Georgetown (4-2) will head into their game with Merrimack on a three-game winning streak with an offense we haven’t seen at Capital One Arena in sometime.
As I’ve said in the past, the word of the season is “sustainability” and from what we’ve seen so far on offense, what head coach Ed Cooley is doing is sustainable.
The question becomes, at what efficiency rate can this team stay at in season one with how uneven the roster is?
Per KenPom, the Hoyas rank 28th in EFG%, 50th in OReb%, 46th in 3P%, and 50th in 2P%.
Those percentages are built on actions and philosophy that are getting guys good look. Once a player receives the ball in space, their talent is supposed to make the right basketball play and so far, Georgetown has been pretty good at just that.
When Dontrez Styles got to Chapel Hill, the theme seem to always come back to his athleticism as if he was an athlete first, a basketball player second.
At Georgetown, he’s forging a reputation of being a basketball player who’s athletic.
Styles is shooting almost 58% from two point range. Per Hoop Math, only 26.7% of Styles’ shots have been at the rim with a 65% finish rate. His two-point jumpers come in at 33.3% of his shot attempts with a 52% finish rate.
Give Cooley some credit for how he’s designing the offense but Styles deserves a lot of praise for getting to the right spots at the right time which is very underrated on the IQ scale.
Styles’ is shooting 40% (12-30) from three-point range. In an era of volume shooting three-point shooters, Styles gets his attempts within the constructs of the offensive philosophy which is why it’s rare to see him take contested threes.
In Merrimack, Styles will have a different challenge.
Merrimack’s active zone will mimic an aggressive man defense on the perimeter. Getting to the open areas and being a good decision-maker will go a long way in what kind of night Styles and the Hoyas offense will have.
Without giving too much away, when I went through Merrimack’s game with Samford, there were some one-guarding-two opportunities that were there on ball reversal.
There will be more on that in the preview article.
