Florida State Mens Basketball Turns ball over on 22 of 69 possessions, loses to Northwestern 73-59, sun rises
by Bud Elliott on Dec 5, 2008 12:30 AM EST
in FSU Football
39 comments
I am bumping this to the top because I am very impressed with the overall level of commenting in this article. I really learned a lot and was surprised by the knowledge of our members. There will be basketball talk here throughout basketball season and I hope that everyone can follow basketball with us as well.
I won't be around this morning, so unless one of you can pressure CaStauch into publishing the Ponder review, there won't be anything new until mid-afternoon (unless one of the other guys has something in the hopper they didn't tell me about.)
I've watched Leonard Hamilton coach this team since 2002. Back in September, I adopted this quote as my official stance on Leonard Hamilton.
Leonard Hamilton is a poor game coach. He is an excellent recruiter and a decent disciplinarian. He will take your program from bad to average by way of improving the overall talent level. He will take your program from average, and well... um... keep it there. It is his track record. He improves the talent level immensely, which creates wins, but he doesn't have the on-court coaching ability or or off court teaching ability to take your program to the next level. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure that this is his M.O.
In October, I advocated that we call him Recruiter Hamilton, instead of Coach Hamilton. This article will focus on Recruiter Hamilton's ability to coach basketball. This is not a recruiting article. I am not going to debate that he is an excellent recruiter. I am going to establish that he doesn't know what he is doing when it comes to offensive basketball, or if he does, he hasn't shown it here. Come inside...
Back in 2002, Brian Landman wrote an article for the St. Pete Times that classified Hamilton as a hard nosed defensive coach. I think Landman got it only half right. Hamilton's focus is defense, but there is a difference between being defensive minded and being an inept offensive coach. Recruiter Hamilton is the latter.
The main problem I notice with Hamilton is the complete lack of anything resembling an offense. There seem to be few plays, if any. The sets are not discernible. The offense is stagnant. The players just stand around. There is little motion. The players are pretty bad at passing the ball. You can tell they do not practice offense well. The players just do not know where to go with the ball.
Some teams are based on defense. That is fine. Even the most defensive minded teams have a few "go to plays" that set up a player with an open shot. If Recruiter Hamilton was a chess coach, he would supply his team with chess sets of fine ivory, and then instruct them to place the pieces randomly across the board. Then he would introduce a timer and make them play speed chess with the randomly placed pieces. Nice chess pieces, no organization. Enough chess jokes? Thought so.
I want to establish something, using numbers: Leonard Hamilton cannot design or effectively coach offensive basketball. His offense does not get enough quality shots because of an insane amount of turnovers, and for the most part, this is not a result of bad ball-handling, but rather, a result of poor design. The guys have nobody to pass the ball to, and they result to forcing difficult passes.
I will use establish this using 3 advanced statistical measures.
Turnovers per 100 possessions: This is the most effective way to measure turnovers. It takes out "pace", so that we can measure the % of the time a team turns the ball over. This is much better than total turnovers. Consider these 2 teams:
- Team A had 60 possessions and 15 turnovers
- Team B had 100 possessions and 18 Turnovers
Which team was worse in the turnover department? Team A, clearly, as they turned the ball over 25% of the time, while team B turned the ball over on 18 of its possessions. Now, see why this is a better measure?
Assists/ Field Goals Made: This is an excellent measure of how effectively a team moves the ball. This is basically "how often do our made shots come off of assists?" This is a good way to see if the offense is getting a guy an open look, or if the scorer got the ball and created his own shot (probably due to his own athletic ability).
