vs. Pittsburgh 2/13/2024

Old habits die hard or, in some cases, not at all. So it was in this game as we went back to sitting Jordan Minor for all but 8 minutes, playing without a Center for almost half the game, sitting Reece Beekman after his third foul and, most glaringly, resuming our aggressive hedge strategies from earlier in the season. 

All in perspective, it’s just one game and it doesn’t undo all of the good we’ve built up over the previous eight, not even close; and Pittsburgh played incredibly well. Still, I was more discouraged than most with this one because, in it, we reverted back to the things that weren’t working well prior to the winning streak despite evidence throughout the game that we shouldn’t be. In fact, Minor played the first four minutes of each half and didn’t return, but was the only player on the roster with a positive Box Plus/Minus at +6. Now, BP/M is notoriously flukey at times and is better evaluated over a full season rather than a single game. It’s far too coincidental over 8 minutes of play – and in breaking down the game you can see the logic behind it based on what happened on the defensive end and HOW we were playing – but we didn’t have to play that way. It also stands to reason that when we were defending so poorly and having such trouble securing the glass again (out rebounded 35-25 again after having made big progress in this area) that it’s probably worth going back to a big part of why we’d turned things around.

I’ve seen a lot of chatter since the game to the effect of, “well, there’s not much you can do if they’re going to hit 14 threes,” or, “the Pack Line just can’t handle it when a team has so many shooters and gets hot from deep.” And, respectfully if you’re someone reading who has said those things, nonsense. Of course if a team shoots the ball well, like Pitt did on Tuesday, they’re going to be harder to beat. Quality shooting in general is hard to defend for any defense – it’s literally changed the way the game has been played – but who you play and how you play them absolutely matters and there were certainly things within our control this game that we didn’t try/got away from that hurt us. 

For example, Miami is a spacing and perimeter focused team that averages almost 80 points per game. We held them to 38 points on the back of going big; playing Dunn at the 3, Groves at the 4, and either Minor or Buchanan at Center. Sure, Miami could have just hit more shots in that game than they did, but their shooting was impacted by our collective length and the quality of defense we were playing. N.C. State scored 76 points on us in their first contest and 53 (in Overtime) in the second. Very similarly to this Pitt team, they did it in the first game by spreading us out as much as possible (sometimes via DJ Burns but he was more deadly as a passer in that game than as a finisher), setting ball screens as far away from the basket as they could, and taking advantage of our hard hedge/finding their plethora of shooters. In the second contest we both played more Jordan Minor, but also adjusted our hedge strategy to both sink the ball defender and/or sometimes to be less aggressive on the ball-handler and to provide more support to our back-end defense on the roller and the shooters. In fact, CTB notably made comments about “simplifying some things” in this game and figuring out how best to coach this team. That appeared to go right out the window in this one. The training wheels came off and things were not simple, but they also weren’t working very well and we were struggling to string together stops all game. In addition to adding more complexity in concept, we continually opted for small (and slower) lineups while playing about as consistently aggressively on the ball screen as we have all season. We did try many different things in this game, which we’ll get into, but we kept gravitating toward the options that pulled us away from the basket and opened up our back end, and the lineup options we were willing to explore were limited (and lacked the requisite foot speed). At some point, perhaps around the time we were red hot after the half but not really making much progress because they were trading buckets with us, we should have gone back to the simplified defense.

Yep, old habits die hard, and sometimes the stubbornness of wanting to do things a certain way, even when it’s not working, prevails.

The potentially positive news is that ball screen defense is the first thing CTB mentioned when asked about the defense after the game. So, hopefully, we’ll do some extreme moderation at how we handle a similar situation down the road. But, for this piece, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. I’m going to spend this entire recap focusing on ball screen defense; illustrating the issues we faced, how we tried to combat it, what we didn’t try, and some possible (and hopeful) alternatives for those moments and the future. Yes, the offense tailed off when Beekman sat after his third foul (and was playing very well beforehand), yes, Pitt played incredibly well and hit some contested shots, but this was the issue of the game and the most pressing thing to correct moving forward. Okay… let’s do it!

Defending The Ball Screen (An Epic Saga)

Let’s first set the stage. We clearly had a variety of hedge strategies that we were ready to deploy in this one and we’re going to get into it. We did not, on the other hand, go as deep with our rotational strategies. CTB clearly wanted one of Andrew Rohde or Taine Murray on the floor most of the time (39 minutes between them), likely thinking that their offense would be necessary to keep pace in this game. He also brought both in before he first brought Groves onto the floor, but ended up playing Groves another 24 minutes. Minor (8) and Buchanan (13) played barely over half the game between them. We’re going to get into how all of this played out – but, of note, we didn’t play Dunn, Groves, and a Center together often and we, once again, didn’t play Leon Bond or Elijah Gertrude despite their collective speed and athleticism.

Let’s also talk about Pitt. They shoot the most threes in the ACC and have a lineup full of guys who can do it. Blake Hinson (#2) leads the way, taking almost 8.5 per game and shooting over 41% doing so at 6’8″. Their primary ball handlers setting up their offense were the 6’5″ Carlton Carrington (#7), and 6’3″ Jaland Lowe (#15), both freshmen (!), Their starting Center, 6’11” Federiko, Federiko (#33) initiated a lot of their offense through the pick and roll to the basket, where the 7’0″ Guillermo Diaz-Graham (#25) could serve as either a pick and pop option as a capable three-point shooter himself, or another pick and roll option. Those are the key players throughout and through whom Pitt ran most of their offense – but note that if someone is catching the ball on the perimeter, they’re probably a capable threat to knock the shot down.

One final disclaimer before folks start telling me that this is just the defensive system and there’s no flexibility. Yes, I’m aware CTB likes to hard hedge – but there’s plenty of flexibility that can be utilized within the Pack Line. How you hedge as well as hedge depth (when you opt to do it) is all variable and CTB has mixed it up quite a bit over even just the past two seasons. And the point of this is to think/talk about what could work/be better contrasted with what wasn’t.

