This was my fear. Before the season started, I wrote (and said) that the main test would be to see how these guys would play and respond through adversity, of which there would definitely be some this season. I didn’t correctly forecast how much adversity that would be, but we’ve reached that point now and you can see it impacting really all but one of our players on the floor.
Can they be convinced that, with Coach Sanchez as an interim coach and after such a jarring departure, they’re playing for more than themselves? Can they grow together and play for each other this season? So far, the answer appears to be, “no.” This after players like Dai Dai Ames and Blake Buchanan have found themselves farther down the rotation, after Coach Sanchez intimated that Christian Bliss was able to play but holding himself out of games, and with the most demonstrable frustration and dejection on the court accompanied by our worst loss of the season… it certainly feels as though it’s slipping out of control.
That was a painful game to watch as a fan of a proud program that has built itself on effort, Servanthood, and never being lukewarm… most all of what we did Wednesday night (and into Thursday) felt lukewarm. It was the performance of (most) players as well as the head scratching coaching decisions (and inaction) that just compounded into something that, frankly, you felt bad watching. The team is not great as constructed – but it shouldn’t be this bad.
So, without a ton of over-arching direction, I’m going to talk a bit about a bunch of things that aren’t going well, but I want to start by highlighting one player who deserves all of the flowers after that one, despite it all.
Andrew Flipping Rohde!
I still see Andrew Rohde as the draw of many-a-fan’s angst and, of all the people. He’s been our best player the past two games and, maybe most impressively, has remained calm, supportive of his teammates, and continued to put in maximum effort and play the game the right way. I get that last year was frustrating – but this isn’t last year and, really, that wasn’t his fault. That was CTB’s fault for playing him so much. It’s not like he wasn’t trying his hardest then, too.
A debate could be had about what role, if any, would Rohde have on a good team – he’s had some rough moments this season (especially for that stretch against Memphis) but he’s been playing like our best guard now, and I want to commend that. In fact, the craziest thing about this game is that almost any time something good happened and not just in the box score; sometimes it was a good look created for a teammate that they didn’t take, or creating a mismatch that would have been good for a hockey assist as we swung the ball, Rohde was almost always involved in the play making something happen in a variety of ways and bringing good energy amidst a bunch of bad and rarely (one turnover and a couple of bad possessions guarding Stojakovic) contributed a negative play on a night where they cropped up everywhere.
You could just see his presence all over the court. Let’s start just by examining that 11-0 run they went on to start the game and go up 11-3.
He assisted on the first jumper by Cofie, then he hit this little push shot in the lane:
Strung together possessions like this one where he gets a solid contest on an isolation three-pointer, then runs out, directs traffic to get the ball swung around and fed to him in the post, draws the defense and then kicks the pass out to Saunders who swings it over to McKneely.
As an aside, that was iMac’s only made field goal of the night – something we’ll revisit later.
He ran the pick and roll and got Buchanan sent to the FT line with a nice lob pass.
Grabbed a rebound and also forced this steal with very good active hands after covering Stojakovic up the floor and forcing a deflection earlier in the play too:
So, at this point, we’re five minutes into the game and up 11-3. Rohde has either been the primary facilitator (the reason the play created an advantage, in this case, not the direct assistor on the iMac 3) or scored on 9 of the 11 points, has a rebound, has forced a steal, and basically been controlling the flow of the game.
Then Cal started to make their comeback (we’ll revisit the delay after) and the tone of the game gradually changed from concerning to downright bad across multiple fronts – but Rohde continued to perform admirably after that.
Here’s a great look and I wrote in my notes that I felt bad for Rohde because he was just getting no help. Here we are after Cal has clawed all the way back and taken the lead by two. Rohde crashes down and grabs the board, brings the ball up the floor, draws two defenders into the paint and kicks out to Cofie who has an absolutely wide-open three that he should shoot without hesitation. Instead Cofie waits for his man to close out, gives a half-hearted pump fake, takes a bounce and passes back to Rohde. Undeterred, this time he passes over to Power, starts to cut through the lane and posts up in the mid-post. McKneely cuts through the lane and takes the pass… but he goes up so weak, fading away, with no awareness of his ability to get a shot up by Stojakovic. His shot is absolutely annihilated.
