@ Wake Forest 1/13/2024

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to CTB’s postgame comments after the Wake game, especially his off-the-cuff description of what it means to keep working through adversity and maintain team culture when things aren’t going well, it’s worth a listen. It’s the kind of leadership that can pull you through a stretch like this (and IS the kind of leadership that allows a team to win a National Championship a year removed from losing to a 16 seed). I wouldn’t trade CTB for any other leader and will ride with him for as long as he’s with the program. Honestly, that little speech at the end was good motivation for me to dive into a game like this just like I’ll continue to dive into these games even if they continue on this trajectory, even when it’s not fun.

That being said, CTB really does need to look inward with both himself and his coaching staff as to how they’re viewing this team and roster and their willingness to go outside of what they normally do in order to maximize their results this year for this team. It is a flawed roster. Iit is an inexperienced roster (in terms of continuity in the program); but they just played a team with four portal players that was executing quality offense and smart and intentional team defense. Teams that we beat earlier in the season, like Florida and Texas A&M just blew out Arkansas and beat Kentucky in overtime, respectively. Not to be too blunt, but other teams are improving much more dramatically as the season progresses. Our opponents have figured out how to play against us and are punishing that relentlessly. On our end, we seem to have increasingly fewer answers on the offensive side of the ball, running the same sets into the same issues, and most individual players appear to be playing with less confidence. While we run into strategies geared to our scouting report, we continue to try to improve just through system execution, rather than tailoring a plan to beat our specific opponents (and when we’ve tried that, it’s been sending a double team to the three-point line, as really the biggest example).

That’s coaching. 

CTB has always steadfastly believed in his system. Hone, refine and rep The Pack Line until the defensive unit is a well-oiled machine. Introduce three basic offensive systems that can, in theory, compliment a variety of offensive skillsets and create good looks. Value every possession, play great defense, pass up good looks for great looks, protect the ball. All of this combined has allowed under-athletic and less highly recruited teams to compete with the 5-star behemoths of the ACC to an incredible track record over the years – to the tune of winning HALF the regular season championships over the past 10 seasons, including two ACC tournament titles (and a Natty). The overall philosophy is this – our half-court offense and half-court defense, when executed as a team, will beat yours. It’s why we send so few guys to crash the glass, so as not to get beaten in transition the other way. It’s why we, historically, only run when there’s a clear opportunity. It’s the foundation of the entire program from a strategic standpoint just like the Pillars are the foundation from a principle standpoint.

But what happens when your team roster is not well-suited for that strategy? Our offense has not been effective in the half-court because of our lack of size/finishing at the rim, threat to shoot among certain lineup staples, and limited players (being utilized or health) capable of creating off of the dribble. All of those things combined (which we’ll see in a bit again) have made scoring in the half-court VERY challenging. Across our five losses, we’ve averaged 51.2ppg and, in all five of those losses, our opponents have approached us the same way strategically – run a few of our shooters off of the three-point line, and sag their best rim protectors off of our non-shooting bigs to clog up driving lanes in the middle. The result has been a ton of our guys settling for mid-rage jump shots (often contested) because the three-point shot hasn’t been open with our standard actions and because the lane is completely clogged. I wrote a while ago on social media that I didn’t think teams had “solved” our offense… but I’m here to tell you that with this roster, and these lineups, executions and sets, they have.

So, for a team that mostly reps and emphasizes defense (and yes, there’s still lots of room to improve there), it’s the offense that needs some tender love and care. But, doing so might require some significant strategic shifts. Of course, without seeing it in action, it’s unclear what the best path forward is, but there are plenty of options and ideas to be considered that we haven’t yet tried. My personal favorite would be playing Beekman, Bond, Dunn, and Minor (1, 3, 4, 5) cycling through McKneely, Rohde, and Gertrude at the 2 and spending a lot of time pressing/leaning into the aggressive defense; trying to get out and run, crashing the offensive glass. If you do get into offensive sets post up Minor and put Beekman/McKneely around the nearside arc to shoot with Bond/Dunn diving on the backside if help comes, play more two-man games out of Sides (our best offense on Saturday was the pick and roll with Rohde and Minor), give Gertrude a chance to just create for himself off of the dribble, keep encouraging Dunn and Bond to attack the hoop off of the dive/bounce, even if they get blocked from time to time. Basically, lean into trying to get more broken play/hustle/second chance/momentum buckets at the rim and be willing to muck it up in there. If Groves is in the game, make it at the 4 and not the 5 and run more pick and pop actions with him, ideally on a cleared-out side (rather than the middle version of Flow) so that anyone helping off of Dunn or Minor or Buchanan won’t have as good of positioning to help on the drive and, again, encourage a lot more diving to combat those. But that’s just one set of ideas. Drawing up new sets that are more focused on freeing up McKneely and/or Groves beyond the three-point line. Actions that our opponents haven’t seen with elevator screens and riffs off of our traditional offensive looks. Inbound plays that aren’t just lining four up along the baseline, lobbing it out to a post player and resetting the offense…. 

