Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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03-26-19 10:51 AM - Post#282790
In response to Streamers
Harvard is unquestionably a top 75 team next year. In terms of talent they are top 30.
Sounds like an indictment of their coaching, no?
It will be interesting to see how the possessions get distributed. The way the injuries shook out the last couple of years, Amaker resorted to having one guy eat a third of all the shots when they were healthy and on the floor—Aiken this year, Towns last year. That’s pretty extreme. A second heavy possession eater backed them up—last year Lewis, this year Kirkwood.
Mike probably has the raw numbers on this, but Towns and Aiken really haven’t spent a ton of time together on court, and when they did as freshmen they had a classic senior PG in Chambers distributing the ball to them, so their possession & shot distribution was pretty even.
One outcome of Aiken taking over in the second half of the year in ‘18-‘19 was that Lewis saw his offensive numbers decline across the board from last year—ORtg, %minutes, %possessions, %shots, eFG% were all down, while his turnovers on a very turnover-prone team rose dramatically, and he was at his worst on offense in conference play. I know injury may have played some part in that, but it was a pretty big falloff for the most highly-rated player in his recruiting class.
With all the guys mentioned back, plus at the very least Ledlum among the new faces (and with only Corey Johnson subtracted from the old faces) I’m assuming we will see a reversion next year to the more even distribution of past Harvard teams, and certainly not one that was as hero-ball oriented as this year’s (#300 nationally in A/FGM). But how the ball ultimately gets shared will be the thing to watch in the early going of the non-conference schedule.
Edited by Chip Bayers on 03-26-19 10:54 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
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