Louisville 1/4/2025

The whiplash in the vibes between the past two games has been extreme. There was a pretty strong resurgence of positivity, I gathered, from the fan base after the offense looked better against N.C. State. To the point, where it sounded like people were starting to be hopeful about where the season could end up, again, and were even talking more optimistically about the outlook of this coaching staff. I felt it, not to the same conclusion, but it was nice to have had a game where the offense felt like it had gotten something going. Now, you’d think it was a death knell.

There were positive things to call out after last game and to celebrate; just as this game felt like the most discouraging display yet. I think it reminds that success is fragile with the current state of things, and we seem to be increasingly backing ourselves into self-imposed corners. What’s important to keep in mind, because the emotional highs and lows of winning and losing will swing and can cloud judgment, is not the outcome. It’s whether or not the way we got to the outcome seems sustainable, if good, or hard to avoid, if bad.

In the case of this game, contextualized across all of the others, I’m not left with the feeling that we have any permanent solutions or vision to cure what ails us. There are limited options on the roster but, also, we seem to be just kind of trying things without a great sense of what’s likely to work or what’s likely to make it work. It’s like our approach is kind of stack-ranking our roster as to who we think is playing the best and has “earned” time, and then we’re simultaneously trying different offensive systems; but there’s very little co-ordination between who does what well, who plays in which system well, and who compliments who well on the floor.

It’s also maddeningly inconsistent in the sense that it appears we have these fairly rigid rules and guidelines around which players can share the floor together and which can’t… but then those apparent guidelines go flying out the window in dramatic and illogical ways at other times.

This was one of those games where it felt like we could be competitive, but then so much fell flat that it became hard to know what to address. As a result, I won’t be doing any deep dives into just a couple of themes from this one. Rather, I’m going to be scatter-shooting around a bunch of different ideas; mostly things that need cleaning up or focus but a few notes of positivity as well. LOTS of work to be done after a game like that one and, again, you have to start worrying about morale and engagement again.

The Confusing Journey of Dai Dai Ames

There was a time this season when Dai Dai Ames was our most important player to have on the floor. Metrically speaking but also the eyeball test. The fact that he was our only player who could regularly get something going and create off of the bounce (normally his own offense but also for others at times) was the big driving factor behind that. He was playing with confidence and shooting well.

Then came the ankle injury at SMU; one that kept him out of that game and then, precautionarily, against Bethune-Cookman. He returned to play 31 minutes against Memphis in a poor display of 2-11 shooting, including the bizarre end of the game sequences where he appeared to tunnel vision his own shots around the basket rather than trying to get up more timely looks. Perhaps that was the beginning of the shift, it’s hard to say. He saw just 22 minutes against American and then played only 9 in the win vs. N.C. State. Many, including me, assumed that he might have reinjured the ankle after sitting out the majority of the last 3/4ths of that one; especially against their pressure defense. But, Coach Sanchez never said as much and, it appears now, given that you don’t typically lose your starting spot due to injury and Dai Dai was available for 10 minutes in this one, that he may have just fallen out of favor.

It might be that or… it might be because of the shift in offensive philosophy. Dai Dai Ames was well-suited for our offense at the beginning of the season. Lots of dribble hand-offs and ball screens that gave him the opportunity to attack off of the bounce. It played to his strengths of being a primary ball-handler and looking to get downhill to either score or with a clear option or two to dish the ball. The Inside Triangle (nor Sides, which we ran some but less frequently in this one) doesn’t play to his strengths. He’s not well-suited as a cutter or screener due to his size and he’s not actually a great passer in terms of his ability to read a defense and quickly know where to go with the ball. As a result, he doesn’t do well in the mix and if you stick him with the ball on the wing, he’s not your best option to find the right pass.

This is also true of Blake Buchanan, mind, who was better suited with the ball in his hands as a passer out of the high post-extended in the first offense than he is in the Inside Triangle (because his man can just sag off of him without worry about the shot) or Sides – because he’s really not that great of a screener either. He also doesn’t have a great offensive post-game. So, while this section focuses on Ames – some of the talking points are also relevant to Blake.

