vs. Wisconsin 11/20/2023

Woof. What do you take away from a game like that? Firstly, I’ll say that I don’t think Wisconsin that much of a better team (if at all) than Florida. They asked tough questions, played very soundly, and we played terribly and seemed a little shell-shocked. There really weren’t any answers coming off of that sideline.

I want to start off by saying that CTB did stress that there would be games like this, and this kind of game has become a bit of a staple over the years even on teams that have ended up being very good. I’m not saying that to say this wasn’t concerning (I don’t think I would have realistically conceived it would look that bad), but there is some perspective needed. I also want to stress that it cannot be overstated how big of an impact the Ryan Dunn injury had from early in the game. I don’t know how obvious the change was to the more casual observer because he stayed out there and played mostly normal minutes throughout the remainder of the game – but this was the play in question very early:

I’m no doctor and so I don’t want to speculate because I’m sure there are a variety of things that could have happened here, but Dunn’s mobility and explosion was sapped from that point on. The thing is, he was still one of our better defenders and rebounders in the game despite it, but you could absolutely tell that he wasn’t himself. Dunn is not a powerful 4 – he’s a lightning quick one who relies on his disruption to fly all over the court. If that’s reduced as it was in this game, significantly so, it certainly will and does impact our ability to do a bunch of different things on the defensive end; including to secure the glass, and almost entirely limits his offense to others creating for him. Take a look at some of the clips below and compare to his mobility from any game earlier in the season. This is something I’ll be keeping an eye on because two of our best three players were not 100% in this one.

Please sanitize what I’m saying here – this was not anywhere near the sole reason that we got the doors blown off of us in this game – but on a team with such a glaring weakness and with slim margins/effective answers (at least this early in the season) it does help explain some of why things looked so different and why he wasn’t more impactful. We need Ryan Dunn flying around and helping to create turnovers, double faster, hedge faster, fly to rebounds… if he’s just standing in there and trying to hold off bigs, teams like Wisconsin have the strength and size to handle it. And if that lingers, we may continue to see the kind of bleak rebounding margins and team defense we saw Monday night.

Injuries are a frustrating thing to talk about and to endure for so many reasons because, when it comes to team outcomes, they don’t really matter. Injuries are a part of the game; and you have to have the depth capable of supporting them if they happen – which it would seem that we do not, at least not that has developed enough yet. If we lose certain historic games, and our ACC 6th man of the year future NBA 4th overall draft pick is out, it’s notable and certainly part of the reason, but in actuality no one outside of the program cares – you still have to play and win the games with the situation you’re given. Injuries are, all-in-all, viewed as an excuse, especially when the players are still playing, just less effectively. We all know that Reece Beekman was a shadow of himself after his injury last season (despite still being good) – but that doesn’t change any of the outcomes.

On the other hand, if you’re a fan trying to assess whether this is your reality for the bulk of the remainder of the season or how the team might improve, it is very relevant. Because, while issues like rebounding are likely going to consistently be a problem, while other players on your team may not have had good games (at all) themselves – the slowness on rotations, lack of bothering passes, inability to supplement Beekman on offense at all – even McKneely’s on ball defense at times, though he moved decently well – are all likely going to be better as long as these things don’t linger, which will better help to support everyone else as they grow and develop. It’s one of those things where, if you can just find a way to win ugly against WVU, the full week off to rest and regroup should be beneficial. If it lingers longer, then the stretch prior to the break after non-con play becomes a very serious concern. But we still are at a point in the season where there should be some opportunity to rest/rehab even if it means resting some through some buy games. I’d still prefer short-term losses for long term health.

All of that being said – it really was a poor performance across the board and Dunn still made some good plays, despite it all. There were many other issues at play that boiled down to a few main things: we couldn’t create any offense outside of Beekman (who was involved in the creation, I believe, of all but two of our made field goals scoring or assisting), we struggled mightily to defend their size (either conceding easy points around the rim or allowing for wide-open looks on the kickouts), and we could not reliable keep them off of the glass in any way shape or form. The result was the completely lopsided result that slapped us in the face.

Offensive Woes

If you’re a Tony Bennett coached basketball team, the defensive issues are going to be those that you often highlight and speak to the most – but the truth of the matter is that we still only allowed 65 points which, no matter the pace of play, shouldn’t be the winning total on such a large point disparity. No, the lack of offense was the most glaring issue on Monday. Wisconsin had great overall size and strength, running the 7’0″, 247lb. Steven Crowl (#22) out there at center alongside the 6’9″ Tyler Wahl (#5), and 6’7″ AJ Storr (#2) at their 3-5. This collective size along with their very active hands and aggression on the dribbler, basically made it so that only Beekman could effectively create for himself or others, and none of our own forwards were effective helping to create offense on the interior. After his injury, Dunn made very little effort to create with the ball in his hands which was unfortunate because his quickness and range could have given Wahl some fits and, instead, Wahl was the player with more lateral agility and quickness. Additionally, he missed two open three-pointers early on shots that just didn’t look comfortable compared to some of his looks earlier in the year. As a result, Wisconsin opted to play off of him and sag passing lanes, making matters worse. Blake Buchanan seemed entirely off of his game in a contest where we really needed him to show up and show out. The weight advantage of Crowl played heavily and he had a miserable time playing one-on-one defense and/or securing the glass. He only played 14 minutes as a result – which, if you told me ahead of the game that Buchanan would only play 14, I’d have been very concerned with the outcome. Our chief attempt to battle what we were seeing was through Jacob Groves at the 5, thinking that his shooting would help stretch out Wisconsin. But this also didn’t work as Groves wasn’t shooting well and, on several occasions, passed up open looks for pump fakes that led to worse shots. This game gave me flashbacks of sticking with that stretch 4/5 last year even when the shots weren’t going down and getting killed inside as a result. We tried Jordan Minor early in the game, but that wasn’t effective, and Leon Bond ran into the same issues he did against Florida. There really were no good answers ready to respond to that moment.

But, to me, the simultaneous concern and hope (outside of the injury situation) is that the team just straight up looked flat. Neither the energy nor the intensity were there and it definitely looked like Wisconsin’s physicality took a toll on our response as did the aggregate weight of having such little success. So, this has the opportunity either to be a great learning experience, or something that sticks in a bad way (and we have another test playing against size in Jesse Edwards on Wednesday night). Let’s take a look at some of what I’m talking about:

So let’s set the stage early as one of the first issues we faced. Immediately after his injury Dunn had two looks beyond the arc that he took and didn’t really look comfortable doing so. Here’s the second of them:

Notice how far Dunn’s man has sagged into the lane on this play. Dunn is wide-open and Beekman really has nowhere to go on his drive other than the kick out. Dunn not being able to punish this was a story all game as we’ll see later, as Wisconsin did their scouting and made the decision to just leave him at a distance.

Here’s a look not so much later and this has to be a pretty desperate feeling for Beekman, as it likely was all game. Wisconsin basically just jammed their bigs into the lane all game helping. Beekman dribbles all throughout the baseline with nowhere to shoot, but finds Dunn on the wing open enough to shoot. He’s unwilling to do so, and the advantage dies. They then try to get something going through McKneely but the hard follow/shadow ends up drawing the illegal screen from Buchanan.

So, the strategy was very clear. Wisconsin was going to just completely clog the lane with DEEP help off of Dunn, or later Bond, or which ever non-Groves big was in the game, while being very aggressive on whoever the ball handler was on the perimeter because they trusted this aggressively sagging help would be there should they happen to get beaten. It was devastatingly effective.

Here’s later in the game and you’ll see the same thing. Watch how far Crowl is sagged off of Dunn on this play. When Beekman drives the lane, all 7 feet of Crowl is right there, dead center in the lane, a good, I don’t know, 15-20 feet off of Dunn on the wing? Beekman drives and kicks and Crowl doesn’t even really react. He dares Dunn to shoot. Instead, Dunn passes down to Rohde in the corner and feigns a screen and rolls. When McKneely attempts to hit Groves on the roll next, it’s deflected, but Crowl is camped in the lane anyway if the pass were to have gone through. Beekman attempts to drive again with Dunn nearside but Wisconsin has two players there to help on it. Instead, he fires it across the court and Rohde attempts a tough three over a contest.

I believe this was in the scouting report anyway – Wisconsin was going to make Dunn shoot this shot regardless; but I believe the two misses early coupled with the injury made him completely unwilling to try from that point on. We really can’t have this against such big teams. If we’re going to thrive offensively, we need to space the floor and knock down shots. At the least, we have to be willing to take the opportunities that are there. I am giving Dunn an out because he clearly wasn’t right and he did hit a couple earlier in the year – but this is a shot he’ll need to take and make some of this year as other teams will surely replicate this.

Now, he was passive offensively most of the game, which we know just by seeing how little dribbling he did with the ball on the offensive side against, ostensibly, slower-footed players (normally). But also watch the beginning of this possession, below. Dunn sets a screen for Rohde who curled to the center of the lane, and Crowl sags entirely off of Dunn basically leaving him uncovered by the block. He’s not worried about a pass back, and Dunn is not hunting that pass back. There really isn’t anything for Rohde to do here. Beekman makes a spectacular play – but it’s another great look on the offensive side at how Dunn wasn’t right or threatening.

Now, Blake Buchanan was a great offensive answer against Florida when things had been stalling. He went aggressively to the hoop on his catches, tried to dunk things, had a good time finishing or getting fouled. In this game, he played timidly and ineffectively, not getting many looks and getting bodied/throwing looks up like this one when he did get the ball:

Blake really had a rough game, and we’ll see some on the defensive side as well. The weight disadvantage may have gotten in his head… I don’t know. He looked like a much different player than he did in Charlotte, shying away from contact rather than forcing the issue. And, frankly, it’s to be expected that our Freshman Center is going to run into some size/strength issues in year one. What I would say, though, is that we absolutely need Blake to keep plugging on the offensive end, especially in games like this. Go up strong, try to draw contact, even if it doesn’t work out, keep plugging. Even though you wouldn’t know it by this look, he’s still one of our only viable options to feed the ball to inside to finish around the rim in games like this, especially with the Dunn situation as it was. Who cares if there are some ugly possessions? If we go away from it entirely, now pretty much all of our points have to come from outside or from Beekman making something wild happen.

The other big issue of the evening was that the most regular look we were able to get were Jacob Groves threes. Groves was 1-7 from the floor and 0-3 from beyond the arc and, worse, he continually passed up open looks from back there. But, here’s the thing, we weren’t getting better looks so he really needed to be willing to take those and, if he wasn’t, then we really couldn’t afford to have him out there due to his defense (which we’ll see in a bit). Let’s take some looks….

This play, below, ends up in Minor getting fouled (would have liked for him to catch that – his hands seem oddly off when he’s in which, he was great at catching on the move at Merrimack), but Harris draws the defense and finds Groves a look here early. The big reason he’s on the floor is to take these.

Here… man that’s a tough look to wind up with at the end of a shot clock. Groves actually gets the best look of the entire possession early on with Beekman drawing two and kicking it out. If he’s playing and points are hard to come by, I kind of just want him taking that. Crowl is on Bond who basically has no chance to score inside against that matchup, and who sags deeply off of Rohde, consistently daring Bond to look for an outside shot. He really never leaves the paint while Bond is out there, at least not by much. As a result of the complete lack of threat we’re generating on the inside, Wisconsin is able to be very aggressive on the ball. Beekman beats his man but Crowl is right there and there’s nowhere to go with the ball unless he somehow spies Rohde all the way across the court over the 7-footer. He doesn’t, and Groves is left with a turn-around three-point attempt rather than the first look he had.

Adding a couple more looks here where he passed up an open look and it went poorly afterward and we either got a worse shot or turned the ball over just to emphasize the point that this wasn’t a one-off, two-off thing. Here, McKneely does create/free him for a look off of a pick and pop:

And here Beekman frees him a bit but he pump fakes, gets in trouble, and turns the ball over out of bounds.

Especially in a game where Wisconsin was just packing the paint, Groves needs to take these while he’s in the game. He wasn’t having a good shooting day and so maybe he was reluctant to fire away… but if he was reluctant to shoot then we really needed to look elsewhere for a spark. Shooters shoot and if he’s on the floor he definitely needs to be willing to do so when the look is there.

