Discussing How We Use The “SF”

The other day I had a couple of discussions on social media about the role of the “three” or “Small Forward” in today’s game of basketball and how it applies to our team. I think I confused the discussion a bit by bringing up the talk about “3 and D” types of players vs. positional interchangeability. My use of that terminology was to invoke models of players and wasn’t precise especially as the skill/how you would conceptualize those terms differs between the NBA and college hoops. It distracted from the point I was trying to make.

Really what it boils down to, in my opinion, for our team, is…

Guards vs. Wings

First, let’s get on the same page with how I’m viewing these roles. Sometimes you have players who can fill both of them, which I’ll talk about momentarily, but the distinction here tends to resolve around a combination of size and skill (although it’s not fully married to either). The most defining characteristic for a guard is likely comfort and skill putting the ball on the floor and being able to use the dribble to attack the rim or set up the offense for others. They tend to either be smaller, say, 6’4″ and shorter OR play smaller than their size, but this isn’t necessarily true. Jalen Warley, for example, is clearly a 6’7″ guard. Shooting is also an ideal for guards and is more important every day but, isn’t definitive to the role (see, Dante Harris last year or, Warley again this year).

Wings, on the other hand, are typically going to mess around less with the ball in their hands. They might try to beat their man on a straight-line drive to the hoop… “slashing” if you will; but you’re not really seeing them bring the ball up the floor or trying to break their man down off of the dribble with some kind of combo move often. They are typically bigger and longer – but not always. Leon Bond was only 6’5″ but was very clearly a wing and not a guard. Sometimes they can even take their man into the post to take advantage of a mismatch. In most ideal worlds, if they’re going to see time for you, they’re going to be able to knock down that open three-point shot reliably for you, and they’re also going to be able to defend their position and help secure the glass – but neither of those things are necessarily true of your wings. Basically, they exist in a world without quite the same ball skill as your guards, without the same inclination or ability to bang in the post as your frontcourt, but as some kind of hybrid of the two.

CTB has always shown a determination to have no fewer than two strong ball-handlers who can initiate offense in the lineup at all times. It’s been a more obvious challenge in recent years (Reece and Harris or Rohde; Reece and Kihei) but that’s been primarily because those options have been either poor or reluctant shooters (or both). But you can extend back throughout any iteration of CTB’s lineups from Clark and Jerome, Jerome and Hall, Hall and Perrantes, Perrantes and Brogdon… even as far back as Sammy Zeglinski and Jontel Evans.

That’s not actually what I’m here to talk about, though. It’s the third guard. CTB also prefers playing three guards, a Forward, and a Center (or two forwards) rather than a more traditional wing style SF. In most instances, given the choice, he leans hard in that direction.

Last year, for example, he leaned hard into Beekman and McKneely and then rotated through the third guard spot with Rohde, Harris, Murray and, to a lesser extent Gertrude. Very rarely did he trot out the bigger, lengthier, lineup with Dunn, Groves, and Minor (or Buchanan) on the floor at the same time. Even more rarely did he play Leon Bond at the SF despite how good he was there defensively (as mentioned, he wasn’t a shooting threat outside of the arc).

In fact, aside from the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 seasons where we played Braxton Key, Mamadi Diakite and Jay Huff and Trey Murphy, Sam Hauser, and Jay Huff respectively, you have to go all the way back to Justin Anderson in 2014-2015 before finding a season where we had a wing at that SF position in our most commonly used lineups rather than a guard. That’s basically two out of the past ten seasons and here’s the thing – it includes De’Andre Hunter throughout his time here who was pretty much the perfect wing. He could shoot the ball, handle it a little, and defend virtually any position on the floor… and yet we played him predominantly at the PF in favor of three guard lineups.

Of course, we did win the national championship in 2019 with that heavy guard lineup and it was needed in several key matchups in the tournament so it’s good that we rocked it a majority of the season. But, our bigger lineups were our more efficient lineups that year.

