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Why can't players shoot?


juscAUse

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I am an old man. I was not a basketball star. I never made it to 6 ft tall, and even in the 70's, that wasn't tall enough. I would have given good money ( if I had any ) to have the athleticism that today's players have. But how AU can give scholarships, year after year, to people that can't shoot a lick is beyond me. I grew up in a town where everybody could make a free throw except the center. He only made 6 out of ten, or so. I know the defenses are better, but Florida doesn't seem to have problems making shots. Is it the three pointer? Dunks? Do people not practice jump shots anymore? I know we all get better the older we get, but everybody I played with could hurt you from 12 ft in. You could not give them a shot. Today, guard the 3 and the dunk and you seem to be good. I guess I'm a dinasaur. Educate me, please.

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Jus...seems to me that you covered it pretty well. It is curious :-\

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AU simply isn't a great perimeter shooting team. They couple that with a stubborn refusal to consistently drive to the paint. The result is scoring droughts that last 10 minutes. Its maddening, really.

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AU simply isn't a great perimeter shooting team. They couple that with a stubborn refusal to consistently drive to the paint. The result is scoring droughts that last 10 minutes. Its maddening, really.

Good discussion on Sirius Sports today by a couple BB coaches....summation is that teams play zone mostly today because none of the players can shoot....national epidemic apparently....the few kids that can hit a reasonable percentage of their shots are the exception. They blamed it on HS and AAU where emphasis is on "going to the hoop"....which generally does not work in college against a good zone defense. Interesting to me is if you look at the best percentage 3 point shooting teams in the NCAA it is mostly a bunch of teams you never heard of....same for free throw percentage.

JMO but the big schools go after the big athletic guys who dominate HS...but when they get up against good defenders with the same physicality in college, their shooting weakness show up and we see what have been seeing a lot of lately.

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Exhibit A of this premise.....Duke for one of the few times under Coach K used a zone defense to cut down on Louisville's dribble drive offense and held them to about 30% from the field when they had to resort to shooting from outside...and thus knocked off the #6 team at home.

All those athletes at U of L...and most of them can't shoot a lick from more than 4 feet.

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So, you're saying it's not just Auburn?

;)/>

Last I saw we were the worst in the SEC at fg percentage and 278th in the country, so yeah, I'd say it's worse at AU than most everywhere else

After seeing those stats, the wonder is how we ever win. Let Bruce get a shooter or two, and we are trouble. For anybody.
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Maybe Vandy will lease out their 10th grader with the plastic face. He's a dead eye.

perhaps....college basketball has lots of those baby-faced sharpshooters but mostly they seem to play for the smaller private schools and Vandy almost always has a couple of them. Wonder why that is ? Guess they don't make much of an impression in person and many coaches aren't able to see past their "athleticism" criteria.

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First you build a team with overall game strengths, then you add players that are specialist. And athleticism helps out tremendously with defense. Changes usually lean to being better on defense than offense.

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First you build a team with overall game strengths, then you add players that are specialist. And athleticism helps out tremendously with defense. Changes usually lean to being better on defense than offense.

We haven't had a pure shooter since Wesley Person ....about the past 20 years+ . Seems like one of the five coaches since then could have come up with a couple of them. It's heartbreaking to watch these highly touted athletes hitting about 1/3rd of their of their outside shots and missing 1/3rd of their foul shots.

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Scotty P that played with Chris porter, doc rivers, Bryant smyth, and mamadu. He was pure. Derrick Bird and Lincoln glass were great shooters as well. KT that we have now is a great spot up shooter. In all the basketball I played a team full of shooters but little athleticism isn't hard to beat at all as long as you're smart and disciplined. But you put two of those guys with some other guys that can create their own shot you're in trouble. But usually the older generation complain about shooting, free throw there's no excuse but as far as during games or whatever you can't discount the fact that overall defense is improved now as well with all the length and athleticism on the floor more. 6'8" guys used to be power forwards, they're shooting guards now. 6'9" guys are small forwards.

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Maybe us older guys complaining on this board....we remember when you never gave the opposing guard an open shot...but it's not just defense...and not just older guys who are aware that the game has changed and one of the things lost in the change is "shooting skill".

Smaller guys like TC-D and Ross-Miller were usually counted on to hit a high percentage of 3s and 85%+ of FTs....yet both are less than 30% from the 3 point range and nobody bothers guarding them out there. The only thing that makes defenses look better these days IMO is that most of the time the defenders only have to keep track of a couple players and can take their chances with the rest of the opponents who are either not going to shoot ....or who will miss the vast majority of their shots.