Steals Allowed per 100 Possessions: I included this because I wanted to show that we don't have bad ball handlers, but rather, just don't have viable options to pass to. The coach isn't designing an offense that gives guys passing options.
| *NCAA Rank is out of 344 teams* | |||
| YEAR | Turnovers per 100 Possessions (NCAA Rank) | Assist/ Field Goal Made (NCAA Rank) | Steals Allowed per 100 Possessions |
| 2004 | 22.4 (225th) | 60.8 (58th) | 10.1 (146th) |
| 2005 | 23.2 (266th) | 51.5 (255th) | 11.9 (270th) |
| 2006 | 22.2 (223rd) | 50.7 (265th) | 9.4 (84th) |
| 2007 | 21.4 (182nd) | 46.3 (321st) | 9.3 (119th) |
| 2008 | 21.8 (228th) | 44.4 (325th) | 8.7 (64th) |
| 2009 | 24.7 (283) | 51.7 (215) | 10.3 (204) |
What I noticed:
- Always in the bottom half in turnovers
- Except for 2004, always outside the top 255 in Assists/ Field Goals Made (and trending downward!)
- Usually in the better half in the steals allowed category
So... your thoughts. Why is this happening? Is there any reason to expect this to improve under Recruiter Hamilton?
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It was pathetic
Watching them handle the press.
"Leonard Hamilton cannot design or effectively coach offensive basketbal"
I think his brand of basketball is plenty offensive for me.
See what I did there? Puns. They’re great.
Anyway, Leonard seems to be completely dependent on one guy who can score from anywhere over anybody (Pickett, Thornton, etc). But here’s what frustrates me most. Ok, so we’re going to have 1 go-to scorer. Fine. You can win some basketball games like that (see Davidson). You give your guy the ball and get out of his way. But we don’t do that. We do as much as possible to limit our top guy by not feeding him the ball in his spots.
We used to do an ok job of this, but it was mainly because Pickett could hit a falling down three from any bad spot on the court where the ball happened to end up off a deflected pass. Thornton was such a freak of nature that we could give it to him wherever we wanted and he alone would create the shot.
I consider Toney to be our only legitimate scorer with this team right now.We’re much worse at this with Toney than we have been in the past. If we were going to have a chance in that game last night toward the end, we needed Toney Douglas to go insane and hit some threes. And we didn’t come up with a scheme to get him open. Combine that with frequently pathetic substitution patterns (hit just hit three 30-footers in a row, get him out of the game), and the complete mismanagement of time outs you’ve got the Leonard Hamilton offense.
And lest we think he’s genius on the other side of the ball, our defense isn’t that much better. He preaches focus and intesity (I’m starting to hate that word) on defense, but rarely puts our guys in a position to succeed. Sound familiar? He is loyal to his scheme and not his players and will sacrifice any bit of offense in favor of defense. Isaiah Swann always got me with this. Swann was a defensive liability, no question. But rather than masking some of his deficiencies, he was thrown under the bus and removed from games. We would frequently bench our best leaving a giant hole in our offense. No wonder he took some terrible threes, never know when you might get to shoot it again.
Hopefully it won’t cost us many of the recruits, because we will not become a better basketball team until he is gone.
He coaches the team right?
His title is “Coach” correct?
It’s Coach Hamilton whether you like HOW he coaches or not. That’s just courtesy.
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." - General George S. Patton
You can call it a joke if you'd like
but the fact is that kind of joke is poisonous, and just plays into a garbage-like attitude towards FSU athletics. Your stats usually prove your point, without making snide remarks like the above. I’m waiting on all the anti-Martin stuff in the spring. Is he flawed? Yes. Is he ever going to win Omaha? Probably not, but it doesn’t mean I want to oust him either.
"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't." - General George S. Patton
Martin consistently gets his team to Omaha
he has an excellent track record and baseball isn’t a sport where a coach needs to work an 80 hour week to dominate.
Seriously, lighten up, CC.
If something like that really offends you, then let me go out on a limb and say that this may not be the right site for you.
Uncensored, excellent analysis as always. (And your humor is appreciated – especially in times like these – by those of us who get it.)
I get where he is coming from and I like CC
I also disagree what calling Coach Ham “Recruiter Hamilton” poisons the fan base.
There's nothing wrong with being a recruiter
And Coach Hamilton excels at recruiting. I love the talent he brings to the team.
But they never seem properly prepared for the opposing teams and they don’t seem to have a set offense that’s effective.