Rohde created both opportunities on that play in different ways. We passed one up and then rushed/took another in an absolutely crazy way. It’s like McKneely forgets how to play basketball when he’s in the paint and decides he’s just going to put a soft layup over the 6’7″ guy who wasn’t even stealth – he was right in front of him. Isaac could have pump faked and try to draw contact, or he had a great pass out to Taine in the corner if he could have gathered himself.
Taine’s only three taken in the game came from a run out that Rohde created by pushing the ball 5-on-4 and seeing this nice cross-court pass:
He was giving effort and sacrificing his body – even if this one didn’t work out, good active hands on the drive to deflect the ball and then go diving trying to save it from going out of bounds. This effort, here below, was really only matched by Cofie (who took away from his own value by playing frustrated and giving up fouls).
He ran a really nice pick and roll with Cofie toward the end of the game out of Flow that made you wonder why they don’t try this more – very effective and looked too easy:
And, lastly, I’d say that this clip, below, does well to encapsulate the different kinds of ways he contributed toward always working to create offense. This play is all Rohde – everyone else barely even moves. He starts by crossing one man up to force a defensive switch, then does the same on the second to find space baseline. Cofie is slow on the slot cut but Rohde finds him with a quick and slick left-handed pass. You’d like Cofie to be earlier to recognize this and to take the pass with momentum so that it’s hard for his man to get in good defensive position as he attacks the basket. Instead, Cofie stalls and passes the ball back out to iMac. Rohde cuts through the lane out to the corner, but then schemes up a quick little screen – directs (literal Point Guard, as some are saying) iMac to pass it to Sharma, sneaks in for a little pin down screen on his man, allowing Sharma to shoot over the slower close-out from the big that had been switched onto Rohde.
In a game where almost everyone else seemed paralyzed to come up with good ideas on offense, this is where Rohde’s basketball smarts come into play. That and he doesn’t allow himself to get deterred by the game-score situation. He keeps working and thinking. His initial facilitation didn’t lead to a shot when it probably should have (again), so instead, he works his way to the other side of the court, recognizes Sharma as a shooting option, probably understands that there’s a mismatching chasing him as well, and lines up a nice screen to force his own man to close out from the buffer he was giving. A nice shot by Sharma, too, who I was happy with his willingness to launch from outside (3-7 for the game).
But, yeah, those are some select plays. As bad as it was, I cannot emphasize enough how much worse it would have been with Andrew Rohde. He was the only player on our team making positive things happen for himself and others with any regularity at all while also minimizing negative plays. He was also (you could probably argue Sharma as well) one of the only players who kept their poise. Look, I know it’s not ideal that we’re at a point now where he’s our primary PG over the span of a season – but I love his lack of quit and his lack of… flusterability (he knowingly makes up a word because it’s his blog and you know what he means). In a time where we’re all kind of looking things to get behind and root for this season, I encourage fans to move on from last season and embrace Andrew Rohde’s improvement and mentality. It’s inspiring, to me at least, that a player who got so much grief last year continues to represent the program like this while things are going as they are. In my (brief) lack of motivation to write about this piece after watching the overall performance (nothing new – bad losses are always tough to revisit), wanting to shine a positive light onto Rohde was what rekindled that spark.
Okay, go Andrew Rohde! Now, moving onto the other stuff….
Quickly Blowing An Early Lead
Short anecdote, it’s frustrating how many online personalities who kind of help shape the UVa social media experience during games are so quick to blame factors external to the team when things go poorly. Things like the refs, shooting variance or, in this case, the clock situation. I don’t mean saying “that’s a bad call!” or stuff like that in the heat of the moment (there were some bad calls in this game) – it’s the frequent implication that the team is just getting lucky or unfortunate or that the outcome of the game is undeserved. More, it’s the lack of accountability that underscores its message. “Oh, man, we’re shooting really poorly!” True… because we’re shooting fadeaway midrange jumpers from the baseline and step-back threes. Stuff like that doesn’t do us any favors.
In this game it became about the long delay after the clock confusion and how the momentum of the game switched so starkly from us being up 11-3 to suddenly down 11-13. The problem is twofold – how are you using that time? It doesn’t have to derail your momentum; how are you coaching your team? What adjustments are you making to what you’re seeing and can you anticipate how the other team is going to respond. Secondly, the reason California got back into that game so quickly was just plain bad play from our players regardless of the pause.
