Losing by 34 points on the road to your in-state rivals stings. Flatly, it’s a terrible look. The offense was bad. The defense was bad. The energy was bad. But, when that sting fades, you have to ask yourself the question, “what happened?” It’s a hard question to answer when everyone plays that badly because there’s no single answer; it was a snowball of a lot of things that got moving too fast downhill. In fact, it was so bad, that I don’t think anything good comes of film review (and I’m not going to do that to us today). But there are some ideas that are a good place to start, and I do think that we’ve been trending over the past four games away from what we were doing when we were playing our best basketball of the season.
Okay, please indulge me because we’re going to take a detour here and the conclusion regarding the actual V.T. game and what I think the takeaway moving forward should be will come at the end. Also, I’m going to be working off of some premises for the purposes of discussion without relitigating all of the historical points. I’ve written about most of these points in the past, though, if you want to see my thought process there.
We have a size issue, everyone.
Not in that we don’t have enough of it on the roster; in that we’re unwilling to commit to playing it through adversity and that we’re much more likely to view its success through a situational lens – as a backup option – rather than considering it just to be one of our best (or at least very important) options. Really, it’s not a SIZE issue in that it’s not like CTB has any real preference AGAINST playing bigger/more athletic players; you can go down a laundry list of those he has over the years. It’s just that the combination of skills he values and what he wants most often on the court is more commonly found in our smaller lineups and so size/length cross-positionally is often sacrificed. Really ever since the UMBC loss, time and time again, we’ve erred toward playing more technically skilled players while scaling down in size/athleticism across really all positions. It’s how CTB likes to play. He won a national championship with it by leaning into Kihei for extra ball handling and quickness on the perimeter which, often and at very key times, that team absolutely needed. We don’t beat Oregon or Auburn without Kihei Clark and possibly, we don’t come back on Gardner-Webb, either.
But, on the flip side of that coin, we don’t beat Texas Tech (didn’t force OT or handily get on top of them therein) and win the championship until we leaned into Braxton Key. His size, athleticism, ability to guard up or down complimenting Hunter and Diakite defensively while helping to clear the glass and finish around the rim were all valuable options that we needed to complete the run. Both players offered completely different traits and skills that we needed at different moments to supplement our core players.
And that’s the thing – we clearly learned the lesson and placed emphasis on the one side of the coin, but not on the other.
For example, in 2022, sometimes (often) it was just plain better to have Kody Stattmann on the floor at the SF position! VERY clearly, he wasn’t as good of an individual player as any of Reece Beekman, Kihei Clark, or Armaan Franklin. In fact, I’ll probably have some people balk at this argument because his individual play was rough at times and he had a limited talent ceiling individually. But I use him as an example to try to make a more extreme point about lineup fit/need. With Jayden Gardner being a 6’6″ PF, and with the collective size of that group 1-3 (Clark, Beekman, Franklin) as it was, in many of our matchups we were often just better with him at the three.
His 6’7″ frame could help on the glass some, he was adequate, not great at knocking down an open three (34%), and he also allowed Franklin to scale up to his more natural SG position, improving our team size there. The problem was, we rarely did that. As you can see from the sample-sizes above, Franklin at the 2 and Stattmann at the 3 was criminally under-attempted, certainly given the contrast with its performance and with that of our two starting lineups. When he played SF it was rarely alongside Franklin, but much more commonly with both of the PGs. We would even end up using him as a 4 to spell Gardner (which actually was fine when paired with Shedrick) more than playing him at SF with Franklin on the floor – or even as a small ball 4 with Gardner playing the Center! This, (along with having the 6’10” Igor Milicic riding the bench) was a consistent pain point all of that season – we were just plain undersized everywhere but Center with the two lineups that got the vast majority of our possessions. And because the ways to improve that, despite both passing the team eyeball test and being metrically favorable, often relied on us having to take one of our best individual players between Beekman, Clark, Franklin and/or Gardner off of the floor; CTB just wasn’t willing to do that for any extended period.
