Don’t get me wrong I loved that team and they were very good, but down the stretch it was noticeable and maybe the biggest topic of conversation around that team. At some point teams would just pack the paint and dare them to shoot from the outside. And we either a) wouldn’t shoot and our 2% suffered and/or b) we’d take them up on the open looks and usually we suffered. Maryland in the ACCT was the most glaring example of it but we saw it a lot down the stretch during our collapse once the scouting report was out. We then tried to win with bully ball and we had enough talent that it still worked a decent amount, but good teams had that trump card against us down the stretch and we had no answer.
Our effective Fg% was under 50 in 8 of our last 15 games. Under 35% in two of those where we had zero answers offensively when teams schemed us well. We were 52.0% eFG in conference play, good for second then but would be just 7th in this year’s ACC.
By comparison we’ve been under 50% just 6 times all this year, under 40% once (LSU).