Looked like we were playing a high school math team...
honestly with as many turnovers as we had last night, i still kept waiting for us to blow that team out…
A couple observations…
1. Outside of Toney Douglas and Demercy we have no legitimate ball handlers. Half of those turnovers last night resulted from awul ball handling. Guys not confident in their ability to handle the ball in the back court.
2. Our press breaker looks pretty middle school-esque in my mind and i think once we get into the heart of our ACCschedule that will get exposed and result in a lot of fast break points for the opposing teams.
3. Why didn’t we play zone the entire time last night? As slow as those kids were last night they were still able to get plenty of back door cuts that ended in layups or kicking the ball out for an open three.
4. As someone i think mentioned earlier, we really needed to extend the D as well. We needed to press at least 3/4 court. We were a much more athletic team and i think that press would have exposed them
4. Did Northwestern’s coach have Tourette Syndrome?
5. We gotta stop with the excessive amounts of cross court passes. those all stem from lack of movement. move off the ball and get the hell open…
6. I hope we can stay healthy because we have some really talented young guys…
7. I’m very hopeful with this team as there were some glimmers of great basketball last night i have to say. We pass really well around the basket.
The talent is there now lets see if Hamilton can get them to gel together.
2. I have no clue what we were doing. Their defense was so extended that we could have blown by them easily, yet kids are so scared to get trapped on the sidelines that they wouldn’t even take the ball over half court. Just throw the ball in bounds and dribble as fast as you can to the middle of the court. We played right into what they wanted us to do. Slowing the game down limiting possessions.
3. I agree. For some reason their court seemed really big to me, maybe it was the camera angle we were working with in that middle school gym they had. They were effectively able to stretch the field because we felt it necessary to guard them at the half court line. And if that wasn’t enough we also saw fit to have everyone converge on the ball away from the hoop to leave shooters wide open to do the pattented NU Chuck Shot. I looked better shooting in my middle school league with two hands.
5. This was half of the problems on the turnovers. For some reason our team seems to run away from the ball. I don’t think I saw one person set a pick or check to the ball to bail out someone getting trapped.
Another thing I noticed is that we were absolutley murdering them on the boards for stretches of the game. The only times we didn’t seem to get rebounds were on awkward deflections. There’s no reason to take a rebound and reset the offense when we were getting as many as we did. Also, the foul calling was atrocious. We were getting hammered anywhere close to the basket and not getting half of the calls, yet getting called on the other end for legitimate steals and blocks. If we touched a NU player with the ball, a foul was called. Really killed our athleticism and intensity. NU is a terrible team. They were simply better coached. At the end of the game it became apparent to me that if we wanted to, we could prevent them from ever inbounding the ball. We wouldn’t get a steal, but it seemed possible that we could bat it out of bounds on any attempt. This seems like a more effective method of playing defense that what we were doing.
I dont have the game recorded
but I really wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t one. We could destroy teams with some pick and roll action with Reid. These kids should just buy some Mike K tapes and coach themselves.
There were plenty....
but they were in all ineffective and half as*ed. most of them were the typical high low picks in the paint. And we did set a couple high picks but often left the ‘roll’ in their dorm rooms
on a side note, when those back cuts work it’s really gorgeous basketball to watch. can you imagine that offense with out athletes?
. We gotta stop with the excessive amounts of cross court passes. those all stem from lack of movement. move off the ball and get the hell open…
I dont have the ability to
watch FSU basketball unless they are playing on ESPN. Not moving off the ball typically stems from exhaustion or laziness. Are they well conditioned?
Thanks for starting this discussion...
I was so frustrated last night watching this game. After waiting a couple of weeks to watch this team play, I was highly disappointed.
I said to my wife in the first half that watching this game was like watching the football team play Georgia Tech. Then the announcers stole my line in the second half.
Here are my thoughts:
We somehow scraped through the first half with a lead, and I think Hamilton was “content” with having the lead on the road in a prime time game. We fell apart when the second half started. When a team starts a second half like NU did, they clearly made an adjustment and we didn’t. What did Hamilton say to his team at the half? They came out flat and I didn’t see any adjustments.