The situation last year was much more visible and impactful because that team itself was more talented top-to-bottom. After a terrible first half against a UNC team that was playing without either of their starting bigs (Nance and Bacot), CTB once again went small, playing Ben Vander Plas at Center around four guards, Reece Beekman, Kihei Clark, Armaan Franklin, and Isaac McKneely, and benching both Jayden Gardner and Kadin Shedrick for the entirety of the half (basically). The results were explosively good at first, and lead to a decision from there to play smaller; working Ryan Dunn into the rotation more but also starting BVP at the 5 alongside Gardner at the 4 (which isn’t what had worked against UNC), and incorporating the four guards around BVP as well. The problem was that this wasn’t treated as a situational adjustment or, as Cookie Monster would say, a “sometimes food,” it was implemented as the starting lineup (Gardner and BVP) and the focal point of the strategy (many iterations around not playing one of our two Centers). This caused mixed results; starting out working quite well before teams adjusted, but culminating in a four-game stretch where we barely beat cellar-dwellers Louisville and Notre Dame before losing handily to Boston College and North Carolina. In each of these games the issues were apparent; we were getting killed inside while struggling to generate the same level of offense we had earlier during the stretch. BVP, who at first thrived in this environment and was at his best vs. Duke, struggled mightily down the stretch as the injury to his back flared up and, ostensibly, he was increasingly playing worn down from banging with opposing Centers all season. And yet, it wasn’t until he suffered a season-ending hand injury that CTB’s figurative hand was forced. He had to return to playing Kadin Shedrick, Francisco Caffaro (and Ryan Dunn for that matter), more minutes. We rode the injection of size to improved play until the ACC Tournament Championship game where the absence of BVP’s ability as a shooting threat stretch-forward against Duke’s size (along with Clark being seemingly pretty worn down from a lot of minutes over a long season) eventually caught up with us as it did in the NCAA Tournament.
The moral of that story wasn’t that playing big all season would have been correct nor that turning to our smaller lineups was incorrect; it’s that we leaned SO heavily in favor of playing small to a fault that it burned us for a while. That we should have mixed it into our overall strategy, making it one possible option among many to which we could turn. We were playing our worst basketball of the season until we were FORCED to get away from it through injury; we didn’t choose to mix it up (at least not significantly) due to the decreased quality in our play.
The irony is that we had a similarly effective moment earlier in the season at Michigan. With Reece Beekman playing hobbled and staring down Michigan’s superior size, we played a crucial stretch in the second half with ALL of Gardner, BVP, and Shedrick on the floor. The unit defended well with its size, provided unique mismatches (think, BVP backing down Michigan’s 3 in the post and scoring/passing well out of the attention that it brought), and ultimately played a big role in us winning that game. And… we never went back to it. This despite the fact that there were many matchups where it could have helped to address some of the size woes we were self-inflicting. So, why lean SO much into a smaller lineup combination that had its moments and benefits and NEVER go back to a bigger lineup combination that had its moments and benefits? The strength of having a versatile roster and system is that you can choose between those options depending on what the situation calls for. The fact of the matter is, we had Armaan Franklin, a 6’4″ SG by trade, playing the PF MUCH more than we had Ryan Dunn, Jayden Gardner, or BVP playing the SF last year. And, while sometimes that was a neat wrinkle that confused opponents and created offensive spurts, it wasn’t a sustainable model, most situations didn’t call for it, and there were quite a few times where we kept looking to those kinds of lineups for answers when they weren’t working but refused to try to remedy those situations in-game by playing bigger.
Now, I can already hear the skeptics. That team won 11 of 12 prior to the B.C. game and tied for the ACC Regular Season champions, while making the ACC Championship game and securing a 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament. All true. But it took the wheels falling off over four consecutive games (including two that we won narrowly against bad teams) for us to even start to course correct a little (we started working Caffaro in a little at that point) – and the full-on inability to use one of our players due to injury to return to some of our other important options. Does a strong midseason winning streak followed by a tougher patch of 4 games (two of which we won) sound familiar? Do we have quality options/strategies that we’re currently under-utilizing? Will we be willing to self-correct? I hope so and that’s the whole point of this article, but I fear not.
The biggest difference between last season and this season is that last season we struck gold in the middle of the season and then unflinchingly stuck with it even when it wasn’t the best option. This year, we found something during our winning streak that worked well and yet we keep pulling away from it; determined that the opposite is the best path forward despite what the results are telling us. It’s all still consistent in archetype; that we keep skewing away from playing our size and more toward the comfort of smaller more ball-handling (and ostensibly “skilled”) lineups.
