Friday, January 25, 2013
Lack of shooting to doom Wiscy?
By Matt Giles
Andy Glockner of Sports Illustrated had an interesting idea via Twitter recently: what if college teams were able to trade, or move, players? Would Arizona be improved with the addition of Matthew Dellavedova? How about Illinois with Jackie Carmichael? The one idea that caught our eye, though, was the potential of Brian Barbour to trek to Wisconsin. While the guard is only converting 31 percent of his threes in his final season, he has shown the propensity to connect from deep often, and he would clearly be a great option on a Wisconsin team that really struggles to score from the perimeter.
The Badgers is scoring just over one point per possession in Big Ten play, and while they are displaying the tendencies of a typical Bo Ryan squad -- no turnovers -- they simply cannot connect from three. Only two other conference teams are attempting as many threes as Wisconsin, but Ryan's team is only making 31 percent of their long-range attempts. Since the perimeter shot is somewhat a staple of Ryan's swing offense -- the constant player movement often rewards the Badgers with open looks -- but other than a trio of players (Sam Dekker, Ben Brust, and George Marshall), UW is attempting a lot of threes will little success. We wonder if this deficiency could hurt UW as the season continues to grind. The team scored more than one PPP against Iowa, but underwhelmed offensively in the Michigan State loss.