Okay, so we have Wisconsin aggressively sagging off of our 4s, Dunn really not being able to contribute other than on blown coverages (offensively), Buchanan (Bond and Minor as well) unable to put offensive pressure on, and Groves reluctant to shoot the deep ball. These were big enough issues themselves but there was one more worth calling out.

Here’s a look with Groves and Bond in the game at 5 and 4 respectively. Harris, IMK, and Rohde are the guards. We run a bunch of screen actions and get all three guards the ball on the wing at one point or another and none of them see any opportunity or feel comfortable enough to probe the defense, touch the paint, get anything going. A lot of that was how Wisconsin was packing the lane, but a lot of that was just a lack of confidence in their creation (and maybe also who they were creating for). They do end up getting a McKneely shot from deep (1 of 2 three-point attempts on the game which, I’m not sure why he’s only credited for 1), which is generally a good shot – but it’s the lack of any kind of threat and how it felt very much like a settle that’s striking.

And, in general, only 2 looks from deep in a game where McKneely played 33 minutes and we couldn’t get anything going inside is wild. Wisconsin was hounding him but, given how Groves was shooting, I’d have liked to see some more designed actions – whether it be elevator screens, that staggered screen action… force some looks his way. What he did end up doing a lot to combat Wisconsin’s overplay of him on the outside was curl around the screen and shoot those elbow jumpers. It’s not the worst shot in the world to keep a defense honest, but it’s also not a high percentage shot for us in general (and he attempted and missed a good number of these vs. Florida as well). The % was better on Monday, and he wasn’t 100% (which CTB confirmed postgame), so maybe the lift and creation weren’t fully there… but we have to find a way to get him more attempts from deep, especially in a game like this. Heck, the one look he made from deep was very contested and it still went in!

So, yeah, the combination of all of that put almost all of the offensive creation on Beekman who handled it pretty admirably, all things considered, but who really didn’t have many options. Dunn and McKneely health notwithstanding, we cannot have so many players as inactive participants on that side of the ball and we cannot let teams deter us from taking open looks from outside and/or testing the interior more often with at least Buchanan.

Defensive Woes

I’m going to do a short section on defensive rebounding after this to highlight some of the worst offenses and to talk about the issue, but you’ll see a couple of situations in here as well. Wisconsin rebounded over 50% of its misses against us in the game. They had 12 points off of those offensive rebounds which, in a 24-point game, certainly isn’t the reason that they won. I mean, it helped… it was half their margin… but the broader point is that the offensive stagnation coupled with defensive struggles were the real drivers and the defensive rebounding was a combination of a symptom of the poor defensive positioning/rotations as well as a general lack of tenacity that was consistent across phases of the game. So, that was the headliner for most, but we’ll circle back to it because there were defensive problems galore.

We discussed Dunn’s reduced mobility which I’ll show in more detail throughout, especially later, but the issues were wide-spread; from rotational problems, to the inability to defend the post one-on-one, to the Badgers doing a good job of punishing us when we did double the post by finding the open shooter on the outside (and shooting 44.4% from deep).

Let’s start with some of the rotational issues and, recall, my last piece was literally all about the great team defense that we played against Texas Southern and how quick our guys were flying around (if you don’t remember check here). This first clip, below, Buchanan simply over-helps where he doesn’t need to and completely loses track of his man, Crowl, at the three-point line. This feels like he didn’t respect the shot but, really, this is a reflection, to me, of either a strategy or interpretation of the players to help in the post a little too aggressively. We’ll see later that our one-on-one post defense had a very hard time stopping Crowl, but given what we were dealing with I think sometimes you have to live with a 7-footer hitting a contested hook shot us. We sent double teams but they because so regular and so predictable that Wisconsin started to anticipate us and punish those accordingly, as we’ll discuss later. One adjustment I’d like to see us make is mixing up when we double vs. when we don’t so that it’s a surprise – and certainly not over-helping on plays like this where it’s not needed to begin with.

