It’s hard not to watch a game like we had against Florida on Wednesday and not immediately think about Jalen Warley and Elijah Gertrude. Those two were our answers to help combat athletic matchups like these and all roster composition discussions have to take into account their lack of availability due to injury and CTB’s retirement. They were part of the roster design unrealized. That being said, we just have way too many of the same style of player, between Isaac McKneely, Taine Murray, Ishan Sharma, and even TJ Power, whose primary value comes down to shooting, who struggle to beat most players defending them from parity off of the bounce, and who are disadvantaged athletically against most players they guard.
As much as these pieces are often long, I still always find myself having to make cuts and to make decisions about how I want to focus the piece. What are the most interesting or relevant things to talk about and how to organize it. For example, the Twitter account HoozDefense is doing some solid work identifying key tidbits for our future opponents. Ahead of the game they called out the seal actions Florida used with their bigs against our defense which were effective; spot on. We could focus on those and nerd out a bit on tactics… but I think the most pressing and relevant story of the team right now is figuring out how we want to utilize this roster.
On the surface, there aren’t that many guys you want to be playing – but the current starters + Cofie have had some really good moments and stretches – and the lack of utilization of our depth has caught up with us dramatically in the second half of both the Tennessee and Florida games in both of which we were close after the first half. So, I think the best way to tell this story in a comprehensive way right now that captures the pulse of the moment is to do a small dive on each of our 8 most commonly used players right now through the lens of this game.
I’m going to pull just a couple of clips for each that contextualize them within the broader context of the team right now and how they’re being used and what, if anything we or they still need to figure out vs. what is going well.
Elijah Saunders
I’m going to start generally through the guard and wing rotation/situation but I wanted to give the headliner space to Elijah Saunders for this one so, here’s the marquee:
Saunders showed up in a big way during this game. He played with confidence, energy, was a little chippy at times, and proved that he can be an effective and impactful player at this level. His 19 points were a career high on an efficient 50% shooting from the floor including 60% (3-5) from three. He wasn’t just shooting well from outside, though, he was sealing and finishing inside and making his presence felt around the rim. Saunders is a strong player, but his lack of length at the PF position against a team with the side of Florida on the interior was still a bit of a question mark coming in, especially considering he hasn’t had huge games against lesser competition. And it did show up on occasion, on the glass, defending the post, trying to score over people. Still, I thought overall he answered the bell and, while I wouldn’t call him our most important player this season, I do think he’s our best player this season with plenty of room to build on games like this.
And, while it wasn’t the same gap we faced down during Dai Dai’s absence from the contest, which we’ll talk about momentarily, we were up 20-16 when he left the game with just over 12 minutes to go in the first half, and down 20-24 when he returned just over 4 minutes later. Four minutes is a lot of consecutive time to sit one of your best players when your team literally isn’t scoring a point and when your defensive lineups aren’t playing well, which we’ll talk more about in a bit, but Saunders ability to step outside and knock down a shot (this was my favorite of his three because the release was so quick and over a good contest where his defender was just in natural guarding position – very confident take)…
paired with his ability to create space around the rim with his strength and finish…
paired with his ability to slash from the outside when there’s a driving lane…
make him our most well-rounded offensive player. That drive above came against the very athletic 6’5″ Denzel Abeerdeen (#11) who was still recovering to him but wasn’t able to cut off the drive or bother Saunders shot through his strong frame.
I’d like to see Saunders look for opportunities to slash like this a little more often and, as we’re going to continue to talk about our struggles at the SF position, I’d still like to see us give him a shot there more regularly. The rotation is getting tight!
Where I’d like to see Saunders develop is with his mental consistency/focus. I absolutely loved his competitive edge all game, but I’d like to see him improve his awareness and passing out of the post rather than forcing up contested shots out of rhythm over taller players.
Here’s one late in the game where he drives it in from the wing again (good!) but gets stymied by the help defense and just tries to force it right up over length, getting blocked in the process.
He gets tunnel vision when he gets the ball that deep and is a bit of a black hole with the ball. I love that he’s a scoring threat in there. He’s got that little baby hook, we saw him with the seal earlier, he can finish off of the drive… but there’s also opportunity for him to create the advantage inside, force the defense to collapse on him, but then kick it out to an open shooter or to someone who can attack a close out.
