If Indiana wasn’t going to play a lottery pick like he’s a lottery pick, why did they recruit a lottery pick?
There is no sure-fire strategy to succeed at scoring the basketball.
For teams with good players at all five spots, ball movement and selflessness works. For teams with one dynamic player, a good player, and three who can’t shoot, the ball needs to be controlled by the star.
It’s tough when there is a single serious offensive threat on the floor, and no one else commands legit defensive respect. It’s hard to get the ball to the stud as often as he needs it, but for Indiana, their best chance to score every time down the floor is to get the ball to Romeo Langford.
Oddly, IU appears committed to sharing the ball to their own detriment.
Against Purdue, Indiana played eight guys. One of them was Zach McRoberts – a guard who wouldn’t shoot six times in a game at the Hyper. Juwan Morgan was 3-for-14. The other six Hoosiers each shot six, seven, or eight times, and made a combined 11 shots.
I love Morgan, but when he shoots more than twice as often as Langford, the erase part of the dry-erase board must be used.
It’s nice to share the ball, but sharing the ball among those six guys to the tune of an 11-for-39 night is a great way to score 46 points.
The last game Indiana won while scoring in the 40s was a 49-45 win over Iowa in 1984. To win, IU most score points, and if not Romeo, who? Zora Clevenger might have coach the last time IU won while scoring 46 or fewer.
Give your best player the ball – and let him go to work!
Basketball is not complicated. Scoring points is good, and your best offensive player has the best chance of scoring.
Give Romeo the damn ball.
Conversely, the Pacers seem to be a team where everyone can score, so the ball is shared. There is no great offensive player on the team, so on any given night, Myles Turner, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thad Young, Domas Sabonis, or Tyreke Evans can lead the team in scoring – and each has during wins.
That’s the way they play, and thus generosity is the culture of the team. And it is successful. If the Pacers were losing 11 of their last 12 as the Hoosiers have, I might ask for someone to step up as the alpha male and go to work, but the Pacers are 38-20 (3rd in the East).
Stay the course. Share the ball. Don’t argue with success. Frustrate more talented teams by kicking their asses with old fashioned ball movement.
At IU, argue with failure! Do something different with Romeo while you have him.
Easy game. Coach to your talent. Win. See, easy.
Kent Sterling hosts the fastest growing sportstalk show in Indianapolis on CBS Sports 1430 every weekday from 3p-7p, and writes about Indiana sports at kentsterling.com.
I tend to take the opposite viewpoint from your comments. IU’s NCAA hopes are dead. I think that they might get an NIT bid so long as the rest of the season doesn’t continue to implode. Who really cares? An NIT bid is like kissing your sister. No excitement, and no glory.
I believe that the coaching staff should focus on development instead of putting the ball into the hands of one player. It is hard for me to believe with all of the assistants that Miller has that he can’t seem to teach and coach players to improve their shooting. Most of the problem is definitely confidence. You get confidence by playing minutes and shooting the ball when you are open. Sometimes I get the feeling that players have been instructed to get the ball to Juran and Romeo so much that they have lost confidence in themselves. If this is, in fact, IU’s main strategy, it is (and has been) a formula for disaster. After all, Juran and Romeo can’t shoot the ball either!
One great high point for IU against Purdue was the defensive job that Phinese and Durham made against Carsen Edwards. What a great job! I also liked the defensive job that Davis did against Haarms. This was a victory of sorts that no one is talking about.
Agreed on Phinisee and Durham. One possible explanation about the lack of offensive confidence for those other than Morgan and Romeo is that they are not very good. To co-op an old saying about paranoia, “Minus great talent, a lack of confidence is just good thinking.”