After a loss in the Play-In game of the NCAA Tournament that saw us score 42 points in a 25 point defeat, it’s time to take stock of where things stand. There are many varying opinions out there, including those who say that this shouldn’t be a referendum on the program; it’s a simple talent issue. I’m here to contest that line of reasoning. Not in the sense that having more talented players wouldn’t be helpful nor that we shouldn’t focus much of our efforts in trying to attract the best and most versatile players to the program that we can, but that that is the only issue we’re facing and that there aren’t many areas and opportunities for us to improve.
I wrote about several of these last offseason and, while I think much of it stands, I feel like I still didn’t catch everything and even undersold some of the concerns. I also feel like the fanbase, coming off of a share of the ACC regular season championship and a pretty flukey play to end the season in the NCAA tournament (the play was flukey but was the outcome?), was not ready to hear it then while now, maybe more so. The truth is that the outcome of seasons alone shouldn’t get in the way of good analysis. You can have a bad outcome but do a lot of things right to get there, and you can have good outcomes and still have a lot of opportunity to improve. The great thing about CTB that continues to be true, is that he’s set a pretty high floor and, even though I think we’re in the middle of a period in which he needs to do more soul-searching than he ever has, the program can certainly still be described as a “good” one. But that’s the thing about setting a standard; we’re not aiming for merely a good program any longer. The stretch from 2014-2019 might be unrealistic as an expectation, but being one of the better teams in the country with a ceiling that reaches those heights shouldn’t be. We’ve fallen away from that at the moment, and it’s really how we approach things from here that will determine whether we can get back into that conversation or whether we’ll continue to trend as we have recently; as either a bubble team or one that struggles to get out of the first round.
This is going to be a full-on assessment, though, so let’s first take a look back at what we did to be so successful, what those conditions were, and what changed. And what a 15 year run it’s been!
Building A Title Team
When he became the head coach of the program back in 2009, CTB brought with him a philosophy; an identity, if you will. Yes, there were the Pillars, which spoke to behavioral qualities he looked for in his players, but the tactical foundation was, and has remained, defense. Specifically, The Pack Line. Execution of this defensive system became his non-negotiable around which everything else fit. At its core, it’s a helping man-to-man style of defense that’s complex in its responsibilities and rotations. Most of the time its described as taking at least a year to master, sometimes more; and it benefits from guys repping it over-and-over, practicing together to refine it. The more athletic your roster the better, obviously, with the main principles of it being packing the lane, denying as many points in the paint as possible, and forcing other teams to beat you by shooting contested jumpers over your defense. Guards who pressure the ball handler shortly after they cross half-court and who are tasked with keeping them from touching the paint, aggressive hedging strategies from our big men to cut off the dribbler and then recover, help side defense that makes quick, anticipatory, and rangy rotations, often double-teaming the post and playing off of that on the back end, attempting to block sight lanes and get steals…. If you’ve watched our teams over the years, you’ll know that this is the back bone of what we do.
Now, with such a complicated system comes the need for reps; approximately 80% of our practice time is dedicated to defense, by first-hand accounts. It’s also a system that values continuity. The longer our guys have played the defense together, the better they can execute it; with the overall goal being that the sum of our collective can out-weigh individual talent. Still, 80% of resources allocated to perfecting it is a staggering amount; and that leads to trade-offs in other areas, which we’ll discuss later.
But thus was born the model. In an era where the one-and-done 5-star recruit was the priority of the Duke and Kentucky’s of the world, we took athletic 4-star players who weren’t a big threat to leave for the league early, but who we could sell on learning fundamental basketball, improving their defense, and winning a bunch of basketball games. We kept them under our roof 3-5 years, drilled them on our system, aggressively redshirted them, worked on their skills and their strength, and then played our most experienced and (usually) mature guys. Grown men vs. kids. A cohesive team vs. a bunch of parts. A defensive system ideally suited to stop the easy things and to force teams, often with superior athletes, to beat us with, often lacking, pure basketball skill.
To compliment this, we ran an offense designed to wear out our opponents and frustrate, both in the execution itself and in the pacing. We have three core offenses now and have run a few over the years, but “Blocker-Mover” or what we now refer to as “Sides” has always been the staple comfort zone that we lean on the most. At its best, it forces a defense to defend, running off of screens, for the majority of the shot clock, wearing them down in the process and frustrating them as they get out of rhythm offensively themselves. Its goal is to pass up “good” for “great” looks and generate incremental advantage over time until the perfect shot is there. Additionally, the function of the offense is to limit and place a high value on every possession such that, if we prioritize a low-risk, low-turnover approach the importance of each possession is magnified, both increasing the variance of the game (because there are fewer possessions in each game), and levelling the playing field against teams that aren’t used to playing against that style and who, in theory, were bringing more talented players to the floor in the ultra-competitive ACC. We’ll revisit all of this in present day soon, but this is where this was born – building a program from its worst season since the late 60s into a powerhouse by designing a system that gave us an advantage in every game just by us running it; even when we appeared to be over-matched in terms of talent.
And it worked! Boy, did it work; to the tune of a 362-133 record over the 15 seasons, 6 ACC regular season titles, 2 ACC Tournament titles, 1 NCAA title, and a stretch from 2014-2019 where we were among the very best programs in the country almost every single season! When we talk about CTB being a future Hall of Famer… he took a program that was really struggling and built it back up, making it THE best in THE best conference in the country (for most of the stretch, anyway, arguably still so).
Some things working in our favor during that stretch from the start of his tenure until around just after winning the title, though. For one, the defense was perfectly positioned to combat how most NCAA offenses played. The three-point shot was still a huge weapon in the game, of course, but there were a lot more two-non-shooter offenses out there, and the midrange was much more of an acceptable shot. I’ll tackle this concept more in a bit.
There was also next to no mobility of players. Once we got them in the door, unless they went pro or were willing to sit out a full season after transferring (which most weren’t), they were ours to shape and mold however we saw fit. CTB never promised anything to recruits on the recruiting trail, but many were willing to bet on themselves, only to get “the talk” once they were in-house that it wasn’t looking good for their playing time this season and that redshirting would do them a lot of good from both a strength and conditioning standpoint and from learning the system. At the time, this was a great and savvy weapon and I loved that we did this. Often fans lamented it as they wanted to see players earlier but, because players didn’t have the same mobility, the most common outcome was that we had them bulk up that first season, learn our systems in practice, and then get a full four years out of them while they were a more complete and ready player to execute what we were doing. COVID 5th years now were just our redshirts back then! But, to be clear, the reason that it was so good and so potent was because the players had no (good, anyway) choice and basically had to go along with it! Yes, the externally facing language was always that it was the player’s choice, but how many first year players are going to tell their new coach who just tells them they probably won’t play much this season and sells the benefits of a redshirt year no? They naturally don’t want to disappoint him out of the gate and they also don’t want to waste a year of eligibility. In most cases that choice was an illusion.
We might not have practiced offense a lot comparatively to the defense, but the team played together so much over so many successive seasons, that we were still a pretty well-oiled machine in that regard and the system we were using was still fairly prevalent across basketball. It wasn’t as well-scouted and anticipated by our opposition (although it still was) and, when it was, we were better at running it so we could adapt a little better when defenses over-played us. Guys were more comfortable and could adlib in the system more often. I would say that our offense and offensive style were more limiting factors for us doing many of our best seasons (punctuated by us moving much more toward a continuity ball screen offense the championship season) than we realize both because of our success AND because at some point WE became the team that benefitted from less variance… but we’ll cross that bridge.
The last major thing going for us was on the recruiting trail. As an emerging and successful program and with no (legal) NIL across the land, we might not have had the same recruiting pull as the “blue blood” programs, but we could make a very competitive secondary pitch. Come to UVa, develop as a player, get a great education from one of the best schools in the country, and win a lot of basketball games. In a world where players aren’t paid if they’re not looking to go pro immediately, this is an enticing package! Think about non-revenue sports now that don’t command big NIL dollars. Which schools tend to be good in them? It’s the major conference good academic schools, like us, like Stanford, like Duke, UNC, etc. It was a similar environment then for us once we had the credibility as a competitive basketball school again, and that along with what CTB was doing was enough to elevate the team, to be simply dominant.
