Men's Basketball...The State of the Program

So, I've posted the reports on the offensive and defensive elements of the team, but now, the questions before us are:

• Where are we now?
• What is the future prognosis?
• Are we achieving as we should?

To start, I would refer you to the last "Ask the AD," where Greg Christopher said that he thought the men's basketball program was going in the "right direction."

We have to keep in mind that given that Coach Orr is staying, there isn't a lot else for him to say.  Could he have said something more like Coach Clawson usually says ("We are making progress but our goal is to win championships and we aren't there,"), sure, he could have said that and still be supportive of the program, because that's what they should all be saying.  He's not a guy on a message board, and if you are staying the course, you can't be half-hearted about it.  You're either in or out.

Before you can get irate about the statement, though, you have to know what the direction is.

I feel the same where here as I do about our stats...the only thing that matters is the relative conference rank.  How are we compared to the teams we are designed to compete with?  I don't care if we beat Michigan State or Malone.

Here are our MAC finishes during the Orr years.  Right direction?  For the Nation, this is a sort of ink blot test.  You can see what you like.  Yes, we have finished 6th or below in 4 of Orr's 5 season and little reason to think we are going to break through next season.  On the other hand, if  you view the 09-10 season as a natural crater built on empty Dakich recruiting classes, than we have steadily built on that.

A couple of thoughts.  The last two Dakich years were pretty grim, though I believed all the time that BG would let him ride the last two years out in his contract, and they did.  And, I think that people would be expecting the same thing this year, if BG hadn't pulled a complete shocker and bought out Brandon with time left on his deal.

I'm not comparing the situations, but other people are.  We saw how mismanaged the football program was under Brandon during Clawson's second year.  Also, the football program had APR issues, and (here I am strictly inferring) people didn't respect Brandon....both of which are not true for Orr.

A lot of people said that Brandon was fired while he had a winning record and we shouldn't fire a coach with a winning record.  He was the exception that proved that rule.

Now, another thing I said when Dakich was here was that you can't hide from the results.  Somebody might be a "good coach" and we might be moving in the "right direction," but is the person a successful coach who wins in a way we can be proud of?  Good is a judgment.  Success is not.  Those are things you cannot hide from.

And the results are just average.

You cannot hide from this fact:  There are 3 elite programs in the MAC that are good year in and year out:  Akron, Kent and OU.  If there's a candidate to break in, it is Buffalo, not BG.

So, if that's our goal, and it almost has to be, then after 5 years we aren't there.  Not only is BG not good every year, but we have only had one season over .500 in the Orr years.

I also think that people felt like this was a year we had a shot.  BG had the 4th most experienced team in the MAC, and Orr's first full recruiting class.  And we finished 6th.  Only 28 D1 teams were as experienced as BG or more and finished .500 or below.

And I have already showed that we under-performed based on our stats.

And those are the facts, as I see it.  Regardless of whether we are going in the right direction, we are not where we should be.

Will next year be better?  Because the whole "right direction" argument does rest on whether the line on that chart keeps moving up.

BG loses quite a bit.  Our two wings are gone, as well as a guy who provided badly needed strength and toughness on the inside.  The guys who are coming up have showed promise at times--Sealey for certain periods, for example, and Clarke if you want to remember individual drives to the basket, but I think it is fair to say that if next year's team is going to be better, we are going to need a lot of production from guys who haven't shown it. Doesn't mean they can't or won't, just means they haven't.   (We do expect Kraus back and we have seen what he can do).

On the other hand, this was a senior-dominated year in the MAC.  Two years ago, it seemed like everyone had a lot of guys back.  Not so much this year.  WMU loses 5 guys AND Stainbrook, 3 teams had 4 seniors and 4 teams had 3 seniors.  That's 8 of 12.  CMU only lost 2 seniors, but they lost Zeigler and could lose McBroom.

