WHAT THEY BRING

Theoretically, an offense

Being rude online is not my mission in life, but bar none, this is the worst offense that will come to Thompson-Boling Arena in the 2019-20 season. I am somewhat comfortable stating that both Eastern New Mexico (which had a good offensive player) and Alabama State (same) offer more on this side of the ball than the Rattlers do. Obviously, given their MEAC disadvantages and their lack of serious program success, this is no real surprise, but it’s worth diving into the numbers to describe just how bad this may be.

Florida A&M’s offense enters Wednesday’s game 342nd out of 353 teams in KenPom’s Offensive Efficiency metric. They make 41.1% of their twos (333rd), 22.1% of their threes (351st), 60.3% of their free throws (328th), only attempt threes 22.5% of the time (352nd), and get next-to-no assists (37.3% Assist Rate, 345th). It is a bankrupt offense, a horrifying one, and its one saving grace – a good Free Throw Rate (36.8%, 88th) – is almost meaningless given their serious issues at the free throw line. Could this also reverse trend a little in the future? Sure; this year’s A&M team brought back all but two players from the 2018-19 team that shot 36.4% from three (75th-best nationally). But it seems quite unlikely it’ll be much more than bad.

As best I can tell, what A&M runs is closest to a dribble-drive motion offense with a lot of emphasis on getting shots inside the perimeter, particularly mid-range looks.

They want to get fouled early and often, but I don’t know if that’ll be of much use against a Tennessee team that’s been very good at keeping opponents off of the line. Compared to…well, everyone else in college basketball, this offense might as well be devoid of set-ups for threes; this is a very mid-1990s basketball offense to be running in 2019-20. If this is your thing, congrats, but I’d like to imagine we moved past this for a reason. I’ll set the over/under for A&M three-point attempts at 11.5 in this one.

Rod Melton and MJ Randolph are 1 & 2; everyone else kinda falls in line

The scoring leader thus far with 11.2 points per game is Rod Melton, a 2-guard that is the team’s most prominent three-point threat. (Surprised to see him as the leading scorer! Wow! Maybe threes are good!) Melton’s just 8-of-33 from three, but he’s actually been fairly effective at driving to the rim, making 9 of his 19 attempts. (He went 0-for-9 from the field in the USC game I watched, so just pretend this shot goes in.)

Second to Melton is MJ Randolph, a 6’4” sophomore that plays 1-through-3 and is almost exclusively inside the perimeter. Of Randolph’s 42 attempts from the field, 37 have been twos, with the majority coming at the rim. Randolph is also willing to pull up from mid-range, as evidenced here:

A&M only plays eight guys, but they don’t require a ton of analysis. The most efficient of them is Bryce Moragne, a very small 4 that makes his living mostly from mid-range. The rest vary from horrifically inefficient (Kamron Reaves, 59.4 ORtg, 2-of-18 from three and 7-of-26 from mid-range) to forgettably average (Evins Desir, 93.1 ORtg, largely post-ups, mostly because he is 300 POUNDS).

The defense is bad, but better than the offense

I mean it’s an acceptable kind of bad. Like when you see a movie and you know it’s bad but you can still laugh a few times because it has moments? That kind of bad. The Rattlers mostly run a man-to-man defense that takes a lot of chances in creating turnovers (44th in Steal% last year, 47th this year) and also commits tons of fouls.

They commit these fouls because there’s not really much else to do if you can get to the rim. Opponents are making 66.2% of attempts at the rim against the Rattlers, the 313th-best rate in America. They only block 5.4% of rim attempts, the 317th-best rate. If you get blocked by this defense, it seems like it’s your own fault.

Also, if you miss the shot, you probably should rebound it. A&M ranks 348th in defensive rebounding after ranking 318th last season and 350th the season before that. This will never be a good defensive rebounding team because, again, they’re small. Tennessee can and should go inside early and often. If they miss, they can put it back up; if they miss that, they’re probably going to get fouled.

A&M generally limits shots on the perimeter fairly well, but I’m not totally convinced it’s because they have anything better than an okay three-point defense; it’s mostly because you can score at will against them in the paint. Tennessee could get up threes in this game – fine, I’ll set the over/under at 19 attempts – but I’m not sure it’s really necessary. Still, practice is practice, and you could always use it.

Side note: A&M uses a press from time-to-time, usually around 5-10 possessions a game. It’s nothing all that special beyond applying a little extra backcourt pressure; if Tennessee has any trouble breaking it at all, the ten days following the game should have practices focusing heavily on breaking a basic press. (This is a shorter clip because the Pac-12 Network gave me three more seconds of Andy Enfield’s face than I wanted, but you get what A&M’s going for.)

NEXT PAGE: Basketball, yes, but can we discuss Saturday’s VCU broadcast? My God, just remarkable. It really lived up to the hype. In terms of “what are you thankful for,” the eternal Thanksgiving question, I was quite thankful that Grandfather Bob – the official grandfather of this website – has excellent Internet service and was able to stream the game without issue. Did it cause our necks to snap looking left to right from the Tennessee football game to that? Sure. But it was worth it. Alright basketball