Well, there is nothing to sugar coat from that contest. I sat after the game in stunned silence for a while attempting to process what I’d just watched prior to a (shudder) re-watch. Sometimes you’ll see CTB coached teams get blown out by high quality opponents. Sometimes you’ll see them lose to opponents they shouldn’t. Rarely to almost never do you see them get blown out by a bad team.
Notre Dame shot the ball very well, and we didn’t (more on that to come). But the body language was bad, the execution was bad, the decision making was bad and, yes, the coaching was bad. There was no confidence. There was no attack. The defense struggled across the board and then, eventually, seemed to lose morale. It was rough sledding all the way around.
Now, all season when people have said that this is a young team that’s going to have ups and downs, I didn’t really think this would be the down. Sure, losing a close game at Notre Dame could have been a conceivable down, but this type of shellacking was not what I envisioned, mostly because we really just haven’t seen it against this level of competition outside of the UMBC game (which was better ranked competition than this was). So, while I have no doubt that this team has the potential to play better (we’ve seen it) and can right the ship, the question remains will they and will CTB be able to press the right buttons in enough time. Frankly, a loss against Louisville at home might be enough to permanently damage the season (and this loss @N.D. is really going to hurt if we’re even just above average in conference play).
To me, the issues seem mostly mental. The offensive confidence in a lot of the players appears to have taken a significant hit, which has impacted aggressiveness and the ability to knock down shots. Candidly, and this will likely be a bigger topic for another time, but my biggest concern is how many guys appear to be in their head on the offensive side of the ball and playing much worse now than they were at the beginning of the season. In fact, we’re seeing a trend where this is happening season-to-season, guys getting tight and playing worse, especially on the offensive side of the ball as a season progresses after appearing to be much looser earlier in the year. Whatever the reason (something that almost certainly doesn’t have just one answer and is complicated and case-by-case to solve), it would be hard to argue that there isn’t, at least a recent, team cultural element to this. And whether it be who we’re playing, how those who are playing are approaching it, how we’re engaging with those struggling, or all of the above, we’ll need to solve or improve it sooner than later.
Defensively, there’s a lot to look at and a lot that can be cleaned up, but I was most discouraged by how they appeared to let up entirely when N.D. pushed the lead from 10 out to 15 with about a quarter of the game to go. We’ll focus mostly on the 3/4ths of the game where things were still within reach.
So, let’s go ahead and look at what went wrong, the reasons for them, and some thoughts on what needs to change moving forward…
Offense
The offense has been our weakest link all season, and I’ve seen some opining that our offensive systems are just outdated and teams know how to defend them. I’ve also seen some speculation that Kyle Getter was able to coach N.D. to defend us because of how familiar he is with our systems and our players. There are some kernels of truth in there. Specifically, I’d have liked to see us much more in Flow this game than we were, which we’ll talk about, and I would like to see us add some more/different offensive concepts into the mix. N.D. was also pretty well prepared and, at times, did a good job of knowing where we wanted to go with the ball and beating us to those spots, which we’ll also see. But the truth is that we had plenty of opportunities in this game to either knock down open looks or make a better decision with the ball (or off the ball), and we simply didn’t execute for a variety of reasons which we’re about to delve into. I think our best bet is to look at each of our three offenses one-by-one starting with:
Sides
When CTB talks about us doing some different stuff on offense this year as he did in the post-game presser, he appears to mostly be talking about some subtleties within the three offenses. We’re moving between them more within possessions now than we used to and there are more transitional concepts where, for example, we’ll set an on-ball screen out of Sides if we can’t get that going, or we’ll start in Flow, set an on-ball screen on the wing, and then get into Triangle from there. A lot of similar concepts like this designed to make it harder to tell which offense we’re in and/or to be able to exploit concepts from different offenses within the same sets. So, I’ll try to call these out when we get to them – but, regardless, we did run a lot of Sides in this game. Generally speaking, I don’t love Sides with our starting lineup. We’ve run it wide to some effect and can still get some looks off of it, but neither Dunn nor Groves are solid enough screeners to often get the wings very open on their own. Groves is solid as a pick and pop option and Dunn can slip/rim run and it’s a good way to engage him at times. So, it’s not without merit, just not ideal as an offense we run the bulk of the game, allowing our opponents to get into rhythm of defending, or without having bigger screening options like Buchanan or Minor on the floor. Basically, I think Sides is better off being an option to mix in to give defenses another thing to defend, not to be the core offense with this team. Still, early on our offense was generating quality looks despite the fact that it was also missing some opportunities.
