NEW COMMIT: AJ Staton-McCray
- Thread starter MooneyHall07
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If we have guards playing the 3 then we are truly doomed. A 3 guard offense is great if you have guys who can shoot the 3 and bury them. This is not the blueprint for SHA and the players he recruited.
Hate to break it to you but we have a zillion guards on the team and we will play with three guards on the floor with this lineup quite a bit. If they can score (it doesn't have to be from three) and rebound they will be fine. But if we have no inside scoring threats, we are doomed just like last year. We were very easy to defend.
It's a major weakness of his not to embrace the 3-pt shot more and will always limit the offense of his teams. That then means his teams have to play at a snails pace and work extra hard on defense to try and grind out a Win.
He's trying to replace bad 3PAs with easier paint shots and Free Throws but in relaity he's getting more Turnovers, contested midrange shots and wild drives to the hoop. And despite a higher Free Throw rate, most of his teams (except 24') have been terrible FT shooters. It also makes for a very effort-intensive brand of basketball which is difficult to maintain over a season at a high level.
Things clicked better when he had Kadary at the point who was a PG in a Power Forward's body who didnt shoot many 3s and could get in the paint at will but he was a very unique player.
With today's environment, kids aren't used to playing this style. Everyone embraces the 3 and wants to play fast. It makes it difficult to entice talented players and much harder to implement in a few months with an entirely new roster each year. We will see if he can find the right players for his style and if he can mold them on the fly but the odds are against him and he has to look to adapt.
The best coaches are always looking to learn the latest trends and they mold their style to the team they have. Up to this point Sha has not really shown that he wants to do that or has the ability to adapt to the players he has. Hope he does before it's too late.
He’s stubborn. Even after good shooting games from 3 he trashes it publicly. Imagine you shout it well and your coach is sh-tting on it? lol
We can welcome and root for new players while also acknowledging that so far our program has failed to put together a competitive roster - at least on paper.
This is extremely disappointing coming on The heels of all of the talk about how lessons have been learned and things will be different.
This is extremely disappointing coming on The heels of all of the talk about how lessons have been learned and things will be different.
Agree on this point. If you are playing several minutes with a three guard rotation, its tough when they are not adept at shooting the three. They really need to start acquiring some height to this roster relatively soon.
Is coach Francis still on the staff? When he was hired, Dan stated that he (Francis) has "ins" with several players--anything or just more lip service? The team is pitiful up front--
Do you all really believe he purposely doesn’t want to recruit top 3 point shooters. SMH. Those guys are at the top of the market in terms of cost. You are talking $3-4m for one player of that caliber. Revenue sharing or not Seton Hall doesn’t have those resources available for one player.
He also understands what his rosters limitations are. His St. Peter’s elite 8 roster shot 35% from 3.
His last 3 Seton Hall teams shot:
2022-23 - 32.5%
2023-24 - 33.6%
2024-25 - 31.2%
In St. Peter’s first round win vs Kentucky they shot 9-17 from deep.
In the next 3 games they went 3-13, 6-21, and 4-16. Which is 26%. He talks like this is in the post game, because he doesn’t want to become reliant on that after one game that is an outlier.
Do you know why they beat Murray St and Purdue? Because they got to the line for a total of 52 attempts and made 19/21 against the Boilermakers. Against UNC they only attempted 10 FTs.
Sha has coached his rosters to play a style that matches what their skill sets are. When he had a player capable of shooting the 3 he utilizes it.
For me the biggest example is Al Amir-Dawes. Over his last 14 games as a Pirate he began to play more within himself and take higher quality shots. During that stretch Dawes shot a blistering 46.7% from 3 on 6.5 attempts per game. To me this is a credit to Sha’s ability to coach, because we ALL were clamoring for Dawes to be sent to the bench in favor of younger talent development after watching his first year and half in Pirate blue.
This guy has proven he needs time to coach kids up. Unfortunately he will not be given that opportunity to do that at Seton Hall with the current NIL / Transfer Portal rules.
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Athletic guys who can shoot the 3 are certainly expensive. Personally, I’d welcome someone who shoots the 3 ball and is a below average athlete. They need more shooting on this team. I’d be scouting lower D1 and D2 for someone at about 40% and find ways to get them looks. A team full of guys shooting 32% or worse from 3 isn’t gonna be very good.
I am ok with this philosophy. But if the player is that one dimensional then I think the disparity in how well they shoot the 3 needs to be even higher.
Because, I am not expecting much from 2 point range and I’m probably sacrificing on D.
The 40% shooter has to be such a floor spacer that it makes the driving lanes for a player like Budd Clark even wider.
Rice from Maryland shot 41% from 3 last year. Willard’s best shooting guard. He was expected to follow KW to NOVA. That is until USC signed him for $3 million a few days ago. Does SHU have $3 million for a top 3 point shooter? 2 million? I’m sure Holloway is looking for shooters but they are the 2nd most valuable and expensive commodity in the portal, behind only starting bigs.
