Disaster struck on Saturday, at least for one game and hopefully not long after, when Dai Dai Ames landed awkwardly on his ankle and could only play seven minutes of the game. Already thinned by transfer and injury, the PG position was left fully to Andrew Rohde with players like Isaac McKneely and Ishan Sharma helping by committee. Would we have won the game with Ames available throughout? Who knows? But we once again fell apart late; holding a 7-point lead with 10:17 seconds left to go in the game and ultimately being outscored by 19 points over the remainder of the game.
The positive news was that, despite being in a nightmare PG situation, we were very competitive for a half of basketball. The flip side of that, clearly, was the depth petering out and the team falling off after a certain point in time. Without knowing when Ames will be able to return or, even more tentative, if Christian Bliss will see the court and contribute in any meaningful way, I want to focus on what we could control Saturday and how we did it.
I thought we made a few smart decisions like running a lot of our Sides offense. Generally speaking, I would be reticent to ever abandon our new offense for the old. The main reasons being that the spacing concepts are worse, teams have scouted us and know what’s coming, there’s less room for innovation and improvisation, and that we’ve had an unfortunate tendency in the past to abandon the new when it gets bumpy to revert to the past. In this case, however, the offense took some of the burden off of the lack of ball handling and played more into off-ball movement and screening to get players open. With .5 PGs available, this was a smart decision (though I do hope we go back to the new offense when we regain health).
But I also thought we made some really poor decisions throughout; primarily in who we decided to play and when, and in how one-dimensional we became in how we looked for our offense. It’s natural to want to start having core groups of guys that we view as “better” and shortening lineups at this point in the season. But, if anything, Saturday showed us that this team’s depth is such that we need to be willing to play what’s working in the moment rather than relying on preconceived notions of what’s “good.” Aside from Ames, when healthy, there really isn’t anyone else we “have” to play on this team right now. I’ll accept a case for McKneely as that’s a loaded one and I don’t really want to divert this piece for that right now – but only if we don’t over rely on him as we did in this game.
But, otherwise… no one. For example, Blake Buchanan has had good games this season as a passer, as a hustle player, and as a scrappy finisher. He’s had a few games where his touch around the rim is on, etc. But in this game… he was quite bad. His energy wasn’t there, his alertness wasn’t there, his presence on offense was hurting us, and he was really struggling to defend SMU’s 7’2″ Samet Yiğitoğlu. And, yet, despite that we had a very good sample size of this, he was in there during the back-breaking stretch run of play and we never turned back to Anthony Robinson despite a very promising couple of minutes in the first half. Buchanan is not so good that he has to be out there no matter what because he’s the starter (and I’d argue he should be that at this point – but even still).
Similarly, Elijah Saunders was coming off of his best game as a Wahoo against Florida (although he still struggled defensively at times); putting up 19 points on efficient shooting at all three levels. He really didn’t have it in this one, going 0-6 from the floor, struggling to make an impact against SMU’s size, taking some pretty bad shots and missing badly, not rotating well nor being able to impact shots against SMU’s bigs when he did. In fact, him being forced to sit at times due to foul trouble was probably a boon for us as it probably forced our hand a bit and we got to see more Jacob Cofie.
Now, Saunders definitely is one of our better players, but he’s not so good or important that you have to play him when he’s playing poorly and other guys are offering more in any given contest. This shouldn’t be a radical thought, but it does seem to be, that we need to be less prescriptive with how we manage our lineups and more reactive to who is playing well on any given night and who isn’t; because we really just don’t have the kind of dudes you can never afford to sit… AND we’re not good enough to afford riding with guys who are having an off night.
In this game, I thought we made two broad and crucial critical errors: we were too reliant on Isaac McKneely to make a play, for most of the second half really, but especially down the stretch; and we stuck to our predetermined roster depth chart too closely rather than adapting to how things were going in-game. We’ll tackle those in reverse order, so let’s get after it!
Give All of The Jacob Cofie
There have been games where he’s off and looks tentative. In which case the message above holds; you have pieces who can play instead if they’re playing well. He also missed an incredibly impactful dunk late in the game in this one. That being said, I’d love to see Jacob Cofie inserted into the starting lineup, played at both the PF and C as a priority, and turned into one of our focal points on offense. His 24 minutes in this one were a delightful +3 despite the fact that we lost by 12 points.; and he probably only played as much as he did because of the aforementioned Saunders foul troubles. That needs to switch. I’d like to start him at Center alongside Saunders and also play him alongside Buchanan or Robinson.
He’s getting much better with his rotations and makes splash plays on defense, his reach and athleticism cover up a lot of other mistakes, and he has the ability to both stretch a defense and make a play off of the bounce on offense. In fact, I’d love to see us empower him to take more shots and try to run offense through him as a considerably higher priority option. An aggressive and confident Cofie is certainly a part of our best teams. There doesn’t need to be a conflict between his minutes and Saunders; play both together and Buchanan less. If Buchanan and/or Robinson are playing well, you don’t need to sit Cofie to get Saunders his minutes – I’ll still argue that playing Saunders at the SF is doable and could be quite good with Cofie + a Center.