The point is, there are a lot of things that could be on the table that CTB would surely be able to dream up/execute very well, but they’d require work and practice time and emphasis and experimentation, which would both take away from defensive practice and might not be in our standard wheelhouse of offensive options. But it’s times like these that we need to be willing to spend time focusing on the most pressing needs and being flexible enough to adapt.

Similarly, the how and why around WHO we play and when we play them needs some soul-searching. On Saturday, Jordan Minor may have been our best player on the floor which I’ll spend a lot of time focusing on in this piece. Now, during his limited run earlier in the year, he never looked anywhere near this good. He made mistakes. He looked tentative and confused. He sometimes had trouble finishing around the rim or even making easy catches, and occasionally made a mistake, just like in this game, that yielded points for the opponent. But in all of those games he had an incredibly short leash. Virtually any mistake would see him pulled from the game either never to return or to return much later, likely after the game was already decided. Now, you can choose to believe the narrative that this was all executed exactly as it needed to be – that he just now started practicing well, coupled with the glimpse he showed at the end of the N.C. State game, and that he finally put it all together enough that he was able to contribute in this way starting in this game. But I would hypothesize, supported by corroborating evidence re: how Kadin Shedrick played at the beginning and end of last season when his leash wasn’t so short and he got consistent minutes (and just using these as recent examples), that we, perhaps, could have been getting similar play from Minor much sooner if we had given him more consistent game reps. 

And herein lies the conundrum – CTB establishes a core rotation through what he sees in practice, as most coaches do, but he’s reluctant to deviate from that even when things aren’t going well during a game and when he does give game reps for players either outside of that core rotation or on the fringe of it, he typically is quick to pull them back when they make mistakes. For example, going into the N.C. State game, he decided that he was going to primarily use a seven-man rotation including Taine Murray based, ostensibly, on practice and how he played in the Louisville game. The problem was, when he wasn’t contributing much on offense and was also struggling on defense, we didn’t go away from him and/or expand the rotation until the game was already well out of striking distance. Last year’s game against Miami was another great example of this, with CTB adding Taine into the rotation and his minutes going incredibly poorly, and not playing Dunn at all until into the second half, where he played so well we didn’t pull him out of the game again and almost capped a comeback. The same thing with the Virginia Tech road game where we played Shedrick zero minutes despite getting killed on the glass and inside all game. Practice is one thing, but games are another thing entirely and anyone who has played organized ball will tell you that it’s not always so linear – the players who are lighting it up in practice throughout the week are not always playing their best on game day and vice versa. Furthermore, when you’re practicing you’re playing against your own guys. Players might benefit from different matchups in-house vs. what they see against opponents. So, for example, if we lack someone on the roster to approximate an Efton Reid or DJ Burns in practice, it’s hard to always effectively gauge how that’s going to translate. And, lastly, some players thrive on the practice court but wilt in front of a hostile crowd and some might struggle in practice but come alive in that kind of electric environment. Point being, if the goal is to win every individual game, which it is, we need to be willing to embrace more quickly adapting to in-game situations and giving guys who offer hypothetical answers to problems the ability to make a few mistakes while contributing what they can.

Minor is one of the most recent examples of this and, despite starting the game well, he turned the ball over and was blocked on successive plays and was pulled from the game before the four-minute time out. That being said, CTB came back to him not that long after and he played very well (compared to much of the roster) on both sides of the ball – offering stout resistance and rebounding on the defensive end and being one of the most consistent sources of quality offensive looks.

Elijah Gertrude is the other, and most glaring, current example of this. And I’m not writing this to paint the picture that playing Gertrude will solve everything and we’ll suddenly be good – but giving him two blow-out minutes in a game like this where our offense was struggling so much and in such obvious ways was perplexing. We know it’s nothing disciplinary, so really no matter what he’s been showing in practice it’d have been worth trying. Isaac McKneely was 2-10 from the field and -25 BP/M in a team-high 36 minutes of play! Taine Murray wasn’t making an impact offensively in his 9 minutes and hurt your defense while he was on the floor. Not only is Gertrude pretty solid with his pull-up dribble, he represented the ability to get into the paint and attack the rim, which we desperately needed, and his athleticism on defense would have been welcomed. It wouldn’t have changed the final outcome but, for so many reasons, you have to be willing to try him in a game like that!

If we’re truly searching for answers from the player AND as a collective coaching staff, we need to be willing to fully reconsider our pre-conceived notions of what good looks like. Isaac McKneely is a huge part of our present and future – but he doesn’t need 36 minutes when all of his looks are coming in the midrange and he’s shooting like that, just as an example.

So, yeah, that’s a much longer intro than I normally lead with on pieces like these, but these are ways that I think we can, and need to, evolve as a program without CTB having to sacrifice anything related to his pillars or character bedrocks. We can evolve the strategy and implement different and new ideas without abandoning the identity of the program itself. But, it will take an awareness and willingness to get outside of our comfort zone truly not just practice and improvement within what we’re already doing. We’ve really never had to before, in all honesty. When CTB was first starting out he was putting the frame work in place and getting his guys for this system. Fifteen years later, we’ve reached that point, at least with this iteration of this roster. I have less than zero doubt in my mind that CTB is fully capable of doing it if he’s willing to. It’s whether or not he accepts that he needs to that’s in doubt. But, hey, one of the key components of the Pillar of Humility is being willing to accept that we all have opportunity for improvement and growth, even when we’re future Hall of Fame coaches!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllrighty! Let’s dive into…

Jordan Minor!

I loved that we started out big in this game, which was a nod to both the Louisville game, how Minor played against N.C. State, and the need to do try something else. Where I think we fell short was that we went away from it early when Minor made mistakes and then, in general, we attributed the offensive struggles to the lineup and got scared off of it rather than trying to adapt what we were doing on that side of the ball while riding out the defensive benefits. Much of when we got punished at our most extreme in this game was when we tried to put optically superior offensive lineups into the game and gave up more points than we were scoring. I do think this game should have earned Jordan Minor a more prolonged stay in the starting lineup, and will hopefully offer some solutions to build around from here, even if not perfect ones.

But, I get ahead of myself. Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Here’s an early, defensive possession with our big lineup of Beekman, McKneely, Dunn, Groves, and Minor on the floor. Minor is matched up against the 7’0″ Efton Reid III (#4), with Groves on the 6’10” Andrew Carr (#11), Dunn shadowing 6’5″ Hunter Sallis (#23), McKneely on the 6’4″ Cameron Hildreth (#2), and Beekman on the 6’0″ Kevin Miller (#0). So, even though Wake poses good length in the frontcourt here, this collective lineup gave us size advantages across just as many positions (with a push at SG) and Minor’s size/strength (weighing two pounds more than Reid despite giving up four inches) allowed him to play strong. This clip, below, shows some very good collective defense with no one on Wake having a clear advantage on their man. Eventually, Minor hedges and Dunn is there on the back side as a quality deterrent for the pass to Reid, and Minor recovers well after the hedge. Hildreth has to shoot over a quality contest from McKneely from three, but Reid’s roll to the hoop along with Minor’s recovery has Reid in good rebounding position. But check out just the strength on this play by Minor, tussling with Reid (holding him, really, but these are rarely called) from bad rebounding position and keeping him pinned with his left arm/body while using his right to tip the ball over to Dunn. 

That’s really good and probably would have been an offensive rebound concession with anyone else on our roster on the floor (maybe not Dunn as he might have recovered more quickly, but still likely). It also made him two-for-two on defensive boards thus far in the game.

This next time down the floor, this is what I expected to see more of this year and talked about at length during my Jordan Minor scout – because of his strength, he does a good job of controlling opposing big men with his lower body. I hypothesized that him being able to play someone one-on-one would actually be a better fit for him conceptually than playing the middle of a zone since he’s not naturally a vertical rim protector. Wake clears out and Minor does a good job forcing Reid to catch the ball away from the hoop. Reid starts to back Minor down and he holds his ground pretty well. Reid hits him with a pretty successful drop step, but Minor uses his lower body to nudge him toward the baseline, throwing him off balance and keeping him from getting good elevation as he goes up. From there, Minor does a good job getting up quickly and blocking the shot. Really good one-on-one on-ball defense in the post against a much taller player!

We still haven’t scored yet, though, and from here Wake does hit a three and then Minor throws a pick-six the other way. That’s followed up by this possession, below, where he gets two-hand blocked by Reid on the hook shot, which is certainly daunting to see. But look at those screens to free Groves throughout this possession, he frees him twice. That strong of screening is a big part of what’s been missing on the offensive side of the ball and if Groves keeps his dribble on that second play rather than shooting the floater, he could have drawn Reid farther in for a dump to Minor. Still, that’s a shot he can and often does hit.

From here, Minor was pulled in kind of an all-time short leash move with a starter, but it makes sense considering some of what we were seeing from the spacing in Flow (which we started out in and I’ll show later and wasn’t working) and how we still hadn’t yet scored, despite playing good defense. But, fortunately, he did come back after a while. Unfortunately, they grew their lead more while he was away. Once he did come back, though, we started seeing this:

Andrew Rohde and Jordan Minor running a two-man pick and roll game out of Sides was our best and most reliable offense over the span of the game. Minor was setting great screens, Rohde was using them well and keeping the angles and, unlike anyone else on the roster, Minor found success being able to convert buckets around the rim or draw fouls even when closely contested by Reid (or others). Notice in the above how after he takes the return pass from Rohde, he uses his body to create a little space/knock Reid back, and then finishes on the other side of the rim. That’s the spatial awareness and physicality around the rim we’ve been lacking.

Here’s another look an, again, notice how we’ve trimmed the lead from 12-4 to now tying it up at 14 during this stretch of time after he made his return from his initial exodus. This is a nice shot at an angle from Rohde, good screens and space created throughout by Minor:

And here’s just another good look at a quality two-man game here. Minor sets a great screen for Rohde who curls it well and throws a nice pass back. I’d probably rather Minor keep this one on this side of the rim, but he draws the shooting foul with the body still by aggressively going up.

This next one is REALLY encouraging. He once again takes a return pass from that Andrew Rohde pick and roll but this time he’s really not in good position to go up. Reid is right there umbrellaing him throughout, but he uses his physicality to basically push him away, then draws contact through the arms over-hanging him as Reid tries to get back into good positioning for the play.

The worry about Minor on offense has always been his height inside up against 7 footers. Plays like the first offensive one shown above where he’s two-handed blocked are the concerns… but there are a lot of clips here, especially this one, suggesting that he can be effective against length inside, given some looks.

One more look at it, again, this time with Beekman in a cleared out side version of Flow. Again, he becomes static deep under the hoop with the ball but is able to score past Reid:

There are a couple more looks with Rohde scoring himself in here that I didn’t even include working with Minor… and I think a good option this game would have been a lot more Rohde at the 2 with Beekman, Dunn, Groves (or Bond), and Minor. Rohde or Beekman on a Side with Minor in the pick and roll can be solid offense to build around.

A couple more quick defensive clips to illustrate his impact along the way, as well. Here watch him hold and move Reid on the quality box out to secure the glass comfortably.

And here, good active hands on the deflection and the run out, finishes well in transition.

All of this is encouraging from Minor. His ability to defend the five, allow Groves to play the four, and flex Dunn up to the three allows from some legitimate defensive lineups. His ability to get out and run the floor is something worth noting. But, certainly most needed, his ability to finish around the rim with height guarding him is not something we’ve had much of this season – especially without downhill momentum. Here’s to him hopefully prolonging this run and adding a different element to the team from here.

Offense

We saw some neat two-man offense from Minor, above, but after putting up 47 points in 40 minutes, we should be looking for answers here. Wake Forest took a cue from everyone else who has beaten us this year and helped aggressively off of our non-Groves big men, knowing that they weren’t shooting threats from outside and not fearing them scoring at the rim. This cluttered driving lanes for our guards, who were not successful driving and scoring or driving and dishing. Furthermore, Wake continued to run our shooters off of the three-point line, again, not fearing the drive into the lane. The end result was a ton of the worst shot in basketball, the midrange jumper (especially the contested midrange jumper or the midrange jumper from a non-shooter). You could tell Wake’s game plan was working by how many of these we took. Let’s take a look:

Here’s one of the first looks of the game with our Big starting lineup with Minor at the five. We started this game out in Flow which made a lot of sense to me but, in reality, did not work very well. The reason being, with Minor setting most of the ball screens, Dunn’s man was free to roam in the paint. Wake played drop coverage with Efton Reid simply camping the lane and, correctly, not worrying about Minor’s jumper. If you freeze at two seconds into this clip, the ball screen works fairly well, forcing Wake under. Theoretically, Reece could have pulled up beyond the arc here, but he really has nowhere to go otherwise. Carr (#11) has cheated WAY off of Dunn, not at all worried about the catch and shoot (and Dunn is well beyond the arc anyway), and Reid is there as a safety net if Beekman does somehow squeeze through. They reset the offense and Minor attempts to screen for Groves, but Groves’s man gets over the screen, and so they again reset. Once again Minor sets a ball screen for Beekman and his man goes under. This time he does take the three and narrowly misses. 

