The debate over moral victories is silly. No one is happy after a loss and how to “feel” emotionally after a loss is a pointless exercise to try to regulate in someone else. All it really means, practically, is to consider how the loss reflects on your team’s ability and chances moving forward. The “a loss is a loss” crowd is using similar logic to the “wins are a QB stat” crowd.
That being said, considering how we’d played against athletic teams like Tennessee, St. John’s, and Florida, this game may have appeared to be progress. In some ways, it was. But I don’t think this loss is reflective of our ability to hold up against athletic teams like this that can pressure well in the future. Memphis was the second best three-point shooting team in basketball coming into this game and went 5-23 from beyond the arc. Surely, we had something to do with that in how we played defense – but there were quite a few open looks that just didn’t go down at a rate that you’d have to say we were very fortunate. This game was closer and felt closer, but played on repeat, it was probably closer to some of those worse losses we’ve seen earlier in the season in terms of how the teams matched up and how what they did gave us problems.
The reality is that Memphis added all three of its starting guards in the portal this past offseason. All three are shooting at least 39% from three on the season on high volume, can defend (and pressure!) with athleticism, and can attack their man off of the dribble from parity. Three guards that can shoot, defend, and handle well. We currently don’t have a single player in our backcourt who can do all three of those things well. And it’s not like Memphis is one of these SEC teams who currently have us out resourced with football money or the like. No, I have no fear about our ability to draw talent to the program over the long term as long as we offer a compelling reason to come here from a basketball perspective in addition to any NIL packages we can put together. And right now,
So, if we have so many inherent disadvantages in our backcourt this year, why even bother analyzing the team? A lot of reasons. I want to determine if we’re doing the best we can with what we have, gauge the scale of room for improvement as we get into conference play, and determine, in this era of volatility within college hoops, but especially within our program, which players would be truly hard to replace from a blank-slate standpoint if that’s where we end up.
There’s going to be time for all of the above throughout the season – and I’ve done a lot of player profiling and analysis (and use of said players) throughout the year. Today, I’m going to focus on whether we’re getting the most out of our team. Upfront, I think the answer is “no.” We’re doing some things well and others poorly, and that’s how I’ll break out this session below; but even though we were fortunate to be in that game, that’s a game we should have won as it played out. At the very least, there was room for decisions and inputs that would have helped with our challenges. Let’s go ahead and get into it, starting with what went well:
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Casting a Wide Net Early:
Taine Murray
Taine Murray taught me a lesson with regard to this team. We can’t afford to sit any of our ten guys who regularly get minutes. It highlights that our guard play has been so inconsistent on a game-by-game basis and we’re just not good enough to view anything as the definitive answer. Of course, the piece after I write about how I’d use Taine so much less, he plays his best game as a Cavalier! That was cool to see, and admittedly when I saw him warming up at the scorer’s table and things had been going well for us, I was worried that he would derail our momentum. Quite the opposite, he was our only guard who consistently made something positive happen on the offensive side of the ball. His straight-line attack showed back up, and he was playing with confidence.
Murray played great; but had been pretty terrible in the previous few games. All three of our starting guards had pretty-to-incredibly poor performances, despite all of them having had highlights throughout the season where they’re doing well. That’ll be an area of criticism, not being willing to shift away from some lineup staples when they’re doing poorly – in this case especially focused on Andrew Rohde, but Coach Sanchez got all of Murray, Sharma, Power, and Robinson into the game and all of them played pretty well – at least better than many of their counterparts. We leaned heavily into Murray as we should have, and that was great that we found him. But we didn’t lean into Robinson, nor Sharma… and even Power was having a more positive impact than what we were doing in some cases. That’s the lesson learned – that we have to be completely malleable with this roster in terms of what’s working and who is playing well. Step one is casting the wide net early in a game – but step two is believing what we see when we cast that net and sticking with it while it’s working until it’s not.