I know, OU has everyone back except Groce (apparently).  I'm just saying, maybe the bar is a little lower.  Still, it isn't like we lost nobody and they all lost people.  We riding the tide, and those teams started better than us.

I find it hard to believe next year's team will be much better than this year's team was.  I hope that proves to be wrong.

Which leaves us with two years left on Orr's contract.  I'd really like to see what we hope for--that Clarke, Sealey and Henderson (not to mention Calhoun and Black) jump in and become really good players and the team is better next year and we start to be good consistently.  I just don't see that next year, which leaves Orr trying to do all this in his last year.

Some people have said that he has only had one year to recruit to the Stroh.  I never really accepted the idea you couldn't recruit to Anderson, but to say we have to be in the Stroh for, say, 3 years before we can expect to compete in the nation's 20th ranked conference, that's going to be tough for people to swallow.

Teams just seem to get better faster.  UT, for example, was one of the worst teams in D1 for two seasons, and they would look to be better than BG next year.  EMU was better than BG in one season.

I don't think it is the recruiting, honestly.  It just feels like our guys develop into above average players and maybe into good players but not into great players, and that good teams can figure out ways to beat us even when we play well enough to win.  I believe that observation is supported by the facts.

Certainly, as a collective, our team has gotten the results of an above average and sometimes good but not great program.  I'm sure that's supported by the facts.

Anyway, if you want the state of the program, I would say that I fear the word is "languishing."  I hope that's wrong, because come whatever might come, I'm going to be in my seat again starting in November.  But, for where we are today, that's what I see.

Falcon Football Schedule Out--Fans Screwed

Complete 2012 BGSU Football Schedule
Sat., Sept. 1 - at Florida
Sat., Sept. 8 - vs. Idaho
Sat., Sept. 15 - at Toledo
Sat., Sept. 22 - at Virginia Tech
Sat., Sept. 29 - vs. Rhode Island (Homecoming)
Sat., Oct. 6 - at Akron
Sat., Oct. 13 - vs. Miami (Family Weekend/Varsity BG Weekend)
Sat., Oct. 20 - at UMass
Sat., Oct. 27 - vs. Eastern Michigan
Wed., Nov. 7 - at Ohio, 8 p.m. (ESPN2)
Sat., Nov. 17 - vs. Kent State
Fri., Nov. 23 - vs. Buffalo (ESPNU/ESPN3*)

There it is.

Now, you'll miss the headline if you just look at that.  The real headline is that November 23rd game to be played against Buffalo, the one that looks like a home game, that game will now be played on a neutral field in Columbus, OH at the Crew Soccer Stadium.

Some quick points.  According to the post, if you have already bought your season tickets (which they have been hounding you to do), you will not be refunded for that game.  You can, however, use the ticket exchange to get two additional tickets to another home game (trading something you wanted for something that you didn't want).

The free parking you were promised?  Not for this game.  Sorry.

You want my opinion.  The game should be excluded from the package.

Let's look at the University's statement.  We haven't had anything this juicy and self-delusional to work with since Brandon left.  Here is the statement....

“With students away from campus for Thanksgiving Break, the Buffalo game became an opportunity for us to take BGSU on the road to one of our most populated alumni areas,” said Athletics Director Greg Christopher. “We view this as more than a football game and truly a university-wide effort and event. The Crew are excited about the partnership and we look forward to the unique event.”

Moving the final game to Columbus is an opportunity to provide something unique to our fans.  This will be the first Division I college game played in the Crew Stadium so BGSU will be a part of history.   Columbus is an important area for BGSU football recruiting and currently 12 players are from the Columbus area which will impact attendance.  This is not just a football game—this is a university event. It allows the university to take BGSU on the road to the capital city which will engage a strong base of students, alumni and allows an opportunity for admissions recruiting.  The day after Thanksgiving game has been a challenge from an attendance stand point in Doyt Perry Stadium and similar to Northwestern and Illinois playing at Wrigley Field and Ohio State and Michigan playing hockey at Progressive Field---this is an exciting opportunity for the Falcons to play on a different stage.  

