Here’s hoping our guys are up for the short turnaround more than your friend at CfTC is… because this was a crunch and I wasn’t able to get to everything I wanted to. What a big win on the road (Quad 1!) against a team that presented the kind of size mismatches I’d been concerned about all year. Between PJ Hall, Chauncey Wiggins, and Ian Shieffelin, Clemson had three players at least 6’8″ or taller in the starting lineup, two at 6’10”. And, in Hall, they have one of the most prolific bigs on both the offensive and defensive end in the conference. So this was a great litmus test as to how we’d handle not just size, but skilled size, throughout a lineup.
We’re going to spend the bulk of the time talking about the utilization of our Big-3 Lineup with Ryan Dunn at the SF, Jake Groves at the PF, and either Jordan Minor or Blake Buchanan at the C. This was the grouping that we turned to the most in this one, despite not starting in it, and was our most productive solution to Clemson’s size. But I’m hoping that our increased use of it is an indicator of the direction we’re headed with our lineups rather than simply a direct response to our opponent. We’ll also talk about some offensive lulls and bad shot selection, some cool offensive sets/designs, Ryan Dunn’s hustle, and Jordan Minor defending PJ Hall. We’ll also briefly talk about some of the different lineups that briefly were on the floor and then discuss the end of the game.
I wanted to spend a little time on Isaac McKneely as a stand-alone subject this game. Specifically, he really struggled to defend Chase Hunter in this one which, with Beekman taking Joe Girard and Wiggins being such a size mismatch, became a problem. I didn’t have time for that, but just wanted to put this placeholder here in case it becomes an issue again with a different player down the road. To this point in the season, McKneely has been very good defensively very consistently – but if we do start running more big lineups, he will likely continue to get tested more often. Also, I am going to talk about bad shot selection across the board from some of our guys and there are some McKneely clips in there – but he also had a much more effective midrange game in this one, in general, and was able to get some wide-open looks and some looks in good spots/moving toward the rim that really helped. So, this evolution in his game likely is going to be a positive that just needs some refinement – and we’ll likely look at it again in the future.
Okay, enough of an intro, let’s get into it!
Big 3 Lineup
This could also mean the trio of Beekman, McKneely, and Dunn as our best three players, but I’m using it here to refer to our bigger lineups where we played Ryan Dunn at the SF alongside Jake Groves at the PF and either Minor or Buchanan at the C. This was our most effective lineup for much of the game against Clemson as it allowed us to match size with size, but I will be clamoring to see it much more often moving forward (I kind of already was but this renews my enthusiasm) after watching this game. It doesn’t hurt that we’ve already been having a SF issue with Andrew Rohde alternating between being “solid” and not very good from game to game, Taine Murray playing much better but having a ceiling, and Dante Harris being an awkward fit alongside of Beekman. Personally, I also like looking at Leon Bond at the SF and playing Gertrude some, too but, for a practical discussion, those two have been on the outs of the rotation (Gertrude entirely removed and Bond only playing recently when teams have smaller 4s).
Dunn shifting up to the SF accomplishes two things while potentially introducing new challenges: Firstly, it allows us to keep Jake Groves on the floor more. Ever since Minor and Buchanan started primarily manning the C and Groves stopped having to play out of position, he has shot the lights out when he’s been on the floor. This game was another choice example of that following the 6-8 from three performance against Notre Dame. This shift gives him more minutes without sacrificing time for Ryan Dunn. Secondly, we get to keep Dunn’s overall playmaking and opportunism on the floor. From the SF he’s even more dangerous crashing the glass and playing help defense. We’ll see several clips of that below, focusing on Dunn’s opportunism and hustle in general, but just conceptually, imagine us double-teaming the post but, rather than sending Dunn, we send Groves and Dunn is the one roaming the weak side anticipating passing lanes and swooping in to block shots/crash the glass. That’s much more effective than having Dunn double and Rohde or Murray playing that role. And, at this point, I’m not sure we HAVE to give up much offensively – but that is the potential trade-off. Let’s check some of these looks out:
In this first clip, we have Minor at the five in the big grouping. This was our best grouping and we started it at the beginning of the second half as a result of how effective it was in the first half. Clemson has the 6’10” Hall (#24) at C, the 6’10” Wiggins (#21) at the PF and 6’3″ Josh Beadle (#0) in at SF with 6’4″ Chase Hunter (#1) at SG and the sniper 6’2″ Joe Girard (#11) at PG. Now, often the 6’8″ Ian Schieffelin or the 6’10” Jack Clark would also be in the game, either with each other or pushing Wiggins up to the SF, so Dunn would be guarding size. But here, on the other hand, he’s got 5 inches and reach on his man, Beadle. Personally, I’d probably rather have seen us put him on Hunter with this lineup and let McKneely take Beadle given how Hunter was playing, but that’s not what’s happening here. As the play starts, Beadle is in the corner and you can see how Dunn would have the ability to cover some ground and help on the back side, but on this play he runs under a screen and gets isolated on Beadle one-on-one. Beadle seems to think that because of the size difference that he’ll be able to take Dunn off of the dribble, as he immediately explodes toward the rim on the drive, hesitates, and does do again, attempting to finish a reverse layup and use the rim as protection from the block. Dunn slides very well, though, stays close, and bothers the shot immensely (I thought he blocked it live) for Minor to clean up easily.