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Earlier this season we struggled terribly on the road; struggling to both combat size and score with Jake Groves as the starting Center and Ryan Dunn as the starting PF. Blake Buchanan was the only true Center option on the roster because Jordan Minor wasn’t in the rotation, and he was dealing with Freshman growing pains; struggling to contribute meaningfully as we continued to lose games, and by a wide margin, on the road. The obvious change to our fortunes and our quality of play (especially when travelling) was when we inserted Jordan Minor into our starting lineup. We did so during the first Wake Forest game after he showed flashes against N.C. State, and we built on his success from there. He played really well in the first V.T. game, defending the post, running a million pick and rolls out of Sides, and starting our winning streak. His presence gave us two true Center options to defend the 5, to improve our scoring around the rim, to improve our rebounding and second chance points… to set better screens throughout the offense, and took the pressure off of Buchanan to perform as the only Center; improving his game. Furthermore, it allowed Jake Groves to play his natural position of PF, placing less responsibility on him defensively so he wasn’t having to bang with opposing Centers all game or to hedge/recover on ball screens so frequently. This gave him fresher legs for his shot and matched him up against less length on the offensive end. As a result, he went on an offensive tear, averaging 14ppg on 70%(!) shooting from three over the four-game stretch that I would consider our best basketball of the season, @Louisville, vs. N.D., @Clemson, vs. Miami.
That stretch also coincided with a shift in lineup strategy. With the initial emergence of Minor and Buchanan playing around 40 minutes combined at the 5, Groves had initially seen his minutes decrease from the V.T. game through the Louisville game, down to 12.5 minutes per game. This was a result of us relying on a Center and simultaneously needing to play Ryan Dunn for his defense and intangibles. What started in that Louisville game and carried through to the Miami game (Dunn was in foul trouble during the FSU game so the minutes shifted) was that he saw increased time at the PF while playing alongside Dunn at the SF and also alongside a Center. This BIG lineup 3-5 of Dunn, Groves, and Minor/Buchanan did two main things – for one, with a true Center banging on the inside and Dunn being much more of a threat to crash the glass than shoot, opposing teams were most commonly playing their SF on Groves. This allowed him an easier time shooting over these defenders from outside with less intrusive contests, AND allowed him some more success getting inside with his size or even keeping things alive on the offensive glass. It’s nice to have a 6’9″ player as your SF! On the flip side, the collective size made our defense better. Our Center could take, well… the Center, Groves could take the PF or whoever the slower wing was, and Dunn had options. Either we could put him on the better scoring option between the SF or the PF or we could play him more off the ball and let him roam. Theoretically, we could also play him on the SG and let McKneely take the SF if that player’s size/scoring wasn’t as much of a threat. Altogether, having both Dunn and Groves there to help secure the defensive glass, help the Center in the post, and just around to contest shots was a big deal. It was used regularly through what I thought made up our four best games (Louisville-Miami) and was a focal lineup in what I thought was our single best game of the season, the 60-38 point drubbing of a Miami team that averaged 80ppg.
So, over that stretch of our best games (and I would also include the first half and early part of the second against N.C. State along with these), we leaned much more heavily into our size. Really it was just swapping Groves for any of Harris, Rohde, or Murray for the practical SF position, which was an upgrade, and it gave us more defensive options (although that came a little later in the Louisville game). But, even going back to the start of our winning streak, we were also doing some other things differently. Andrew Rohde’s playing time was the biggest change, as he saw a season low stretch starting with a dip to 12 minutes against N.C. State and staying considerably lower than his season average throughout (a brief spike against Louisville where everything was coming easy only to stay at 20 mins or lower throughout the remainder of the stretch) until the FSU when he spiked back up to 32 minutes (which we’ll talk about momentarily). Dante Harris, working his way back from injury early on, has played a little more over this recent stretch. I wouldn’t call the contrast in his time stark over the two stretches, though. He played 20 minutes vs. N.C. State (and was on the floor for the long stretch they closed the gap in the second half) and 24 minutes in this game against V.T., but ranged from a low of 6 against Clemson and a high of 14 against Miami otherwise. He’s primarily played as the backup to Reece, but typically also grabs a few joined minutes as well but, similarly, his minutes were more productive when he was playing alongside our bigger lineups. They presented more of a finishing threat for him to pick out on offense and they offered more rim protection behind him on defense. Playing him a little less often alongside of Reece and, when he was playing, pairing him with that BIG 3 (or with Taine) more often had a positive impact on the minutes Dante was getting. Speaking of Taine, when we weren’t playing our BIG 3-5 lineup, his minutes at the SF were also up over that stretch, averaging about 17 mpg over that same N.C. State-Miami run, and he was playing well.