Learning when to take the shot or when to pass out of the post will go a long way toward making him the most effective offensive player he can be this year.
Also on the mental side, much of the time he gives up offensive rebounds or plays on the defensive end is because he relaxes on the play. We saw it last game in one of the Holy Cross clips where he fell asleep on his man cutting to the hoop. Here, he does a good job hedging, but doesn’t hustle back to his man and gives up the lob pass for the oop.
Fatigue has seemed to be a factor across the team in the second half, which we’ll discuss more with rotations, but this is still in the first half not long after he had a four-minute rest. I don’t think it’s as much of a fatigue issue as it was just not identifying the urgency of the threat of his man scoring and thinking he could get back on time without a full sprint.
This is what CTB used to always describe as being “continuous” on defense and, while I’m very happy that Coach Sanchez isn’t sitting Saunders for mistakes like this, it’s worth pointing out as an area of his development.
As we progress through what is starting to look like a challenging season (hopefully we’ll find out footing in ACC play), I like to think about who the most preferable pieces would be to bring back next year regardless of how everything plays out or how realistic it is to keep them. Saunders nears the top of that list.
Dai Dai Ames
If you had told me when I was scouting him from Kansas St. that Dai Dai Ames would be the most important player on our team this season… I’d have been shocked. Of course, I’d also have been shocked if you had told me at that time that Andrew Rohde would be our back up PG. It’s more a comment on our depth and the crazy circumstances surrounding the squad this year than anything; and Ames is a bit of a wild card as a player, but it’s glaring how much we just need him on the court.
Not only has he been shooting the ball well all season, but he’s the only player on our team who can do things like this:
and like this:
Those plays are smooth and fluid around the rim, with the ability to finish in traffic around much taller players on help side. He has a knack for creating off of the bounce, touching the paint, and scoring from all three levels as a guard – things we sorely are lacking otherwise as we’ll see later.
And – look – there are a bunch of things on which Dai Dai can improve. He’s not actually a very good defender on the ball, especially when not paired with better defenders around him. He too often gives up the angle at the point of attack, like in this clip below, and doesn’t have the speed or size to get back into the play effectively:
He’s not always alert and opposing teams are comfortable pulling up and shooting over his close outs:
He’s sloppy with the ball far too often which can lead to squandered possessions and runout opportunities for the other team, like here:
And he still is too lackadaisical against the press; not taking ownership of breaking it as often as you’d want, and going avant-garde with some of his press break attempts rather than just doing the fundamentally sound thing. In this clip below, for example, it’s not a good pass from Rohde… but Ames is the only one back there against the press and he decided to try to back door the defender on a fly route. It’s not a good decision. Start that run and then snap it back and come hard to the ball.
Even here, below, Cofie has to take ownership for this bad pass and rushing the outlet without clearing that the defense wasn’t lurking. He could really just start dribbling the ball himself. But, still, Ames waits stationary on the other side of the hoop for the outlet without looking around at all to clear the defense. Don’t just drift away there – look around and clear the defense and then either come back to the ball or start pushing for moving the ball up the floor (if it’s clear). It’s far too casual, especially considering the level of pressure athletic defenses have been putting on them this year.
But, while those things are all true and he needs to work on them, he still has to be on the floor as much as possible.
With him leading the offense to start the game, we scored 20 points in the first 7 minutes; absolutely cooking. He knocked down a three, assisted another, and generally helped to keep offense flowing so that between he and McKneely and Rohde, there was just enough facilitation and ball movement to generate some quality looks that we knocked down across multiple players.
Dai Dai got his second foul (the first was borderline, the second wasn’t a foul) with 12:08 left to go in the first half and, true to system form, he sat the next seven minutes of the half. When he left, we were up 20-16 and when he returned, we were down 22-29. TWO points scored across seven minutes of game play. Unconscionable. And for us to watch that drought carry on and our hot start go to waste all the while keeping Dai Dai on the bench for just the two fouls was terrible roster management.