I don’t actually hate this shot. I think Beekman needs to continue to be aggressive about taking looks from out here to keep his man from always ducking under and, in general, him heating up from three is an important catalyst for our long-term outlook. Still, it’s glaring how few other options we appear to have on this possession.

For the next play we’ll take a look at Minor is already out of the game and Blake Buchanan is in for him along with Andrew Rohde off of the bench for Groves. Firstly, watch the difference between these Buchanan screens and the ones we saw from Minor in his section, especially as it relates to Rohde. Hildreth is getting over screens at will with little resistance. This allows Rohde’s man to stay glued to him. Eventually they get a look for sides with McKneely and Buchanan, and this time Buchanan has a fairly effective screen coupled with Wake’s aggression on McKneely. I still really want McKneely to be aggressively hunting his three-point shot here and I feel like if he keeps running this up the three-point line there’s probably enough of a screen action from Buchanan to shoot the deep ball. Instead, he briefly hesitates and then drives to the paint. Here’s the problem – if you pause at 19 seconds, you’ll see how far off of Dunn Carr is playing in there, as well as how unthreatened Efton Reid feels with regard to needing to recover to Buchanan. The ball does go back to Buchanan but it just results in a midrange jumper that Wake will live with every time and misses badly.

In this next clip, you’ll see Rohde’s man getting over screens pretty easily again. And, again, a huge part of these offenses is being able to set quality screens. If we’re consistently see our big men (and the guys running off of them) struggle to impact the freedom of movement of defenders, then how are they going to be effective? Rohde is actually hounded over the top of the staggered screens to start the play. As Buchanan goes to set the second run of screens for McKneely, Beekman sees some cleared out space from the screen action and attempts to drive the lane. Again, though, Reid is just hanging out there despite his man being at the three-point line. There are three Wake defenders, one 7 footer and one 6’11”, around the rim with only two of our guys there. Reece picks out and finds Buchanan with literally no one around him, but he doesn’t look to shoot or drive with Dunn and Carr between he and the basket. In fact, Reid sees him but doesn’t even recover out to him, he still stays home. Buchanan passes back out and the ball gets back to Reece again. This time Blake sets another ball screen and Reece drives, both Reid and Carr sag, but this time Reece finds Dunn at the three-point line cycling back around and as Carr recovers to him, he drives the ball to the lane quickly for the running left-handed layup that gets blocked but also draws the foul.

This is what I’ve been talking about Dunn needed to do for a while now but we still don’t see consistently. When his man cheats, he needs to catch the ball with a head of steam and attack with his quickness and athleticism. He shouldn’t care if he gets blocked some of the time; the fouls drawn and buckets made otherwise will be worth it, especially on a team that’s having such trouble scoring. Still, while this is how Dunn needs to combat this most of the time (I’d still like him to shoot in rhythm more, as well) you can once again see the problem compounded with Reid’s ability to ignore Blake. This should hopefully also re-emphasize the importance of those Minor buckets above.

Here’s another similar look to this where Beekman and Buchanan play the two-man game and that’s a fine look in an offense generally, wide-open at the elbow, but still not a shot you love to rely on when you only have four points 7 minutes into the game. Again, Blake has been playing much more passively over the span of the season. I’ve love to see him catch this moving toward the rim and attempt to dunk it (likely not but probably getting fouled).

So many of our offensive woes could be improved by our frontcourt being willing to catch the ball with advantage and throw their body at the rim. At a minimum, we’d draw a lot more fouls. Likely, we’d also get some shots blocked… but that’s no worse than missing a mid-range jumper and your risk/reward is better.

Here’s a different look a little bit later of Sides just not really yielding anything. This time Taine Murray is on the floor with Bond at the 4 and Buchanan at the five still. Beekman is out of the game, so Rohde is playing point and McKneely is at the two. Firstly, and Jayden Gardner ran into this against Carr last year as well, it’s just so hard for an under-sized 4 who doesn’t shoot the three to play in the ACC, especially against Wake. I just want to make a plug here that I still think we need to lean into Bond more at the three and get creative with our offensive sets as I’ve described before (and heck the whole intro to this piece was about getting more creative with our offensive sets). Still, Buchanan’s man isn’t Reid, but he still camps the lane this entire possession. We just really have no one on the floor posing a scoring threat to take their man off of the dribble (especially with a cheating rim protector). The ball goes to Bond in a weird spot on the wing because of the pressure and he resets to Rohde, then taking the return pass back in beetween the three-point line and foul line. Unfortunately, McKneely has drifted out to the point rather than staying on the wing, bringing his man into the play and not being where Bond was expecting to be able to throw the pass. Look at McKneely at 21 seconds into the clip – he’s drifted out to the logo and isn’t doing anything threatening at all. He needs to be hunting a good spot to take a pass and rip a three should Bond pass out. It’s so passive.

