13:00:10Z

Scoring is down in college basketball. This is well known. In the 2012-2013 season, Division I teams averaged 67.5 points per game, the lowest per game total since before the shot clocks were turned on in 1985.

So did the NCAA do to boost offense? Last Thursday, the NCAA Men's Basketball Rules Committee proposed several sensible recommendations to help.

After extensive discussions, the rules committee made the following recommendations:

Alter the block/charge rule so that defenders who move into the path of an offensive player once he has started upward movement to pass or shoot the ball will be called for a blocking foul.

Strict enforcement of already existing rules on fouls related to: defensive players with a hand or forearm on an opponent; with two hands on an opponent; who continually jab by extending arms; or who uses an arm bar to impede an opponent.

(Source: USA Today, May 9, 2013).

With these proposals, the NCAA rules committee is trying to address two heavy areas of criticism during the most recent basketball season. One change adjusts the requirements for drawing an offensive foul, essentially making them more difficult to earn.

The second recommendation is intended to help the offense along by encouraging officials to call more fouls, particularly off the ball.

What could these changes mean for scoring?

With increasingly sophisticated defenses, and increasingly physical play, the college game has bogged down, much like the profession game did a decade ago. When that happened, the NBA made rules changes that cut down on hand checking, and clarified blocking calls.

The results of the changes in NBA rules were significant. In the 2003-4 season, the year prior to the changes, NBA teams scored an average of 1.03 points per possession. The following season, with the rule changes now in place, NBA teams averaged 1.06 points per possession. Effective field goal percentages increased from 47 percent to 48 percent, turnover rates dropped slightly, and free throw attempts increased from 24 per game to 26 per game.

If the proposed changes have their intended effect in college basketball, we should see a similar shift. There will be a few more free throws every game, and scoring from the floor should open up.

How will these changes affect the way the game looks?

Part of what makes me so happy about these proposed changes is that both could have a significant effect on the way the college game looks. By making it harder to draw a charge, and by limiting how much defenders can hold and bump cutters, and bump in the low post, these changes have the potential to open up the paint and make play more free-flowing around the basket. If this happens, it will be a win for spectators.

Cutting down on offensive fouls called against players driving the basket will reward players that attack the basket, and will open up play in the area in front of the rim for the offense. From the spectator's perspective, this is exactly what the NCAA should do; plays at the rim tend to be among the most exciting in the game.

The block-charge call is still going to be controversial. Many of these calls end up being 50/50 calls, and this rule change will do nothing to change that. The block-charge call is one of the most difficult calls in basketball, and if anything the addition of the restricted area has made it even more difficult to make. In real-time, the referee must determine if the defender's feet are outside of the restricted area, and if the defender established position prior to the offensive player leaving the floor. Now, instead of determining if the offensive player has left the floor, the official will have to determine if the offensive player has started his upward motion. The call is still going to be difficult to make.

But the goal shouldn't necessarily be to help make this call easier for the officials; the goal should be to open up offense by opening up the paint. To do this, a higher proportion of these block-charge calls need to end up being called on the defense, rather than on the offense. This rule change has a chance of making that happen.

The second recommendation isn't a rule change; it is simply the rules committee encouraging officials to call fouls more tightly. If the NCAA is able to cut down on holding players off the ball, and on bumping and redirecting players cutting through the lane, it should further open up play near the basket.

What are some of the other potential consequences of these changes?

The downside of both of these changes is that they will likely lead to more fouls. This will be particularly true as players and coaches adjust, and will probably remain true for some time. But from my perspective, calling a few extra fouls is a good tradeoff for opening up the middle of the floor for the offense, and rewarding teams and players that attack the basket.

I am most curious to see how these changes affect the tactics used by teams on offense and defense. College basketball offense is becoming increasingly homogenous, with more and more teams basing their offense around high ball screens; even John Beilein and the Michigan Wolverines moved away from motion offense and towards ball screening in the last couple of seasons -- although Trey Burke probably had as much to do with this change as the way defenses play.

If defenders are allowed to grab players running off of screens, and are allowed to bump and aggressively redirect cutters without consequence, offenses that emphasize cutting and screening away from the ball become less attractive. Eliminating these defensive tactics likely will gradually shift college basketball away from the increasingly homogenous style that we currently see.

I wonder if these rule changes might help to bring back that nearly extinct animal, the 2-3 zone. From my perspective, this isn't necessarily a good thing, but I could see it happening. One of the main advantages of a 2-3 zone is that it helps to cut down on fouling by the defense; zone teams tend to foul much less than man-to-man teams. In a world where the defense is limited in its ability to redirect cutters and physically defend against screens, and where more fouls are called, I could see more teams adopting a zone defense to shift the game to a different style.

And what will be the consequences for teams that play extremely physical styles of defense? If the officials truly implement what the rules committee is recommending, there are certain teams in particular that will be interesting to watch. I recommend everyone keep an eye on the Butler Bulldogs. No program is more often associated with aggressive and physical defense than the team led by Brad Stevens. Stevens is a smart guy, and I am sure he will adapt, but I wonder how much of the Hinkle magic is due to the way that Butler has managed to maximize just what the officials will allow them to get away with.

One widely discussed rule change that wasn't made, and why it was the right decision

It seems that everyone has had a plan to fix college basketball, and one of the most commonly proposed fixes has been reducing the shot clock from 35 seconds to 30 seconds. There have even been proposals to shorten the shot clock to 24 seconds, to bring things in line with the NBA.

The rules committee wisely chose not to do this.

If the objective is to help shift the balance of power towards the offense, then a rule change that actually helps the defense isn't the direction that you want to head. If the goal were just to raise scoring on a per game basis, then a shorter shot clock probably would do that, simply because it will lead to more possessions, and more shots, per game. But many of those added shots won't really be good ones. Adding another five or ten poor shots per game isn't going to help the offense, and it won't make the game more fun. I can't imagine that is what anyone really wants.

Will this work?