Here’s one look at both of them playing in this offensive system together with Ames and Sharma on the wings and iMac, Saunders and Blake in the mix. Buchanan is being guarded throughout by 6’6″ J’Vonne Hadley (#1). He’s got 5 inches on him (only 10 lbs, though). If you pause at 15 seconds to go in the shot clock, Ames has the ball on the wing and Buchanan is looking for a lob pass fairly unconvincingly. Louisville is covering Ames with their three-point shooting specialist Reyne Smith (#6). Both of these should be mismatches in our favor, but there’s nowhere really for Ames to drive with Buchanan positioned as he is and Buchanan isn’t physical enough (and doesn’t even seem like he wants the ball) to get Ames confident enough to throw this pass. Have Buchanan set a ball screen for Ames here offset from the others like we might in Flow or in our offense to start the season, then you have both more comfortable, driving with space at the rim, forcing Louisville to hedge and recover, with Buchanan as a rim-runner going downhill. Instead, Ames reverses the ball not having the confidence to do anything. The ball swings around and gets to Saunders in the post. Pause at 7 seconds and notice how far Hadley is playing off of Buchanan; protecting the lane. Saunders makes a difficult pull-up midrange jumper – but it’s a tough shot and not the quality shot you want (a contested long two). He takes it simply because it’s the only thing he could reasonably do with the shot clock and how the defense was cheating off of Blake.

Here’s one more look at this in a different clip, below, just with Ames and Blake off of the floor. We’ve got Cofie and Power in the mix with Dai Dai and Rohde and Sharma on the wings. The offense becomes more perimeter-oriented, then, with Ames dribbling around the outside rather than setting screens and cutting off of them. It makes sense with his skillset and we do have the option to play the offense this way, but when Cofie does set a ball screen for Ames, Power is cutting through the lane where Dai Dai would be driving rather than being spaced out properly like he would be if we were just setting a ball screen out of our early-season offense or Flow. The rest of the possession just turns into a lot of passing it around the perimeter without any plan or threat and Dai Dai eventually just settles for a step-back three.

I wrote this in my last piece about using the Inside Triangle offense, “What remains to be seen, is how (Coach Sanchez will) view this moving forward; how much of a staple offense and whether or not he agrees with the same limitations around how players operate within it.” Neither Dai Dai Ames, nor Blake Buchanan (nor Anthony Robinson, for that matter) are well-suited for this offense.

But here’s the thing: we have four established offenses we can use (Unnamed “New” offense we started the season with, Flow, Inside Triangle, and Sides). Sometimes it’s like we don’t think we can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. Because we turned to Inside Triangle in the last game and ran it well, we grow enamored with it and decide that we want to run it (we sprinkled some Sides in later when it wasn’t working consistently but basically just stuck with those two). But who you’re running it with matters too. Don’t get me wrong, if we want to play Ames and Buchanan less because we want to run players who operate better out of Inside Triangle more (and it’s working) then by all means, I’m all for it. But if you’re going to play them, which you should because your team will be exhausted if you don’t and because they have distinct skillsets as well, then why not run the offenses that compliment their skills when you’re playing them? It gives the defense a different look to deal with and better plays into what we’re doing. You don’t have to completely shelve the “New” offense just because it works poorly when Dai Dai is off the floor. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You could run Inside Triangle with any combo but Ames, Buchanan, or Robinson on the floor, Sides when you’re playing Robinson (could allow you to play him and Blake together if you were so inclined, which we’ll talk about later but) but not Power, and Flow or “New Offense” primarily when you’re playing Ames (and one of Buchanan or Robinson).