Our guards, except for Douglas at times, played timid. I saw no sense of urgency trying to beat the half court trap. This was not a complicated trap and should have easily been beaten with a couple of passes or movement by our “athletic” team. I don’t understand stopping and throwing the ball back toward the baseline. Our guards stopped moving up the court when they felt any pressure; this was particularly evident when Loucks had the ball.
We do not move on offense. It seems that our team expects to overwhelm teams with its athletic abilities. Well, when you stand around and throw the ball across court athletic ability means nothing. Does Hamilton not understand how to beat a press zone? Can our guards not drive and kick? Against a bigger more athletic team, those lob passes are intercepted more often than not.
Simple execution. Our passing was sloppy and lazy and poorly positioned, so many balls were thrown at players feet or not passed to put the offensive player in good position. What I mean is that a pass, particularly to a big man inside should lead him or put him in a better position with the ball or at least a safe position.
Foul trouble. I agree that at times the refs had some questionable decisions and that led to a lot of frustration fouls. But, we put our self in the the position to foul, getting in bad position on defense, chasing way too often.
Effort. Did anyone see any emotion from this team? I mostly saw guys holding their hand up with the “What?” look on their face. This is not surprising from a young team. Douglas needs to take control and get these kids fired up.
This game shows you what a well coached team can do against us. They ran their offense the way they wanted to. We did nothing to disrupt the back door cuts or get them to consider other options. Once they were up, they drained the clock. There is a reason they are one of the worst “tempo” teams in the nation….but once they get up, they suck the life out of you and bleed the clock. It’s effective.
We play Florida this weekend at home. We always do well at home and it certainly helps young players. But watch out….we cannot rely on athleticism alone to beat well coached teams….especially if they are athletic as well.
Overall a very disappointing game to watch. We have some great players and we will get there. But we need a leader. Hamilton needs to do better. I was confused at his substitutions, his lack of adjustments and his game planning. Again, like GTech football…we’ll never see anything like this again this year so it is hard to game plan against. But Northwestern played well coached fundamental basketball and won. Simple recipe for victory…
I should add..
that if you look at Northwestern’s assist to field goal ration…it was ridiculous a ridiculous 78. Imagine that 3/4 of your baskets are a result of pass then shoot…that is team basketball. It demonstrates a system and guys are buying into it. Ours was 52…not great not awful. We didn’t get into any offensive set or flow. Kudos to NU for playing a great game. They showed up to play and beat us and made us look like a timid confused team.
I'm glad you finally got to see them, even if it was tough to watch.
Do you see potential from our PG’s? How could we mitigate some of this silliness?
Losing Douglas will be huge...
He’s our defensive leader, sets up our offense and plays effective basketball.
Demercy is almost there on the offensive end. He has to work on his decision making skills and get to the basket more. He has a quick first step when he chooses to use it, but he isn’t. Plus, he needs to work on his shooting. Too often he passed up open threes knowing there was no way he would hit it. I love a guy that understands his shooting range, but a guard needs to be able to hit jump shots on a regular basis or get to his spot to shoot. Too many cross court passes.
Loucks is very very young. I liked his speed but his decision making is clearly that of a Frosh in his 8th game. I like his build and athleticism. However, he was so timid with the ball. He was clearly afraid to make mistakes…again not surprising. I think we will be okay. Plus we have so many young guards in our arsenal, all of whom will get experience by the end of the year.
Looking forward to Snaer and Okaro White…we will have ball handlers in the future. My biggest concern is that Hamilton needs to help them. He needs to have a clearly defined offensive set to help them with those decisions. Look at Northwestern…they’re young and they run a very sophisticated offense. But they run it over and over and over and over…so you know where to put the ball. You know where your teamates are going to end up. We don’t. Too much standing around, which makes young guards look terrible.
Fundamentals. Organization. Repetition. That will help young players get into a rhythm and decrease the mistakes. I really feel that their lost out their because they unsure of where to go with the ball. That results in them placing a significant amount of pressure to “not screw up,” resulting in timid play and poor decisions. We’ve got the talent…the question is can we maximize it? We can. I have no doubt that we will surprise some big teams down the road when this team gets a lot of games under their belt. We won’t be talking about the same issues once we get into ACC play after the new year. I really think we have a lot of growing pains that are compounded by the lack of a clear system. I think Hamilton does an incredible job recruiting considering the position he is in and he relies on his talent.
