Indiana Hoosiers basketball season in review: Matt Roth.

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on May 16, 2011 1:15 PM EDT in Indiana Hoosiers Basketball

This is another in the prolonged postseason wrapup series. Pretend that I made a bunch of empty promises here about when the next post will be.

Matt Roth is one of three remaining Kelvin Sampson recruits on the IU roster. Derek Elston (previous post in this series) and Tom Pritchard (next post in this series) are the others. When the IU program was at its all-time low, those three guys stuck with the Hoosiers, and that isn't often mentioned and shouldn't be forgotten. Roth's freshman year was the horrid 2008-09, "let's just field a team" season, and Roth played quite a bit that season. Frankly, I did not recall that he had played so much, but as a freshman, Roth logged 21 minutes and 5.6 shots per game. Nearly all of Roth's shots came from three point range that season, and he averaged 6.7 points per game on 37.5 percent shooting from behind the arc. The highlight of Roth's freshman season and career to date was his performance in a 93-81 home loss to Ohio State that year, in which he scored 29 points on 9-11 from three point range.

Roth's subsequent years have not yet matched his freshman season. As a sophomore, Roth suffered a season-ending foot injury, logging only a total of 11 minutes in IU's first two non-conference games. This past season, Roth returned, but his playing time was dramatically diminished from his freshman season. Roth's shooting percentage was a steady 37.5 percent from deep, but he played only 8.2 minutes per game and averaged 3.4 points. That's not to say that Roth didn't have his moments. His best game was at Michigan State, where he scored 12 points on 4-5 shooting and would have been remembered as one of the heroes if IU had held on in that overtime heartbreaker.
It's hard to say what exactly is the issue with Roth. His strength is as a spot-up shooter, and IU's offense has not excelled at providing opportunities for such players. Also, Tom Crean seems to favor guards who have more shot-creating ability than Roth has. Yes, with the way IU's offense looked at times last season, that sounds like a punchline, but it's true. Roth does not seem like the typical Crean guard. I may be overlooking someone, but can anyone remember Crean signing or even pursuing a guy whose sole strength was perimeter shooting?

Because of diminished playing time, and because Roth graduated in May and will be attending graduate school next season, his departure has been rumored, but Roth has said he will be back at IU and there is no particular reason to believe otherwise. Unless he seeks an additional year of eligibility (a medical redshirt for the season in which he played only two games), then Roth's career will be over next season, meaning that he will have no impact on the 2012-13 scholarship crunch. As far as we now know, next year's roster of scholarship players will be identical to this season's, but minus Jeremiah Rivers and plus Cody Zeller, Austin Etherington, and Remy Abell. The recruitment of Abell, in particular, would seem to be a bad sign for Roth's ability to earn significant playing time next season. As we discussed back when it happened, the signing of Abell is understandable only if he is able to contribute to next year's team--otherwise, banking the scholarship for the 2012 class (can you bank a scholarship that doesn't exist?) would have been the better move. We don't know whether Abell will be above or below where Rivers was in the playing time hierarchy, but it's fair to assume that like Rivers was, he will be ahead of Matt Roth. All that said, Roth has shown that he is an excellent shooter, perhaps the best pure shooter on the team (although I'm sure that Jordan Hulls and a healthy Maurice Creek could give him a run). It's unlikely that Roth ever will return to the 20 minutes per game visibility of his freshman season, but let's hope he can finish things out by coming off the bench with some well-placed daggers that help IU make some progress.

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To save you time and effort

I would be completely fine if you skipped doing a writeup on Pritchard.

by smileyfacejackson on May 17, 2011 11:36 AM EDT reply actions

Actually, he is one of the more intriguing players on the roster, for better or worse.

The Crimson Quarry, SB Nation's Indiana Hoosiers blog

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on May 17, 2011 11:56 AM EDT reply actions

The scheme problem

Indiana’s personnel and offensive sets have been mismatched under Coach Crean. I don’t think that’s debatable. An offense with lots of off-ball screens designed to get guys like Roth, Hulls, Watford and Creek good three-point looks could have been pretty productive over the past two seasons.

More debatable: Indiana could have won more games had Crean tailored the offense to his players. Looking at the stats, the Hoosiers usually lost because of bad defense and turnovers. A different offense might (or might not) have helped the turnover situation but would have done nothing for the defense. That said, if the offense were only slightly more efficient we might have pulled out a couple more close wins.

The argument has always been that Indiana’s offensive style would attract better recruits. It’s hard to argue with the recruiting results, though we still seem to be a year away from maybe competing in the B10. It does bother me that we’ve evidently done so little with the strengths that the team has had over the last two seasons. As an old Bob Knight fan, I like the MacGyver element of college basketball – how do you take a bedspring, some candle wax, a 6’7" center and two slow dudes who can shoot and challenge for the B10 title? Sadly for me, Tom Crean does not seem like a MacGyver-style coach.

Back to Matt Roth. I don’t know if Roth is or could have ever been an essential ingredient in an over-achieving but under-talented band of alternate-universe 2011 Hoosiers that went 9-9 in conference. Maybe he didn’t play because he simply couldn’t compete at a B10 level, or maybe the sets we used didn’t hide his weaknesses and highlight his strengths sufficiently. I do wonder at the number of players who seem ill-suited to what Crean is doing on the floor, and I hope the new recruits are able to fit into the system more comfortably.

by nothsa on May 18, 2011 10:25 AM EDT reply actions

I agree with a lot of your points. It’s not hard to imagine a more effective offense, but offense was not really this team’s problem. A quick look at the Pomeroy numbers, isolated for conference games only, suggests meaningful improvement on offense from year 1 to year 2 and year 2 to year 3, but stagnation (at best) on defense. For instance, IU made meaningful improvement in turnovers on offense, but the decline in turnovers forced kept us in the red in terms of net. There isn’t an easy explanation from my perspective. Crean’s last few Marquette teams were very good defensively.

IU’s W/L record this season did not match the overall trajectory of the stats. Perhaps that means we’re in line for a bigger-than-expected jump. My hope, given improvement and a general talent decline in the Big Ten, is that IU can flirt with a .500 conference record.

The Crimson Quarry, SB Nation's Indiana Hoosiers blog

by John M (The Crimson Quarry) on May 18, 2011 10:56 AM EDT up reply actions

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