As it stands, it just doesn’t appear as if we have an actual handle on who does what well or, at least aren’t intentional about that as it relates to changing what we do to compliment who we do it with. Instead, it feels much more like we have a high-level idea “we want to play the Inside Triangle to take the pressure off of our ball handlers” and then try to fit all of our resources into that model. I’ll talk more to this later and, to be fair, we did run another offense in what seemed to align with realizing at least that Ames and Robinson weren’t best-suited for Inside Triangle – but it was just Sides which also wasn’t very complimentary with what we were doing most of the time.

Either way, as a result of this offensive shift (not to say that’s the only reason, there could be, and likely are, others not excluding the play of other players) both Buchanan and Ames have been removed from the starting lineup. Now, there’s also always a risk in doing that. Players can respond in many different ways. It could light a fire under them and motivate them, or it could completely disengage them (and everything in between). Often that’s determined by the relationship and trust that the player has with the coach. What makes things even more complicated is the whole dynamic around this season. These players were expecting to play for CTB, not Coach Sanchez; and their loss of perceived status on the team coupled with poor team performance could quickly start them on the path of looking beyond this season.

I highlighted some uncharacteristically questionable effort plays from Buchanan last game; and in this game we saw some very poor defense from Dai Dai Ames that lacked any kind of determination or tenacity. Of course, virtually all of our guards (except McKneely who was barely on him and had his own issues) had a bad defensive moments at times against the glorious Chucky Hepburn (who, fwiw, Reece Beekman absolutely dominated last season despite our rough showing vs. Wisconsin) that left them grasping for air in his dust. Ames was consistently over-matched and offered the least resistance, though.

Here’s a look where he’s just completely blown by on the perimeter but Robinson bails him out by rotating and blocking the shot.

Here’s a look falling asleep on a backdoor cut with Hepburn being fully by him on the catch:

And here he is trailing Hepburn making an Iverson cut but then getting fully to parity on the catch. Hepburn starts to beat him on the baseline drive and Ames just gives the full “ole!” and pulls back/gets entirely out of the way.

Now, you can see there between 18 and 17 seconds on the shot clock, Ames makes a decision, ostensibly to keep from fouling, to pull his body back entirely and to let Hepburn go. Louisville had just reached the one-and-one so a foul would have conceded a trip to the line but, also, it would have been Ames’s 3rd foul, likely pulling him out of the game. Do we think it more likely that Ames just entirely stopped playing defense here to keep from sending Hepburn to the free throw line (as opposed to conceding an easier basket) or that he didn’t want to risk getting taken out of the game for fouls?

These are the kinds of potential business decisions that are worth keeping an eye on down the road and that can compound with the whole not having a great plan on how you want to use players/pulling them out of the starting lineup. If Ames is going to continue to play defense like he did in this game, it’s not a hard decision to significantly reduce his minutes. Is this permanent or is this salvageable? That’s the biggest question. I’m hopeful for the latter. Did we need to get to this point so quickly re: keeping him as the starter working back from injury and making better choices about which offenses to play him in when we used him? I’m skeptical about that one.

Cofie Ball Watching

As much as I love Jacob Cofie and unequivocally would like to see him back on this team next year regardless of what happens around anything else, he had quite a few defensive lapses in this one where he’d get caught watching the ball and lose track of his man. That’s an experience thing, but it caught us in some bad moments like here, where he gets switched onto Reyne Smith and loses track of him fading to the corner:

And here, where he gets so locked into whether or not Ames will need help that he just gets back-doored:

There were more, and it showed up on the glass too. This was the worst game in a while with regard to mental defensive lapses for Jacob.

Bizarre Team Defense

In most of our recent games there have been break downs – but many of those have come off of slight miscommunications, athletic shortcomings, etc. I’d thought we were showing improvement in our simple knowledge of the defense across the board, even if the overall level of play isn’t up to our standard. But there were some really weird defensive decisions made in this one that called that into question for me.