All in all, I am pleased with these changes, as they at least attempt to deal with what I view are the biggest aesthetic problems facing college basketball. But that doesn't mean that they will work.

There is always the worry of unintended consequences. One example: the various rules over the years used by the NBA to outlaw zone defenses led to coaches adopting dull isolation tactics on offense. This was a huge problem for the NBA, which the league eventually corrected when it threw out the illegal defense rules in 2001. People forget just how awful and unwatchable NBA games could be in the 1990s. No one wants to pay good money to watch Charles Barkley or Mark Jackson back his man down from the wing while the eight other players in the game stand on the opposite side of the court. The league wisely fixed this, and subsequently cut down on physical play. Now, the NBA game is about as entertaining as it has been in my lifetime.

Another potential hitch in these recommendations: the officials have to implement them. This might not happen. Or it might happen non-uniformly across college hoops. In fact, there will almost certainly be differences game-to-game and conference-to-conference in the way that these changes are put into place.

Still, while we don't know that these changes will work, they represent a good effort to move the college game in a better direction. I am already excited for the 2013-2014 season.

Texas Longhorns Basketball: The Road Back to Respectability

2013-05-06T13:16:40Z

These are difficult times for Longhorn fans. The football, basketball, and baseball programs are struggling. While I cannot comment intelligently on either football or baseball, I feel comfortable writing about the road ahead for Rick Barnes' basketball program, and how the Texas Longhorns basketball team can (and likely will) improve.

Respectability is closer than you may think for the Texas basketball team. You can argue, "respectability isn't good enough," fine, but that is besides the point. It seems better to face facts, and try to see a path to improvement; this is a reasonable alternative to shaking your fist at the sky and screaming "BARNES!!"

First, let's define what I mean by having a respectable season. A respectable season would be a finish in the top half of the Big 12 and an NCAA tournament berth.

Now, before you immediately start bombarding me with your "not our standard" talk, keep in mind that respectability isn't the ultimate goal. It is simply the first step on a longer path. You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Respectability is something that should be able to happen quickly. I am here to tell you how.

Let's start off by recapping a bit of necessarily information. Coming into conference play in 2013, the Texas Longhorns looked at the time like a team with a great defense and a poor but improving offense. A team like that ought to be able to win more than half of its conference games. But the Longhorns did not. Texas ended up continuing as an awful offensive team, with the added problem that the Longhorns were also below league average on defense during the Big 12 season.

For Texas, respectability seems most obtainable with the following approach. Become one of the best defenses in the Big 12, while achieving something near league average success on offense. Simply by achieving that profile, Texas will have a successful season.

Don't believe me? Exhibit A for the outstanding defense / middle-of-the-pack offense model is the 2013 Oklahoma State Cowboys. OSU was second to Kansas in points per possession defense during Big 12 play, but only fifth in the conference in points per possession offense.

Let's take a look and see what will be needed for this to happen.

Becoming an average offense

The problems of the Texas offense during the 2012-2013 season are easy to summarize. The Longhorns couldn't shoot, they turned the ball over too much, and they couldn't attack the basket. It is a tough combination.

Shooting. There isn't a quick fix for the shooting problems; it will take adding players who can make open shots into the program. But even a small improvement here would help. Texas could benefit by going from being horrible to just very bad shooting the ball.

Much of Texas' shooting trouble came from an unlikely source, Sheldon McClellan. I am not going to argue that the loss of McClellan from the Texas offense is a good thing. Overall, he was one of Texas' most productive offensive players, even if that productivity wasn't anything special. But on the shooting front, there is no other way to say it -- Sheldon McClellan had an awful season shooting the ball. Some of this may have been mechanical (caution: I am not exactly a jump shot doctor). Some of it could have simply been bad luck. And some of McClellan's trouble surely stemmed from the types of shots he was getting in the Texas offense. McClellan is not the sort of player who excels running off of screens, quickly setting his feet, and firing a quick three over a closing defender. McClellan is not J'Covan Brown.

So while the loss of McClellan is a net negative, redistributing the 121 looks he got from three last season (making only 27 percent), and the 168 mid-range shots (where he shot 33 percent), will likely lead to modest shooting percentage improvements for the team.

If nothing else, the most reassuring thing is that the shooting can hardly get any worse.

Turnovers. Turnovers were a major problem for Texas in the early part of the year. With Freshmen Javan Felix and Demarcus Holland doing so much of the ball handling, it isn't surprising that Rick Barnes' team had some early season struggles hanging on to the ball. Things got better as the season wore on, and by the start of conference play turnovers had only become a minor weakness.

Historically, Rick Barnes' teams have excelled at taking care of the basketball. Getting back to that will go a long way towards making the Texas offense good enough for a decent season.

The turnover problems went beyond some initially shaky play by Texas' freshman guards. Freshman center Cameron Ridley also had a lot of early troubles wasting possessions. Ridley's turnovers were of two varieties. Early in the year, he had trouble picking up offensive fouls. He also frequently mishandled the ball in the low post.

Early in the season, Texas focused heavily on getting the ball inside to Ridley, and the offense suffered as a result. As Texas transitioned to a more guard-focused attack, Ridley's inexperience became less of an issue, as he was involved in fewer possessions.

Getting better inside. During the 2011-2012 season, a somewhat undersized Texas team managed to attempt 35 percent of their field goal attempts at the rim. In the 2012-2013 season, a substantially larger Texas squad only attempted 31 percent of their field goal attempts at the rim. This difference can primarily be attributed to four things: the 2011-2012 team benefited from a full season of Myck Kabongo, Clint Chapman significantly outperformed any of this season's big men, Sheldon McClellan attacked the basket more as a freshman than as a sophomore, and the 2011-2012 Texas team was better on the offensive glass.

Getting more easy finishes at the rim will help Texas tremendously, particularly considering that the 2013-2014 Longhorns will still be a below average perimeter shooting team.