Now, I’m not writing this to advocate for one specific strategy over the other. I think there are merits to both and those depend almost entirely on the quality/skillset of the players in question. Also, when you have bigger, longer, athletic, skilled guards like Brogdon and Hall… Shayok even; that sort of mitigates the tension in the question and is a big part of why we saw so much success over those stretches of time. You just weren’t really giving up much defensively (on the contrary) by having those kinds of guys out there. Meanwhile, you were gaining all of the offensive flexibility that CTB covets.

What I am arguing against, though, is the preference toward these types of lineups when there are gaps created by the personnel. That, without the requisite amount of talent/size/athleticism, it benefits us to turn more toward traditional wings; especially augmented by the defense that we run. That we should be flexible enough to adapt what we’re doing offensively and philosophically so that we can support playing wings more often than we have, and in more situations where roster/game state call for it.

You could argue that 2022 was a necessity because of the roster… but Kody Stattmann was way more efficient playing the SF with Franklin at the SG (and the eyeball test really showed this… check out the Wake Forest game that year as an example) than playing the PF (or playing the SF alongside Reece and Kihei together)… but he actually played over twice as many possessions at PF with Jayden Gardner at C than he played SF with Franklin at SG.

People often balk at that concept because of the visceral reaction to Stattmann as a player. He was NOT one of our five most talented guys… but at 6’7″ with a solid outside shot and decent enough slides/size, the roster needs called for more of him in this capacity (you could also make a case for Igor but that’s a whole different can of worms and I’m just limiting this to players within the established rotation). Otherwise, we were criminally undersized (without great outside shooting) 1-4 and the team was consistently punished for that over the span of the season. That philosophy of individual player assessment always winning out over roster fit/construction/need is one of the things that needs to be reconsidered in a world where you aren’t always chalk full of talent up and down the roster.

Last season, we saw the struggles that Rohde and Harris had at times; but they were still used as core parts of the rotation. Ostensibly, this was done due to that same preference for having more guards/ball handlers on the floor at the same time and the idea that we shouldn’t regularly slot guys like Bond, Dunn, or even Groves out there because of their lack of ball skills/shooting (in the case of Bond/Dunn).

So, most of this decision making is actually due to the nature of how we run offense despite being a program that hangs our hat on defense. The nature of Sides is such that you want three fairly interchangeable guards who can fill either of the three slots; at the point and on either wing. Those three players cut off of the screens being set by the two bigs and interchangeably fill for each other with the idea that any of them could shoot/drive/create to pass. So, having had that as our most staple offense/comfort zone is a big part of why you see the gravitational pull toward these roster requirements.

Inside Triangle, on the other hand, tries to play as many shooters as possible to keep defenses from switching screens/cheating in the lane. Ideally you still want guys on the wings in that offense who can beat their man off of the dribble when they fall asleep or knock down a three-pointer; but you can often also hide guys out there until defenses catch on (like we did with Dunn the year before last in Small Ball lineups with BVP). But we’ve seen recently that without enough shooters (especially across the big positions) or without enough of a reliable inside presence, teams will just switch these screening actions – which has once again pulled us toward having smaller lineups on the floor when we run it. In 2022-2023, we’d often play not three but four guards around BVP out of this offense to try to make it effective and create mismatches.

Lastly, Flow is more flexible but also prefers to have at least three shooters surrounding the primary ball-handler and screener. When run to full continuity, it wants to have a quorum of players able to collect the ball and play off of a ball screen. Your primary ball handler doesn’t have to be the best shooter in this offense, nor does your ball screener – but if your other three can’t knock down the open look then the middle of the court still isn’t going to open up, just like with Inside Triangle.

The most common initial response to the breakdown of the three offenses is to think that the solution to these issues is recruiting. If you have enough Malcolm Brogdon or De’Andre Hunter type players than you can kind of just run anything you want to. And… sure, that’s true. Recruiting to your system so that you don’t have to play undersized or out of position should be a priority. But this isn’t a recruiting discussion, those are the kinds of players that everyone wants, and so you have to be ready and willing to adjust your systems to fit your needs when you don’t land a team full of those guys. This means that, unless you have a ton of offensive firepower and differential skill, you need to be able to find a way to play bigger… which in turn comes back to having more options in the offensive toolkit.