Here’s the first look, and it’s a good one to illustrate some concepts. We start out in standard Sides with screens taking place at the elbows and McKneely flaring out to the wing for a catch. He almost doesn’t turn, immediately passing it back out to Reece who turns and sends it to Rohde, open after a solid pin down screen from Dunn. Now, in an ideal world, Rohde runs this out past the three-point line and makes an open shot. The spacing is there and the offense worked for such a look. Instead, he also just takes a dribble to nowhere and passes right back out to Reece. This is a bit of a discouraging start as we’ve already attempted to initiate through both of our wings only to have the ball immediately reset (despite the fact that Rohde’s side had generated advantage through the screen). Reece then passes it right back over to McKneely, this time running a curl screen around Groves who has set the pick out wider near the three-point line. Pause at 9 seconds into the clip. This is another advantage generated as McKneely’s man is fully trailing him and he’s got the ball on the move heading toward the hoop. Note, Groves’s man has sagged off of him and is camping the lane, waiting on McKneely. McKneely takes one small horizontal dribble, though, and immediately flings it back to Groves. This isn’t enough. What McKneely needs to do here is to challenge Groves’s man here while forcing his own to recover to him. Take the dribble farther into the lane and force the post player to stay home. THEN kick it out to Groves (assuming his man is still trailing him and hasn’t switched) which would give him time to shoot this shot. This is the first good look at McKneely now being hesitant to take too many dribbles or probe the lane more aggressively, which is having an impact. Anyway, McKneely passes it too early to Groves and his man recovers, so Groves takes a nice baseline drive and then finds Rohde in the corner. Two men recover to Rohde who finds a wide-open Beekman on the wing… who just misses the open look.
Now before we move on, I want to make the point that yes, this was an open look that we easily could have made and if we made some of these it could have changed the trajectory of the game. Sometimes you’re cold. But the solution here isn’t just “shoot better” – there was a better option available. An open Groves three is better than an open Beekman three, and we likely are able to get it if we’re more aggressive about probing an open path into the paint. Think about it this way as well – Groves shouldn’t be more effective probing and passing off of the drive than McKneely. It’s good that he’s effective, but this is what I mean with regard to confidence and aggression, in this case, with McKneely.
I’m going to call this next one Sides because that’s how we generated the look, but this is more of a Flow/Sides hybrid look. As Beekman brings the ball up the floor, Dunn at least makes to set a screen but instead Reece swings it to Groves on the perimeter. Groves passes to McKneely and then ball screens for him. McKneely, again, just takes one dribble and then picks the ball up, passing it back out to Reece. Dunn sets a screen for Rohde who curls off of it, getting into the lane and missing his little push shot. This is a fine/good look that Rohde can and should make. Now, I’ll say my concern is that #14 on Notre Dame, the 6’10” Kebba Njie, is able to effectively play soft defense on both Rohde and Dunn here. He keeps Rohde from getting all the way to the bucket (although I think he could have forced the issue a little more), while staying home enough that a dump off pass or lob to Dunn isn’t obvious (and he’d probably be able to get back into the play). So that’s a bit of a problem from a size/athleticism standpoint when an opposing team’s center can stay at home on you and impact two free scoring options. Rohde probably could have pulled this dribble wider, creating more space between he and Dunn – but regardless it’s still a quality look here and one he should make.