Cameron Ridley has the greatest potential to improve the Texas offense next season. To be honest, he just had a terrible season on the offensive end of the court. He is not going to become the focal point of the Texas offense overnight. But if he can simply get to the level where he provides efficient offense on a low number of touches, that would help out Texas tremendously. For Ridley, a few more putback layups and dunks would go a long way to helping the Texas offense.

Excelling on Defense

The pieces are in place for the Longhorns to become great defensively. To become the great half-court defense, Rick Barnes and the Texas Longhorns have to first take one critical step. They need to accept what they are.

This is not a small-ball team that is built to run up and down the floor, spread the court, bomb threes, and score 1.2 points per possession. This is a team built to crush their opponents hopes and dreams inside, on defense.

Texas has the ability to throw an NBA-sized front court at teams next season, and it should. A good goal would be for Ridley and Prince Ibeh to combine to play 40 minutes per game. The defense is so much better when they play -- it is not even close. A Ridley/Ibeh platoon at center will solidify the middle of the Texas D, allowing the Horns to protect the rim like few other teams in the nation. This is the path to excellence.

This doesn't mean that Connor Lammert should be relegated to the bench. Lammert can play together with either Ridley or Ibeh. In a way, this makes the most sense. Lammert doesn't have the defensive impact of his classmates, but he has enough offensive skill to make up for it on the other end of the floor. The Longhorn defense loses too much when Lammert plays extended stretches as the team's lone big man, and the offensive benefit isn't large enough to compensate.

Jonathan Holmes will also play a lot, as he should. Holmes had a disappointing year, which was mostly attributable to getting off to a rough start shooting the ball and then suffering a mid-season injury. Holmes will need to give Texas 20-30 minutes of solid play, something that we can easily expect him to do. Holmes is Texas' best rebounder.

Big front lines with Ridley/Ibeh, Lammert, and Holmes shouldn't be out of the question. Ioannis Papapetrou is going to occasionally need some rest. If Texas needs to steal a few minutes in a zone defense here and there to accomplish this sort of lineup, and keep these guys out of foul trouble, so be it.

I know that Rick Barnes likes to play lineups with three perimeter players, and two big guys, but I think this is the year for Barnes to embrace big lineups. I view this team much like Barnes' first few teams at Texas; the strength of this team is going to be its interior defense. Holmes and Lammert are skilled enough on offense to partly make up for only having two perimeter players on the floor at once. The offense was such a mess this season, it is hard to imagine playing big lineups would actually make it substantially worse.

Texas has had rebounding and fouling troubles for the last two seasons. The natural maturation of the young big men should resolve these two concerns, but they need to be on the floor to make an impact.

It is time to be big. It is time to let Ridley and Ibeh make mistakes on offense, knowing that they will more than make up for these errors on the other end of the court.

Summary

I am still a believer in where this program is headed, and I believe that it is safe to expect improvement from the Texas basketball program for next season.

The Texas offense won't be great. It is hard to be great on offense when you can't shoot the ball. But if you can't shoot the ball, the best way to a good offense is to get many more shots than your opponent by protecting the ball and crashing the glass, and by hoping that players like Ioannis Papapetrou, Javan Felix, Jonathan Holmes, and Cameron Ridley start to find their mojo.

On the other hand, greatness on defense seems within the reach of the 2013-2014 Texas Longhorns. The best way to do this will be to find minutes for Ridley, Ibeh, and Holmes.

I am not naturally an optimist. Really, I am not. But I have cautious hopes for real improvement from this team next season. Things likely aren't as bad as they seem.

Looking at the NBA point guard draft class of 2013

2013-04-29T13:00:15Z

Over the weekend, the deadline to declare for the NBA draft passed. We now have a clear picture of what the 2013 NBA point guard class will look like, a class that will include Texas guard Myck Kabongo. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at this group, to give readers a better feel for how Kabongo compares with his peers.

Before I do this, I want to make a disclaimer. I am kind of an idiot when it comes to the NBA, particularly when it comes to projecting how guys will do in the NBA draft and then afterwords in their pro career. So I am basically going to avoid projecting as much as possible. I am instead going to focus on what these guys have shown us so far, with regards to their development, physical ability, and skill set.

While this year's draft is considered weak, what that really means is it lacks can't miss stars. This doesn't really affect where Kabongo goes, as he isn't looking at a top 10 pick anyway. I actually think that this draft has a lot of depth at the point guard position.

The order below roughly approximates the order in which these guys appear likely to be selected, based on the rankings of sites such as DraftExpress.com. Of course, the actual order in which these guys will be drafted will be different from this, and almost certainly some will not be drafted at all. But I think it is reasonable to guess things will break down the following way:

Obvious first round picks

Trey Burke (Michigan): This is obvious. Burke was college basketball's player of the year. He has a great handle, is a terrific playmaker, makes good decisions, and can shoot. From an NBA perspective, the only real concern is his size.

Michael Carter-Williams (Syracuse): Size is not a concern for Michael Carter-Williams. Carter-Williams is about 6-6, and was an outstanding playmaker during his sophomore year at Syracuse. The trouble is that he can't shoot, and his game is still a work in progress. Some team will draft Carter-Williams very high in the draft. This will be a pick based on his potential, based on the idea that 6-6 guys who can pass like Carter-Williams are rare.

C.J. McCollum (Lehigh): McCollum is likely to become the highest drafted Patriot League player since Golden State drafted Adonal Foyle with the eighth pick of the 1997 draft. The Lehigh senior was a scoring lead guard during his college career. He was largely unknown until the 2012 NCAA tournament, when he dropped 30 on Duke, leading the Mountain Hawks to a first round upset victory. Unfortunately, he missed most of his senior season with a foot injury, but he is reportedly back now and ready to impress.

Likely first round picks

Dennis Schroeder (International): I can't comment intelligently on Schroeder, other than to say he has received high praise from DraftExpress.com.

Shane Larkin (Miami): Larkin had an outstanding sophomore season for Miami. His major strength is that he is a good shooter and he makes good decisions; he is not the player that Trey Burke is, but in many ways they are similar. Larkin hasn't demonstrated the play making ability of Burke yet.