But before I get swept away talking about potential lineups, let’s look at what Cofie actually did on Saturday. Let’s start with defense where he’s continually improved his awareness and ability to help within the Pack Line. He’s a sound defender in general, but he’s starting to make splash plays more frequently. In this first clip, below, with Ames still healthy and in the game, Cofie is playing at PF opposite Buchanan. He initially does a good job with active hands on his man on the perimeter, but the special sauce is that when he sees Boopie Miller (#2) get the ball, he sneaks in from behind to straight-up reject the jump shot, leading to a break-out for Ames the other way (that he has to pull out and reset the offense – but still a great play).
His ability to make that play is great; but it’s the comfort and awareness to see it developing and to leave his man to go and make something happen that excites me. He’s starting to feel more comfortable within the defense.
This next one is a nice play by Rohde to attack the ball-handler and come up with the steal/force the out of bounds turnover, but Rohde had the comfort-level with that angle because Cofie shows and recovers so well/at such an extreme angle on the hedge. He basically shows a trap when he pops out which seems to trigger Miller spinning the other way into Rohde.
Cofie uses his mobility and length to hedge better than anyone else we have on the roster at the moment and his quick hands have the ability to be incredibly disruptive. Here, below, we see him downright attack the ball handler’s dribble. It’s like he’s fired out of a cannon swiping at that dribble and dislodging it, forcing the loose ball that we eventually recover.
Now that’s a hard hedge! Of course, if he doesn’t get the ball there his over-pursuit could potentially cause some issues down the road because he really flies out there past the dribbler. I’ll live with that right now, though, and surely he’ll continue to refine it. The quickness with which he goes after the dribble and that he’s successful at getting it while going so low is really impressive, and even when he misses the dribble, that’s still an angle that fully cuts off the dribble and he’s very quick to recover. This is the kind of intrusive hedge we’re historically gotten but not so much in recent years.
We’ll see some more of his good defense in other sections, but offensively there’s so much potential here.
First, there’s his outside shot, which hadn’t been on point prior to this game but he was 1-2 here. He’s got to keep shooting this and he needs to take it with confidence whenever he has a moment. SMU was playing drop coverage on our ball screens and this is a great way to beat that. Where Buchanan was not the threat to shoot and would often have to reset the offense through someone else when he got the ball in these situations, Cofie was able to make the bigger, slower, Center have to move to cover ground and knocked down this three.
This became kind of an afterthought as the game wore on, and Cofie still is still more of a reactive shooter to being wide-open than a proactive one who is looking to take this when he gets a moment. Given our struggles on offense and, in general, to find clean looks without turning the ball over, we can’t afford to be picky or for him to second-guess this. Let ‘er rip!
Similarly, this two-man game with Rodhe looks threatening. First, Cofie sets a back door screen and then a pin down for Rohde and rolls. Rohde makes a nice, quick, bounce pass to split the defense, with Cofie rolling downhill. Jacob actually draws three SMU defenders triangulating around him when he gets the ball to the block. He briefly loses control of the ball, which probably impacts his vision, but he has an open Murray in the corner, Buchanan diving, and Power open on the opposite wing. Room for growth as he has to gather the ball and kick it back out to Rohde, but then they reset and do it again; this time with Cofie flaring to the point and taking the return pass, forcing defensive rotations after the drop coverage, and hitting Power rotating up to the point for three.
So, commands a triple team when he gets the ball going toward the basket and effective handling and distributing the ball across ball screening action.
Additionally, he’s a real threat in the high post. He’s used this move a couple of times now where he takes his man off of the bounce and spins into that left hand – but this time it’s an acrobatic finish as he’s getting fouled and briefly loses control of the ball only to gather and push it back up at the rim.
He does this toward the end of the shot clock after a bunch of screen and roll actions don’t work and our offense is bogged down, but I’d love for us to make this a look we go to more regularly in the offense. He’s good at making the defense collapse or making something happen when they don’t here and has an advantage either with his handle or with his length against many people who would be guarding him whether it be Centers or PFs.
Furthermore, if defenses play off of him when he gets the ball up there, he’s got the jumper to punish it. I like the boldness of the Sharma step-back three here, and we’ll talk about Sharma soon, but Cofie both collects the offensive board and then punishes his man for not coming out on him at the elbow on this play.
It’s a nice shot but it’s a good look on that possession where he starts low, then works out around the high post, is a threat to pop out to the wing, sets a couple of ball screens, and ultimately punishes a switch/mismatch after the rebound by threatening the high/low pass to Saunders and then sticking the jumper when SMU decides to send their big low and try to close out on Cofie with a smaller player.
As it stands, we’re still treating Cofie like we’re working him in and getting him up to speed… which is true. He is still learning a lot and picking up the speed of the game at this level and where he’s supposed to be and what he’s supposed to be doing. But, despite that, his output has been very good between his defensive impact and his offensive skillset. So, while he’s not a must play and there will be times both Saunders and either Buchanan or maybe Robinson are playing well (if you give Robinson more run as I’ll discuss in a bit), I’d like to make him the priority.