Here’s are two examples of that – the first being in a lineup with Andrew Rohde, Isaac McKneely, Ishan Sharma, TJ Power, and Jacob Cofie on the floor. I’ve said before and I’ll continue to shout this because it’s counter-intuitive and you keep hearing the narrative is otherwise; TJ Power is a worse defender at the PF than he is at the SF. Some of the reason is knowledge of where to be, as we’ll see below, but the rest is because he is actually better at sliding with an offensive player and using his length to bother shots than he is holding up to physicality and length on the inside. Here at about 12 seconds in the shot clock, he’s playing away from the ball and sagging in the lane to help on any drive/slip shenanigans from a N.C. State ball screen. Smith (#6) throws a skip pass to TJ’s man, Aboubacar Traore (#25) out near the corner. Let me be the first to say – Traore had a monster of a game against us and I simply cannot believe he’s only listed at 6’5″. He dominated us on the glass and just creating havoc around the rim. Anyway, Power is in fine position to drop, take an angle toward the baseline, and cut off the driving angle here. Instead, who knows what he says to Rohde, but he full on sprints away from the action out to Rohde’s man. Rohde has no prayer to get into that play. Cofie makes a nice block retreating back to the hoop, but his momentum takes him under it and neither iMac nor Sharma are alert or aggressive enough to help corral the loose ball before Traore reclaims and goes back up.

The strangest part about that play is that it wasn’t like Power was put into a lot of tension with difficult rotational decisions. It was simply a skip pass back to the man he was currently guarding and had just dropped off of a little bit. He actively ran himself away from the play with the hopes that Rohde would… somehow drop down and help. Weird. Some combination of lack of spatial awareness or just over-thinking the play and making the complicated/incorrect rotation.

This next one, below, pause with 13 seconds left to go in the shot clock. We send three defenders at Hepburn (#24) after Louisville ghost screens. The result is chaos with the scramble to try to rotate back – Saunders defending the lob and then racing around, McKneely slow to recover back to his man watching the lob and then taking a bad angle to do so, allowing for the drive when the ball gets back, Taine not dropping down to help on the block when Blake steps up to support the drive…. Just kind of unpolished defensive basketball by our Pack Line standards compounded by a bonkers triple hedge on Chucky Hepburn to kick things off:

Kudos to Elijah Saunders for flying around there and his hustle, but it’s a lack of alertness most everywhere else (Rohde was fine). In an experienced-based defense, it’s discouraging to see your two most experienced guys on the floor (McKneely and Murray) be the least on it positionally.

Losing Reyne

Speaking of, McKneely’s primary defensive job of the game was chasing Reyne Smith (#6) around to contest any three-pointers. That did not go well. Smith got off 10 shots, all from beyond the arc, and shot 50%. Isaac had trouble staying attached and it wasn’t always just the inability to get around screening action – sometimes it was just that his natural reflexes were to play help defense as he normally would and that cost him.

Here, for example, he reflexively shades for the back screen Smith sets on Saunders despite the fact that TJ Power is already there in good help position. This split second combined with going over the screen for Smith (rather than getting under and taking a straight-line angle on the recovery) was enough to allow the shot.

This one was just a really cool play design by Louisville. It’s an elaborate series of screens and motions that result in a screen for Smith, to have him give a DHO back to Terrence Edwards Jr. (#5), have Smith fake a pin down screen and then pop out of two different stagger pin down screens to take the return pass from Edwards on the wing to drain the three.

The second pin down was definitely moving and I don’t blame iMac a ton for getting lured by this one. I’m including it because I’m a sucker for design but, also, because it was and ongoing problem and McKneely lost Smith more times than this.

It’s not like Smith was a much better defender on iMac (although he wasn’t exclusively used to defend him, he was often). McKneely was also 5-10 from the floor (although he shot 3 two-pointers). But, if we’re going to hang with a team like Louisville, we need Isaac McKneely to be the favorable matchup against a player like Reyne Smith both in his ability to get his shots and his ability to defend; not get outscored by two points on equally as efficient shooting.

Given how much iMac runs around on offense, I think it’d have been better to mix this matchup on defense some so that he wasn’t also chasing as much on that side of the ball. Ishan Sharma, for example, was probably playing our best perimeter defense in this one as we’ll see some glimpses of below.