I believe I’ve had this discussion before, but I’ve never been one to support the whole “sit a player with two fouls” argument. I get that some players play more timidly when they have the fouls so you want to avoid that, and I certainly get the idea that if they pick up more fouls they’re at risk of fouling out. That’s fine when your back up options are comparable. But if you’re trying to avoid fouling a player out of the game so that they won’t be available by… keeping them out of the game so they aren’t available anyway there’s no point. The odds of the player fouling out even with two fouls are low anyway but, especially in games like this, we’ve gotten the doors off by ranked and athletic teams this season. If we’re playing well on the road and holding a lead – that’s on a razor’s edge – and you absolutely cannot afford to turn to your bench for such a long stretch and derail that momentum as we did. When Ames returned, we even shrunk the lead back down to four before the half.
Now, of course, he was still in the game when things spiraled out of control in the second half. That’s twice now that we’ve held our own in the first half only to get absolutely destroyed in the second. It’s a combination of the opposing team figuring out how best to play to their advantages and, I believe there’s likely some fatigue. So, we’ll have to talk about how to handle that with our other rotations/players – but Ames better be conditioned because this season we’re going to need him to log the kind of minutes CTB loved to play his PGs – as many as possible. At least low-to-mid 30s and not the 27 we saw on Wednesday.
Isaac McKneely
It’s actually McKneely who we can probably afford to play a little less. McKneely played a whopping 36 on Wednesday and, really, it was basically the entire game as he got 19 minutes in the first half and many of the 3 minutes he rested in the second half were at the end when the game was decided. While he’s absolutely our best SG, I think he plays better with more freshness and we don’t actually need him on the floor all of the time in the same way we need a player like Ames right now.
Don’t get me wrong – he’s the only player on our roster doing this kind of stuff with the consistency and willingness to shoot that he has. That’s nice navigation coming over the stagger screen and a quick release to bury the shot. This was designed – you can tell by how Saunders is lining the screen up in advance. Very nice look to open the game.
He shot 50% from three on 8 shots. That’s great; and you’d love to see him find even more.
The problem is that he offers the same limitations around ball handling as your other guards and wings between Taine, Sharma, and Power. He’s better than all three of those guys; but it’s still a limitation. There were plenty of times in this game where he drove to just no success or turned it over (he had three), and he doesn’t relieve the issue of setting up/getting into the offense against pressure when he has the ball.
For example, in this clip below, we’re actually running Sides and he gets stuck with the ball at the point with both Rohde and Ames running off of our screens. He misses and is unable to get both Rohde and Ames coming off of curl screens because of the distance he’s pushed from the three-point line to make the pass. He actually turns his back to his man at one point all the way on the logo. All of the disruption keeps the offense from even starting, let alone trying to create an advantage, and we end up with Buchanan with the ball late in the shot clock where Florida can over play the pass to a guard, and he has to try to take a pull up jumper off of the bounce.
That’s a wasted possession due almost entirely to McKneely being the ball handler on the play. He just doesn’t relieve the ball handling issue.
He was also our worst perimeter defender against the Gators, which you have to think involves fatigue because, while he’s not a plus defender, he’s normally not giving up so many easy drives and is normally better than most of our bench guys.
This first look is in the first half where he was shortly subbed out after for his one minute of rest. Florida executes that low post seal on Cofie to keep him from helping, but the play works because McKneely can’t stop a straight-line drive that wasn’t especially quick. Seems like a fatigued defensive rep.
And here he is, below, later in the game where his man just kind of picks an angle, takes him deep into the paint for an easy finish again:
That one was only two minutes after the half so it probably wasn’t much to do with fatigue – but there were a lot of these examples throughout and, fatigue or not, if he’s defending like this you can feel comfortable sitting him for a couple of minutes.
The reason is that, even though McKneely is absolutely your best shooter and best chance at scoring points at volume, when he’s sitting it’s not like your offense stops functioning. It’s when you can’t initiate offense because you don’t have good enough ball handling that your offense stops functioning. You can’t afford that. But lowering your shooting % at guard for a few minutes while some other guys we’re going to talk about get a little run is completely fine.
Again, this is NOT a knock on McKneely’s game. We can’t or shouldn’t expect him to be our best perimeter defender. He’s a very good rebounder for his position and had 7 to lead the team. But if there’s something we actually can’t afford around iMac’s utilization, it’s running him into the ground because we view him as so indispensable. He needs to have energy on defense and if we never bring him out of the game, we end up taking our ball-handling off of the floor for bench rotations which leads to some incredibly wonky lineups as we’ll see in a bit. Not to mention, it’s also good if he is fresh running off of screens quickly like in that first clip.