All of those factors described above married together to create a perfect storm where we had the inside track and our whole approach created advantage for us. We can’t compete with the blue bloods for 5-star talent? That’s okay, those players go pro early and those programs lose their continuity. Do you know who is typically better than a team of 5-star 18-19 year olds? A team of 4-star 22-23 year olds who have been playing together 4-5 years. So….
What’s Changed?
A lot has changed since 2019, some around that time, and some even just over the past few years, and the landscape now is entirely different than it was then… but we’ve been doing the same things. In sports (and in life) you have to continuously evolve so as not to be left behind changes, but especially when the changes come as rapidly as these. Let’s go over some of them:
Coincidentally, around the same timeline of CTB starting to coach Virginia, a certain NBA player named Steph Curry was re-defining the game of basketball in the NBA. The three-point shot became not just a nice tool that a few players on your team had in their bag, but an essential go-to for most players, at an ever-increasing range; and the three-point line was even extended to 20’9″ during all of CTB’s first 10 years with us to 22’1 3/4″ the year after we won the title. There’s always a lag between the NBA and college both in the skill of the players themselves, but in what they inspire and the style of play that follows. What Curry was paving in the 2010s in the league, hit the college scene in full in the 2020s. Namely, more spacing, better shooting, more players capable of shooting, deeper shooting…. All of these things weaponized against the Pack Line and our style of play. Offenses have changed and modernized as a result as well, working to eliminate as many mid-range two-point shots as possible, instead focusing on layups, free throws, and three-pointers. Most offenses now spread the floor and operate out of a ball screen, but there are also European-style motion-based offenses with lots of back-cuts, off-ball screens, and DHOs, and there are still heavy post-up offenses with spacing, designed to get easy buckets around the rim or a kick-out. Our main offense, conversely, while being a motion-based off-ball screening offense, generates most of its momentum going away from the hoop and still creates a lot of mid-range jumpers. It’s also pretty formulaic in it’s patterns and, although there is some room for variation, it’s limited. Basically, you can anticipate where our players are trying to go most of the time if you’ve scouted us well and there are a handful of things you simply just don’t have to worry about players doing or attempting when defending us.
Meanwhile, with teams increasingly modelling after an NBA that’s entire goal is to spread you out and increase the pace/shot opportunities, we’re playing a defense designed to concede outside shots and an offense and offensive style that is the antithesis of what players feel that they need to showcase their abilities.
Now, I’ll talk more about this later, but I haven’t written off the Pack Line as effective defensive system. We still finished 7th in defensive efficiency this season (200th in offense per kenpom.com) and, while we had two of the very best individual defenders in the country in Reece Beekman and Ryan Dunn on our roster, we didn’t have (well, we didn’t play, we did have… but we’ll get to that) the collective length and/or athleticism that you would have seen on some of our most oppressive defensive squads. We still had a very good defensive team, despite that! The outstanding question and one we’ll circle back to is: do we need to dedicate roughly 80% of our practice time to achieve this? If so, do we need to reconsider?
Offensively, Flow is basically like any ball-screen based offense and we just need the creators, finishers, and ability to shoot to augment it; but you can’t have that as your sole offense. Sides and Inside Triangle have been solved, certainly at least with the lack of freedom in which we run both. Teams cheat off of our non-shooters, sure, but they also anticipate where we’re going as we’re running it, beating us to the spots, and almost never have to worry about us going off script; which comes from the nature of the systems themselves, the symmetrical and repetitive nature of the movements and, also, from the lack of repetition that we have running them. Not only do we not dedicate much of our practice time to refining crisp offense, we haven’t had the roster continuity that we used to; which brings us to….
The transfer rules have changed! And, as a result, our ability to keep players within the program, and to utilize them as we want to, has been severely limited. Remember that redshirting strategy from before when we had complete control over the player? Now, that player can just leave if they aren’t happy with the decision. De’Andre Hunter made great use of the redshirt while he was here… almost assuredly we wouldn’t have been able to keep him under the current rules. Isaac Traudt was disappointed in how he was utilized last year and homesick… but would he have left if he had to sit out another year at Creighton? That part is unclear. Kadin Shedrick, disappointed at his playing time evaporating and how he was utilized last year… does he leave if he has to sit out another year at Texas after already taking a redshirt year himself? Seems unlikely. Point being, CTB had over 10 years under his belt of being able to make any coaching decision that he wanted with regard to roster utilization for whatever reason he wanted to and he had all of the control. That’s no longer the case.
Additionally, while our NIL program is apparently pretty competitive, we hadn’t been leading with it or making it externally facing. From what I understand, it’s possible that is going to change this offseason which may help from a talent-perspective (it may not, we’ll discuss); but the existence of NIL even if we become a prominent player in that area still represents a more competitive landscape and broader challenges for us to get the guys we want. Before it was a handful of schools attracting the very best players, and then we had an edge in that next tier between the education of the school itself and the emerging pedigree of the program. Now it’s a handful of schools attracting the very best players and then us, among a bunch of other schools with big NIL budgets (some considerably bigger), who combine that with offers that merge style and pace of play that are much closer to what takes place in the current NBA. Basically, even if we make strides this offseason with NIL and are competitive with making those offers clear to prospective transfers, we still face a bigger pool of schools making competitive offers AND the stigma of being a low-possession team with an outdated system is more relevant than it has ever been. It’s one thing when you’re one of many offenses like Sides and you’re scoring 60ppg and beating very good teams by 5-10 points; it’s entirely another when a big part of your offensive system is antiquated and you’re scoring 42 points in your biggest game of the season while losing by 25 (and that similar blowouts happened frequently over the season).
So, between freedom of movement and NIL, not only is our ability to attract talent facing bigger challenges, but our ability to retain said talent and build that system of continuity that we discussed has ALSO been severely impacted. And yet, our offensive and defensive systems along with how we play who we play, favoring experience/execution over talent/ability, all have remained unchanged. Prior to this offseason, our recruiting pitch remained unchanged, as well. Just to reiterate, a colossal amount of change to the college basketball landscape and, through this season, VERY little change on our end in response to it. And, frankly, it’s causing us to make mistakes, miscalculations, and decisions that perhaps would have been better in our old environment, but have been costly in the current (and may be even more so, depending on how things play out this offseason). Mistakes such as…
Decision Making/Roster Utilization
It should not be surprising, given the change in the landscape, that decisions made between 2009 and 2019 that were well-suited for that time, aren’t always ideal for present day.
(Disclaimer: I’m going to give quite a few examples below and, for the historical ones, I’m not going to spend much time re-litigating them. If you question an assumption, I’ve almost assuredly gone into it in detail in a previous piece. They can be found at the bottom of my home page. Try checking lessons learned articles, articles featuring that player by name, or specific game recaps to learn more.)
For example, CTB has always defaulted to playing for the moment and trying his best to win every single game rather than making many, if any, decisions on meaningful playing time related to player engagement or long-term growth. The problem is that these decisions have historically been centered around experience. At the very least, knowledge of/execution of the systems and/or around mental mistakes with which he’s unwilling to live. With such experience in much more limited supply, this has often led to poor decision-making both in terms of actual on-court product and with roster retention. Some examples:
Playing Reece Beekman and Kihei Clark as much as possible together over the first three years of Beekman’s career because both defended on the ball well and picked up the system quickly; despite the fact that there were many times (for Reece his first year, Kihei the following two) where matchups/quality of play were better with other options. Treating the pairing like a must-have on the floor rather than a quality option to select between.
Playing no one over 6’6″ 1-4 virtually all of 2022 because of the experience of those four guys and skill/ability to pick up the system while we had a 6’10” athletic stretch 4 Freshman sitting on the bench, despite struggling against size all season. We eventually lost Igor to the portal where he’s done very well for himself in Charlotte, but it also was just an unwillingness to address a glaring need on the way to a NIT appearance because the player was more mistake prone despite bringing other attributes other players in those positions couldn’t offer. Consider, we played Kody Stattmann at the 4 more than Igor Milicic Jr. that season – and there’s really no good faith argument to support that.