In this next clip, below, Rohde and Beekman switch off from the point, getting Beekman the ball on the wing. Beekman does a good job of getting into the lane and drawing defenders, and we can see the difference in the offense when the wing is willing/able to attack. There’s pretty good spacing for Dunn on his roll, although he trips, and neither Bond nor Murray do him many favors by bringing their men into the play, Murray moving baseline and Bond staying home at the elbow. Still, Beekman draws focus from the point, kicks it back out to Rohde who gives a shot fake, losing his man entirely and, again, just misses a wide-open three.
That clip shows a couple of things. For one, we were still able to get a very good look out of the offense that we can/need to make. But, secondly, a lot of the surrounding guys aren’t playing well off of Reece yet. It’s a lot of not knowing the best place to go when reacting to him. He’s driving into the lane and instead of getting spacing for a kick out or looking for space, Murray and Bond are still executing the offense as if nothing else is happening. That’s a teaching point and something that can be cleaned up.
I’m going to keep coming back to attack/aggression, I believe, and I’ll probably focus most on McKneely and Dunn because they’re going to be staples on this offense and we’re going to need them to adapt that mentality if our offense is going to improve. This clip is Dunn, below, with he and Beekman playing the two-man game on the lower side. Beekman initiates the drive before Dunn even really sets the screen but it’s effective in drawing the defenders. He dumps it off to Dunn in the lane. Now, firstly, look at this team spacing – it’s pretty terrible. Both Rohde and Bond are inside of the three-point line (pause at 4 seconds), and their men are both in the play. I’d like to see Rohde drift to the corner there, at least. But Dunn still has a path as Bond’s man is having to lunge to get between him and the hoop. Rather than avoiding contact and pulling up for this little running floater, I’d really like to see Dunn jam this in here. Force contact, draw a foul, get some bigs in foul trouble or, better, just finish at the rim. He doesn’t take a dribble, he just kind of leans into the pass and pushes it. It’s like he’s trying to avoid contact altogether which, really, he has the athleticism to force the issue here and we’ll be better for it. Instead, he misses a challenging shot and N.D. is going the other way.
Notice, again, this play created an opportunity that still could have been something – but we still didn’t execute the offense very well on the back end and N.D. was able to pack the lane/deter Dunn from making an aggressive decision as a result. And you know what? I want Ryan Dunn getting blocked more. I want him missing more hotly contested shots at the rim. Why? Because that means he’s attacking and for every one of those plays, he’s probably also drawing fouls (needs to improve that FT shooting), finishing through contact some, etc. We’ll be better off for him forcing the issue in these situations.
So, you can see how multiple things are true – we could have shot better and made the game closer at this point but, also, we weren’t executing very well.
Here’s another clip below and one thing I do want to call out is how little contact any of these screens are making. We’re not running these hard with the intent of making contact with the defender. We’re either allowing the defender space to go where they want, or just slipping the screen ourselves. That’s, in and of itself, a significant problem especially when running this offense. The ball eventually gets down to Beekman on the wing and N.D. sends two defenders with him, allowing Bond free on the baseline. Now, when Bond takes the pass at 8 seconds into the clip, he has two defenders near him. His own man is recovering from the help on Beekman, but the other is Buchanan’s man! Buchanan’s man is standing between Bond and the hoop, and Buchanan is up at the three-point line setting a screen on Murray’s man! Buchanan should dive here! Dive, take a pass around the ACC logo and go up strong when his man attempts to return to contest his drive! This is either just following the offense without adapting to what’s happening or not having confidence in yourself as an offensive option. Here’s the other thing – this is Bond’s shot! He’s got plenty of space to take this mid-range jumper and, even though that’s not the most efficient shot, he’s good at it and it’s wide-open. Instead, Bond dribbles against the grain of his recovering man, but still has two players shadowing him. He drops it off to Buchanan who has a wide-open midrange jumper, which he misses.
We’ve seen Buchanan hit that shot before, but other teams will (and, in this game, did) live with it all game. It’s discouraging that this was the look when there were two considerably better options once that ball went to Bond. You’d much rather have Bond be the one taking the jumper, and you’d really just want Buchanan to dive, punish his man for cheating, and draw a foul and/or finish at the rim.