Rotations/Substitutions
That was the first time seeing the team actually play so i dont know what our normal rotation has been. But it seemed like Ham was making some questionable subsitutions during the game. You think its because he’s still trying to feel everything/everyone out?
Hamilton was quoted as saying "The small lineup Northwestern used forced us into a small lineup to our disadvantage." I think that’s a cop-out. I’ll buy that answer when you are playing a superior team, when you are trying to stay stride for stride. But when you have the superior athletes there’s no reason that you should let the other team’s line-up dictate your own. Don’t react, be proactive.
Ham better teach these kids how to beat a zone or we are in for a long season.
Totally agree.
I was confused for most of the second half as to who was coming in, when and why. Plus, Douglas looked like he was about to collapse at the end of the game. Those threes started falling shorter and shorter.
With our size, and athleticism, we could have and should have dropped into either a match up zone or even a box and 1 with Douglas being the one. With our size advantage we could have clogged up passing lanes and taken up a lot of space. Northwestern forced us out to the perimeter opening up those back cuts. In the second half, they came out shooting lights out…but look at how many lay ups they had.
Northwestern had a great rotation. They constantly brought fresh legs on to the court…all of their players can be plugged into their system.
I love your “Don’t react, be proactive” line. This works for football and basketball. Hamilton should have forced them to figure out a way to stop our big guys. They actually did a nice job clogging up the paint when we got the ball down low…but if we kept forcing the ball inside, they were collapsing so quickly our guards would have had easily looks for short range jump shots. Plus, their double teaming would have led to them fouling us…there was no way they could consistently stop Alabi. Their 7’0 is a true freshman, who only plays a handful of minutes because of conditioning and output.
Front Court
i agree whole heartedly that we needed to keep forcing that ball inside especially with the zone they were playing. Against that 1-3-1 there are a couple holes that offenses should look to exploit, most of them are on the weakside especially along the baseline. However, with our minimal off-the-ball movement NU had nothing to worry about. But defending the post is typically a hard thing for a 1-3-1 and our big guys should have been getting the ball on the blocks more consistently. You nailed it when you said there was no way they could consistently stop Alabi, he would and should have had a bigger night.
We probably won’t see that 1-3-1 very often but Hamilton still needs to teach these kids how to read/assess/attack these different types of defenses. We played right into their hands by allowing our guards to get double teamed while handling the ball along the sideline (case in point Loucks).
And you mentioned it above and i agree, where is the dribble drive and kick?
Yup...
There was little no backside movement in our offense. I felt terrible for our guards as everyone stood their and watched them dribble into disaster after disaster. And I agree about the 1-3-1. It worked for NU and their scrappiness and we fell right into their trap. We tried to spread the floor in order to use our athleticism…meaning one on one game…and it allowed them to press the ball all along the perimeter, not allowing us to get the ball inside. We settled into throwing the ball across court to get out of the traps, which is fine if we had backside movement of our big men to get a quick inlet pass off that “lob.” We just stood around and watched.
Case in point
Coach Hamilton: “It was a great teaching tool. Pointing out a lot of mistakes we made, a lot of careless errors — offensively and defensively — that can very easily be eliminated with a higher level of focus and concentration.”
“That was probably the worst kind of team for us to play at this particular time,” he said. “They exposed a lot of our defensive weaknesses.”
I think he has a realistic understanding of his team…now let’s do something about it.
Florida Game
is it going to be on TV? i haven’t checked my local listings yet but i’m assuming its not going to be on ESPN or the Deuce
Looks like it will be on FSN...not sure if they will go national with it.
I’ll figure it out before I put up the preview.
What is the deal with Coach Ham and eligibility?
Seems like there is an issue with eligibility every season. This year it is Kitchen. Is this a result of finding diamonds in the rough that no one else wants to deal with? I am not talking about high school grades either. I am talking transfers and foreigners.
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