Some comments:

History?  Yeah, history. Someday, we will tell our grandkids that we saw the first Division I college football game at Crew Stadium.  Maybe the last too.  (This argument is insulting).

Yes, Buffalo and Bowling Green at Crew Stadium is exactly like Northwestern and Illinois playing at Wrigley Field.  Great analogy.  (To be fair, they said "similar," which it is not either).

Yes, we have lots of alumni in the area.  Every single one of them now identify themselves as a Buckeye fan.  I'm sure that they are a lot more likely to show up on the day after Thanksgiving than the fans who watch you every week.

Did you think that this might actually be a game with some title implications?  And we are now taking it to a neutral field?

If the day after Thanksgiving is an attendance challenge, play on another day.  If it is ESPN's fault, that's the bed you made.

Finally, the idea that on the day after Thanksgiving, in Columbus OH, we will be having some kind of BGSU festival, where people do that rather than spend time with their families....yeah, that's going to happen.

It is great the Crew are excited, BTW.

So, I'm not a fan.  The Wisconsin game was fine--it was early in the year, they brought fans, and it wasn't a conference game.  And we never get Wisconsin to the Doyt anyway.

Honestly, selling season tickets and moving one of the games 119 miles away is false advertising.  This is bull.

Hey look though.  We finally get to play Akron.

Men's Basketball Offense, Part III

So, now a chance to review the overall trends in our men's basketball offense, just as we did for the defense.  What have the Orr years brought us?

We'll start with an overall notion....the Orr years have been lean offensively. That won't be a surprise to anyone who watched us play those games.  That, combined with being a team that played only average defense, has gotten us where we are today.

Note....stats are ranking in MAC, using conference games only.

Starting, then, with the most important measure, which is offensive efficiency, we see that BG had only been in the top half of the MAC one time during Orr's years, and that was this year.  In 3 of the 5 years, we have been between 9th and 11th.  Now, you can argue that Coach Orr now has his own players...and that this figure is a step in the right direction.  That will be true, if sustained.  If, on the other hand, this is an artifact of our 3 seniors, then it will be tough to keep it going.

Here, we see BG not improving its relative rank at all from last year to this year.  We noted at the end of last season that BG was not the only team with a lot of guys coming back and the team as a whole would need to get better, not just older.  Overall, on offense, they did, but here, despite our C getting a year older, we see that offensive rebounding was in the middle of the pack this year and last year.  I thought one of the strong points of the inside-out attack was the ability to get rebounds, but we have never excelled here.  Oh, and those back-back 6th place finishes are the high point...

The next of the Four Factors is turnover%.  This one is certainly a little bouncy.  The best year was Orr's .over .500 season, when BG finished 4th.  Last year, we were 6th and this year 5th, which sort of mirrors where BG was in the standings, which is one slot higher.  This is a decent number to have if you want to be a decent team, but is not great if we are trying to be an elite team in the MAC.

Finally, free throws.   If there is one thing that is the identity to our program, I would say it is this:  we don't shoot free throws.  Here, we are talking about getting to the line--not even whether we make them, which has also been an issue.  Now, remember, on the defensive side we did note that we rarely foul, so it isn't that we are falling way behind here.  But, we're not drawing fouls, which is not surprising because the team only really had one really good dribble penetrater and he is 5'6".

So, in general, BG was been, at best, an average offensive team and usually worse than that over the last five years.  Which will lead us to the last part of the review of the season for men's basketball.  The ultimate question is whether the team is going in the right direction.  This quote comes from the last "Ask the AD," in which the AD said that BG was going in the right direction.  This has caused a mini firestom inside the nation.  I'll try to look reasonably at whether we are going in the "right direction" or not, but, just to preview, I will also say this:  regardless of where you fall on the directional thing, we certainly hoped to be more competitive than this after 5 years.  On that, I think everyone--including our Coaching Staff and the AD--would be able to agree.