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So, why the focus on wings in this piece, all other things equal? For as much as Sides, especially, wants three ball-handlers, the Pack Line (and basketball in general) benefits from size/length. The ability to get into passing lanes, the ability to block sight lines, the ability to help contest shots around the rim, the ability to effectively double-team the post, the ability to play help defense and then recover out to contest a shot, the ability to bother three-point shots in general… all of these things want for size and length. Without a certain standard of offensive talent, we can still turn to these attributes, under CTB’s tutelage as the safety net. His special sauce that is his defense, if you will, to help differentiate us from our competitors. You know his guys are going to know how to execute a defense. You know his guys are going to rarely blow assignments (they’ll sit otherwise); and know when and where to help. So, let’s make sure that the group executing his greatest strength as a coach has as many physical advantages as possible. Let’s make that side of the ball as suffocating as possible rather than sacrificing there in the name of offensive fit (but not necessarily talent).

The fact of the matter is that we’ve just been playing undersized, on aggregate, for a while now. Over the past three seasons, our most commonly used starting lineups were as follows (using “u” to designate players I’d also consider to be under-athletic either with their mobility or verticality or both followed by KenPom’s final rating for the defensive efficiency):

2022: 5’9″, 6’3″, 6’4″, 6’6″, 6’11” (59th)

2023: 5’9″, 6’3″, 6’4″, 6’6″, 6’8″(u) (25th)

2024: 6’3″, 6’4″, 6’6″(u), 6’8″, 6’9″(u) (7th)

A far cry from our standard which only fell outside of the top 5 once from 2014-2019 (7th in 2016). These lineups have a few things one could point out – like the reduction of emphasis on a true Center for two of the three seasons. But each one of these lineups would have benefitted from putting a longer and, ideally, athletic wing right in the middle at that “3” slot. And while, yes, last year’s defense was solid in the final rankings – it was bolstered by having two of the very best defenders in all of college basketball and didn’t make up for the offensive woes by our standards. For reference, offensive ratings over the same years were 85th, 72nd, and 200th, respectively – so it’s not like the offensive tradeoffs were actually helping that much. Given that we weren’t finding those solutions – the tradeoffs weren’t in support of fantastically capable offensive players – I don’t think it’s a leap to think that we would have been better served getting more athleticism on the floor/not playing under-sized or both.

I should pause here and say that if you DO start landing fantastically capable offensive players, something that may become relevant sooner than later, then by all means get them on the floor if their contributions outweigh any defensive tradeoffs! Kyle Guy improved a ton, but he was never a great defensive player. His offense was more than worth it and we put the right pieces around him to support the defense. To reiterate, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all recommendation. It’s just saying that we really haven’t had enough of those kinds of guys to justify these choices recently. And last year, making sure we had Andrew Rohde or Dante Harris on the floor to fit our system needs for ball handling/security was a great example of over-valuing that skill and not being flexible enough with your roster.

So, let’s bring it back to this season. If you’ve been reading the site, you’ll know that I’ve been advocating strongly for a large chunk of time for Elijah Sauders at the SF. I’d like to see that be his most played position. The reason being, that at 6’8″ with the mobility to slide with guards, the physicality to defend inside and crash the glass, and the ability to knock down an open look from the outside, I believe that Elijah is uniquely situated to offer lineup combinations that will provide challenges to our opponents. Namely, huge lineups that could be smothering defensively without compromising much offensively (as long as we make the proper adjustments).

