Our offense was very good but not amazing: 10th in raw offensive rating / 9th in adjusted offensive rating. The year before, with Brice and Marcus, it was 4th/1st. The difference between the two teams - between success and failure - was defense (especially in the tournament) and, perhaps more importantly, luck. But still - the offense was very good; 9th isn't up to the historical standard for UNC teams, but it was obviously good enough!
To understand the '17-'18 team's offense, and where we must improve, we need to examine the '16-'17 team's offense a bit further.
Although our offense was very good, what I'll call our "first shot offense" was mediocre:
Our eFG% (FG% adjusted for 3s) was 120th.
And it's not like we were living at the line - our FTM/FGA was 201st.
Factoring in both 3s and FTs, our TS% was 129th. Not good.
So - how do we get to the #9 adjusted offense? Two things:
Our TO% was very good: 11th in the country.
Our ORB% was exceptional: 1st in the country, by almost a full percentage point.
Put simply, we weren't great at putting the ball in the basket, but we were really good at getting opportunities to do so.
Why was our TO% so low? A big part is that our highest usage players (Jackson at 25.6%, Meeks at 22.7%) both had a low TO% (9.5%, 9.8%). Bradley's TO% was also very low at 9.9%. Our 3 medium/high-usage, low-TO players are gone. You have to expect TO problems from the incoming bigs, which will/would be a huge change from Kennedy. It will be very hard to recreate that low TO% with our returning and incoming players.
And there's no way we achieve the same level of offensive rebounding. Just no chance. Kennedy (16.5%) and Tony (18.7%) were both incredible at collecting our misses. Our best returning offensive rebounder is Maye (12.4%); our 2nd best is Theo (5.9%).
What does this mean?
We have to get better at putting the ball in the basket. Holding steady from last year would result in significant degradation in our offense.
We have to shoot more and better from 3.
It will be much harder to get away with having a non-shooter at the 2 and/or 3.
Low-efficiency post-ups from first-year bigs will kill our offense, because we won't have Kennedy or Tony on the other side to collect the miss.
We will likely have to sacrifice defense for offense by playing small; this may requires us to play Maye and the 5.
To understand the '17-'18 team's offense, and where we must improve, we need to examine the '16-'17 team's offense a bit further.
Although our offense was very good, what I'll call our "first shot offense" was mediocre:
Our eFG% (FG% adjusted for 3s) was 120th.
And it's not like we were living at the line - our FTM/FGA was 201st.
Factoring in both 3s and FTs, our TS% was 129th. Not good.
So - how do we get to the #9 adjusted offense? Two things:
Our TO% was very good: 11th in the country.
Our ORB% was exceptional: 1st in the country, by almost a full percentage point.
Put simply, we weren't great at putting the ball in the basket, but we were really good at getting opportunities to do so.
Why was our TO% so low? A big part is that our highest usage players (Jackson at 25.6%, Meeks at 22.7%) both had a low TO% (9.5%, 9.8%). Bradley's TO% was also very low at 9.9%. Our 3 medium/high-usage, low-TO players are gone. You have to expect TO problems from the incoming bigs, which will/would be a huge change from Kennedy. It will be very hard to recreate that low TO% with our returning and incoming players.
And there's no way we achieve the same level of offensive rebounding. Just no chance. Kennedy (16.5%) and Tony (18.7%) were both incredible at collecting our misses. Our best returning offensive rebounder is Maye (12.4%); our 2nd best is Theo (5.9%).
What does this mean?
We have to get better at putting the ball in the basket. Holding steady from last year would result in significant degradation in our offense.
We have to shoot more and better from 3.
It will be much harder to get away with having a non-shooter at the 2 and/or 3.
Low-efficiency post-ups from first-year bigs will kill our offense, because we won't have Kennedy or Tony on the other side to collect the miss.
We will likely have to sacrifice defense for offense by playing small; this may requires us to play Maye and the 5.
