My point is that looks are highly deceiving. Too many of us have firmly ingrained the notion that Balbay is not a good offensive player; therefore, the team is not as good offensively with him on the floor. Then we ignore the realities we are witnessing because they don't fit our beliefs and try to downplay contrary evidence. As an example, I would note that you contend that I was showing the results of one game without Balbay, when in fact, I was showing two games, one of which was against the worst defensive team in the league, Texas Tech, when Texas was absolutely carving them up then went totally south after Balbay left the game. No matter how much we want to think things go better on the offensive end without Balbay, the reality is the results haven't been as good. Texas had fewer shot attempts, a lower percentage of success on the shot attempts, and pathetically poor results from outside, which might be the result of Balbay being the only guy who is good at dribble penetration and passing out to an open shooter. So even if things might LOOK ugly with Balbay on the floor, we should not be so willing to discount the end results.
The issue was, as the post near the end of what last page hinted at, "Do our other PGs step up so that the offensive abilities they bring makes up for the defensive ability we're losing in Balbay" After 1.8 games, the answer is no. We scored slightly fewer points than our last game against OSU even though that was a road game, and we scored like 25 fewer against Tech than in our first game. And this past game, we got 3 total points out of the PG position. Good news is that: 1) Less than two games is a very small sample set. 2) Offsetting the lack of offensive improvement is that we haven't seen much of a defensive drop-off either, mostly thanks to Mason last night. 3) Most importantly - we still won both games
Yes, it is a small sample size, nevertheless, it is the sample we have to work with and it utterly refutes the notion that the offense works better without Balbay. I'm not saying we are better as a team with Balbay playing. I'm just saying our collective idea on this board that Balbay kills the offense merits serious reconsideration based on the results of the last two games. Maybe he penetrates too far; maybe not. Nevertheless, I do suggest that he is by far the best at the team at dribble penetration and kickouts. Whether that is due to him being the best at beating his man with the dribble and getting into the lane with the ball, due to him wanting to look to pass instead of shoot when he does get into the lane, or due to defenses tending to sag in more tightly when he's on the floor, creating more space for other perimeter players to play catch and shoot, I don't know. OK, so you think the sample was too small. Well, try this. I just wasted the last hour looking at the last 14 Texas games from the start of conference play. With Balbay on the floor, Texas scored 1.93 points per minute. With Balbay not on the floor, Texas scored 1.91 points per minute. There have been stretches in which Texas scored faster with Balbay on the bench, most notably the stretch of games from OU to MU, but once you add the 5 torrid minutes Balbay had against Tech, the points per minute were nearly unaffected by Balbay's presence or absence. That said, it need to be mentioned that over the last two games, starting from the point Balbay left the Tech game, Texas has been scoring at a 65 point a game rate. That's 18% below conference season average. How the ******* hell is that an offensive improvement? If appears to be me going to great lengths to defend Balbay, it's only because I want to see if there is some kind of statistical support for the concept that everyone wants to take for granted. That is a far cry from being guilty of ignoring data to cling to an erroneous belief. Texas was not scoring that well with Balbay on the floor during the OU to MU stretch of games, sure. But if the whole advantage was wiped out by Texas scoring 18 points in 5 minutes against Tech, the advantage wasn't that significant over a four game period. As it turns out, the change of having Balbay on the floor versus off the floor tended very slightly to favor having Balbay on the floor over the length of the season, but tended to favor having Balbay off the floor OU through MU. By no stretch of the imagination, however, can it be said that Texas's offense improved the last two games over anything, as there has been only one game in which Texas scored fewer than 65 points, which is what Texas is scoring the last two games after Balbay left with his injury.
Four points. 1) I didn't say having Balbay would have helped; I just note the continued lack of offensive production since his departure. Texas has now scored 180 points in 115 minutes since Balby was hurt. When pro-rated to a full three games, that works out to 62.6 points a game. 2) A delusion is defined as a belief that is not supported by empirical evidence and maintained despite empirical evidence to the contrary. I'm not being delusional by looking at empirical evidence while questioning the validity of commonly stated beliefs. I don't necessarily believe in the antithesis of your postulate; I just remind everyone that your postulate has no objective evidence to support it at present. The farther the season goes without objective evidence to support your assertion, the less likely your assertion is to be true. 3) Your statement that empirical evidence has no relevance to your opinions and your request that I refrain from subjecting you to the horror of considering some actualities suggest you might be at risk of being delusional under the definition given above; however, I would point out that the definition above is not to my knowledge a definition of any kind of clinical condition and I am not any kind of mental health professional, so my opinion here in this regard is not to be relied upon by you or anyone else for any purpose except to appreciate the amount of frustration we all have with the team that leads us to blame players and coaches, refuse to watch games, refuse to consider evidence about the performances, and to descend to sarcasm, which, for me, is not a far plunge. 4) Maybe Texas will go lay 100 on OU and all this discussion will be superseded by the new data tending to support your assertion. I certainly hope so.
My concern at this point is that Texas has looked pretty good only against teams with weak interior defenses. I'd love to hope to see an explosion against a bigger team, but we'll see. I liked seeing Johnson hitting from about 12-15 feet. When he does that and doesn't have to get everything right at the basket, everything seems to open up more than if we simply had one of the outside shooters go off. When Texas has James and Hamilton ready to shoot outside or drive and Johnson to score mid-range, that creates too many options for any defense to grapple. Crap. Sportsline doesn't have a shot chart today.
