Well. That was a game that happened. One of the goals of this blog is to highlight the “whys” through video, after each game and to tackle things that both caused the immediate result and that might have a longer-term impact on what to expect moving forward. It’s a hard thing to do when most of the reasoning seems to be “rust” and “urgency.” The team was playing very efficiently, took a lengthy exam break, and looked like many of the players just lacked a general urgency/alertness for a good portion of the game. Would that be an excuse if they lost? Absolutely. Is it an over-simplification of what happened? Assuredly. But that doesn’t make it any less true. The amount of plays where veteran players either just fell asleep or were caught off-guard on defense was notable. Offensively, aside from Reece taking over and hard-carrying us to victory, the shot-making and shot-selection was rough. Some of that was mentality, some of that stemmed from other things, which I will get into.
We shot incredibly poorly, even airballing three free throws. McKneely hit a couple of big threes late, and Reece, quite simply, took the game over offensively, driving to find/create his own shot. Reece’s offense was, really, the story of the game, as the player who refused to let us lose and, aside from his three-point shooting, really was everything we hoped to see coming into this season on the offensive end.
I’m not really going to cover any of that. Instead, I’m going to focus more on what wasn’t working, what’s hopefully situational and what wasn’t, and then highlight a couple of the guys who helped Reece keep us in the game. Given that the contrast was so stark with what we’d been doing, that’s the “why” that’s most relevant, in my opinion.
Shaking Off The Rust
In his comments postgame, CTB was reluctant to blame the exam break, rightfully so, for the performance. Good teams have to be ready. That being said, how often do you see Reece Beekman completely fall asleep on a back door cut?
Or Isaac McKneely respond so lethargically to tag a slip screen?
There were many other examples of this of players, veteran ones, even, losing track of guys in rotations or just not having as much urgency with their rotations as we’re used to seeing. But the point being, along with the shooting funk which I will dive into in more detail later, it was clear that physically or mentally the team just wasn’t fully there on Saturday. I don’t think this element of our game is something that translates long term, both because the only other time we’ve seen it consistently is when Dunn/McKneely weren’t at full health, and because we did respond to this and play with much more defensive urgency as the game progressed. More on that later. What DID stand out, though, and is something of a concern especially given CTB’s comments about resting him for 9 straight days due to a lingering foot ailment, is Andrew Rohde…
Rohde Injury?
The timeline of all of this is a bit confusing because, in my past several pieces, I highlighted the great defense that Rohde had been playing as well as the secondary facilitation that he was providing. Theoretically, that would have been while dealing with this foot ailment which sounds like it was the case and wasn’t suffered during the break. But, having just rested for 9 straight days, Rohde looked the part of battling through an injury. CTB called it “rust” and referenced his on-ball defense in speaking about this. Hopefully it is just that; re-adjusting to game speed again and not limitation due to the injury itself. But, it cropped up on both ends of the floor and, despite the general malaise of much of the team, it cropped up most starkly and consistently with Rohde. Let’s take a look:
Here he’s incredibly slow to help on the Chris Doherty (#33) slip screen down the lane. The thing is, it’s not a recovery issue with regard to identifying, he just doesn’t position himself well or is too worried about being able to get back to his own man; but the result is a foul on Groves as he attempts to get back into the play.
Here’s some of the on-ball defense that CTB referenced in his presser and it’s a stark contrast with what we were seeing before the break. To me, though, this doesn’t feel as much like rust as it does reaction time/capability. When his man catches the ball on the wing, Rohde positions himself high, getting over the screen and trying to defend against utilization the other way, but his reaction to the baseline drive is incredibly slow as is his footspeed to get back into the play. He’s just left in the dust, forcing McKneely to attempt to stop the driver. Buchanan isn’t very quick to identify and dive/attempt to protect the rim, either, but the break down is Rohde at the point of attack.
Similarly, here’s a possession that featured some really good defense from some of our more active and impactful players on Saturday (Gertrude and Bond). Buchanan does a good job early of cutting off Doherty’s drive and being physical on him and hedges, Bond does a really nice job tagging Doherty’s slip and recovering, and forces a gettable pass out to Harold Woods (#10). Rohde can’t quite get to the pass but, worse, is completely blown by on the dribble, being left entirely behind Woods and forcing Bond to collapse. Woods kicks it to the corner where Joe Pridgen (#0) gives a shot fake on Gertrude and then finishes strongly through a quality Bond contest. This was a really nice job by the majority of our defenders (especially Bond to be active with his help), but was an opportunity created by such a significant break down at the point of attack.
And then here’s a different look where Doherty is working one-on-one in isolation against Buchanan (something Northeastern looked to exploit throughout the game and that I’ll cover shortly). Rohde gets caught under the basket and looks indecisive on whether or not he wants to commit to the double-team or not. Buchanan is playing solid defense here but it gets to a point where Doherty has a clean pass to Rohde’s man and he simply can’t recover quickly enough to get a good contest on the shot; again struggling with footspeed and reactions.
So, there were more, but those were a few glaring examples on defense, especially on the ball. Offensively, Rohde’s shot was obviously impacted – going 0-5 from the field and 0-3 from the FT line. He still had some nice creation for others as we’ll see in a bit, but the rust was clearly there, no more visible than on this play:
That’s a shot well-within Rohde’s bag and for it to look so unnatural and to miss so badly was worth noting in the context of everything else.
While he certainly wasn’t alone in his struggles on the day, his were both the most visible, consistent, and the ones that didn’t appear fully mental. Now, CTB literally attributed his on-ball defense to rust, not to the injury itself. I’ve spoken in the past about how Rohde is a volume/rhythm player so I would imagine that not practicing for 9 straight days could have an extreme impact on his shooting. It would also be odd for him to look physically worse after such considerable rest if he was, in fact, dealing with the injury prior to the break as was implied. So maybe it is all a matter of repetition and getting back into game form and we can hope that he starts to round into pre-break form with some increased workload…. But those plays, especially the defensive ones, certainly looked to be physical in nature. No matter how rusty you are at recognizing/running a defense and even having to be keyed into defending an offensive player – it usually doesn’t account for such extreme disparities in ability just to stay within distance of your man. It also usually doesn’t so visibly impact close-out speed, etc. So, Rohde’s health/foot are something I’m going to be keeping an eye on closely over the next few games. It was clear in this one how much we missed his added offensive pop, how much more closed off the floor was without his shooting threat, and how much his struggles on defense impacted our overall performance. Hopefully it is rust but if not, I hope we continue to lean more on…
Elijah Gertrude and Leon Bond’s Energy
Along with Jacob Groves who also wasn’t shooting well but played some solid defense down the stretch and made some savvy plays in the pick and roll with Reece, Elijah Gertrude and Leon Bond made up the remaining three players in the positive +/- for the game (Groves +15, Gertrude and Bond +12 respectively). Along with Reece, I thought these were the only two guys in attack mode on both offense and defense and their energy/aggression toward the rim (more on shot selection later) was so valuable in keeping us in the game through tough moments.
Gertrude actually spelled Reece at point at times and we continued to make up ground when he did so. He took the ball to the rim a few times and missed, but they were quality looks that really only Reece was creating otherwise. But, even more so, his defense (and subsequent transition into offense) was such a spark of needed energy.
Here’s the first clip after we’d overcome a double digit deficit, largely while he was on the floor, to get within one point. He doesn’t finish on the break, despite it being an incredibly athletic in-air adjustment, or make either free throw, but he did draw the foul and the steal itself and tip ahead to start the run out was electric; setting the tone with which we needed to be playing…
… and it paved the way for this complete insanity, below. You’re looking at Gertrude sagging under the hoop on help-side, getting a two-handed block on Pridgen after he leaves Murray in his wake on the spin-off, having the body control to jump back and deaden the ball when Northeastern attempts to throw it off of his legs, then EXPLODE down the court, outracing four Huskies who were ahead of him coast-to-coast, and then just the bonkers ability to stride through the lane and finish such an acrobatic left-handed layup while falling to the floor!
How were the announcers so calm??? And that passion/expression from the floor after the finish! Every game we see something new from Gertrude that wows, but it’s all practically applicable stuff. I’ve mentioned before that his ability to get these kinds of buckets and to create when other things weren’t working would be valuable. It was in this game!
Before we take a quick look at Bond, it’s also important to call out that in just his 15 minutes on the floor, Gertrude was the team leader in defensive rebounds (Beekman was in total) with five. And they weren’t just long rebounds that found their way to him, they were often strong boards where he boxed out and/or fought off others to secure the glass, like here:
In a game where we still lost the total rebounding battle by 7 even against a non-major opponent, it was huge for his steadying presence to play such a stabilizing role from the guard position.
Getting to Bond, he also played some really bothersome and disruptive defense. We saw his rotations earlier on the possession that Rohde was beaten – still high quality on his end. Here’s a quick look on a play that happened right after Beekman went under a handoff screen and Northeastern punished it with a three-pointer. This time with Bond defending the guard, he gets over the hand off screen and actually disrupts the dribble, breaking up momentum of the play. He then hounds the ball handler as he initiates again and forces a travel by throwing off the timing of the play. I love that emotion at the end from him as well.
In addition to the defensive lift, he was an efficient 3-4 from the floor, hitting a quality pull up jumper from just inside the three-point line, but also providing emphatic finishing outlets around the rim (note Rohde’s distribution still) here:
And here:
That first pass was really, really nice. But, yeah, both Gertrude and Bond brought the physical and emotional energy that the rest of team struggled to sustain on Saturday and the team played it’s best when they were in the game (along with Groves).
Depending on Rohde’s situation, I’d like to see us buy more time shares of both of these guys as an alternative. Obviously, only if Rohde isn’t able to get back into form quickly for whatever reason, if he’s playing like he was prior to the break, he’s a huge asset as a starter. But against competition like Memphis we need to be quick to audible if he’s laboring in similar ways. And, not just to call out Rohde he’s just my biggest concern on at least a near-term basis, but if any of our guards/wings are struggling, we need to be willing to lean into more Gertrude/Bond minutes than even 15 mpg. Both have shown that they can lift the team and we should lean on them more when they’re doing so.
Defending The Post
Okay, let’s move more into team concept now. Defensively, the biggest challenge that Northeastern posed was playing through 6’7″ Chris Doherty in the post. I had to double-check his listing because he seemed like he played much bigger and more physically against us than that, and we’ve faced some big and physical players to this point already in the season. Northeastern liked to run the offense through Doherty, getting him the ball in the post, clearing out, letting him back down his man, and then pass out of it if/when the double team came. And they were more than ready for the double team early and we did not execute it with urgency or subtlety.
Here’s a first look on their first bucket of the game. We started out defending Doherty with Groves with Dunn playing on the wing and coming to double. Doherty was looking to pass early, though, and did a good job of quickly moving the ball to the vacated spot. Here, Dunn comes on the double and Doherty immediately passes out of it. It looks like Dunn actually does deflect the ball, but it goes to Rohde’s man who immediately swings it out to Dunn’s man for the three to start off the game.
It’s a little unlucky that the deflection doesn’t yield a turnover, but the problem is both that Doherty had visibility into the double the whole way and Rohde’s mobility is also at play where he neither gets into the middle-ground to defend both offside players nor is able to pounce on the deflection on his own man.
This next one, the second basket of the game, put the issue on display more clearly, though. For one, Dunn leaves for this double way too early. Doherty catches the ball in that mid-post/baseline area with his body open to the basket and surveying the floor the entire time. He’s not yet a threat to score, so Dunn needed to wait until his back was more to the basket/he was making his move and had less visibility/reaction time to the rotation. As Dunn comes, Doherty sees him the entire way and simply passes over the top of him to the man he left. We see Rohde’s mobility issues on display again, as well, as he doesn’t drop down and is very slow on his recovery on the pass for an ineffective contest.
CTB mentioned that we got away from the double team somewhat early in the game because Northeastern was punishing it, and they were. Doherty was very effective at being aware/passing out of it and the Huskies were knocking down their looks. That being said, I don’t think this is a sign that our double-teaming strategy can’t/won’t be effective in the future. To me, it’s all about execution and health. We needed to be more patient with when we sent the help, and Rohde was very specifically in this game struggling to cover the backside help.
The first adjustment we made was to play Buchanan on Doherty without sending a double but to sag the lane with offside help. I wouldn’t say that was very effective. Buchanan got beaten a couple of times (with some offensive fouls as well) and here’s a look where Gertrude gets paralyzed/waits far too long under the rim. He doesn’t help Buchanan here and is simply there as a deterrent, and loses his man on the outside enough that he can’t get back out to contest on the kick out.
From there, we mostly just allowed Groves, then Dunn, and then Groves again to defend him one-on one without sending help, and both did an admirable job. Dunn, I thought was especially effective. Here’s a look at him just not really being involved in the play that much with Dunn on him, which was a rarity and, in this instance, resulted in a deep contested shot at the end of the shot clock from his teammate. You’ll notice near the beginning of the play he has the ball on the wing with little interest in going to work on Dunn and then when Beekman and Dunn defend the ball screen, they’re able to execute the switch and Beekman can shut down the dribble.
But here’s another example of Doherty trying to gain traction in the post and not really having the quickness to get much headway, stalling. Notice Dunn execute the help on the switch on the dribble handoff to assist Rohde at that point and McKneely shoring up the play with a strong contest on the push shot.
