[NU Sports] 77-44

[s.fridley at comcast.net]

Well, you're spot on as to the usual strategy - that's why good outside shooters are so critical for the Princeton offense - teams are tempted to sag back toward the basket on defense and make cutting very difficult.  When teams zone us, we must shoot well enough from the arc to make that defensive strategy painful.  It's not at all uncommon for teams to zone us until we prove we can hit from outside.  Ironically, it also helps account for some of our success against better teams.  Sometimes coaches are very stubborn about staying with a man-to-man defense as a point of pride.  If they do, and aren't especially quick or disciplined, we can  backdoor them much more easily than a team that's willing to zone us for as long as it takes for us to hit reliably from outside.

In today's game, though, we made layups very early on, and also hit from outside early and often.  The radio broadcast wasn't especially detailed about Utah's defensive schemes, but I imagine they tried several in a vain attempt to slow us down. We really were clicking on all cylinders!


 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Joe Thiegs" <thiegs at umn.edu>
> That's good to hear (I didn't actually see the game).  I was only theorizing
> about how we can win convincingly against a presumably good team on one
> night and have such miserable losses or close wins against teams we should
> blow out other nights.  Without the benefit of any real study, I get the
> sense that there is a pretty strong correlation between our three-point
> shooting percentage and winning (I'm sure that's true of most teams, but
> maybe more so with us).  Also, I'm guessing that hitting the threes
> contributed to success in other aspects of the offense.  Making threes
> forces opposing defenses to guard the perimeter more closely, which opens up
> the driving and passing lanes, short jumpers and layup opportunities.  If we
> weren't hitting anything from behind the arc, they could lay off there and
> tighten up in the interior.  We don't have a lot of big bangers down low.
> Hence, "live by the three, die by the three."  I know that Gonzaga used to
> be a lot like that, at least in the late '90s, early 2000s--they relied
> heavily on good outside shooters.  If those guys had a bad night it could
> get ugly, but as long as the guards shot well they were hard to beat.
> Again, I didn't see the NU game but that's just the sense I get from having
> looked at a few of our box scores.
> 
> -Joe
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
> Behalf Of s.fridley at comcast.net
> Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 3:07 PM
> To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Subject: RE: [NU Sports] 77-44
> 
> Actually, that's a mischaracterization of the game.  We shot threes
> extremely well but we also ran the offense extremely well.  We scored 33
> points from the arc, and 32 points in the paint.  We'd have tied the game
> without hitting a single trey...
> 
> 
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Joe Thiegs" <thiegs at umn.edu>
> > Live by the three, die by the three . . . .  -Joe
> > 
> > 
> 
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