Lorenzo Brown (NC State): Let's start with the good on Brown. He has good size at 6-5, and can get to the hoop. Over the last three seasons, he has typically gotten between 35 and 40 percent of his field goal attempts on layups and dunks, which is a very good rate for a guard. The downside with Brown is that he has been a little careless with the ball during college, and that he doesn't shoot the ball very well. His 35 percent shooting from three point range during his sophomore season looks a little out of place next to the rest of his shooting stats; over his career he has struggled with his three point shot and has generally shot below average on two point jump shots. The size and quickness are promising, but he will have to improve as a shooter to succeed in the NBA.

B.J. Young (Arkansas): Holy crap, I really like B.J. Young. As a freshman, he came out like a ball of fire. He got to the rim at will, taking 39 percent of his field goals there, and finished at a 72 percent rate that is almost unheard of for a guard. Many of these chances came in transition. He also shot 42 percent from three point range and took care of the ball. After that promising first year, his sophomore season was a letdown. He struggled with his shot, only making 23 percent of his 110 three point attempts, and got into some trouble with his coach. Of course, he still got to the rim, attempting 46 percent of his shots there and making 69 percent, and still protected the ball. If the shooting problems of his sophomore year were a fluke, he could very easily end up as the best lead guard in this class -- no one else in this class can do all of the things that he has shown during his two seasons in college.

Erick Green (Virginia Tech): Green is a fabulous basketball player. As a senior, the 6-3 guard basically was the Virginia Tech offense, or at least all of the good parts of it. Green can shoot and he almost never turns the ball over. While on the floor, he took a third of the Hokies shots, and he buried them. Over his last two seasons, he averaged 38 percent shooting from three point range. ACC defenses were able to key on him completely, and he still scored without trouble.

Second round, here we come

Nate Wolters (South Dakota State): Wolters is another guy who could score even when everyone in the gym knew where the ball was going. An underrated part of his game is that he has a pretty good handle. He is an outstanding shooter, a decent playmaker, and is on the taller side, at 6-4.

Myck Kabongo (Texas): Now it is time for the hometown favorite. Kabongo has some of the same holes in his game as Carter-Williams and Brown. Like Brown, Kabongo can get to the rim seemingly whenever he wants. Kabongo is a strong playmaker, but he will have a hard time realizing his potential without developing a credible shot.

Nemanja Nedovic (International): I am not even going to pretend that I know anything about Nedovic.

Phil Pressey (Missouri): Pressey's profile is odd. After a strong year in 2011-2012, he struggled some this year. During his sophomore season, Pressey did well attacking the rim, and finished his layups and dunks at a rate slightly above the NCAA average. During his junior year, Pressey got to the rim and the free throw line less often, and only converted on 45 percent of his layup attempts. Pressey can also be a little scary with the basketball, making questionable choices.

Ray McCallum (Detroit): Ray McCallum is a player who will get drafted much later than I think he should, but what do I know? (I would take him before Larkin, Brown, Pressey, and Kabongo without hesitation.) McCallum was a top high school point guard prospect, but chose to play for his father at Detroit over offers from UCLA, Arizona, and Florida.

(Detroit was one of the most entertaining teams in all of college hoops, pairing McCallum with the electric Doug Anderson. Few teams were more fun to watch in transition. When you type "Doug Anderson" into Google, it offers to auto-complete your search by adding the word "dunk." There is a reason for this. Go to YouTube now, and watch Doug Anderson and Ray McCallum highlights.)

Here is my thinking on McCallum. The current rankings indicate that he will likely be drafted after Myck Kabongo, even though he is basically a better version of the Texas sophomore. McCallum gets to the rim only a little less often than Kabongo. McCallum also draws fouls, and is every bit as quick as Kabongo. But McCallum turns the ball over less and has greatly improved as a shooter over the last year. McCallum is older than Kabongo, but only by six months. Had McCallum gone to a major program, like Arizona, I suspect he would be higher up in the mock drafts.

Leo Westermann (International): This guy is 6-7, with a 6-4 wingspan. I am picturing a tyrannosaurus rex with a handle. I don't watch international hoops at all.

I hope somebody drafts me

Pierre Jackson (Baylor): Jackson can play, but he is very small for an NBA guard. After being a bit shaky with the ball at times during his junior year, he came back as a senior making much better choices. There is no question about his ability as a scorer and a playmaker. The question: is he actually as tall as his listed 5-10 height?

Isaiah Canaan (Murray State): Canaan is basically a larger version of Jackson who didn't pass as much and who played against a lower level of competition. The Murray State guard had an extraordinary college career. He might make teams feel very foolish for passing on him, as he isn't a small as people seem to think.

Seth Curry (Duke): Curry isn't really a point guard, but at 6-2 he may have to convince a team that he can be at least a serviceable ball handler in order to make a team. Still, he can shoot, and he isn't the first member of his family who looked like he didn't have an NBA position when he came into the draft.

Matthew Dellavedova (St. Mary's): Here is something I don't get about the NBA draft. Why isn't Dellavedova rated higher? Dellavedova is big, at 6-4, and he can shoot. NBA point guards have to be effective in pick and roll, and next to Trey Burke I am not sure there is a player better at working with ball screens than Dellavedova.

Let's be clear, I understand exactly why Dellavedova isn't rated higher. He played at St. Mary's, which meant that most of his games took place late at night, and he rarely matched up against high level players. Another legitimate criticism is that he doesn't get to the rim at all. He makes up for it by being extremely good shooting from mid-range, and by being deadly from three. He is also the owner of America's most talked about mouthguard.

Now, let's try a thought experiment. Imagine that instead of playing for St. Mary's, Dellavedova had instead played for Kansas. It is likely he wouldn't have gotten as many minutes until his senior year, but don't you think he would have ended up about five or seven spots higher on this list? Can't you just picture Dellavedova coming off the bench in the NBA and giving a team 10-15 minutes a night?