McKneely’s game was really frustrating to watch. He’s just not taking opportunities like these and hunting a place to shoot, and when he is getting advantages, he’s running them to the midrange. I’ll skip ahead and show one of those here since we’re talking about it and then go back. Here, below, you see him take a staggered screen and get a really good pick from Minor. He needs to run this wide. Flare up the three-point a little on the catch and shoot a three. His man is fully caught on the screen and the space is there. A simple dribble up toward #20 on Wake and then a three-point shot is what’s needed here. Instead, he takes one dribble inside the three-point line, runs into Minor’s man who is sagging off entirely and Carr on the back end, and elevates into a mid-range jumper that misses.

I think he’s being coached to hunt any shot, including these. I want him to HUNT three-point shots and take mid-range jumpers if they just happen to be wide-open. This isn’t a terrible shot, but for someone who is struggling to find open looks from deep, this was a missed opportunity. 

Okay, jumping back again, this next look is Flow into Sides. We end up getting Beekman on the top side with Dunn in the pick and roll. Carr drops just as Wake has been doing all game and Reid is there sagging off Minor again. Beekman isn’t going to have a lot of success here trying to go all the way into the rim, but his man is trailing and Carr is still in a position to be defending one on two. If you pause at 9 and 10 seconds you’ll see the spacing. What Beekman opts to do is stop and take the midrange jumper, yet again. It’s a shot he makes often and, honestly, one I’d much rather he take than anyone else on the game save maybe Bond, but I’d still rather Dunn get a return pass here. I think he could have taken a bounce pass and again challenged Carr at the rim or, even there was space to throw him a lob pass at the rim if he’d have been aggressive about his cut.

And that’s really what we needed all of this game – more aggression.

This next one is a little better, we just need more practice with it. We’re in the Inside Triangle with Dunn and Bond at the 5 and 4, respectively. Groves and Beekman are on the wing with McKneely joining the frontcourt in the mix. Now, Groves has a size mismatch on the wing so I’d love for us to try to find a way for him to get a shot up here, and Wake is switching Bond and Dunn screens. That being said, Dunn gets the ball and starts to take his man off of the dribble, but McKneely runs his man into the play trying to get back up to the point, forcing Dunn to stop his dribble. The ball goes back out to McKneely who drives and finds Bond who slashes toward the rim off of one bounce. 

Bond is blocked out of bounds on that one, but I do like the look and there was a good chance he could have drawn a body foul there. That’s what we need to be able to do against size like Wake’s in the frontcourt – beat them with quickness.

This last clip that I’ll show, below, is exactly what we need more of from Ryan Dunn. I want Dunn to be so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, much more aggressive!

Now, this is a great move where he drives into the lane and drop steps on his man, finishing with that long left-handed reach on the scoop layup. But I think he felt comfortable doing this because it was a bit of a broken play and their defense was scrambling to reset after Reid helped on and blocked Beekman. We just straight-up need more Ryan Dunn isolation on big, slow, players like this. Stop allowing it to become a sticking point of the offense, scheme for our opponents and make these slow guys move their feet. Dunn needs to have the confidence to make this play on the regular, and our coaching staff needs to draw these looks up for him when he’s got these kinds of matchups, whether it be a clear-out on the wing out of the Triangle or something more specific.

So, hopefully watching the above and seeing how we’re being defended illuminates the need to try some different approaches. Yes, our guys need to be more aggressive themselves. McKneely needs to provide better spacing on the floor – that’s a big value he brings! Stop running his man into plays, stop floating away from useful spot-up spots and, especially, stop curling to the elbow when he could flare to the wing. Dunn (and to a lesser extent, Bond) needs to keep attacking downhill… as I’ve been saying for weeks now, and aggressively rim-hunting, but also attacking mismatches in isolation. We need to get Minor much more involved in the pick and roll game with a side of the floor cleared, preferably running it with Rohde and Beekman. These are all things we can likely start doing more of under our current systems. But I do believe that we need to introduce some new actions, isolations, focus so that defenses aren’t so prepared for what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go while they’re executing their cheating.