Benching Kadin Shedrick last season for mental mistakes/preferring the decision making of BVP and Gardner, despite the fact, again, that we were struggling against size. Making Small Ball a permanent fixture of our rotation as opposed to a nice option, living and dying by it despite the limitations/late season struggles, then losing Shedrick to the portal as a result. Speaking of, you know who didn’t have any issues guarding DJ Burns one-on-one? It was, once again, hamstringing us on athleticism and impact in favor of fewer mental mistakes. But there becomes a point where physical limitations are more impactful and the occasional slow rotation might not even be worse when you have a half-a-foot more in reach and even more verticality.
Which brings us to this year. Elijah Gertrude redshirted at first, had that pulled when Dante Harris got hurt, played in some games and showed tons of promise on both ends of the floor. He rebounded well, defended one-on-one, made splash plays on defense through blocks and steals and in transition, was able to create his own shot always (not always consistent was the accuracy), and could get to the foul line. But, possibly scared off by a few turnovers mid-season and some mental mistakes on defense, CTB benched him around the time Dante Harris recovered, and basically didn’t play him again except for almost a full half worth of time against UNC! We say that redshirting is in the best interest of the player, but I don’t see how we handled Eli this season, pulling his redshirt only to sit him rather than letting him grow, could possibly be in the best interest of the player. Yes, in interviews since he’s said it was good to get that playing experience rather than not (another point against redshirting in general) but it should have been considerably more. Meanwhile, we persisted with playing Andrew Rohde just over 25mpg and Dante Harris almost 14mpg ostensibly because of their experience and mental grasp of our systems, despite tape, metrics, etc. illustrating that this type of time and resource commitment was unjustified. Now, the good news is that Eli appears locked into returning next season and has just signed a NIL deal, but that doesn’t mean that utilizing a player with his talent and upside as we did for the alternatives that we chose wasn’t a mistake.
A similar but different situation; Leon Bond was in the rotation earlier in the year but faded entirely as the season wore on. His challenge, coming after a year of redshirting, was one of positional fit. We clearly saw him as a small PF, in the Jaden Gardner mold, within our systems when, in reality, defensively he was better suited to be a SF. Because of our refusal to tailor our offensive schemes to play differently or through mismatches (something we’ll discuss later), he was the odd man out as he was too small to effectively defend or score against the PF position with his skillset, and though we tried him at SF on occasion, it wasn’t something to which we gave many reps. But, interestingly, with a team so focused on prioritizing defense, Leon Bond at the 3 was a great solution compared to any of the other players we regularly tried there – so clearly we were still prioritizing what we thought could lead to effective offense to some degree. The Leon Bond situation is interesting and will be more relevant to the system topic later on.
The hard and true fact of the matter is that, clouded by our laser focus to prioritize how players are playing within the context of what we demand in our systems rather than playing their potential and letting them learn/improve despite mistakes, we have not found or stuck with our most efficient lineups since 2021.
What do I mean by that? Well, by the end of the season, you want your most heavily utilized lineups to be among your most efficient metrically. Of course, it might not be THE most efficient as sample sizes dictate that and there could be some obviously not optimal lineups or those bolstered by blowout time that end up among your most efficient. It takes some time to find the best lineup over the span of the season and what coaches think is going to be their best groupings at the beginning of the year often isn’t that by the end… and sometimes that changes as a season progresses as well. But, ideally, as you go through the rigors of playing you should see a distribution where the lineup you lean into is among your best. For the lineup efficiency metrics I’ll be using, below, I most prefer those from evanmiya.com because they not only account for how full lineups did together, but they also adjust based on quality of not just the opponent, but of the players the opponent fielded while the group was on the floor (which is the number on the far right).
Let’s take a look at this year’s Creighton team, for example, who were very good at this.
Now, aside from a grouping that was clearly used in blowouts (notice opponent BPR much lower), their starting lineup, the one they used religiously and finished the season with almost twice as many possessions as any other, was their most efficient lineup this year. That’s what you want to see; the outliers and smaller sample sizes mostly lower on the efficiency list, maybe a few higher volume lineups that were good but not as good down there, but that you find your best lineups and lean into those. Sure, ideally maybe your lineup with 460 possessions is the one with 91 possessions and vice versa, but these things are never going to be perfect. This is about as good as you’re going to see where they found what was working and really stuck with it and their alternatives were viable/still good.
Now let’s take a look at UNC who wasn’t actually very good at this but whose baseline was still pretty good:
Their starting lineup and the one they sank the most possessions into was still very efficient, but you can see a lot of outliers with smaller sample sizes against quality competition that were performing better, in some cases considerably better. If you’re a UNC fan, there’s probably a good cause for argument that Jae’lyn Withers and Seth Trimble should have been worked more into the mix or, at least, that they should have been given more run until it was clear their time wasn’t actually more effective. Still, UNC landed on a quality rotation, it just probably could have benefitted from some more tinkering.
Now, let’s go back to 2021 for us:
This was really good! Our two best lineups were our two most heavily utilized and the lineup we gave bulk minutes to did it against tougher competition. And, while I still wish we had used the first lineup more, especially playing Woldetensae more against Ohio, that season was really, more or less, exactly what you’re looking for from a roster utilization perspective. The smaller outliers are clearly less efficient than what we went with and we’re left without having any realistic ideas that went under-explored. And note, Trey Murphy had to have his transfer exception granted so that he didn’t have to sit out this season. There was both no NIL and no immediate transfer allowed during this season. A skeptic might say, “sure, but these lineups played themselves with how our talent shook out,” but I don’t think that’s fully fair. There was a lot of controversy over using Beekman so much along with Clark that season and, while I think there was merit to using Woldo more and have long argued for that, the difference between those decisions was much lower than other alternatives. Finding Beekman over playing more Morsell was controversial, especially when Casey transferred, but it was definitely the correct one when it came to how the team played. Regardless, this season was effectively managed over the span of the season (without breaking it down on a game-by-game level).
Now, let’s take a look at 2022, where immediate transfers started in the portal and we got Armaan Franklin and Jayden Gardner and lost Jabri Abdur-Rahim and Casey Morsell, shaking up our roster continuity and planning:
Now, this is what you don’t want to see, and there were even smaller sample sizes that I cut out with both Igor Milicic Jr. and Malachi Poindexter that were colossally inflated. But, even among the groups we gave a significant shake to, the two lineups we gave the majority of our possessions to that season were a middling one and our absolute worst! We just couldn’t wrap our minds around the idea that having Kody Stattmann on the floor along with one of our Centers (normally at the three and best when Franklin was at the two) was in our best interest. And, I mean, it makes sense because he was very underwhelming as an individual player, but he addressed a need in both length and serviceable outside shooting that we needed (as did Igor, but more so). We just couldn’t get outside of our evaluations of the skills of the individual players as well as their fewer mistakes in the system (in Igor’s case) and see the broader team need; perhaps augmented by the fact that we had less time to evaluate our new mix of players working together with Franklin and Gardner coming through the portal along with the exits we had that year.
Let’s take a look at 2023, now:
This one was pretty perplexing in that there was some emerging evidence that the team was just at its best when Dunn was on the floor but CTB wasn’t willing to trust it likely because he was a Freshman. There was even more overwhelming evidence that at least one of Dunn or Shedrick should be on the floor pretty much all of the time and yet our most utilized lineup involved neither. Furthermore, the lineup we started the season with and gave 253 possessions to was really good! That 40.0 Adjusted Team Efficiency Margin was close to the Creighton starters this year (41.1), considerably better than the UNC starters this year (32.1) and even better than our starters in 2021 (37.6). And yet we got away from it almost entirely until the BVP injury. Just a bizarre amount of seeing what very good looked like that season but defaulting to the thing that was okay but worse.