Taine v. Sharma

Taine Murray is maddeningly inconsistent and that’s something, coupled with his limitations with his change of direction, that has prematurely called for us to move on from playing him in the past. That’s not necessary, especially on this team when we need as many opportunities for someone to play well as possible. After three very good games from him, and playing his way into the starting lineup (see concerns about what that might do to Ames, above), Taine had a poor game in this one. It wasn’t terrible, mind. He did shoot 0-5 from the floor and, after a few early misses from outside, resumed his timidness around shooting from deep.

Here’s a look at that – passing up a clearly open three from the corner to drive into a contested layup, get blocked twice, and have to kick it out (nice floater by Sharma to end, though).

He had some nice defensive moments, though. Had two blocks including a really nice one he just sent out of bounds, he also had some plays where he got beaten off of the bounce pretty badly (as did many of our guards). He collected 5 boards which lead the team (good for Taine, not great for everyone else). So, my point is not saying there wasn’t room for Taine playing time. I’m on board with always seeing if Taine is playing well now. It’s just that, he really wasn’t giving you much on the offensive end and that confidence and impact we had been seeing the previous three games wasn’t there.

Sharma, meanwhile, also wasn’t offering you a ton on the offensive end (2 points, the same as Taine, on 17 vs. 28 minutes), but he had fewer opportunities to get going (1-3 from the floor as opposed to 0-5) and he was probably playing our best perimeter defense in the game; including this possession that was probably our best individual defensive effort against Hepburn in focused isolation. You can see him shut down the drive multiple times, be physical with his body, and force a fadeaway that he gets a good contest on (and that misses badly).

Sharma was also doing a better job of staying attached to Smith than McKneely (we’ll get a glimpse of it later).

FWIW, it wouldn’t have mattered in this game and it wasn’t an egregious decision to play Murray more than Sharma. It’s not like either were having an obvious impact when they were on the floor (things collectively went worse for the team with Sharma was on than Taine even though that wasn’t as much due to his individual contributions), and the margin of the game just wasn’t close enough for it to impact the outcome. But these are the kinds of in-game decisions with which we’ll need to be more in tune. Because Murray had been granted the starter’s role, he was given a longer leash (28 minutes), but when you see him start passing up open threes (the clip above wasn’t the only one), that’s a good sign that he’s not feeling it and a cue to shift to try more Sharma (OR to shift to play bigger).

Speaking of trying to play big – what confusing decisions around that later in the game, which I’ll talk about, especially in contrast with what we aren’t willing to try! But, matchup decisions were very interesting in this game. As mentioned, Murray was a starter, but we matched him up against the 6’11” Noah Waterman (#93) and put Elijah Saunders on the 6’6″ guard J’Vonne Hadley (#1). You’d think these matchups would be flipped, but Louisville tends to put Waterman in the corner as a shooter and to play Hadley more around the action/center of the floor, so the idea seemed to have been to keep Saunders on the better offensive player.

The problem was, it lent to some defensive possessions like this one, which was the first play of the game. Cofie takes himself too far out of position on the ghost screen, but that’s a much more imposing help defense and contest at the rim if that’s Saunders instead of Murray. Not his fault – just a bad matchup having him try to play up 5 inches in height.

And this one, below. We had all kinds of rebounding issues in this game, which I’ll touch on momentarily, but leaving Taine to deal with a crashing 6’11” player from the corner is a very tough ask.

Here’s the thing – if you trust Saunders to deal with Hadley such that you’re willing to leave Murray on Waterman… why not just play Saunders at SF to begin with? Bring in Cofie to deal with Waterman and then run a Center. Or, if you don’t want to play a Center because you want to run Inside Triangle, isn’t this a decent opportunity for TJ Power while Waterman is on the floor?

But, having Saunders be guarded by opposing guards could often just result in possessions like this if we were willing to clear out and exploit the mismatch with more regularity:

It’s increasingly odd that we’re not willing to give this a chance considering what we’ll see later.

