re: What is your X’s and O’s critique of McMahon and MBB?

Offensively - he doesn’t play downhill, prefers jump shots or post ups. Very predictable, basically 2 or 3 different actions always in the same spots. Doesn’t push the ball, doesn’t use any high low entries for KJ or Fountain. Doesn’t crash the offensive boards, doesn’t run any quick sets or specialty plays to get certain guys looks when the offense is stagnant.

Defensively- very soft man to man, doesn’t pressure the ball or try to force turnovers so we have no transition game at all.

Basically everything is half court, possession by possession basketball. We have to work for every shot and there are no easy baskets by design.

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Here's my 2 cents from somebody that coached on the HS level until I went into private business. McMahon brought over the same offense he ran at his previous school. It's a ton or PnR roll and replace actions where they look to clear out High/Low or run "shooters" off of staggers. There is some misdirection with running guys off pin downs trying to get the 1v1 matchup in the post for KJ. The problem was we had success early and even against Arky early. Then the blueprint on how to guard our stuff with the guys we have got put on tape. It was too late in season for McMahon to just abandon ship and put in an entire new offense. So he has two choices at the point. Find guys that fit his system or adapt his system. Next year will be very telling. I'd like to see him put some Princeton elements in such as Point Away and Over as well as some of the shuffle actions into pin downs. He needs something more free flowing and not nearly as PnR driven. PnR's are great but you better have a really good player attacking off the screen and a really good player rolling or popping. It's too easy to guard if one of those 2 guys has glaring weaknesses.

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I agree with everything you said, 100%. I think a lot of the fan talk about coaches is overstated, like adjustments for example. Or even better, half time adjustments. But it's always a coaches job to adapt his system to his players, not the other way around. I can live with calling this year is what it is for McMahon, but there needs to be some real growth next season. From the teach and him as a coach.

You got a lot of great answers to this question. The game of basketball as evolved into analytics, pace and space.
It’s get to the rim, for a layup/dunk, get fouled and go to the line, and 3 pt field goals particularly corner 3’s.
We used to destroy teams in the wade era at the free throw line. Most night we attempted more than the other team shot. This is huge and hard to overcome. It also helps you compensate for a poor shooting night.
My analysis, and this is no official stat, but if you need to score around 72 pts to win, and you only shoot 41% and you turn it over 13 times. Then you have to create more possession in order for you to shoot enough to get to 72.
So force more turnovers, a pick up the pace.or crash the glass. Loved watching Emmit and Darius work the offensive glass

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Offense-
I honestly thought drawing up offensive sets was going to be McMahon’s specialty. It hasn’t. Offense is so hard to watch. Seems like all of the action goes away from the rim. There is only one legitimate scoring threat on the team and they’ll make multiple trips down the court without KJ getting a touch. Possessions just result in someone chucking up a 3 at first opportunity.

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You really can't run a successful offense around a single scorer who is your big guy. KJ gets touches but he gets a double 90% of the time and passes out of it. Last game he actually shot against the double, but most teams with better players prevent this. Last few games Miller drove the ball more which helped a lot. But still we need better shooters.

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Defense-
They never switch in man. Ever. That often leads to just chasing from behind. Easy dunks and layups have been a huge problem

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Defense is just that we don't have the team speed or length for a full court press. Our strategy has to be just to get back to prevent transition buckets. Last game Cam came up way short in slowing down guards for some reason.

Beyond that we lack height and have to go to a 3 guard lineup a lot because we have only one true SF.

Brandon Murray, Efton Reid and Darius Days weren’t fast and we pressed with those guys. Fudge and Wilk weren’t speedsters either. Besides you can run zone traps, we did that a lot too last season. Our 2-2-1 trap was very good for us.

“We did pretty bad when we pressed last year.”


Completely false and statements like this call into question that you even watched last years team.

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Good man to man defensive coaches rarely switch on screens. The NBA does this because they really don’t want to go hard on defense for 82 games and switching is a hell of a lot easier. Coach K, Bobby Knight, Chuck Daley in the NBA… these teams never switched on every screen. The man guarding the ball closed the gap and went over the screen. The man guarding the screener sagged and helped to slow down the man with the ball in case his teammate was not getting over the screen quickly and then hustled back to his man. It’s more work on D and requires more physicality, but the switching on every pick and roll allowing PG’s to abuse bigs in the NBA is stupid and could be stopped with some old school get over the pick and help D.

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This is a big yikes

Defensive screen coverage should be predicated on the ability of your defenders and the players involved in the screen action. All things equal, switching is what you want to do. You’re right in that sometimes personnel doesn’t make it ideal, but saying good man to man coaches rarely switch on screens is idiotic. Same with your callback to the Bobby Knight era. Offensive basketball is JUST a bit different now.

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Your comments about size and length are simply false. Last years front line, 6-11, 6-10, 6-8 and 6-6. This year 7-0, 6-10, 6-10 and 6-8.

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JFC. Give up your bs. I said speed and length, not size and length. So you set that up for your little straw man argument.

And of course you throw in Phillips as the 7 footer. Why didn't you throw in Shareef with the other 7 footer and Efton to give last year's team 3 7 footers across the front line? Would fit with your bs if you wanted to make last year's team look taller (which it was)

Early on the X's and O's looked great against lower level competition. Now it looks like crap but everyone has figured out that we have no one that can shoot. Pack it in, play zone, Double KJ, and let everyone else shoot away!