OK I just talked to Coach Howland about how to beat Arizona and he almost guaranteed this would work especially for us. (And we all know Coach Howland knows about winning in the tournament and his love for Weber State.) As a former HS coach myself, I think this will work and somebody needs to relay this to Coach Rahe as a possible strategy.
Arizona is one of the worst free throw shooting teams in the country, especially when there is pressure on them. That is mainly why they lost to UCLA by choking at the line. If you foul anyone other than Nick Johnson or Kaleb Tarczewski, and get them on the free throw line, they will most likely miss the front end of a 1 and 1 or miss 1 of the 2 in a bonus.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...ort/freeThrowPct/order/false/arizona-wildcats
We rank 20th in 3pt shooting at nearly 40% and Arizona's 3pt defense is pretty good but their strength is really defending the interior with their bigs and getting easy rebounds. So we can eliminate that strength by having a chance at the long rebounds and good shots at the 3 by setting good picks. This is what UCLA did on their 3 to win it with a perfect pick by their big man so the shooter is square with his feet. Coach Howland's NAU teams were similar with great 3pt shooters by the way and that's what they did to beat the higher ranked teams.
So imagine this scenario...
We immediately begin fouling by using a designated fouler who constantly targets guys like Gordon, Jefferson and McConnell. It will immediately get in their heads that our strategy is to make them shoot from the line and put pressure on them big time. It will lead to about a 50% average meaning 1 point or less per possession due to some being missed during the 1 and 1s as long as we take care of the boards on these attempts. Of course we can't do it every possession either because we don't have enough players to foul so many times and some possessions, they'll get the board or fast breaks off turnovers etc. so it will increase their point per possession slightly above 1. But the other key will be that their flow will be interrupted and cause bad shots on their side and this is what happened in all of their losses.
Let's say we take 90% of our shots from 3 and average 40% on these. Arizona only averages about 67 possessions per game and the same for us so if they only average let's say 1.1 per possession then that is about 74 points. We will take 60 3s and make 24 and we still have 7 more possessions where we make 1s or 2s at 40% and above which means we will score about 77 points total. If this strategy speeds up the game and there are more possessions, then our margin increases, so even better.
Of course, a game will take many turns and other factors will add or subtract a few points from the point totals. However, as Coach Howland says, the best way to beat a good team which is favored by double digits is to utilize our strength and expose their weakness. And this will be the best way to do it and give our team a fairly good chance to win on Friday afternoon.
If we play them straight up, we have absolutely NO CHANCE imho. So why not give this strategy a try? Plus imagine if we did a Villanova (a la 1985) and shot lights out. It would be a blowout and shock the world! :twocents:
Arizona is one of the worst free throw shooting teams in the country, especially when there is pressure on them. That is mainly why they lost to UCLA by choking at the line. If you foul anyone other than Nick Johnson or Kaleb Tarczewski, and get them on the free throw line, they will most likely miss the front end of a 1 and 1 or miss 1 of the 2 in a bonus.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...ort/freeThrowPct/order/false/arizona-wildcats
We rank 20th in 3pt shooting at nearly 40% and Arizona's 3pt defense is pretty good but their strength is really defending the interior with their bigs and getting easy rebounds. So we can eliminate that strength by having a chance at the long rebounds and good shots at the 3 by setting good picks. This is what UCLA did on their 3 to win it with a perfect pick by their big man so the shooter is square with his feet. Coach Howland's NAU teams were similar with great 3pt shooters by the way and that's what they did to beat the higher ranked teams.
So imagine this scenario...
We immediately begin fouling by using a designated fouler who constantly targets guys like Gordon, Jefferson and McConnell. It will immediately get in their heads that our strategy is to make them shoot from the line and put pressure on them big time. It will lead to about a 50% average meaning 1 point or less per possession due to some being missed during the 1 and 1s as long as we take care of the boards on these attempts. Of course we can't do it every possession either because we don't have enough players to foul so many times and some possessions, they'll get the board or fast breaks off turnovers etc. so it will increase their point per possession slightly above 1. But the other key will be that their flow will be interrupted and cause bad shots on their side and this is what happened in all of their losses.
Let's say we take 90% of our shots from 3 and average 40% on these. Arizona only averages about 67 possessions per game and the same for us so if they only average let's say 1.1 per possession then that is about 74 points. We will take 60 3s and make 24 and we still have 7 more possessions where we make 1s or 2s at 40% and above which means we will score about 77 points total. If this strategy speeds up the game and there are more possessions, then our margin increases, so even better.
Of course, a game will take many turns and other factors will add or subtract a few points from the point totals. However, as Coach Howland says, the best way to beat a good team which is favored by double digits is to utilize our strength and expose their weakness. And this will be the best way to do it and give our team a fairly good chance to win on Friday afternoon.
If we play them straight up, we have absolutely NO CHANCE imho. So why not give this strategy a try? Plus imagine if we did a Villanova (a la 1985) and shot lights out. It would be a blowout and shock the world! :twocents:
