Man, I’m glad they got the heck out of Fort Myers with a 1-1 record! This was not their best basketball hampered by health, poor shooting, and some growing pains for the roster. It’s the kind of series you hope to escape with the best result possible, no matter how ugly, and regroup. Fortunately, we saw great strides from Ryan Dunn, whose mobility was severely limited after his awkward landing against Wisconsin, and the way he played against WVU – looking almost back to 100%. Isaac McKneely also seemed less bothered by his ankle in the WVU game, proving more mobile on the defensive end, crashing down for 5 defensive rebounds, and being a little more assertive off of the dribble… but he was just 5-16 from the field over the span of two games and struggled when being run off of the three-point line.
To me, the most important thing (and I think really only macro lesson to be learned) is the determination and clutch factor they closed this contest with, especially in the wake of such a lopsided contest vs. Wisconsin. The loss to Wisconsin is surely indicative that we might have some consistency issues, but I do believe there were other elements at play in that game and also lessons we will learn from it. It’s not like we just ran into a team with talent or size unlike we’d played – Florida is a collectively bigger, more athletic and, I believe, considerably more talented team than Wisconsin.
So. Yes, we eeked by a team not playing at full health; but we got another rep against a high-quality big man and adjusted much better. Let’s get into it, starting with some improvements on defense and looks at player utilization followed by some quick hitters:
Improved Defensive Rotations:
After the Wisconsin game I highlighted some of the struggles we had with our defensive rotations while doubling the post. Our double teams were neither timely nor imposing enough and our back-end operations were often lacking or confused. That was greatly cleaned up on Wednesday night – let’s take a look:
You can compare this clip directly with a couple of clips from that Wisconsin game where Rohde and Harris got confused on their help rotations. Here the communication and reads are much better along with Dunn’s double team coming timely so that he’s there right after Edwards makes the catch. This double does what it’s intended to – obscures sight lines and makes passes hard. It actually forces Edwards all the way out to the corner. Harris does a great job of sagging down and fronting Dunn’s man. Rather than pinching as he was before, Rohde stays in play for the back two men and closes out well on the pass to the wing, which Harris recognizes and returns to the point (as Dunn recovers from the double team). The ball swings from the wing back to the point and Harris plays quality on-ball defense, with Reece’s support, to force a contested three at the end of the shot clock. This is a really nice improvement game-over-game from everyone involved here ranging from the double team execution itself to Rohde/Harris.
This next look is just really tight rotationally and I want to call out how much Dunn being back to being Dunn helps to influence this. He’s there immediately on the Edwards catch again, Harris does good work on the back side again, Beekman is there immediately on the kick out to Dunn’s man, Harris on Beekman’s, and Dunn back out on Harris’s, who he then completely stifles and swats. Imagine you have our 6’0″ PG guarding you and our PF rotates to you on the perimeter. You think you have a mismatch off of the bounce and this is what you get:
That’s super clean.
Here’s another look, which also highlights all of the difference Reece Beekman makes as the roaming help. WVU wants to get the ball to Edwards in the post against Groves for the mismatch. Rohde does a good job lingering around him to discourage the pass while being in range to recover to his man. As his man clears out, he even hesitates a moment hoping to anticipate and steal a pass, before eventually needing to leave the scene. Dunn’s man is also in the corner so this is not ideal spacing by WVU, and he’s sagged off enough to be right there on the double team on the Edwards catch again. WVU needs to create better spacing so Dunn’s man cuts into the paint and Rohde stays/fronts him, while Reece actually hides behind him, playing both the wing and the corner pass. It’s unclear if Edwards didn’t see Reece due to the lurking or just didn’t think he could get there, but the aggressive double team forces him to throw a jump pass fading away across the court to the corner, which Beekman reads perfectly and steals. Stellar (and crafty) stuff by Beekman and quality execution all around.
Last look, below. I will say that I do not love the decision by Buchanan (or the direction he was given?) to double team Slazinski in the post with Ryan Dunn on him. WVU is in their small ball lineup with Edwards off of the floor so this just screams unnecessary opportunity at giving up a look from the outside. But, Beekman’s recovery to this pass to deflect it out of bounds and force the shotty violache is a thing of beauty! While I do, generally, dislike sending double teams at players who don’t represent a mismatch (especially a stretch 4 against Ryan Dunn, of all people), having Beekman in that roaming role certainly does provide a lot of security.
So, yeah, much quicker and better decision making on our rotations, unsurprisingly, saw our defense improve quite a bit from how it looked two days prior. Again, I want to impress how much I think Dunn’s health played a big role in this – he went from gutting it out to full-on cyclone again. But, there was also a lot of improvement and growth in a short period of time from players like Harris and Rohde working together on the back end. This was clearly a point of emphasis during the off day and it’s great to see it pay off so quickly. When the team is rotating like this, it’s much less punishing to play against opposing 7-footers. Edwards had a good game with 17 points and we still held WVU to 54 in total.
Ryan Dunn’s Offense:
There will be a lot of different factors to success this season, but Ryan Dunn being able to provide an offensive pop to accompany his other-worldly defense is a big part of that. He was actually the leading scorer in this one with 13 points, and looked FAR more willing to attack the basket and much more comfortable, in general, on the offensive end. There was still a stark tension between his outside/inside game, though. On several occasions, he had wide-open looks that, to his credit, he took, but was unable to convert. Here on the secondary break:
And here, at the end of the first half after a pick and pop with Edwards sagging off of him entirely to deter a Beekman drive:
And, very importantly, at the very end of the game with the score tied here. Notice how, again, Edwards is guarding him and how he makes the choice to stay deep in the lane in an attempt to deter driving lanes as opposed to being worried about contesting the Dunn shot. This allows for the wide-open kick-out, but he misses (great offensive rebound by Bond and draw of the foul by Beekman after the fact).
Now, I love Dunn’s willingness to take these shots and, generally, I’d like him to continue to do so until he builds up some in-game confidence and rhythm. What we don’t want is for a return toward the end of last season where he simply wasn’t taking these shots and the defenses knew it. That started to bog things down just like with Edwards playing so deep here. It’s probably not the look you want in such a clutch moment given his lack of success, thus far, but alternatively, the defense was able to force this look given how they were playing him and how we were running our offense. So, aside from continuing to shoot these looks in lower stakes moments until the % starts to come up, what do I recommend? Let’s first take a look at some of his other offensive contributions.
Dunn was absolutely fantastic at finishing around the rim when he had some momentum going downhill all game. It didn’t matter if the 7’0″ Jesse Edwards (#7) was in good position to contest or not. In fact, Dunn’s assertiveness helped to put Edwards in foul trouble throughout the game. Here’s a look early in a broken play where we grab a loose ball in transition and it comes to Dunn in the open court. He’s able to build momentum toward the rim and use his athleticism to create a strong finish right through the chest of the taller Edwards.
A little later in the game, I think this is a VERY informative set out of Flow that illustrates the concept nicely, below. Dunn gets the ball early in the possession in the corner with Edwards guarding him on the perimeter. He dribbles back up to the wing with Edwards playing pretty loosely on him and Slazinski (#11), their 6’9″ stretch 4, shading the middle of the lane hard off of Buchanan. Now, this matchup wasn’t normal with this pairing on the floor, Edwards took Dunn on the secondary break after Reece picked up a turnover. Firstly, at about 7 seconds into the clip I’d love to see Dunn try to take Edwards off of the dribble here. Force him to react in space, put pressure on the switch, see if you can get something at the rim or create something for others. This should be a big benefit of situations where less mobile bigs have to take Dunn on the perimeter. Make them work – pressure test them. As we work through the offense the ball goes to Rohde in the corner and back out to McKneely at the wing, who beats his man off of the dribble and attacks the paint. Edwards steps up to stop McKneely, turning his back to Dunn, who does a great job of taking the kick out and immediately slashing through the opening in the lane to the rim and finishing around contests.
This is the ticket, right here. You still need Dunn to be able (and want to) take and make a three-pointer here, but you certainly prefer him punishing his man’s help defense with a straight-line drive to the rim, where applicable. So, let’s keep this play in mind, while also placing an additional earmark on the idea of him being more willing to attack mismatches off of the bounce.
Here’s another look, below, later in the game and this time Edwards is intentionally matched up on him because he’s playing the 5 with Bond at the 4. Edwards is much more aggressive about his defensive sag here when Dunn has the ball on the Wing, basically daring him to shoot, but there is a significant clear-out so I’d still like to see what Dunn can do against him off of the dribble one-on-one. But, instead, he kicks it out, McKneely curls around him, drawing both defenders momentarily, and then passes to Dunn while attacking the rim, who finishes through Edwards again, this time drawing a crucial foul. That downhill momentum is huge and adds an important dynamic to our offense to have another player (Buchanan when playing at his best) who can finish through (or draw fouls against) the opposition’s best rim protection.
This next look is just a phenomenal pick and roll with Andrew Rohde, who I want to highlight briefly here because that’s a great pass on the slip and because I still think his contributions are being undervalued since he hasn’t been as effective scoring or penetrating as many hoped, but his passing and general contributions have been valuable. He had a timely midrange jumper in this one as well as a pretty backdoor cut in addition to this pretty look and quality defense. It’s going to seem a bit counter-intuitive because I’ll later advocate for more Bond time at the 3, but I do believe Rohde offers a very important (albeit perhaps slightly different than envisioned) role on this team that will grow with time. For now, he’s been more important glue with an occasional flash moment. I’ll try to spotlight him more in some upcoming games. Anyway, it’s a great catch with momentum and finish on the other side of the rim through contact by Dunn.
And then there was this, which was his biggest play (other than the late offensive rebound) of the game and this is what I’m talking about! Interestingly, WVU has Edwards on Bond and Slazinski on Dunn. Bond and Beekman play a two-man game from the wing but Edwards is able to both aggressively shade help toward Beekman and recover to Bond in the post who had no interest in trying to make an interior move with such a size disadvantage. Instead, the ball goes back to Dunn who just aggressively takes Slazinski off of the dribble right past Edwards trying to help. Slazinski is completely set at the beginning of this drive and Dunn looks incredibly fluid with this explosion – so, again reiterating, I’d really like to see him test these waters more and more. He’s a hard cover with his mobility and his newly found handle – so having him apply more pressure will be a wide-ranging benefit.
I hope and believe that Dunn’s offensive confidence is going to keep building throughout the season. This absolutely needs to come with his shot, full stop. Those clips of his misses were all wide-open and all better options to shoot rather than to attempt to take it to the hoop, given the lane congestion. But, I do believe that a big part of the solution to all of this is for him to be much more aggressive with his drive. Whether it be just trying to take his man off of the dribble and looking to finish or dish, or quickly getting into his bounce on kick-outs when his man has been helping, that will really help lubricate the offense. Attacking like that should ALSO help his confidence and his shot as he increasingly gets into the offensive rhythm.
Leon Bond’s Offense
I’ve written a bit already this season about Leon Bond’s defensive presence at the 3 spot as opposed to playing at the 4. I’ve also written about how we can use the Inside Triangle offense with him at the 3 to create mismatches against our opponents. And, I just simply do wish that we’d see us break that out and lean into it against a higher quality opponent than North Carolina A&T. BUT, something very notable from this game against WVU is that Bond functioned admirably in our other base offenses at the 3 as well!
Here he is at the 3 with Groves at the 5 and Dunn at the 4 (McKneely and Harris as the other two backcourt members). I really like the pairing of Bond at the 3 and Groves at the 5 (with Dunn splitting the difference) because Bond’s added defensive pressure and both offensive and defensive rebounding can help make up for some of the areas Groves lacks in those departments. When Bond is playing the 4 and Groves the 5, then we’re just very undersized across the board – and while Rohde can be an effective 3 to pair with Dunn and Groves, you don’t NEED him out there as much when you have Groves’s shooting to pair with McKneely and, usually, Beekman. This is nothing spectacular by Bond, but he gets set at the point in Sides and alternates between looking to distribute to either Harris or McKneely coming off of down screens. He ends up delivering a nice pass in rhythm to McKneely off of a screen that frees him for a good look from three.
Also, side point, notice at the beginning of that play how he starts out as a “blocker” but Dunn motions him to switch and then he becomes a “mover.” There were some rumors before the season that they might play this lineup and have Bond play the 4 on offense and 3 on defense and Dunn vice versa. At least for now, it appears they’re keeping each respective player in the same position when they share the floor.
Here’s just a little taste I wanted to include of what he can bring intangibly while he’s on the floor (and that’s against a 4, not even a three). Just completely slips by his man with the put back! We’ve seen this a lot during his time playing but the bulk of it has still been while moonlighting as a 4. I do think he can ratchet up the impact while being covered by less size.
But here’s the clip that I really wanted to show, below. He’s at the 3 as a mover with Groves, Dunn, Beekman, and McKneely on the floor. WVU is playing with Edwards on Bond for some reason, I’m not really sure the logic, but opting to put the 6’6″ Ofri Naveh (#9) on Dunn while keeping the 6’7″ Josiah Harris (#22) on Groves. No matter, Bond simply comes off of a Dunn pin down screen but, rather than going out to the three-point line, he simply takes it just outside of the elbow and seamlessly gets into that silky midrange jumper. It’s quick and it’s fluid and, despite Edwards not contesting it hard to give drive depth (and possibly also help on Dunn), it’s something that Bond should be able to shoot over smaller defenders or drive if they over-extend, as well.
The reason I’m excited about this is because of the implication of his ability to execute our most base offense from the 3 position and not need them to break out the Inside Triangle just because he’s on the floor (although I still think that’s a great mismatch creator). He doesn’t have to extend everything beyond the three-point line, he can play to his strengths and curl to the midrange and still make it all work. This is something I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on in the near future.
And, while this is a look that he got while playing the 4 as well, it’s something he could replicate out of the three. This is a creative look with both Beekman, Harris, and McKneely on the floor as the 1-3 and Groves paired with Bond as the frontcourt grouping. In general, I really don’t like this lineup because of the Beekman/Harris pairing offensively and the collective under-sized nature of it across the board, especially with both Jesse Edwards and Quinn Slazinski on the floor. Still, they start out representing Sides motion but then Bond flares out to the three-point line and takes a pass from Beekman. He passes back and Groves has come over to set a ball-screen for Reece. This is a crafty little Sides feign into Flow. Beekman presses into the lane drawing his defender and both Edwards and Slazinski slide deep into the lane to help. If you freeze at 7 seconds you can see the three WVU defenders all converging on the drive with Bond all alone at the point. Reece turns and locates and Bond simply drifts into his comfort range, jump stops on the catch, and drills his midrange jumper. Playing the perimeter as the 3 in Flow would give us more ball screening options but he can also just drift in if his man helps from the outside and look for shots like this for himself. I generally am not one to advocate for the midrange over the three-point shot, but Bond shoots it so well and so comfortably that I’m not opposed here, especially if it creates another path to see him playing more time at the SF and not just the PF.
Okay, now that I’ve spent some time establishing my desire for Bond to play a lot more 3 rather than 4, I do want to highlight a couple of interesting wrinkles and exceptions. This lineup here, where we’re playing all of Beekman, McKneely, Rohde, and Groves along with Bond offers our maximum realistic spacing. 4 of the 5 players are real perimeter shooting threats and the 5th is money just inside of the arc. So, even though I really don’t love the idea of this lineup defending larger teams with bigs like Edwards on the floor, look at the tension created through the spacing, below. They’re still running Sides, but all of Rohde, Groves, and McKneely are spread around the arc, after the pass to Beekman on the wing, offering maximum spacing and an open interior. Bond hunts and sets a good screen on Beekman’s trailer, forcing Edwards to help after the pass gets through. If you pause at 6 seconds you’ll see some glorious spacing where WVU’s Kobe Johnson (#2) attempts to get over the screen and Edwards having to come attempt to contest a shot. Bond rolls and there’s a canyon of a passing lane with only Slazinski hopeful (and helpless) to contest the much more athletic Bond going downhill.
Again, just to reiterate, I doubt that’s a sustainable lineup against size, but it does offer an interesting wrinkle offensively and could put some slower-footed bigs in a real quandry. Definitely worth a look on occasion down the road.
Lastly, I’ll just say that we closed the game with Bond at the 4 and Dunn at the 5. They got two offensive rebounds between them in the most crucial moments to end the game, and we’ve seen Dunn and Bond have good chemistry on the court during scrimmages, etc. But it certainly appears as though that kind of lineup could both ratchet up our collective athleticism and be a very good option to combat small-ball (which is why we introduced it to begin with against WVU’s surge with Edwards on the bench). It IS very nice to have some versatile pieces like Bond, Dunn, and Groves which give you a variety of ways to mix and match lineups to take advantage of different things. Now, I’ll take a moment to say that teammate chemistry between Bond and Dunn is NOT good right now (it’s actually THE worst), but the sample size is low and is still mostly with them in this 4-5 hybrid instead of the 3-4 combo. A lot TBD here and hopefully a lot more to learn.
That being said, I do think that our best option for improved collective team defense and creating offensive mismatches include Leon Bond at the 3. Which, segues into…
Dante Harris – Backup PG?
Harris only played 8 minutes on Wednesday, only 4 of which came alongside Beekman. Given that he was averaging nearly 22 mpg prior to the WVU contest, this represented a pretty significant departure from the norm. If this most recent contest is any indication of an emerging trend rather than an anomaly, then it appears that his role is shifting more into a pure backup PG role rather than the first sub 1-3 role he started the year in. It makes sense. Aside from the redundancy in ball-dominance that he overlaps with Beekman, his lack of shooting prowess and size has thus far appeared to work better as a change-of-pace to Reece rather than an accompaniment. In fact, of all of our teammate pairings with at least 50 possessions together on both sides of the ball, their pairing has been our worst, and his pairings with all of our other starters (Dunn, Rohde, Buchanan, and McKneely) are among 5 of our worst 7 qualifying duos (taken from https://evanmiya.com/), which most coincide with the time he’s played against our opposition’s best competition.
Now, I want to again stress that sample sizes are low at this point, and I think he has been a fine pilot of the offense when given the reigns and aggressive defensive player when spelling Reece; but both the data and eyeball suggest at this point that Reece is just the far more effective player and the pairing with Harris just isn’t complimentary basketball, at least it hasn’t been yet. Which brings us back to… Leon Bond got a season high 21 minutes in this one despite averaging under 15mpg prior, including more minutes at the 3 than we’ve seen.
