Mick Cronin’s #1 Objective This Offseason: Overhaul The Offense

(Courtesy BleacherReport)

Mick Cronin is an excellent basketball coach but he like other coaches has his deficiencies. Brian Kelly had his defense, Butch Jones had his in-game decision making, and Bob Huggins had (probably still has) the bottle. Mick’s primary scuff on his coaching career at Cincinnati has been the offense. In fact it’s been so bad this year that it reached historical levels of ineptitude. Additionally the lack scoring caused a season once filled with excitement and high expectations to become one that forced the fanbase to call for its merciful end.

Most of the time it seemed like Mick’s offensive gameplan was as simple as this:

1. Get the ball to Cashmere Wright or Sean Kilpatrick
2. ???????????????????????
3. Score

Obviously not the best system to swear by but it appeared like Mick did so for whatever reason. Now like I mentioned he is a defensive-minded coach and he teaches the hell out of it. But Cincinnati has become over reliant on using turnovers to create points. Mick has overemphasized using defense to create offense that it has sapped UC’s ability to use the actual offense to create offense. It’s nice to be able to occasionally deflect a pass or steal the ball and sprint up court for an easy layup but this is something that isn’t nearly as sustainable for a winning program. As soon as the turnovers stop occurring the team doesn’t score. That’s a terrible system to follow.

To illustrate just how poor Cincinnati’s offense has been during the Mick Cronin era I give you the table below. I’ve used this in a previous post but for our purposes today I’ve added in a couple of other metrics. Again the data is from Cincinnati’s Big East games against Big East teams to show the Bearcats’ performance against the non-dredges of college basketball.

All data courtesy, as always, of

StatSheet.com

.

The story is pretty clear; the Cincinnati Bearcats struggle to score points and this season was their worst performance offensively during Mick Cronin’s tenure. What’s even worse is that UC was loaded with sharpshooters this year in Cashmere Wright, Sean Kilpatrick, and at times JaQuon Parker. All three of these guys could hit double-digit points on any given night. Yet Cincinnati was last in the Big East in field goal % and second to last in points per game.

I think the most telling stat of all is the free throw %. It’s mind boggling how Mick’s teams have struggled to come within earshot of the top half of the Big East in this category. Now I don’t attend practices but I still don’t understand how such a poor shooting stat, and one most indicative of a team that can’t put a ball in a basket, could go completely ignored. In 7 years at the helm you’d think Mick would at least make an effort get his team to collectively shoot over 70% from the stripe. Of all of the stats above, free throw % is arguably the easiest to improve and with the talent continuing to pour into the program hopefully we see a spike in the future.

In addition to the metrics from the earlier post I added in a couple of new ones this time around. The first is “Floor %” which measures how many of a team’s possessions are scoring possessions, essentially how much they score each time they touch the ball on offense. While their rank among Big East teams and the raw numbers have improved over the Mick Cronin era, UC’s floor % dropped like a rock this season. The Bearcats scored on 4.7% less possessions in 2012-13 despite having a veteran-loaded backcourt. The reason behind the drop off is that Cincinnati took far too many errant shots this season, which leads me to my next point…

Over the last 7 years, Cincinnati has ranked near the top of Big East in three pointers attempted, pacing the conference the last two seasons. However the Bearcats have regularly ranked in the bottom half of the Big East in the percentage of those that actually go in. Essentially during this time, UC didn’t just shoot threes, they threw them up like hand grenades that were about to go off. This begs the obvious question, why would Mick continue to let his players shoot at that pace if they statistically couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn? No team that shoots 29% from beyond the arc should be taking almost 400 threes over the course of a season. That’s ridiculous!

So now we have strong evidence to understand the problem with this team; they can’t shoot the basketball and even worse take too many poor shots. But it goes deeper than that. Cincinnati’s offensive incompetency can be traced back to the head coach. Mick Cronin’s offense, whatever wild cockamamy gameplan he’s installed, is simply too vanilla and far too easy to gameplan against for the likes of Big East coaches. Throwing the ball around the perimeter for 30 seconds then leaning on a guard to hoist up a prayer with the shot clock winding down hasn’t worked. It didn’t work when Cashmere Wright was leading this team and it sure as hell won’t work when he’s gone.

At this point Mick needs to hit the reset button. He needs to throw out whatever playbook he has and start from scratch. Opposing coaches are wise to Mick’s games; they cheat up on the perimeter because they know most of the passing occurs on the outside and UC doesn’t have many set plays to work the ball between the backcourt and frontcourt.

Therefore the Cincinnati head coach needs to create flow in his offense, basically the polar opposite of what we currently see with this team. It’s easier said than done and will take some time to perfect but a good starting place would be a motion-type of system. In this offense, as the name suggests, players are constantly running around without any noticeable rhyme or reason. It’s sometimes called controlled chaos and relies heavily on the players instinctively knowing where their teammates are on the court at all times and making fast, confident passes. The offense can get out of control at times but it does an excellent job keeping the defense on its heels and when the well-oiled machine is clicking it creates wide open shots for the shooters.

But if Mick doesn’t want to go so far as to installing a full-fledged motion offense it would do him well to at least infuse some set plays to create more flow when the Bearcats have the ball in their hands. What Cincinnati needs most of all are open shots and there is no better way to create these than screening. They’ve ran a boatload of high-ball screens and flare screens to get shooters open along the perimeter but UC needs to create opportunities to drive the lane. Mixing it up in this manner would create options to score besides by way of the three and create good looks when the Bearcats did try to hit the outside jumper.

Those are but a few options Mick Cronin needs to consider this offseason. It’s clear what’s been doing for the last 7 years isn’t working and he needs to make changes to take Cincinnati Bearcats basketball to the next level. The defense is there, the support from the fanbase is back, and the recruiting has taken a step forward in the last cycle. The final piece of the puzzle is transforming UC’s offense into one that is feared around the league instead of over-looked. I sincerely hope Mick takes a long look in the mirror over the coming months and does what is right for this program.