I really like how the first good clip I have to show from this lineup is NOT with Clemson playing big and us responding to it. Clemson is playing about as small as they do here, but Dunn is able to defend a quick guard quite well on-ball.
Here’s the trade off, though, as we started out by playing Dunn as a mover with this group (and did some off and on throughout the game) and Groves as a blocker in Sides. Clemson got the scouting report from watching earlier ACC play and when Schieffelin and Hall switch on a Minor screen for Dunn, Hall sags off of him entirely and just gives him that free-throw line jumper. It doesn’t go well.
That’s been the eternal question with this look – are the defensive benefits worth any potential offensive trade-offs? In this clip, Dunn just didn’t look comfortable taking this shot that he was, frankly, given.
From here, we first switched to the Inside Triangle, though, and you could see how Groves’s versatility came into play and why we were forcing the issue to get both on the floor without giving up playing a true Center. This is a bit of a transition offense where Beekman and Minor started out with a Flow ball screen and then they backed out such that Groves got the ball at the three-point line with Minor and Dunn on either block. Groves was able to take Schieffelin off of the dribble and Clemson either wasn’t able or opted not to send help and leave Minor or Dunn alone around the hoop. If Groves was playing the C here and this was Hall, it’s almost certain he wouldn’t have tried or been able to drive to the rim like this.
Not long later, this time they get the offense fully set up with Beekman and Dunn on the wings and Minor, Groves, and McKneely in the mix. This is just crafty by Groves as he walks Schieffelin down a little, pushes off of him, and then Minor steps in the way to screen him off on the recovery. It’s not much time but it’s plenty enough space for Groves to hit the three.
Even last year when he was playing the 4 alongside of BVP at the 5, we’ve had success planting Dunn on the wing in the Inside Triangle, and this little action allowed Groves to hunt a shot from deep.
Back on the other end, here’s a great look at why we’d be willing to make some of these concessions and why we’re changing offenses to keep Dunn on the floor. Now we have Blake Buchanan in at C with this group and Clemson is playing Hall along with the 6’8″ RJ Godfrey (#10) and the 6’10” Jack Clark (#5). This gives them a ton of size and we’re playing Groves on Godfrey and Dunn on Clark with Buchanan guarding Hall. So, despite Dunn having covered Beadle earlier with Groves on the PF, now Groves is taking the smaller player between the two. Just think about the lineup flexibility that Dunn provides in this case and how you can basically always put Groves on the easier cover for him when Dunn (and Buchanan) are playing. To the play, firstly, Clemson runs a DHO from Godfrey to Chase Hunter and Groves has to flat hedge to support McKneely. Godfrey rolls to the hoop but Buchanan does have the ability to come off of Hall to bother a pass there. Groves and Buchanan are able to navigate the temporarily free Godfrey without him taking a pass and Hall comes out to get the ball on the wing, with Godfrey now posting up Groves. Now here comes the fun part; often we’ll send the double team from post-to-post in a situation like this to help Buchanan and, most normally, that would come from the opposite side. But with Hall on the near wing and Buchanan there, Blake drops down for the post-double. Seeing this, Hall dives to the rim and Godfrey finds him with a nice pass and now we see why having such a mobile condor on the back side is so valuable as Dunn drops off of Clark and just ensnares Hall’s shot, blocking it and heading the other way.
If you pause at 8 seconds in that clip above, we’ve got both Ryan Dunn and Reece Beekman roaming the back side which, you couldn’t ask for anything more if you’re sending a double-team. In this case, they don’t cheat the passing lane, but Dunn is able to easily block the shot of a player two inches taller who is averaging almost 20ppg. Next-level defensive options here.
We’re going to jump around both sides of the ball now, here going back the other way on offense. This is just a really cool possession. They set up in Flow with Groves on the block and Dunn and McKneely in the corners. You can tell it’s the version of Flow with one man on the block because of where the wings are located and Buchanan goes up to set the ball screen for Beekman. However, instead of setting it, he turns early and runs away from the play and Beekman dribbles hard toward the bottom corner. McKneely sets a screen FOR Groves popping out to the corner himself (although he sets it on his own man) which is a nifty little wrinkle that needs to be highlighted. Groves’s man jumps at the shot and he pump fakes. I like that he drives this all the way to the basket, drawing Schieffelin to contest the shot. While Groves misses, both Dunn and Buchanan crash the glass with Blake coming up with it. He resets the offense which becomes Inside Triangle with the space cleared out for Beekman to drive the baseline against the regrouping defense for the easy layup.
This lineup is just problematic with its size, despite facing off against size itself. In fact, while we’ve been getting killed on the glass all year but have improved since moving to Minor and Buchanan as the Centers, we ended up outrebounding Clemson 38-33 in this one and this lineup and its activity on the offensive glass (15 offensive rebounds in the game) was the biggest reason. I love the pressure it puts on the opposition even when we’re missing shots.
Okay, back to the defensive side, this is one heck of a possession. You’ve got a quick show from Buchanan only to fall back on Hall, Groves and Dunn execute a nice hedge where Dunn sags on Groves’s man as he shows and they recover. Buchanan then hedges with McKneely and rides Hunter a long way with McKneely dropping pretty deep on Hall, with them switching back cleanly. From there, great on-ball defense from Dunn and good on-ball defense from Groves with Dunn coming off of his man to bother the shot from behind and then to help clean up the board (with Blake fighting off Hall on the glass).
That’s classic Virginia oppressive stuff for basically a full shot clock.
Clemson briefly went to a zone, theoretically in hopes of putting strain on this lineup’s shooting, although with Groves on the floor instead of Rohde or even Murray it’s a better shooting lineup than when Dunn is at the PF. But, even though it is clear they rightfully aren’t as worried about a Ryan Dunn three here, watch Jordan Minor punish the offensive glass twice and then Jake Groves even get into the mix to keep the play alive.
I don’t think this is a viable strategy against our opponents because, again, we have the same number of shooters, but zones are notoriously hard to rebound out of because rather than being already on your man, you have to read, locate, and get in good position on the right person when the shot goes up. With us having three threats to go get a board on the floor, this is a great example of the challenges teams will face if they try to go that route.
Here’s the first possession out of the half. Lately CTB has been proactive about going away from the starting lineup after the half and going to whatever was working best in the first half (which I’m all for). It was clear that he, also, liked what this lineup was doing as he also closed a lot of the game with it. Here you see a similar concept to the above only against man as opposed to zone. Once again, Clemson not playing Dunn as a shooting threat. Once again, he’s forced to take a jumper at the free throw line and misses… but you’ve got Minor there crashing the glass and tracking down the ball after having three Tigers around him, resetting, and then Jake Groves using his shot fake to get by Hall and then knocking down that open midrange jumper.
It’s just a lineup that keeps possessions alive and still has several key places to go to score the ball.
This is a good example of that with them going back to zone. With not much else going and with Clemson playing spaced out on the perimeter, we throw the ball into Minor. Now, PJ Hall is a good defender and Minor is still able to get this bucket one-on-one on him going to his left hand after pounding the ball a bit.
It’s encouraging because it proves that Minor is able to create offense left alone against one of the better post defenders in the conference, which means that when the offense is struggling to get something going as it was later in the second half, you should be able to turn to Minor to break a drought or at least to improve your shot quality. And, actually, we did in this game with him getting some increasingly important buckets as the game neared its end.
Now we jump to later in the game with us having lost the lead and just regained it. We’d gone to some other lineups throughout the middle of the half and turned to this one down the stretch. We were locked in trying to get a stop here and it, again, shows the value in the size we were carrying 3-5, this time with Buchanan on the floor guarding Hall. Hall gets the ball at the three-point line and attempts to drive, but Dunn ducks off of his man, Jack Clark (#5), to bother the dribble. Dunn probably lunges too much and takes himself out of position on the kick out to Clark, who takes a good driving lane to the hoop. Now, Clark is 6’10” he’s not small, and Groves is able to slide over from the week side, go straight up, and block him at the rim.
I wouldn’t normally think of Groves as a rim protector, but when he’s flanked by two, that’s helpful and he more just uses really good awareness, positioning, and technique here to make the play.
The last one we’ll look at from this grouping was probably the play of the game or maybe one of 2-3 plays of the game. We’re running Sides and later in the game when we ran it we played Groves as a mover with Dunn as a blocker. But this was McKneely using a Dunn screen rather than a Minor one and absolutely hunting his three-point shot late.
I think I still prefer Groves as a pick and pop option out of Sides, isolating one side of the floor with Beekman or even McKneely as two shooting threats, but I still like the option of doing both and giving different looks – potentially even depending who opponents are using to defend he and Dunn. He didn’t look lost as a mover, though, and considering some of the struggles we were having earlier to create quality looks, this was welcomed. McKneely… just what a clutch shot and really this level of aggressiveness with his three I love. He passed up looks with this tight of a contest from outside at other points.
I thought this lineup was instrumental in being able to combat what Clemson could throw at us. Imagine playing our starting lineup from earlier in the year in Beekman, McKneely, Rohde, Dunn and Groves bulk minutes in this one. We would have gotten eaten up inside. But, further, given Dunn’s defensive versatility and intangibles, along with Groves’s hot shooting and offensive punch (along with his size on defense at the SF/PF), I’d like to see us turn to this one often in most matchups. Speaking of why you want Dunn on the floor even if his lack of shooting can alter how you need to play offense…
Dunn Hustle Plays/Intangibles
I highlighted a lot of his defensive and rebounding impact above, but wanted just to single out some of the stuff you’re regularly getting from Dunn being on the floor…
You get the plays where he runs the floor as a viable finisher, in this case converting those second-chance points easily.
You get THIS crazy hustle play to keep the offensive rebound alive against all three Clemson bigs and then the complete lay out dive to save the ball from going out of bounds.
That’s the kind of determined stuff that wins you games. A quick call-out to the big lineup again, here, and Groves making a nifty drive/finish on the baseline yet again.
There was this tip in off of the Minor miss inside which was incredibly clutch; up only two with under a minute left to play in the game.
Pushing the lead out to two possessions was huge there and we got it not through amazing offensive execution but through scrappy hustle (and again, the big lineup). Dunn basically just had a tractor beam for the ball late in the game.
And then, finally, and we’ll cover this more later, the final defensive play of the game after the Harris free throw miss. This stop was hugely a result of Dunn as he both helped McKneely shut down the Chase Hunter dribble, which had been a problem for McKneely all game, and then he springs over to give a great contest on the Jack Clark three attempt.
While we struggled to close out this game, Dunn (and McKneely) basically willed us to victory.
So, this section was more of just a nod to some of the great and clutch plays that Dunn made in this one, but is also trying to solidify the case that it doesn’t just have to be either Dunn or Groves at any given moment now that Minor and Buchanan hold down the Center position. It can be both and probably should be even as a starting lineup option moving forward.
Bad Momentum Shots
I’m making this section somewhat abridged for the goal of completing this piece, but I did want to briefly focus on a trend that’s becoming an issue that has been a part of our scoring droughts and has been cropping up in big momentum moments. It’s especially been an issue with Rohde and/or Harris on the floor because of the buffer teams give Harris from outside and because Rohde can put pressure on a defense with his passing but has struggled to do so with his dribble or reliably with his shot.
In this clip below, we see both on the floor along with Taine Murray, who is better about this with regard to driving in a straight line and being able to knock down shots, but who can also contribute to this issue by just kind of fading into the background from time to time or not being able to get much going. Clemson has just pulled the game within two for the first time in a while and with still over half the shot clock left, Harris rejects the ball screen to the left and then takes a step back jumper just a few feet inside of the three-point line.
That’s just really not the shot you want at that point in the shot clock, in response to some momentum from the other team (but really, ever), from that player. It’s not even one of his closer midrange jumpers that he can get near the elbow or closer on the baseline, it’s pretty far away for him. It’s really less about him taking the shot as it is doing so prior to needing to because we didn’t run offense.
This one from McKneely I thought was the worst of these of the game. He made some tough ones in this one and you want him to be aggressive looking for his offense. Him doing so was a big reason we won this game as he did hit quite a few buckets in the midrange, both open and contested. But this one came right after an advantageous possession from Clemson where we’d defended them really well, doubled the post, and Schieffelin had found a wild pass across the court down the baseline for an open three for a teammate as the shot clock expired. The lead had previously been pressed out to 11 and we had been getting good offense. We responded by McKneely taking this really tough turnaround jumper with a man in his face, the first time we initiated a Sides pass. There were still 15 seconds left and when he landed from his shot it was fading away just inside the three-point line.
It’s like he made up his mind that he was going to shoot it as soon as he touched it that possession no matter what because he started his shooting motion before he even really evaluated where his defender was. Really, when an opponent hits a big/opportunistic shot, like N.C. State did from the logo at the end of the shot clock or Clemson did here (albeit much less improbably) one of the last ways I’d want us to respond is to rush a contested midrange jumper on first touch… really no matter who the shooter is, especially when we were getting good offense. Clemson responded to that play by coming right down and Girard drilling another long three – closing the gap from 11 to 5 in a heartbeat in no small part because this was the decision sandwiched between the shots. This will come, but it’s just a little more situational awareness from McKneely. When does he need to press a bit to make something happen, like he did brilliantly at the end of the game because other options were fading, and when can he trust the rest of the options to keep building on the quality shots they’re getting.
And this one from Rohde… we’d just given up the lead for the first time and it’s pretty late in the game. Clemson has all of the momentum and we’re collectively having trouble initiating quality offense. Where this shot was better than the other two was just that it was a little later in the offense when it was more clear that our probing wasn’t doing much to their defense. But, still, there were a full 10 seconds left and this really isn’t the shot we want. The other issue is that we had to settle for this shot in no small part because of the way Rohde was running the offense. He was slow, lumbering almost, around the curl screens such that, even though Minor set two good ones, Rohde’s man, Gerard, was able to get back into the play both times. There seemed to be space enough that on that last curl Rohde could have kept his angle tight and had a clear driving lane to the hoop on the right side, but he’d basically made up his mind that he was going to shoot before the catch. Girard was able to get a quality contest on it as well.
In general, you’d just want the decision making around taking these tightened but, especially with that last clip, some of it was coming just from the offense having a really hard time creating separation and being able to get anything going toward the hoop or from outside. Another reason going to the Big 3 lineup has its benefits.
Cool Offensive Possessions
There were a couple of really cool offensive things that we did that I wanted to highlight and give a tip of the cap to the coaching staff and the players executing it.
This was a hybrid play where we ran Inside Triangle into Flow and it’s the same lineup from which we saw Harris take that jump shot above. We’ve got Harris at the point, Rohde, and Murray at the 2-3, Groves, and Minor on the floor. It’s an odd lineup in general with none of our best three players (Beekman, IMK, Dunn) on the floor. Murray and Harris are on the wings in Inside Triangle with Rohde, Minor, and Groves in the mix. The screening action isn’t yielding much and Jack Clark is having a pretty easy time of it staying with Rohde. I’ll reiterate, it’s possible Rohde is still playing through something because his straight-up foot speed and mobility do not seem like where they were and he’s very slow/doesn’t have much agility running through these actions. But here’s where it gets interesting as they recognize this, switch from Triangle to Flow, Groves pops out to the corner, Taine walks farther down, and Minor comes out to set a ball screen for Rohde. As Hall flat hedges on Rohde, Clemson’s back side defense has to sag to help with the Minor roll, and Rohde whips a strike across the court to Groves for the quick-release three over the close out.
It’s a pretty neat set because someone, I can’t tell who, got them out of something that clearly wasn’t working into a new look that forced the defense to defend something new and better played into Rohde’s strength (court-vision/passing rather than so much cutting).
This was cool mostly because they showed all three offensive looks in this one possession, which I haven’t caught them doing before, and it finished with some very much improved composure from Blake Buchanan in the lane. At the beginning of the play they’re giving a Side look with Buchanan and Groves at either elbow and it looking like McKneely is going to cut through baseline to the near side, he calls out three-man, though, and they move to the Inside Triangle. Back screens for Groves and McKneely from Buchanan prior to a return curl screen for McKneely. None of the screens really work, with Clemson narrowing and getting over the screen each time without even having to switch. So, when the ball goes to Buchanan up top, he passes down to Beekman and now they’re in Flow with him running to set a ball screen on the bottom side of that unbalanced court. He sets screens two different ways and then rolls to the hoop where he takes the pass from Beekman but a sagging defender initially disrupts his catch. This is the part I love. Rather than panicking, Buchanan gathers himself, gets into a rhythm with his pivot foot, and calmly sinks a turnaround jumper over Hall in the lane.
This little turn around jumper is something Buchanan has made several times over the past few games and is a welcomed addition to the offense with touch that he was lacking (or confidence that he was lacking) mid-season. This was nifty offensive processing that didn’t actually yield much, but Buchanan, of all players, created something out of a stalled situation. Earlier in the year he likely would have flung a fadeaway hook shot flatly at the front of the rim there. This is a big improvement and the shot had a good arc/softly dropped in there.
Saved the best for last. This was the play they set up before the half and this one was a thing of beauty, helped by Jake Groves’s crazy shooting clip. They run the clock down and set a double-staggered screen for McKneely flashing in front of Beeman and running toward the top wing. From there, Buchanan (the first screener) sets a back flare screen for Groves (the second screener) who fades to the corner and takes the pass from Beekman. Schieffelin scrambles to get back into the play but Groves calmly pump fakes the contest, steps to the side, and drills the shot.
This was a delicious play design and I feel like we should be integrating more of this kind of stuff throughout the game, not just before the half and out of inbounds – but it was really well thought out and executed. I’ll especially note Groves’s decision to step back up the three-point line after the shot fake, not forward into the midrange.
Minor In The Hall With The Rope
PJ Hall is averaging 19.9 points per game and finished this game with 19 points… but he did so on an incredibly inefficient 4-16 shooting from the floor which, honestly, was probably the biggest reason we won this game. Most of the defensive thanks, final bad foul and contributions from Blake Buchanan notwithstanding, go to Jordan Minor who was physical at the point of attack and played Hall well. Here are a few quick looks at what I mean.
Here, on a really great defensive possession, we’ve got him hedging well with Harris early on (notice we’re still running that drop coverage from the ball defender while the post defender hedges and then they swap – Harris sagged deep on Hall there – also very good help side from Groves to hold Hall for a bit before returning to his man), and then Clemson gets the ball into Hall in the post. Minor withstands Hall hooking him with his arm, holds the point of attack, and blocks him up top cleanly before eventually tracking down the ball. Notice Hall getting his arm in there after the play doing his push-the-limits thing and Minor yanking the ball away. Hall was complaining about this after the fact but, if you ask me, he was the one initiating that sequence and Minor simply held strong.
All-in-all that clip above is one of the better full defensive possessions I’ve seen from Minor this year and is great to see him physically holding his own not just with the body but also being able to block a player like Hall’s shot on the release.
Here (notice again, Big 3 defense), I love how physical Minor is with Hall on the lower body. He doesn’t get pushed toward the basket as Hall likes to do, he uses his lower body leverage and arms (which he keeps close to his body so as not to extend and get called for a pushing foul) to keep Hall off balance and moving away from the hoop. Hall settles for the fadeaway and misses.
And here, crucially, was probably his biggest defensive stop of the game with us up 4 with 36 seconds left in the game. Hall is really getting away with lowering that shoulder but Minor is a load and even though he’s getting pushed back a little, he’s able to maintain contact with the body and get an obtrusive contest on the shot, which Dunn cleans up on the glass.
Huge play.
