@ Duke 3/2/2024

As a UVa basketball blog I have to admit, gentlefolk, that I’m feeling a bit discouraged at the moment. On one hand, if you were to go back to the beginning of the season and tell fans that we’d have secured a double-bye in the ACC Tournament with a chance to be the #3 seed with a win over Georgia Tech, only finishing behind UNC and Duke, I think most of us would have been pleased with that given the youth on this roster.

So, that’s some valuable perspective. On the other hand, our perspective does evolve over time with what we’ve seen. Yes, the wide-margin and way we’ve lost at times has been painful, this game being a great example. We’ve lost by 20 points or more 5 different times this season now, and by double-digits in every single defeat. Meanwhile, we are 10-0 in games decided by fewer than 10 points; literally closing out every single opportunity in a close game we’ve encountered. It’s a remarkable record in close games, especially considering this team’s free throw shooting woes, but having been able to seal the deal on all of them (sometimes despite ourselves like against Wake or at Clemson) deserves recognition. That type of variance is hard to sustain, though, which is why we rate so poorly in predictive models; but it is also WHY we’re still very much in play to make the NCAA Tournament. Winning games does still matter, and we’ve done enough of that to still be alive.

I don’t really care to go through the, “how we got here” exercise with regard to roster construction right now. I wrote about that some prior to the season and I’m sure I’ll review after the season. I’m also given to understand that there is the potential that the way we review this upcoming offseason could be significantly different than the previous few. We’ll see if that’s true in the not-too-distant future.

What I do care about, right now, is maximizing our play to the absolute best of our ability to close this season so that we do make the NCAA Tournament and play the best that we possibly can while we’re there. So, what is discouraging is seeing us continue to fall back into the similar patterns and strategies that have not yielded our best basketball this season while being unwilling to shake things up in any large-scale kind of way. Against a team like Duke playing like they were, it almost certainly would not have changed the outcome of the game… but it might have made us more competitive and could have helped to quash the damaging narrative about our team (especially the offense), impacting the perceptions around our resume. And, at the very least, it could improve confidence (inside and outside of the team) moving forward for this important stretch of games.

We returned to, and rode with for far too long, several strategies in this one that have proven to punish us throughout the season. From our high ball screen defense, to who we utilized as our help defenders, to how and when we deployed our offenses, to how we utilized our bench, despite being in the danger zone early. All were reflective of not having permanently updated our portfolio on what’s actually been bad for us, vs. keys to our success, vs. encouraging signs/options for us this season. Basically, we keep doubling-down on things that have, at least at times, gone very poorly for us this year, even when they’re going very poorly in-game. Honestly, that’s the most discouraging thing to me throughout all of this; much more than how individual players have played, because players and rosters churn now more than ever in college basketball. But, if we don’t end up with a roster in any given season that can do all of the things we typically like to do in the way we like to do them, we need to be able to adapt what we’re doing (and how we’re viewing our roster) more. This is a talented team; its strengths just don’t really best fit the mold of how we historically like to play, compounded by the fact that teams have gotten a lot better at attacking how we like to play on both sides of the ball. The answer is evolution and adjustment, not simply just tightening up execution.

Candidly, I was also discouraged after having listened to the Coach’s Corner interview with John Freeman. I could probably do a whole piece on how CTB frames things with the media and how that normally foreshadows his preferences about the team and why that interview worried me, BUT since that’s conjecture and we have tangible stuff to look at right now, I’ll keep it to what we’ve explicitly seen on the hardwood. Shall we jump in?

Game Start

We started the game in our Big 3-5 lineup with Dunn, Groves, and Minor at the 3-5… and we got away from it so early! Andrew Rohde checked in for Jake Groves at the 16:20 mark with the game at 11-4 and immediately turned the ball over, and we didn’t go back to our starters again. We did play them with Buchanan with the group instead of Minor late in the first half but by then the game was already well out of striking range. CTB said in the Coach’s Corner that we went to that starting lineup for a little more shooting which, fair enough, Groves is a better shooter than Rohde and can get his shot off over more players, but it’s also one of our better defensive lineups. It didn’t start out great, going down 11-4, but a lot of that was also that neither Minor nor Buchanan held up well against Filipowski. Given how well Dunn played against him last year (and we’ll talk about that later), switching that matchup, putting Dunn on Filipowski, Minor or Mitchell, and Groves on (likely McCain) was definitely worth a look, especially if we had been more intentional about some of our offensive looks out of it.