Andrew Rohde
Rohde had a quiet game. As I was going through and looking for plays that showcases a specific player, there were few where he popped as the focal point. That was disappointing especially as he did have a height advantage most of the game and we never really saw him get into the post. He was only 1-4 from the floor, two of which were end of half or shot clock desperation threes, and one of which was this broken play off of his lost dribble which he was able to convert (and shout out for Saunders for the illegal hold – but I like the physicality, speaking of low post seals).
He struggled often when Ames was out to get the offense initiated, but we’ll also see some of that in later clips had to do with who was playing alongside of him during those times and who was(n’t) getting open.
All-in-all, I’d like to see Rohde be more aggressive on offense, especially when he is spelling Dai Dai at point (which hopefully will be increasingly fewer minutes) but also when he’s the secondary ball handler. And I say that in a world where I probably wouldn’t if this roster comp were different… but it isn’t.
I will say, I’ve been happy with Rohde’s on-ball defense this season and he did the best job of it across our perimeter defenders in this game (which has normally been true). That’s good defense, below, getting to his man on the close out in the corner, getting over the screen, defending the isolation, and getting a good contest on the jump shot.
He had a couple of plays where he got buried on the post seal action and fouled a jump shooter once – but all of our guys had their own issues with Florida’s talented guards and Rohde did the best job on them with more possessions like this one as well.
Rohde probably needs to play more than his 26 minutes. Overlapping him with Ames is best practice and you can afford to rest McKneely for that time when you do, but when you do sit Ames, Rohde has to be in (and vice versa) and so, too, should be McKneely. He pairs well with Sharma as well but, most importantly – if Ames is out of the game, lean into your more athletic and skilled bigs, like Saunders and Cofie to help relieve some of that ball pressure either through their own dribble or a post up. More to come on this.
Ishan Sharma
Sharma, along with TJ Power, only played five minutes each in this game and only 3 of Sharma’s were meaningful (a 3-minute stretch during that incredibly dark period between the 11 and 8-minute mark in the first half). Those three minutes did not go well. But here’s the thing – ALL of Sharma’s 3 minutes were alongside of Power and some of them were alongside BOTH Murray AND Power!
What’re we doing???
If we’ve got two guys in Sharma and Power who we’re almost unwilling to use all game, then why are we running them out there together along with our other wing bench player? And if we’re unwilling to use them because things went poorly, then maybe don’t put all of our eggs in the bench basket at once! It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy!
*AHEM* Sorry. That fired me up because, two fouls on Ames aside, it was terrible roster management. Not only were we not supporting our less tested players with stronger ones, sprinkling them into the game, but we did so while we were clinging onto a lead and had been playing very well, AND we used that as confirmation that we couldn’t play them later in the game, despite the rotation being small enough to cause fatigue. It was really, really… really… really bad. It also builds on the point I’ve been making in the buy games that we haven’t been giving enough run especially to Sharma so that he can get more comfortable prior to these moments.
When Sharma came it, it was with Rohde at point, already sacrificing ball handling with Ames on the bench, Sharma was the SG, Taine was the SF, and Power was the PF with Buchanan at Center!!! There’s no one on the floor to help Rohde with the ball handling here. We’re running Sides and getting nowhere between Power getting an isolation against a man he should theoretically be able to attack off of the bounce, but not, and then Murray takes a slowly developing drive into the lane and loses the ball. Sharma is actually the one to save it with a nice little awareness play, but Blake has to attempt a three, which he airballs (and Sharma is actually there to clean up the rebound as well but the shot clock expires).
This isn’t Sharma’s fault! Sure, he’s part of that lack of ball handling formula – but you’ve got to play him with people who can lighten that load across the guard position and forward position. But, if anything, he was hustling and looked more comfortable with the ball than Taine or Power did. We’re still up four points and it’s been over a minute since Ames went out, though (and we’d played Murray and Power ahead of this) – you just can’t… you can’t go to all of your most marginal bench guys at one time no matter any other circumstances.