But, given that this is the positive section – let’s talk about that the benefits that wide net. Firstly, we found that Taine was playing great and we DID utilize him accordingly. This isn’t revolutionary as we’ve shown a desire to play Taine this season probably more than we should have. BUT he did come off of the bench after Sharma, showing that we were adapting to what we’d seen in previous games and when he clearly played well, we did use more of him (although, not as early in the second half as we should have, but we’ll talk about that later). We don’t find Taine if we’re embracing my previous thoughts, because I just wouldn’t have put him in the game when we did. We were playing pretty well prior to him coming in, so, why test it? Testing is what we should do. When things aren’t going well, be quick to move away from them, but be willing to evaluate how things are working early.
ALL 10 of our rotational guys got at least 10 minutes in this one (some of that was due to foul trouble again – and it shouldn’t be limited to that). Here’s a look at Taine early who was in attack mode again. One of his first touches came on the wing without a ton of space and, unlike recent games where he was passing up this look, he launched into it right away:
Here’s a look at him attacking on the drive and getting his first dunk as a Wahoo (I heard that, if there’s another one, apologies, I can’t recall one offhand).
Of note, TJ Power at the PF coming up and helping to break the press. Not something for which I’ve advocated (Power at the PF), but compared to some of the things we did later in the game where we played four guards – it could have been worth revisiting this. Especially because pairing Power with Robinson was a good way to mitigate some of the weaknesses of having TJ as an interior defender, as we’ll see later. Another value-add of Robinson I hadn’t considered; potentially making TJ playable at PF.
Either way, Taine was our only guard who was consistently attacking through the pressure, finishing a fast break in a layup once, facing up his defender near the baseline and giving a few nice shoulder fakes to explode that way:
Attacking off of the wing and finishing well with the reverse layup later in the game…
He drew a couple of fouls, and even just took a jab step three from parity against his defender that just rimmed out that made me think, “Okay, Max Leg Room, you get yours!” because he was being aggressive and playing with confidence at a time where we really weren’t getting that from any of our other guards.
He had zero turnovers in the game (which has been a problem with him from time to time) and was solid helping to break the press when we utilized him. When we played Taine, we were +3 in the game and, unlike some of those other figures, it was clear that he was contributing importantly throughout that time to actually provide a release valve against the Memphis ball pressure.
Basically, I’d love to see him play like this all of the time, but we’ve seen that’s not realistic. However, casting that wide net early and bringing him into the game at the just under twelve-minute mark of the first half when things were going pretty well at that point (we were up 12-10 when he came in) he provided that spark, we immediately jumped out to a 19-10 lead, and we were able to build our confidence using him for the rest of the contest.
That was good.
Anthony Robinson
What was also good is that, due to foul trouble from Jacob Cofie and general struggles handling Memphis on the glass, we found that Anthony Robinson was also an incredibly positive piece to the puzzle in this one. What wasn’t is that we got away from him for all but two minutes in the second half, despite Cofie being out, in favor of worrying about their ball pressure.
Let’s first look at a big reason why Cofie got into foul trouble. I’ll argue later how important it was to get Cofie back on the floor sooner than we did, despite his foul trouble, but we need to be clear: he was struggling to secure the defensive glass. We’ve seen this over the year especially with Buchanan, Saunders, and Power trying to hold down the frontcourt, but Cofie getting pushed aside like this and then having to foul was a struggle of this contest:
He just got discarded. Cofie was instrumental in a variety of other ways, and even pairing him alongside Robinson would have done some good things, I think, but he was absolutely having a hard time holding down the fort on the glass at Center.
Enter Robinson, whose strength and length were on full display and really improved our ability to eliminate second chances when he came into the game. Here’s a nice box out on Dain Dainja (#42), at 6’9″ 271 lbs who had been hurting us on the glass.
That’s a good, tough, rebound. The ability to move Dainja off of his spot coming from transition and being in poor rebounding position directly under the hoop was impressive.
And then here he is later against Dainja again, at first withstanding the back down (and it takes strength to withstand a Dainja back down), and then watch the space he’s able to clear on his box out. He can really move some people down there!
Robinson collected 6 rebounds, which lead the team, in just 10 minutes on the floor and drew an over-the-back foul on the 6’11” Mousa Cisse as well.
But he wasn’t just a one-dimensional contributor while he was in there. He was active in recovery and bothered shots (outright blocking this one – he had two):
He was a credible finisher off of the pick and roll where we played four shooters around him and he had a clean lane to attack when he got the ball with momentum:
And he set the closest thing to Jack Salt screens we’ve seen since… well, Jack Salt, including this de-cleater on the baseline out-of-bounds play:
Basically, during the 10 minutes Robinson was in the game, including the entire final 8 minutes of the first half where we built our lead from 5 to 9, we held our own, if not better, on the interior. Memphis was having much less success securing second chances, creating one-and-done shot scenarios. They were having less success finishing inside when they penetrated from the perimeter, and we were giving them something to think about with some very physical screens. Also, as mentioned earlier, he opened up the ability to play TJ Power at the PF more successfully. Power wasn’t anything amazing in this game, but the team did well when we played him in no small part due this pairing. The biggest issue with using Power at the PF so far this season is that he’s just really struggled to hold up defensively on the interior. Playing alongside Robinson, though, he gets much more support protecting and clearing out around the rim than he does alongside anyone else. Not a priority at this point, especially considering Saunders was playing well at PF, but something to keep in the back of the mind if Power ever starts shooting.
Keep this in mind (don’t worry, I’ll remind you) as we look at our ill-conceived attempt to play four guards later in the contest and the issues that created on the glass as well as inside. Here’s the thing – our perimeter defense is going to be lacking regardless this year – so we need to back up the penetration they’re sure to concede with a less comfy lane to attack. Robinson needs to be a part of that rotation – and we simply cannot be afraid to go back to him when he’s playing well even when foul trouble isn’t an issue. Consider this as well – at higher levels of basketball when offensive quality is good and increasingly harder to defend, defenses tend to chase players off of the three-point line and try to funnel them into stout shot blockers. Robinson has the ability to help our interior defense, sure, but also to help support some of our perimeter defense.
So, yeah. Robinson was a great find via the wide net – just don’t throw back the marlin after you get it on board.
Miscellaneous Thoughts
Sharma and Power also played pretty well while they were on the floor but only got 12 and 10 minutes respectively. I’m not digging into these as I did Taine and ARob because the impact wasn’t nearly as big… it was more, Sharma wasn’t turning the ball over, was playing some solid defense, and was pitching in on the boards – which was considerably better than what Rohde was offering. Power turned it over once, but it was definitely better to play him at the PF if you wanted more ball handling to support pressure than to play another guard. He helped break the press well a couple of times, contested a couple of shots at the rim effectively, had two assists, one we’ll see in a bit, etc. They were +8 when he played which was mostly other things (like ARob and Taine having moments), but he certainly wasn’t hurting on the whole in this game. I actually think just more Saunders there (he did end up with four fouls too) would have been better – but if you’re getting desperate, don’t play the fourth guard, play TJ and support with Robinson or Cofie.
Okay – so, yes, cast the wide net, see what’s working, trust what you’re seeing. Especially when you’re getting a high level of impact from bench pieces (such as Taine and ARob in this one – but we’ve seen it from Sharma in the past; we could conceivably see it from Power but haven’t yet), but also to mitigate when some of our guys are really struggling. Continuation of these thoughts is coming later in the piece.
4-Around-1
It was a tale of two halves and Memphis ratcheted up their ball pressure in the second half. But prior to that, in the first, I thought it was the best our offense has looked conceptually this season. A lot of that has to do with Cofie getting the start, which I was happy to see Coach Sanchez embrace and would like to see that continue on the move forward – but it was more than that. We did a good job of opening up the middle and playing more aggressively through the one, as well as keeping spacing on the outside and being ready to quickly shoot out of it.
Here we start with a bit of a high/low from Saunders and Cofie with Saunders posting on the block and Cofie lingering around the three-point line just inside to keep spacing. Ames should get Saunders the ball here as he’s open around the block, but he resets and we get a pretty high ball screen from Cofie for Rohde. Notice that Saunders floats out to the corner, so it’s all five guys outside of the perimeter as the screen takes place (and you have to consider all five players shooting threats from out there). Cofie starts to give after the screen, drawing help from both Ames and Saunders men, Rohde passes across Cofie to Ames who quickly gives it to Saunders in the corner and he’s ready for the catch and shoot right away.
