WBB: what kind of offensive schemes does Robin Pingeton run?

Her offense at Mizzou last year was, uh, quite different from Wisconsin's offense.

Basketball coaches are like snowflakes, insofar as they do most of their work in the winter months and the Inuits have 50 different words for them. Wait, that can’t be right.

::shuffles papers around on desk::

Ah, here we go! Basketball coaches are like snowflakes because they are all a little bit different from one another. Hmm, yes, that’s a much better analogy.

The Wisconsin Badgers women’s basketball team will, for the first time in four years, have a new head coach on the sidelines during the 2025-26 season. Marisa Moseley announced her resignation back on March 9 and UW announced former Mizzou head woman Robin Pingeton as their new coach on March 25.

There hasn’t been any news out of Madison on whether or not there will be an introductory press conference (UPDATE: per a UW release I bullied them into sending there will be one on Tuesday, April 1…I hope this isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke on me tbqh), she doesn’t have a bio up on the UWBadgers website, and there have been two (2) posts on Twitter in the five days since she was hired. To say this new era of Wisconsin hoops has started off with a muffled thud would be insulting to muffled thuds everywhere.

Since we aren’t getting any content from UW, we’ll just have to make some our damn selves! Having not watched a ton (read: any) Missouri women’s basketball, I was extremely curious as to what sort of schemes Pingeton might run. I asked Eli Hoff, University of Missouri sports beat writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a couple of questions and he was kind enough to answer them for me!

Firstly, I wanted to know what the “general vibe” was around Mizzou WBB the past couple of years to see what she might bring to Madison. Eli’s answer was, uh, not super inspiring. He noted that the past few years were “a quiet slide into being something really, really lackluster.”

It would appear that Pingeton was given some sort of ultimatum two seasons ago but with the lack of an athletic director to fire her, she got to run it back one more time and…things didn’t improve.

“After the 22-23 season, Mizzou's AD told Pingeton very clearly that she had to make the NCAA Tournament or would be dismissed. That was the standard, and the Tigers didn't get there — but there was no AD to actually make that call, so Missouri kept her into the final year of her contract. Nobody expected anything besides what happened, which was a poor season that ended Pingeton's tenure.”

It is certainly worth noting, as Hoff reminded me, that Pingeton resigning less than a month before her contract ended because that means it wasn’t really her decision to “resign.” National reporters and various online insiders were all taken aback by the hire and Hoff said Tigers fans were just as shocked as everyone else.

“I think a lot of Mizzou fans were surprised. I had the sense that she wanted to keep coaching. I assumed that her track record [at Missouri] wouldn't make a power conference job an option and that she might have to go down a level, but that obviously wasn't the case.”

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So, with some final off-the-court stuff out of the way, let’s take a look at how Mizzou played on the court under Pingeton the past couple of years! A brief look at The Numbers leads me to believe that Pingeton’s teams can score the basketball, often with the best of them in the nation, but struggle to stop the other team from scoring the basketball, often at a rate worse than their offense.

Missouri’s Offense Last 4 Years

• 2021-22: 70.5 ppg; 108.1 AdjO; 52.4 eFG%

• 2022-23: 64.6 ppg; 105.4 AdjO; 50.2 eFG%

• 2023-24: 70.0 ppg; 102.8 AdjO; 51.3 eFG%

• 2024-25: 68.6 ppg; 106.9 AdjO; 49.5 eFG%

Wisconsin’s “best” offense under Marisa Moseley came in 2022-23 when they averaged 68.5 ppg, their AdjO was 102.3, and their eFG% was 49.0. You’ll notice that only Mizzou’s points per game in 2022-23 were worse than all of UW’s “best” stats.

One area of Pingeton’s recent Tigers teams that is completely different from Moseley’s Wisconsin teams is the amount of “rim attacks” (defined as “drives and slashes to the rim from the perimeter, includes pull-ups and floaters”) that Mizzou did. Here are the numbers for MU, provided by the invaluable Hoop Explorer:

• 2024-25: 28.4 rim attacks per 100 plays, which was in the top 97.2%ile in the nation

• 2023-24: 25.8 rim attacks per 100 plays; top 92.6%ile

• 2022-23: 24.2 rim attacks per 100 plays; top 80.9%ile

• 2021-22: 24.1 rim attacks per 100 plays; top 83.0%ile

Wisconsin, on the other hand, barely used “rim attacks” at all over the past three years.