Okay! Early on, you could tell that we had a very aggressive approach to defending the ball screen. And, just to reiterate, I don’t mind that at all as an initial thought. My general philosophy is that you can and should be willing to try lots of different strategic approaches because you don’t always know what’s going to be effective and sometimes the things you don’t expect to work do. That being said, when something clearly isn’t working, you have to get away from it and be willing to adjust. The truth is that most of our defensive strategies in this game made it unnecessarily harder for us to defend Pitt. I’m going to show one clip from the middle of the game first to exemplify that point, and then I’m going to back up and walk through the game more chronologically to try to get behind the mindset of some of the adjustments and to evaluate them within the game flow.

I thought we executed this set about as well as we could have given what we were doing, but I want to note how hard it was to do so. We’ve got Beekman on the ball handler, Carrington, with Groves at the 5 guarding Federiko, Harris, Dunn, and McKneely are on the back end. Federiko comes all the way out to the logo ostensibly to set a ball screen for Carrington on Beekman, and watch how aggressively Groves jumps him with the hedge. Meanwhile, Federiko slips the screen himself. If you pause at 4 seconds into the clip, you’ll see both Beekman and Groves near Carrington all the way out at the V Sabre with Federiko already almost to the three-point line. Just pausing right there… Carrington isn’t going to shoot from there and if he does, we welcome it (he actually pretty much does which we’ll see later… and it was a positive result for us). So why we made this our line in the sand in this game when it kept opening us up so much on the back-end is perplexing enough that I’m doing a 37 clip break down of this. Anyway, Groves continues to engage with Carrington almost at half-court at this point and Beekman does cede some ground to the three-point line. Federiko is still pretty open but Dunn is a threatening enough back line of protection and the pass is far enough that they don’t try it. Still, one has to ask, what advantage did we really create here for ourselves? Groves is out of position and now has to scramble back. We could have achieved a better result by Beekman just being aware of and going under the screen from way out there and Groves hanging out around the three-point line the whole time. As he sprints back I also have to call out, this is incredibly tiring for Groves! He’s basically doing almost a full half court sprint (and did so many times over the span of the game. This happened because he was playing the 5 and, thus, defending the ball screener more than he recently had been. It also happened because we schemed this so much more aggressively. But the consequences weren’t just the defensive openings that it created, he also didn’t have his legs in this game and a player who had increased his season average to over 50% 3pt shooting based on his recent play shot 1-4 from three in this one as a result. This was fully reminiscent of how he was playing offensively earlier in the season having to guard centers and being regularly put in the pick and roll – it wears you down when you’re under-sized and, in general, when you’re running that much! Basically, using Groves in this way hurt his efficacy in his most valuable way – his outside shot. Okay so the ball goes over to Hinson and Dunn does well to close out and McKneely shades Federiko until Groves gets back. Groves does a nice job from there of helping Dunn on Hinson’s drive and he kicks it back out to Carrington. Now Hinson sets a ball screen for Carrington but he also slips it toward the top of the key. The action happens still at about the depth of the Sabre on the V over by the home bench, and Dunn also aggressively lingers with Carrington when all he needed to do there was trail Hinson and follow him. This forces Beekman to switch and take Hinson, who takes the feed from Carrington and, even though that contest from Beekman is good and the shot misses, it unnecessarily gave Hinson a shot over a smaller player than he would have had just naturally. Again, there was no need for that linger from Dunn, Carrington was so far away from the basket we just unnecessarily gave them an advantage. 

Often the correct defense to an effective pick and roll offense with so many shooters is to switch defenders; but you have to make the opposing team earn it before giving them that switch unless your 1-5 are truly interchangeable defensively. Here, we just handed it to them. 

Now, all-in-all, the team defense executed all of that pretty darn well! There was a moment where Lowe was free near the high post but Dunn and Groves doubling Hinson blocked that line of sight. But we made it SO much harder on ourselves than we needed to, forced Jake Groves to cover so much floor, and gave Pitt a player 5 inches shorter than their shooter to shoot over; all unnecessarily. Having both bigs stay trailing the post player and having Beekman go under screens that far away from the bucket eliminates all of the tension on that play. Basically, to sum, it was good defense but artificial tension caused by the tactics we were using which weren’t actually creating an advantage for us. And that is a good intro, IMO, into this piece – the battle between what Pitt did to us in defending the ball screen and what we did to ourselves with our choices.

Okay, let’s back up. Here’s the first clip I’ll note from the game starting in chronological order now. No, surprisingly, we’re still not covering every ball screen possession in this game, but we’re tackling many of them. Our starting lineup with Minor on the floor and Dunn, and Rohde at the 4 and 3 respectively. Beekman is guarding Lowe who is handling the ball. Now, Federiko sets a screen on Beekman while Lowe is a good 30+ feet away from the hoop. Minor shows and then lingers on the other side, but really isn’t needed here. He should leave with Federiko as soon as he goes, in my opinion. As soon as any advantage is negated, which is was almost immediately, get back to your man. Even still, Minor is able to recover to Federiko without the ball getting to him. Lowe then works off of a ball screen with Hinson and Dunn (similar to as we saw later) jumps the ball handler while Beekman plays directly behind Hinson, jamming his roll. This isn’t bad and is similar to how they’ve been playing with the ball defender sagging back to help on the roller, the problem is they don’t switch back and Dunn lingers on Lowe. It appears that we thought it would be fine to switch with Dunn/Beekman early. The problem wasn’t so much Dunno on Lowe, it’s Beekman on Hinson. Even though Reece is a great on-ball defender, he’s giving up 5 inches and 35lbs here. Hinson works him into the lane and, unlike the three above, hits the turn around jumper on him.

Now, this is just one possession. I have no concerns with us trying a Dunn/Beekman switch as an option to play their PnR action as a philosophy to see how it goes; but there are two issues here. For one, this really wasn’t an earned switch. Dunn and Beekman are not at risk of giving up a clean look if they don’t transition this back, they proactively chose to do it, which I don’t like. Keep Dunn on Hinson as much as possible if you can so that the contest is as intrusive as possible (knowing he’ll still make some). Secondly, as we’ll see, this wasn’t a short-term experiment, we switched big-to-small many more times throughout the game, which consistently burned us and we needed to get away from it much earlier. Watching Hinson calmly elevate over Beekman here should have been a very early warning sign, especially, again, when there wasn’t anything Pitt did here to demand the switch action.