Saunders had a good offensive game and a few moments where he really shined so it was odd that we never really felt like we made an effort to consciously get him looks. But this play was effective because we could play true 5-out spacing and then when Cofie dove he commanded just enough help to create an open look for a willing shooter.
Here, below, is a look with a significantly different lineup – all of Sharma, Power, and Buchanan in the game with Rohde and McKneely. The spacing is really good (and respected), Buchanan dekes a screen one way and flips to the other, Rohde passes to Power on the wing who delivers a nice quick almost touch pass to Buchanan diving down the lane with plenty of space behind the defense.
There’s nothing complicated about that set at all – it’s just good spacing with a ball screen and quick recognition/delivery from Power. But this was probably the vision with the improved shooting on the roster this year – the spacing it offers.
And then this one was really nice to get Cofie the ball isolated at the high post with no defenders behind his man and everyone else outside of him. Cofie, notably, was more aggressive on offense when he had the opportunities in this one, and this look gave him the option to drive (which he did quite well) or to kick.
It makes me wonder why we need all the noise at the beginning of the possession (we’re still strategically drawing out possessions is the answer), but you can theoretically take a lineup like this and just space it out/throw the ball into either Cofie or Saunders at either post and let them make a play. I would like to see us to this more often in general, but especially when we’re facing down so many ball pressure issues.
Much of the reason offense seemed to get harder in the second half was due to the pressure of Memphis – but it was also due to not playing Cofie due to foul trouble whose presence we seemed much more comfortable with in how we handled pressure and threatened on offense in addition to just not getting away from those who were committing the bulk of the turnovers (more on this to follow). We also used this to post up Rohde once, as a different example, where he was actually effective, but then never went back to it. As it stands, I think there was much to be encouraged by with our offense IF we’re playing teams that can’t as effectively pressure the ball. It will only be encouraging against pressure if we’re more effective attacking that pressure from the perimeter OR (and this is most likely) if we’re comfortable isolating and playing through our bigs more like this last play.
But now, let’s talk about what we didn’t do well… as the opportunity to win this game really was there.
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It’s difficult to coach a basketball team at this level. I have the benefit of time, for example. In coming to these conclusions, I literally rewatch every play of every game multiple times and try to diagnose it. What went well? What went poorly? Where were the strengths coming from our players and our strategy? Who was it easier for opponents to attack? Who was limited in their ability or missing assignments? Basically, what was the root cause for the outcome of every play OR, multiple inflections within a possession.
As the game is happening, coaches have to figure this stuff out in real time. Still, it’s not good enough just to see that the team is struggling with pressure and to play an extra guard. It’s important to be able to see who was struggling MOST with pressure, who was playing fine against it, how non-guards could better help to break it. To come up with a more formidable strategy than we had. To understand that securing the glass and protecting the paint was also a significant challenge and going too small would limit our ability to do that.
I thought Coach Sanchez really struggled with his ability to diagnose the nuance of the problems we faced on Wednesday and to put a timely strategy in place to respond to it. Specifically, we already saw how Anthony Robinson was incredibly effective for us, earlier, and we hardly turned to him in the second half. That was a huge miss because there wasn’t a ton of reading between the lines on that one. Our bigs were getting in foul trouble because of Memphis’s pressure on the offensive glass and he was relieving that pressure as well as being a solid deterrent for dribble penetration.
But there were other elements as well. We didn’t handle Memphis’s pressure well at all, but specifically Andrew Rodhe was really struggling on both sides of the ball. He had a couple of positive flashes in the first half, but there were still some bad mistakes then, and then he just strung together bad play after bad play to open the second half without sitting for any significant amount of time until the pendulum had already swung in the other direction (and we outplayed the Tigers again after he went to the bench). He had over half of the team’s individually credited turnovers himself (and had some bad defensive lapses as well).