Let’s take a look at the first basket of the game. We start off right out of the gate running the roll and replace action that I highlighted in our win over B.C. The problem is, and I called out in that game, that set is limited in effectiveness without three shooters on the floor in addition to the ball screener and the ball handler. With Dunn on the floor at the wing, Mark Mitchell (#25) is able to aggressively camp the lane under the hoop to cut off any pass to Minor’s roll, which you see him do here. Interestingly, we’ll look at a few sets later where this set was STILL somehow effective despite having Dunn at the wing and then, during another point, our having a better lineup to run the set and going away from it. Either way, we switch out of the set into Sides after it’s initially successfully defended, the ball eventually gets to McKneely on a curl screen, who passes it out to Groves, who drops it back to Beekman and sets a screen for him. Now, Duke is in a conundrum here. One of the 6’2″ Jeremy Roach (#3) and the 6’3″ Jared McCain (#0, who was primarily assigned to guard him) is going to have to cover the 6’9″ Jake Groves. McCain gets back to him, Groves gets the ball in the mid-post, and simply elevates over him and makes the jump shot.

This was a mismatch from square one. Duke put the longer Tyrese Proctor (6’5″) (#5) on McKneely to bother his shooting. We should have mercilessly looked to get the ball to Groves on his man in the post or mid-post, and punished the size mismatch until either Duke had to switch assignments or go bigger. Instead, we ran our offense as usual, Groves took one more solitary shot after this (which was a missed three), before being subbed out less than four minutes into the game for Andrew Rohde, ostensibly to shift Dunn down to Mitchell who scored 5 of their first 11 points.

This is probably one of the most consistent flaws we’ve had offensively all season. When we have mismatches, we need to target them and attack them repeatedly and force our opponents to react. Instead, we more often than not run our base sets with our base execution and try to funnel shots to the players we always do, no matter what the opponent is doing. We’ll see it later when Buchanan gets Roach switched onto him in the post and we don’t get him the ball. This HAS to be a coaching point that CTB should be hammering with our guys. We have a 6’3″ player guarding our 6’9″ SF. Post him up! Shoot over him just like this! Be intentional.

Gah, I’m fired up today! Especially when I see people talk about how we just don’t have a talented enough roster, which I disagree with, or talk about next season like there’s nothing left to be done for this team and like CTB doesn’t have any control. We’re too opponent agnostic and too stubborn about running our stuff the way we like to. If an opponent has a weakness, you’ve GOT to go after it.

Okay, this next one was us running Sides after initially showing Flow. Dunn played most of this play at the point before eventually getting the ball to Beekman on the top wing. Mitchell drops aggressively to gain depth in the lane with the goal of eliminating any drives Beekman might attempt after the ball screen action. Rather than hang out at the point, Dunn freelances and cuts right down the lane, taking the lob at the rim for the dunk.

He did this a couple of times this game, cutting to the hoop as a counter to Mitchell sagging, which was effective. I’d liked to have seen us do it more, along with forcing the Groves action. We also just missed on a pass where Minor was open on a ball screen going to the rim (Beekman threw it too high he couldn’t get there for the oop).

There was some potential here with some tinkering instead of being so quick to go away. Move Dunn to Filipowski, Minor to Mitchell, Groves to McCain. Make them play through McCain with a long contest and Dunn and Minor on the back end rather than Filipowski or Mitchell as frequently and milk your mismatch on offense. There was a framework here.

Even later, when we had Buchanan with this group instead of Minor but the game had already been blown open, here’s a nifty cut from Dunn to punish a Mitchell cheat with the Inside Triangle, aided by a crafty screen by Buchanan.

You can see Mitchell playing so deep that all Buchanan has to do is drift a little bit into the recovery angle for Dunn to be able to capitalize on the dunk.

This would have been another option early if you were unhappy defensively, pulling Buchanan on for Minor, rather than getting away from Groves so early. We know that Buchanan struggled with Filipowski as well, but that was with far less lengthy and athletic help, and he could have also been a good Mitchell counter while playing Dunn on Filipowski.

It wasn’t perfect. Buchanan still struggled on Filipowski and we didn’t run with the adjustment of playing Dunn on Filipowski until the second half, but here’s one look that defense with Buchanan at the five flanked by Groves AND Dunn rather than a traditional 3-guard lineup.

Good length, rotations, and a contested long three resulting in a shot clock violation. There was definitely some potential here with some tinkering on how we routed the offense and how we slotted the defensive matchups. But, to be clear, Dunn guarding Filipowski wasn’t a radical concept – we both tried it to start the second half of the game AND we saw it work very effectively last season. Given how much success he was having in this one (which I realize I haven’t shown yet, but will highlight in just a second), you’d think we’d have gone to it before we were down by 25.

Guarding Filipowski

I’ve been talking about it, but Kyle Filipowski (#30) ate us up in this game to the tune of 21 points on 9-14 shooting including a three-pointer. Most of his damage came against one of our two Centers, or when we were overly aggressive with our hard hedge, and 15 points game in the first half before we tried putting Ryan Dunn on him.

This is Duke’s second bucket of the game and it’s Filipowski in transition just backing Minor in to the hoop. He actually misses the first shot but, rather than boxing out, Minor turns and ball watches with the rebound coming right back to Filipowski.

This was a mismatch from the jump, especially in hedging situations which we’ll talk about later. Filipowski got 4 early points against Minor within the first four minutes of the game as Duke took an 11-4 lead, but Buchanan also wasn’t the answer; he actually fared worse.

For the next 6 minutes, Filipowski piled on another 7 points on plays like this, where he withstood the double team and then methodically backed Buchanan into the paint:

Or on plays like this in transition where he uses his mobility to get a quality turn around jumper in the lane.

Sandwiched in between that was a three-pointer where Buchanan got too deep in his transition recovery and just lost track of him outside.

We pulled Buchanan from here and put Minor back in, only for Duke to go right to the high ball screen and for us to high hedge all the way out by their logo (which is tiny!). resulting in the easy dunk for Filipowski around the rim.

I’m going to revisit this play in a second so, more to come here.

But, Filipowski had 15 combined points against Minor and Buchanan in the first half as Duke shot their halftime lead up to 40-18. Meanwhile, in the second half, when we started Dunn on him, we got this where Ryan sticks with him from the perimeter like glue and blocks him TWICE successively, forcing the jump ball:

Compare that directly to the plays above where he would just score on these over our Centers (or get the offensive rebound and THEN score). Why did it take being down by over 20 to go to this? The concept of Dunn being effective on Filipowski wasn’t a foreign one (supported by the fact that we did eventually go to it). Simply recall last year’s matchup:

How familiar does that look? Again, it wouldn’t have made the difference in the W/L record, but when you’re getting cooked by the guy all throughout the first half, this is a change that you need to go to earlier. You have the information that it’s effective and you’re seeing that your other current options aren’t.

We’ve been far too slow to make in-game adjustments to the game plan this year; mostly waiting until halftime, if at all, and by then it’s often too late. This is doubling DJ Burns at the three-point line or hard hedging Pitt’s high ball screen for the entire game. You have a plan coming in and stick with it to a fault even when there is lots of supporting evidence that it’s not working. It’s like that Mike Tyson quote about everybody having a plan until they get punched in the mouth. We had a plan, got punched in the mouth, and rather than adapting, just went down to the mat.

Speaking of reluctance to change the hard hedge…

Hard Hedging

Alright, I’m going to revisit this first clip I showed above and give it a little more attention prior to looking at a few others. We once again fell for the over-playing the high ball screen trap that we repeatedly fell for against Pitt. This has become a vulnerability that teams are intentionally going to and we haven’t displayed a great track record of not biting. Firstly, we’re down 14 points and have Dante Harris playing with Reece Beekman, which is our worst duo pairing on the entire team, so that’s problematic out of the gate, and we’re supporting them with Andrew Rohde at the SF. This is the same trio that struggled against B.C. in the second half before we went to our Spacing lineup; so we do not appear to have gathered the takeaway that it’s not a great grouping to pair together, especially given the crucial juncture of this one. Dunn and Minor round out the group and, Minor having come in for Buchanan likely prompts Duke to go back to the high ball screen. At the 5 second mark into the clip, Filipowski sets a ball screen on Harris who is guarding Roach. Minor hard hedges all the way out until his foot is on the Duke logo! Look at that logo. It’s so small! Dante is back in decent guarding position almost immediately, barely having glanced off of Filipowski before he slipped… so why are we sending Minor so far away from the hoop? This is an adjustment, to get away from this) that we should have made by now, especially with our less athletic 3s playing help on the back end (either Rohde or Murray, in this case Rohde). Minor could have easily just flattened out here, stayed even with Filipowski, stayed near the three-point line lightly shading the driving angle. Duke very smartly passes to Dunn’s man on the wing to occupy him from being help defense, and Minor can’t recover all of that distance to get back, and Rohde is not effective as the last line of defense. Filipowski gets a very easy dunk.

This is just one of those unnecessary pain points that we’re putting on ourselves because it’s “what we do” and how we run the system rather than adapting, especially when this kind of personnel is out there. If Blake Buchanan is on the floor instead of Minor and Jake Groves is on the back end rather than Rohde, then this gets punished a little less – but it’s STILL not necessary that far from the hoop and, unless we’re playing an attack-style defense with a bunch of athletes cross-positionally, it’s hurting us way more than it’s helping.

This wasn’t a one-off. Here’s another example of us going to it LATE in the shot clock against Ryan Young (#15) no less. This time we’ve got McKneely back instead of Harris and Taine Murray on the floor instead of Rohde with Minor and Dunn. We defend this possession really well throughout while Duke is running their offense closer to the three-point line. Mitchell gets the ball at the point with Dunn on him, iMac gets over a flare screen and then back again with Minor sagging off of Young, and Minor shows flat on a ball screen and recovers well to Young. Great defense. Then, with 7 seconds left on the shot clock and Duke having generated no advantage, Roach calls for a high ball screen from Young. He doesn’t get there until under 5 seconds. There’s not much time and they’re not in a threatening position! Minor could just call this out to Beekman, he could have his head on a swivel and get under it, and they could likely force a contested shot here. Instead, Minor hedges hard on the Young screen, chases Roach all the way to the wing as Beekman attempts to recover, and Roach finds Young under the hoop who makes a bucket with less than a second on the shot clock, even with Dunn on help side.

This took the margin of the game to 20(!) but was especially disheartening because it spoiled a great defensive possession and was so unnecessary. It’s a simple adjustment; don’t hard hedge so far away from the hoop! We’re bailing them out.

Just in case you, dear reader, are thinking maybe this is a Jordan Minor issue, here’s Groves showing so hard so far from the hoop and Taine Murray stopping the progress of the initial roller but Mitchell getting the dunk on the back end as Dunn tries to help as well…

And here’s even Ryan Dunn struggling to get back into the play after getting pulled so far away and McKneely equally not being able to hold up as the last line of defense against the 7-footer…

If you want to say that this is an athleticism/talent issue because we don’t have the mobility in our frontcourt or across our backcourt to properly execute the system… well, I would probably not agree with you because Blake Buchanan and Ryan Dunn are both incredibly mobile and both have been involved in varying aspects of these plays throughout the season and in this game. BUT, if I were to accept that premise, it’s STILL a coaching issue because that would mean that we’re continuing to run something that doesn’t align with our roster talent.

If the argument is that CTB is sticking with it to teach these guys how to run it, that’s STILL a coaching issue because this is the second-to-last game of the regular season and we still have everything to play for. You don’t repeatedly stick with a tactical decision that is ineffective in big games this year for the purpose of being better at it next year (and, for what it’s worth, I don’t think that’s what CTB is trying to do nor does he coach that way because, if he did, he’d utilize his bench players differently).

There’s really no argument for doing this with the lineups we’re running that holds water. It’s not theory, we have the outcomes and they’ve been consistent all season. In case you’d still like more focus or evidence on how this has gone poorly for us, I wrote an entire piece on it if you’d like more examples.

Offensive Struggles

Okay, I’m going to close this article by doing a dive into our offense and the different challenges and approaches that we took in this game. Again, I’ve seen a lot of commentary that this team just isn’t offensively talented, doesn’t have enough shooting, doesn’t have enough creators, or is too limited by the system. There is some truth to that which, I’ve talked about the offensive struggles recently. But, there’s also truth in that the WAY we’re playing offense and how we’re leveraging our lineups is often limiting our efficacy. For example, we’ve been unwilling to play through role players as primary offensive options when the situation dictates; instead preferring to run our offenses as they’re designed to execute, primarily featuring our strongest players. I started talking about this briefly earlier with our starters and how playing through mismatches (in that case, Groves) would help us. Groves is on the floor primarily for his shooting, and CTB has confirmed as much, but we typically utilize him as the conversion point to take advantage of an opportunity created by Beekman. For example, pick and pop from a screen and shoot a three, cut to the basket within Inside Triangle, catch a pass in the corner after running a roll and replace and knock down the shot, etc. What we don’t do is, for example, notice that he has a 6’3″ player guarding him, put him on the block and clear out three times in a row to see what comes of it.

It’s that mentality that’s lacking from both our players and the instruction they’re getting right now; most everything goes through the silos of our best offensive players (Beekman and trying to get looks to McKneely even if they’re very contested midrange ones), which is generally a sound strategy to follow in a vacuum, but not as an absolute, especially when teams are cheating hard off of some of your players to contain these two.

So let me give some more examples of where I think we need to approach offense differently and where that could help. Here’s a look from early in the game and we’ve already put Rohde in for Groves and Buchanan in for Minor with Beekman, McKneely and Dunn rounding out the group. We’re running Inside Triangle with Rohde, McKneely, and Buchanan in the mix and Beekman and Dunn on either wing. Mitchell is sagging hard off of Dunn, which is noticeable by how he shuts down Beekman’s ability to get to the hoop at the end and he has to take a difficult jumper over both Mitchell and Filipowski. But, focus on the early part of the play at 10 seconds into the clip. Beekman takes the ball from the wing and drives to the center of the floor, which forces a Filipowski and Jeremy Roach switch. This puts the 6’2″ Roach on the 6’11” Blake Buchanan on the block! This is a mismatch that’s exactly what the offense is designed to create. But, instead of aggressively demanding the ball and trying to make something happen, and instead of Beekman doing everything he can to get BB the ball on the much smaller player, we back the ball out and continue to run our offense which ends up in Beekman trying to shoot over Duke’s two biggest players in the midrange. Get the ball to the post!

Now, I get that Buchanan is young and not one of the offensive leaders on the team. I get that the offense isn’t designed for him to be a volume player, which is certainly correct. But you still have to take what the defense gives you and you can’t be so tunneled into just playing through your best player. It’s why face guarding McKneely and helping off of Dunn is so effective because teams are comfortable with how unwilling we are to make other players a primary focus. It’s why Memphis was sending double teams just to get the ball out of Beekman’s hands without repercussions.

It happened again later in the game and this time Beekman gives him the ball in the post with Roach on him. But, rather than backing Roach down, trying to spin off of him… generally using his size advantage, Buchanan flips a pass to a cutting Groves who takes a rushed jumper in the lane over a contest (he also could have slowed down because this was McCain).

Beekman recognized the opportunity this time but Buchanan wasn’t willing to be assertive. We need to tell him to look for and take these opportunities!

Think back to the second game of the season when Florida wasn’t sagging off of Dunn and Beekman and Blake Buchanan ran the pick and roll to great effect in the center of the floor. Buchanan had a great game and we featured him because it was working. The difference then and the reason we were comfortable doing so, is that the ball was still in Beekman’s hands as the catalyst. Buchanan was simply the conversion point to finish the play, just like Groves has been from outside.

This represents the mental shift our players and coaches need to embrace from here, IMO. Identify the mismatch, throw the ball to Buchanan, and force Roach to defend him (or them to send the double and let him pass out of that). More, see if you can get this switch again and try to go back to it! Make Duke defend Beekman’s probe into the middle of the floor differently. If Groves is being guarded by McCain, post him up, throw the ball into him, allow him to make a move and shoot over him/draw a foul. Neither are an offensive feature, but we should be willing to feature them if there are mismatches and the situation dictates. That means we have to be willing to let THEM be the primary point of creation repeatedly rather than just the conversion point.