And, finally, let’s look at this season:
There’s a lot to digest here and I gave the Cliffs Notes of the previous seasons because I’ve discussed those years previously, but I haven’t yet wrapped up this season in total, so I’ll do that now. The first thing that jumps out at me is that our starting lineup for the early part of the season and for our most possessions on the season, the Small Ball Lineup with Beekman, McKneely, Rohde, Dunn, and Groves, played against by far our worst competition on the season of those lineups qualifying; even more than that Small Ball with Bond lineup did, which I’m mostly ignoring because of the sample size against poor competition. 1.64 BPR from opposition with the Small Ball lineup with Dunn and Groves and, even though it’s weighted for competition, that grouping was not a strong one for us. The fact that it performed so poorly against the easier part of our schedule (against some of our most undersized opponents) was an alarm bell. It wasn’t good, we shouldn’t have stuck with it, we shouldn’t have looked to it for solutions, it was a sign that we needed to look toward Minor earlier than we did. In fact, this is a pretty clear indication that we needed to be playing with Minor or Buchanan as a Center but, in reality, it took us a long time to figure that out and we even kept drifting away from it toward the end of the season. Interestingly, our BIG lineup 3-5 that I championed much of the season was good with Minor (against very strong competition), but our worst of all qualifying lineups with Buchanan instead (who was better with other combinations of players). Just playing Taine Murray instead of Rohde with Beekman, McKneely, Dunn, and Minor was better; but despite there being signs of that we really didn’t find it until the VERY end of the season. But, perhaps most interestingly, we had two quite different lineups with over 30 possessions both ways under their belt, and against quality competition, that were both more efficient than our other looks and that we never explored at any real depth. Beekman/McKneely/Murray/Dunn/Buchanan makes a lot of sense as a lineup, had an efficiency of 48.3, but only got 36 offensive and 42 defensive possessions. Our “Spacing Lineup” of Beekman/McKneely/Rohde/Groves/Minor had an efficiency of 46.2, but only got 35 offensive and 36 defensive possessions. Both of these are WAY better than our Small Ball Starters with their 13.3 efficiency across over 260 possessions and our mid-season starters of 24.5 across just over 200 possessions. And, sure, to reiterate, it’s possible, probable even, that with an increased sample those groupings would have regressed – but they were playing well enough and we struggled enough that we should have seen how much. I’d be willing to wager they’d have ended up better than our high use lineups.
Now, it should be pointed out that the pace at which we play both offensively (and how long we make our opponents work defensively) limits possessions, so our sample size is smaller to calibrate these things… but that’s also an argument against the pace at which we play (something I’ll tackle later). Either way, it can clearly be said that we didn’t come close to optimizing our lineup in any of the past three seasons (the worst in 2022), and instead stuck with other options.
It doesn’t seem coincidental that these inefficiencies started as soon as the transfer rule was updated so that players had freedom of movement between teams without having to sit out a year. More new faces, more faces exiting, and less time to calibrate. CTB is nothing if not someone who is going to stick with what he thinks is good until clearly proven otherwise, and without the same number of reps for players to earn his trust, he’s trusting more than ever what his eyes see in practice or what he conceptualizes for the team more than what he’s seeing during games. The adjustments are pretty slow to come, often cautious when they do and quick to revert back to old habits, and almost always quick to stray away from mental mistakes even when the players making them are offering a more positive collective impact on the floor than maybe less physically gifted but more systemically sound players.
I believe this helps to explain what happened with both Minor and Rohde this season as the inverse of each other. Minor came onto the team with a huge learning curve having played zone for each of the previous four seasons. By all accounts (including CTB publicly), he was slow to pick up the system. This was not part of the initial plan which was to have him be the starting Center and, along with Buchanan, fill the void vacated by our frontcourt exodus the previous offseason. But Minor did not execute the defense to CTB’s liking and was squarely on the outside of the rotation looking in to start the season. Candidly, he looked like a player who had lost his confidence as a result, struggling in physical ways at times when he did get limited clean up time at the beginning of the season – having the yips even catching the ball on offense. But, the fact remained, the team needed someone to bolster the frontcourt in addition to Buchanan. Groves wasn’t it as we saw in comparative lineup inefficiency, rebounding margins, just watching teams crush us inside in those games, etc., and Blake was too raw to play such extended minutes. We turned back to Minor mid-season out of desperation (and because, to his great credit, he didn’t give up!)… and it was a huge improvement! To be clear, there were still struggles hedging and knowing where to be, but the physical abilities that he brought to the table – his strength, one-on-one post defense, rebounding, ability to finish around the rim with that left hand when given the opportunity, they all cropped up and improved with repetition. He was not an elite or vertically explosive athlete, mind, but his attributes filled a MUCH needed void. Now, the narrative that is possible but improbable and one that I reject, is that this just so happened to be the PERFECT time to start playing Minor in the season. He finally picked it all up (he hadn’t), he’d built his confidence back up (it had definitely improved), and it was time. That narrative requires us to suspend a lot of disbelief re: what was happening in the season (we needed him) and the eyeball test (he still was far from clean defensively). In reality, it was just the decision to turn to him, though his play was imperfect, that was the positive one. But, again, we did it out of necessity to solve a big problem that had existed for 15 full games before we tried him as an option. This is too slow to react. It’s too married to system execution over results. Let’s recall that our main alternative over that stretch, Dunn and Groves at the 4-5 with Rohde at the 3 was one of our worst lineups against the worst competition that we faced! Minor filled a need (an obvious and logical one) and we needed to be willing to fill that need sooner that we did even if the solution imperfect from an execution perspective.
Rohde was the flip side of this coin. Clearly when we recruited him and watched him during the offseason, we envisioned him being a big part of our success and carved out a large role for him as a starter and (early on) as a 30+mpg player. He knew where to be on defense the vast majority of the time, he took care of the ball pretty well, he was a good passer, and theoretically represented someone who could shoot and create. Kind of the definition of “doing no harm,” with upside. But that upside didn’t show up often and wasn’t that high when it came. He proved to be ineffective at being able to create off of the dribble at the ACC level (at least where he was oft utilized at the SF), shot very poorly from the field and, despite knowing where to go, was very slow on closeouts/help side rotations to a very impactful degree (especially when he was battling foot injuries). The result was a player who wasn’t making many “mistakes” on either side of the ball, but who wasn’t coming close to reaching his promised potential and who WAS hurting the team both by being a soft spot within the defense and by not often creating much of a threat on the offensive end. But, despite all of this, it took FOREVER for us to get away from him this season, and even after realizing we should scale back his minutes, we didn’t sustain that for any prolonged time. We played him near 30 minutes per game in every meaningful contest except for Memphis (because we were getting blown out) all the way until the N.C. State home game where he played only 12. What’s more, he didn’t see his time reduce in that game due to ineffectiveness, he saw it dip significantly for the first time because he had some glaring and uncharacteristic turnovers and was really struggling to stay in front of Casey Morsell on-ball. That was the 19th game of the season, having been blown out badly five different times already, before we really tried scaling back on his involvement in the core rotation. From there, his minutes fluctuated to a varying degree, but we always kept coming back to him for big chunks of minutes. Sometimes it worked, like when he helped to break FSU’s pressure en route to a rare game where the team scored 80 points, and sometimes it went really poorly, like when Pitt punished his help side defense on repeat. Post-N.C. State game was at least more flexible around fluctuating his minutes (although he still got too much when he wasn’t playing well and still wasn’t a fit at SF). He even sat out entirely against Georgia Tech in a game in which we played great against a team that had been hot! I wrote in my self-assessment that a big part of the issue was the role he had to play on our roster was not a good fit. But, it took a mountain of evidence and an actual sloppy game from Rohde to get CTB to even slightly reconsider how to utilize him… and that’s a problem, especially when there ARE other viable options on the roster. In order to play, a player shouldn’t simply “not mess up” often… their overall impact HAS to be given preference. Rohde was the inverse of Minor; a player who didn’t make many mistakes but who did not make much of a positive impact in how he was utilized; where Minor made more mistakes but did make more of a positive impact in how he was utilized. And, while we did eventually discover that over the season, it took too long, we didn’t lean into those lessons enough, and we continually strayed back to our old habits throughout that period of time.