Let's hope to impress in summer league

Anthony Marshall (UNLV): I will be mildly surprised if Marshall ever makes an NBA team.

Peyton Siva (Louisville): Siva is quick and he plays hard. But he is 6-0 and he can't shoot. This class is full of guys who are quick and can't shoot. Most of them are bigger than Siva.

Elijah Johnson (Kansas): Johnson can make decent money playing basketball abroad.

Khalif Wyatt (Temple): It has become a cliché to talk about Wyatt's "old man, YMCA game." Wyatt is big and strong, smart with the ball, and a pretty good shooter. It is easy to picture him playing ten years in the NBA. It is just as easy to picture him never making a team.

D.J. Cooper (Ohio): Cooper doesn't show up in the DraftExpress.com top 100. That is a bummer. He is more fun to watch than pretty much any other player on this list. He is small at 5-10, but he has absurdly long arms. Cooper can pass like few other players, and had a virtually telepathic connection with his Bobcat teammates. If he doesn't make the NBA, he could make an amazing Harlem Globetrotter. He just plays with style.

Summary

Trey Burke appears a step ahead of everyone else in the 2013 point guard class, while B.J. Young could very easily end up being the best player in this group five years from now. I also won't be surprised if Isaiah Canaan is either drafted very late, or goes undrafted, and ends up with a solid career.

There seems to be no shortage of athletic guards with shaky shots, as well as more polished upperclassmen who can score. For Myck Kabongo's benefit, I hope that there are a lot of NBA teams looking for athletic guards with shaky shots.

Mike Rice and the Modern Coach

2013-04-22T13:00:11Z

Several weeks ago, in the middle of the NCAA tournament, video of Rutgers head basketball coach Mike Rice firing balls at players, kicking players, and screaming obscenities became public. These videos eventually led to the termination of Rice's contract, although he did pick up an extra $475,000 on his way out the door.

Mike Rice is an out of control bully with poor impulse control; this is not a novel comment or opinion. He isn't the first to lose his job for this sort of behavior, and he probably won't be the last, either. He was an undisciplined tyrant, and he eventually was exposed.

In his coaching days, Indiana coach Bobby Knight was the same way. In a way, Knight was worse. Not only did he have essentially no self-discipline or self-control, but he spent his entire career defending his generally indefensible actions, and frequently embarrassing himself. For example, I give you the video below, which is shows the pure class of the man. Well, maybe it is class, minus a couple of letters.

The beginning of the end for Knight at Indiana happened in the spring of 2000, when former Indiana player Neil Reed alleged that Knight had choked him during practice. These stories were followed up with video from an Indiana practice where Knight appeared to place his hands around Reed's neck.

Indiana cut Knight a bit more slack than Rutgers gave to Rice. IU adopted a "zero tolerance" policy towards Knight, which he predictably violated. The most well known of those violations was when he grabbed an Indiana student by the arm, pulled him aside, and lectured him for not showing the coach the proper respect. Knight was dismissed soon after this incident came to light.

...........

If people don’t like the way I do it or how I do it, I really don’t care anymore. I’m getting old-schoolish a little bit. So guys that don’t play (hard for) 40 minutes or didn’t get back (on defense) are going to have a problem. That’s the way it used to be. They’re going to pay a price, and the price is either they’re going to sit or I’m going to tell you.

--- Tom Izzo, Michigan State head basketball coach (timesdispatch.com, April 21, 2013).

Coaches scream and yell at their players. The best and most admired ones in the country do it. Unknown JV coaches in tiny high school gyms across America do it. Coaches yelled at me -- frequently -- when I was young (*). I don't have a problem with this, and I want to differentiate this more run of the mill discipline from the sort of behavior of sociopaths like Mike Rice and Bobby Knight.

(* "Damnit Haley, pull your head out of your ass," is something that I have heard more than once. There are also some other memorable chestnuts, but they are just too vulgar to write down here.)

We as a society have accepted that coaches will occasionally be rough and coarse with their players. We have granted coaches more latitude than we would grant other educators or other supervisors. Coaches are permitted to discipline their players in a variety of ways. They can yell at players. They can make players run. They can force players to sit on the bench, rather than play. This is all reasonable.

Some of our most successful coaches are well-known for their yelling and screaming. We occasionally get a little glimpse into this world. We get it through articles, written by people who have attended practice, such as this Joe Posnanski story about Kansas head coach Bill Self:

I remember a late-season practice three years ago, where Self just unloaded on two freshmen he believed were not giving full effort. Neither was a particularly important player at that point in the season. One was an athletic looking forward who lacked confidence and averaged barely two points a game. The other was a tall and gangly 7-footer who averaged three minutes a game and nobody seemed too sure how much he even liked basketball. Self just pounded on them and pounded on them, pushed them and prodded them, insulted them and motivated them.

The former turned out to be Thomas Robinson, who became a starter as a junior and then an All-American, led Kansas to that NCAA Tournament runner-up spot last year and was the fifth pick in the NBA draft.

The latter turned out to be Jeff Withey, an All-America candidate this year who already has been named the Big 12 defensive player of the year.

Even less often, things that normally only go on behind the scenes creep out into public. One such case was this example of John Calipari, shown in the video below.

A little bit of yelling and screaming is something that we have all decided is fine. We will cut coaches this level of slack. It is considered a method of motivation. It probably even works, provided it is not overdone.

But then, we also have limits to what we as a society consider acceptable. Consider, for example, the video below of Sean Woods, head coach of Morehead State, from earlier in the season.

Wood's behavior went too far, and he was suspended for the following game by his athletic director. He stepped over the line by pushing the player, by continuing to come back to the player to scream at him, and by the fact that he did it all in public.

Little tirades like these end up on YouTube forever. They are part of the way that we view the coach. I imagine many readers had not ever heard of Sean Woods prior to this incident. If they had, it is probably because they knew of him more for his time as a player in early 1990s at Kentucky (he was one of the Kentucky stars in the famous Christian Laettner game), and had relatively little knowledge of his coaching career.