So, what do I mean by “pressure?” It was done both through the press in both halves (but more aggressively sticking with it in the second half) but also through ratcheting up the intensity of the defense on perimeter players to deter their ability to handle the ball and even catch a pass cleanly.
Here’s the first look with Memphis pressing in the first half. Now I had some issues with our actual press break that I’ll talk about more later. I’d like to see Saunders coming up farther here, as an example, but in this one when Rohde gets trapped on the entry pass Taine is open for a next pass and he could probably also still get a pass back to McKneely. Instead, he tries a wild cross-court pass to Blake Buchanan, of all people, which is picked off and Blake draws the foul to boot.
That’s a pretty wild pass that just indicates panic. Of all of his four teammates on the floor, that was the worst one to attempt to get the ball to, the worst player to help break a press skill-wise, and the hardest of the four passes to make. Just a terrible, terrible decision. Now, coming into this game we surely looked at Rohde as at least our second best option to beat a press given how we’ve played him historically… but this was all mental. There’s nothing about being in that situation that any of Ames, McKneely, Sharma, or Taine wouldn’t have been able to do there. Something to call out considering how stubbornly we stuck with Rohde later, as we’ll see.
Now we start taking a closer look at that terrible stretch at the beginning of he second half where Memphis erased our 11-point lead in a 6-and-a-half-minute span. This is a nice defensive hedge by Buchanan taking contact but still retreating so as not to draw a foul. Rohde picks the ball up and pushes it the other way, but he’s tracked down in the full court in a footspeed race pretty easily and then he tries a stop and start move that’s just wild with his dribble; losing control and fumbling the ball out of bounds.
This was a very poor unforced error. What was weird about this is that we’d already yanked Ames early presumably for a miscommunication on a pass to Saunders that resulted in a turnover and over-dribbling on a possession that we’ll see later. But Rohde’s mistakes started coming in waves and were even more glaring and he was allowed to play through them.
Here, later, he just throws the ball way over Sharma’s head; like, to the Moon.
And here he is one more time, with us having given up the lead for a while just absolutely sailing McKneely after being trapped in the half court.
Rohde had 5 turnovers in the contest. The team had 11 and no other player had more than 2. But the thing is, it’s not even like Rohde was the only one breaking the press or doing it effectively most of the time. He was one contributor toward the effort who was consistently panicking and throwing the ball away when he got into these types of situations. Neither Sharma nor Murray turned the ball over once and both looked much more comfortable handling the pressure. While I get that Rohde is the team’s back up PG right now and the perception is that he’s the second-best pilot of the offense, you absolutely have to update your portfolio and sit him if he’s turning the ball over. Ames and McKneely both made dicey plays as well, but Rohde was the one burning us over and over. We didn’t need four guards (which we’ll see in a bit), we just needed to sit him.
Even worse, though, is that he was compounding his ball insecurity with very poor defense as well. Here he is during this comeback just falling asleep on his man and getting backdoor cut for the easy bucket.
He also got backdoor cut earlier to cause Cofie’s 4th foul, as we’ll see later.
This is just horrible defense in transition, letting his man blow right by him without offering any resistance whatsoever.
These are out of chronological order to group the turnovers and defensive folly together, but you can piece these together and see how it was basically play after play after play. Any one of these plays (or two if we’re being generous) would be enough to grab him a quick seat to get his head back into the game. But there’s really no justification for him being kept in after this one.
Yes, still, we prevailed, and we got this one just 40 game seconds later where Rohde gets switched onto Tyrese Hunter (#11), who is only 6’0″, after a screen. Hunter isolates and posts Rohde up (and we also see the lack of comparative rim protection help Blake offered here) and just out-quicks him for the easy bucket inside.
Rohde made the pass that sailed Sharma directly after this bucket he conceded and finally at 14:44, with our lead having gone from 11 to 2, Sanchez pulled him out of the game… for all of a minute and 42 seconds. He came back in with the game tied at 37-37 playing alongside three other guards and didn’t leave the game again for another 6-and-a-half minutes until we were down by seven and he threw the pass over iMac’s head from above. From there, he sat until the final 20-seconds and we clawed back to within 2, but the damage was done.
