Our Wahoos got a much-needed buy game after their drip to the Bahamas, and it was a good thing that they did because it’s clear that we’re still searching for some solutions. In games like these then the quality of opponent drops (Manhattan is outside of the top 300 teams in DI per Kenpom – so certainly not one of our more challenging tests on the schedule), I try to focus mostly on looking for things that aren’t out of scope based on the quality of the opponent. Namely, what are some positive things that look like they could be replicated or we could lean into against better competition vs. what are some things that are concerning signs for when the quality steps up (or – that this opponent was even able to exploit – like in this game).
It’s a tight turnaround before the Holy Cross game on Friday, with Thanksgiving in between, so this will probably be a Turky Day special of an article and I’d planned to go a little lighter than normal. But, you know me, I got to Cutting up the video and one thing led to another…. We’re under 30 clips, at least!
There was more to it, of course, that we’ll talk about, but I thought that this game acted more as a showcase of the positives and areas of development for Blake Buchanan more than anything. At 6’11”, he had at least a 3-inch length advantage inside against any of Manhattan’s regulars, and where were times where he used that to his advantage. On the other hand, Manhattan sagged off of him extremely and clogged up the lane, and put him in space on defense, forcing him to move and close out quite a bit; neither of which are his strengths. Playing him and, especially, how we opted to utilize him was an interesting run over his 21 minutes – as we were effective in that regard earlier in the game and not as much later on. As I dive into some of these concepts and clips below, they’ll often be shaped by his role, so keep an eye out (and of course I’ll point this stuff out).
Additionally, I’ll just talk about it as it relates to other concepts below, but this was the first game in which I took significant issue with the rotations within the game. Specifically, TJ Power only playing for 6 minutes and Ishan Sharma not seeing the floor while Taine Murray played 15 minutes. Of course, considering what happened in the Bahamas, this rotation made logical sense. Power and Sharma didn’t play well or as much as usual, and Murray didn’t do anything flashy, but made a couple of plays when he came in and, altogether, looked more solid than the other two. Neither Power nor Sharma had been shooting the ball well, for example. BUT, any version of this team where we hit a respectable ceiling (which, the stakes are high this year in terms out outcome potentials) involve certainly Power playing (and playing much better) and possibly Sharma as well. These kinds of buy games are the ones where you should be playing them more minutes to build their confidence. When you play a team like Florida, for example, maybe then tighten your rotation and play guys you perceive as having a higher floor – but I really doubt that having Taine eat 15 mpg against the Coppin State’s and Manhattan’s of the world is the best plan for either or short or long term strategy. Also, Power actually played the best he has in a Virginia uniform, I thought, in the 6 minutes he was on the floor – deflecting two passes that forced turnovers defensively, hitting one of his two threes (and taking both confidently), and setting up a play out of the post that we’ll see in a bit.
It was an odd time/decision to scale back his minutes considering he’d been locked in as the starter despite not playing well in all games prior. It reflects the mindset of we’re allocating playing time by looking at what happened in the previous contests and just considering that – when, really, we should be looking most at what do we need as the future state and how can we best afford to build to that. Sure, scale back on minutes in our more closely contested games, but let’s not do that against poor opponents when the player’s performance on the floor isn’t necessitating that. If we’re going to improve at all this year, we can’t just play our highest floor. We’re going to need to be laser focused on, and have a plan to, bring our ceiling along as quickly as possible without losing unnecessary games.
Okay. There are three main strategic sections I’ll cover in this one, and then two shorter call out sections. Away we go!
Playing Through The Post
In my recap of the Baha Mar Championship, I suggested that we run our offense through the post more to take some of the burden off of our guards as playmakers and to force the defense to react, allowing us to either get a decent shot at the rim or to kick out to some of our good shooters. In this game, we started to do so early and got some good results, but increasingly went away from it as the game wore on. It’s not surprising that we got away from it – we’ve been such a guard-dominated program for years, but there were enough glimpses there that you’d like to see it more. Really, the main goal is just to limit empty possessions with these kinds of touches by either getting a shot in and or around the lane, or being able to pass out of the post to generate advantage and better offense elsewhere. It doesn’t mean your post players have to be the ones scoring the buckets themselves, although you should still take those attempts of the opposition plays you straight up, but you’re trying to limit the high turnover rate and/or late desperation shots from outside that have cropped up far too often due to our guard play.