If Harris’s role IS being scaled back a bit and the result is more Small Forward Bond, then I think that’s a very positive development for this season. I love the idea of Reece as the true 1, with Harris as his backup, McKneely as the starting SG, and either Rohde or Bond as the starting SF with the other being first off of the bench for either of the other two (shifting Rohde up to SG if Bond comes in for McKneely), with Dunn, Groves, and Buchanan sharing the minutes 4-5. This of course still leaves Jordan Minor as the odd-man out of the core rotation, which he was again on Wednesday with 2 (early) minutes played. If Minor works his way into the rotation, I assume that will be a good thing because he’s improving within the defense and his physicality is in play. I also assume this will increase the need to work Bond into the 3 slot more. But, for now, this is not in the cards, so let’s take a quick peek…
Two-Minute Minor: Roughing
Man… that section head couldn’t have worked out better, huh?!? You probably could have landed a big score on a prop bet if you had Jordan Minor as the first points of the game. His role was strange because he was the first off of the bench at 5 in this one when Buchanan sat down, ahead of both Groves and Bond, played two minutes, picked up two fouls (and 2 points)… and didn’t return for the rest of the contest. Aside from the fouls (one of which was called after his hedge had forced what should have been an obvious travel), it’s hard to say why he didn’t return later in the game. He had one mix-up under the rim where he switched to McKneely’s man and didn’t switch back to Edwards, allowing an uncontested dunk for WVU’s first points of the game:
This was definitely on Minor as, he can certainly shade that cutter but needs to let IMK recover to his man and certainly can’t leave the 7-footer alone under the rim. But, generally speaking, he got the bucket in transition, I thought his hedges looked fine despite the quick body fouls, he bodied up Edwards and grabbed an offensive board which he saved… to no one in particular… but was still a decent effort. He wasn’t yanked immediately after this play, above, it was after his second foul. I believe the most plausible explanation isn’t that CTB pulled him for his two-foul rule and then just didn’t feel comfortable going back to him later on given how tight the game was, his few minutes in games prior, and other players having already been in the flow.
It makes it continually hard to get a read on just how much CTB and company are still holding out hope for Minor to contribute in the long run. The fact that they went with him before Groves or Bond is a positive sign for a willingness to turn to him for a physical presence… but his quick foul issues and complete benching immediately after don’t bode well. Personally, I think that since Minor is already such a low priority within your rotation, you don’t really have to worry about his personal fouls, aside from protecting team fouls. I would have been very interested to see how he matched up with Edwards over a more prolonged stint; and believe there’s value in giving it a longer run. It wasn’t yet clear that we would be leaking points in so doing, and having the extra fouls (Buchanan ended up fouling out) and having that weight wearing on Edwards could have been helpful from a fatigue standpoint.
It’s a bit of a conflicting one because, while we haven’t seen much from Minor to encourage more time, and I do like the rotation we’re carving out between Dunn, Groves, and Buchanan down there, we’ve also seen him get marginal run despite not looking detrimental at times, too. If you DO still have plans for him longer term, it’s an alarmingly short leash in the short term. If you’re mostly counting on the easier part of the non-con for that, it’s still hard to trust him when facing tougher and bigger competition. I’m torn because I do think there’s a strong likelihood that our other options just offer more in different ways, but I also think that, at the very least, a bruiser in the post who can set powerful screens and be a bit of an enforcer is a role we’re currently missing on the roster. At the end of the day, I’m quibbling a little bit here. My biggest frontcourt priority this year (aside from all of the Dunn minutes) is getting Blake Buchanan run and experience – and I’m thrilled that Minor hasn’t been prioritized simply for his experience/resume if he’s not proving to be a more competent option. Maybe Minor’s role is just going to be the potential occasional situational spark (hopefully) and that’s fine. I don’t think that door has been closed, nor do I think it should be yet, but it’s also hard to imagine it opening much wider considering the way it’s going now. Dunn is going to be a mainstay and both Groves and Buchanan fill a very specific need. Speaking of again…
Buchanan’s Growing Pains
The game against WVU showed a little improvement from his rough Wisconsin outing, but Fort Myers is probably just an experience Blake Buchanan is better off forgetting altogether. I thought that he did a better job playing physically against Edwards than he did Crowl, and that his double teams and rotations were also better, but his rebounding was still poor, he did end up fouling out of the game, and it felt like he was still rushing on offense. Let’s take a look at a couple of things, starting with rebounding:
Here, he does a very good job not letting Jesse Edwards back him down early in the possession and then, frankly, takes a lot of straight up shoves in the back and does a good job banging with Edwards in the post. But by the time the shot goes up, he’s just gotten himself shoved too far under the basket, can’t clear Edwards out on the box out, and loses the rebound over the top.
