“Which one of these things is not like the others…”
Human nature is such that it’s hard to stay as passionate or consistent about something when it’s not as good as it once was or when it’s not what you thought it would be. Personally, I was off my game for this tournament; relying on a way to get videos that I didn’t have control over that didn’t work out. I’d set cable to record the games as a back-up, but due to the variable schedule of the second game, that listing wasn’t updated by the cable provider and I didn’t get the recording. So, now I’m left trying to figure out whether I should record two copies of the game over again in time to fit two separate reviews together before Tuesday’s next game… and I just thought… it’s not realistically happening this time.
Perhaps that’s for the better. There’s not a ton of encouraging things to take away from the tape of either… but it’s certainly out of the norm for me since the start of this site to forgo some detail mid-season without having some kind of personal conflict.
Similarly, it’s going to be difficult for our guys, given the way the season started, given the current roster, given how this tournament went, to be able to maintain the same passion and resilience needed to turn this season around. We can only hope that they’re more determined in their efforts than I was this weekend.
Having a stretch of games go this poorly isn’t unheard of (Tennessee was the origin of the mythical Joe Harris-drives-his-truck-to-CTB’s-House story many moons ago), but the frequency has increased recently. Last year we had this kind of meltdown where we just weren’t competitive no less than seven times (more depending on how you want to categorize it), and we were still able to scratch and claw our way to the postseason. There are some key differences this year, though, that we’ll discuss; that make that seem like a steeper climb.
The biggest story in all of this is, of course, the Coach Sanchez situation. The natural fan tendency in all of this is going to be to make a case for keeping him or moving on from him after virtually every meaningful game. There was a clamoring to re-sign him after we beat Villanova… something that would be laughed at heartily if that same case was made now. But, similarly, while it seems obvious to say that this Baha Mar situation was something to move on from, there’s some nuance here with quite a bit of script left.
The two most obvious things to consider are – why were we so bad and is it something that will likely change. The answer to the first question is pretty easy… and abundant. The answer to the second is more murky and requires some context.
The way I see it, there are four main plagues on the team right now outside of the general morale issues that we see creeping in like we did last year:
Handling Pressure – Setting Up The Offense
The team has struggled severely to withstand pressure to the point where it’s often hard for them to dribble, complete a pass (inbound or within the offense itself), and certainly when it comes to being a threat to attack the basket. I would call this the single largest problem that the team faces right now. You can’t run offense if your team is struggling to do the basics like dribble, get open, pass and catch because the other team is just quicker and more physical than you are.
You’ll see in this first clip…. Wait, you all didn’t think I was serious about not getting both of the game recordings, did you? Of course I found a way to get both copies and watch them and watch them again… I’m just going to limit my examples to two per – one from each game.
So anyway, before you interrupted me with your incredulity (how dare you?), in this first clip against Tennessee, we eventually see Ames have to take a fadeaway baseline that doesn’t really threaten because the entire possession is guys being ball pressured so hard that their back is to the basket, some guys (like Taine) trying to just straight post their man up at the three-point line because he can’t get open otherwise, and Blake has to lob it in to Ames in the post.
And here’s a look, below, against St. John’s where you see no one a threat to attack again. When Rohde is hedged on his ball screen he retreat dribbles well-beyond the three-point line, Ames catches the pass back at the logo. It’s hard to threaten or run offense from the logo, as we see with the distance from which he tries to thread the needle to iMac on a curl screen, which also doesn’t have any space because his man is blanketing him. The pass is deflected for a run-out the other way which leads to three.
So that’s issue number one and takes all the headlines. We just don’t have the individual athleticism from really anyone (Ames can do it occasion but he’s actually pretty sloppy with the ball himself as we’ll see in just a second and can’t be just the volume guy) to credibly threaten a drive or, at times, to even get open. Whenever Ames inbounded the ball to break a press having anyone even get open to catch the ball was an adventure of itself. Which brings us to…
Handling Pressure – Turnovers
It’s really an extension of the first problem, but also is true just of ball security itself. Because the guys are having so much trouble playmaking, they press and try to make ill-advised plays (or really, just, “plays” because how ill-advised can they be when the other options have been so limited).
It’s especially true of Ames who had turnover issues at Kansas St. anyway and those are being highlighted with him in this volume role. We saw the pass to McKneely above, but here he is this time off the bounce after a possession that yields nothing. iMac gets his drive shut down and settles for a fadeaway on the baseline with two defenders on him, Buchanan has the rebound come to him, and Ames gets super loose with his handle trying to jam the ball into traffic.
And here against St. John’s, watch how non-threatening every single one of our ball-handlers are on this play. They either make no advances toward the hoop or are pushed farther away from it. Ames finally gets the ball a little past the three-point line but has to stop his dribble with nowhere to go, and Power can’t get open/runs his man into Ames forcing the turnover.
One could make the argument that these are two of the more athletic teams in this way that we’ll see all season. But we’re going to see Florida, and Memphis again, and more than a few others. And, either way, even if we find some respite and more success against some of the ACC… that’s not super encouraging… that just means we have a capped upside against higher level talent; so I don’t think there’s much solace to take in that thought.