..........

Are we becoming soft? Would we have once tolerated more of this sort of behavior, back in a day where men were men? Would Sean Woods have been suspended in 1970? Have our standards shifted?

Or is it simply that our modern culture, with the 24 hour news cycle, social media, and bloggers looking for something to write about just bring more attention to bad behavior and force a response?

While our changing standards may be a factor, I suspect that we are not really becoming soft. It is hard to imagine that Billy Gillispie's behavior would have been tolerated from a coach forty years ago, had it become public.

Gillispie's offenses were numerous, but the most shocking one is how he treated injured players, per this report by Jeff Goodman of CBSsports.com:

"He [Kader Tapsoba] was literally crying at practice," said the source, who was with the program last season. "He couldn't even run and Gillispie had him running up and down the steps at the arena. I remember the doctor getting the X-rays back and coming to practice and telling Gillispie it was really bad. He'd just ice him up and tell him to go practice."

"He shouldn't have been practicing," he added. "But he bullied everyone, including the trainer. He'd make the trainer make kids come back. Bodies were dropping like flies. One day I walked in and the whole team was in the training room. All the players and even the managers. He'd make them practice."

The difference is that these days when athletes complain the modern media is ready to scoop up the story and run with it. These sorts of stories are perfect, as they help create content that both cable networks and the blogosphere craves. These stories sustain us (you are reading a blog post on the subject right now); they help us get by in the dead time between spring practice and fall practice, or between March Madness and the Midnight version.

The modern coach is forced to mind his manners more than his predecessor might have had to. He is forced to be more civilized, and behave more like you and I do in the office Monday through Friday. Because, if he is not -- if he acts like a cruel tyrant, if he hits his players or locks them in a bathroom stall -- he will eventually be found out. And he will be run out of the profession.

Myck Kabongo and the Texas-Canada Pipeline

2013-04-15T13:00:12Z

When kids younger than me are coming up and thinking about going to Texas, I want them to be thinking…I want to go to Texas because I saw what Myck Kabongo did when he was there.

-- Myck Kabongo as a high school junior (Slam Online, December 3, 2009).

Myck Kabongo's story is a common one in the new Canada. Zaire, the nation of his birth, was only a few years away from civil war when Myck was born in 1992. Kabongo's father left Africa, eventually gaining refugee status in Canada, where the rest of the family soon relocated.

When Myck Kabongo was six he found himself in Toronto, a city defined by its generations of immigrants. Living just blocks away from one of the most sacred spots in all of Canadian sports, the Maple Leaf Gardens, Kabongo didn't choose the sport of prior waves of Canadian immigrants. He would excel at basketball rather than hockey.

Settled in Canada, Kabongo's life closely followed the archetype of the modern basketball star. As a child in the Regent Park neighborhood of Toronto, Canada's oldest housing project, Kabongo's talent was obvious from an early age. By the time he was a teenager he had latched on with the powerful Grassroots Canada AAU program. He started his high school career at city power Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute, located at the edge of a tree-lined middle-class neighborhood settled by Greek immigrants in the 1960s.

Kabongo's talent was immense, and it led him along the strange itinerant path of the modern North American high school basketball superstar. Like many of his contemporaries, he left his home and traveled as a teenager to play at a prep school; elite high school basketball players are essentially unpaid pro athletes.

Kabongo's first stop would be St. Benedict's in Newark, where he played under coach Dan Hurley. His senor season would see yet another change of location, as he transferred to the famous Findlay Prep in Nevada. He was an All-American, considered one of the very best guards in the class of 2011. He was heading to Texas, the central figure in Rick Barnes' latest highly regarded recruiting class.

By the time Myck Kabongo landed in Austin in the fall of 2011, he was already being compared with T.J. Ford and D.J. Augustin. He was designated the next great Texas lead guard before playing a college single game. Like Ford, Augustin, and Daniel Gibson, Kabongo was expected to spend a couple of seasons leading the Longhorns to victory before heading off to the NBA.

.......

Tristan Thompson, Cory Joseph, and Myck Kabongo all followed similar paths from Ontario to Austin. All came up through the Grassroots Canada program, and all finished their high school years at Findlay Prep. Like Kabongo, Thompson also played for a time at St. Benedict's.

All three players were central figures in a time period where the Texas fanbase's attitude soured towards Texas basketball. None of the three are really to blame for this souring, but all three were there as it happened.

The souring started before any of the three Canadians attempted a shot in the Erwin Center. It had started in the winter of 2010. After grabbing the number one ranking in the AP poll in early January, a first in school history, the undefeated Longhorns fell apart. The Longhorns dropped eight of their last fourteen regular season games, and the season ended with an uninspiring first round NCAA tournament loss to Wake Forest. Seniors Damion James and Dexter Pittman were headed to the NBA, and freshman Avery Bradley left with them.

After the collapse of the prior year, and the departure of many key players, the expectations for the Texas Longhorns going into the 2010-2011 season were not particularly high. Texas started off the year unranked by the Associated Press. The Longhorns started two freshman and a sophomore, and the first player off the bench was another sophomore. The team's most experienced players were the offensively limited Dogus Balbay, the tiny Jai Lucas, and the hardworking but undersized Gary Johnson. Senior Matt Hill was the backup center. On paper, it looked like a limited team.

But the two Canadian freshman, Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson, both played exceptionally well, while sophomores Jordan Hamilton and J'Covan Brown took well to the team's new offensive approach, built on principles used by the Utah Jazz. The team played suffocating defense, shutting down opponents.

For whatever reason, people now overlook just how good the Longhorns were during the 2010-2011 basketball season. It is easy to see how this has happened looking back, but let's be honest, it was one of the most fun seasons in recent memory for Texas basketball fans. The team substantially outperformed expectations after a year where it had underperformed them.