Okay, so here you start to see some of the personnel problems. Minor hedges with McKneely on this one at a reasonable distance on the wing. I’d still prefer he show and recover here knowing how Pitt was playing but this is still very early. McKneely sags as we’ve been doing, to keep the early pass from getting through to Federiko. It’s not bad. If there’s any fault it’s that Minor lingers too long out there and should start his sprint back a couple of beats sooner. But Rohde, on the back end, has dropped into the lane (as he should) to help if a pass gets to Federiko. Carrington has to load up to throw a pass all the way to his man in the corner, but Rohde just doesn’t have the dexterity or the foot speed to recover to get out there for a good contest, and they sink the three.

This would have been a good game to still have Leon Bond in the rotation, as he’d have been perfect for this back end rotational stuff but, more plausibly, this is why I’d want us leaning into our bigger lineup here. If Dunn was at the three, he can still be on Hinson, but this defender would be Groves instead of Rohde. Groves’s mobility is probably as good or close to it as Rohde’s, possibly even better at times. But, he’s much more of a threat to help defend around the basket so he wouldn’t have to commit as hard to the lane here AND his length is more intrusive for a close out on recovery. Just planting the seed now – it worked well against an even smaller/quicker Miami team who also likes to shoot… yet we were unwilling to try it out in this one. Getting back to playing Groves at the PF and Dunn good minutes at the SF is going to go a long way toward team health, regardless of scheme.

Now here’s where we start to see why CTB was short with his Minor leash again. This was right after his dunk attempt had been blocked and he sat for the rest of the half a few possessions after this play. Now, if you’re going to aggressively hedge to cut off a dribbler’s angle, this is where you’d want to do it – right near the three-point line on the screen. Similarly, you could flat hedge or Minor could drop and McKneely could play over here. Minor kind of gets caught not really doing any of these. His hedge angle isn’t intrusive and doesn’t cut off the ball handler and rather than flattening out or dropping and letting McKneely get back into the play, he extends his defense out like he’s going to play Lowe straight-up… allowing himself to get drawn all the way out near the logo (notice that Lowe backs him out here to add distance to the play, very smart for a Freshman). He also doesn’t sprint back on the recovery which, by this time, Beekman has released, and Federiko is wide-open under the hoop for the dunk.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is bad defense on Minor’s behalf. It’s the kind of thing that has CTB sit his bigs down for a bit, historically. It’s also a glimpse into why Minor wouldn’t have been playing earlier in the season vs. now. But, and this is a big but, we made adjustments to our defense to accommodate him playing for a reason! Pull him out of the game and coach him up, sure. Encourage him to take a flatter line there. Don’t have him pursuing the ball out to the logo (and if that’s your strategy, scrap it). But the takeaway can’t be that he doesn’t play for the rest of the half. It’s that simplified defensive piece. Of note, Minor had 4 points in 8 minutes and, just to reiterate, we outscored Pitt by 6 points when he was on the floor despite this defensive break down (and he didn’t have a clean second half, either). 

But, to complete the point, this is the last possession before he came out of the game for the half. McKneely still draws a foul on the floor on this play, but it’s a better possession! Federiko sets a screen on McKneely at about the same depth as above. This time, rather than getting caught so far out on the ball handler, Minor shows and recovers (this is the way I’d have liked us to play this near the hoop much more often). McKneely gets back into good defending position but gets called for the foul (either with the body or hand check I couldn’t tell) on the drive.

Now, look, the outcome still isn’t what you want out of the play, but you’ll live with Isaac McKneely defending one-on-one on the perimeter most of the time; he’s been good the majority of the season. The main victory is that you’ve taken the teeth out of the screen action so that Pitt doesn’t have the advantage they’ve been getting, and are forcing them to make a one-on-one play. They do here, but it doesn’t yield points and we’d much rather possession-after-possession of them having to make a one-on-one play against the man assigned to guard them than getting a better look out of their offensive action. Minor sat from here – but it was already an encouraging adjustment that I’d have liked to see us lean into. The takeaway during the game appeared to be that Minor couldn’t execute the defense how we wanted to – where, increasingly as we saw the game continue to unfold, I think it should have been that we needed to adjust the defense so that Minor could play more (and more so, that we needed to adjust it because it wasn’t working).

Okay, so now Buchanan is in for Minor and Buchanan is a more mobile, faster player. But this play, below, is pretty counter-intuitive all-around. The first screen Federiko sets for Carrington after the hand off is actually inside of the three-point line. Blake doesn’t hard hedge, he shows flatter despite it being much closer to the hoop. McKneely fights over top of the screen and the ball gets disrupted. So, despite having less distance to recover, we don’t hard hedge there, but then on the next screen Buchanan chases Carrington all the way back out to the logo! Now, he turns with his arms high and recovers and Dunn does a good job on the back end but that’s a head-scratching juxtaposition. Then they set yet another screen for Carrington with Federiko, Blake hard hedges, McKneely doesn’t sag so they immediately slip it to Federiko. Beekman has to step up to stop Federiko who then passes to Lowe in the corner. This is good offense. Beekman being Beekman is able to run Lowe off of the three-point line, and he shoots a much more difficult runner which Buchanan needed to rebound, but couldn’t. From here, we see two more screening actions unfold quickly. One, Carrington rejects Federiko’s ball screen, with McKneely bracing against it, Buchanan slides with Carrington before dropping to recover to Federiko. Then, Carrington passes to Hinson, takes a return pass, and McKneely gets hung up on Hinson’s screen attempting to go under, which allows him to make the three.

Now, it’s definitely possible, likely even, that there were some execution issues here. CTB mentioned this after the game so we cannot assume this is all strategy. Still, Buchanan and Dunn were less aggressive showing on screens inside the three-point line or right on the wing and then Buchanan was incredibly aggressive chasing Carrington all the way back to the logo on the deepest of the screens at the point. Dunn didn’t actually show at all, playing back off of the action and letting McKneely attempt to get under the screen on the wing (which he couldn’t). But it’s notable that the most urgency to re-route the ball handler comes at the time when he’s in the least threatening position. That being said, Buchanan being the one hedging and recovering most of the time and Beekman being in help and recover positioning ended up forcing a pretty tough shot at first that we just needed to rebound. This was one of those plays where it was clear that something about the message and the execution was out of sync.

Here is another set that highlights the lack of back end footspeed that we had on the floor, this time in the form of Taine Murray. It’s not bad defense schematically. Buchanan does a better job on this play of showing briefly and recovering more quickly to Federiko. I still don’t think we need him showing much at all the way out when Carrington’s foot is on the handle of the Sabre. McKneely could have just played under this screen and held up Federiko and then reacted to which ever direction Carrington went, which is how I’d like to see us play against a team like Pitt who are trying to set such extended screens. Still, Buchanan’s recovery is fine, but it’s Murray who has sagged in the lane who is just really slow to get out to his man when the ball whips around.

We’ve seen twice now where the defense has been okay schematically but where our rotations are just slow; at first with Rohde, now with Murray. And, again, if we were going to keep playing them like this, this is where we needed to reconsider the “who” was out there making these rotations.

This one I liked and I wish we had played more of the possessions like this one. Groves is in the game at the PF with Buchanan on the floor in one of the rare times we didn’t have Dunn in the game (which, we needed Dunn as much as he could go on the defensive side in this one). Pitt has Diaz-Graham (GDG from now on) at Center who is a threat to shoot the three where Federiko isn’t. Initially GDG sets a ball screen, again, pretty far from the hoop, and Buchanan shows. GDG flares but catches it too deep and Buchanan is able to get back into the play. Note that action, though, because his flare became a problem. They run the ball back through GDG again who hands it to Carrington, still well away from the basket. This time Beekman plays under, jamming GDG, and Blake shades the side of momentum but doesn’t go out hard. Instead, both Beekman and Buchanan play kind of behind/level with GDG. Carrington is tempted into the DEEP shot and Buchanan is still able to get a quality contest on it. 

This is what I would have loved to see us stick with more often than not from here when Pitt set these deep screens rather than so aggressively jumping out on the ball handler. Let the ball defender jam/slow the roller/flarer and keep the post defender at level. When the ball screener leaves, let the post leave with him and the on-ball defender recover from there. There was still so much space between Carrington and the hoop that, had he not shot, Beekman could have taken a good angle of recovery to him. It anyone says, “okay, but what’s the solution?” to all of this – this set along with playing bigger/more athletic players in general is a great start and what I’d want us to lean into moving forward.

Okay, this next one’s in transition and here Buchanan just gets pulled too far away from his man before he decides to recover. GDG sets the screen near the three-point line, it’s a pretty good flat hedge by Buchanan. Once he reaches out with his left hand and touches Leggett (#5), though, he could release him at that point and recover to GDG. Murray had a fine angle from there and had gotten around the screen/had depth. Instead, Buchanan continues to ride with him for about five more steps, getting pulled far too far away from GDG to recover in time to contest the three effectively.

Everything about this is fine except for the decision on when to recover. We needed our guys to make getting back to the big a bigger priority. We’re about 10 Cuts in so far. Think about how many times the initial ball handler has been the issue for us in terms of being the one scoring the bucket. It’s been one time – Carrington taking the three when IMK went under Hinsons’s screen. Every other time the issue has been an open shot or a mismatch created on the back end due to our rotations. We needed to start being much more prompt about leaving the ball handler alone after hedging. Less far out, just a much quicker and less extended show; letting the on-ball defender get back into position to defend.

Here, this defensive set was better although we did unnecessarily switch men which is a bit of a harbinger of things to come. The first ball screen with IMK and Buchanan shows very quickly and recovers. Love it. But then, on the back screen, McKneely gets buried under the GDG screen, and plays behind him, switching with Buchanan. Thankfully for us, Leggett decides to pull up and shoot over Buchanan rather than passing the ball inside to GDG. There was time and opportunity here after Buchanan showed the second time for McKneely to step around the screen on the top side and for BB to drop back.

Loved the beginning of this play, not sure why they let the switch happen as it wasn’t necessary – but the outcome was still good.

But this next clip better highlights the issue with the clip above. Dunn does a good job staying attached to Hinson as they run a play hoping to get him a corner three. Harris does a good job staying close to Lowe as they run him over a screen and Harris gets over it without Groves having to give up much defensive positioning (and he, in turn, does a good job of staying at the three-point line level with his man so he can easily drop back into the lane. To about the 10-11 second mark we’ve defended this play really well – but then Pitt goes back to their action and draws Harris out to the logo and runs a Hinson screen at him going toward the near sideline. Dunn hedges this aggressively and just stays with him – no effort to recover to Hinson. This creates a situation such that when Hinson slips Harris has to go with him and now we have an 8-inch size mismatch for no reason. All Dunn had to do here is show and retreat and Harris is still on Lowe, who he was hounding, and Dunn is still on Hinson who he just followed like a glove to the corner. I’m going to continue to be a broken record here – but this is unforced and creates a bad matchup for us. Yes, Hinson probably travels here, sometimes they won’t call the travel in turn for not calling what they think could be a foul, sometimes they just miss it; I’m not really interested in this specific call. I am interested in this opportunity being favorable for Hinson to exploit because of a switch we didn’t need to make. You can argue, “Hinson got away with a travel,” and it doesn’t change that this wasn’t good strategic defense.

I have to wonder if this next play shaped too many of our decisions moving forward or was a flashpoint to reinforce bad strategy. This is an out-and-out attack on the ball handler after a screen at severe distance. GDG just showed and then immediately ran toward the hoop, but Harris is pressuring the ball handler intensely and gets his hands on the ball such that Dunn lingers and attacks as well as they’re fighting for it. The ball slips out to Dunn who is there to pick it up and go the other way for an easy bucket. 

It’s a nice play by Harris with quick hands, and it’s a good reaction by Dunn to see what’s happening and to stay opportunistically. This is why, generally, we like pressuring the ball and CTB has gravitated toward quick guards who heat up the ball handler. So, having Dante Harris hound the ball handler when he’s in is a fine strategy (it’s one we pretty much always use). But the takeaway shouldn’t be, jump the ball handler at mid court with the post defender when they set a ball screen. That’s actually what Houston often does, but they do so by always having three incredible athletes on their backline of defense to rotate accordingly. Also, that’s not even what caused this situation. Dunn reading the play and reacting to Harris getting his hands on the ball was great – but Dunn being there came after Harris had already started making the play. So, I do not know for sure, but I would expect that this along with some success we had shortly after, made us lean into this strategy even more when those plays were the anomalies and the strategy was hurting us overall – we’ll tackle this often over the remainder.

Here’s one shortly thereafter and there are elements about this that I really like – but we’re still not on the same page in our execution. At about 7 seconds the hedge from Groves on Leggett I absolutely love although I do wonder if it happened that way because he was late getting to the play initially. Either way, this was great to see with him hedging and meeting the ball handler with disruptive body contact that was initiated by Leggett. Groves takes a flat line and rides him basically down the three-point line rather than out to the logo or all the way to the sideline. Then he turns, finds GDG, and recovers while McKneely gets back into the play. Great! But then Leggett swings the ball back to Lowe, who runs off of a screen from Hinson and Dunn goes from straight up switching last time we saw this to not showing at all on the other side of the screen. If he had played this just like Groves just did on the other side it would have been perfect. Instead, Harris gets completely hung on the perimeter and is in full-on chase mode. Fortunately, Groves steps up to help and Lowe misses the runner – but he was wide open.

Basically, the exact same action happening on either side of the court but Groves and Dunn handling it entirely differently leads me to conclude one of two things. Either something was unclear about how they were defending this and/or they were confused on the execution, OR, they had a bunch of different ways they could choose to defend it and were either communicating that real-time or were reading each other. If it’s the former, that’s something we can and should clean up after watching this on tape (all of these screens, above, were actually close enough in). If it’s the latter, then I think we’re back to the “simplifying” discussion and need to err more on the side of “simple” again.

Okay, so this next play I’m going to show, below, they start being EVEN MORE aggressive far from the hoop. This might have been spurned on by the Harris play and Dunn break out layup, two clips earlier, or it might have been something they intended to get to – but it worked here the first time we used it in full-force (which might have been a curse in disguise). Beekman pressures and disrupts Carrington’s dribble and Federiko runs up to set a ball screen WAY out near half court. Groves shows very hard here considering how both he and Beekman are almost near half court and Carrington tries to slip a quick pass to the rolling Federiko – which would have been a great idea (and was later), honestly. But Beekman’s quick hands deflect the ball and Dunn swoops in for a break the other way. We don’t get direct points on this one because Dunn gets a flat tire on take off, but we retain the ball.

Now we already know that our defensive strategy was erring toward aggression from the clips all through the game, but at this point I think we’re still finding our way/deciding exactly what we want to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Harris steal and then this play gave CTB the impression that we could disrupt Pitt through MORE pressure on the ball handler, not less.

Now, I think we’ve had a body of work enough such that we’ve already seen we’re getting punished more the farther away from the hoop we’re extending our defense. I also think that splash plays like the Harris play and this one aren’t very reliable, especially when the opposition starts to expect it. What followed later in this one did not go well; but this is the best supposition I can come up with as to why we kept doing to some of the strategies that we did later on in spite of the results. Hopefully, it’ll be something spotted out and scrapped moving forward (I say as there are more clips of what “it” is coming).

Okay, now we see a direct result of leaning into the above, below. On the Federiko screen on Beekman out, again, by the logo, Groves is itching to go. He’s waiting on it and jumps/cuts off Carrington from taking the ball horizontally down the court. This happens out by the three-point line! Beekman sags back a bit, but still has to wait on Carrington eventually and now Groves has to spring all the way from the half court line back to Federiko who is at the free throw line when he starts. By the time Carrington gets his vision, Groves has literally just started to run back. This puts Dante Harris in the position to have to protect the basket from a player a foot taller than he is while also recovering to his man in the corner. Carrington drives the ball toward the three-point line holding Harris on Federiko while Groves attempts to get back into the play and then fires the ball in the corner. Yes, Dante attempts and misses the steal, but his recovery wasn’t going to get there either, and Pitt hits the open shot.

That play was us just making Pitt’s lives easier while simultaneously making Jake Groves run wind sprints in the middle of a game. The cost was obviously an easier and open shot attempt that was created by what we were doing, but what was the potential benefit? There’s not much. Carrington was too far away from the hoop to do anything when Groves was out there anyway and Beekman dropped off so it’s not like they were even trapping him out there. It was a low-reward, high-risk strategy!

Responding to the play above, we tried Dunn on Federiko and Groves on Hinson next. Now, clearly, this is the kind of rotation from Dunn that CTB wants – showing hard and then recovering. Dunn does it lightning fast and then Harris is able to stay with his man on the drive back. It’s better defense, for sure, but even still Dunn is showing and retreating, not lingering like Groves was on the play before. Pitt, on the other hand, just gets the ball to Hinson and lets him isolate Groves. 

Now, that’s one you just tip your hat. Of all of the makes from Pitt so far, this is one where I’d be comfortable living with it on repeat; a step-back three over a decent contest. But, I still don’t trust Groves to be able to defend Hinson one-on-one if Pitt continues to isolate him because he’ll start taking the ball to the hoop, as well. We switched away from this quickly. But I still have to reiterate; why? Why are we SO adamant on having someone show on Carrington 35-feet from the basket that we have to switch Ryan Dunn off of Hinson to see if we can do it better and give up the isolation bucket? It feels like the answer is more “because this is how we do it in this system” than that there’s a practical answer that needed to be addressed in this game. Sure, in an ideal state with a defense full of players athletic enough to make these rotations and the speed to get back from the half-court faster, it can keep the defense from running as cleanly, can frustrate them, can slow down their ability to run their offense, can cause the occasional bad pass/turnover throughout the chaos. But, in a world where we aren’t playing those kinds of guys and the offense is carving you up MORE easily because you insist on doing it, then sticking with it is incredibly counter-productive; at least in terms of winning that game. We could have simply left our post defender at the three-point line all game and let the ball defender go over/under the screens by the logo and retreat back into position all game and just that adjustment would have, at a minimum, eliminated most of the openings I’ve shown above. 

Okay – now here we get into an interesting stretch. After the two plays above, we had a stretch toward the end of the first half where I thought we’d figured things out. The defense was MUCH better, and the shots Pitt made were more difficult. This one, watch all of the ball screen defenses. Either we’re straight going under or very briefly hedging and then recovering. It ends with Lowe trying to finish an extended running layup over Rohde’s length and Groves boxing out well/securing the board.

Of course, it helps that Pitt kept this possession compact around the three-point line and didn’t extend us; they’re running a different offense on all of these clips that’s not relying on the high ball screen, but you can still compare our defense here with what we were doing earlier, like on the clip Harris got caught trailing his man and Dunn didn’t show. The problem is, where I’d thought we’d figured something out, it seems more likely that we were just reacting to this change in their offense rather than we’d temporarily switched defensive strategy around this – especially given how we defended later in the game.

Here’s the next one and, notice again, much more disciplined on the hedging. Show and recover. A good one from Groves early, Dunn stays home on Hinson at the end but is there if Leggett goes that way. Instead, he rejects and goes baseline, and Pitt gets speed up in general from passing from the ground to the Federiko travel.

Then, here, first Leggett rejects the ball screen but Rohde defends it well, then he uses it but Groves hard hedges; but they’re much closer to the hoop here so it’s an easier recovery and McKneely is there on the back end. Dunn then plays very good one-on-one defense on Hinson (compare to Groves earlier which wasn’t bad) and blocks the shot.

And then, they did make this one, but it’s MUCH better defense throughout and Groves just falls asleep on the close out on GDG at the very end. The first screen Groves hedges very well to deter the drive while Beekman chases and McKneely sags to help on the potential pass back to GDG. Groves does really well to disengage as soon as he notices the drive is not still moving toward the basket, and McKneely presses up on GDG well. Lowe backs the ball back out and Hinson goes to set another ball screen, this time farther out as has been giving us issues. Rather than showing hard and then having to recover to Hinson, Dunn only briefly shows and then continues on to stick with Hinson. Perfect! All of this boils down to Lowe having to try to take Beekman on-on-one off of the dribble. How rarely have we seen this during these clips? Groves’s mistake here is just that he allows too much depth on his help (and really doesn’t need to help Reece this much anyway) and doesn’t get back to the 7-footer quickly enough from range.

All that is, above, is a teachable moment. It’s not a schematic issue as we’ve seen so often above, and it’s not a physical limitation issue on Groves’s part (it’s an alertness one). You tell Groves to stay out closer to his man there and let Reece defend. The rest of the possession is exactly what you want emulated from here: Show quickly and move on that ball screen far out, barely worry about it, and show and recover like Groves did when we get in closer to the basket. Be ready on close outs if they go one-on-one. If we had played the rest of the game like this set, it would have been a much more competitive contest.

Second Half (That Was Only Half?!?!?)

As we head into the second half it could be helpful to also keep the game situation in mind. We’d clawed back in no small part due to that string of good defensive possessions above, to briefly take the lead, and then that GDG shot and the Beekman turnover/flagrant foul ended the half. We’ve been playing good offense to keep pace with Pitt to this point in the game and that carried over into the second half where we were scorching to start it out. Unfortunately, we were unable to string together the stops needed to get any distance from them during this stretch, so we’ll look at what happened.

At the start of the half, we put the starting lineup back in, which included Minor. Pitt started the half with this possession, which was a rough start. As Federiko sets the screen for McKneely and Carrington takes the pass for Lowe, he then walks up like he’s going to set another back screen, but he doesn’t, he just dives. Now, I don’t know what Minor was told to do, but he should have backed out and gone with Federiko here. Instead, he shows, timidly, toward Carrington’s right like the ball screen actually happened. He even lingers and lunges toward the ball before turning to recover. Again, this unforced. McKneely didn’t need his help here to stay in front of Carrington as Federiko didn’t even set the screen! Meanwhile, Dunn has to tag a diving Federiko and, as he does, he gets hung up on him. This frees Hinson for the pass from Carrington and to knock down the three.

Now, observing this game you might find yourself annoyed that Hinson made this/got the roll, and that’s fair, sure. But it’s a quality look from him that was caused entirely by our big’s decision to show on the other side of a ball screen that didn’t even take place. Is this a Minor issue? Yes, certainly in the sense that he was slow to change direction and recover. Was the decision for him to show here a mistake based on his instruction? That part is less clear and I’d be willing to venture it wasn’t given how the rest of the game played out. I do want to clearly say, whatever the direction, strategically I think it’s clearly a mistake and he should have just stayed on Federiko throughout this one and that’s what we should instruct our guys to do moving forward.

Okay, so Pitt is setting zoom screen actions now, which was a cool wrinkle to start the half (and I think Capel absolutely crushed it in this game). This is where a man sprints off of an off-ball screen directly at a player with the ball for a hand-off. The action can be tricky to defend and THIS is where we’d want Minor to be more aggressive about his hedge angle as opposed to earlier where no threat was imminent. Ideally, you’d want Minor taking this hedge angle like Groves did toward the end of the first half, but instead we play over/under with Beekman chasing and Minor attempting to flatten. He loses a good angle on the ball handler who then finds Federiko on the roll. Now. Here’s where we see the Ryan Dunn factor at play and he’s able to get back into the play and block the shot/secure the rebound. But you see Rohde there with two feet touching the paint and he doesn’t feel like a threat to either cut off that pass or recover to his man in the corner on time. Odd, actually, that he chose to run to the corner and leave Federiko entirely.