Rebounding

Related to the above, we got absolutely crushed on the glass in this one to the tune of 42 rebounds to 25! Sometimes it was due to shot blockers getting pulled out of position trying to help protect the rim and not enough team adjustments:

But sometimes it was just things like ball watching again (see Cofie, below) and not being alert enough or long/athletic enough to keep Louisville’s activity and length off of the glass – Waterman just splits both Cofie and Saunders here with both just turning and looking and neither boxing out:

I wrote in my Tracking A Transfer piece on him, that Elijah Saunders was a very good rebounder when it came to tracking the ball and crashing the glass, but that he wasn’t as good when it came to competing against strength and/or length. Sometimes San Diego State would take him out late in games when they needed to secure the defensive glass.

In this game, across 30 minutes, he had one rebound. Not one offensive rebound, one total rebound. That really hurts, especially in a game where you’re getting outrebounded by 18. And this is why, again, I think we should explore shifting him up in the lineup, especially when we’re getting destroyed on the interior and facing down so many clearly bad matchups like Murray on Waterman. Cofie and Saunders are an important duo for us on both sides of the ball but especially offensively (as really our only plus players in that area aside from McKneely’s shooting). But they have struggled to hold down the glass on their own, especially alongside of our unathletic guards. When it’s clearly a problem, get one of the Centers in there, shift Cofie up to the PF, and play Saunders at SF.

Speaking of trying to play bigger….

I’ve Been Lobbying To Play Saunders At SF and We Played WHAT Lineup????

I want to start out by saying that the impact that this had on the game is overblown. It was one offensive and one defensive possession and we finished even on the scoreline after both were done. No harm, no foul. The reason I called it out live and am talking about it now is, well, it was bizarre, but also because it took any semblance of previous lineup rigor and smashed it against the wall.

What I’m talking about, of course, are the two possessions where we played a lineup of Andrew Rohde, Isaac McKneely, TJ Power, Blake Buchanan, and Anthony Robinson! Now, I believe these were the first two possessions that Buchanan and Robinson played together all season… and what a time for that, down only five with 16:30 left to go in the game. It’s not like Saunders or Cofie were in foul trouble – they had one and two respectively. It wasn’t fatigue – Saunders only played 30 minutes; down 37 from the N.C. State win and Cofie only logged 24. What’s more – they chose to pair Robinson and Buchanan with TJ Power who only played 6 minutes of the game himself – about one minute of which was with this group.

So many questions. How is Power supposed to have a chance to be successful if 1/6th of his floor time is this, for one. Also… why?

The actual rationale appears to be very disappointing. We had just pulled Cofie out of the game for Robinson and TJ Power was in the game with them and Saunders. Saunders picked up his only foul, a costly one, shoving a Louisville player in the back after a made basket, giving them the ball back. Coach Sanchez pulled Saunders out of the game, ostensibly to talk about the silly foul, but didn’t want to turn to Cofie because he just pulled him out and didn’t seem to want to pull TJ or ARob out because they just went in. We’d also been getting killed on the glass anyway, so he likely didn’t want to go smaller with Power at the PF. So, he put Blake in the game for two plays, before pulling both he and Power out for Saunders and Ames again.

Why does this set off alarms for me? After all, I said we should start flinging spaghetti against the walls earlier in the year to figure out all of our potential lineup options and how to use them, isn’t this doing that? That was in the heart of non-conference play against teams we had the ability to beat comfortably and we never tried this; let alone down only five in a crucial game where we weren’t yet clearly being outplayed. We normally treat out lineup structure of three guards and two bigs, if you’re counting Power as a guard which we normally do, as pretty sacred. If anything, we err on the side of going smaller to our detriment at times. I’ve been advocating since before the start of the season, and all throughout, that we play Elijah Saunders at the SF some due to his (and Cofie’s) flexibility, the way that could make us play big and create mismatches, due to our subpar guard options, and the way that could help our collective team size and defense. We haven’t tried him there in ages, and no more than a few possessions all season. The implication being that it either wasn’t perceived as good enough or that it deviated too much from what we were trying to do.

