Lets talk about assists.

[PimpMario]

I am really glad we gutted out a win last night; obviously we needed that win badly.

 

But I got to thinking about assists on the way home and this morning looked it up, we average 11.2 assists which is tied for 261st in the nation.

 

We are 261st in the nation in assists.  

 

My knee jerk reaction would be to say that this is something that ails our team, but are assists really that important?

 

Are assists important in general?

Are they less important when a lot of our players create their own shot?

Are we bad because at assists because we can't shoot?

Are assists not a useful statistic for this team?

Am I an old fogie for bringing up assists?  

 

2 areas I think we could do a better job sharing the ball: off the drive and in transiation.  It seems like in the halfcourt a lot of times when our players create off the drive they open up the floor for their teammates but rather than pass it they either continue to go into traffic and either turn the ball over or get to the foul line.  We get a lot of points off of transition so it is hard to nitpick it too much but it does seem like we could be a little more efficient there.  It seems like our guys are content to try to get fouled as opposed to actually trying to get a good look in transition.  

 

 

I think we can all agree that turnovers are bad and should be avoided.

[hhcmatt]

Assists are more indicative of a style than a predictor of success.

You could say the same thing for 3pt shooting rate.

 

Miles has gotten this far without running an offense that has ever generated high assist rates.

At this point our turnover rate is a much bigger deal because possessions = points.

[Huskerpapa]

An easy fix to some of the assist issues is if we would knock down the shots.  We missed a number of shots last night that would have resulted in an assist being rewarded...

[Red Don]

An easy fix to some of the assist issues is if we would knock down the shots.  We missed a number of shots last night that would have resulted in an assist being rewarded...

   We did seem to have trouble finishing at the basket!  (it does seem to even out:  They make their FTs, they win handily!  We finish at the basket, we win handily!)