Start him. Make it a priority to play through him on offense more. Increase those reps. Hunt high post touches with the goal of making something happen. Hunt opportunities to punish immobile bigs by getting him looks from outside. Play him alongside Saunders if both are playing well. Don’t be afraid to play him alongside either Buchanan or Robinson… and don’t be afraid to flex Saunders up to SF if he’s playing well alongside of one of the Centers. SF is a complete wild card right now anyway, let’s get big and physical sometimes!
But, yes, the foundation for us to unlock better rotations with more upside, in my opinion, is going to be changing the way we view Jacob Cofie. Let’s implement him less as our first back up option when other things aren’t working as well, and more as the guy we lead with and prioritize.
Blake Buchanan Struggles, Anthony Robinson Flashes
Blake Buchanan has gotten a lot of criticism this year and, until this game, I thought it was a little overblown. He has struggled on the glass as most of our team has (which is actually one of the biggest reasons to look toward Robinson more); but he’s also had moments where he’s hitting that little push shot and his baby hook, and he’s had moments where he’s passed it well out of the high post and from around the arc (he’s still fourth on our team in assists at just .1 assist fewer than Dai Dai Ames per game). He leads the team in blocks and is usually pretty mobile in his rotations. Point being, he’s had some good moments too. In fact, just one game ago, he played a big role in our opening salvo against Florida on both ends of the floor. I think there’s a useful place for Blake Buchanan in this rotation and the best versions of this team include him in the mix.
It just might not be as a starter nor as someone who is seen as indespensible.
Blake really struggled in this game, especially trying to defend Samet Yiğitoğlu on the interior. Samet’s size at 7’2″, 265 lbs was just too much for Buchanan. He went an ultra-efficient 7-8 from the floor for 16 points, most of which were scored while Blake was guarding him (both Cofie and Robinson did a better job). But it wasn’t just that Blake wasn’t able to slow him down, when Blake was on the floor it made it easier for Yiğitoğlu to play drop coverage against our ball screens. We could have and should have attacked this more consistently with McKneely, which was another issue. iMac missed a couple early and then went away from looking for his shot off the bounce – which, we really need him to keep attempting to punish this – but Buchanan neither being able to drive the sag nor shoot the jumper created a lot of situations where our offense would create an advantage that would get squandered.
Let’s take a couple of looks at the defense first. This first one is just a bad hedge and recovery executed between Buchanan and Ames. Recall the Cofie hedge that I showed above and how he was jumping the driving lane and shutting it down disruptively. Here, Blake doesn’t get out far enough on the hedge so he doesn’t actually stop the progress of the drive, he just shows at the ball. Boopie Miller (#2) smartly keeps his dribble, forcing Buchanan to have to stick with him on his drive while Ames tries to recover from the screen. It’s bad communication all around as Buchanan could have asked Rohde to step in rather than show, and Saunders could have identified the roll and dropped into help. Alternatively, Blake could have sprinted back to his man and left Miller to Saunders stepping up, which wouldn’t have been ideal but would have been better than this result. None of those things happened and we gave up an easy dunk to Yiğitoğlu (#24).
The rotations and help weren’t bad but, make no mistake, the lion’s share of this falls on Blake. It was a bad hedge AND it was a bad and indecisive recovery angle after the hedge didn’t work – he really didn’t slow down either offensive player.
Next, this is really a terrible defensive possession without sugarcoating it. Saunders picks up guard (6’3″) BJ Edwards (#0) in transition and ends up playing a two-man game with Blake on Yiğitoğlu. Saunders actually does a really nice job here first getting over the ball screen and then surviving Yiğitoğlu’s seal screen. Elijah had given up a step on the drive but was able to use his size advantage to get back into the play without allowing a shot and forcing Edwards to stop on the block. Good on him. Buchanan, on the other hand is first caught out of position and unaware on the seal. He’s also rocked by it, got whiplash. This had been happening to him a ton the past two games so he needs to be ready for it and either play behind Yiğitoğlu or shade and be actively moving with the drive so that he can’t be sealed. Saunders makes up for the transgression and Buchanan is able to work his way back between Edwards and Yiğitoğlu – but he’s doing so SO casually. It’s like he’s going for a stroll in the park and he neither anticipates nor does anything but waive at the pivot and entry pass from Edwards. From there, he just is too deep in the lane and his attempt to contest the shot doesn’t do much.
He was over-matched physically but that’s also bad tactical defense AND bad effort. Really bad across the board, especially in light of some of the effort we were seeing from Cofie and Robinson (which we’ll see soon).
Here’s another bucket that just comes far too easily. And, although this one’s a break where SMU has numbers, it’s almost like Buchanan is unwilling to commit a hard foul to stop a shot because he knows that foul trouble is the way he’ll get taken out of the game (purely speculative). It’s just way too comfortable of a layup for Yiğitoğlu even after Buchanan steps up on the drive.