Here, (and I wrote in my notes “how are we still playing this lineup???”) no one can even get open all the way out near half court to take a pass from Rohde.
Sharma did have a couple of bad defensive sets, all due to awareness and just being close enough to his man to close out a three. These were compounded by rebounding issues Power was introducing at the time. Sharma’s man was responsible for two threes over him while he was in, and this was his worst play of the game, below, where he tries to help on the dribble penetration and loses track of his man in the process, expecting him to be on the wing extended and not noticing the shift down to the corner.
But like… that’s just an inexperienced mental lapse trying to focus on help defense and not being aware. This is the kind of thing you can improve easily through reps and comfort which is why you should be playing more in buy games!
Look, Sharma doesn’t fix the roster issue we have of too many pure shooters and not enough athletes or complete basketball players, but we’re really not setting this kid up for success right now. You’ve got to be willing to invest the developmental minutes against worse competition, and we aren’t, and when you do give him his opportunity in a big moment to shine, you can’t surround him with the worst possible roster compliments, and when he does poorly there, you can’t not play him the entire second half as a result until the last minute and a half of the game despite the fact that most of the second half wasn’t close. It’s just like a checklist of what not to do with a developmental player like this especially when there’s a real need this season to have him improve and contribute.
TJ Power
They really just don’t know what they want to do with Power. The truth remains, he’s a worse defender at the PF than the SF; especially against big and athletic teams like this one. We tried to play him at the PF to backup Saunders and that just really wasn’t a good idea to match the physicality of the Florida bigs.
Here he hedges and recovers okay with Sharma (he probably needed to shut down the dribble more but didn’t get burned) and he definitely gets fouled on the first rebound with an extreme shove in the back. And Blake is big at fault here for not shutting down the opposite side of the hoop and letting the rebounder swoop past him. But Power is just getting manhandled under the hoop and can’t hold up; eventually giving up the second board for the put back.
He conceded quite a few offensive boards during his five minutes and it was a real problem.
I still think he’s better suited as a defender on the wing. Most of the time when he doesn’t hold up, it’s a strength and verticality element around the hoop, but he has moments where he can move his feet against smaller players and use his length to create mistakes.
But this is one of those situations where you have to be very mindful if you’re going to use Power how you’re going to use Power. You may not be able to play him against Florida right now – but you definitely can’t play him at PF against a team like Florida where you might be able to get away with it against a middling ACC team. He’s completely lost right now and not playing with confidence on either end.
Speaking of the other end, there’s still a disconnect on role and intention. Here, for example, he’s playing the PF with Cofie at Center. It’s a good theoretical spacing lineup, but with Rohde, McKneely, and Murray around him 1-3, it’s a pretty bad defensive one. Here’s the thing, though. On this play, when Power passes McKneely the ball and screens for him, Florida switches the action. That leaves Power with a size mismatch inside on Aberdeen (#11) – he has four inches on him. But as he pushes him into the lane, McKneely doesn’t even care to register the switch, neither looking to pass to Power nor to take the 6’9″ Thomas Haugh off of the bounce. What are we doing if not to capitalize on a mismatch the offense creates either way? So, it speaks to the trust and confidence of both in that respective way at the moment and, really, Power doesn’t make an effort to post up Aberdeen or call for the ball, he lulls about the lane and directs traffic to Cofie who sets a ball screen for McKneely who ends up turning it over.
And then, a little later, there’s just zero chemistry or interplay between he and iMac on the wing again where Power looks like he wants to be setting a ball screen of some sorts, but can’t find a good place to do it, iMac is basically ignoring him entirely (I’m sure it wasn’t intentional it was just being harassed with the ball… but still), and ends up taking a very forced back down turnaround jumper.
Just a terrible possession/lineup with Ames, Saunders, and Cofie out and not having a plan for how we were going to navigate this.
It’s clear right now that Power minutes are getting increasingly rare – and I think he feels this by how hard he pressed on that airballed pull-up three early in the shot clock late in the first half. But I also think that we need to be willing to change our style a bit if/when we use Power which we still absolutely should. I’ve seen some arguments that he’s better served as a PF, which is what we’re attempting to do now. I disagree. I don’t think he’s strong enough to play the position well against our best competition right now plus, between Saunders, playing Cofie with Buchanan, and another idea, I don’t think we really need him there. I DO think we can give him some more run at SF (primarily playing with Ames and not so much Rohde), but we’d have to be very intentional about how we use him on offense and cater a game plan that either just lets him spot up away from the ball or that allows him to (and we encourage him to) post up a mismatch. There’s enough shooting on this roster between Saunders and Cofie that you can free up areas of the floor for actions like that if you’re willing to.