Now these were earlier in the game. Let’s take a look at two possessions in the second half because, after running it a good bit, it got more muddled. There were two moments in the second half where, after trailing by 17 at the half, we pulled within 10. Both times, we responded poorly and N.D. pushed the lead back out (eventually blowing it wide-open over the last quarter of the game). After the first of these moments, we had a bad defensive possession which we’ll talk about later, and this was the first offensive possession after that. We start by passing the ball to Rodhe to run point with Beekman and McKneely on either wing. McKneely runs a curl screen around Groves which is pretty non-threatening with both the contact from Groves and the speed with which he runs it. Beekman comes out to get the ball at the wing, without even really getting a screen from Dunn. Dunn then drops to screen for McKneely, cutting baseline, but that screen doesn’t do much, either, and McKneely ends up jacking up a contested mid-range jumper from a bigger player while in motion.
That’s simply a terrible look when you’re trying to reclaim momentum in a game, especially after you had been having some early success in the half. This is the very shot I’ve been harping on from McKneely for a while now; the contested mid-range jumper and there’s still half of the shot clock left. It’s as if, rather than being more active with his cutting and off-ball movement, and feeling shy about his dribble penetration (potentially exacerbated by the struggles he had in the Memphis game?), he’s trying to force himself into the game through these shots. This has got to stop. Only take these if the shot clock is about to expire or if you’re wide-open! I’d rather this exact same look from three than from here from McKneely. But I think, for now, focus on off-ball movement (and focus on setting good screens by our guys) has got to be the most important short-term fix.
This last one was late, and it’s really just a neutered Sides possession at this point. A big part of that is that there’s no Reece on the floor, but watch how the point (especially when it’s Gertrude’s man) cheats down off of all of our pin down screens to clog the middle. How proactive they’re being there likely is the Getter element at play but, as we can see, that’s not why we’ve been bad. But this is just a look where no one is looking to (or can) get anything going toward the basket and it results in probably the worst quality look we’ve seen from McKneely all year (not from a decision-making standpoint, he did have to shoot this one, just from the standpoint of how bad the look was after running 28 seconds of offense, down 23).
That’s the kind of possession where we shouldn’t be in Sides – methodically trying to get a decent shot, down late, with only Gertrude as a creator in an offense where his attacking isn’t going to be a focal-point, after running this offense a large chunk of the game and only having 40 points to show for it.
This is being too stubborn with the offensive sets.
Okay, speaking of some of those alternatives, let’s look at them.
Triangle
As much as we just talked about Sides, our Triangle sets also weren’t very effective, and a lot of that also had to do with execution. Let’s take a look at this clip above, where we run some screening action to get Bond the ball on the block. He, McKneely, and Dunn are in the mix, but as he starts to make his move toward the center of the lane, McKneely and Dunn start a screen action for each other, running their men into the space. Bond ends up settling for a pretty extreme fadeaway which, it’s possible he leans into that shot anyway, but he had few other options (if he was going to shoot) with the way the motions took place.
This next one is from the second half – and we’ve pulled within 10 for the second time with about 12 minutes left to go in the game. This was right before N.D. really took the lead and hid with it. Beekman dribbles the ball to the wing, with McKneely, Rohde, and Dunn in the mix. The first action starts out awkward, as both McKneely and Rohde hover out past the three-point line as McKneely takes the pass. Rohde passes to Murray on the wing and cuts at the same time Dunn is setting a back screen for McKneely, negating the efficacy for either and Dunn’s man just stays home under the hoop. None of the screening action makes an impact and, eventually, Dunn tries to get low, but his man continues to camp the lane and McKneely just takes a driving pull-up jumper with 14 seconds still left on the shot clock.
The play was ineffective because of disjointed and non-complimentary movement, Dunn’s man camping off of him in the lane and him not being able/willing to punish it with a jumper, none of the screens being effective, and resigned early (and bad) shot selection as a result of all of the above.