It should be noted that this is a much worse defensive possession for TJ Power. He does nothing to stop the ball and then certainly he could afford to give a foul on the layup. I don’t have a whole section on him but will discuss him later. There’s just very little heart on this play in a game where many of our other guys showed heaping amounts of it.
This next one is another look at bad defense by Buchanan but is also a look at how Saunders also wasn’t the best fit this game and didn’t offer much resistance on help-side defense. On the first ball screen, Blake tries to stay with the hedge longer but doesn’t cut off the ball handler and takes a pretty bad angle back to his man. This angle leaves him behind the play, trying to catch back up, such that when the ball does to Yiğitoğlu and he hands it back to Miller, Rohde is caught going under the screen and Buchanan is back at the foul line. This means that he can’t offer any kind of intrusive hedge on the screen because he’s so far back when it starts because of his poor recovery angle. Buchanan gets caught between a flat hedge and a drop hedge, not really bothering Miller or Yiğitoğlu who takes the pass on the dive – so this opportunity was just created by Blake getting lost and not playing heady basketball. Saunders recognizes the rotation, but it comes too late to stop Yiğitoğlu before he gets to the restricted area, and Saunders just isn’t big enough to contest a shot from him.
He wasn’t very effective or alert on the glass, either, with this solid defensive angle by Sharma wasted as the rebound hits Blake right in the hands, he can’t catch it, and it deflects to a SMU player who Blake also can’t contest effectively.
Sometimes in basketball a player just isn’t right between the ears; and it causes delays to their reaction time and general awareness. The game feels like it’s moving faster than normal and your processing isn’t where it needs to be. That was clearly happening to Buchanan on Saturday.
It’s rough to see our defense give up these easy kinds of buckets and for Buchanan to be so overmatched but, while I’ve been critical of how quick our leash has been on our post players for mistakes in the past, this was the opposite. It was obvious all game that he didn’t have it, and yet he was in for over 6 straight minutes from 10:17 when our lead was 7 to us going down by 3 points. He was getting beaten badly defensively all game (there was a lot more I’m not showing) and we’ll tackle the offense in a minute.
So, what to do? Well, Cofie was doing a really nice job defensively across the board and his length and movement were very relevant in this matchup at both the PF and C; but there was about a two-minute stretch at the end of the first half where we gave Anthony Robinson some run alongside of Cofie – and it was glorious. In fact, Robinson lead the team with a +6 +/- in that two minutes which; granted, very small sample size… but it was clear his presence was valuable and we never went back to him after that.
This makes me think that we only played him due to foul issues with Saunders and to give Blake a short spell – which is discouraging and hopefully will change once we get a chance to evaluate how the game went. Let’s take a look at what Robinson was offering on the defensive end and how that was augmented by playing him with Cofie.
First we get a look at him hedging with McKneely. I’d like to see him take a more intrusive angle, but he’s still out beyond the three-point line and almost gets his hand on the pass. Cofie on the back side is in a much better defensive position than Saunders in the clip earlier as well. He stops the drive and Ishan Sharma does a good job of chasing the pass to Cofie’s man in the corner. Robinson recovers to his man and Cofie is quick out to the wing to take Sharma’s. Great work all around. SMU then attempts to set up a ball screen to make both Cofie and Robinson play it. They both kind of get shielded behind Yiğitoğlu for a moment but both are so long they’re able to deter the shot in the process anyway and when SMU’s Edwards dribbles to get some space away from Cofie’s contest, Robinson gets a good contest on the shot, forcing a miss. That puts Cofie in the awkward position of trying to box out the big man, pushing down the lane having switched, and he fights hard but likely could concede the rebound… except Robinson hustles back down the lane and swoops in on the ball, collecting the board.
It wasn’t perfect defense. Robinson didn’t take the best angle on his hedge and he and Cofie didn’t play the ball screen as cleanly as they could have – but it didn’t matter because their hustle and their length and athletic ability allowed them to make up for those things with pretty suffocating defense. Great rotations from Cofie and Sharma too in there – and I want to call out Sharma because I’m going to briefly touch on him later – he had some really good defensive sets as well… like this one below with Cofie and Robinson again.
This next clip was my favorite defensive possession of the game and it opened my eyes to the potential we still have on the roster if we’re willing to play more seriously with certain players over others we’ve been using. It was my favorite because it was imperfect but also because the athletic potential and hustle/activity were so good that it didn’t matter. It demonstrated both room for growth and a more imposing defensive team than we’ve been fielding. This is Rohde, Murray, Sharma, Cofie and Robinson. You could easily sub McKneely for Murray here. You could sub Ames for Rohde (although this is probably a better defensive lineup, his offensive pop would matter and the D is already good). Boldly, you could also sub Saunders for Murray here in what would be a pretty oppressive defensive lineup, IMO.