Stop defending sha like this. Kobe Magee was one of the best shooters available and did not get anywhere near 3 million. He got under 2 million
How much was this guy? https://www.nj.com/rutgersbasketbal...s-previously-committed-to-big-ten-school.html
I got nothing better to do today. So let’s keep defending.
Say Kobe Magee got 1.5 to 1.75m to leave Drexel for Florida state. That would be about 1/4 to 1/3 of our projected budget once the House Settlement is approved. Which by the way still isn’t, so we don’t have that money to spend at this time.
But let’s say we could spend it now.
Drexel finished 9-9 in the CAA last year. Which by the way was worse than Monmouth (10-8). So to me level of competition matters, because stats don’t always translate to the next level.
Case in point. 2023-24 3 point FG percentage leader in the country was Koby Brea from Dayton. Shot a ridiculous 49.8% his senior season. Then he transfers to Kentucky and shot 6.3% worse and dropped to 43.5%. Which by the way is still great and led the SEC. but is still a regression from when he was at Dayton.
Let’s say Magee came to Seton Hall and regressed to 38%. He would be getting killed here. People would be saying you can’t pay a player that kind of money when it’s such a big chunk of your budget.
Don’t like the example above. Ok how about the following. Two players who finished in the NCAA top 10 in 3 pt FG% in 2023-24
Dominick Harris - 44.8% Loyola Marymount down to 11% at UCLA
Or
Chase Lanier - 44% north florida down to 38% Tennessee
Point being. Players typically regress statistically when they step up from low D1 / mid major to high D1.
Now let’s say you still want the kid because heck 38% is still way better than anything we can get our hands on at the moment.
You want a young kid to choose Seton Hall over Florida St? Sorry but that kid is choosing the sunshine and scenery down in Florida over SHU 99 out of 100 times.
I won't speak for Piratz but my point is regarding Sha's desired way of playing - not so much his players. He has coached for 7 years and its clear what his style is. Even when he has teams that shoot the 3 average or better, they always shoot them far less than most other schools.
Below shows Sha's 7 seasons with his ranking among all 360 D1 teams in 2 categories. 3pt Attempt percentage (the number of 3s you take as a percentage of your overall shots) and Overall Pace of Play. His teams play slow and they don't take many 3s. Have been like that all 7 years with different players. Even his last St Peters team that hit 35% from 3, they only ranked 334th in 3s attempt rate.
Year - Pace - 3pt Attempt Rate
2025 - 323 - 346
2024 - 231 - 315
2023 - 227 - 306
2022 - 247 - 334
2021 - 253 - 248
2020 - 197 - 288
2019 - 342 - 280
I leave you with two very interesting stats (using Evan Miya's Metric Analysis)
1) In his 3 years at SH, Sha's Pirates have been in the 300s in 3-pt attempt rate every year. In the 101 games played, SH has taken 31.7% of their overall shots as 3pt attempts. When they shoot 31.7% or more 3pt attempts, their record is 29-22. When they shoot less than 31.7%, their record is 20-30.
2) In the 101 games played, Sha's teams perform better when they play faster. When they get at least 67 Offensive Possessions, their record is 31-23. When they get less than 67 possessions, their record is 18-29.
Most of this makes sense relative to how today’s game is played. Don’t disagree from that perspective. The object of the game is to score points.
However, the NIT winning team scored 73.8 ppg, the year prior was 68.4, ppg and this year was an atrocious 61.6 ppg. I am going to go out on a limb and say Sha decided to not push pace against the teams in the BE this year because he didn’t have the horses to do so. Why would you want to increase the amount of possessions vs a superior offensive team? Now should he have done that more against the OOC slate. Absolutely!!
Couple of additional points.
1. I don’t think we have the resources to recruit the best players to play at this pace. Most likely faced similar challenges at St. Peter’s, so he built a roster in a way he could best prepare them for success, which was to make them more connected defensively and play slower.
2. Based on the pace of play stats, I would love to see a breakdown as to how many of those games with higher possessions resulted in games vs lower level competition. Also would be curious as to how many occurred in the 2023-24 season when he had his best collection of offensive players.
Bottomline he needs a formula that will work for a 20 game grind of the BE season with less talented players on the court then his counterparts. Don’t envy the position he is in, besides the pay check. 😉
All of your points are correct. FSU is a way better place, but this Choice was made on money and money alone. A back court of Budd and Magee would’ve been competitive in the Big East. 38% on a high volume 3 point shooter would be incredible. Considering we had no shooters last year and we will have no shooters this year. The key point is that if we couldn’t spend 1.7-2M on a player than we never actually had 6million to spend and Sha preferences playing 10 deep again which shows he’s learned nothing from last year
I think you give him way too much credit and benefit of the doubt often. He does not want to feature the 3PT shot. He’s not adjusting bc he can’t get shooters, he doesn’t like that style of offense. Yes, he wants guys that get to the line.