This was a fundamental misunderstanding by Sanchez of the situation. The situation wasn’t just that we were struggling with their pressure. It was affecting us, but it was Rohde who was really struggling during this stretch, the most by far, on both sides of the ball. We brought him in with a four-guard lineup (around Buchanan and Saunders for most of it, although we also did this with Robinson for two minutes to better effect) ostensibly to deal with the pressure when he was the one causing most of the issues AND we dramatically weakened our ability to protect the interior in the process.
Here’s the second defensive possession after going to this four-guard lineup. Note, the guards of choice are Ames, Rohde, McKneely, and Murray with Buchanan at the Center. This is a back screen from Dainja (#42) on Ames for Hunter (#11). Blake isn’t alert enough and doesn’t need to be out on Dainja, Ames gets completely impeded by the screen but, most glaringly, there’s no one else back there who can remotely begin to help. There’s no size. The layup is clear.
They then tried Saunders at Center with the four guards. This lineup was absolutely crazy. Your only frontcourt player is your most under-sized one against a Memphis team that was really fighting us on the interior and on the glass. This play, below, is bad defense by both Rohde and Saunders getting split so easily, but both Ames and Murray recognize it and are there on the back side but there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
The game was still close at this point! Terrible… terrible lineup decision.
Here we are with the same group and, we get lucky that Memphis steps out of bounds on their drive after two consecutive offensive rebounds in which we offer virtually no resistance on the glass.
The other team might be pressuring you well… this lineup is never the answer.
We did it with Robinson and it went pretty well… certainly better than the previous two. He is better at covering up the interior without the size around him – but you still don’t want to have to rely on him to hold down the fort along for very long..
But we also eventually brought Cofie back in and tried this and it’s not like we were even playing solid perimeter defense to justify it. Here’s Ames getting caught on a screen again and Rohde (again with his defense!) sagging on the ball screen and not being there to deter the shot/contest well.
I do have to remind myself watching this one, as Ames also had a poor game, shooting 2-11 from the floor, also making mental mistakes, also getting beaten on defense at times, that he probably wasn’t 100%. I’m not harping on Ames in this piece because of that, because he’s previously been the most important player on our team this season (due to lack of the skillset, not due to overall talent), and because his mistakes weren’t as… omnipresent. But he also had a bad game.
But, yeah. When your backcourt is the weakest part of your team, it’s probably not a good idea to play more of those guys just out of position. Just like Rohde showed panic breaking the press, to me, that shows coaching panic. We needed to find who could more reliably just make the passes to get us into the half court and then play more through our interior to mitigate the perimeter pressure.
For one, we were still incredibly disorganized on our press break in general. Here’s a look at iMac making a bad pass out of a double team that didn’t lead to a turnover. Saunders helps inbound the ball and then hands it back to Isaac, but then everyone clears out to at least near halfcourt, leaving iMac alone to deal with a Memphis two-man trap.
There’s a lot that could be going wrong here but it’s definitely something. Either players don’t know their responsibilities to get up and help break the press, or the design is just to get it to a ball handler and clear out, or they aren’t alert enough to recognize the trap, or no one else really wants to be charged with the ball handling. No matter what, this is a coaching issue considering how many times we’d stared down the press already. Our press break, especially, given that we don’t have really anyone I’d want to just give the ball and clear out (like we used to often do with PGs of yore), has to be a collective effort. But that’s also why you don’t need Rohde in there if he’s struggling turning the ball over because you shouldn’t be just giving it to one of our guys and having them try to beat a one-on-one consistently, let alone a trap. You should be regularly presenting many outlet options and passing out of the press.
This clip was a good look at how Saunders can absolutely help you break it. Notice that Memphis doesn’t spring the trap until McKneely gets the ball. The wait for Saunders to pass it, which also makes the clip above all the more glaring because this play happened before that one. But on this one, Saunders stays home and takes the pass back from McKneely and then outlets it to Ames. It’s kind of awful because both Rohde and Ames are on the floor and neither are the ones actually breaking the press. Bad design and accountability. But it’s also worth noting because if one is playing really poorly (like Rohde was) you don’t need either of them as long as everyone is taking it on themselves to help. The possession itself goes nowhere because Memphis hounds the ball handlers, denies passes, and Ames over-dribbles, leading to a shot clock violation.