Okay, let’s now look at the spacing issue more closely. Here’s us running Sides with our Small Ball lineup in the game with Jake Groves at the five. Ryan Young is guarding Dunn with Mitchell on Groves. After setting a screen for Beekman, Groves floats down to the block and then out again to the wing as Beekman just beats his man off of the dribble. Young sags into the lane to stop the drive and, rather than diving and taking a pass, Dunn sets a screen for Murray to fade into the corner. Beekman elevates into the runner and misses.

Now, yes, Young is helping and impacting the spacing here but something is wrong with the execution of our players. It’s not like Dunn hasn’t been aware to dive to the hoop on other plays in the past, but this is a clear one with a lot of space where if he just presented, Beekman could hit him with a bounce pass for a shot right at the rim. If the screen was by design, Beekman would have been looking to kick it out to Murray in the corner (which he still could have if he was aware), which isn’t as good as Dunn diving but is still a better shot than the one we got. This is just an execution issue that’s coming from Beekman being so hard-wired that he needs to take this shot, but the other opportunities are there. Dunn needs to be aggressively hunting moments to punish his man helping and there was a clean one here.

Here’s us running the roll and replace again with Dunn on the floor at the wing. Recall how effective it was against B.C. due to the spacing we had on the floor. Recall, McKneely starts low and pulls his man out of the lane, and Beekman and (here Minor, against B.C. it was Buchanan) run a pick and roll. Here, Beekman rejects Minor’s screen and is able to draw both defenders, Roach and Filipowski to him. The problem is, Mitchell has sagged so far into the lane off of Dunn, that Minor isn’t an option to take the return pass. Beekman has to kick out to Dunn, he passes up the shot, and the play resets.

Now, this offense is never going to be as effective with a non-shooter on the wing here, especially one so advertised as Dunn. But getting that much space and not utilizing it shouldn’t happen. This is the kind of thing where Dunn should ideally dive (sense a theme) again to punish the space. He could have looped around to trail Minor, he could have come in directly. Ideally, taking an angle that makes Mitchell’s recovery harder. Or…

He can try the three.

Now, I should be clear. While I want Dunn to take the wide open three like this from time to time without hesitation in hopes that his man will defend him more closely, I’m also not trying to sell this as reliable offense. BUT, surprisingly, this set was still pretty successful even with him out there and there’s potentially some room to adapt.

For example, here Beekman waits out Mitchell returning a little bit to Dunn which, not coincidentally, was after he just hit that three above. He gets the ball to Minor who draws both Roach and Filipowski around the rim, and is able to find Beekman back in the corner for the jumper that would ideally be three.

Notice how Mitchell still sags there but doesn’t commit to it as hard and isn’t able to stop the pass to Minor this time before recovering. Also notice how Dunn does dive once Minor has the ball, and he’s open as well as the kick out to Beekman.

Duke actually switched Mitchell onto Minor and moved Filipowski out to Dunn because they sensed that this might become a problem, and Beekman was actually just able to take the set all the way to the rack, here below:

So, yeah. Dunn is still going to have to become a larger part of our offense when he’s on the floor. This primarily means just filling the space given. If your man sags, cut to the hoop and look for a pass… almost universally. If you get the ball with that much space, either shoot or drive in and take it up. But, throughout this piece, whether it be in Sides, Inside Triangle, or Roll and Replace – we’ve seen plenty of opportunity for this. It’s the most reliable way to combat the cheating, we just need to make it a priority until our opposition stops.

Interestingly (and also perplexingly), we ran a good deal of roll and replace with Dunn in the game but when we had lineups on the floor better equipped to run the offense, we didn’t! Here’s a look with us down by 10 still pretty early in the game. CTB made the decision that we needed an offensive spark given we’d scored 4 points through 6 minutes of play. Here he put in the exact same lineup that gave B.C. fits at the end of the game last week… and, it largely worked! At least from an offensive perspective. Defensively we conceded a lot with this group. We start out running Sides here which we did on occasion with this group vs. B.C. bookending our roll and replace sets. Not getting what we want, we turn to Flow and Buchanan sets the ball screen at the three-point line. Without Dunn to sag off of, Duke stays home around the perimeter, allowing Beekman to beat Filipowski to the hoop for the reverse layup.