Either way, watch the activity and how they’re just flying around. Cofie defends a ball screen with Rohde and then recovers. Sharma, Cofie and Robinson navigate a three-way screening action where Cofie slips through and Robinson hedges. Now, he (Robinson) doesn’t recover as quickly as he could or should here to his man, but (is this the Cofie section?) Cofie does a really nice job of recognizing this and switching under the hoop. Robinson is slower to recognize the switch, but he stays mobile and his length is imposing on a cross-court pass, so we end up fine and he gets where he’s supposed to be. Taine probably needs to be close to his man and is a little slow with the close out in the corner, but his man dribbles, draws Rohde, and kicks to the wing for a three. Rohde doesn’t play this cleanly either, as he gets too deep and responds with too much gravity helping on the drive where Taine was in fine position, but his length is useful and effective on the close out. Cofie gets into good rebounding position and Robinson absolutely just board checks his man out of bounds. Which, we’ve been getting manhandled inside this season – YES! Give me someone who is going to match that physicality! Fantastically, Sharma comes flying in from the wing to collect the board.
This was awesome. Cofie’s alertness has come a long way already, but the athleticism and hustle in this lineup was great and it gives glimpses to how you could have a McKneely or an Ames in with this group and it would defensively support their offense OR how you could add a Saunders with this group to really lock down the inside.
Robinson also held up at the point of contact with Yiğitoğlu, as well. In this clip, he slides well off of a ball screen to shut down the dribble, recovers to Yiğitoğlu under the post (and his length doesn’t allow an easy pass in) after some good help from Cofie, and then plays straight-up behind Yiğitoğlu as he gets the pass in the post. I’m not sure he’d get this charge call in many games, but it was effective here and it was a much bigger roadblock than what Blake had been offering.
So, yeah. Defensively, Robinson was giving us a lot more during his short stint; especially as he was paired with Cofie (allowing Cofie to roam at the PF). The bigger concern, I’d imagine, is what his presence does to the offense. But, let me tell you friends, it wasn’t going to be much worse than what Buchanan was offering in this one.
Buchanan was at a loss on how to attack this one, at least effectively, and we didn’t really help him strategically as a team, either. This clip, below, is what I think we should to as much as possible. It’s how we attacked Villanova when they did the same. Blake catches the return pass from Rohde with all of the space in the world and you see he doesn’t have anything he wants to do with it against the drop coverage – but he does pass it to McKneely, set a ball screen for him, and McKneely fires off of the bounce.
McKneely missed a couple of these and then went away from it as a way in which he was trying to get his shot – but I don’t think we can or should do that. His ability and threat to shoot coming off of a screen against drop coverage is a valuable weapon and one we should keep going to on repeat. When he stops, we can get punished for playing Blake, as we were.
Here in the next clip below… this is a bad lineup. We’ve got Rohde, Murray, Power, Saunders, and Buchanan on the floor. The biggest problem with this is that, despite having to play Rohde at PG, you’re not complimenting him with any of our healthy players (McKneely or Sharma) who can help at least a little with initiation. Murray is not that, he’s a slasher after advantage has been created for him and Power is not that at all. I’m going to take a brief detour here to talk about how Power and Rohde are the most negatively correlated two-man pairing on the entire roster… by a lot.
(It’s all Power and Murray which will dovetail into a talking point later). But Power really needs to play alongside of a player like Ames who can penetrate by himself, and Rohde needs to play alongside wings (and bigs) who can help with the ball handling responsibilities and get open less encumbered on the wing. They don’t align in that way; and this lineup is one of the least athletic ones we could be fielding.
So, anyway, this is a lineup issue first off, with a lot of plodding dribbles. But when Buchanan eventually gets the ball and his man sags, he’s got no answer. Murray still can’t get enough space that Buchanan even feels able to give the handoff and has to kick it way out, and then eventually he ends up shooting a fadeaway baseline jumper because there was just nothing else to be done. Worse yet, Blake just jogs back on defense and gets beaten down the floor by his man (who wasn’t running at full speed or fast) before having to foul.
The game was tied at this point but, as an aside, it’s the exact same issue we ran into at Florida (aside from the Ames injury element) where we trotted out an unathletic lineup in the middle of the game. And yes, this is just the difference between two starters and not in this circumstance and Ames was unavailable – but Taine and Power are your biggest concessions with athleticism and we continue to play them together. This is a coaching miss in my opinion, as it’s a misevaluation of what works together and what doesn’t.
Anyway, back to Buchanan, these are just a few examples of what was true much of the time he was in. SMU was playing drop coverage off of him and covering him with a player who was taller by three inches and heavier by 40 lbs. Blake didn’t have the jumper to punish it, wasn’t going to take it inside, and we weren’t aggressively hunting the outside shot off of the bounce to exploit the drop coverage. Along with the catastrophic defensive cover, it was clear he wasn’t helping us a ton on this side of the floor (to the tune of just 1 bucket made on only 4 attempts and that was the first basket of the game).
And yet, again, he was in for an over 6-minute stretch of the time we bled our lead and our offensive drought saw these continual issues of him not being able to contribute to building offense for us. Finally, it was this play that got him pulled, and you can see just how uncertain he is. Taine makes a non-threatening drive toward the baseline, Blake gets the ball, hesitates, decides he’s going to try taking the ball in off the bounce, and dribbles it off of his leg for the turnover.