Rohde getting run off the ball so he can’t even take the DHO… it’s all kinds of messy. This is where we run into some general limitations with our roster because of our struggles to stand up – not even to full court pressure – but just to be able to set up a functional offense when the pressure ratchets up like this. It is especially when we’re playing Buchanan, IMO, though, like you see on that clip where he didn’t set a ball screen and isn’t a threat to drive his man or shoot.
But, yeah, give me four guys sensitive to the press at all times not waffling to halfcourt and hoping our ball handler is able to win a one-on-one or two-on-one. This is a want to thing and if everyone wants to, then you don’t need to rely on any one. Plus, Sharma has been generally quite good and secure with the basketball – don’t be afraid to play him when others are struggling. Oh, and let Saunders help! Let Cofie help when he plays. Even look at Power at the PF (remember that clip of him helping to beat the press from the position earlier) prior to getting rid of one altogether.
The Cofie Conundrum
This is going to be a discussion about foul management in addition to highlighting Cofie’s value even when he’s not at his best on the glass. Cofie accrued two fouls in the first half and sat for much of it which was a big factor in those Anthony Robinson minutes in the first. But, quite disastrously, he picked up back to back fouls at the very beginning of the second half to get his 4th with still 19 minutes to play in the game.
Here’s the third foul after an airball gets to his man:
And here’s the fourth (note Rohde allowing the backdoor cut again, he was so vulnerable to it in this game):
So that’s two fouls on back-to-back plays after already having two.
As a result of this foul trouble, Cofie only ended up playing 14 minutes in the game, and we were +12 (in a two-point loss) with him on the floor! How is that possible with him having some of the issues securing the defensive glass we’ve shown?
Because he was making plays and finishing inside:
Because he was still providing solid and mobile defense from the frontcourt, in this case, below, fronting his man and then forcing a turnover from his sliding:
AND, probably something that’s underappreciated, he was a solid release valve for the pressure when he was on the floor:
Notice how much cushion Dainja gives Cofie when he has the ball – really the only player on Memphis not comfortable pressuring because of who he was guarding. Easier to set up the offense when the ball defense wasn’t hounding, and it was a nice pin down hand off that also dove to the rim with Saunders to pressure the glass if the McKneely shot had missed (3 of Cofie’s 4 rebounds were actually offensive ones in this one).
This brings up a bit of a philosophical basketball debate that I don’t really want to get into. There are the people who say you always pull with two fouls in the first half like we did, both because of the risk of picking up a third and because the player plays more cautiously (i.e. worse). This wasn’t really an issue in the first half (protecting Cofie’s fouls) because we were playing well in his absence and using Robinson. Robinson probably should have been on the floor most of the time Cofie was sitting in the second half, which is a different issue I talked about earlier altogether. So, this isn’t that debate.
There are also folks who will argue that we should have sat Cofie immediately after the third foul so he didn’t pick up a fourth. There’s merit to that as long as it’s a short stint. Sit him really quickly, have a few words of strategy on how to defend, clear his head, then get him out shortly after so that he doesn’t compound the mistake. I could go either way on that and, personally, kind of like the mentality of trusting the player to keep him out there. Unfortunately, Rohde parted the sea for his man to run baseline and, there we were.
At that point, we were up 11 with two incoming free throws for Memphis pending so, likely up 9. We’d been playing well in the first half without him on the floor (using Robinson, though). I have no issue whatsoever with sitting him – clearly the correct decision. Here’s the thing, though. We sat him for the next twelve consecutive minutes and watched our lead dwindle from up 9 to down by 6 without getting him back in the game!