Now we’ve reached blowout territory again. Here’s Beekman, Groves, and Dunn in the mix with Gertrude and Rohde on the wing. Beekman utilizes a screen from Dunn and drives, drawing his man, and then finding Dunn, but Dunn isn’t quite sure what to do here again, without the ability to take a jump shot, and reluctant to drive this into traffic and force contact, he instead drives it into traffic and passes back out to Beekman, who immediately whips it out to Gertrude. There’s some ineffective passing around the outside to Rohde and back to Beekman, who settles for a jab step three that misses.
Triangle I thought was actually our least effective offense on the day. Despite using it well earlier in the season, it felt both discombobulated against N.D., our screens were ineffective, and they weren’t playing Dunn honestly.
Flow
I thought that Flow gave us the most consistent opportunities on Saturday, we just didn’t always see them/execute. We sometimes ran it by itself, others as an opener (and in different variations) and then morphed into Sides mid-possession. I’d like to see a lot more riffs on this offense, though, so that the team gets better at running it.
Here, McKneely ends this possession by making a difficult three; but that’s a really tough shot and there was a much easier opportunity on this play. Watch as Beekman rejects the ball screen by Dunn and drives down the right side of the lane, pulling both his man and Dunn’s man with him. Rohde’s man also aggressively cheats into the lane and you’ve got four N.D. players packing the lane as a result of one drive. Beekman finds Rohde who probably has enough time to set and shoot, but the catch is a little awkward, so he also starts to drive toward the lane. If you pause at 8 seconds, you’ll see Dunn wide-open under the hoop, Rohde just misses seeing him. Beekman has occupied two defenders and they haven’t communicated the switch well. Instead, Rohde passes it out to Bond who has plenty of space, but is not comfortable shooting from out there. He passes over to McKneely and you can see him now recognizing/pointing to Dunn, but McKneely launches and sinks the shot.
A good result, but bad execution of a play that could have yielded a much easier bucket.
This next one is interesting because when I was initially clipping, I’d earmarked it as a Triangle into Sides example; it isn’t. This is really a Flow variant into Sides. We start with Bond low and Buchanan setting a ball screen for Beekman. Now, here is a bit of a design problem; both defenders run with Beekman, leaving Buchanan wide-open under the hoop. In standard Flow, I’d want Buchanan diving here (and still kind of do), but with Bond under the hoop, there’s a defender there if Buchanan runs to the rim. I’d still like him to do that, catch the ball at the logo (same thought as before) and continue toward the hoop/dump off to Bond if applicable. Instead, he takes the pass at the three-point line and is no threat to shoot. He passes to McKneely and tries to set a ball screen for him. McKneely rejects and drives, drawing Buchanan’s man and slipping the ball back to him on the roll. But the roll comes pretty high and Beekman’s man is able to get into the play to bother progress, and we reset, now into Sides. We run Sides through Taine on the curl, and I think he has plenty of room to probe further here. That’s becoming a consistent trend – non-Beekman/sometimes Rohde wings being unwilling to probe farther into the lane. He passes to Bond whose man has time to recover. Bond goes nowhere on a drive baseline that’s cut off, and they reset yet again. This time McKneely takes a good curl screen from Buchanan and has an advantage – he and Buchanan basically have a two-on-one on Buchanan’s man. But, again, instead of taking a few more dribbles into the lane, drawing the defender, and dumping it off to the diving Buchanan, McKneely takes the tough runner from distance and misses the shot.
Keep your dribble alive! Take everything just a little bit deeper. Force the defense to commit. Don’t settle for a bad shot.
This next clip, below, ended up being a great opportunity for a rim-running Buchanan. It’s a very similar set only Beekman rejects the ball screen from Buchanan, drawing both defenders again. This time Bond isn’t so deep in the lane and Buchanan has a clear path to dive… only he finesses the shot and misses the lay-in badly.
This is back to the confidence thing which I’ve been highlighting with Buchanan for a while now – but he’s just rushing here/seems sped up. He can make this lay-in. More, he could have grabbed the pass, come down, and gone right back up trying to dunk it. He might’ve gotten fouled doing so, but it would have been a stronger/positive play if he was feeling like that finish was too acrobatic. But, if we’re going to have any kind of offensive success, this result needs to be, at least, two free throw attempts. It’s an important piece because Buchanan was literally the only player in the positive +/- at +1 for the game during his 9 minutes. A lot of this was because of his contributions on the defensive end – but he’ll need to be able to contribute some on the offensive end for us to be able to tap into that!
Here’s a final Flow look. Groves is wide-open on a pick and pop; Beekman just doesn’t see him. That would have been a great shot to start the possession (and could have been a two-for-one). Instead, Beekman dives it down the lane, drawing yet another extra defender. But if you pause at 5 seconds, you’ll notice that Rohde floats in DIRECTLY BEHIND Dunn, effectively taking himself out of the play and allowing one defender to cover them both. He should have been moving to the corner at the beginning of this drive and ready for the pass. Instead, he finds himself scrambling back there late, and when he does get the pass, he’s not a shooting threat at that point. Rohde passes BACK to Beekman (far too much of the offense is standing back and hoping he creates something – and not being in ideal positions even when he does), who attempts to force something into the lane and turns the ball over.
But yes, despite using examples of us executing this offense poorly, I do feel like there were more opportunities here if we’d executed better.
I would also say, we needed to be utilizing Gertrude much more than we did this game. He played a total of 11 minutes. Given the struggles we were having defensively (which we’re about to tackle) but, more, how tentative almost everyone but Beekman was to drive into the paint, we needed more of his dribble penetration, and we needed it not out of Sides, but out of Flow. I’m not here saying Gertrude is the savior already – he clearly has work to do on both sides of the ball – but when the team isn’t shooting or initiating, that’s the time you need to be willing to lean into him. Taine Murray was, again, in off of the bench ahead of him. Enough of that, please!
Dunn Attacking
I illustrated some offensive issues, above, with Dunn being reluctant to attack the basket and the problems that created; but he did do it!
Here off of an inbound play he has his much bigger defender isolated on the elbow and takes him off of the dribble, elevating for the bank shot. It’s smooth and he gets into rhythm shooting without thinking.
Here in Flow, Beekman rejects the ball screen and slips the pass to Dunn and he goes all the way to the rim for the layup.
And here, below, Beekman gets stalled at first so they switch to Sides, Rohde hits Dunn with a nice pass and he attacks his man off of the bounce, finishing at the other side of the rim.
More than any other variable, I believe this offense is going to go as Ryan Dunn goes. His man is going to sag off of him? He needs to be willing to attack the rim and punish for it. We need to be willing to isolate him on his man, let him face up, attack off of the bounce. He needs to be willing to go up and through defenders, get blocked from time to time, miss in the paint from time to time, but a much higher volume of those shots from Dunn unlock a lot of things, get us more inside looks, ideally force more free throws and foul issues, and take advantage of our opposition playing slower-footed players on our quick forward who should be a capable slasher. Ryan Dunn – attack the paint, attack the paint, attack the paint! Don’t be shy of contact. Make them swallow their whistles repeatedly.
Defense
Alright; after the game CTB most lamented us losing our defense in the face of adversity. Notre Dame shot the ball well all game, but the defense certainly was not playing with the urgency or discipline that it needed to. I classified three main issues throughout the day – gambling too much trying to get a steal, block, etc., general bad positioning, and then the size disadvantage. All combined, that’s a rough trio.
Over-Gambling
For one reason or another, perhaps pressing because of our offensive struggles, perhaps trying to replicate our earlier season successes in this area, we’ve become pretty unsound, at times, when it comes to our risk-taking on the defensive side of the ball.
Here’s a clip from basically the beginning of the game, just down 3-0. We initially do a good job with Dunn defending a hedge with good back side help from McKneely and Groves. The ball goes to McKneely’s man as he recovers from his tag, Reece lurks and McKneely cuts off the driving angle – but here’s where it breaks down and unnecessarily so. Beekman lingers and attempts to jump/steal the pass back to his man. When he misses, he takes himself way too far out of the play (pause at 8 seconds). His man takes the pass, starts to drive, forcing Rohde to play off his own man to help on the drive, passes it to the corner, and we’re punished.
Now I’ll say – that play above was Beekman’s fault – but Rohde struggled mightily to get to close outs in this game which is something to keep an eye on again.
This next one could also fall into the poor positioning category, as Groves fails to hedge on the ball screen for Beekman, leaving his man unchecked into the lane. Dunn does a good job of helping and cutting off the drive, but he’s undisciplined on his close-out back to his man, jumping at the player rather than keeping his feet until the offensive player leaves the floor and just trying to contest. Instead, it’s like he’s trying to get there to block it, and the pump fake sends him well past the ball. Big shout out to his athleticism to get back into the play and stop the dunk with the foul (block?) – and to be honest this play also highlights his incredible athleticism and how valuable he is within the defense. But he needs to be more disciplined, especially on the perimeter, and stop trying to block jump shots unrealistically. Contest and box out on the shot or break down on the drive.
This is a similar concept for Dunn here, below, who this time plays excellent on-ball defense on the drive but then swipes at the jump shot and fouls unnecessarily. It’s a shame because it was very good team defense all around and it was so unnecessary. It makes me think that instead of just playing natural defense, he’s trying too hard to get those blocks/stats. If he goes straight up there, it’s a miss and we’ve just had a good defensive stand only down 8 points.
This last one was the most costly, and it was right after we pulled within 10 points in the second half for the first time having played less than three minutes. All of the momentum was going our way at this point. We played good defense throughout the possession again, and Beekman is all over this play on the perimeter, but his man makes the slightest of bobbles and Dunn tries to jump on it/the passing lane and leaves his own man just wide-open on the perimeter for the clean three.
What a momentum killer… and really just not a smart play because it’s not like the ball was even very loose here. I’m not saying we don’t want Dunn or Beekman to be aggressive trying to make plays – we do, and that’s a big part of what we’ve done so far this year. But it also can’t become reckless and there has to be some game context within the decision-making process.
Positioning
This is mostly stuff that we can clean up, and some of it might also be not adjusting the game plan to what’s happening in-game quickly enough. N.D. hadn’t been shooting well from outside prior to the game, and so it appears that the game plan called for us to go under some screens. But, when they started off the game scorching, we needed to adjust to that sooner. Beekman sees these screens developing from a mile a way and, granted, Dunn’s man intentionally lingering up there makes the path to contest much longer, but him going so passively under this screen rather than fighting over it doesn’t seem strategically sound given how N.D. started this game (and, in general, fighting over the screen is usually just better).
Here, below, we see Jordan Minor over-extend on a hedge, allowing Beekman’s man to split them both. That’s an execution issue with his angle and foot-speed, but the more concerning thing is that Groves, Bond, and McKneely are all back there and no one steps up to cut off the driving lane soon ehough.
Here’s an inbound play where they run McKneely off of all of the screens in the world as his man paths to the wing and knocks down the open look. Firstly, see what some impactful screens can do but, secondly, there needs to be more team defense here. Rohde and McKneely either need to switch, or Minor needs to better react and step out to help contest the shot/McKneely transition to defense. The defensive strategy here just relies on hoping McKneely can get through everything on his own.
This next one is good team defense throughout but Rohde goes under the screen again and N.D. buries the shot. There might be some argument/dispute about changing a game plan/scouting report down just 10-0… but there shouldn’t be most of the way through the first half with the opposition shooting 70% from three at one point. Rohde gets caught underneath the screen attempting to anticipate Konieczny (#20) coming out the other side and, instead, he just fires away.
Konieczny was especially hot all game – at one point 6-6 from the floor, finishing 6-8 from the floor for the game and 4-5 from three. At 6’7″ he had good lines of sight and a size advantage pulling up. We needed to find a way outside of McKneely and/or Rohde to disrupt him far earlier. This is a situation where playing Bond at the 3 and letting him (or even Dunn, putting Bond on the 4 on defense) chance a player like that around would have some value. Note, above, how well Dunn defended him until he unnecessarily swiped at the jumper.