The defensive shift put Groves on the wing, guarding the 6’5″ Joe Pridgen (#0) on the wing. I would have thought this would have been the matchup Northeastern was able to exploit, and might have forced us out of this change, but Groves defended it really well. Here’s a good example of him shutting down the baseline drive and forcing the reckless pass out that caused a back court violation. Notice, also, how Dunn is right there to help if needed, comfortable leaving Doherty that low in the paint without worry about recovery. It was very well done by both.
No, it was actually Doherty spinning off of Dunn and making a reverse layup that cause CTB to make the switch back to Groves (who, to his credit, had fought hard and drawn an offensive foul earlier in the game).
And he also did admirably staying home. Here’s a good look at him shutting down the back in and forcing a kick out to a very contested three.
And this is actually the last defensive play of the game, below with the score tied in crunch time. Groves plays physical and stout defense on Doherty forcing the miss and Dunn soars for the rebound on the back side – preferable to Dunn forcing a miss and Groves needing to clear the glass for sure.
Overall, I was very impressed with Groves’s defense in the game especially once we went away from throwing the double team his way. He did a pretty good job of holding his own both in the post and on the wing, where needed. It wasn’t perfect and Doherty certainly got deep and could have made that last shot, above, but it was enough to be disruptive and to allow the rest of our guys to stay home on their shooters. And, despite the fact that it felt like they were killing us with those actions, they only shot 26% from outside for the game – a stat definitely impacted by this adjustment.
Now, despite all of that, I don’t actually think that leaving Groves alone on a post player who is given repeated isolation is a good long term solution to our inside needs. Doherty played big and had a lot of game pounding the rock with his back to the basket, but he’s still listed as 2 inches shorter than Groves. He’s not commanding the type of size differential that we’ll see later in the year or that we saw against Crowl or Handlogten, as examples.
Dunn probably IS a viable option to defend against some of these guys straight-up just based on his ability to bother with his mobility and harassment, but it’s still probably a big ask against those heavier bigs.
Buchanan was CTB’s first inclination to try one-on-one and I like that sentiment/hope it will be the most viable solution as the season progresses, but he wasn’t quite where he needed to be just yet when tested.
No, it’s apparent we’re going to have to stick with and better execute that double team action as the season progresses and as we have in several games, especially after Fort Myers (and before the break). The two biggest parts of the improvement are going to be having our farthest defender play with more anticipation and mobility than Rohde was able to on Saturday (and that he has done successfully earlier in the season), and better disguising when and from where the double team is coming. If we get more Bond at the 3 with Dunn, we’ll have more options in how we do this but, barring that, at least we need Dunn to be savvy enough to notice when the offensive player doesn’t have his eyes on the rest of the floor.
Shot Selection
This was the most disappointing thing for me from Saturday’s game, even more so than the energy. Sometimes players or entire teams take the floor and just don’t have it. Aside from Beekman (at least consistently and at volume) this was true of Saturday. But where you can impact the game in that case, especially against less talented opponents, is with the intelligence with which you play the game and how much you’re willing to press the issue to get higher percentage looks. I thought we were collectively bad at this against Northeastern in a game where outside shooting was at an abysmal 14%. We regularly settled for contested threes, deep threes, pull up mid-range jumpers, etc., rather than getting the ball inside and forcing the issue re: higher percentage shots or drawing fouls. Reece was the saving grace to this and, fortunately, he is the kind of player who can carry your offense for longer stretches against anyone, but even he had a few head scratchers at pivotal moments during comeback pushes that didn’t seem like they were well-advised.
Most of this came from simply not running the offense hard enough, not playing through their physicality, and settling. Here are some examples…
This first clip is another Rohde clip, and I promise these won’t all be picking on him (and if you’ve read the blog before, you’ll know that I’m generally very high on what he brings to the team). But this is also a good sign that he wasn’t right. To this point, we were already not shooting well and our lone bucket was a Beekman jumper from the elbow. We’re running some stagger screens early that don’t make much of an impact at all, and eventually settle for a deep pop-out three from Rohde that misses everything.
This is the Inside Triangle with Buchanan, Dunn, and McKneely in the mix and Rohde and Beekman on the wings. Dunn comes up to set a screen for McKneely but it’s not utilized or set well at all and basically has no impact on McKneely’s defender, who shuts down the drive. The ball goes out to Buchanan who passes to Beekman on the wing and then attempts to set a ball screen for him, deviating a bit from the standard offensive structure (but a good wrinkle, in theory). The problem is, as Buchanan rolls off of his screen (and is left alone by the two defenders) he runs right into Dunn who is still on the block with his defender so Beekman doesn’t feel comfortable passing the ball inside. The ball then goes over to McKneely again who forces a very difficult and contested three that misses. I’m not mad at this shot from him, just at the fact that he has to take it because everything else got gummed up.