Here’s another, and this time he just kind of gets blown up by Edwards as he crashes the glass. He loses the angle early, and can’t stay between him and the hoop. He just concedes the board far too easily.
And this one was definitely the worst of the bunch, as the others involve an experienced big efforting to crash the glass. This one was against the 6’8″ Patrick Suemnick (#24) while WVU was going smaller. Suemnick never makes an attempt to challenge Buchanan offensively on this possession, even when the ball gets to him in between the wing and the block. He doesn’t even look at it, immediately kicking it right back outside to his teammate. McKneely gets attacked off of the dribble down the center of the lane but forces a wild miss on the runner, and Buchanan is in great rebounding position but, rather than finding and boxing Suemnick, he just turns and watches the shot. Suemnick cuts right past him to go get the offensive rebound and draw the foul from Dunn. Buchanan’s right there, just put a body on him and keep him from cutting to the glass.
He had a solid play later in the game where you’d have preferred he finished but he did draw the foul (felt more like his Florida impact). But he seemed very rushed on a short jumper he took off of a Harris feed, and here’s another where he just kind of plays a little weak and gets his shot blocked. Beekman draws the defense driving baseline and finds Buchanan where Edwards has to turn around and find him to contest. Edwards is also in the restricted area here. You’d like Buchanan just to go right through him strong and force the issue, but instead he shies away, tries to bring the ball down and then go back up with it on the other side of the rim. He just didn’t fully know what he wanted to do with this and, as a result, it gets him caught out and blocked. He’s got some momentum going to the rim… go right at it!
Blake did eventually foul out late in the game, again jostling for position with Edwards in the paint. Now, I fully get that the freshman center is going to have these levels of struggle and inconsistency. What is a little surprising is how dramatically different his poise looked over this stretch of two games vs. what it looked like in the Florida game. He has struggled with defensive rebounding technique across the board, but against the likes of Micah Handlogten and Tyrese Samuel he was in full-on attack mode, catching everything with purpose and beelining to the rim. In Fort Myers he was shying away from contact and rushing attempts. It seems fully like a mindset/confidence shift. We’re absolutely going to need Florida Blake as often as possible moving forward, and that doesn’t mean he needs to play flawlessly, and it doesn’t mean he won’t have ebbs and flows; but it does mean he just needs to believe that good things will happen when he plays aggressively. I’d much rather see him attempt to capitalize on opportunity and make some mistakes doing so rather than to play timidly and to lose opportunities from one of our few players capable of regularly converting chances to points in the paint.
It’s McThreely, Not McTwoly
Okay, I may need to reel some of these headers in in the future. Isaac McKneely is currently shooting 55% from three and 22% from two, and he’s attempting around 4 of each per game. Now, teams are definitely playing him ultra aggressively around the three-point line, which is great because it opens other things up for other players and allows Isaac the opportunity to make some plays off of the bounce. But I’d like to see us and him make a concerted effort to increase the number of three-point attempts (and likely reduce the number of two-point attempts). That doesn’t mean that I don’t want him shooting twos when the opportunity is there, but what I have noticed is that we’re generating offense for him with the intention of shooting those little curl jumpers at the elbow and those have not been very efficient shots for us.
Here’s a look that has become very common for us over the first six games and I’ve almost called out previously. He’s cutting tight around the screen and intentionally freeing himself up to elevate into this little elbow jumper. The problem is, he’s not been hitting it at a good clip and, unlike Bond who thrives on this shot, he’s actually just a much better shooter from distance! He’s hit some hard contested shots this season off of similar actions. I don’t hate this shot at the end of a shot clock to punish and overly-aggressive defense, but I don’t love it as something he’s proactively initiating with 15 seconds left on the clock as with the below here, at least not at the frequency he’s been opting for it.