Sentinel on Special Teams....

The Sentinel comes in with the third story on Falcon football, this one on special teams.  Things are pretty much where we left them last year.

A couple notes.  First, FG kicking has been a big issue.  Stein did OK when he got in last year, but as Coach noted, we only tried short FGs, and elite teams should be pretty much automatic inside 45 yards.  Kyle Burkhardt has left the program, and we have four kickers on the roster, including Stein, redshirt Tate, incoming FR Farinella, and a guy named Ozcypok (I swear) who has never tried a kick in a game.

Also, kickoffs are an issue because Burkhardt did that.  With that in mind, we can assume that if Stein had the leg for that he would have been doing that.  The FGs are going to be back on the 35 again, so if we just want touchbacks, it is hard to believe we need anything besides Farinella, whose recruiting video is OMG!!!  A touch back in HS should be a touchback in college, right?

Same issue hits kickoff returning.  We talk about Boo Boo returning kickoffs and how good he was, but it remains to be seen what kind of role that will have under the new rules.

Punt returning is also increasingly a small part of the game (teams have strategies on how not to have a kick returned--BG had only 20 returns last year on 66 opponent punts)...Eugene Cooper did our returning and he has graduated.   We have a few likely prospects, including Gates and Joplin.  I understand that sometimes you rip a really nice 50 yard return or get a TD and it can really change a game.  I'd be happy with someone who never fumbled.

Finally, in terms of snapping, Cory Johnson will continue to be the long-snapper, and then Clay Rolf is being trained to be the short snapper (for placekicks).  They like his size if he can make the snaps...he's an athlete, I think he probably can figure it out.

Anyway, you know our feelings here.  Special teams are really important and have been lacking at BG.  At a minimum, you want special teams to not give the game away (as we often did during the Brandon era) and you'd love to be able to make a few game changing plays, as elite teams can do.  I think Clawson has made some progress, and if the placekicking can be improved, I think we can be where we need.

Samuel Breaks Wrist, expected back for Fall

According to the Sentinel, Anthon Samuel, BG TB and MAC Freshman of the Year, broke his wrist in Spring Practice.  He had surgery and should be back at full strength by the end of May and ready for summer/fall workouts.

Spring Report: Defense

So, continuing to work off Jack Carle's previews in the Sentinel, today (Tuesday) we're going to review what they came up with as it relates to the defense.  The key thing I took away is that we were playing guys for too many reps the last couple of years, which could have led to the problems at the end of games.  We want to literally be able to play 22 players over the course of the game, and we have not been able to do that.  Whether we will...this remains to be seen.

One thing...and Clawson acknowledges it in the article, is that while our players are more seasoned, the defense remains very, very young.  He says he's rather have a sophomore who has played than a senior who hasn't (which is nice) but the question is whether our sophomore who has played can compete with an opposing SR. WR who has played, for example.

A few notes:

On the line, Jones, Campbell and Oullette are expected to run a three-man rotation on the inside.  On the end, we have about six guys competing for time, incluing Bryan Thomas, who is back from injury.  Baird and Shaq Hall, both of whom red-shirted, are in the mix as well.

(As we know, this is where it all starts.  Interesting question.  At his season-ender, Coach talked about the team getting stronger over the off-season.  I'd wonder how that was going....you could ask him, but he's not going to say it didn't go well.)

LB is pretty solid.  We have Woods and Swan with DJ Lynch and Gabe Martin in the backup roles.  Woods is one of our two best players, and if the line holds their blocks, he can be a force.

It sounds like the d-backfield is the most unsettled position.  Remembering that two years ago we were bringing in JUCO WRs and moving them to the d-backfield, this is not a terrible surprise.

For example, at CB--we have 3 and Coach says in the story he would like to get to 4.  The 4th does not appear to someone with game-proven ability at Corner.

