Now that the sting isn’t as sharp as yesterday, just wanted to say congrats to Auburn. I was nervous heading into this game for a few reasons.
First was turnovers. They’ve been our Achilles heel all year (our offense ranked 184th in the country in turnover percentage). Auburn’s defense, on the other hand, is ranked number one in the country in terms of turnover percentage. This was the only area where Auburn had a decided edge and they were able to make us pay. It’s hard to win a game when you turn it over on nearly 20% of your possessions.
And if you look at Cal’s teams, 5 have been pretty bad at protecting the ball and 5 have been pretty good. The bad teams in terms of turnovers were 2010, 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2019. Not surprisingly, we’ve had less tournament success in aggregate over those 5 seasons.
Auburn’s success in harassing our point guards also helped neutralize one of two areas where we had a massive advantage - offensive rebounding. As is usually the case, we were one of the best offense rebounding teams in the nation. But many of these rebounds depend on our guards being able to penetrate and force a big to help. With our guards’ inability to effectively penetrate, our paint points became too reliant on PJ or Reid posting up. While those are high percentage chances, you’re also less likely to grab an offensive board on the ones you miss and we were well below our season average.
Lastly, we failed to capitalize on the second area where we had a massive edge - the ability to draw fouls. We were one of the best in the nation at this and Auburn’s defense is one of the worst at committing fouls. We saw this play out with Auburn’s bigs, but we shot below our season average from the line and didn’t make them pay as much as we should have.
More importantly though, is that it was only their bigs who we got into foul trouble and not their guards. It was their guards who really killed us, but with our inability to handle their defense, we were never really able to draw fouls on them. They were simply more physical and our guards struggled to handle it. This also meant that we weren’t regularly sending our best foul shooters to the line. Hagans, Herro and Quickley shot only one free throw combined. That’s also a big reason why our free throw percentage was low.
In hindsight, Auburn’s best shot at winning, and maybe only shot, was to go all in on a strategy of harassing our guards and keeping them out of the paint, and it worked out for them.
Hat tip to Bruce Pearl and to the Auburn players for their effort. You earned this win. You attacked our weakness and unfortunately for us, there wasn’t much we were going to be able to do about it once it was clear that our guards were struggling.
This game was a good reminder of how important solid guard play is in college. If you can rattle a team’s guards, then you can effectively cripple a team that might have more talent. We’ll see you next year.
First was turnovers. They’ve been our Achilles heel all year (our offense ranked 184th in the country in turnover percentage). Auburn’s defense, on the other hand, is ranked number one in the country in terms of turnover percentage. This was the only area where Auburn had a decided edge and they were able to make us pay. It’s hard to win a game when you turn it over on nearly 20% of your possessions.
And if you look at Cal’s teams, 5 have been pretty bad at protecting the ball and 5 have been pretty good. The bad teams in terms of turnovers were 2010, 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2019. Not surprisingly, we’ve had less tournament success in aggregate over those 5 seasons.
Auburn’s success in harassing our point guards also helped neutralize one of two areas where we had a massive advantage - offensive rebounding. As is usually the case, we were one of the best offense rebounding teams in the nation. But many of these rebounds depend on our guards being able to penetrate and force a big to help. With our guards’ inability to effectively penetrate, our paint points became too reliant on PJ or Reid posting up. While those are high percentage chances, you’re also less likely to grab an offensive board on the ones you miss and we were well below our season average.
Lastly, we failed to capitalize on the second area where we had a massive edge - the ability to draw fouls. We were one of the best in the nation at this and Auburn’s defense is one of the worst at committing fouls. We saw this play out with Auburn’s bigs, but we shot below our season average from the line and didn’t make them pay as much as we should have.
More importantly though, is that it was only their bigs who we got into foul trouble and not their guards. It was their guards who really killed us, but with our inability to handle their defense, we were never really able to draw fouls on them. They were simply more physical and our guards struggled to handle it. This also meant that we weren’t regularly sending our best foul shooters to the line. Hagans, Herro and Quickley shot only one free throw combined. That’s also a big reason why our free throw percentage was low.
In hindsight, Auburn’s best shot at winning, and maybe only shot, was to go all in on a strategy of harassing our guards and keeping them out of the paint, and it worked out for them.
Hat tip to Bruce Pearl and to the Auburn players for their effort. You earned this win. You attacked our weakness and unfortunately for us, there wasn’t much we were going to be able to do about it once it was clear that our guards were struggling.
This game was a good reminder of how important solid guard play is in college. If you can rattle a team’s guards, then you can effectively cripple a team that might have more talent. We’ll see you next year.