There’s 7 years of data on this when you evaluate his team’s 3PA:FGA and overall % of points from the arc. He does not run any offense that uses ball movement to create perimeter looks. His teams are also terrible with turnovers offensively, always have been.
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The more I read about some of these numbers for sharpshooters, the more I think it was malpractice to not take back Scotty Middleton. If Kobe Magee got anything close to $1.5 to $2 million, then you have to take back Scotty Middleton if he's willing to come back at a fraction of that cost.
Middleton has shown he's a good three-point shooter at the high major level. We can't say that about Kobe Magee, and we all know that for every Chaz Lanier or Dalton Knecht, there are examples like Nicolas Timberlake or Aidan Mahaney. Some guys do well with the step up in competition and some don't.
I know he's long gone and it's probably not worth wasting my breath, but it just seems like an incredibly foolish move to let your best three-point shooter from last year just walk away when he was willing to come back back for (in my view) a bargain. He didn't live up to a lot of our expectations last year, but that's not to say he didn't improve in some areas (e.g., his free throw shooting was up to nearly 80% by the end of the year after only 50% at Ohio State), and he was still only a sophomore.
For what it's worth, Magee shot only 35% from 3-pt range as a sophomore (and on fewer attempts than Middleton). There's no reason to think that Scotty wouldn't have continued to improve.
I don't even think we really used him well, either. Most of his shots were under pressure and we didn't make it a priority to run plays to get him open looks, so maybe going to Tulane will work out for him. I hope it does and I think he'll do well in the AAC.
Middleton has shown he's a good three-point shooter at the high major level. We can't say that about Kobe Magee, and we all know that for every Chaz Lanier or Dalton Knecht, there are examples like Nicolas Timberlake or Aidan Mahaney. Some guys do well with the step up in competition and some don't.
I know he's long gone and it's probably not worth wasting my breath, but it just seems like an incredibly foolish move to let your best three-point shooter from last year just walk away when he was willing to come back back for (in my view) a bargain. He didn't live up to a lot of our expectations last year, but that's not to say he didn't improve in some areas (e.g., his free throw shooting was up to nearly 80% by the end of the year after only 50% at Ohio State), and he was still only a sophomore.
For what it's worth, Magee shot only 35% from 3-pt range as a sophomore (and on fewer attempts than Middleton). There's no reason to think that Scotty wouldn't have continued to improve.
I don't even think we really used him well, either. Most of his shots were under pressure and we didn't make it a priority to run plays to get him open looks, so maybe going to Tulane will work out for him. I hope it does and I think he'll do well in the AAC.
Magee is a much better player than Scotty. Scotty wanted to come back for 200k and sha said no. Sha is grossly incompetent
Not really my point to say who is the better player, but is Magee 10x better than Middleton, monetarily speaking? Absolutely not.
The market is what it is, but in my opinion if a guy has averaged approximately 40% from three for his college career at the high major level, and he's willing to come back after a disastrous season, and he's not asking for that much relatively speaking, why aren't you jumping at that opportunity?
Sad to say that I'm starting to agree with your last sentence.
Kobe Magee is not materially better than Scotty Middleton and AJ Staton McCray is much better than Dylan Addae-Wusu. My God there are some bad opinions floating around here.
The worst opinion is what you just typed out. Scotty was not a big east player. McCray is not “much better” than Wusu.
I'm sorry man, but you're way off on this one. Scotty is a fringe BE rotation player (7th-9th guy on a decent team), which is exactly how I would rate Magee. I can see the argument for Magee being a bit better than Scotty, but not much better. The kid complied against very bad teams, and for the most part filled his shorts against the good ones.
As for AJ, my opinion has more to do with Dylan than it does with AJ. I grade AJ as a back-end starter/role player (5th-7th guy in the rotation) on a decent team.
The GM at Wake Forest who is part owner of an NBA team offered Magee 1.5M and the starting 2g role. Wake Forest is a substantially better program in the NIL era. But Scotty is on par? Make that make sense
People spend money like idiots all the time.
And, no, Wake Forrest is not a substantially better program in the NIL era. They've made the NCAA tournament zero times since 2020. They've made the NIT twice. Sound familiar?
A 20 win season last year since hiring the GM is significantly different than 7 win season. You’re just wrong here. Take the blue glasses off
I don't have blue glasses. I think we are the worst run team in the Big East and probably the worst run high major program in the country. That doesn't mean Wake Forest is some bastion of intelligent player evaluation. They aren't.
I understand what you are saying. Some of our posters are suggesting that he should put more credence on the 3, ball. I tend to agree.
I'm on the same page. His mindset on how his team approaches offense is well established. I'm not convinced they allocate dollars to players that fit the budget based on pace or tempo. I do give credit to LeftCoastPirate and Fishjam for evaluating the data.
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