And this last one is the offensive play after the Dunn missed steal attempt, followed by that McKneely contested mid-range jumper. N.D. slips the ball screen and no one on the back end (neither Rohde nor McKneely) jumps in to tag the big man. Easy dunk.
There are a lot of correctable issues here with regard to rotations, but also a lot of disappointing things regarding our decision making process as a coaching staff. We needed to get better matchups size-wise on some of these guys, we needed to update the scout sooner to be more aggressive about getting hard contests on outside shooters. Despite offensive concerns, we needed more run from more athletic players like Gertrude and Buchanan to help combat what was happening. Speaking of size…
Size Disadvantage
This was pretty glaring throughout, whether it be their 40-27 rebounding advantage or just their ability to isolate and get points inside.
Here’s some quick looks at those things, the first being Dunn getting isolated inside. Now, Dunn can be capable of playing bigger players both height and weight, but he needs to use his quickness to combat and we still need to be willing to support with our team defensive concepts. Here he gets a deflection on the post entry but neither Bond nor McKneely can recognize/jump on the ball. Njie collects it and then backs Dunn down and hits the hook shot over him. It’s an admirable effort by Ryan – you can see how much he struggles with Njie’s weight/strength as he’s trying to establish position and then he gets a good contest on the shot- but our not sending any help there makes it tough.
This is a similar thing with Bond when he’s at the four, and I’ve foreshadowed this when we get to conference play all season. It’s great team defense across the board, but we don’t sent help when Bond is isolated and backed down and the size disadvantage proves too much.
And there were a couple of plays like this but here was a demoralizing scrap on the defensive glass that repeatedly wend their way.
It’s a hard matchup to play Bond at the 4, and we probably shouldn’t have been doing it. It’s a hard matchup, honestly, not to have Buchanan or Minor on the floor to help. It’s a great matchup to have more sets you’re running Bond at the 3 and to play Gertrude more (broken record alert).
We really need to recognize these as viable alternatives to what we’re doing, and soon. It’s definitely not going well enough to be locked into the lineup decisions that we’ve been making.
ZONE?!?!?!?
Okay, allow me to… look, I get wanting to do something to send a message to your team that they need to defend better. This is the second game this season that CTB has done this… but this isn’t it. When we went to zone we were only down 10 points – the game was still well within reach, and we trotted out a defense we don’t play and aren’t good at AND a style of defense notoriously bad at defending against the three – which is where they were thriving!
This happened:
And this:
Both of these were from the back end (especially Dunn) not knowing how to react/how to play the zone/where to be, which isn’t his fault because I suspect they rarely practice this. From here, the lead jumped from 10 to 15 and it spiraled entirely.
Just a completely head-scratching decision. And before you say something to the effect of, “they needed to try something different because what they were doing wasn’t working” – firstly, N.D. only had 48 points almost 3/4ths of the way through the game at that point. Secondly, and more importantly… how about playing and sticking with more size/athleticism? Or, how about getting Beekman, Gertrude, Bond, and Dunn on the floor and pressing this turnover-prone, pretty slow team? There are so many much more viable options that we could have and should have tried before doing… whatever this was.
In Conclusion
Blech. I’m still reeling from having to write about zone. Seriously, though, EVERYONE within the program (other than maybe Beekman who, this might have been his worst game in a long time but, geez, what else can you ask this guy to do?) needs to look inward and examine how they’re playing and how they’re coaching.
We need all of our guys to start attacking and playing much more aggressively on the offensive end, but especially McKneely off of the bounce and Dunn going at the rim. We need cleaner and better decision making and execution from everyone – which will come with repetition and more consistent practice/game play. And we need CTB/his staff to re-examine what good looks like on this roster. Really take a look at some of the alternatives he has available with regard to how he’s utilizing his lineups/players… and be less stubborn about certain things. If we’re going to go uncharacteristic – do it with stuff like amped up defensive pressure/concepts and play the players who fit that. Leave the zone at home forever.
The time is now for some significant mid-season changes.
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