Here’s a look early on with them playing through Blake in the post. Now this is against the 6’7″ Wesley Robinson (#14) so it’s a considerable mismatch. Blake looks a little bit like a baby deer gingerly learning to gallop as he backs the ball toward the basket, and you’d like to see him getting something strong going toward the hoop here, but it’s still a shot in the lane over a mismatch and he’s able to cash it.
This one, below, is much better from him with a quality drop step going right at the basket and drawing a foul in the process:
Note how in that one above Rohde directs traffic, waiving Ames over to the wing so that Buchanan can repost and get the entry pass.
Buchanan had the biggest size advantage in this one, and he had a good offensive game at 11 points on 5-9 from the floor, but you’d like to see him get a few more opportunities to make plays like these so that he can keep working on his skills in game action. The defense is going to be tougher in some future games and you don’t want to feel like you can’t go to this in those matchups.
Elijah Saunders didn’t have his best game in this one and, unfortunately, was passing up some open threes later in the game because his first two didn’t fall, but he’s also capable of making a play with the ball in his hands down on the block.
In this one, he’s got the 6’7″ Fraser Roxburgh (#13) on him. We get him the ball on the block, Buchanan dives to the opposite block to pull his man, the rest of our guys clear out the side, and Saunders gives a little up fake, steps through, and makes a pretty difficult shot with his left hand.
This shot may not be one he takes or makes against a longer or more athletic defender, but he’s also got a baby hook shot and turnaround jumper he can use on the post. And, while he hasn’t been overly efficient with those shots to this point in the season, it’s good to have that threat.
And it’s good to have that threat because then you can pass out of it. Here he is posting up and taking the entry pass from Power. Point of note – you can more easily play Power on the wing when you’re posting up more both because you can do it with Power, as we’ll see in a moment, and because Power can throw an entry pass and cut through like he does here without having to do a lot of dribbling. Also point of note – because we’re playing all of Cofie, Power, and Saunders, a team like Manhattan has to make some tough matchup decisions and Saunders is being covered by 6’2″ Shaquil Bender (#1) on this play. When Power passes it into Saunders and cuts through, Saunders has a huge mismatch on the block, which makes Wesley Robinson (#14) leave Power on his cut and hang out under the basket to help on Saunders. Elijah draws the double, kicks the pass out to Power in the corner who collects it and drills the shot.
Now, most teams are going to have a bigger third player than Manhattan, and most are probably going to play their smaller guy on Power in this situation rather than Saunders, but when you play this kind of lineup you can hunt the size mismatch if you’re willing to make that a focus of your game plan. It might not be a 6’2″ player on Saunders, but most teams aren’t going to be playing three guys who can match 6’8″ or bigger in the post. And because all of Power, Cofie, and Saunders can shoot from outside, it makes it complicated to try to help or double team those mismatches.
So, yes, I think we’ve learned that neither Power nor Saunders are going to be great offensively if you’re using them just like we would Rohde or Murray or Sharma; but there are ways to play them there that will pose difficult questions for our opposition. Again, if you’re willing to commit to it.
Here is another look with the same offensive lineup and the same mismatch with Saunders. He posts up in the mid post this time and this time Cofie sets a back screen for Rohde and there’s room for him to cut down the lane in behind Saunders. He draws the weak side defender and just needs a better and less rushed pass out to Power there and it’s another wide-open look.
All turnovers are created equal in the stat sheet but not all turnovers are created equal in terms of the idea or the potential for the future. That play has potential for future use.
And then, here’s a final look but this time it’s TJ Power in the post and he’s actually at the PF in this lineup alongside Cofie at the Center with three guards alongside of him. That’s encouraging because he’s not drawing a wing here on defense, it’s the 6’8″ Elijah Curry. Now, I’m not sure Power would be able to make a one-on-one post move against this player… I’d like to see; but before he even makes a move Manhattan sends a double team. Power passes it right out to Ames who passes over to Murray, who had an open shot there if he wanted to take it, but attacks the close out effectively and dishes it to Cofie for the dunk.
So, yeah. Power didn’t have to make an aggressive move to the rim or to score inside for this post touch to be effective. Sometimes teams have a defensive scheme to proactively attack the post despite who gets it. Sometimes they think a player might be more effective than he is (and Power may be effective down there – it might be a way to get his offense going, we haven’t seen it much yet). But if you can make the defense adjust to you by getting a post touch like this, you can punish it through good passing. Certainly, this is a more effective offensive set on average than passing it to Power on the wing and having him to try to isolate a man out there or dribble off of a ball screen. And, again, if we’re going to play him at SF much of the time anyway, why not do this more against the slew of 6’4″-6’6″ players who will likely be guarding him?
Despite a lot of this success, most (not all) of our intentional post touches came in the first half; which is really when we played our best basketball. It’s like it was in the game plan to exploit the size differential and then they got away from it. But consider, UVa took a 14-point lead after that last play, above, with 8 minutes left in the first half… and were outscored by 5 the rest of the way. Given the way the first six games have gone, I’d like to see this not be viewed as something to do in buy games to take advantage of size mismatches and, instead, be viewed as a legitimately viable strategy on how to set up our offense against any team. Hunt the mismatch and put them on the block with shooters around them.
Drop Defense vs. Buchanan
Here was another wild development on the night. Manhattan surely watched us play Villanova and then play in the Bahamas… and they decided that drop coverage was the way to go. This despite watching McKneely torch Villanova off of it all game. But, also oddly, we really didn’t attack this decision through McKneely or other shooters with anywhere near the same intention that we did against the Wildcats.
Here was a look early in the game that very closely paralleled that one. Buchanan sets a ball screen for McKneely, Buchanan’s man camps the lane, and McKneely dribbles off of the screen to the three-point line and fires away.
I thought “here we go!” when watching this and imagined that Manhattan would be pulled out of this defensive strategy early… only they weren’t and McKneely really didn’t hunt this shot aggressively off of this defense. He took one or two more like this and missed them; had a couple of drives, one of which he finished at the rim, but why not force the issue here since we’ve found it can be so effective?
Instead, we often played into the Jasper’s game with this. Here Ames attacks the ball screen with Buchanan, but he’s not going to pull up into a three like iMac, instead he attacked the drop coverage but just gets himself caught against that length in the lane, doesn’t have a plan, is out of control, and turns it over trying to pass out to McKneely.
Here, below, you see a possession where Buchanan’s man gums up the lane the entire time. First BB sets a ball screen for Ames by the logo but his man is down all the way by the elbow as this is happening. With nowhere to realistically drive, Ames passes back to Buchanan who looks for a place to go with the ball for a moment before transitioning into a DHO with Rohde cycling up from the corner. Blake makes good contact on that screen as well, but his man is camping the lane again, so Rohde drives but passes out to Saunders. Saunders passes to iMac and screens for him, but now Buchanan is off the ball and his man is camping the lane even more. iMac’s man is still attached around the screen, so he drives and then hit’s an incredibly difficult low-quality shot as a step-back two-pointer.
It’s fantastic that he made that one, but it’s not one you want him taking often or our offense settling for. And we start to see this tension with Buchanan in as the only non-shooter we’re really playing right now with any regularity. Teams will choose how much space they want to give him. If they play him honestly and he can get into those DHO actions and QB the offense with them on him, space opens up behind in the lane. But if they don’t, it really gums things up in the middle. So, the counter, then, is we’re going to have to post him up more, like I mentioned earlier, and make his man play defense; OR we need to attack the three-point line off of those screens like iMac did above and like we did throughout the Villanova game.
That or Blake is going to have to develop some range:
That’s the rarely-spotted Buchanan three-point attempt ladies and gentlemen!
Really what we absolutely can’t do against coverage like this is run our offense as if nothing abnormal is happening like we did in the last three of these clips (and did quite often during the game). You have to make that man play defense on his cover either by posting it or by shooting threes with McKneely until his arm falls of. Play intentional, find a weakness, and keep attacking it!
But now we’re really starting to see the strengths and weaknesses of playing Blake in a game like this. He was a handful for them to cover inside, especially early; but he also gave them a way to cheat on defense.
Poor Close Outs/Rotations
Similarly, Manhattan’s ability to play small and space the floor/shoot with their Centers also gave Blake (and others, at times) difficulty. The Jaspers shot 42% from deep on twenty-six attempts; many of which were far too open. It looked like our guys were moving through molasses on our rotations at times; but really the bulk of the challenges came either from Blake’s mobility on the perimeter or with communication issues; especially with Cofie and Saunders.
Here’s a great look at Blake getting pulled into the lane while defending a ball screen with a flat hedge (one reason we’ve historically hard hedged is to cut off this driving angle so the big doesn’t have to carry the drive as far). Rohde also falls asleep on the rotation on the back end, not identifying early enough that he needs to be in position to recover to either Blake or his own man (this play is actually more on Rohde).
Blake getting pulled too deep, not communicating a hand off quicker with Ames, and Rohde not playing good help side defense (Rohde’s defense was actually good most of the night, though).
Here’s another very similar look only this time Buchanan doesn’t get pulled as deep into the lane, McKneely identifies the rotation sooner than Rohde did, but Buchanan is slow identifying and recovering to McKneely’s man in the corner. His close out is lumbering and he gets blown by on it with the Jasper player finishing at the rim.
Here’s a different look, below, that also ends in a slowly identified and executed close-out by Buchanan. There are other issues up front, though. When Manhattan sets a ball screen on Rohde by Saunders’s man, Saunders plays drop coverage at the three-point line. He and Rohde don’t communicate it very well because Rohde continues to trail and no one recovers back to Saunders’s man who popped to the three-point line (this is how many teams beat drop coverage themselves; by having a Center who shoots the deep ball). McKneely does a good job of being alert enough to rotate over, but Blake just doesn’t see the play developing until far too late and doesn’t have the close out speed to get out there.
Saunders and Rohde not communicating well enough and Blake not identifying the need to help (or having the right skillset to do so) soon enough.
It certainly wasn’t just Buchanan getting punished with the outside shot, although it was a consistent challenge for him to stay with the smaller guys as they moved around out there.
Here’s a look, below, at Cofie just missing his rotation altogether and running by a shooter with the ball. He and Rohde defend a ball screen together, and Cofie hedges pretty far out while his man rolls to the hoop. As Rohde recovers to his, Cofie turns to recover to his own, but Saunders has dropped off of his man to tag the roller. At four seconds into the clip, you can see Saunders pointing and calling to Cofie that he switched. But, rather than take the shorter distance of recovery to Saunders’s man, Cofie doesn’t recognize the call out and runs right past him trying to recover to his own man. Ames recognizes this and tries to get into the play to contest but it’s too late.
Cofie was so locked into his personal responsibility of trying to hustle back to his guy, he had blinders on to his surroundings with the ball just being with an open guy just off to his side.
Below, in transition, he and Saunders again fail to communicate and converge on the same guy in the paint while their other responsibility is open on the perimeter.
This shot missed and they weren’t punished – but it was a significant break down.
And here’s one more communication issue, below. This was the big offensive rebound by Manhattan late where they acrobatically tipped the shot back in despite being fouled. This was possible, though, because Dai Dai Ames was trying to box out their 6’7″ Wesley Robinson. Earlier in the possession, Cofie hard hedges and rides the ball handler out to the logo but, instead of recovering back to his man as Ames comes back to his, they just do a straight switch. At about the 10 second mark the ball goes down to the wing and Ames is on the much bigger player under the hoop with Cofie guarding the perimeter. They need to be talking at this point, coordinating a switch back. Instead, they just defend as normal which leads to the offensive put back despite the fact that Cofie gets an initial block on the drive.
So, this is surely why Murray got 15 minutes in this one, you may say, because we needed to play smaller to handle the rotations and the new guys weren’t communicating well. Not so fast! There were a couple of break downs by him as well, and here’s one, below:
We went small here, playing four guards around Saunders, ostensibly to allow for more mobility to handle the small ball rotations and to improve our prospective free throw shooting. But here you see Taine is playing punchy. On the first drive he steps up in the lane to help despite the fact that Rohde is still in pretty decent defensive position. If you pause the clip at seven seconds, you’ll see Rohde still between his man in the hoop, just on his hip, and Taine has turned his back entirely to his man and has come to a full-on jump stop, both arms behind him, like he’s going to go up and block a shot. If Rohde’s cover wasn’t dealing with his length, he had eyes on a lob behind Murray, who stops when he realizes Rohde is still in the play and goes back. Then, when Saunders is beaten off of the drive from the corner, Rohde is fully in Murray’s vision as being there to help on the drive. He should let Rohde collapse on the ball, stick with his man, and keep eyes on Rohde’s man to try to read/jump a pass or rotate as needed if he dives, but allowing Ames to help on Rohde’s man as well and take both players on the back side. Instead, Taine leaves his man far too early and turns his back on him entirely again giving up the easy pass across the lane for the layup.
That’s just bad defense. He really wasn’t needed as help at any point on that play but ended up going blind to his man twice unnecessarily. This was the worst offense but there were quite a few plays like this from him, including one on the glass that we’ll see later.
As I mentioned earlier, if you’re playing Murray because he elevates your floor, in your opinion, against better competition – I do think you should be giving run to your higher ceiling guys like Power and Sharma in games like this. But I actually doubt that Murray is raising your floor when he’s playing defense like he’s been playing (and he was very passive on offense while he was in as well – just not spotlighting it).
All-in-all; defensive rotations both in speed and in communication were pretty horrible by our standards in this one. In the future, we’re going to have to make some decisions on whether or not we need to play smaller defensively when this happens; but hopefully the communication issues will get cleaned up because that is the kind of thing that can improve greatly with reps.
Shout Out to Andrew Rohde
Rohde had a very good game. He defended with intensity and brought energy to the team:
Defending Kyle Guy in practice might be helping some things (which is 100% true but he’s always been a better on-ball defender than off)!
I think Rohde is a pretty solid redemption story this season. I like how he’s starting to use his size more effectively again, like here, which dovetails with my desire to see us play through the post more often. It’s a nice play and flow that’s all set up by Rohde from the outlet pass at the start of the possession to rocking right into the drive after it gets passed to Cofie in the corner. I like how he takes his time on this one and it’s a nice little hook shot:
He could absolutely make it a point to get the ball inside against most opposing PGs when he’s playing that role for us.
So, that’s something I think he could replicate when playing point – but here’s the other thing that I think he can replicate against any type of opponent – this push shot that he appears to have honed this offseason! He’s hit it quite a few times this year and often from deep – like just inside of the free-throw line deep.
This clip, below, is the first play of the game. We start out in an interesting look with two players plastered to the corners and three guys rotating screening actions away from the ball. It’s almost like an Inside Triangle look but the wings are lower and it’s not static. When the initial actions don’t yield anything, Rohde runs a ball screen off of Buchanan, whose man sags again, but Rohde crosses it over, threatens the drive, and shoots that runner from deep so that the defender is caught off guard and doesn’t get a good contest on it.
This is another way to beat drop coverage, as an aside, if you can hit this shot with regularity.
Here, below, he curls around a ball screen and works his way into the lane with his man behind him – hitting that runner to punish the drop coverage which also had to sag to protect against Buchanan’s roll.
And here, below, he curls around a ball screen again, but this time his man isn’t trailing as much. Still, Rohde keeps his defender on his hip, dribbling into him to control his body and then using the body contact to push off and create space for the runner. This one’s fully outside of the free throw line when he jumps.
It just looks very smooth and comfortable. Talking about what kind of things can be useful against a higher level of competition – this shot is one of those things if he can keep his accuracy. He’s long enough that he can get it off pretty well, he’s got good enough body control to hold his defenders where he needs them to be to be able to shoot it, and it’s just a surprising shot in general. College defenses don’t really expect the runner from that far out as a high percentage or go-to play – they’re more looking at a pull-up jumper or for the player to go a little deeper on his drive. But, basically, you don’t need a ton of an advantage off of the bounce for him to be able to get to this shot – which is perfect because we really haven’t been generating much advantage off of the bounce as I’ve previously discussed.