Taine Murray
This was Taine’s best game of the season, which isn’t saying a ton because it mostly accounts for the very end of the game. He did hold up probably better than anyone aside from Rohde on the perimeter and had a few relevant defensive plays – but mostly it seemed that Florida wasn’t attacking him like they were our other guards. Fine by me if you can have Taine “do no harm” so-to-speak on defense.
The thing was, he played twenty-five minutes in this one and for almost all of it, absolutely nothing happened. Like, he’d get the ball, make the same three dribbles with his left hand toward the center of the lane, and pass it to someone else. Stuff like this where he’d camp the corner, get a pass – in this case he had an open baseline to attack off of the dribble but opted not to – couldn’t throw an entry pass to Saunders, and reset the offense which eventually stalled and caused Ames to force a late shot that was blocked.
Just straight passivity and stagnation for most of the game.
Here, again, just so you know I’m not hyperbolizing. He catches the ball in the same spot, similarly has a driving lane baseline, similarly takes a few dribbles with no intention of doing anything and gets rid of it.
But then, in a crazy flurry within the last five minutes, Murray woke up. Perhaps it was pressing due to the time and score, perhaps it was Florida being a little lax due to the same, but it wasn’t just that he was making shots at the rim, it was that his entire energy shifted.
Here you see him late in the game… we’re down 18 as opposed to being in a close contest, but when he catches the ball on the wing he first immediately dribbles toward that baseline and forces two defenders to come to him. Then he holds the dribble to keep them and looks for the pass. Unfortunately, it’s just back to Blake on the three-point line where he’s not a threat, but then after Ames misses the layup and Buchanan tracks down the board, Murray is in straight-line attack mode from the point with a pretty acrobatic finish.
He followed that up with a backdoor cut on the baseline and another fast break bucket. Even just running up and down the court between plays you could notice a spring in his step where he just looked way more alert and engaged than he has been at any point this year.
Aside from the lack of outside shooting still, this was the Taine for a short stretch I think many hoped to see this year. The question will be, then, can he regain that energy and assertiveness at any point when a game is not in doubt. Can he start playing with his hair on fire as opposed to feeling asleep at the wheel?
Either way, 25 minutes is absolutely crazy when he’s playing like he was for most of the game. It’s definitely not enough to “do no harm” on this team (especially because that’s not really true because his struggles to shake pressure defense and his desire to keep from handling the ball much DO “do harm” given the roster and how much we’re playing him). He’s going to have to contribute meaningfully and play with energy always – otherwise he’s just blocking development. Many will say that this last few minutes proves why he has a long leash – I say that juice isn’t worth the squeeze with what we’ve weathered to get there, and hypothesize that if we were to offer the same amount of opportunity through mistake to Sharma, at the least, that we’d have just as many if not more of these moments.
Jacob Cofie
If there’s one player I could ensure would finish his career a Wahoo, I would pick Jacob Cofie. The combination of time left and potential are undeniable. He’s flashed a little less frequently than he did earlier in the season, but his ability to compliment most lineups remains. He has true athleticism and length for his position and his defensive presence makes up for many ills. He’s been getting less run than he was too, though, which has seemingly coincided with this idea that we’re playing him and Buchanan as true backups to each other and trying Power out as more of the PF with Saunders. Split between them, Cofie and Buchanan made up exactly 40 minutes played on Wednesday.
We need him on the floor more. We need him to do things like pressure the offensive glass and keep plays alive:
We need his defense, we need his relief of pressure… we need to green light him to make more plays, like this:
That’s a gorgeous move that’s really hard to stop with his body control and how far he can stretch that ball out away from a defender. Post him up in the high or low post! Isolate him. Call his number.