Here we’re in the middle of our come back, down just three, with the Huskies on a three minute scoring drought (as you’ll hear in the clip). Dunn catches the ball in the mid-post and, instead of attempting to take his man off of the dribble, explode by him, etc., he just gives a jab step and settles for a mid-range jumper.
I’ve no doubt he can make that shot – but that shot, there, from him, with 18 seconds left on the shot clock, in that game situation, is not what you want to settle for. That’s a fine shot at the end of the shot clock if he doesn’t feel like he has time to attempt to take it inside. I know he bobbled one later in the game through the lane for a turnover, but this is the kind of play where I think Dunn really needs to get downhill quickly and explode toward the rim in isolation. He can’t be shy to try to exploit his defender, and certainly shouldn’t be settling for his pull up game so early in a possession of a game where we’re still trailing and scrapping for some upward momentum.
This next look is in transition and can be juxtaposed with the quality looks in rhythm that McKneely got over the previous two games where he could catch and fire right away (or even, gather, fake, regroup and shoot after seeing the ball go through the hoop a few times). This one came at a time where he had yet to make a bucket from outside and was not shooting well for the game. He receives the ball very deep from Beekman and isn’t comfortable enough to let it go at first. Instead, he takes a dribble in and to the side and then fires away over a healthy contest for the miss. Where I’ve applauded our desire to push the ball and get McKneely threes in transition, this one didn’t feel there and it looked more like IMK felt like he needed to shoot it rather than wanted to do so.
He also took and missed quite a few mid-range jumpers on the move, and this runner in the lane that gets swatted by help really doesn’t have any light to get off.
Now, please don’t get me wrong, IMK hit two huge threes in this one that weren’t easy looks and him shooting a threeball is still our best shot – but not when they’re like these and in the context of our whole team struggling to sink shots and needing to get something higher percentage going.
This final look is back to Rohde and is a shot he has hit for us in a big moment in the recent past. This falls under the shot selection section and I don’t even hate that he takes it because absolutely nothing was happening and the shot clock was under 5 seconds, but that’s the broader point here – absolutely nothing was happening! This is Sides with Dunn and Bond in the frontcourt and Gertrude and McKneely with Rohde in the backcourt. The Northeastern lead is only two, but there is absolutely nothing threatening or even probing about this offensive possession from beginning to end. The screens aren’t catching defenders cleanly, the ball keeps getting caught extended well past the three-point line, and there really aren’t any follow up ideas once the ball handlers do catch it.
Rohde has to resort to this cross-over pull up because that was really all there was to do – and that ties back into the whole effort/intensity discussion that we lead off with.
These were just a handful of quite a few options I could have selected to discuss this topic. Some of this was baked into Rohde’s situation, but more of it was just a general lack of anything threatening happening in the half-court outside of Beekman making plays off of a simple ball screen or on his own. We need to run our offenses with more urgency and, of course, capitalize on the looks that are created with much better finishing. I do think those are elements that can and will be cleaned up, as we’ve seen most of the season but, again and not to beat a dead horse, a lot of that does rest on Rohde. If anything, this game should have made clear to us both how much he was contributing to us prior to the break and how much we need to turn to other options if he’s as limited as he was Saturday. It should also have made clear how valuable Beekman is. Speaking of…
You Didn’t Think I’d Actually Ignore His Performance Entirely, Did You?
So clutch. So acrobatic. Beekman is built for these kinds of moments and it IS great to know that he’s there to help through some of these inevitable growing pains. He did this kind of stuff all game, which you can find in basically any highlight reel if you have a hankering.
In Conclusion
Should we be worried about how the team played in this one against a much less talented opponent? I’m not, really, on a broader scale. Young teams like this are going to get wake up calls from time to time both with their mentality and their execution. The shortcomings in this game were mostly mental and most of the issues we faced are not the kind of things I would expect are left unaddressed or corrected.
BUT, it does seem that the Andrew Rohde situation was more than just mental and that could be a real concern if the issue lingers, especially if we don’t turn to some of our younger guys much more aggressively. That’s the biggest thing I’ll be keeping an eye on with Memphis, along with the trickle down that takes place throughout the line up. Memphis is already a big, physical, and athletic team, so leaning more into Gertrude and Bond makes natural sense, anyway. The positive news is IF Rohde still looks limited against Memphis (especially if the rest of the offense looks as limited as a result) we still have a buy game and a very reasonable return to the conference schedule to work through it and hopefully get right. It’s also hard to know, just in general, how a player is going to respond after so much time away – so now our training/coaching staff have some knowledge and can adjust accordingly.
An added element to keep our eyes on tonight.
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