This year has been frustrating, but I suppose looking back through the Bruce years, not unexpected.
This is clearly systematic of the Bruce offensive system and holes in recruiting. When he has player turnover with especially young or poor guard play, the offense falls off the map. The combination of poor shooting and turnovers is telling; if a Bruce team trends at worse than 50% for eFG% and 20% or higher on TO rate his team is going to be bad. (as most teams would)
The odd things is that this year's team (for the most part) continues to play really good defense. To be fair, offensive efficiency is down this year across college basketball and especially in the Big 12, but this ranks as the 2nd best efficiency defense (raw numbers) at K-State in the 3 point era. The chart below is not adjusted for opponent (like kenpom's above), but still I think most would agree that defense isn't the major issue for this team, though it has dropped outside the top 50 in kenpom.
This year's team has really rewritten the defensive trends for Bruce's teams. Over the course of his 8 seasons here, 190 games have been against kenpom Top 150 opponents. About half the time (97 games) K-State's defense has held opponents to 1.03 points per possession or lower. Of those games, K-State won 67 times or 78% of the time. When opponents score better than 1.03 ppp, Bruce has only won 25 times in 93 tries, or 27% of the time. Last night was the first time an opponent scored more than 1.03 points per possession in any game this season, but the Cats are only 3-8 when holding teams under 1.03 ppp this year (27%), well below the trend for his first 7 years here. The defense isn't as good as last year and maybe last night is a sign that it is starting to slip, but for the most part the defense has been good enough to win games this year.
That leads us to the offense, currently the 6th worst with a real possibility to fall to the bottom 3 as it trends right now. Shooting and TOs are really bad. Interestingly, Bruce teams haven't needed great offense to win games in his 8 years. The efficiency breaking point for offense vs Top 150 teams has been at 1.02 points per possession, with a 94-96 game split above and below that line under Bruce. K-State has won 71 of those 94 (76%) games with efficiency of 1.02 or better while winning 24 of 96 (25%) when below that. This season 2 games (both wins) have been above 1.02 ppp while only winning twice in 10 games (20%) when scoring below 1.02.
With 2 of the top 3 teams in the league coming up before going to Alabama, the next week isn't looking much better and we're likely to see a couple more ugly games. Plus this team has so many issues, it seems like when one thing gets corrected a bit, something else slips. 2PT% is a problem, TOs are a problem, FTs are a problem, making 3s are a problem, and at times FTs are a problem; the issues seem to pop up 2 or 3 at a time in a rotating basis. There will be a handful of games where things come together on offense and K-State likely manages to win 3-5 games, especially against the other flawed teams in the league. Still, an offense this bad is something most of us didn't expect (I certainly didn't) and it makes this team tough to watch. But again, this just seems to be a Bruce thing; when he gets particularly bad guard play and imbalance on his team the efficiency slips A LOT giving his team very little ability to win, even with pretty good defense.
This is clearly systematic of the Bruce offensive system and holes in recruiting. When he has player turnover with especially young or poor guard play, the offense falls off the map. The combination of poor shooting and turnovers is telling; if a Bruce team trends at worse than 50% for eFG% and 20% or higher on TO rate his team is going to be bad. (as most teams would)
The odd things is that this year's team (for the most part) continues to play really good defense. To be fair, offensive efficiency is down this year across college basketball and especially in the Big 12, but this ranks as the 2nd best efficiency defense (raw numbers) at K-State in the 3 point era. The chart below is not adjusted for opponent (like kenpom's above), but still I think most would agree that defense isn't the major issue for this team, though it has dropped outside the top 50 in kenpom.
This year's team has really rewritten the defensive trends for Bruce's teams. Over the course of his 8 seasons here, 190 games have been against kenpom Top 150 opponents. About half the time (97 games) K-State's defense has held opponents to 1.03 points per possession or lower. Of those games, K-State won 67 times or 78% of the time. When opponents score better than 1.03 ppp, Bruce has only won 25 times in 93 tries, or 27% of the time. Last night was the first time an opponent scored more than 1.03 points per possession in any game this season, but the Cats are only 3-8 when holding teams under 1.03 ppp this year (27%), well below the trend for his first 7 years here. The defense isn't as good as last year and maybe last night is a sign that it is starting to slip, but for the most part the defense has been good enough to win games this year.
That leads us to the offense, currently the 6th worst with a real possibility to fall to the bottom 3 as it trends right now. Shooting and TOs are really bad. Interestingly, Bruce teams haven't needed great offense to win games in his 8 years. The efficiency breaking point for offense vs Top 150 teams has been at 1.02 points per possession, with a 94-96 game split above and below that line under Bruce. K-State has won 71 of those 94 (76%) games with efficiency of 1.02 or better while winning 24 of 96 (25%) when below that. This season 2 games (both wins) have been above 1.02 ppp while only winning twice in 10 games (20%) when scoring below 1.02.
With 2 of the top 3 teams in the league coming up before going to Alabama, the next week isn't looking much better and we're likely to see a couple more ugly games. Plus this team has so many issues, it seems like when one thing gets corrected a bit, something else slips. 2PT% is a problem, TOs are a problem, FTs are a problem, making 3s are a problem, and at times FTs are a problem; the issues seem to pop up 2 or 3 at a time in a rotating basis. There will be a handful of games where things come together on offense and K-State likely manages to win 3-5 games, especially against the other flawed teams in the league. Still, an offense this bad is something most of us didn't expect (I certainly didn't) and it makes this team tough to watch. But again, this just seems to be a Bruce thing; when he gets particularly bad guard play and imbalance on his team the efficiency slips A LOT giving his team very little ability to win, even with pretty good defense.