(For what it’s worth, and as an aside, going back prior to 2021, 2020 was pretty well managed as was 2019 (most of those lineups were great), although it should be stated that we pretty clearly should have been playing Jay Huff more that season and apparently we missed out on the death lineup of Jerome/Guy/Hunter/Diakite/Huff that was by FAR and away our most efficient lineup with at least 30 possessions (103.1 efficiency rating… 43 efficiency points ahead of the next closest, which was the same grouping just swapping Key for Diakite!). It makes sense when you consider CTB, though, who wasn’t yet ready to trust a young Huff with so many veteran options with more experience ahead of him which is a good segue into Elijah Gertrude this year…)
Eli didn’t get enough of an opportunity to make much of a metric or lineup argument. When you continue to lower the sample size requirements on lineups you get a lot more variance. How much can you really tell on 5-25 possessions? At least when you cap it at 30 that’s like… a half of one of our games in total. But when he did play, he typically shone bright. The energy and pure athletic ability he brought cropped up in an acrobatic rebound here, a fast break there, a splash defensive strip or block leading to a run out, getting to his jump shot whenever he wanted to or an acrobatic finish at the rim (or drawing a foul). The mistakes that he made were being loose with his handle over a very small sample size of games (one of which was against Memphis when everyone was loose) and missing some defensive rotations despite impacting the game positively defensively. It was very much that tendency of not being willing to trust talented and impactful players because they’re too raw for CTB’s liking. But here’s the thing – all but 1 of the 8 five-man combinations Gertrude played in that even registered at any sample size rated better than our starting “Small Ball” lineup, most considerably so. And here’s the most eye-popping small sample-size line I’ve found while combing through our metrics over the years: The lineup of Beekman/McKneely/Gertrude/Dunn/Minor played 10 offensive and defensive possessions together and faced an avg opponent BPR of 5.64 (no other single lineup we faced was even in the 4s, anything in the high 2s or 3s is very formidable)! I suspect those possessions were across the UNC and Duke games. Despite that, the group was one of our more efficient lineups on the entire season! Now, think about that – that’s really just taking four of our standard starters this year and, instead of playing Rohde, or Murray, or Groves, or even Harris with them… just trying Gertrude for more than 10 possessions with those guys. Those 10 possessions went really well against VERY difficult competition and our alternatives were held to under 50 points in 5 of our last 9 games/struggled to find something that worked consistently all season. How could we really go that long without giving your most talented young player the opportunity to make more of an impact given all of the factors? How could we watch how that UNC game unfolded, see the impact and energy he brought to that game, and be more fixated on the couple of defensive rotations missed rather than the broader picture that here was someone who could help and just needed more of an opportunity, which would also help him grow? Coming into the season CTB himself said that they were glad they played Dunn as much as they did last year because of the experience it gained him… and yet we didn’t apply that logic (certainly not to the same extent) here. It’s like we’re learning lessons but not applying them to future states.
This is one of the biggest areas that I think CTB needs to improve and I think it’s, primarily, due to a struggle adjusting to the change in player movement rules and roster continuity. Not that he was ever good about playing talent if they weren’t polished system-wise, but in the past most of the talent WAS polished system-wise. He’s defaulting to what he knows best and what has worked for him in the past; which is playing players who execute the defensive system well and play smart (and risk-minimizing) offense. Players who rarely make mistakes on either end, hit their marks on the floor, and help quality looks funnel to his most trusted players (and best shooters). When, in reality, he needs to be more accepting of mistakes and let his most talented players who are having the most positive TOTAL impact on the court learn and grow in live action. Gertrude might not be “continuous” and miss a couple of defensive rotations per game, but Rohde or Murray are going to be A LOT slower on every single one of their close outs and rotations, comparatively and won’t be as strong of defenders on ball and won’t get you the quantity of turnovers generated. Gertrude might not have the three-point shot that those guys do, but he can get to the line at a rate only Beekman can and he can get a decent look for himself almost whenever he wants even against stifling defense. Point being (and Gertrude is just the most glaring example of this but Bond is another that I’ll touch on later, Minor was for half a season, Shedrick was for the inverse half of a season, Igor was as well) not that you shouldn’t ever play those other guys but that you SHOULD have given Gertrude a legit sample size of opportunity and that you have to evaluate success in a little bit more of a practical way i.e. “what’s the overall impact” of player x as opposed to “are they executing as cleanly as….” It was true of Gertrude, it was true of Bond (who we’ll talk about in the system section), it was true of Minor and, on the flip side, of Rohde and Harris…. But, hopefully, if this section helps to illustrate anything, it’s that it hasn’t been an isolated issue to this season or just nitpicking; it’s been a trend over three seasons now; ever since player mobility became fluid. You don’t NEED to sit these guys to get them to learn as a teaching point; they’re going to keep working and trying and learning regardless and more live reps will HELP that process. There’s a misconception, though, that it’s BETTER to sit them because they’re making mistakes when outcomes show that’s just not been true.
Systems and Philosophy
This brings us to another meaty topic; our systems. I wrote a piece on all three of our offensive systems last offseason; Sides, Inside Triangle, and Flow. I’ve yet to write one on the Pack Line defense, but you can see it in virtually every single defensive possession clip in any of my pieces. We’ve, quite simply, been unwilling to dedicate the time, resources, and innovation to make our offense formidable. Defense is the bell cow. It’s ingrained into every single fiber of our team’s culture and DNA. I previously mentioned that we spend about 80% of our time practicing it; but it runs deeper than that. CTB will take almost any question the media asks about the team and pivot back to something on the defensive side of the ball, and that’s intentional. The ideas is that offense can come and go, you can make or miss shots, but if your defense stays sound throughout, you’ll stay connected; within striking distance, capable of still winning the game. It’s been his consistent battle cry throughout the past decade and a half… and it’s worked on the whole. The defense, especially when buoyed by rangy, long, mobile players, can choke out bad offenses and keep good offenses from running away and hiding. And this is doubled-down on through our offensive pace. Rarely in a hurry to initiate our offense, we usually walk the ball up and get into it with just over 20 seconds to go. A few Sides cycles, a few cuts in the Triangle, a potential clear out into a ball screen, we force the defense to work prior to normally taking a late shot. All of this – the tight and compact defense that forces teams to work to get an open look plus our methodical approach to offense – has us regularly as one of the slowest teams in the country re: adjusted tempo. In fact, Kenpom.com had us as the absolute slowest team in the country last year at 60.1 possessions per game compared to the top team, Western Kentucky’s 75.2 possessions per game. That’s 15 fewer opportunities to score the ball (and to be scored on) per 40 minutes than the fastest team and 7.5 fewer opportunities per game than the median team, Ohio!
This increases the variance of a game. Just like the five-man lineup data from earlier is less reliable/convincing at a smaller sample size (it’s simply indicative of what might be good or bad and then you lean into more possessions with what looks good), fewer possessions puts greater importance on each individual possession. A turnover wastes a bigger percentage of your opportunities, as does a missed shot. Giving up or benefitting from a broken play or a blown coverage has a greater impact on the game’s outcome than it would in a normal contest. If a shooter gets hot and starts making a lot of shots, there’s less time for him to cool off and that hot streak makes up a larger portion of the game. Similarly, and this is especially important for our out-of-conference schedule, if it takes a while for an opponent to figure out how to play against the Pack Line, that percentage of possessions is also a larger part of the game.
So, you can see how this was a really great collective strategy for an upcoming program looking to outperform its talent against more talented and historically pedigreed teams. Introduce a system that we run well, isn’t like many other defensive systems that they’ll play, limit possessions, increase variance, and hope that your team plays more disciplined, fundamental basketball that will upset talented offensive minded squads or blot out the Sun on lesser offenses. The problem is, it also works the other way. Once WE became a pedigree program with more talent than our opposition then, just like those other programs we were trying to limit earlier, WE would benefit from more possessions in a game against a lesser opponent. Taking the air out of the ball and playing a slower pace might be core to what our identity has been, but it gives teams that are worse than us a better opportunity to get hot and win. This is, candidly, a big reason why we’ve been upset so many times early in the NCAA Tournament and why some of our victories have been more harrowing than you’d hope considering how good our teams have been. People who are fans of the program often bristle at the “Pace of Play” criticism because it’s at the core identity of what we do, we take pride in it, and because that criticism is often levied from an entertainment perspective, which is not valid (outside of the recruiting element). But from a competitive standpoint, it’s just math. Better teams are going to do better when there’s a larger sample size of game and worse teams are going to benefit more from variance because they don’t need the ball to bounce their way as often to win. We also almost never vary from this approach – rarely increasing our pace of play even with sizeable deficits later in the game (holding out until it’s far too late many times) – not just ignoring macro game strategy, but often just being immune to micro game strategy in trying to catch up within any given contest. It’s a rigid approach to pace that, because of the lack of adaptability, hurts us just as much as it helps us. And which it does is determined more by the situation we happen to find ourselves in, not something we’re proactively adapting. We’re going to handle it the same way regardless.