Let’s consider – even if we’re not looking to just play a reasonable offensive lineup and not lean too much at defense, say you trot out an, I expect to be at least somewhat common, lineup of Jalen Warley, Isaac McKneely, Elijah Saunders, TJ Power, and Blake Buchanan. At 6’7″, 6’4″, 6’8″, 6’9″, and 6’11” that’s a HUGE lineup. You’ve still got your playmaker at PG in Warley (and I’ve discussed previously what a huge asset he is playing on the opposing team’s primary ball handler), you’ve got three shooters in McKneely, Saunders, and Power to spread around the three-point line, and you’ve got Buchanan as a ball screener, rim runner and, if there’s something to his post game, for that. You’ve got your two weakest defenders in this group, McKneely and Power, flanked by length and athleticism on either side of them at each portion of the lineup and you’ve got four guys towering at 6’7″ or taller. CTB should be able to work wonders with that Pack Line and it wouldn’t even be our best option there (likely getting Cofie in at the PF and probably Rohde at the SG would provide the best options 1-5… but less likely because of the offensive tradeoffs). This still-offensive-focused five-man lineup would offer the kind of size and ability to play bigger than other teams that we really haven’t seen us take advantage of recently – but it would do it without compromising positional integrity as long as we were willing to play the extra wing/forward instead of the third guard.

Compare the above with another likely alternative of Warley, McKneely, Murray, Saunders, and Buchanan. Now you’ve got a big defensive gap in the middle of your lineup between McKneely and Murray; the latter being considerably worse at defending the SF than McKneely is at defending the SG. Both would be much easier to attack alongside each other. Saunders, as opposed to likely being a defensive difference maker smothering a guard/wing and crashing down on the glass from the perimeter (which he does incredibly well – he has a great nose for the path of the ball), is just a good defender at the PF position. He plays physically but also often concedes size and doesn’t benefit as much from his mobility. The advantage you gain from him defending the SF becomes pretty standard PF stuff when you bump him up a position. You’re basically having to hope here that Murray’s three-point shooting % is enough better than Saunders that replacing a significant defensive advantage and lineup differentiator with a defensive weak-point is worth it.

I’m not sold. But, here’s the thing: you don’t actually have to make that decision. Murray is still going to get time at the SF. He probably won’t play north of 20mpg and Saunders will rotate some amount to the PF…. So, really all you have to do is make the case that Saunders would be significantly better there than Rohde, or than playing Warley at the 3. Both would be significant defensive downgrades at SF AND also shooting downgrades. You’d also have to assume that he’s better than whatever Christian Bliss and Ishaan Sharma will be offering at that slot (both being untested and probably more likely to back up McKneely if they crack the rotation anyway).

So, yeah. Color me unconvinced that ANY of those options, including Murray (although that’s probably the closest at the moment), would be better than giving a big chunk of time to Saunders there.

But, I’m writing this now, and it’s a whole discussion point to begin with, because I don’t expect (and I’d wager most fans who follow the team closely don’t either) that we’ll actually use Saunders in this capacity that often. We will occasionally, I’ll bet; but, given our historical precedent, we’re much more likely to defer to one of those other guys in the name of ball handling to support our offensive systems and skew small, if anything.

That should change… and there might actually be an opportunity right now for it to do so.

There has been real smoke this offseason across a number of different outlets, and continues to be so, about changes coming to the offense. We don’t know the extent or exactly what that will look like. Perhaps it’s radical. Perhaps it’s underwhelming. Perhaps it looks like one thing and then we revert back to the old way when we hit bumps in the road. But it IS a great opportunity to be intentional about those changes so that you can more readily support wings at your SF position offense. In a college system with often inconsistent or interchangeable talent, it allows you to better take advantage of your roster and your vaunted defensive scheme while also building a more modernized foundation for your offense.

Give yourself the flexibility to do anything!

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Alright, if you’ve made it to the end of my ramble on this, thanks for your attention!

I’ll likely do a piece on some (hopeful) upcoming recruiting news and then put something out after the Blue/White scrimmage. Please feel free to subscribe to the free e-mail notifications or follow @cutsfromcorner on Twitter to be alert to new content!