Now, I’m not sure why we aren’t running the roll and replace here given the spacing and us running it later. But, it’s a close variant just with a static wing and it works!

It actually continued to create effective opportunities for the chunk of time this group played together. Here we give a similar look with us starting in Sides and then evolving into Flow on a cleared out side. Beekman runs the pick and roll well with Buchanan, this is just an execution issue on his end. He’s wide-open with a path to the basket on reception but, rather than putting the ball on the ground once and going up and dunking, he rushes and shoots the little push shot right away. Again, I like that he has this shot in his repertoire and is willing to take it, but do that when there’s a Center who will block your path to the basket, not when you have a clear path for the dunk.

Still. This is good offense and a good opportunity and all this should require is someone to give Blake a little coaching around, when the path is clear, take it all the way in there. The Spacing lineup was operating as intended here.

One final look from this group, and it’s funny because this is exactly what I was talking about earlier re: giving it to Buchanan when he has a mismatch, it’s just something we went to at a time when it wasn’t as essential because there wasn’t as much clutter/help on Beekman. Still, it’s a good example of how it can be effective! We’re in Sides again and Beekman draws a switch with Filipowski with Roach staying on Buchanan. We rotate Rohde through who throws a lob entry pass into BB. Mitchell immediately has to come to double team, which allows Blake to survey the floor, find Groves on a kick out who passes it to Beekman, who blows by Mitchell on the close out for the And-1.

There was a lot of opportunity on that play. Groves could have shot it from three as that was a good look prior to the Beekman three-point play.

So, even though we weren’t running the roll and replace with the lineup in which it’s worked the best, we WERE running effective offense with this group, predicated on the spacing offered and Beekman’s creation.

The problem was, you’ll notice Duke score in these clips; even with Beekman converting the free throw, even though we were scoring, Duke was too. We were only pacing them and not closing the gap. That being said, pacing them was a significant improvement at this point! We hadn’t yet found a combination that was doing it (although we talked a bit about how the Big 3-5 could have made some adjustments that would have helped) so getting five points in short succession and creating other quality opportunities was worth exploring.

Unfortunately, Beekman turned the ball over on one such possession which led to a runout the other way.

It was at this point that we turned to Dante Harris and rested Beekman. Now, we didn’t sit Beekman long, only about a minute and a half in game minutes and, while it might have been in response to the turnover, it’s more likely this was scheduled rest as CTB doesn’t normally yank Reece for turnovers. This is about when Dante had been coming in during previous games and he played for about 4 minutes here, more of which were actually with Reece (which, as I’ve mentioned, is our very worst two-player pairing). But they went from being within striking distance around 8-12 points before him coming on to being down 29-11 when he left. It was a back-breaking stretch that basically buried the game early and sent us into that familiar spiral of not staying connected on the road.

When he came in and replaced Reece, not only did we lose Reece, but we also changed offenses from the Sides-into-Flow that had been working to Inside Triangle. Ostensibly this is because we didn’t want so much offensive burden on Dante or trust him to be as effective finishing around the rim, but this was the first offensive possession that we got after he came in:

Now that’s a mighty big change in how effective we look. The difference isn’t just Dante, it’s the switch in offense we’re running which wastes the personnel we have on the floor. We have three shooters in the game but two of them are inside the arc for the majority of this play and Dante, not a threat to shoot from outside, ends up resorting to a frazzled step-back baseline jumper that misses everything.

Then here’s the next look which actually results in two free throws for McKneely… but it’s not good offense and we’re bailed out by the foul. We’re in Inside Triangle again with Rohde, IMK, and Buchanan in the mix again and Groves and Harris on the wings, just switched with how they were last time. There’s no threat here. We’re going through the motions with our cuts and screens, no one is a danger to drive with the ball because the only player with the skillset to do so is stationary on the wing and not touching it (or a threat to shoot). The result is a bunch of milling about before McKneely hoists a long step-back two and Duke trips over themselves trying to contest it.

These were the only two points (the FTs) we scored during the entire stretch Harris was on the floor!

Now I just show these two clips because during these two free throws we inserted a wave of new subs with Beekman, Minor, and Dunn coming in for McKneely, Groves, and Buchanan. It’s predictable that grouping struggled offensively given the Beekman/Harris paring along with Dunn and Minor and we continued to see the gap widen.

