This ia a topic that hits the centre of my attention as I'm interested in all that's being discussed here.
Btw, +1 for the quote you pulled up from 2009 about OD. That was an outstanding find!
I am sad to say I've forgotten how you configured your team offensively - I know you had the big shotblocking and low IS, but I don't remember if you went heavy on passing and tried to scrape together points by generating more assists or if you actually also put significant work into training JR/JS. But I'm curious for your opinions as well on the issue of "open" (uncontested) shots from guards vs. contested and open shots from your big men. I know watching PBP of my heavily Princeton team for season after season, and checking the advanced stats when that tool on the USA offsite was working, I got the strong impression that uncontested shots from guards were still not exactly high percentage when going against a team with good OD rating.
I may have to try to see where (if anywhere) I ended up documenting a specific player. I know I had a specific player (Jack Poirier) who for most of his time with the team had the highest JS on the club (and was among the top passers). Over I think a three season span, he consistently shot below 50% on uncontested jump shots but actually over 50% (or at least higher) on contested jump shots.
And so while I agree that passing is much lower than it probably should be game wide, I'm not personally convinced that it's the solution to the outside shooting problem. It'd be great to see more done with high JR and high passing against quality competition, and maybe there's someone out there who's done that (beyond BB-Ryan's data points even?). I just find that passing is exceptionally helpful in scoring inside (where open shots are *much* better), but my experiences make me tend to think it doesn't help that much on outside or jump shots.