Minor struggling to hedge intrusively aside, Dunn’s crazy coverage on the back end and Rohde’s lack of presence highlights once again the benefits of size and athleticism on the back end if you’re going to consistently put your guys into rotation like this. If it’s Groves instead of Rohde there (even when it’s not, it’s just not as effective), the play is to help Dunn contest Federiko (and let IMK deal with the rotations on any kick outs). Also, one more plug for Leon Bond as an alternative when Groves isn’t in to pair with Dunn and a Center. Watching these clips as well as those in the first half, specifically his uncertainty around the angle to take, you get why Minor only played the 3 minutes in the second half following the 5 in the first. But, as I’ve said, I’d have wished we’d have spent as much time tinkering with the players sharing the floor around him and him not showing as hard as we did some of our other adjustments. His ability to help on the glass likely would have come up on some clips we’ll see later in those circumstances. I also wouldn’t have minded trying Dunn on the ball screener with Minor using his strength on Hinson (at least see what it looked like once like we tried with Groves – he had a good contest that forced Hinson to miss earlier in the contest).

Okay, so the game is now tied. Minor just hit a reverse layup prior to heading to the bench. Blake is back in. We see a few glimpses of trouble on this possession despite Pitt not capitalizing. For one, Buchanan is hedging hard away from the basket again and, even though he recovers well, that indicates we aren’t sticking with our more tightened philosophy late in the first half. Secondly, Dunn and Beekman miscommunicate on the screen and both leave Hinson, Dunn apparently thinking they were switching and Beekman thinking they were hedging and recovering. Hinson missed a wide-open look as a result. Thirdly, Pitt batted at and almost kept the defensive rebound alive, something they were successful at doing later in the game.

So, basically, two key concepts that we should have, IMO, scrapped at this point (hedging so hard so far away and switching big-to-small), are still very much in play. 

For this next one, here’s a line I wrote to myself directly from my notes that I jot down when I’m clipping something, “WHY ARE WE SWITCHING HERE???” Seriously, though. This is like how FSU plays. Dunn proactively switches onto Carrington when Hinson sets a screen on McKneely when it would have been very easy to drop back to Hinson. Instead, he just stays and Pitt smartly gives space and posts McKneely with Hinson. As a result, now we have to send a Buchanan double team. Sure, it’s not executed well and, also, he probably travelled again… but it’s the need to do it directly as a result of something we proactively chose to do (that’s undesirable) that’s the big issue here.

As soon as Carrington takes one retreat dribble, Dunn could have bounced back to Hinson and McKneely could have resumed defense on Carrington, the positioning was good!

Here, Buchanan played drop defense on the first screen and McKneely did a good job getting over the top. Then, on the way back, he shows on the other side of the Federiko screen but Pitt slips it quickly. IMK doesn’t drop/tag here, but Rohde drops into the lane to help on his dive. As Blake recovers, though, Rohde is late leaving to get back out to the corner and, once again, that close out speed is lacking.

This next one is what got Beekman in foul trouble and, ultimately, changed the momentum of the game as he sat. But watch the beginning of this play. GDG sets a glancing ball screen on Beekman out by the logo and Groves is separated from him, showing low. Pause at two seconds in – he could legit just play back here and it would be fine, the action isn’t happening close enough to worry about it yet and Beekman is having no issues getting over the top. Once Beekman gets over, GDG just turns and sets it the other way, and now Groves is scrambling because he has to beat Leggett in a foot race to back to the other side. While he gets there, this is oddly a time where he doesn’t actually do anything to stop the drive, going back to GDG while Beekman is on Leggett’s hip. 

Of course, both Dunn and McKneely could have helped better here, and that’s a soft foul call/good make but, again, the opportunity was available because Groves got himself so far out of good defending position early and it was a scramble from there. It’s notable just how many of our defensive issues could have been improved by simply reducing the distance we were willing to hedge and/or even picking up the ball handler farther back. I know, that’s not how we like to play, but if you’re getting beaten on that same high ball screen over and over and over, you’ve got to adjust!

Here, this is a pretty tough lineup in general with neither Beekman nor Dunn on the floor. Blake is the only player who is giving us much range or coverage playing in the position that he is. Pitt just sets the high ball screen and GDG flares, they see we’re playing it aggressively still, regroup, set it again closer in, and GDG just slips the screen and is wide open on the back end.

That one’s pretty rough and, again, speaks to the concepts of – the post defender showing hard before the post player even sets a quality screen and – back side defenders being too plastered to shooters/not being mobile enough to give a proper buffer to help and also recover. 

Then they just play off of basically the same thing but exploit our reaction. They slip GDG into the middle, we collapse from everywhere. Look at the start difference between this play below and the one above. No one reacts to the slip above, four players react to it below. Touch pass out for the open three.

This is Pitt really carving us up and you tip the hat to them, sure, but it’s also us not having great answers for a simple slipped screen on a hedge. We’re either all reacting or not reacting and this group is slow with its rotations.

But we continued to double down on the aggression out high. Here Blake hard hedges on Carrington and rides him out to the logo again but, this time, they just switch proactively, probably because they were getting burned on the slip screen. So now you have Buchanan on Carrington and McKneely on the 7-foot GDG by choice. Groves makes a really aware play to switch with McKneely so that he takes GDG and McKneely is, at least, on Hinson. We actually are able to force a well-contested three on this play because Carrington doesn’t attempt to take Buchanan off of the bounce, but GDG not having Blake on him inside causes the foul on us fighting for the rebound.

The most frustrating part of all of this, to me, is that we felt so out of solutions that we were willing to proactively switch our (almost) 7-footer onto their PG and our 6’4″ shooting guard onto their 7-footer before we were willing to try just sagging our defense off of the ball handler until he got closer to the three-point line (or bringing in our more athletic bench players). That’s one pretty extreme defensive line vs. a much simpler one that keeps the right players guarding the right players.

Okay, now we’ve got Beekman and Dunn back in along with Buchanan, Taine, and now Rohde is in for iMac. This one’s better. On the initial screen action Rohde plays under the screens and gets to the spot and Blake stays with GDG. They set a ball screen and Blake does aggressively hedge it, but Taine’s in much better helping position on the back end (along with both Beekman and Dunn being on the floor and in good spots), but Rohde does a much better job of sagging back on GDG and then switching back to his man. This is how we’d been defending these actions a lot – it’s like we had been abandoning the on-ball defender sag or, when we hadn’t, we’d carried that into a switch. So, this was good. They attempt to set another ball screen on Beekman this time, but slip it and Blake does a much better job of just showing and going with GDG on the slip; Beekman stays in front of his man. This is what I’m talking about re: make sure the post player is actually setting the screen before over-reacting to the ball handler. Now, this could have also been a make by GDG because Blake sags too much on the drive and Beekman didn’t really need the help, but he recovers and still gets a decent contest there. The shot misses, and you see on the back end 6’7″ Zack Austin (#55) crashing in on the baseline. Taine attempts to box him out and they have a hard collision, but Zack is able to keep the rebound alive and almost save it.