Inbound Plays

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this – but this was one of several surgically effective baseline inbound plays that Wake executed against us on Saturday. Inbound plays are an opportunity to make a defense defend something coordinated. We’re a team that struggles to score. I’d love to see us bust out a playbook of stuff like the below and at least put effort into trying to get easy points rather than just lob it out and reset the possession the majority of the time.

Defense

This one’s going to be a little more scatter-shot because, especially in the first half, I thought our defense was pretty solid and we would have been in the game if not for our offensive woes. This is just going to be a bit of a cluster of things, both good and bad, that I wanted to highlight/quickly comment on:

We did a better job of double teaming this game, returning to our longstanding strategy of doubling near the paint… not the three-point line. However, it was also personnel-specific. The timing is way better in this clip below when Buchanan comes over to double with Dunn. Tthe back-end rotations are better, and hands are much more active. Good and refreshing to see.

This, on the other hand, below, is a double-team executed by Leon Bond and Jake Groves as opposed to Dunn and Buchanan. Reid is able to see the floor better, kicks a good pass out to Beekman’s man, who passes down to Hildreth. McKneely, having had to run under the hoop to deal with a cutting Carr, has too far to recover to the wing and Hildreth is able to side step and knock down the shot.

This line up, in general, with Bond at the four and Groves at the five was an ill-conceived one and really causes me to scratch my head. It’s true that whenever we went to it, we were trailing. Ostensibly, CTB played it for the offensive pop to try to get back into the game. The problem was that there really wasn’t much of an offensive pop to begin with but, what was provided was offset by the poor defense. I’ve talked in the past about Groves and his struggles to play the five in the ACC and Bond’s struggles to play the four… and here we’re doing both.

Just a couple of examples and in this first clip, below, we have Taine Murray on the floor instead of Beekman. For a program that typically values defense first and foremost and uses it to get back into games, this is about the worst possible defensive lineup we could theoretically field… and it’s only 9-4 at this point in the game! Sure, we have 4 points 8 minutes in… but this is like the nuclear option. You can just see everyone is a step slow in the clip below. Groves and Bond are fighting with their guys inside (and Bond manages pretty good rebounding position) but Taine and Rohde as a tag team are put on skates on the perimeter. Taine bites on a shot fake and runs himself out of the play, drawing Rohde over but who can’t get back out to his man from three.

It’s just a non-complimentary defensive lineup with slow foot speed, and minus size and athleticism. And, look, I am for trying different things, but this is about as bad of a plausible lineup combination as I could imagine on this team. It didn’t actually provide an offensive boon because it had no speed on offense. I’m not saying this lineup cost us the game or anything like that, because we didn’t stick with it that long. What I am saying is that if you’re supporting the notion that we can’t even try Elijah Gertrude earlier in a game because of turnover concerns but yet we’re trotting this group out there then there’s some pretty sever suspension of disbelief going on. In fact, since turning it over 3 times against Memphis (where a lot of our guys were doing the same) he’s only had 3 turnovers in the 5 games since across 42 minutes. If that’s the concern, it’s not like he’s even had the opportunity to reinforce it that much. It’s certainly not one of those things where you just can’t possibly play him in favor of… that, above.

This next clip, below, is a similarly bad defensive lineup but does at least have Reece in the game for Taine. If Groves is playing the five, we’ve got to at least protect him with Dunn. If Bond is playing the 4, we need to protect him with one of the centers or, at least, Dunn. McKneely has an especially poor defensive possession here for him, having trouble staying in front of Hildreth on two separate occasions. The first time Groves steps up and does a good job of stopping progress without allowing a good passing lane back to Reid. McKneely stays with the double team and they kick the ball out. Wake recycles it back to Hildreth again, though, and this time he beats McKneely on the baseline, getting entirely past him. Bond comes over and challenges the floater but doesn’t have the length to bother it badly. Doing so pulls him out of position and his man, the 6’10” Carr crashes the board on the back end and neither Beekman nor Groves are able to do much about him. Bond, in desperation, just swats the ball out of there. Reid, who had been drifting back up the floor, drifts back into the play. Groves is in decent help/recovery position, but he isn’t very aggressive on his close out and can’t get a great contest on Reid’s length.

We were just really undermatched defensively with this 4/5 combo and, no matter the score or what we’re doing on offense, I’d discourage our going to it (aside from the potential for some very matchup-specific games). But, again, just to reiterate the point, we’ve been reluctant to try some things but willing to do this. I don’t even mind trying this even though I don’t think it was conceptually sound, as long as we take away the needed information and don’t go back to it/ARE willing to try other things. 