But that is not how the 2010-2011 season is remembered. It is remembered for the loss to Arizona in the second game of the NCAA tournament, followed by Thompson, Hamilton, and Joseph all leaving school for the NBA. Remembering the season this way allows it to fit neatly into the negative narrative about the program. It is too bad this is the case. No matter how you feel about the program, it doesn't seem right to view the 2010-2011 team in that way.

This particular revision would have been much more difficult had the Longhorns played slightly better against Arizona, had Jordan Hamilton waited to be fouled rather than calling a timeout, or had official Jim Burr not skipped a number on his way to five.

At the center of the frame during the fast five count was Cory Joseph. It would be one of his last moments in a Longhorn uniform. To many, it was the only moment of the season that mattered -- the four seconds that wiped away the previous four months.

.......

Myck Kabongo's Texas career started on November 13, 2011 in a blowout win over Boston University. It wasn't a particularly memorable game. His second game, against Rhode Island, was a fair bit better. Kabongo scored 18 points and dished 9 assists. He was off to the races as the next great Texas guard. Except that it didn't happen that first year. Kabongo would show flashes of his talent, but he didn't quite put it together during his freshman season. He had an up and down year that mirrored the up and down performance of his team.

After the early departures of freshmen Bradley, Thompson, and Joseph, many Texas fans figured Kabongo would likely follow his fellow Findlay Prep graduates into the NBA. But Kabongo did not. He chose instead to return for his sophomore year at Texas. It gave Texas fans a nice little shot of hope.

That shot didn't last long. By now, everyone knows what happened next. Myck Kabongo accepted a plane ticket to Cleveland to visit his friend Tristan Thompson and to work out with a trainer. Then Kabongo lied about it to Texas compliance. It was a mistake that wiped out most of his sophomore season.

In the end, Kabongo's career as a Longhorn wasn't much longer than those of his friends from Toronto. Now he is moving on to professional basketball. There wasn't enough time to realize his potential as a college basketball player. He will instead try to realize it as a professional.

.......

Texas' foray into the recruitment of Canadian basketball stars seems a strange blip now in the history of Longhorn hoops. It won't be a period that Longhorn fans will look back on fondly. This seems harsh, but it is also seems true. The three highly regarded Canadians did not leave a lasting impact on the program of the sort that fans will remember. They will all just fade into the past in the same way that Avery Bradley or Maurice Evans have; if remembered at all they will be remembered as players who we barely got to know.

This is a shame. Myck Kabongo's story is the story of a family who fled their homeland, landed in Canada, and got on with life. Kabongo is a first-generation immigrant who is making a better life for himself. He is charismatic, hard-working, and is trying to make the most of his gifts -- and those gifts are substantial. His is a feel-good story that is practically a cliché.

It is kind of sad that Texas fans don't get to share in a happy chapter of this story. We just get the bitter one. We get the chapter where mistakes had consequences, and where the hero had to face adversity so that he could be redeemed later. It will just be an unfortunate, but ultimately minor, setback in what will hopefully be a very successful life for Kabongo. But it will be the only chapter that we get, and we will always wonder if things should have been better. We won't get that chapter of redemption.

Sometimes, things don't turn out the way that you expected, or the way that you hoped. Sometimes, as hard as you might try, things just don't come together quickly enough, and before long the time has passed. Sometimes great potential isn't realized. This is one of those times.

The sad truth is that no kid will come to Texas because he saw what Myck Kabongo did. Maybe things could have been different.

A Statistical Recap of the 2013 Longhorns Basketball Season: The Texas Defense

2013-04-04T13:00:12Z

This article looks at how the Texas defense fared during Big 12 play. It is the companion to an earlier article looking at the Texas offense.

One of the most surprising things that happened this season was the collapse of the Texas defense. While Texas' offensive struggles earned all the press, the defense during Big 12 games wasn't very good either. During non-conference play, Ridley and Ibeh dominated the paint, making Texas one of the very best defenses in the nation. But during conference season, Texas allowed 1.04 points per possession, ranked sixth in the Big 12. The average Big 12 team gave up 1.02 points per possession.

The problems of Texas' defense during the Big 12 season are highlighted in the waterfall chart below, which compares the Texas defense to the average one in the Big 12. Red bars indicate categories that reduce points per possession, while green bars highlight categories that increase points per possession. Since this chart pertains to defense, red is good, and green is bad. (Please see yesterday's post for more on where this chart comes from.)

Texas' three biggest problems on defense were poor rebounding, too much fouling, and a lack of any exceptional traits.

1. For the second year in a row, the Texas Longhorns had trouble on the defensive glass during Big 12 play. While Texas' defensive rebounding was bad last season, it was even worse this year, as the Longhorns allowed conference foes to recover 36 percent of the available offensive rebounds, which ranked ninth in the league. Towards the end of the season, Rick Barnes regularly started a front line of Connor Lammert (15% defensive rebounding rate), Jonathan Holmes (19% defensive rebounding rate), and Ioannis Papapetrou (13% defensive rebounding rate). No Longhorn had a defensive rebounding percentage greater than 20 percent. This is a big problem; if a team doesn't have at least one or two guys pulling down more than 20 percent of the possible rebounds while on the floor, it generally leads to trouble.

2. Also for the second year in a row, the Longhorns had trouble with fouls. Over the years, Rick Barnes' defenses have been successful because of their ability to hold opponents to low two point shooting percentages without fouling. Over the last two seasons this hasn't happened. As he did his freshman season, Jonathan Holmes struggled to defend without fouling. For their part, Cameron Ridley and Prince Ibeh did what freshman centers typically do; they fouled a lot.

3. A hidden problem of the Texas defense was that it didn't excel at anything during the conference season. During the non-conference slate, when Ridley and Ibeh were blocking shots left and right, Texas' two point field goal defense was stellar. Texas' ability to protect the rim during that period of time made the Texas D seem legitimately great, even if those great defensive games weren't always coming against the best teams. As the season wore on, and Ridley and Ibeh's minutes dropped off, the strength of the Texas defense dissipated. I want to dive into this more deeply below.