What I really hope is that he’s not Ryan Dunning, because his shot and willingness to take it seem to be regressing from where he came in after the offseason. In each of the past few games he’s either hesitated or very clearly been thinking hard about whether or not he should be shooting compared to earlier in the year when he was just letting it fly when he had space.
I’m saying this a lot but I think it’s true – most of our guys need to be greenlit to be aggressive when they have an opportunity or positive matchup. What appears to be happening instead is that we’re becoming more picky about who gets what shot again, we’re increasingly relying on guard play to carry the offense, which hasn’t been working well anyway due to our roster comp, but which feels like the same output as with our previous offensive systems. As a result, we’re seeing more forced shots while not being open from our preferred scorers again (Ames, iMac, Saunders) and seeing the rest of our guys appearing to become more conservative on the offensive side. I seriously hope that’s a mirage that’s just started to happen recently – because that’s what leads to defenses being able to cheat and offensive players losing confidence and feels all too familiar. Fingers crossed. Let’s play through Cofie more!
Blake Buchanan
I don’t have a ton to say about Blake in this game. I thought it was a pretty status quo game for him this year. I liked some of his movement to free himself in the lane while working around Saunders – like here where he comes open in the lane with Elijah basically boxing his man, McKneely is able to find him and he doesn’t waste motion getting the push shot up:
I thought he had a few moments of being more active on the offensive glass than normal, which was good to see:
But he still doesn’t play with as much strength or awareness as he needs which has been hurting us on the defensive glass like we saw earlier, and as another example, he really struggled to identify and/or fight through, and/or fall behind these seal screens all game:
He just gets physically pushed around and moved too much in that clip. To me, Blake continues to be a valuable energy player who has improved as a passer with the ball in his hands and is at his best when he’s active and attacking around the rim. But it’s still hard with him, Cofie, and Saunders as the only really practical frontcourt players as it limits our flexibility.
Which made me think – maybe it’s time to give Anthony Robinson a little more purposeful run. Not a ton. When he’s played, I think it’s been pretty clear why he’s considered greener as he looks unsure with the ball in his hands. He made a hook shot in this game that had almost zero touch and was a hard bank in from straight away. But he is big and strong and athletic and 5-10 minutes per game from him could potentially help with some of our rebounding issues, could keep our frontcourt more fresh, and could give us more flexibility in how we use Cofie as he could increase his minutes at the PF. Similarly, we wouldn’t have to play Power there for Saunders, but this could also free up some of those coveted (at least for me) Saunders at the SF minutes. Given our current rotational issues there, as documented above, and the fatigue our team has felt across the board (and the lack of playable depth our coaching staff appears to think we have), that could be a very welcome thing. A lineup like: Ames, McKneely, Saunders, Cofie, Robinson, for example, suddenly seems much more imposing from a defensive standpoint and I’m not sure it’s giving up much on offense from what we’ve been witnessing. If anything, it could allow us to play some bully ball.
In Conclusion
There are still many rocks left unturned and I’d like to see us start turning more over, because what we’ve been doing and what we’ve increasingly been leaning toward (playing just 7 big minutes with Taine being one of them) is not a formula for success. It’s too unathletic and too fatigable. There’s no staying power there; no upside… no unique advantage.
When we’re playing teams like Bethune-Cookman and American on our upcoming schedule, let’s start throwing some spaghetti at the wall and seeing if we can either bring some of our young talent along or if we can find a different lens through which to design our lineups – like by going ultra big (surprise, surprise I still want to do this even if Power hasn’t been successful so far… we’ve really just tried using him like we would any normal SF when we play him there) – or even just by who we play through (like more Cofie and more post initiation in general).
When we’re playing upcoming teams like SMU and Memphis… we just need to be better about assessing the moment. We can’t have 7 consecutive minutes without Ames. We can’t load our least athletic lineups on the floor all at the same time. We’ve got to find ways to leverage our depth without doing it all at once. And, mostly, we’ve got to find ways to empower more players to stop playing so cautiously and just go for it.
Let’s see the 5-minute Taine version of all of our guys whenever they get the chance to step on that floor and let’s be comfortable with whatever that looks like, mistakes and all. Because right now, we’re still making plenty of mistakes just without much of the attack. Give me active mistakes over passive ones every time.
Quick turnaround again – let’s hope for a more positive outcome to start our ACC play this afternoon!
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