Yes, I understand he had four fouls – when I made this point on social media there were so many responses to the effect of, “well he picked up that quick fourth foul so he had to sit.” For one, him getting the fourth foul is the entire point of the conversation. Secondly, no he didn’t. If you put him in earlier it’s true he might foul out… but if you sit him all that time he’s also not playing. It’d be one thing if you were maintaining the leave or it was maybe ever-so-slightly being shaved. But by the point you’ve lost your entire lead and are now down six, what are you saving him for? To make a comeback? He didn’t actually foul out so who knows how much more run you could have gotten out of him – probably a non-zero amount of time that might have mattered. But, let’s say he did foul out – better to have gotten everything you can from him trying to stave off losing the lead and momentum rather than giving up your advantage entirely and having to try to muster the mental ability to deal with having blown a big lead entirely and come back.
I thought that was a significant blunder that, especially when grouped with not going back to Robinson for long, was costly. It’s not wrong to sit your best players in foul trouble to preserve them for higher leverage situations in a game – but there isn’t much more of a high-leverage situation than to have had a double-digit lead and to watch that erode entirely. If you just sit them regardless of what’s happening in the game, they might as well have actually fouled out, because you aren’t treating them as available when you need them. Use the player to stop the bleeding and if they foul out doing so, so be it. You used them as much as you were able to, and you’re guaranteed to not have lost minutes of your own discretion. Keep in mind, there’s no guarantee they even will foul out, even with four.
No, in this one Cofie didn’t foul out, we fouled him out.
End of Game
I was going to talk about how poor this was and our end of game management with regard to our urgency and decision making…
I don’t really want to, though. I think we all get that this was pretty bad and, while it may not have mattered in the end, it assured that we took the loss in this game.
In Conclusion
In playing Memphis we ran into the same issues we did against other highly athletic teams capable of pressuring the ball. That’s not going to change this season against teams capable of doing it (we’ll see how many ACC teams that truly is). This will almost assuredly be the playbook against us and it has been throughout the year and Memphis clearly made it a much bigger point of emphasis after the half.
There will be an element of us just always struggling with this, I believe. However, I do think there are some paths toward us being able to handle this, and play, better, if Coach Sanchez embraces them and makes them points of emphasis:
#1. If the other team even hints at a press, send four men back on that side of half court, with one man deep, to break it with urgency. None of this trusting the ball handler like they’re Reece or Kihei nonsense. None of this floating to half court and expecting our PGs to throw long passes out of double teams. Huge point of emphasis. Get your box going, use Saunders and/or Cofie to help break it too, don’t use four guards.
#2. If/when the other team attempts to get us out of our halfcourt sets by denying passes and hounding the ball, play simpler. Play 4-around-1 and post Cofie in the high post or Saunders on the low. Run a ball screen at the top of the arc with the rest of the team spread around the lane. Post a guard. Play three big and post a mismatch and send two to the glass. Run Sides with iMac and Sharma. Minimize unnecessary dribbling and passing. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
#3. Treat each game like an audition for that specific game, not the season. Cast your wide net early and then determine who is having the most positive impact (or most negative) and adjust your playing time decisions around that in each game. If that changes, adjust again. But stomp benching guys who are making a real positive impact for guys who are just doing no harm or, worse, are doing harm. Almost no one on the team is good enough to be considered indispensable and there’s just not enough consistency to not be wide open to whatever is working. Play the true hot hands (not just in scoring, but in total impact).
#4. Your biggest advantage on this roster is your functional size combined with its shooting and (at least in the case of Cofie, Saunders and… a little bit Power) ball skill. Be willing to leverage frontcourt players 3-5 (as one of your many strategies that also include three guards) and be willing to change the way you play to accommodate that. Let’s make it so that the lane is an inhospitable place to drive for our opposition, and that we can threaten a lot of length around the rim on offense (without giving up the ability to space the floor for those guys). ARob can and should be a part of your rotation, not just assistance for foul trouble.
If we just maintain everywhere else but make those four things points of emphasis with our coaching decisions and for our players, this team will get better. How much better, who knows? But at this point the only thing you can do are the things that will make you play better. I’ve little doubt they’d have won this game, for example.
Well – American this afternoon as a final tune up before the bulk of conference play. The main thing I’ll be keeping an eye on is whether or not good play from the bench or poor play from the starters seems to significantly impact their minutes either way or whether we seem to stay more toward a pre-defined depth chart.
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