Here’s another mistake on a rotation, this time on a post double. They had enough success against us even without the mistakes, but Crowl again gets the ball in the post vs. Groves – one of the bigger mismatches we had going against us. Leon Bond dives to double. Now, this is effective at getting the ball out of Crowl’s hands, but when Bond and Groves are the ones doubling, the 7-footer had an easy time just looking over it and passing out of it. Here, both Rohde and Harris pinch the cutter in the lane when, in reality, this most logically should have Rohde while Harris into position to rotate to either of the shooters. Instead, Harris gets buried/hung up while fronting and isn’t able to recover to his man for the wide-open three.

When we talk about is it personnel or execution, on this play it was both. The personnel being unable to obscure passing lanes on the double and the execution on the back end getting confused.

Okay, now we’re going to look at some Dunn rotations which, again, go back and watch him the previous game, these are very tender and lack the explosion he’s been playing with. Here’s the first when Crowl rolls down the center of the lane on the hedge. Dunn’s just slow to get there and not impactful when he does.

This next one, below, just doesn’t even look like Dunn. He hedges on the drive and lingers on the wing with Beekman, but isn’t disruptive on the ball and his attempted recovery is downright sluggish. On the back end, Groves doesn’t linger long enough “tagging” the roller, and pops back out to his own man on the wing too soon, allowing for the open layup (over the McKneely contest that doesn’t quite get there). So, the combination of Dunn’s limited mobility and Groves’s back-end decision making cause this:

Here, he just looks uncertain and much slower to change direction. The ball gets into the post and Dunn gets caught in no man’s land, hesitating to come over and then not reacting well, or with his standard agility or explosion, to the pass to his man cutting.

One more look, this time not involving Dunn, but back to Groves not tagging a cutter for long enough and Buchanan lingering on the hedge for too long. The timing of these transitions is everything and IS something that can improve with experience.

Okay, so what happened when we didn’t double team the post? Well, it didn’t go well. Here’s a little hook shot over Groves:

Here are some pretty good defensive rotations throughout, ending with Crowl getting the ball one-on-one against Buchanan in the post and hitting that hook shot again.

But, here’s the thing – those are good looks that you take if you’re Wisconsin… but they’re still shots that drew iron and bounced in, could have been missed, were shot over contests, and were only worth two points. Yes, you want to avoid this if it’s happening for a more sustained period of time or if the buckets are coming much more easily without a chance of missing, but I am not sure that the reaction to stopping these looks is always worth it; certainly not the way Wisconsin was shooting. Plus, while you do likely want to help Groves as much as possible, Buchanan getting more reps defending should help him improve in this area.

And this was pretty punishing. It’s actually really good ball movement from Wisconsin. Crowl draws the double, which is pretty aggressive and pushes him away from the block. Meanwhile, Wisconsin is actually able to send a player in behind him to the block, and he takes the pass. Rohde has to defend this, putting Beekman as one against two players with VERY good spacing at the top of the key and in the corner. The pass goes to the point and then as Beekman recovers, to the corner for a high-quality look. One thing I’d have us consider doing on a play like this is backing out of the double team after it’s pushed Crowl away, ideally before he throws the pass. That’d be a long way for him to back Groves in, and sustaining that double team allows him to survey and make a good pass.

Here they put Crowl in the post again and it’s actually a similar situation as the Harris clip above, only with McKneely and Rohde (maybe should have included it before). McKneely and Rohde both get caught on the cutter, leaving two open Wisconsin players on the perimeter with no one in that off-side area. Rohde attempts to recover to the wing and then change directions to anticipate the corner pass but can’t get there in time.

I would definitely say more damage was caused with Wisconsin’s quality passing out of double teams (all over the floor) than through us playing Crowl straight up on the interior. So, as I mentioned earlier, I’d love to see us change it up more and offer more unpredictability on whether or not we double team – especially when Buchanan’s in the game.

The last two clips I just want to show more evidence (this doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention so hopefully it isn’t something that will last) of Dunn looking hampered on D. On this one, below, he’s slower on his contest, very slow to be able to change directions and recover, week on the leg (staggers with the contact) and not explosive on the contest.

And here (and this is an offensive rebound but not one I think we’d normally give up), he just kind of gets displaced on the drive and isn’t able to get back into the play.