The other element to playing as we do is that a disproportionate amount of pressure is placed on every single play and it becomes harder for our players to play loose. CTB always talks about valuing every possession, playing sound, mistake free basketball that’s continuous on defense and that is smart with the ball on offense. Then he talks about trying to play free… but that’s harder to accomplish when the framework of everything is like it is. It’s like the parent teaching their teenager to drive for the first time, clutching the door handle, stomping on an imaginary break, shouting instructions and then, in between breaths, telling their kid to “relax.”
What ends up happening on offense, especially over recent seasons but our teams have almost always started pretty tight in big games even during the championship run, is that the quest to pass up “good” for “great” shots and for the “right” guys to get the looks, leaves role players on the team feeling as though they do not have the ability to create offense on their own or take advantage of open opportunities. Their role is to screen, make hustle plays, convert the easy buckets created by our focal offensive players, and defend. But, invariably, that means that these kinds of guys (unless they’re just stone-cold clutch who don’t need repetition to hit their shots in big moments and, if they were, they probably wouldn’t be role players to begin with) are typically going to second-guess good looks, hesitate, shoot worse in big games/moments, and fade in involvement and efficacy as the season goes on. We’ve seen this A LOT over the past few seasons. Think about how many players look pretty confident on offense coming into the season but, as the season progresses, become less and less involved and less and less effective. Think about Ryan Dunn who scored our first basket of the season on a confident three-point shot without hesitation who, after a couple of misses, eventually stopped taking open looks all together and became (almost) a complete non-factor on offense who teams could sag off of (we’ll circle back to this). Think about Kadin Shedrick who was aggressive, even taking and making threes at the beginning of last season who was visibly in his head and paralyzed to try much for worry of being benched. Think about the offensive struggle/adjustment from Armaan Franklin and Andrew Rohde in their first seasons with us and how dramatically their shooting percentage decreased from their previous season (different reasons but stylistic difficulty was certainly one). Hopefully Rohde will rebound (in more ways than one) like Armaan did. Think about how, in big games, so many of our role players look afraid to do anything on offense AND how our collective shooting seems to deteriorate an abnormal amount in those contests.
I could go on but I’m trusting at this point that it’s apparent to those who have watched the team for a while that this has been a significant trend for our teams. The other thing it does it put a disproportionate burden on just a few players to create our offense. This year those two players were Reece Beekman and Isaac McKneely. Almost no shot from McKneely was considered a bad shot, but he struggled to create for others, and Beekman had to do almost all of the initiation/finishing in the paint himself, while setting most everything else up for everyone else; whether it be Groves on a kick out for three or Minor/Buchanan in the pick and roll, etc. Now, and I’ll talk about this a bit later, this absolutely WAS a talent issue from this perspective – only Harris and Beekman were regularly able to gain advantage off of the dribble (to create for others) and you didn’t (shouldn’t have anyway) want both on the floor at the same time. Most of your best shooters were more in that catch and shoot mold. Most of your bigs were not great at creating their own look, or converting inside. All of that is true. BUT, we still tried to funnel too much through Beekman and McKneely and weren’t willing to update our core strategy to get away from that at all (or to support it by taking some focus off of it). Teams knew that they could be hyper-focused on Beekman to stop his drive and to help off of players like Dunn (extremely so), Rohde (most of the time), Harris, and Minor and Buchanan (if they weren’t setting ball screens). Meanwhile, they’d overplay McKneely to try to keep him from catching the ball and they would be right in his hip pocket on the catch, not fearing the drive based on his own tendencies and also knowing that the afore mentioned help was there. I’ll circle back to this concept in a moment but need to talk about something that also compounded it.
This wasn’t helped by our offensive systems. Sides is a very predictable offense to defend especially when a team isn’t comfortable going off-script with it. Teams defending it know where the movers are trying to go, where the screens are typically coming from, and where they’re all unlikely to go, and they’d cheat these routes aggressively. It’s why something so “radical” like Beekman rejecting a screen and flaring into the corner as opposed to coming out at the wing appeared so noticeable this year; because it was something just a little bit off-script. This team mostly just looked like it was going through the motions with the offense. No one looked comfortable reading the defense and countering… because that comes with experience; but it’s hard to get experience executing an offense when you’re practicing it such a small portion of your practice… and that’s what happens when the offense is such an afterthought, especially with an inexperienced team. Now this was also true of Inside Triangle, where teams just need to learn where they can switch the screens and where they can sag (and we also didn’t add many creative elements to these actions), and this was also true of Flow which, depending on personnel was our hardest action to defend just because it can be hard to defend a ball screen when you have your shooters on the floor (but we couldn’t often play enough and help was often still there).
To our credit, we did add some wrinkles over the span of the season, like switching between offenses in hopes of confusing the defense, like adding a roll and replace to our Flow sets, adding some staggered screen sets as well… but none of this solved the problem of our players not being able to read a defense and adapt to what they were doing within our system – we mostly just ran our stuff – and none of this took much of the burden off of Beekman nor McKneely in any real way. It was like a couple of fleeting thoughts within the context of three broad ideas that we kept going back to.
Alright, so our offenses were predictable in how we were running them and we were funneling most of what we were doing to our two best offensive players. We’ve discussed how teams defended Beekman and McKneely aggressively – Memphis even proactively double-teamed Beekman when he crossed half court to get the ball out of his hands – but let’s also talk about how inflexible we were about using our other guys in ways that exploited mismatches or that fell outside of our core offensive systems. For example, Jordan Minor as a 6’8″ post player could not often be the focal point of our offense in the ACC. He WAS, however, a capable finisher around the rim which we took advantage of most commonly through Reece finding him after pick and roll action (he was our best screener). But against Colorado St., Minor was not undersized. And when he got the ball inside, he made plays like this:
And like this:
Given how terribly things were going offensively all game for us and how poorly we were shooting, why not just call some clear outs for Minor in the post earlier in the game and see what he could make happen?
Similarly, against Duke, we started our BIG lineup with Dunn at SF and Groves at PF. Duke opted to defend Dunn with Mitchell, leaving them guarding Groves with a player 6 inches shorter. This was our first play of the game where Groves got the ball late in the shot clock and simply isolated the much smaller player and elevated over him for the jumper.
That’s a clear mismatch. Why not go right back to that, put Groves on the block and feed it to him until Duke has to help and it breaks down their defense or until they have to change their matchups or lineup? Instead, we ran our offense as usual, Groves’s next shot was later and it a missed three that came within the flow of the offense, and he was subbed out after that. The game got out of control quickly from there, and this was never something we looked to exploit despite the clear advantage and opportunity!
Leon Bond! Leon Bond was a great offensive spark early in the season, when he was playing against smaller players at the 4. We didn’t like playing him at the 3 because he didn’t have a polished perimeter game and wasn’t a three-point threat. This came to a head when he had some sloppy turnovers during the home N.C. State game mid-way through the year. His time had already been decreasing and, afterward, he didn’t see much time at all. But we have an offense, the Inside Triangle, that can pretty easily get him into the post against a SF defender, if we wanted. We could also simply clear out on the block for him for that matchup and play off of him if they tried to help off of our non-shooters by diving for the pass.