These were just a couple of examples and Hall did get his, play better in the second half, and get to the free throw line often toward the end, but his general inefficiency and struggles from the floor were huge for our ability to force scoreless possessions and Minor being able to bang with him in the post one-on-one and cause that was absolutely immense. I look forward to seeing him go against Bacot and Filipowski now, as I always thought we’d need to live in the world of double-teams when playing both and now, I’m not so sure. At least we have the option to mix up coverages.
Closing The Game
Okay, this is the last topic I definitely wanted to get to and I find it to be an incredibly interesting one both from a tactics perspective and a fandom perspective. You can learn a lot about what kind of fan you are by how you approach critical discussion after things that go well. Do you prefer to just live in the positive vibes of victory? Do you bristle at other people thinking/talking about what could have been better? Do you find it interesting to talk about what went well and what didn’t? Do you go the other way and lament what, incorrectly attributed in my opinion, “should” have been a loss?
If you read this site with regularity you probably, like me, fall into that third category as the thinking about the strategy of the game and what would be best is enjoyable. I’ll tell you what, though, I’m sure CTB and his staff are doing the same. They aren’t just happy for a big win with nothing to learn from it, they’re thinking about the situation and how they’d change things, if at all, next time around. It’s not about placing blame – I don’t think there’s any “blame” to be placed or that the decisions were necessarily “wrong.” Harris could have just hit his foul shots and none of this would have been relevant and, either way, we still won! But it is a good thought exercise to examine what happened and what the best path forward would be.
Let’s set the situation up first. Jordan Minor fouled PJ Hall on a three-point attempt and he hit all three, bringing Clemson within 1 point with 7.5 seconds to go. Jake Groves had just missed the front end of a one-and-one to give them that opportunity despite having shot well all game from the field. Our first thought was to have Dante Harris inbound with McKneely, Beekman, Groves, and Taine Murray on the floor to receive the pass. This is what happened, below. Murray breaks deep, McKneely cuts near, trailed by his man and shaded by the inbound defender who has his back to Harris, Groves breaks toward Harris, quasi-open but being held by the defender, Harris has to call time out before Beekman even breaks to the ball.
Now, it was a good time out by Harris. It appears to me, by the fact the Beekman didn’t really break to the ball until Harris was calling time out, that we did not want to get him the ball, instead looking to get the ball to McKneely first and Groves secondarily. I do disagree with this philosophy quite a bit. Beekman has not always been good at end-of-game free-throws this season, so that’s probably part of the thinking, but he’s still your most clutch and experienced player in these situations. Other than McKneely, there’s not a player on the team I’d still want to take free throws ahead of Beekman here, despite percentages indicating that Groves is better from the stripe by .8%. So, designing the play for McKneely and Groves rather than Beekman I think is a flaw both in the target but ALSO because McKneely and Groves are two of your worst targets at actually getting open. Also, Groves just missed the front end of a one-and-one so I’d much rather have tried Beekman here even everything else aside. The other thing I don’t really like about this play is that it’s too methodical and slow developing. It’s trying to get McKneely open first, then Groves, then maybe Beekman if there was enough time, which there wasn’t. Ideally in these situations, you’d want multiple options coming open at once to put more strain on the Clemson defense. Beekman should have rolled and presented himself much earlier rather than waiting to see if Groves got the ball and McKneely just kind of gave up on getting open until the VERY end once he was covered. I do think Harris could have probably gotten the ball to Groves with a good pass, and he could have sprinted the baseline to make a continuation pass to him in the corner, but generally speaking I wouldn’t really put this play on Dante – more the design as well as the intended targets.
From there, with no timeouts remaining, we went to this look, below. This time, McKneely is inbounding with Beekman and Harris working to get open and Taine and Groves clearing out deep. Clemson shades Beekman who I didn’t think made a very aggressive effort to get the ball and broke his route toward the help defender, and Harris was able to get open to receive the ball.
Now, I like this play even less than the play above. It’s easy to see the logic – you just ran two of your slower players as options to get the ball so now you’re going to lean on two of your quicker players to get open. Dante Harris was under a 60% FT shooter on the season (now 50% exactly) BUT is a 76% FT shooter for his career on much higher volume at Georgetown. If you can use his quickness to get the ball in his hands, he should make that first free throw about 3/4ths of the time, in theory. The problem that I have with this is several fold:
For one, Harris had only played 6-minutes in the game and wasn’t in the flow of the game. To come in pretty cold and knock down a pressure shot is a big ask.