The FSU game shook up that flow, however. Prior to that game, I’d called for us to turn to the BIG 3-5 lineup as our starting lineup in response to how well they’d been playing and how dominant we were during the Miami game. Instead, we went the opposite direction. Ostensibly due to FSU pressuring all game and also on the back of Ryan Dunn being in foul trouble, CTB turned heavily toward Rohde again, playing him 32 minutes (and Dunn 20) up from the 16 he’d gotten against Miami. And he played well! I wrote in my FSU review a chunk about how Rohde was effective at diffusing the pressure and, even though we were getting crushed on the whistles, he shot well from outside (2-3) and chipped in 8 total points while making it so that we really didn’t have many issues with FSU’s full court pressure. To reiterate, I’ve not been calling to dramatically slash Rohde minutes throughout the season like many. I’ve regularly called out what he brings to the table when he’s playing well, how he works as a great passer/connector of the offense, how he serves as a secondary ball handler much of the time and how his defense, at times, can be quite good. I have no issue with Rohde minutes when he’s playing well. For example, although everyone was playing well against Louisville, he played 28 minutes during that game which was squarely in our stretch of high-quality play. He defended and shot well (enough) in that game and added 3 steals along with his 7 points and 4 assists on 50% three-point shooting. Just like against FSU, when he’s playing well and knocking down shots, by all means, have him be a big part of the rotation! But he was not nearly as effective across many other games, in several we’d even start off the game struggling only to make a significant push when we pulled him out and went with the BIG 3-5 lineup or brought Taine in.
The problem is that CTB REALLY wants Rohde to thrive. And that’s not a bad thing generally; every coach wants their players to thrive, but he’s been leaning heavily into Rohde minutes most of the season regardless of whether he was on his game or not, and regularly at the expense of other lineups; like the BIG 3-5, like more Murray, like being willing to try Gertrude, etc. During our run of excellent play, Rohde’s minutes were down because they were scaling more accurately with how playable he was in any game. But, buoyed by the quality FSU game, CTB seemed to lean back into the more gung-ho approach to his time, scaling up to 26 minutes against Pitt and 27 mins vs. Wake prior to the 16 against Virginia Tech (which, that reduction in time was due to CTB going to the bench after the game was already over on the scoreboard). And, not only was he NOT playing as well across those games (his off-ball defense/rotations against Pitt, especially, were bad and he was a collective 2-12 from the field; at times passing up open looks from outside), but his time came at the cost of playing those lineups that were thriving (yes, foul trouble and CTB’s views on how our hedge defense was going also played a role in that as well, but the point being, regardless of the reason we got there, the lineups changed).
In fact, against Pitt we never saw the Big 3-5 lineup despite them carving up our ball screen defense all game. Against Wake, we only saw it for a short stretch at the beginning of the second half, and that was one of our most effective stretches of the game (the group with Minor taking the margin from 22-21 Wake to 31-26 UVa)! Against VT we didn’t see it despite Lynn Kidd and Robbie Beran destroying us on the inside for 27 combined points on 9-9 shooting from the floor! Instead, across all of those games we were MUCH more likely to be playing small again, with Groves at the 5 and either Rohde or Harris on the floor with two other guards, than we were to be playing big again with Dunn at the 3 (not to mention Taine’s minutes dropped by about 7 minutes per contest)!
Now, would we have beaten Virginia Tech if we had reverted to playing our BIG 3-5 lineup and Taine Murray more? Almost certainly not. Everyone was playing horribly and I have a feeling that the team was under the weather while being on short rest. But that’s not really the point. The point is that we didn’t even try it or think of it as a valuable option while we were in the middle of a 9-minute scoring drought and getting completely carved up on the inside. The game went from 14-16 Tech to 16-36 Tech and we never once went to it despite it being a very logical response to what was happening in the game. We went to Dante Harris early, we played him with Beekman for a while (something that’s consistently throughout the season been our worst two-man player combo), we played all of Minor, Buchanan, Groves, and Dunn… but we never played three of them together. And, really, that lineup matches up so well with Tech defensively! Tech shoots well, runs good sets, is a skilled team, but they aren’t overly big and they aren’t overly quick. Put Minor or Buchanan on Kidd, Groves on Beran, then let Dunn take Collins and roam and/or take Cattoor if he’s hot? That’s a great defensive recipe vs. Tech. More length and size just to crash the offensive glass and try to get some scrappy points since we were missing so many shots? Yes, please! And both Dante Harris at the 1 and Andrew Rohde at the 2 play some of their most effective basketball when paired with the BIG 3-5 so mixing that element up since neither Beekman nor McKneely were playing very well themselves would be fine! Taine’s even good at the 2 in that lineup and adds even more size!
