Our "Motionless" Motion Offense

I am continually frustrated by our basketball team's offense. Turgeon wants to run a motion offense, but we do more standing around than any motion team I've ever seen. When Turgeon screams "Motion!!", we move around and pass the ball a lot, and end up getting off a bad shot at the last second of the play clock because we don't seem to know what we're doing.

It seems to me that for the second year in a row, the team is struggling to pick up the intricacies of Turgeon's offense. If it takes over a season-and-a-half to learn an offense, either your system is too complicated, or you aren't a very good teacher. The other possibility is that players on this team haven't bought into the offense, but I'm not sure I buy that excuse. For one thing, you shouldn't have to wait four years to get all of "your" guys in to buy into your system in college basketball; you can turn a team around in one season in basketball; Billy Clyde Gillispie proved that. Another reason I am skeptical about that excuse is that if we have holdvers from BCG's time here who don't believe in Turgeon, they've had ample opportunity to transfer out now. If the players do not believe in his offensive system, Turgeon has done a very poor job of selling it to them and getting buy-in. If they do believe in his system, he has done a poor job implementing it. At this point in the season, I think we should look like we know what we're doing on offense. I still see signs of confusion on offense during games, even against the inferior opponents we've been playing lately.

Last season, Turgeon complained about having too many big men, which is a statement that still amazes me to this day, because I've never heard a basketball coach complain about having too many guys who are tall. Usually, basketball coaches crave as much height as they can get on the court. I think Turgeon wants more guards, though, because he is used to running his motion offense with shorter players, and taking advantage of their speed. Junior Elonu and Bryan Davis would be the square pegs trying to fit into the round hole of Turgeon's offense in this scenario.  If Elonu and Davis were bad fits for Turgeon's offense, though, I think both would have transfered by now, so I don't think it is personnel.

We do have signs of encouragement, with the recent improved play of Dash Harris (9 assists, 1 turnovers in the last two games), and some improvement on defense. We're still struggling in transition defense, though, and giving up too many open shots.

We play North Dakota at 7 p.m. tonight at Reed (game on FSSW except where Spurs game is shown), which is our last game before we open conference play on the road against Oklahoma State. I'm really hoping we blow the Fighting Sioux off the court, and show that we're ready for conference play. Despite our gaudy 13-1 record, I am still not convince that this is a good team. I don't think we're as good as the team that went 8-8 in conference play last season, and that is very disconcerting.