Texas Tech basketball: What we learned in 2019-20

Moretti doesn’t need to be a team’s primary option

This is going to sound like I’m complaining about Davide Moretti, which is one step away from heresy in West Texas.  Trust me, I’m not.  But the reality is that this year taught us that he is at his best when he is a complementary piece rather than the player that everything runs through as was often the case this year.

To understand how his role changed this year, we have to look no further than his usage rate.  That stat measures what percentage of plays end with one particular player either shooting, assisting, or turning the ball over and is a measure of how much a team is asking from individuals.

When you look at Moretti’s usage rate, it was a career-high 19.7%.  Though that was nowhere near the team lead (Jahmi’us Ramsey was tops at 26.2%), it appeared to be too much for Moretti’s skill set.

That’s because almost across the board, Moretti’s numbers dipped from last year to this year.  His field goal percentage dropped from 49.8% to 41.9%.  His three-point percentage fell from 45.9% to 38.3%.  His free-throw percentage fell from 92.4% to 90.2%.

Additionally, his scoring rose only slightly from 11.5 points per game to 13 despite the fact that he played almost three minutes more per game.  Most telling though was that his offensive rating (the estimation of how many points per 100 possessions he accounted for) fell from 129.9 to 110.1.

All of those numbers suggest that Moretti was asked to carry too much of a burden this season.  Some of those declines come from the fact that he was more of a focus of opposing defenses as teams did not have to throw their best defensive players at Jarrett Culver or Matt Mooney thus they spent more time trying to take away what Moretti does best, shoot the three.

It’s also fair to think that the increased workload took a toll physically.  Being as Moretti spent more time handling the basketball this year, one has to believe it impacted his legs late in games and that could be a reason that he missed some key free throws late and why his shooting percentage from three-point range fell off so dramatically.

Next year (if Moretti returns rather than playing professionally in his native country where his father is a professional head coach), we should hope to see the Italian fan-favorite return to being a complementary piece because that’s when he’s at his best.  His game is most suited for being a long-range sniper that knocks down shots from deep as teams have to worry about others creating off the drive.  If that happens, we could see Moretti have the best season of his career because he doesn’t have to try to also run the offense and facilitate for others.