If you worked those looks into the rotation, you could get this on offense from the SF (he’s playing the 4 here but similarly sized player as to an ACC 3):
While getting this on defense:
The reason we don’t do any of these things is because we’re not being told to do them; and the players don’t have either the confidence, knowledge, or freedom to do them on their own. We don’t do a good job of trying to punish defensive mismatches unless they’re created for the guys through which we’re already running our offense. If Reece Beekman can get Quintin Post switched onto him, sure, we’ll try to isolate that and run it on repeat, as well we should. But if Minor, Groves, Bond, or other similar players have a clear mismatch in their favor, we won’t deviate from our standard offense to go after it. If it comes up in the course of natural events, sure, they can take that opportunity, but there’s nothing targeted or strategic about it. In fact, if we don’t have a player like Anthony Gill, or Sam Hauser, or Jayden Gardner on the team, we really don’t play through the post offensively much at all. It’s just not what we do – we’re a perimeter-oriented offense and opportunities go to post players after ball screen or off ball screen actions; opportunities created by the guards where they then convert. It’s surprising and disappointing because isolating a player either on the post or the perimeter when they have a clear advantage on their man is basic basketball 101. N.C. State does it with DJ Burns against virtually anyone. There are a lot of offenses where this is their primary focus. We’re not going to be like that – nor should we be (unless we buck recruiting trends and bring in a player like that who is universally good against everyone in the post) – but we DO need to have it comfortably in our bag when the opportunity is there and be intentional about going to it.
Finally, and this touches on the earlier portion about lineup utilization as well as the defensive identity of the team but, if we really are still going to be a defensive-minded team that spends SO much of its efforts and energy dedicated to that side of the ball (which, I think we need to modify, that point is coming), then we aren’t even using our best guys in that regard. The Pack Line benefits, as I mentioned earlier, from length, quickness, mobility, and awareness. Leon Bond was your best defender at the SF position (outside of Ryan Dunn who is also your best defender at the PF position). He’s been in the system, has practiced it, has more experience running it, is a smothering on ball defender, is great rotationally, and is great on the glass from that spot. Elijah Gertrude is your best defensive SG. He’s not as good with his system knowledge, but his elite athleticism more than makes up for it as his rotations are lightning, his on-ball defense is great, his verticality is amazing, and he makes more splash plays for you on a per play basis than basically anyone outside of Beekman or Dunn (and can rival both). So if defense is SO important that we’re practicing it 80% of the time, if it’s SO important that we’re sacrificing offensive reps, innovation, and evolution; if it’s SO important that we always turn talking points back to it even when our offense has been the worst performing unit (as it was all season), then why not fully lean into it, play TRULY our best defensive team?
That question is only half-rhetorical. A lineup of Beekman/Gertrude/Bond/Dunn and either Minor or Buchanan would have been incredibly hard to score on all season and probably would have taken our unit from 7th in efficiency to among the very best, competitive with Houston. A few tweaks to how we attacked transition basketball, crashed the glass, and ran our offense, and I’m not sure it would have been a terrible idea to try. That being said, the part of the question that is rhetorical is because offense is important. CTB wanted shooting and spacing and was willing to live with some suboptimal defensive lineups to provide that… but the offense was still terrible because of all the reasons we just discussed. So, in reality, what’s happening is that we’re living in this incongruous space strategically, where at the program level we’re sacrificing so much in favor of defense: offensive execution, the ability to draw talent, lack of innovation and focus, suboptimal mix of athletes vs. skilled offensive players (especially with range)… and yet we still have Andrew Rohde and Taine Murray trying to recover from covering a post player to closing out on their shooter as opposed to Leon Bond or Elijah Gertrude. The philosophy and the tactics are missing each other and something needs to change.
Okay, so let’s briefly recap the issues here:
- Defensive culture ingrained to the point of neglect on the offensive side
- Pace of play can be as harmful as helpful and increases variance – often not appropriate depending on the opponent or situation and limits tactical options
- Increased pressure on every possession and unwillingness to take risk, shoot, etc.
- Limited offensive focal points
- Predictable and outdated offensive systems
- Unwillingness to target mismatches
- Unwillingness to alter or play outside of systems to address the moment
- Unwillingness to lean on/play through offensive role players outside of how they typically interface with focal offensive players
- Philosophical dissonance around lineup alignment with team core strategies
Where Do We Go From Here?
Well, that seems like a lot. The good news is that the floor is pretty high with how we play and how CTB coaches. In fact, with the rosters we’ve had (and this may be somewhat controversial but the rationale is in all of the above), I think we’ve been pretty close to the floor of what we should have gotten out of them (with CTB coaching, not with any random coach coaching), in each of the past three seasons.
But what should we do to improve? That’s a lofty question that’s hard to write about without tempering in realism. What should CTB do? Well, the first and most simple step is that he should embrace the program’s significant NIL resources to compete in the transfer portal more willingly. Improving the total talent level on the roster is always a positive. When you have 3 NBA draft picks and 3 more NBA players on the roster who have played with each other for 3 seasons, Sides is going to look better (but even that year we went to Flow much more regularly). So yes, that’s a given, and when the total talent pool is elevated it makes it so that you can’t really make as many mistakes on roster decisions by benching players for mental mistakes because enough of your players are that talented that you only have good options. We could probably realistically upgrade all of Harris, Rohde, and Murray in the portal; but it’s also looking increasingly unlikely we’ll lose any. It’s definitely a factor that, in this day and age, we need to be able to exit players who aren’t performing at the necessary level as the ability to upgrade your lineup is increasingly important. We’ve not seen this happen yet.
It does sound like there are some significant strides happening in this area overall, though, and I’m not the resource for knowing everyone in the portal and who we should prioritize (after we get someone, I’ll break their film down and tell you what I think and where they fit in). But, and this is what I want to focus on mostly, this is not the only thing needed to rectify all of our issues. Many people discuss the state of the program as if it’s just a talent issue. Upgrade the players and everything will be good. And, while there’s definitely truth to better players producing better results, it obscures the systemic limitations I’ve outlined above that will still have their impact on more talented rosters and will limit their ultimate potential in this environment. Consider, we’ve scrimmaged UConn each of the past two seasons and have beaten them “handily” the first time and lost in OT (without Clingan) the second. After those games (and we’ll talk about them a little shortly), they went on to become a juggernaut, coasting to a title last year and two games away from doing the same this year. Meanwhile we peaked early and regressed over the span of each of those seasons, ultimately suffering disappointing finishes. They were just scrimmages; but our talent level when our guys were playing loose and prior to a season worth of adjustments (by us and our opponents) was competitive with the very best of opposition. It’s definitely not just a talent issue.
What we absolutely need to do, essentially so (and this would also help with our ability to attract talent in the portal as well), is to modernize our offensive approach. That means scrapping Sides (potentially Triangle as well, although that offense has some more potential with practice as a wrinkle), and only keeping a set of ball screen actions (Flow) from what we currently do to be integrated in a new approach. The dream scenario would be something like Dan Hurley did with UConn which has very similar parallels given his background of loving defensive, tough basketball. UConn’s offense (which if you’re unfamiliar with it is covered incredibly well in this video) is similar to both Sides and Triangle in that it’s a motion offense with lots of off-ball screens and actually takes up more of the shot clock than standard offenses. But where our offenses are limited in scope and design and just require our players to try to read and react to the defense while going through a series of fairly repetitive and often symmetrical motions, UConn’s offense is an elaborate web of scripted plays (apparently over 100 of them) pulling from some of the most innovative offenses across global basketball. The plays have actions, goals, and then counters on what to do if a defense tries to cheat or overplay an action. It’s been described such that when teams actually know a play and know what’s coming, that’s when they have you where they want you because they’re so good at punishing the cheating.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Not because a basketball mind like CTB couldn’t get there, but because executing at this level offensively requires time, focus, attention, prioritization, and practice. The article linked above outlines how Hurley reimagined all aspects of the program from the recruiting profile of the players to how the team practices. It was a full-on culture shift. But, to be clear, he didn’t do this with a team full of 5-stars; these are 4-star guys who were recruited for their fit to this specific strategy and, through his system and dedication to execution, have mastered the offense and created a unique advantage for their program. Sound like anyone we’ve described? It’s like the inverse of what we did in the 2010s with defense. The difference is, because it’s such efficient offense generating such good looks, they haven’t been vulnerable to the same variance we were with our defensive, low possession games. In fact, UConn shot just 17.6% from three (3-17) in their Elite 8 matchup with Illinois last weekend and still scored 77 points, winning by 25, because they shot 65% from two and also generated 17 free throws. Oh, by the way, they still play good defense and didn’t have to sacrifice that to be this good on offense.