I want to recap what’s happened here. We bring on our Spacing lineup to hopefully spark our offense since we weren’t scoring. It works! We start getting much better looks despite the defense still struggling at a point in the game where we’re still within striking distance of single digits. Rather than riding that out and seeing if we can build off of it, we interrupt that by bringing in Harris and changing the offensive set we’re running entirely despite keeping the same supporting cast around him.

If you’re going to bring him in with that group, why not try letting him run the offense as Reece was? Set a ball screen for him out of Flow (or run roll and replace with McKneely). See if he can use his quickness to get downhill or create for someone else. If you’re not comfortable with him running that offense then why are you bringing him on the floor and/or why aren’t you adding a more defensive supporting cast when you’re bringing him on? It’s really two issues; you’re disrupting your best offensive flow of the game in favor of your scheduled rotations at a tipping point in the game – AND you’re running the two possessions above rather than letting your backup PG try to replicate what had been working.

It begs the question – why does he need this time especially if you don’t trust him to run the offense that was working? It’s not like the defense was better either, and we didn’t rest Reece for long at all…. The end result was basically us just hamstringing our offense for four full minutes at a fragile point in the contest.

And this just goes back to us just being too prescriptive about what we think we need to do and not reacting very well to what’s happening. We want to give Reece some rest in the first half… but we break up the flow of an offensive unit that was finally doing something. We want to run the hard hedge on the high ball screen in our defense because we think that’s the best way to do it, never mind that it keeps burning us and has been a pain point throughout the season. We want to play Harris because he’s quick and we think he can be a good on-ball defender, never mind that we’re not often running offense designed for him to create off of the dribble, that he’s creating his own spacing issues with his shot, or that his defense hasn’t actually been good. We want to play Rohde 25+mpg because we think his shooting, passing, and play making is going to be essential to reaching our offensive ceiling, never mind that he’s been inconsistent offensively and that his defense off of the ball is often a problem. We’re reluctant to play Eli because he was injured, is a turnover concern, and isn’t continuous on defense, never mind that his athleticism has been explosive, that his defensive impact has been visible all season through both his splash plays and his rating, that he’s often generated a spark for the team when he has played, even in big games, and that he’s the only player outside of Reece who can regularly get to the rim (and draw fouls).

It’s like we had this dossier of information coming into the season about what we thought the model for success should be, but we’re not willing to move off of or give up on some of those entrenched ideas despite having seen repeatedly that they’re detrimental.

In Conclusion

If you feel like I’m being too critical right now, I would ask you to attempt to re-evaluate. Oftentimes buried in these kinds of discussions are the assumptions that criticism is intended as a referendum on the program as a whole or on the totality of CTB’s tenure when it’s been incredibly successful. As I’ve said many, many, many times, hiring him has been the single greatest thing that’s happened probably in all of my fandom across all sports. Absolutely within UVa sports. We’re in 3rd place in the ACC not a year removed from a regular season title and not 5 removed from a National Championship! There’s much more going well than not and there’s so much good to build off of!

Critical commentary is targeted toward opportunities and ideas for how we can be even better. It’s not a referendum on history, certainly not within this site, certainly not from me.

What it is, is a spotlight into the now. How are teams playing us now? How are we utilizing our roster now? And while, holistically, there are clearly a lot of things we’re doing right to be in the position we’re in (and I’ve highlighted many if not most of these throughout the season as well), it would also be incredibly hard to objectively argue that there aren’t things that we could be doing better from a strategic standpoint. And, in the wake of losing an important game by 25 (a margin that grew to that scale in the first half alone), and, given that similar results have cropped up so frequently this season, this shouldn’t be a taboo thought. That’s when you focus most on the areas of improvement just like you focus more on the things to build upon after big wins.

Yes, 100%, it’s a two-way street and there are many execution issues that the players themselves can and need to tighten up; but I don’t see many people arguing against that concept. It’s not just execution and player development, though. If we’re going to be as successful as we can be THIS season, the coaching staff needs to really be willing to challenge their preconceptions about some of the strategic decisions they’re making.

Throughout every single game there are a countless number of decisions to make, options to innovate, to re-conceptualize, to take a more optimal line. The next opportunity starts Saturday night at 8:00pm, on Senior Night!