Secondly, he just really hasn’t been shooting very well both on the year and recently. He’d shot 53% from the free throw line this year on only 15 attempts and 5 of those makes came in the very first game of the season and he’s been shooting 25% from the floor since returning from his ankle injury. Confidence nor accuracy form the jumper have been there. When I saw that he was no longer inbounding the ball, I hoped he wasn’t on the receiving end of the pass and feared he would be, and ss soon as he caught the ball, I had an intense gut feeling (as did everyone I was watching the game with) that he was going to miss the shot. That’s obviously just a gut feeling and comes with the nervousness of being a fan – it’s not scientific or anything – but it wasn’t born out of dislike of Dante or anything like that, it was born out of recent trends and what we’ve seen from his shot over the past seven games. So, the idea of having him as one of just two targets to receive the pass when the play design is just “use quickness to get open” and the team is almost certainly going to face-guard Reece… you’ve basically designed a play where he’s almost certainly shooting that shot for you.
Thirdly, by having McKneely inbound, you’re basically eliminating all opportunities for him to be the one to shoot the shots. The percentages of him taking a return pass are remote – they’re going to foul whoever catches on the catch and certainly wouldn’t leave him unguarded. He wasn’t able to get open the first time, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t get open the second time, especially if you design more actions screening for him rather than just having two guys run deep.
The result was exactly the fear – that Harris missed the first half of the one-and-one but, thankfully, we were able to stave off the last second shot attempt.
So, what to do moving forward? I think you have to do everything in your power to get either McKneely or Beekman the ball in these situations, and we never ran a play where both of them were the primary options. In fact, if Beekman is breaking off of the screen in the first play, even, rather than Groves, Harris can probably find a pass. I would inbound the ball with Rohde. He has more length than Harris and is the second-best passer on the team. I like his ability to read the defense and intuition on where to put the ball in that situation. With 7.5 seconds to go, you’re rarely going to need to make a return pass as the opposition is going to want to foul you right away if they can’t get a steal to preserve clock. Even if you do, Rohde shot 81.5% from the line at St. Thomas (is a bad 4-12 this year on few attempts, though) and played 20 minutes in this one so he was more in the flow of the game. Either way, the improved chance of getting the ball to who you want is more valuable than the limited risk he’ll have to shoot. I’d rather that risk over making Harris the primary option. I still like Beekman, McKneely, Groves, and Murray on the floor as Murray has looked very comfortable at the line recently. If the inbound defender is fronting the first man to break, send someone like Groves first who you don’t mind if they let go free but would rather be the decoy, and then break Beekman and McKneely off of each other on the other side such that you’re fine if either catch the ball.
Of course, these are just things that I would do moving forward and I think there are some lessons learned here across the board that the staff will have taken to heart. Yes, “Make your free throws,” or, “be clutch,” are true in the sense that if either Grove or Harris had done that then none of this would have been relevant. But, that’s not really a strategy. I think we need to reframe the thought process as basically HAVING to have either McKneely or Beekman take those shots and then live with the results, even if they’re misses, and then design everything around that.
Either way, to me it’s a very fun thought exercise. I think we can all agree that, aside from Clemson missing their attempt, that stretch went poorly. So… what would be some good improvements? There’s where I am, hopefully we’ll end up with a more comfortable margin in our favor tonight against Miami.
In Conclusion
I love how playing Ryan Dunn at SF maximizes the amount of time our best players are on the floor and helps us across the board, especially defensively. I hope that’s something we lean into rather than playing situationally.
While we had some struggles closing out a once convincing game, we did it! And it wasn’t just Reece putting us on our back this game, a lot of guys played key roles, especially McKneely, Dunn and Groves (and as I write that I don’t want to leave out Minor… and then I might as well just reference the Big 3 lineup again!).
The team is collectively rising to these challenges far better and that speaks to them as individual players and to CTB’s adaptations across the board.
Quick turnaround tonight against an equally short-rested Miami team. May you have as much luck finishing reading this in time as I did writing it!
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