All-in-all, this was a MUCH better defensive possession than we’d been seeing. Rohde did a much better job on the ball than he’d been doing off the ball and Buchanan was making much better decisions on the ball screen and reacting better to GDG. It’s STILL an example, to me, of how beneficial it could have been in a game like this to have Groves there instead of Murray to help on the glass – but this one worked out and if we’d played our actions more like this throughout (and at the end of the first half), it would have been great.

But then we go right back to this:

I couldn’t believe this, watching live, having just seen the previous possession, and then watching this. Blake’s out now and Groves is defending GDG. Pitt’s initiating this almost at half court. Groves not only shows hard, he shows on the complete wrong side of the ball screen, and Lowe just uses it for a clean run into the lane to make the runner. At this point we have a huge sample size (which is also kind of the point of me showing SO many of these) of this not working. We just had a good defensive set where we didn’t do this… and we just hand them an easy runner in the lane because we’re still trying to force the issue near half court!

And then, we saw that last play above, despite the plays prior and continued to do it! Groves over extends out by the logo again here, leaving GDG free to pump fake Beekman and drive the lane.

This is a great shot by Hinson, below, but the whole defensive break down/rotations are just caused by Groves jumping the ball handler with IMK and, eventually, getting switched onto him.

And then here we proactively switch Groves onto Carrington again, he gets isolated… it works out, which is great, but we got pretty fortunate not to have a foul called here and you can’t have your primary plan being Jake Groves defending the PG starting 30 feet from the bucket.

Which is reinforced here; where they try the exact same thing, this time on Lowe, and it goes as you’d expect:

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In Conclusion

Alright… that’s 35! Thirty-five pick and roll defense clips showing our tactics throughout the game. We tried a lot of different things this game but, frustratingly, we were unwilling to stick with the things that had the most success and were unwilling to re-evaluate our core strategy of trying to pressure the ball once it got inside half-court both with the on-ball defender and the post defender. We were also unwilling to try playing big, as we had been doing successfully during the winning streak, were unwilling to keep a Center on the floor at all times, and were unwilling to look to our superior athletes on the bench (Bond, Gertrude) to try to shake things up on the defensive end. 

It’s one thing to have a set of concepts/strategy that you bring into the game thinking will be effective. But it was very apparent that proactively switching guard-to-post and aggressively showing/jumping the ball handler out by the logo were two concepts that we had that were making it much EASIER for Pitt to score points. That, combined with our regular use of smaller, under-athletic rotational players on the back end… I thought it was a startling display of being willing to go down with the ship.

Teams are absolutely going to test us like this if they have the personnel to do so. Wake will probably be the first. We need to resist the urge to pick up old habits through adversity and return to the core of what turned the season around.

Play A Center: Sure, there will be situational times where you don’t do this; end of game needing shooters (come back or free throws), foul trouble, you might go to small ball briefly to shake things up, etc. But you shouldn’t abandon your shift to almost always having a Center, especially in a close game or one you’re losing. Getting killed on the glass, not having the collective size to defend well, not getting as much in the paint, wearing down Groves and making him less effective offensively. Minor did NOT have a good game defending the ball screen given what we wanted to do and how we wanted to play it – but we need to keep coaching him up and, candidly, NO ONE was doing a great job defending it when we were executing it so far away from the basket because the combination of the philosophy and the personnel we were using to execute it wasn’t effective against how Pitt was playing.

Play Dunn at SF Often: Much like the points above, the size of these lineups gives other teams fits, but this is also your path to getting Groves on the floor more in the most effective way. I firmly believe that these lineups would have been a big deal if we’d used them in extended stretches this game.

Simplify Your Hedge Defense Again: If this was a foray into complexity, either scale it back again or be willing to do so in-game if it’s not working. Scrap switching guard-to-big except in dire circumstances. 

Be Willing To Sag Post Defender: I don’t think it’s a problem (and it’s a core part of CTB’s philosophy so it’s incredibly unlikely to change) to have the on-ball defender pressure the ball handler inside of half-court… but there is no need to send our post defender out that far on a ball screen. It might be a preference and working it into games is going to happen – but if we’re consistently getting burned by it, we’ve got to be willing to keep our post player back; at the very least playing behind the ball screener and maybe even staying back by the three-point line until the action takes place closer in. Let the on-ball guard just slip under and pick up again until the ball handler gets into realistic shooting range. 

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But here’s the other thing that we hadn’t been doing the previous winning streak that’s worth mentioning if we ARE adamant on playing defense like we did today:

Reconsider Your Bench: Both Leon Bond and Elijah Gertrude ARE the kind of players you can get away with running more of an attack style near half court and either pressuring the ball or helping on back-end rotations. If that’s the direction that you want to go, they should be part of the plan, because that kind of play is ideally suited for either or both of them whereas players like Rohde and Murray (and Harris even, not from a quickness perspective but from a length and sight-lines perspective) really struggle in so much space defensively. The most realistic response to all of this is likely just catering better to what our most desired rotations do well again (including Minor), but this is more food for thought if the defensive philosophy is so important.

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The takeaway from this game shouldn’t be, “Pitt played really well, oh well!” Pitt DID play really well, but our defensive strategy did a lot to make their lives easier and we did not adjust meaningfully/effectively throughout the entire contest (other than that last stretch of the first half). I know this is going to have been a focus in preparation for Wake; I just hope that the findings are more aligned with the above rather than trying to revert back to old habits. Because that’s really what this game was on the whole – a reversion to old habits from when we were playing our worst basketball this season. And that’s why I was a little more concerned about this one than most; because old habits do die so hard!

Fortunately, the path back, IMO, just relies on our willingness to do/stick with the things we already did once to course correct! Big game this weekend; all eyes on JPJ!