Looking at how Ridley's and Ibeh's playing time affected Texas

I wanted to try to understand how much of an effect Ridley's and Ibeh's playing time had on the Texas defense. Because many non-conference games came against much weaker opponents, it is best to look at conference games only, as I don't want to unfairly bias the results. The plot below shows how opponents' two point field goal percentage changed as a function of the total percentage of minutes played by the Ridley/Ibeh during the Big 12 regular season.

The figure above is not surprising. Of course opponent two point shooting percentage goes down when the two best shot blockers for the team play more. This effect seems to translate to the bottom line of defense, opponents' points per possession, as shown in the figure below.

More minutes for Ridley and Ibeh potentially come at a cost. It would be pretty reasonable to hypothesize that giving more minutes to the pair, and fewer to Connor Lammert, would likely hurt the offense. But when we look at the actual data, we don't see much of an effect.

This seems surprising, but in a way it makes sense. While Lammert was measurably better on offense than either Ridley or Ibeh, none of these three players played a major role in the Texas offense. Lammert used only 13 percent of Texas' possessions while in the game, and took only 14 percent of the Longhorns' shots. Ibeh and Ridley were similarly only minor players in the Texas offense.

Summary

In the previous post, I highlighted Texas' problems on offense during the 2013 Big 12 season. The most significant problem was Texas' troubles with three point shooting. While turnovers gave Texas trouble during the non-conference season, the turnover disasters were mostly a thing of the past by the time Big 12 play started.

This post looked at the defense. Texas' key defensive problems were poor rebounding and excessive fouling. Additionally, the Longhorns didn't really excel at anything defensively, and more minutes for Ridley and Ibeh would have likely made the Texas defense better, while doing little harm to the Texas offense.

Is Protecting the Rim the Key to Reaching the Final Four?

2013-04-03T14:07:58Z

As John Wooden famously said, "basketball is not a complicated game."

For the most part, the most effective way to score in basketball is to get as close to the goal as possible before shooting. This eternal truth applies at all levels of the game, and has been true throughout its history.

Perhaps the most important part of defense is to limit these chances near the basket, and to make sure that someone is ready to contest them when they inevitably occur. This basic fact is part of the reason why six out of the last ten NCAA champions finished the season ranked in the top 25 in shot block percentage.

The year 2013 has again brought us a surprising mix of teams to the Final Four. But when we look at things from the perspective that the best teams generally defend the rim, the quartet starts to make more sense. Three of these four teams excel at defending the rim. In an average NCAA game, 34 percent of all shots are taken at the rim and these shots are made about 61 percent of the time, while 10 percent of all shots at the rim are blocked. Here are what those percentages look like for Louisville, Syracuse, Wichita State, and Michigan.

Rim defense of the 2013 Final Four participants.

Team	% opp attempts at rim	FG% at rim	Block % at rim
Louisville	29%	57%	15%
Syracuse	28%	57%	21%
Wichita State	27%	56%	19%
Michigan	28%	63%	8%

(Source: Hoop-Math.com)

As we see from the table above, all four remaining teams in this year's NCAA tournament are better than average at limiting opponents' chances from in close, and only Michigan is below average when it comes to opponents' field goal percentage on shots at the rim. Louisville, Syracuse, and Wichita State all protect the rim with shot blockers. Syracuse and Wichita State rank second and third in the nation in at rim shot block percentage (Hoop-Math.com).

To put these numbers into context, the difference between allowing 57 percent shooting at the rim (like Syracuse) and 63 percent shooting (like Michigan) is worth about 0.03 points per defensive possession, or 2 points over a 67 possession game. This may not seem like much of a difference, but in terms of its effect on the final score of an average game, it is worth slightly more than the difference between shooting 38 percent and shooting 34 percent from three-point range. That's a difference that just happens to be equal to Michigan's perimeter shooting advantage over Syracuse.

The basic importance of protecting the bucket was highlighted nicely in Louisville's Elite 8 victory over Duke on Sunday. The Cardinals beat the Blue Devil defense like a drum, getting to the rim without trouble, and shooting there without worry. In all, 27 of Louisville's 55 shot attempts were layups or dunks, and the Cardinals converted on 70 percent of those. Duke big men Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly are both outstanding players, but neither one is a rim defender, as demonstrated by the fact that Blue Devil opponents made 62 percent of their shots at the hoop this season. This lack of an inside presence, as well as Coach K's style of defense that focuses more on perimeter pressure and limiting three-point attempts at the expense of allowing some penetration, allowed Russ Smith and Peyton Siva to spend much of their Easter Sunday shooting lightly contested layups.

The three outstanding interior defenses in the Final Four all have outstanding big men. Louisville's pressure defense is well complemented by an ability to defend the rim, with shot blocker Gorgui Dieng swatting just under 10 percent of opponent two point attempts while on the floor (source Kenpom.com). When Dieng is out of the game, Montrezl Harrell picks up some of the slack. For Syracuse, Rakeem Christmas blocks 11 percent of opponent twos at the back of Jim Boeheim's zone. Christmas also gets help from Baye Keita and several other Orange defenders. The Shockers' D is anchored by Carl Hall and 7-0 Ehimen Orukpe. Orukpe deflects such a high percentage of opponent shots (12.6%) that he is second on his team in blocks per game while only playing 15 minutes per contest.

Fans and the media love to focus on guards, but even in this era of the three point shot, basketball still favors the tall. The story was more or less the same last season, when Final Four teams Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisville all excelled at defending the basket. And it was the same in the chaotic tournament of 2011, when Final Four participants Kentucky and Connecticut both held opponents to only 53 percent shooting on layups and dunks.

Being big and protecting the basket works. It has always worked. And it will work until the end of time.

More in College Basketball:

• The best recruiting class ever? Calipari reloads

• Wichita State's secret weapon

• Gruesome injury brings Cardinals together

• Dunk City USC? Trojans hire Andy Enfield

• Spencer Hall: One night in Dunk City