Now, I do think that’s one of our best lineups and the one we should be playing frequently for all of the reasons I’ve stated. It’s better defensively because it adds collective team length/size and it’s at least as good (if not better) offensively because it unleashes Groves and allows for more second chance points/easy/scrappy buckets around the rim. BUT, the point of this piece isn’t to make any of those kinds of definitive statements like we should be starting the BIG 3-5 lineup, like we shouldn’t be playing Rohde or we shouldn’t be playing Harris. We have flexibility and we should be doing all of those things when the players are playing well and the moment calls for it. The point is that the lineup SHOULD be viewed as a big tool in our bag and one that we should be looking to use and trot out regularly throughout any/every matchup. If you’re going 9 full minutes without scoring and your defense is also playing poorly by your standards and you aren’t once trying to go big with that group that has been so effective recently, then I firmly believe that’s a sign that you’ve fallen back into the old comfort-zone habits and have gotten too far away from it strategically. You have a tool in your belt that has proven to be an effective option but you don’t use it either because you don’t view it as effective as it is, or you view the alternatives as superior – but, certainly at least in this game at Virginia Tech, the alternatives were not desirable.
And this is the reason that I’m bringing this up and going here now. Because, at least in the previous three games, while they certainly felt more tenuous and you started to see us gravitating toward earlier season trends, two of the three outcomes were still positive. In retrospect, the FSU game seems like a solid strategy in which Rohde was playing well and was the correct ingredient for what they were dishing out. The Pitt game feels like an over-correction from the FSU game, where we should have adjusted to go big to help on the defensive end but kept trying to go the opposite direction, and the Wake game we saw the lineup (with Minor at C) be successful for a short stretch of time (less effective when Buchanan came in for Minor with that group) but didn’t utilize it again after (but still won despite it).
But the VT game was not debatable.
From a little under 10 minutes to play in the first half, nothing went right. So, not viewing it as at least an option to help right the ship/course correct when things were trending that poorly is a concerning sign that we’re once again tunnel-visioning away from viable (and good) options. It’s Basile, Mutts and Pedulla (posting and driving) carving you up inside last year while your two 6’11″+ players play a total of 5 minutes all over again; perhaps not in terms of costliness, but certainly in terms of tendency and preference. And while, again, this isn’t really a discussion about one specific lineup, it’s still the best current example of something that has been quite good when we’ve used it; it’s about not becoming so determined to force things that aren’t working and being unwilling to turn to things that have shown promise.
This would be like if we roasted UNC in the second half in Charlottesville last year with our small ball lineup, continued to use it against FSU, VT, and Wake over the next three games (which we did), played some of our best basketball with it (which we did), but then trotted it out for just a handful of combined minutes over the next four games despite looking considerably worse and going 2-2. No. We RODE that strategy into the ground last season as a staple of our identity until we were forced out of it by circumstances outside of our control. And, again, I’m not advocating that we do that with the BIG 3-5 lineup (I’m not advocating that we do that ever!); I’m simply advocating that we continue to implement it with frequency if and until it becomes clear that it’s no longer a good weapon.
I wrote on social media at one point during the game that CTB should pretend like Rohde and Harris were not available and see what happens from there. I got some push back (as well as some praise that was misattributing my comment to be universally advocating against their PT moving forward, which it wasn’t). The point I was trying to make is that I think it’s very important, now at this inflection point of the season, that CTB be open to breaking from the habits he’s favored for the past several years and has been leaning back into recently. Last year when BVP got injured, we initially played better because it forced CTB to break the habit of overplaying small ball… but it still wasn’t a great thing in the long run because we would have benefitted from having BVP, used in balance and moderation, alongside all of our other options against Duke and in the NCAA Tournament. Rohde is an asset (as is Harris), but the team turned a corner when we leaned more into playing Jordan Minor more, finding good minutes for Dunn at the three, playing Taine Murray and, yes, leaning into more Rohde minutes when he was shooting and defending well… rather than playing him 25-32mpg no matter the situation.
Similarly, seeing Dante Harris minutes rise from the single digits/low teens to 24 against Tech continues to signal we’re thinking about going the other direction. Playing into our historical comfort zone would be the exact opposite direction if we look at team efficiency both collectively over the season and what’s been working well (or not) recently.
If anything, we should probably lean into sticking with more Taine minutes at the SF (non-Harris at SG) maybe even just as much of a priority as sticking with the BIG 3-5 lineup…
I’ve said, but it should be reiterated, this rabbit hole I’ve gone down around our lineup tendencies/preferences was prompted by lingering concerns discussed above that seemed to be confirmed by our approach on Monday – but they wouldn’t have solved all of the issues we had in that game. This isn’t a cure all. But, in reality, everything is still all in front of us starting with UNC. We can recapture our form; but I firmly believe that, in order to play the best we can as consistently as possible over the most important stretch of the season, we need to be willing to fully utilize and rely on what’s been working. ALL of our options, rather than just what we think should work, what we want to work, or what we’re comfortable with.
It’s time to re-imagine how to best leverage this roster. It’s time to be more flexible.
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