Here’s another similar look with that curl action but, instead of just catching, turning, and firing, here he takes a couple of dribbles into the lane and then pulls up. Now, I’m sure he can hit this shot with more regularity than he has in games otherwise he wouldn’t be hunting them but, in general, the midrange jumper is just less than ideal when the player is such a high quality three-point shooter.
I wish Isaac would really hunt that three even more aggressively than he has been, like with that Bond assist above or even over strong contests, as he’s been successful with those shots this season at a much higher success rate, and for a full point more per make. I’d also like to see us just design more looks for him intentionally throughout the game to shoot from range. Sides and Flow and Triangle all have their purposes and moments, but we’re still playing “whatever good look comes” basketball on almost all of our possessions, where CTB has a full-on wheelhouse of looks developed over the years, we’ll call it the Kyle Guy playbook, to funnel looks to a specific player. McKneely is that player!
In general, I’d like to see us run Sides less often than we are now. It’s good that Bond can play the three in it, it’s been a cool adjustment to see them bump it farther out to the wing when they initiate, it’s been really cool to see some of the looks where they jump from Flow to Sides within specific possessions and use looks from each to disguise which offense they’re in. All of that is some really sweet innovation. I’d still like the distribution of possessions to err more toward Flow than it has, I would like more of the Inside Triangle mixed in, again, focused on creating mismatches with Leon Bond at the SF position, and I’d like to see more designed plays to get McKneely open looks from outside since containing that has been such a point of emphasis from opposing teams. I have a feeling all of this is coming and CTB is going to continue to layer it in over the span of the season as he has in the past; doesn’t want to put too much on tape early, etc., but these upcoming games with Texas A&M and Memphis are opportunities for which I wouldn’t want us to leave opportunities in the coffers.
In Conclusion
In general, I thought there were a lot of positives to build off of, especially on the defensive end. Offensively, we got a much-needed spark from Ryan Dunn, with opportunities for much more in the future, but also let WVU hang around long enough that just briefly heating up from deep immediately swung the momentum of the game from comfortable to dogfight. This play, specifically, stuck out to me as the thing that started the snowball, and it was really something as simple as Dante Harris coming off of his man when we were playing good defense (notice Bond at the 3 undercutting a possible ball hand off on his man and almost forcing a steal while still staying in good defensive position) to gamble on getting a steal and then not being able to get back out to him in time to make an invasive contest:
As we all know, our games are prone to these kinds of moments because of the pacing and smaller margins. And, honestly, it would be nice to have the flexibility to increase the pace against a team like WVU that was playing a short bench and was so gassed late in the game against SMU. In an ideal world, you can both play to your own strengths AND exploit your opponent’s weaknesses – and this roster seemed solid in broken play-type situations all game (note the Dunn finish from earlier). But what was encouraging was to have that moment where we lost a double-digit lead; momentum felt like it had fully tipped in the other direction, and then just gutting it out and willing our way to the victory at the end through the series of clutch plays we highlighted earlier. Having those bounce-back moments in-game is so important and between Beekman and Dunn, there’s a great clutch framework off of which to build. Hopefully (and very possibly) this tournament is actually our worst stretch of basketball this season. There’s obviously no guarantee but, if it is (or even if it’s close) we still managed to get by without catastrophic damage while nabbing a character-building win. It’s not how we wanted the tournament to go heading in, but considering how it all played out, it feels like we escaped with a serious positive, at this point.
Tomorrow against Texas A&M will be an entirely different test in terms of style. The Aggies will possibly be the best offensive team we face all season, but are also not very good defensively. Their 6’0″ scoring dynamo, Wade Taylor IV, is about to go through the Reece Beekman experience, and while they won’t be hugely advantaged in height, they should again have advantages with size and physicality. It should be a good litmus test to see if we’ve adjusted from the Fort Myers funk or not.
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