Now, Cofie was having a much better game as a whole and, missed dunk aside, was clearly the better play to have on the floor at this time. If you’re finding yourself thinking “but he did miss the dunk so clearly he wasn’t any better” I’d encourage you to challenge that thought and think about it as a coaching decision. What was the correct decision based on what had been shown on both sides of the ball at that point? What is more likely to happen again between a physical/mental mistake on a wide-open play vs. a skillset/matchup issue that was demonstrated over 20+ minutes of game time?
The real question becomes – can Anthony Robinson contribute offensively to make it worth playing him more, or, can he not be a liability such that his defense is worth playing? I guess my first argument would be – it’d be hard for him to have a rougher go of things on offense than Blake did in this game unless he was just turning the ball over a ton. He doesn’t have the polish in his game to have a ton of success posting up or taking his man off of the bounce – but he can be active, crash the glass, and set good screens (as many of our bigs have been primarily asked to do in the past). And if we were already conceding to run Sides, that along with being a rim-runner has historically been enough to play productive minutes when coupled with good and physical defense.
Here he is setting a pretty good screen on a pin down from Sharma (who shows off his quick release from outside – Sharma is pretty well-suited to run Sides if we’re going to be playing it with Dai Dai’s injury) who buries the three.
All-in-all, there are surely going to be games where Blake can offer more on the offensive side of the ball than Robinson and there are going to be games where Robinson’s contributions there are raw and ugly – so this isn’t a one-size fits all plea aside from wanting to start with a higher priority on utilizing Cofie.
But, that’s also the point of this – it’s not a one-size fits all solution in our frontcourt. Saunders and Buchanan may be who we think is our best duo (I’d argue Saunders and Cofie at this point), but neither are consistent enough or matchup independent enough to plug and play no matter what’s going on in the game. Coach Sanchez needs to put a much higher priority on playing Cofie and needs to work Robinson into the regular rotation rather than just when we have foul trouble but, more, he needs to read and react to who has actually been playing well and who hasn’t. Who has a favorable matchup and who doesn’t? If he’d been doing that instead of relying on his pre-established depth chart, we’d almost certainly have gotten some Robinson in the second half, and would have definitely turned to Cofie much earlier in crunch time. Would that have been enough in a game without Dai Dai? Unclear. But the focus can’t just be on outcome, it has to be on assessing what’s the correct decision based on the information that’s been made available and being open to receiving and utilizing said information.
Small Forward Shuffle
Similar to that closing point about the frontcourt, I’d like to make a similar but shorter point about the Small Forwards since I’ve been tackling that topic a lot in previous games and not a lot has changed (though some has). I’m not going to plug in additional clips in this one aside from what’s already been included in many of the clips above, aside from this one quick defensive gem from Sharma:
We still haven’t figured out what’s “good” with our bench at SF yet, and “good” might be relative given our personnel, but watching this game made me increasingly confident that what we’ve been doing isn’t it.
Sharma needs to be the play here in a first off the bench at guard situation when Ames is healthy, and potentially even as a starter if he isn’t. After Ames, Rohde, and McKneely, he’s the next best player on the team with the ball in his hands, and he offers more athleticism and activity on both sides than either Murray or Power with just as much potential to heat up with his shot if he could get more looks. This is especially true in a world where we start playing more Sides, but in any world.
Murray didn’t actually have a bad game in this one. He had some more impactful defensive moments than we’re used to seeing and I thought had a couple of physical rebounds – but you can see the difference in his defensive ability with Sharma’s in many of those clips above. He’s trying just as hard, but just isn’t as effective, or active, or quick. He needs more space to shoot – which is a luxury we have almost none of… he’s just okay. You can get by with him on the floor if you’re doing well in other areas – for example, things went well in that lineup where he was playing with Sharma, Cofie, and Robinson, (and Rohde) because there were more athletic defenders around him to support and because he wasn’t required to do as much of the ball handling as he is when Power plays. But it’s just… we clearly view him as a priority part of the rotation right now (I won’t be surprised if he starts on Thursday) when we should really be trying other things and coming back to him when we’re tired or really need a lift. Basically, he and Ishan should be swapping roles right now and I think we’d be the better for it.
Power, on the other hand… I’m moving away from Power right now. Previously I’ve advocated for continuing to play him, but in very matchup and scheme-specific ways. You’re best suited playing him offensively at the PF but defensively at the SF but neither has proved to be worth the tradeoffs you’re making for how we’re using him. We were outscored by 14 points in the 10 minutes he was on the floor on Saturday and it felt that way because we couldn’t keep SMU off the glass when he was in and we couldn’t initiate offense, either. We just don’t do anything unique for him in our offense right now where we take advantage of where he has potential (namely: being a 6’9″ guard who we can play two forwards alongside) and defensively we’ve been playing our least athletic lineups around him rather than our most for some reason. Right now, if Ames is out especially, but even without – I don’t think we’ve figured out a good enough way to utilize him yet and he’s actively been hurting us when he’s out there. I’d like to see more of his minutes shift to Sharma and Robinson.
