The big question for the Men’s Basketball Program at UMaine is can Coach Walsh turn the program around his third year as Coach Richard Barron did with the Women’s program.
Coach Barron was 13 and 46 a 22,1 winning percentage after his first two seasons and Coach Walsh is 12 and 45 for 21.5 winning percentage,
In Barron’s third year he turned the program around as the Women went 17-15 and won their first tournament America East Game in several seasons.
Can Coach Walsh Match that next year in order to stay on a comparison schedule with the Women’s Program.
Both programs were in disarray when both Coaches took over as head coaches..
Barron has really turned the corner as he has gotten the Women to the top of the conference regular season standings with 2 back to back regular season co-championships and getting to the semi-finals of the conference tourney 2 years ago and this year losing to Albany in the conference tourney tournament 59-57 at Albany.
Right now let’s compare the two teams statistics for this past season to see if the men are on the right road to success.
Per Game Category………….Men………………Women
Record……………………………8-22……………….26-9
Games……………………………..30…………………..35
Points per game scored……..76.0……………….60.5
Points per game allowed…….86.9………………51.1
Field Goal Percentage………..43.2%……………42.5%
3 Point Percentage…………….33.9……………….32.9%
Foul Shooting Percentage……65.6%…………….73.0%
Percentage of FGA’s as 3’s…35.3%……………35.7%
Total Rebounds…………………35.1……………….32.8
Offensive Rebounds…………..11.2………………..10.5
Defensive Rebounds………….23.9………………..22.3
Assists per game……………….14.4………………..15.5
Turnovers per game……………16.4………………..12.3
Personal Fouls per game…….21.3………………..12.9
Steals per game…………………..8.3………………….8.2
These are very interesting team statistics as each team played a completely different style of play.
The women were a half-court, control the tempo offensively and very fussy about their shot selection and very half-court defensively minded.
Whereas the men were completely the opposite, as they tried up tempo and speeding the game by pressing full-court. to speed up the opponents and a run and gun offense which let the players decide the shot selection geared to get as many offensive possessions and shots off as possible.
Even though they were complete opposites offensively and defensively they were very close in some of the statistic columns except for points scored offensively and points allowed defensively which was caused by their own style of play.
FG Percentage was almost the same men 43.2% and women 42.5%
The men averaged 63.6 FGA and made 27.5 per game and the women averaged 54.3 FGA and made 23.1 per game. Even with their up tempo and up possession style of play they only got just under 10 more field goal attempts off.
From 3 point land the men averaged 7.6 for 22.4 and the women averaged 6.4 for 19.4. For the different styles of play both teams were very close in the 3 point department.
From the foul line the women out shot the men by shooting 73% averaging 7.9 for 10.9 and the men averaged just 65.6% on 13.4 for 20.4 per game. The men giot to the line twice as much as the women and that was because of their more offensive possessions and slashing stye of offense.
Foul shooting is really the only actual stat then can be equally compared except that the women’s ball is a half inch smaller in diameter, but the basket is 10 feet from the floor the foul line is 13′.9″ from the middle of the rim, the players have 10 seconds to shoot with no defender guarding the foul shooter.
Both teams were about even on rebounding with the only real difference was that the men got 9.3 shots off per game but only got .7 more offensive rebounds then the women did.
In the important turnover category the men averaged 4.1 more per game 16.4 to 12.3. This was the result that the women’s team slower pace style of play allowed the women to make better basketball decisions when they had the ball on offense.
In the personal foul section the men committed 8 4 more fouls at 21.3 to the women’s 12.9 was caused by the men pressing full court most of the time they were on defense, wheres the women played more zone and played more half-court defense.
Defensively the women not pressing very much unless behind late in games turned their opponents over 15.7 times and the men pressing full -court most of the season averaged just turning their opponents over 16.6 times per game.
The men averaged 14.4 assists per game to the women’s averaging 1.1 more assists per game at 15.5 per game. The women had a higher ratio of assists per FGA’s 15.5 on 23.1 made FG’s to the men’s 14.4 per game of 27.5 FG’s. made.
The women had 67.9% of their field goals from assists and the men had jsut 52.4%. This was because the women were far more patient on offense with the system determining the shot attempts to the men’s players being allowed to determine the shots they took.
Also both teams ran a different substitution pattern. The men used a 10-11 man rotation (averaging 14.5 to 28.3 minutes per game) subbing every 4 or 5 minutes in groups of 4 or 5 players. 3 players averaged over 27 minutes per game.
The women used just a 7-8 player rotation (6-7 seniors and Jr. Sigi Koizar) with 7 players averaging over double figure minutes per game, one at 35.1 minutes per game, one at 32,7 and one at 28 plus minutes.
The differences in the two teams substituting procedures WAS THE DIFFERENT STYLES each team played during the season.
The women’ only needed 7 or 8 player whiles the men’s required mass substitutions,
So the question is if the men continue with the same offensive and defensive philosophy will they be able to turn the corner next season like Barron did with the women using a completely different style of basketball to get the women to where they are and him a new 4 year contract.
I have a question for the men’s style of play. Has any of the past UMaine coaching staffs ever tried to play this way in the history of the program?
How many of the 68 Teams in the NCAA’s March Madness or the 64 teams in the field for the NIT this year played this way and if they did how successful were they?
Don’t look for any changes as Coach Walsh has been quoted by the media that he is trying to recruit athletic players that fit his style of coaching as that is the only way he knows how to coach successfully, but that was in D-3 not D-1.