KT runs hot and cold. But considering he is the only shooter the opposition has to worry about, he gets all the defensive attention and yet has a good % for his 3s....but that's it.....nobody to take the pressure off of him.

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I agree with cole a little, but a little more so with au64 ... Shooting isn't as good. Maybe the better shooters become better due to lack of athleticism therefore they work on their shot more - would that mean they are a liability on the defensive end?

Regardless of that, FT shooting is bad in general. I may recollect poorly but it seems 80% used to be the standard for FT shooting and the standard "good" percentage now is about 70?

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It's two sides to every coin we could also be asking why can't spot up shooters work on their dribbling and overall awareness more? That's a skill set just like shooting. It's so easy to guard shooters who can't create their own shots. And NOBODY ever talks about working on defense, it's a skill set too. But I'm assuming every generation is going to complain about certain things I guess. It's similar to music you'll never please everybody.

Everybody needs to work on being a complete player more than anything.

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It's two sides to every coin we could also be asking why can't spot up shooters work on their dribbling and overall awareness more? That's a skill set just like shooting. It's so easy to guard shooters who can't create their own shots. And NOBODY ever talks about working on defense, it's a skill set too. But I'm assuming every generation is going to complain about certain things I guess. It's similar to music you'll never please everybody.

Everybody needs to work on being a complete player more than anything.

. Pro coaches complain about the same thing me and AU64 gripe about.

It's fact. Ask Magic and countless others, who learned how to shoot when they got to the league.

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Magic wasn't even a great shooter himself.....coaches complain about all facets of the game.....yes shooting is one. If you had a bunch of guys who weren't playmakers they'd complain about that, if you have guys that aren't tough or good defenders they'd complain about that, guys don't rebound they complain about that and etc....

Btw magic wasn't a great shooter but I bet you wouldn't trade him for anybody else that was....

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Magic wasn't even a great shooter himself.....coaches complain about all facets of the game.....yes shooting is one. If you had a bunch of guys who weren't playmakers they'd complain about that, if you have guys that aren't tough or good defenders they'd complain about that, guys don't rebound they complain about that and etc....

Btw magic wasn't a great shooter but I bet you wouldn't trade him for anybody else that was....

HELLO!!! That was the point. Magic, Isaiah Thomas, many, many, more got to the league and discovered they were not the biggest, strongest, or meanest on the court and they had to learn how to.....shoot. Read about them . They will tell you how many jumpers they shot after practice. How many threes. My point is, why did it take them 20+ years to learn to shoot? Maybe the old guys had to learn to shoot, because they weren't allowed to dunk. I don't know the answer. But I know shooters. And I haven't seen one that would scare me on an AU team since Person.
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No you missed the point magic wasn't a good shooter in the nba. You don't need to tell me to read about ANYBODY I know basketball inside out like the back of my hand. I just told you why shooting is down because they focus on other skill sets which is just as vital as shooting and just as valued. Usually shooting is the only thing people see though. I'd take a team full of though minded defensive players over a team full of one dimensional shooters any day of the week, most coaches would too.

And Isaiah Thomas was always as above average shooter btw

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But actually I'll bow out this convo.....You guys just keep complaining about shooting, I'm more interested in winning.....Usually the team with hard nosed defenders one if lucky two outside decent shooters, a point guard more interested in passing than shooting and that leader who's not afraid in clutch moments. It's been the blue print for quite some time now...if you worried about our team first thing we need is a good point guard, someone who can handle pressure and distribute the ball and be a leader. Then we need some tough athletic rebounders, a long versatile defender that is around 6'7" that can guard every position on the perimeter. Virginia gets around 20 points a game off defense alone.

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Magic became a 3 point shooter by working his butt off after practice. It is in his book. Thomas said in his book that he became a good shooter after he got to the NBA by shooting 100 jump shots a day. Just quoting them. And attempting to have a discussion about a topic. It's all about arguing and name calling on here now. Kind of boring, actually.

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I note that AU is ranked below 300th in FG % and about 250th in 3 point shooting. And maybe it's just a coincidence, but seems that the other teams ranked down there in both categories with us have at least one thing in common....some are big schools, some are small schools ...but all of us seem to have trouble winning ballgames.

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