I don't think it's any secret that Clemson is underperforming this season. The obvious culprit is the offense, which has struggled in just about every imaginable way to put points on the board. The statistics agree with this sentiment pretty strongly. First I'm going to show charts that are slightly different from previous charts I've shown, these track differences in offensive/defensive efficiencies across the last two years:
I don't have the data from midseason 2009, so that point is interpolated by averaging the bookending points. Clearly, we are struggling on offense this year. But what's I really find interesting is the relationship between offense and defense over the past two years. In 2009, the defense steadily declined while the offense steadily improved. This year, the defense has steadily improved while the offense has steadily declined. Last year, the defense fell apart largely because Clemson became too predictable in their pressure defense over the course of a game, allowing teams to routinely break the press and score. Often teams weren't settling for a drive to the basket, either, but were looking for (and making) wide-open threes. This year, Purnell came out with a clear plan to counter the defensive struggles of last year by mixing up pressure looks not just during blocks of possessions but even from individual possession to individual possession. The results have been fantastic and are clearly evident from the forced turnover rates--Clemson's defense ranks 4th in the country in opposition turnovers and 5th in steals. Make no mistake, rate of forced turnovers is driving the defense--our effective FG% defense is a respectable 50th in the country, but that lags well behind the other strong defenses in the ACC.
On the other hand, I imagine Oliver Purnell was not counting on the complete implosion of the offense. I'm not showing the overall efficiency data relative to recent years, but we are currently as bad as we've been since 2006. Let's look at the four factors the offense to try and get some answers:
It looks all four factors have gotten slightly worse across the board. I would wager the fluctuations in FT attempts/FG attempts and offensive rebounding percentage are little more than noise and not much to be concerned about. However, the turnover% and FG% (the two most important factors), while up only slightly, still look troublesome. Here are the component offensive factors:
Now we see something emerge. Our drop in effective FG% appears to be directly related to our struggles from behind the arc since the start of ACC play. Also, our rate of having the ball stolen has gone up slightly, although I doubt that alone explains the increase in turnovers. The other factors don't worry me too much, and unbelievably our FT% has actually gotten better since the start of ACC play (must be that flukish 18-20 UNC performance).
I think our offensive troubles since the start of ACC play can be traced primarily to 3-point problems and to a lesser extent, an increase in both forced and unforced turnovers. I've been pretty adamant since the start of the year that our three-point shooting would be fine, but I can't ignore the data any longer--we need more threes to start falling. I didn't anticipate Young's struggles. He's not missing shots, but he's having a hard time getting open looks against the taller ACC competition. Potter has regressed substantially, and while Johnson hasn't been a disaster as a freshman (35%), I was hoping (probably too much) for more. Stitt has improved from around a 30% shooter in his first two years to 35% this year, but his injury has left him out or hobbled through most of ACC play. Tanner Smith has been a catastrophe, shooting below 30% now on just 61 shots. All of this adds up to a markedly below-average three-point shooting team for the ACC.
Meanwhile, on the turnover front, while Stitt has actually marginally improved a couple of percentage points, overall he still sports an ugly turnover rate of 23.1 (meaning he turns the ball over 23.1% of the time he is involved in a possession). This gain has been offset, however, by Young's increase from 16.9 a year ago to 21.9 this year. With our two primary ball-handlers giving the ball back in one out of five personal possessions, Clemson's having a tough time just letting plays develop long enough to get looks at the basket.
There's not much I can see Clemson doing to improve their problems behind the arc. Minor tweaking is probably all Purnell has at his disposal now, something along the lines of 1) letting Johnson shoot as much as possible hoping he develops into a more reliable shot by the end of the season, 2) relegating Tanner Smith to defensive specialist, and 3) figuring out ways of ensuring Andre Young is open at least a few times a game. The turnover problems are even worse. While I believe Andre Young's true turnover rate lies closer to 16.9 than 21.9, he's done little since Stitt's injury to support this. Its a difficult problem to solve midseason.
The most frustrating aspect of these offensive struggles is that we could be better now with a little more emphasis on fundamentals. We have the shooting skills to be better than 64.2% from the line. While our 2P FG% is keeping us afloat, everyone knows from watching the games that we could be even better. And of course, if we could just stop dribbling the ball off our legs, we'd cut a good 5% off our turnover rate. All of these little things would add up to at least a respectable ACC-level offense.
You would think Purnell might turn his attention to these offensive fundamentals. However, watching the team (particularly since Stitt went down) and listening to Purnell's recent statements to the media, its pretty clear Purnell has gone in the opposite direction: he's looking to further improve the defense. I think this also explains the increase in defensive efficiency since the start of ACC play (second chart above).
If true, it's an interesting gambit and I actually kind of like it. The key selling point for me is Stitt's injury. While Young has filled in reasonably well in his absence, without Stitt we almost entirely lose the ability to penetrate on offense. Given Stitt's poor all around play after returning from injury last year, its difficult to count on him being the same player when he finally does return. With that in mind, if our half-court offense is going to essentially consist of Trevor Booker underneath and Grant cleaning up on misses, we might as well focus on defense to keep the other team's points down and try to score some easy points off turnovers.
There's been a lot of chatter around the blogosphere about discontent with Purnell. This puts me in a rather odd position where I feel compelled to defend Oliver Purnell; long-time readers will know we've been critical of Purnell when the situation warrants. I don't feel like this is the time. To me, the first two charts indicate that the program is not necessarily plateauing, we just haven't been able to combine excellent offense and defense at the same time since the end of 2008. Right now, we have room to grow on the offense (even in the remainder of this season) until we get closer to previous seasons. Its tough to fault Purnell for the perfect storm of 1) Booker taking small steps back in productivity both at the FT line and in 2-pt shooting, 2) the failure of Jennings and Johnson to develop into useful players, 3) Andre Young's battle with turnovers, and 4) Stitt's injury. Even with only one or two of these, the offense is good enough to win a couple of the close games we've already lost.
Purnell did a good job of adjusting to our problems in the offseason, I suspect he'll do the same in offense in the coming months, spilling into next season. I can easily see this group of players providing equally efficient offensive and defensive production, even though it is taking longer than any of us would have liked.
No comments:
Post a Comment