Now, I think it would be the coolest thing in the world for CTB to decide, “well, I’ve been the best defensive coach in the country over the past decade and a half, let me try my hand at putting together an offensive juggernaut.” I mean… how awesome would that be? But we all know that’s unlikely to be the direction this goes so I don’t want to spend too much more time pining for our team to replicate UConn’s system (have a discussion during a scrimmage! I kid. I kid… but entirely to protect myself as that’d be awesome). But what NEEDs to be taken from this is that you can drill and focus on defense and that can be a differentiator (look at Houston) but you have to be able to play effective offense and that requires both a system that generates advantage AND practice. Reps. Adjustments. We can’t be 3/4ths of the way through the season, have Reece Beekman driving the lane, and have Blake Buchanan turning and setting an off-ball screen near the three-point line rather than diving toward the hoop for a dish or offensive rebound… simply because that’s the next step in the offense that we’re still running it mechanically because we haven’t repped it anywhere near close to as much as our defense.
It doesn’t have to be 100 ultra-complex sets with tons of nuance (although… yeah?), but I’d love to see some kind of cohesive offensive system that’s not Sides, that gets most of its action moving toward the basket (or to generate open threes), that minimizes rather than maximizes midrange jumpers (we took WAY TOO MANY of these last season), that plays through the post and through mismatches a healthy amount (let’s draw some skilled offensive post players back!) and, most of all, that’s not predictable. If we integrate ball screens, let’s run some more off-ball action simultaneously or add some complexity with some three-man screening actions rather than just have three guys standing around in a shell while two guys try to play two-on-two despite five defenders staring at them (making help defense and sagging way easier). I’d love a motion offense that incorporates some more modern actions and that’s not so symmetrical, that’s unpredictable with its movements, and that our guys have REPPED enough so that they’re not just going through the motions but are actively able to adjust to what the defense is doing. Give me 50%… at least 40% of practice dedicated to offensive strategy, improvements, innovation. Doing that will solve a lot of issues. It’ll help bolster our ability to draw talent by playing an offensive style of basketball that gets everyone involved and better showcases their offensive skills, and it’ll just help maximize our offensive performance in general. But it WILL require a lot of work from CTB and staff this offseason. Perhaps hiring someone for the sole purpose of scheming and implementing offense would be the best approach here, although I’m not sure CTB would want to give up that level of control. Either way, it has to be a priority.
We also have to be willing to be flexible on pace. I don’t mean to scrap the philosophy entirely, and if you are running a quality motion offense, sometimes that’s going to take some time. But we need to be willing to SCALE our pace depending on what the game and opponent calls for rather than always applying the same universal solution. If a team like UNC wants to speed up the game, are really good at pushing the tempo and getting a lot of shots up, the way we play currently is probably perfect (unless we fall considerably behind in which case, PLEASE pick the pace up!). It’s a good tool that we shouldn’t relinquish. But if we’re playing a double-digit seed in the first round, or a buy game in the non-con (especially in those games to increase victory margin and reduce opportunities for a Navy game or a San Francisco game), or against middle of the pack ACC teams who we are better than, that really shouldn’t be our strategy, especially if that’s coincided with an improving offense. Get into our offensive set more quickly and take the quality opportunity when you get it rather than passing it up and hoping something better comes later (and don’t be as judicious about who takes it). Flexibility of pace so that we’re increasing variance against teams we shouldn’t be favored against or that we really benefit by slowing down. Minimizing variance against worse/less talented teams so that we’re more often pressing our advantage in talent. There would be added benefit of unpredictability and preparation challenges if opponents never really knew what they’re going to get from us. It would be a significant cultural shift, but it might be the most important one we could make, aside from upgrading an offensive system, because it would help reduce our upset vulnerability and should improve the offensive confidence of the team in general, but especially the supporting cast.
Now, the question remains, how much different does the Pack Line look with about a 30% reduction in practice time and with, sometimes, an increased pace of play? The defensive system itself shouldn’t be impacted by pace of play much. There’s the element that when we take such long possessions it can throw the other team off of their offensive rhythm, but that’s a good case for pace variability and still being able to go to that as a tool, when needed. It’s the reduced practice time for a system that takes a year to master that’s the bigger concern. We’d have to see, but I think that concern would prove to be overblown and that the proper adjustments could minimize the impact. For example, we could (and should be willing) to make slight tweaks to our execution if something wasn’t catching on with a key player in game. There was a period of time where we had BVP change his hedge angle last season, for example, to make it less aggressive and make his recovery easier so that we could keep him on the floor. We actually did the same for Jayden Gardner two years prior. But, another adjustment we’d need to make is our willingness to let players make a few more mistakes than usual when running it. Recall the discussion about Eli from earlier and how what primarily kept him off of the floor was his execution of the defensive system… but the team’s adjusted defensive efficiency was at its BEST with him on the floor! So, sometimes having the right players on the floor is the most important thing and it’s not like he just couldn’t get the system at all – he just had to learn on the job some. Say we make a few mistakes like that in each game… if our offense is considerably better because of our adjustments and if our players are better because it’s a more appealing place to play, the net impact is going to be positive! The defense would still be very good under CTB, make no mistake, and the players would still learn and improve execution as they went. We just have to stop biting our nose off to spite our face by prioritizing defensive system excellence over everything else.
In the article that I posted above, Dan Hurley relished the move to a more offensive-focused team because as he said, and I’m paraphrasing, when you can score as effectively as they do, it takes the pressure off of everything else.
It’s hard to imagine CTB changing so dramatically, so quickly. Certainly, I don’t think we can expect anything like what UConn did anytime soon. In fact, I was pretty discouraged by some of his comments after the CSU game where he talked about, and I’m paraphrasing again, how he thought the team had, more or less, maxed out during the season and how the way teams figured out how to guard Reece and iMac made things tough on us and figured us out. No! They only figured us out within the context of the same three offensive systems we ran and how we chose to execute them and how we chose to utilize the players within them, AND which players we used at all. There was practically an unlimited number of decisions that he could have made to try to address those problems differently than he did. In fact, he explored our options pretty minimally, all things considered. Saying that the team maxed out implies that really there wasn’t anything more he could have done to improve things and I fully reject that idea. And, while he did say that maybe something needs to change with the system, I get the sense that he’s thinking more in terms of tweaks and micro-adjustments – with a bigger focus on talent attraction/retention than anything else.
Of course, that was right after the game and he hadn’t had a chance to process and re-evaluate everything, but those comments along with how he approached the whole season did leave me feeling like the larger need for a more dramatic change to approach hadn’t taken with him, at least not then. I’m writing this outlining the historical context, the many issues, and what I think needs to happen to fully improve the situation; but I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen. I think he’s going to have a lot of roster continuity (seemingly just losing Minor, Groves, and probably Reece and Dunn as of writing this), try to draw a splash player or two in the portal (hopefully bigger splash than not), and then just try to improve by doubling down on execution; perhaps being a little more aggressive with some tweaks of the existing offensive systems. It might be enough to improve the team some through player development and continuity. Given the fact that we’re probably losing our two best players, I doubt it. I’m hopeful that we’ll make a few changes in roster utilization if that’s the case (specifically with Eli and Leon)…. But I don’t really see us positively shaking this sphere we’ve been in recently of bubble(ish) team that has trouble getting out of the first round and is growing an increasing negative national narrative unless we make some significant alterations to our approach, as I’ve outlined above.
CTB 100% could do it well if he set his mind to it and bought in on the need. How cool it would be to behold? But, will he or is he there yet? To be determined. I don’t think so, at least not this year.
Either way, I’ll certainly plan to be here next season to root for our guys, see how it plays out, and hope to be wrong! If we do get some transfer news, I’ll break down the incoming player as always through game film, I’ll probably have a few pieces TBD during this Spring/Summer as well, and then will round into preview pieces similar to last season once we near the Fall.
Enjoy your offseason, everyone! Thank for a fun second year and talk with you soon!
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