But, yeah, this is a good tool that could pick us up some buckets when we’re struggling to create against athleticism .
Rebounding
This is going to be just a two-clip section that I won’t harp on a ton, but rebounding is still an issue and didn’t get cleaned up as of yet. I mentioned the size advantage that we had in this game… and yet we were still out-rebounded 31-28!
A lot of it still appears to be mental – relaxing or getting caught ball watching. Here’s a good example of that where Buchanan does a solid job of helping on a drive but then fronts a much smaller guard, gets caught behind him on rebounding position but nudges him toward the rim so it’s probably likely he could have secured the glass if it came off that way. It doesn’t, though, and the shot airballs. It looks like McKneely is going to get it and at eight seconds into the clip you can see Blake ease-up – but Isaac can’t control it and it bounces right to Masiah Gilyard (#3). Gilyard is only 6’3″ and yet he’s able to grab the bounce and go right up and make the layup.
Buchanan needed to be fighting to get back between Gilyard and the basket pretty much that whole time, but certainly needed to be alert enough so that he could be there to block/contest the shot when the ball bounced to him. This was just a case of watching the ball and assuming that iMac was going to secure it rather than continuing to work throughout the play.
And then this next one is a combination of Taine losing track of his man and then just getting bullied under the hoop and conceding the board and the foul.
A little bit of lack of awareness, ability, and tenacity all balled into one there.
And, again, I don’t highlight that one to pick on Taine (I could have done a whole subsection from this game) – it’s to show where the lack of athleticism in our guard play can hurt us on the glass as well – and also to add another visual to my earlier thought around rotational time. I don’t think it’s a leap to say that he represents a lower ceiling later in this season compared to what Power and/or Sharma (at least one but probably both) can offer you. The question is more around the floor he provides now vs. what they do. Certainly in the Bahamas, he seemed more capable of living in those moments now against that kind of competition…
But we still got blown out in those games and, even still, you don’t really need a floor in games like this (even if it was closer than we’d want)… and I’m not convinced that the floor he represents is even higher than the other two now.
I’d like to see us play Power in and off of the post more, as I discussed, and I’d just like to see us give Sharma more air to play in games like this one and on Friday as well. It’s because it’s a small sample size – but Sharma is still in seven of our top eight player efficiency pairings!
Which doesn’t mean a ton at this point – but it does probably mean we could stand to increase those reps until that’s no longer the case.
Over our next six games we have three difficult challenges and three games that should be comfortable. If we want to err toward raising our floor over the more competitive ones, I see the argument for the experience (although we just beat this team that lost to Maryland by 30 by 9 using that philosophy). But, at the very least, let’s play to build confidence and reps in our ceiling during the buy games. The two-year window has closed. I’d like to see Coach Sanchez swing for the fences by leaning into potential.
In Conclusion
All-in-all I found this win to be more discouraging than encouraging after the rough tournament; mostly because a poor team hung around with us and made the game uncomfortable pretty late. More than that, though, because we fell back into some old habits of ignoring in-game strategy that was working, or had worked against similar looks, and defaulted to playing experience over potential against a lesser opponent while trying to develop a roster over the course of a season.
But there were some glimpses.
In trying to find our identity as a team, we saw signs of some things that we could try to do more of to help our situation on the offensive side of the ball (play through the post, take pressure off of our ball-handlers). And defensively, although we’re going to struggle with some limitations all year, we also saw areas within our control (communication on rotations) that have the potential to improve.
It’s a weird time and one where I’m not even sure what the best outcome would be for this season as it relates to the program’s long-term upside; nor what we can reasonably expect the team’s upside to be for this season. But I am starting to see a more-clear vision for how and who we’ll need to play this year to get to its best possible outcome.
Will keep evolving thoughts as they come! Let’s get some TJ Power and Ishan Sharma significant run against Holy Cross on Friday!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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