• 2024-25: 13.9 rim attacks per 100 plays, which was in the top 7.5%ile in the nation

• 2023-24: 19.3 rim attacks per 100 plays; top 35.1%ile

• 2022-23: 16.8 rim attacks per 100 plays; top 18.1%ile

• 2021-22: 27.1 rim attacks per 100 plays; top 95.7%ile

When you think about the distribution of talent on UW’s roster this past season it makes sense that it wasn’t a very “guard oriented” team. Serah Williams and Carter McCray were UW’s two best offensive players and they both did most of their operating in the paint. Other important rotational pieces, like Tess Myers and Lily Krahn, were primarily spot up three-point shooters. The Badgers, quite simply, didn’t have many (if any) players that could drive to the rim and create their own shot.

With the mass exodus of Wisconsin players to the transfer portal there is no one on the current roster who qualifies as a Big Ten caliber rim attacker. The past two seasons at Mizzou, Pingeton’s teams were highly inefficient in these rim attacks (0.78 points per play, 34.6%ile last year; 0.81 PPP, 46.8%ile two years ago) and that was with a roster that she specifically constructed to play her style of hoops!

Somewhat bizarrely, the Badgers actually had a slightly HIGHER two-point attempt rate (against all field goal attempts) at the rim than Mizzou AND Wisconsin shot a higher percentage at the rim (59.1 to 55.6) than the Tigers. I’ll be honest with you here, friend…I don’t understand that at all!

Pingeton’s Mizzou teams, almost without fail, have been excellent long-range bombers. Her first year at the helm (2010-11) they shot 28.6% from beyond the arc (18th percentile) and then only had two seasons below the 82nd percentile nationally the other 14 seasons. Her ranks nationally over the past four years?

• 2024-25: 16th, 36.6%

• 2023-24: 30th, 35.5%

• 2022-23: 31st, 35.3%

• 2021-22: 4th, 38.4%

She has more seasons where her teams finished in the top-10 (three times) of three-point percentage than below 100th (twice). The only problem? Pingeton’s teams don’t shoot ENOUGH threes. MU’s three-point rate of 29.6% last year was 185th in the country. While the three years before that were better for three-point rate, only one of them rated in the top-50 nationally and it was 50th. I hope Lily Krahn’s shooting arm is ready for a workout next season!

A few other notes on Pingeton’s offense at Mizzou:

• the past two seasons, the Tigers got out and ran a bit (41.4%ile this year; 66%ile last year) and were exceedingly efficient, averaging 1.33 points per play on the fast break both years.

• Wisconsin was in the 99th percentile in frequency of post-ups last year. Over the last four seasons, the highest percentile Mizzou had in post-ups was 61.7%, four years ago. Since Williams and McCray are both in the transfer portal, and the only big left on the roster is Alie Bisballe who can shoot a bit, one can safely assume that the Badgers will not be among the national leaders in post-ups next year.

• Mizzou’s teams have been better taking care of the ball than Wisconsin, but they weren’t particularly good at it…UW was just consistently bad at it.

• outside of this year, Missouri was not the type of team to crash the offensive boards. They had an offensive rebounding rate of 33.4% this year, which was 99th best in the nation. Moseley’s best mark at Wisconsin was 30.2%, which was 199th best in the nation two years ago.

• one thing that Moseley’s teams were consistently well above average at was sharing the basketball. UW never had an assist rate lower than 60% in her four years and their worst finish nationally in this category was 54th. Pingeton’s teams appear to rely a bit more on individual creation as we can see in these numbers:

  • Missouri

    • 3P assissted: 89%

    • 2P mid-range assisted: 26%

    • 2P rim assisted: 40%

  • Wisconsin

    • 3P assissted: 96%

    • 2P mid-range assisted: 44%

    • 2P rim assisted: 58%

That’s probably enough numbers and data for one post, so we’ll call it here. I’m hoping to have a similar post to this, but about Pingeton’s defensive tendencies, ready soon, but my kids are on Spring Break now and my family will be returning to the Old Country (Philadelphia) to visit relatives.