Wake was running some Spain screens in this game which, if you’re unfamiliar with that term, puts two players in either corner and runs variants of screens to play off of the traditional ball screen. For example, you might get a traditional ball screen from a post player with a wing then setting a back screen for that post player and flaring to the wing. It’s designed to give the defense tricky decisions and tough communication on how to recover. In this play, below, we have Minor in at center with Bond at the four, and Rohde, McKneely, and Murray 1-3. Wake actually doesn’t execute this that well. Reid goes to set a ball screen but, instead, dives to the hoop while Miller sets up to set a double screen on Minor. It’s not impactful because Minor is already rolling to the hoop and now McKneely is hedging on the dribbler instead of Minor, who is recovering to Reid. Miller then flares to the wing, though, and McKneely’s recovery angle is too direct, giving Miller a driving lane. This, highlight the effectiveness of Spain, for what it’s worth, because they didn’t really execute it that well but the actual still gave them something clean. The biggest problem, though, is Taine Murray who is in perfect help position to stop the dribble or even take a charge (even with the new rules). Instead, he doesn’t really do anything. He just kind of waives at Miller as he goes by and recovers to his own man, allowing Miller to score over the still recovering McKneely and also draw the foul.

I promised to keep checking in on Murray’s defense and it really has been going poorly. Coupled with the fact that he hasn’t offered much of anything on the offensive end since Louisville, I’d like to see him fall back to where he was in the rotation earlier in the season, if even that. It was definitely worth more of a look after Louisville, but that continues to look like an aberration and where the offensive pop has been inconsistent, the defensive struggles have been consistent.

Okay, this is another look later with Bond at the three, which I like, Dunn at the four, and Groves at the five on Efton Reid. Generally speaking, I like the concept of this lineup because both Bond and Dunn can theoretically help to support Groves. That being said, Groves is still going to struggle when paired on most of the best centers in the ACC and that causes the problem here. Wake runs Spain again with Miller screening Groves off of Reid AS Reid goes to set the ball screen. We don’t actually read this play very well, but our improved athleticism on the floor is initially helpful. If you pause at 7 seconds into the clip, you’ll see ALL of Beekman, Groves, and Dunn having been pulled to Hunter Sallis (#23). Bond tags Reid, though, and Wake has two men free, one in the top corner and one moving to the wing. Groves does a pretty good job recovering to Reid from here and Bond holds him, but Dunn is buried on the low elbow with the pass going out to the top wing. Watch the recovery and close out from there. He covers so much ground and gets close enough to deter a shot that should have been an open take, then does a good job of breaking down and going with Miller on the drive. He uses his superior length to deter the first moves and, even though Miller gives some good pivots and does get a makable shot off, he has to rush it and misses. To this point, this was a good defensive set where our personnel choices allowed us to make up for some good execution on the Wake Forest end. The problem is that Groves has just been unable to move Reid around and he’s gotten good rebounding position in the lane. He goes up to collect the offensive rebound and Groves has to swat wildly at it to keep that from happening, allowing Wake to track down the long board. With a reset shot clock, they reset and just post up Reid on Groves who, despite Dunn pecking down from his wing position a little bit, can’t offer much resistance to bother Reid’s move/hook shot.

In my opinion, this is where you send a double-team. You can’t leave Efton Reid along with Jake Groves. If this was Minor or even Buchanan then it’s okay to let them try to defend one-on-one, but you’ve got to play your matchups. Personally, I think Dunn can move well enough that just having him sit on this dribble harder is the best course of action, allowing him to recover to Sallis on the wing for a kick-out. But you could also send Bond across as he’s making his move and have McKneely sink into the lane/Beekman roam the kick outs – that would be our most standard rotation here. Either way, like Bond at the three defensively but still a struggle for Groves at the five either way against a skilled 7-footer. Still, I think they were close to making this serviceable. One more thought here – just putting Dunn on Reid with Groves on the 6’0″ Zach Keller (#25) and Bond on Sallis could be something, as well. Worth trying.

In Conclusion

I don’t think I can really sum up my initial thoughts much better. We should not already think of this team as a rebuilding year. This idea that our hands are, more or less, tied and we just have to wait the team to improve dramatically skill-wise or executing what we’ve already been trying is one I reject. There are many things we could be doing, trying, changing, but it would look a little different than our normal approach. It doesn’t have to be some kind of compromise of the soul… just a willingness to take our core beliefs and evolve a little when what’s worked historically isn’t the best formula for the current roster.

If we were to give all of that stuff a legitimate try and saw similar outcomes… then, sure, at that point rebuilding talk is fair. But, until then, we need to be willing try; to be willing to have “good” look a little different.