Perimeter Defense
We can certainly play stretches of good defense, and did in the first half against Tennessee (aided by some of their choices and shooting). But we don’t really have any good perimeter defenders – at least in the plus defense or shutdown sense. Surely nothing like Reece, but nothing even like Armaan Franklin or Casey Morsell. And while they can hold their own at times within the context of the Pack Line and some solid efforts behind them; the athleticism really just isn’t there nor is the rotational depth. As the game wears on, it gets much worse as we saw in this tournament:
But even early on in games, it’s just hard for us to say in front of the better athletes out there.
Dai Dai Ames, iMac, and Rohde is probably our best trio of perimeter defenders (and I’ve long advocated playing a bigger lineup but, given our glaring facilitation issues, that doesn’t seem worth advocating for at the moment), which is not great to begin with but even worse when they’re exhausted. Power isn’t giving you enough offensively to justify the trade off and Murry and Sharma are both significant downgrades in that area.
Rebounding
Of all of the four issues, this is probably the most fixable – but man was it bad in the Bahamas. Collectively, we were out rebounded by 17 across both games, including a glaring stretch opening the second half against Tennessee when we were still in the game and they just kept keeping possession after possession alive with second chances.
This one I thought epitomized the worst of that stretch where Cofie just gets out worked and out leveraged by Igor Milicic Jr. (hey, remember him?) who keeps the play alive. If you pause at 15 seconds, you can see Blake kind of relax and fall asleep on the play as he starts moving out of the lane as Igor gets the shot up, giving his man a completely free path to put back the dunk. One physical mistake and one mental one by two different players.
And here was a really bad one against St. John’s where Saunders actually played pretty good perimeter defense and forced a midrange jumper, and Buchanan just got slipped around for the board and the put back.
All of our bigs (and guards as well) had some pretty bad stretches securing the glass (Saunders got off the hook in these selections but he had some rough moments). I don’t think this has to be a weakness with us, though. We have the length and strength and athleticism in the frontcourt – we just need to be consistent with the mental awareness and the energy on the glass. I didn’t mind Anthony Robinson getting 8 minutes (some of them relevant ones) against St. John’s, either, even if he only secured one board himself in that game. The willingness to go to the big man when we needed help in that area was worth the look and could help to light a fire under the normal starters longer term.
I won’t say it’s not a concern – because it really hurt us in this tournament – just not as much as the other areas and there isn’t an underlying physical limitation causing it.
What Does It Mean for Coach Sanchez and Can We Improve This Season?
It’s interesting looking at all of this through the lens of roster construction. There’s the temptation to say that we just aren’t athletic enough across the guard position and that’s absolutely true in reality right now. We just have far too many guys between iMac, Sharma, Murray… even Power who kind of just do versions of the same thing and offer you shooting at the cost of athleticism and very limited value off the bounce. It has to be in the right situation or matchup for any of them to be effective there and you aren’t going to see them create much from net neutral.
But, if you look at things from a roster composition standpoint, the three guys we lost due to coaching retirement or injury – Jalen Warley, Elijah Gertrude, Christian Bliss (return this season TBD), literally all of them would provide at least some answers to the most glaring issues above. Warley and Gertrude as highly athletic and rangy defenders who could both touch the paint against pressure (Gertrude might have a turnover or two as well but you know he’d get into the lane), Bliss as a question mark but certainly as someone who could also threaten to drive and could add some additional ball security. Having all three would be ideal – but just having at least one of Warley or Gertrude would be a huge boon to our functional depth and to our ability to respond to the kind of athletes we saw Thursday and Friday.
Although, as I’ve been writing this thinking about how all of our athletes are unavailable while all of our shooters are, it did strike me that we’ve been limited recently to recruiting athletes OR shooters rather than recruiting my favorite – athletes who ARE shooters. So, is it “fair” (fairness isn’t really the question, though, correctness is going to be the real question) to judge Coach Sanchez based on this?
If the roster was still as designed, it would surely be more balanced and have some of the skills we need but I’d still argue, “yes.” It’s going to be hard to convince me that recruiting under Coach Sanchez is going to be better than under CTB. It’s possible. He might embrace NIL earlier in the conversations and open more doors to more recruits – but he was still doing a lot of the recruiting himself for this group and his style of coaching has, at least to the macro eye (we talk about difference all of the time but those are very small on the national stage) replicated CTB’s style. CTB’s style of coaching without CTB sounds like a challenging sell especially after two back-to-back games like these against two top 25 teams as a part of the proof of concept. But, of course, that sell could be more credible with a turnaround this season on the floor. So, how likely is that and what can be done to influence it?
It’s hard to see a clean path forward with this group as it is. I certainly don’t think it’s scheme-related or that any overt changes to the offensive system would matter that much. The current system has tried and true concepts at this level with a versatility of ways in which we could theoretically attack; and it provides good spacing. It’s just really hard to run effective offense when you’re being hounded on every catch, so many normally easy passes are difficult to make, defenders are in your hip pocket without worry about the dribble, and many of your primary ball handlers are so often retreating from the ball pressure.
