Blowout Plans

NCC 102- Milwaukee School of Engineering 49
91 FGAs
44 Threes
56% ORB
31 TOs
+48 Shots

As you can from the results above, we finally broke the 100 point barrier.  I'm hoping this will be like the 4-minute mile... within months of Roger Bannister's record setting performance in 1954 several other runners eclipsed this supposedly impossible goal.  Now that we've done it once, the next time should be easier.

We were happy to meet three of our five goals, but the game was essentially over at halftime, as we owned a 66-28 lead against a short-handed and rebuilding MSOE squad (who was actually 17-10 last year but lost several top players off that team).

A few stats are remarkable, such as the 56% ORB (70% in the first half) and the +48 shots, which was due partly to the fact that MSOE shot so many more FTs  than us (25-11) they didn't have to shoot as many from the field, and partly to our great ORB performance.  NOTE: The formula goals are not going to be a an accurate reflection of System performance in a game like this, and in such cases we take Coach A's advice and use halftime stats to project perfomance, in which case we met all five goals.

In addition to new school records for points in a half and in a game, we also had the opportunity to implement our "Blowout Plan" for the first time this season:  pulling off the press with three minutes to go in the first half, falling back into a 2-3 zone, playing our freshmen more minutes, and lengthening shifts to 1-2 minutes for the rest of the game. 

One thing we did not change was our offensive attack, continuing to run and shoot threes throughout the game.  System coaches differ in their feelings about this when the game is out of hand.  Our approach has always been to pull off as noted above, but to maintain offensive tempo.  After spending the last two months trying to hard-wire pace into their nervous systems, we don't like telling players to not shoot open shots, and not run the floor hard.  In high school I might do it differently, but for better or worse, on offense we keep running: win, lose or draw.