Robinson, you say? Yep. Because if we do start playing him more often, not only are our lineups going to be better defensively and hold up better inside (which we’ve been terrible at all season) – but because we could also revisit playing Saunders at the SF again which we did ever-so-briefly at the beginning of the season but went away from. Our SF depth has been lacking and our frontcourt has more guys that can probably help if they’re in the mix. Unlike Power, I’ve no doubt Saunders would actually post out of the SF, and aggressively so – he’s taken those looks all season no matter who is guarding him, really. He’d crash the glass, he could make up a very imposing defensive unit coupled with Cofie and a Center, he wouldn’t be worse with the ball out there than some of the options we’re using now and could probably get open easier. All of the reasons I advocated for this at the beginning of the season still hold true – even more so with our increasingly limited or underwhelming guard options. As it stands, I’d prioritize our normal three starters, then getting Sharma in there, then seeing if playing big with Saunders will work while working in our other bigs together, then Taine or Power (separately) if something really isn’t working or you just need a different look.
The thing to be clear about these thoughts is that they don’t have to be etched in stone. I also wasn’t on giving Robinson many, if any, minutes after the Blue/White scrimmage, for example – but that’s evolved after seeing our interior play and what he can bring to a lineup. Similarly, it may click for Power later in the year and then you absolutely figure out where that is and start working him in. Taine’s “do no harm”… ness (although, to be fair, there’s been quite a bit of foot-dribbling harm so far) might end up being something we need to turn to on occasion. This is just about what has been flashing now and where it’s best to prioritize our efforts. But, yeah, I’m at the point where I think Sharma and Robinson are more likely to bring us upside and ways to be competitive than Murray or Power are at the moment – so let’s shift them ahead in the priority line – significantly.
Overreliance on iMac
Firstly, let’s throw this out and put this to the side – once we went up 7, SMU started face-guarding McKneely and holding to keep him from getting open. It’s unclear what was said or done to combat this from a standard complaining standpoint. Hopefully Coach Sanchez was pointing this out every chance he could get and was forceful about his… displeasure. For iMac, he had a few moments where his body language made it clear what was happening (it was very obvious), but I’d have liked to see him force the issue and embellish it a bit more. Physically stop running and push the guy’s hand off of you when he’s grabbing, fall down or trip, make a point to talk to the ref about it every chance you get. Generally speaking, I thought we were too willing to just live with this adjustment by SMU and try to play through it rather than forcing the issue with iMac’s freedom of movement.
That being said, when SMU started disrupting iMac’s ability to flow within the offense late in the game, we had no answers, and it was because we became too reliant on him making a play. For the most part, this wasn’t iMac’s fault. There’s a level of confidence and aggression that we needed in the other guys to run offense and take shots at the end of the game like it’s any point in the game. That could be at the player-level; it could also be an empowerment issue or a strategic issue where the plan is to play through McKneely no matter what. But I do know that there was passivity and nerves across the rest of the group. A few things I wanted to highlight:
There were a few things that keyed me into this before the stretch run, but this was one of them. This play would have worked (at least to get Cofie a quality outside look) if McKneely had been able to give a better pass back out of the double-team; that part was on him for being loose with the ball as we were many times late. That being said, notice how all of the offensive guys are defaulting to just try to get him the ball. He comes off of the screen from Power and gives it to Power in the post. Now, Power has a two-inch height advantage on Matt Cross (#33) there (although he’s giving up weight) and should theoretically be a threat to back him down or face up and drive. Jerrell Colbert (#20) is even shading the lane if you pause at 8 seconds to prepare for this. Taine Murray is floating free on the opposite wing, and his man is shading Cofie while keeping track of him. The best play here would be for Power to post/drive the center of the lane and then look for a pass across court to Murray or Cofie (likely) for an open three as they spaced around the arc. Instead, Power makes no move whatsoever, and just passes it to Cofie, just inside of the three-point line. On the catch, Cofie has plenty of space. If he’d gotten more depth, he could have taken a three, but he had enough room to shoot a jumper or to drive his man on a close out as the lane was clean otherwise. Instead, he immediately just looks to dump the ball back out to iMac, effectively resetting the entire offense.
There’s still 15 minutes left in the game, but you could already see them tightening up and being less willing to try something on their own. We need more aggression from both Power and Cofie on a play like this, and the result was McKneely feeling like he had to force something (which doesn’t absolve him of the bad pass – but he needs his teammates to do some lifting).
Okay, now let’s look at a few possessions from this offensive desert stretch. This was the first possession after his second three in a row (the first of which was a four-point play), but it’s just too predictable and not a good thing that our team became tunnel-visioned on him being THE offense at that point. This entire set, SMU has tightened how they’re defending him, and we’re just looking for him – first off of a failed isolation dribble and reset from the point, then off of a pin down screen from the baseline that resulted in an extreme fadeaway from the midrange.
I get that this one was a bit of a heat check – but it’s still a really bad quality shot over a quality contest, the shot only counts for two points, and the reason it’s the shot we ended with is because the entire point of the possession was to force something from him.