So, what was this? Unlike the Saunders lineups, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re expecting either Robinson or Buchanan to be more mobile than they are and are putting Robinson on Hadley as opposed to the less mobile Waterman. He’s not Saunders and has to play in more space, and in the defensive look below both he and Blake are slow to close out and gave up multiple open three-point looks from Reyne Smith in the possession prior to Power drawing the over-the-back call.

And, offensively, at least we had the sense to run Sides which was the only logical option, but we paired them with Power as a mover which isn’t his strength, we got pressured all over the ball, and didn’t have the offensive options to take advantage of it. Robinson hustled and collected an offensive board, which was nice, and Buchanan should have finished the second chance but didn’t really know what to do with himself on the catch:

The thing is, there’s actually something here. You could play this group with Sharma instead of Power and put Ishan on Hadley, Buchanan on Waterman, and Robinson on James Scott (#0). Ishan has the athleticism to play with Hadley, especially backed up by the other two, Waterman isn’t mobile enough to shake Buchanan, and Robinson overpowers Scott. Similarly, if you run Sides on offense with that group, you still have two screeners (that offense is designed to be able to be run with two non-shooters) but now you have a full compliment of guards who are better at coming off of screens and shooting on the catch.

There’s something that could be worth exploring baked in there. What makes me so frustrated is that we haven’t explored it so far this season so we had no idea what would work or what wouldn’t, that we didn’t really have any sense around what could make sense conceptually in the context of what we do given the situation and the personnel idea and, maybe mostly, that we weren’t actually doing this to try something strategically. We simply had a pre-disposed rotational idea re: getting Robinson and Power into the mix and then when Saunders did something that we thought needed some coaching, we reacted to that without reconsidering the plan we already had in motion. It’s just such a rigid thought process and we end up putting a bad lineup on the floor because we don’t want to deviate from the plan we already had in place but, meanwhile, we don’t do nearly enough lineup experimentation early in the season when we could afford to have a few more empty possessions to arm ourselves with some quality ideas for what to do in these situations where we need size and physicality (hint: play Saunders at SF with Cofie at PF and a Center – but of course the lack of reps we’ve put into that would make it probably have some growing pains too).

When it comes down to it, this kind of thing just highlights, to me, how little innovation to do other things, like find ways and approaches to play bigger, we’ve really attempted especially when our guards have struggled so much to stand up to pressure and create. And then the juxtaposition of that, ostensibly viewed as being risky or just not the right direction, with being willing to throw this group on the floor in the heat of a close game against good competition in conference play.

Surely, if we needed to talk to Saunders to cool him down for a minute, we could have put Cofie back out there for a second and slightly disrupted his rest schedule by two plays. Or we could have pulled Power back and put Sharma out there briefly and then gone back to Power. That stuff happens all of the time where a coach will pull a player out of the game, say “stay with me, you’re going right back in I just need (insert thing) to happen first.”

All-in-all, the point I’ve been building toward is that it just feels like having blinders on; like the vision for how it all works together or good ideas for how it could just aren’t there and we’re getting lost in the weeds around the mechanics of stuff like, “I’ve got to pull my guy and talk to him when he makes a bad foul.”

Wonky lineup aside, this all applies to Anthony Robinson in general now, as well. By not playing him earlier in the year aside from clean up time, especially against poor opponents, he missed out on valuable experience that would help us now when we need him to help stand up to the physicality of ACC rebounding. He wasn’t ready to contribute well enough in this game, and game reps certainly play a role in that. We clearly under-estimated how much we would need him, which was a misevaluation.

iMac Initiation

Building on the same discussion point from last game, we’re still asking or expecting iMac to do too much off of the dribble. Yes, we’re lacking there, but he’s too valuable off the ball as a catch and shoot option and he’s just not great at taking matters into his own hands so much. When he’s forcing things we get airball scoop shots….