You could make it a bigger priority to play through the post. Not like every single possession, but a considerably bigger share of your possessions. This was my favorite play across either of the two games, by Cofie. After catching the ball in the post, facing up his man, and completely losing him with the shoulder shake, he dumped it off to Blake for the finish:
The offense allows for frequent post ups if you so choose across any position, and it’s relatively low resistance to set up even if you’re hounded. TJ Power actually gave the entry pass on that play above despite having limited room to breathe all game. Granted, it’s not like Saunders or Buchanan have been very effective there this year, but both have some potential and some reps and forcing the issue could build confidence.
You could even do it through your guards more often whether it be through forcing the issue when Power is on the floor at SF with his man (could be a way to get him some confidence and get him going… worth trying considering the state of things), or even playing through Rohde down there as he’ll often have a size mismatch.
This look, below, wasn’t a post possession as it came off of a drive from the outside, but practically speaking the way he used his size and methodically finished inside, it could have been.
I’m not sure that’s going to be a path that fixes anything dramatically, but it’s really the only idea I had to take the ball out of the hands of the guards on the perimeter more often and to play through a different angle. I’d make it a concerted effort to post up all of Cofie, Saunders, Rohde, Buchanan, and Power (maybe even Ames) with more frequency in these two upcoming buy games to see what that looks like. Play through the post and keep your spacing for kick outs on the help. Most of our shooters have still been effective when they’ve had open looks; it’s just been the open looks that have been hard to find.
The only other potential saving grace coming (outside of some significant player improvement with their dribble and aggression mid-season) is if Christian Bliss can finally get that foot healthy and get himself in condition to start logging some significant minutes. I’m not sure what that would look like and I’m not yet convinced that we’ve actually seen him at full speed in a UVa uniform; even at the Blue-White Scrimmage. I’m also increasingly unsure of if or when that will happen as he appears to have suffered a setback on his road to recovery with his foot. It’s a long time since he’s seen live game action and nagging foot issues are notoriously difficult things for b-ball players to be effective playing with. So, I see that is more of an unlikely wild card scenario that could change the dynamic of the team for the positive by adding more playable depth at a necessary skill and take some much-needed burden off of Ames and Rohde. But, I’m more or less expecting our current situation to be our reality.
In Conclusion
It’s hard to conceptualize a solution for this roster as it stands right now. It’s going to be tough. Some of the inexperience, especially in the frontcourt, could start to melt away and we could (and should) see some improvements on the defensive side of the ball as a result. Playing through the post is not a guarantee to help, but it is an idea. We don’t have players with a ton of great post moves, but we do have some good passers, we do have size mismatches across several positions depending on our lineup of choice, and it would take some pressure off of our ball-handlers to create opportunities.
The troubling part is that these progressions, if they helped at all, would be masking a roster problem that we know is festering this season. If we are able to overcome it and play better, which is possible but probably a big ask, we still have a capped ceiling due to the limitations of our guard play. Having a capped ceiling in any given season is true of many teams, though. So then, the next question becomes, what are we working toward?
There is a world in which we still embrace the two-year window concept that CTB so often talked about. Our roster is quite young as it stands. If you can put enough band-aids on this year to show some room for optimism and retain your group, get Gertrude and Bliss healthy, see a year of improvement from many of your key pieces, and either convince Chance Mallory to re-sign or maybe spend in the portal to get one or two impact players, you might really have something next year. But that’s far from the certainty you’d hope and, in this day in age, we might show improvement this season and still lose key pieces.
I’ll spend more time talking about the longer-term picture for Coach Sanchez later as the season has progressed more. Prior to the season, I’d said on a podcast that it would be a difficult situation for Coach Sanchez to make the case that he’s THE candidate from a national search, especially considering that we were probably going to see some swings in the quality of our play given our circumstances. I think we’re starting to see that play out now.
It would be silly to draw any firm conclusions now when we still have so much time ahead of us to evaluate and make decisions, though. Time is a resource right now and we need to use it to make the best possible decision because the next permanent decision will probably shape the next half-decade or more for the program. Let’s see how the team does respond to adversity; whether any in-season improvement is possible from individual players, whether any improvement in roster health will have an impact, whether we gravitate toward my ideas for improvement by playing more through the post, or if there’s anything else that could help that I’m not seeing at the moment.
As it stands, it does look like a very tall ask. Not just because the turnaround in season would have to be based on overcoming some very specific physical limitations, but also because that’s not going to be the only factor to consider even if progress is made.
Whether it’s an improbable story of resilience and redemption, or whether it’s a farewell tour of a bygone era, let’s collect more information and try to live in the moment. As we do so, I’ll be here breaking down games in more detail and rooting on our guys who have put so much energy and love into this program. In the end, I’ll always advocate for the path that seems to give the program the greatest avenue for success. And, at the moment, the strategic best path forward is collecting and processing as much information as possible.
Go Hoos! Chat with you all after the Manhattan game….
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