A little later, they actually went to posting him up on his man. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually don’t hate this in a vacuum. It’s not his strength, but it’s not a terrible way to make a play in a world without Dai Dai. He was able to do it to get an open look from Rohde from the corner earlier in the game, spinning off of his man baseline and finding the pass. There are two conceptual problems with this design, though. For one – Rohde is being guarded by Boopie Miller who is giving up 6-inches on him. Rohde is a better passer than iMac and is better at finishing inside. Strategically, if you’re trying to post a guard, it would have been a MUCH better decision to post Rohde on this play and work that mismatch. You could have potentially forced help to free up iMac himself for a shot. The only reason to do this instead is if you’ve made the conscientious decision (or the team has) that iMac has to be the one to make a play. The second strategic error is that we’re doing this with Buchanan on the floor (see the section earlier about how Cofie should have been in here), so we have no spacing to give. Yiğitoğlu is sagging the lane so there’s nowhere for iMac to operate on the inside, Buchanan isn’t a threat to shoot a jumper, and so he awkwardly attempts to dive into the space that Yiğitoğlu is already filling and McKneely throws a terrible pass to him for another turnover.
That’s just straight-up situationally bad basketball. It’s passing up one player’s advantage and skillset for something your preferred player isn’t as good at (and has a worse matchup)… and it’s doing so with personnel who do not compliment the strategy anyway.
And as the game wore on late – it was just plain obvious desperation with blinders on iMac – like this turnover from Sharma trying to force an illogical backdoor pass to him:
Or this shot from McKneely himself where I guess he was trying to draw the foul but…
I get that our hands felt tied a bit with Ames out and that McKneely made some big plays and had moments where he was playing really well. He should absolutely be a focal point of our offense… but he can’t be our only offense. Becoming so one-dimensional in looking for him to make something happen made us easier to defend, not that we need help with that. And this is why I harp all of the time on getting other players reps and shots and improving their comfort level because no matter how well McKneely is playing, we need Cofie to take open shots without hesitation and attack off the bounce, we need Rohde to post up his 6-inch mismatch late in a contest and be the one throwing those passes out of the post, we need Power (if he’s playing) to be able to take a few dribbles toward the lane to draw a defense… we need Sharma to feel as greenlit to shoot a three off of a pin down late in the second half as he does late in the first. And, whether or not this is the players naturally defaulting to his experience and leadership, it’s on Coach Sanchez to drive this lesson and this empowerment.
We’ll continue to wilt late in games if this doesn’t evolve.
Bonus Ames Helps Content
To close on a slightly more positive note – but still relevant to the situation – not that many probably need convincing that losing Ames was a big deal, but here are two looks at how he helped our offense function even without touching the ball while he was in. In this play, below, Boopie Miller (#2) has to guard him (remember him guarding Rohde earlier). That leaves the slower-footed Matt Cross (#33) on Rohde, who takes a high ball screen from Buchanan and, note the quality seal screen from Saunders, so that Rohde has a clean path to finish with Cross trailing.
And same thing here – Ames occupying Miller on the top side while McKneely takes the high ball screen from Buchanan and has enough room to maneuver around Yiğitoğlu as Cofie seals his own man this time.
Then, with Ames out, now there’s no one to pull SMU’s best on-ball defender and so he takes Rohde, which further stymies the initiation and, in this case, created havoc, pressure, and a turnover leading to a runout the other way.
It was very disappointing that we just kind of kept trying to play our game, through all of this and didn’t do more intentional things like repeatedly post Rohde on Miller if they wanted that matchup while spreading the floor around him with shooters like Cofie and Saunders, pulling their bigs out of the lane. That’s the kind of adaptation we need; accounting for the situation and paying to mismatches.
In Conclusion
Ames’s injury dealt us a rough hand but I thought we responded poorly to it from a strategic standpoint. Our biggest “innovation” was to go back to an old offense. And, while I’m for “any means necessary” and that worked for a bit, our lack of trust in our non-McKneely players and our lack of intention around how we used our roster was glaring.
We didn’t adapt to what was working in-game and what wasn’t from a personnel standpoint (playing Sharma and Robinson more, and moving away from Buchanan for much more Cofie). We continued to trot out lineups that were too unathletic on the whole (Murray and Power together). We didn’t identify or play through any mismatches (Rohde in the post against Miller, going bigger on offense). Frankly, it was just kind of “business as usual” once Ames went down and that was disappointing.
Coach Sanchez is going to need some imagination if this thing is going to turn around at all – but I do think there is some room there to tinker if he can rethink what’s good and be more adaptable to the extreme fluctuations between who is helping and who isn’t on any given night. If he can move away from experience and pedigree as variables that matter and just see the floor for what’s happening and what the team needs, I do think there’s room for us to be a better (and different looking) team than we’ve shown (assuming Dai Dai’s near-term health).
Tomorrow night I’d really like to see us make an effort to push playing time toward the players who popped against SMU. The game shouldn’t be in question. Play for development and confidence.
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