Safety and Rover are intertwined.  Rover is the hybrid WILL LB that also has to cover slot receivers.  Gates played their last year, but very late in the season he was moved to Safety, just because your safeties have to tackle, and Gates is one of our best player.  Basically, there are a number of guys swirling around here....if no one steps up at Rover, Gates would move back.  There is talk of "cross training" them which means you might only need to go 3 deep instead of 6 deep if the guys are not cross-trained.

Anyway, the defense is getting more experienced.  Given the relative youth, I still feel a little bit like the ceiling might not be terribly high, but they should be moving in the right direction toward being a really, really good unit.  The key is up front.  If we are stronger at the line, then I think we have the ability to make some plays at LB, and keep pressure on the QB and off our D-backs.

Offense Part II...

So, earlier in the week, we established that the offense was actually pretty good...BG was 4th in the MAC in offensive efficiency.  I was pretty surprised to see that...it seemed like BG went through prolonged periods of time where they could not score at all and had virtually no offensive competence.  We said we wanted to play inside out, and I guess we were pretty good when that was working, but when teams packed it in (as CMU did against BG in the MAC Tourney), we didn't have the "outside" necessary to pull them out.

Let's look at the four factors that go into that efficiency.

The most important is FG%. If you thought you observed that BG doesn't like to shoot the 3, you did see that right.  BG was last in the MAC in 3-FGA and 11th in 3s made.  So, by process of elimination, you would expect BG to have a high FG%, since more of their shots were coming closer to the basket.  And that played out pretty much as you would expect...in terms of raw FG%, BG was 2nd, shooting 46.6%.

Now, when you look at Effective FG%, which gives teams 1.5 makes for a 3 and 1 for a 2, we can a slightly less optimistic story.  BG falls to 5th in the MAC in EFG%.  That's certainly not terrible, but it does show the impact of teams taking all those 3s and demonstrates the trade off BG makes in playing the way they do.  To win, we'd need to be even better on 2-FGs than we are.

The second most important stat is turnover%.  BG was 5th in this as well, with 20.6%.  Which means that BG was slightly above average in actually getting a shot, and slightly above average in making them when we did get them.

So far, in fact, we are over-performing to be 4th in efficiency.  Oddly, for a team that supposedly wants to play inside, BG does not get to the line.  BG was 11th in the MAC in free throw rate.  Which means they cannot expect much help from the stripe to the overall scoring.  (BG was also 10th in the MAC in FT%, so not only did BG not get to the line, but they didn't convert very often when they did).

Now, you start to think we are really over-achieving.  The final category helps explain, which is offensive rebounding.  BG was 4th in the MAC in offensive rebounds, averaging 35% of their overall missed shots.  This obviously helps, though you'd think getting those second chance shots would lead to a better overall shooting %.

We noted when looking at the defense that the average MAC team got 51% of its points from the field, 28% from 3, and 20% at the line.  BG was 62% FG, 22% 3-FG and 16% FT.  It would be interesting to see how many successful teams are that one-dimensional.  I'd like to think you'd be harder to defend if you successfully found two ways to score instead of one.

Other notes....

Assists are an interesting stat.  First, it seems like they are giving a lot fewer assists than they used to.  More importantly though, it strikes me that there are two kinds of assists.  The ones where you rotate the ball and make an easy pass to an open guy who hits a 3 (relatively easy pass) and then where a PG beats his man, gets into the key and kicks out to a guy who hits a 3 (in my mind, a more real assist).

BG was 9th in assist% and in 5th Assist-turnover ratio.  It is interesting to me that 7 of the 12 teams in the MAC had a ratio less than 1.  BG's was 1.

So, that gives us an idea of how the offense stacked up.  I guess when I looked this over, I don't mean to sound like it was worse than it was.  In fact, with some balance, the team probably had the potential to be better.

Next, we'll look at trends in our offensive basketball...are we moving in the right direction?  Are we establishing, for good or ill, an "identity?"