These plays just aren’t consistent with his other-worldly defense we saw through the first four games of the season, and you can definitely tell he was fighting through something and was playing more tenderly than normal. If it doesn’t linger, that helps a lot of these areas above when he’s in the game and around the ball.

Okay – so, a tough balance between some poor rotations, some mismatches created through size, and really our most dominant interior presence in terms of floor coverage being limited. Let’s take a quick look at the glass…

Defensive Rebounding Woes

Ack! So many woes! Okay, I’m not going to show too many of these as a good number were us just scrambling/being smaller/out of position from the rotational issues that I highlighted above. BUT, there was also a distinct lack of awareness/tenacity/urgency around going after rebounds, I thought, at times.

Here’s a look where we have good positioning to get the board. Rohde gets beaten going over top of the screen but Dunn does a good job stepping into the driving lane and forcing the jump shot. When it goes up, Groves puts a really nice box out on Crowl and Rohde is in great position to do the same to the shooter… but instead he just turns and ball watches and drifts in toward the hoop. His man blows by him and grabs the board, which Groves can’t go in and snag because he’s on his back foot keeping the much bigger Crowl off of the glass. This is just an example of our guards/wings needing to help with rebounding. It’s something Armaan Franklin was SO good at last year and we need to work on.

These next two focus on Buchanan who did really struggle in this area comparatively given the impact he needs to have for us. This is a bucket in transition where he had easily the best positioning to get the rebound but, rather than looking around for a box, he kind of drifts in, gets too far under the hoop, and then gets displaced by Crowl when the ball hangs on the rim longer than he anticipated. This is just technique and experience.

This one I think shows he’s still a little too passive on the glass. He’s right there to crash on this board but just kind of lets the shooter drift in front of him, go up and get the board, and then go up and finish. Now, fortunately for us, there was a shotty violache that waived this off, but it doesn’t change the issue. He’s kind of just drifting and ball watching a bit and isn’t great about getting good positioning yet. This is a board he should be attacking.

Rebounding is mostly positioning and will. There was something collectively off about the latter on Monday night and it’s something that I definitely think can and will improve as the season goes on. Will we be a good rebounding team this year? Probably not. But with some better defensive rotations and cleaning some of these types of things, above, up, it shouldn’t be this extreme and I don’t think it will be.

In Conclusion

I don’t think I expected the down games to look exactly like this but, in retrospect, it really shouldn’t have been surprising or shocking. We have had shell-shock games like this early in seasons that have gone quite well at the end. McKneely seemed not 100% but close. I am worried about Dunn. He could play, but this team really needs him at 100%, so hopefully that comes sooner than later. As for the things we can control, I do think there are a lot of teachable moments here and things that fall under that line of caution CTB gave after the Blue/White scrimmage where we’ll improve as the season goes on. Rotations. Intensity. Adjustment to this level of competition. Simply a willingness from certain players to attack inside and shoot from outside. There’s definitely room for that to get cleaned up and we’ve seen this team be able to play at a high level against Florida, which wasn’t a mirage.

Size on the interior is likely going to be a hurdle for us throughout the year. I talked about a lot of things to combat that in this piece, but I do think playing Leon Bond at the 3 is and should be a big part of that strategy, especially when Jacob Groves is on the floor. We exclusively used him at the 4 in this one and he wasn’t a threat to shoot it from outside and was too small to impact the Wisconsin bigs offensively or defensively. But, at the 3, now he’s impactful on the glass, now we have plus defense on the exterior, now there are more places an effective double team on the post can come from (Dunn and Bond). You might trade off some shooting on offense but, given that our offense was still creating looks for Groves and still was resulting mostly in putting the heavy lift on Beekman, I believe it’s worth it to get that bolster to the defense in there in games like this one.

Well. Learn the lessons and move forward! Tonight, we get a weakened WVU team but one that has another very imposing big man in Jesse Edwards, so it will be good to see what adjustments we make getting the opportunity to test our mettle on the inside again. I’ll be watching that closely as well as watching Dunn like a hawk and McKneely like a… bird with worse eyesight. A kiwi?

Until sometime after Thanksgiving!