Fake drives that don’t threaten or cause a defensive reaction, leading to turnovers….

And step back threes which is actually my favorite play of the trio and almost went in… but is still an incredibly hard and low percentage shot even for a great three-point shooter like he….

We’ve got to shift the burden/ask of the offense away from him with the ball in his hands and increase the opportunities for someone else to find him to launch from deep. That probably means more post touches for Saunders and Cofie and I’m here for all of that.

Speaking of….

A Moment of Cofie

Okay, turns out the positivity I promised in my opening will just be a smattering. So, sorry about that, but rightly so. Jacob Cofie, though. He had one of his worst games in a while. The defensive lapses were more frequent, and he didn’t seem to ever get comfortable offensively, shooting just 2-7 from the floor for only five points. But every single game I still wonder, why aren’t we forcing the issue through him more often?

He’s very effective as a driver:

And it’s not something we do for him as often compared to Saunders, but he’s also effective in the low post:

That’s a strong move through body contact with good spatial awareness and body control. I’d love to get to a point where most of our offensive possessions either go through him or Saunders to either create a shot for themselves or to create an opportunity where the pass can go elsewhere through them. From the perimeter, high post, or low post, both have proven they can generate advantage against most matchups in some way, shape or form.

Rohde Rhetoric

I want to close just by expressing some sincere appreciation for Andrew Rohde. Rohde isn’t the player you want playing the role of your primary ball handler at a P5 school with virtually no other options around him. In fact, I wrote before the season that I’d be comfortable without him getting PT once the season settled in (this was before the Warley departure). He became a lightning rod for criticism last season because of the disproportionate number of minutes he was getting contrasted with our other options and the quality of play we were getting from him (that’s more on CTB for being unwilling to waiver, though). But he’s performed admirably this year given the circumstances. He’s been thrust in and out of the starting lineup and there’s never any sign that it bothers him and he’s giving his all physically, and mentally, virtually every play which is uniquely not something we can say universally with this year’s team, sadly.

It might be a statement on the level of play from this game, but he was our best player in it, leading the team in scoring with 16 points on 50% shooting from the field, adding three steals to the mix, and probably being our second best perimeter defender after Sharma in this one (and probably collectively our best perimeter defender on the season).

He had some nice moves and finishes in this one like finishing through contact here:

And this crazy move where he almost tripped himself and used it to juke the defense, here:

But I also think it’s admirable how much he worked on his shot this offseason – shooting 46% on the season from deep, representing over a 20% increase from last year. His catch and shoot has been smooth and his release has been really quick with little wasted motion – to the point where we should probably be looking to get him more looks from out there rather than what seems to be more tertiary-type options when the offense sputters:

And he’s also done a nice job with his defense. It’s not perfect and he’s still limited with his foot speed (I’m thinking of a different play where Hepburn completely lost him baseline in this one), but he’s gotten very effective at making up for that disadvantage he gives with his first step with good body positioning and imposing length.

He’s also much improved with his off-ball defense this year, as well, which was actually his biggest weakness last year.

People tend to get very (read: far too) prickly when Rohde is discussed so I’ll clarify that I don’t think he’s awesome or anything (on the court, I’m really liking him as an individual); but I’m grateful for his contributions, am impressed by his improvement, and think he could be a solid 6th/7th man-type on a good team.

In Conclusion

Look, this is all really hard. The coffers were laid pretty bare, especially when Warley transferred. The coach didn’t have the same amount of time to make his own plans this offseason as he normally would. We understand the plight and the situation.

That being said, there are still many (in my opinion) missteps being made right now in how we’ve progressed, in what we’re considering (or aren’t), and in how we’ve utilized the time we’ve had to this point. It feels like we’ve lost the plot, a bit, and are most focused on approaching this a specific way as opposed to considering the uniqueness of here and now.

You better believe I’ll be hunkered up ready to watch the next chapter unfold at 11 p.m. tomorrow night, though!