Let’s look at how that run unfolded for them. This is first play after the break, and the first defensive possession with Dai Dai Ames on the floor. Ames came in for all of four minutes in this game, mostly to do with how this stint went. Here he just takes a bad angle on the pin down screen. He could have gone over the screen and chased his man into a hedging Buchanan, but instead, he looks to cheat it and go under and meet his man on the other side coming to the ball. The problem is that his man stops, pinning Dai Dai behind the screener, and drills the three. Ames basically buried himself by trying to anticipate to get into position rather than just chasing hard around the screen.
After the make, here’s our next offensive possession, below. Now, here’s one thing I’ll say that was a positive – I wrote after the last game that if you’re going to play Ames and Buchanan, especially together, that you should either go back to the first offense of the season or run more Flow. They did that here, switching to the “New” offense once Ames was on the court with Buchanan. The problem was the ability and decision making. Firstly, after Rohde swings the ball through the offense via Buchanan at the high post to iMac on the other side, Isaac attempts to drive baseline. Two man go with him but neither he nor Buchanan are able to find/connect with each other despite the fact that Lee Dort (#34) helps on the drive. A combination of McKneely remaining limited as a facilitator and Buchanan struggling to command the ball around the hoop. The ball goes back out to Ames with 10 on the shot clock and he rejects a ball screen from Buchanan whose man is playing drop coverage. Ames still has 7 seconds on the shot clock and he’s got Saunders posting up Andrej Stojakovic (#2). That’s a mismatch in our favor. Saunders has an inch and 20 lbs. on Peja’s son and Ames should get him the ball here – he’s got good position. Instead, Dai Dai calls his own number and takes a step back three.
Now, I don’t mind Ames taking a step back three at the very end of a shot clock when he’s out of options; he’s shot pretty well from deep this season (though trending downward with less playing time). And McKneely and Buchanan helped to create that situation – so this possession is not all on Dai Dai. But, the way he’s been playing, you did just kind of have a feeling he was going to shoot it himself rather than look for the pass, and Saunders was working for the ball, open, and a much better option there to make something happened with 7 seconds on the shot clock.
The other thing about that possession above is, notice the shift in who was handling the ball. Over the run Rohde was making everything happen. Here, he was on the floor and he touched the ball at the beginning of the play, but the possession was bogged down by McKneely trying to be the facilitator with Ames getting the final shot.
Now, let’s go the other way again. This is when I started thinking that McKneely might not be in this game mentally, rather than just making a few mistakes. It’s a very low energy defensive possession from him and it’s not just that he concedes the bucket in one-on-one isolation here, it’s how little resistance he puts up. There’s no physicality or fight here; it’s just kind of sleepy defense which, despite your evaluation of iMac as a defender, there’s never been a question of how hard he’s fighting to defend until now, at least not in my mind.
The next play is on Rohde. Perhaps forcing a little too much to make something happen after the previous play. I’d say this was his second worst decision of the game (behind the transition pass to Cofie we’ll see later) mostly because Blake runs his man into his drive and doesn’t find space for a pass, which makes the shot awkward and he doesn’t have to shoot this – there’s still time.
Then, back the other way on defense, we end with this possession where Ames fouls a three-point shooter. This is probably what got him relegated to the bench for so long ultimately and he’s done this a few times this season. I don’t think the Taine one later was a foul – but Ames does hit the shooter on the wrist here.
It’s just kind of careless, sloppy, and unnecessary. He did a pretty good job of shading Dort (#34) and recovering for a quality contest – just have a little restraint! Terrible timing as it punctuated already slipping momentum.
Just like that, 3 offensive possessions for Cal and two for us, an 8-point lead evaporated. It’s lazy to blame that on the clock fiasco, though, other than maybe to lament that they made some adjustments and we felt the pain from two subs (in Ames and Buchanan) and one starter (McKneely) who weren’t playing well.
Speaking of….
It’s Time We Have An Isaac McKneely Discussion
McKneely played terribly in this game. It was probably his single worst game as a Wahoo. Mentally, he looked like he just wasn’t there at all, his body language was that of a zombie, he played with the least energy I’ve seen from him, and he shot an uncharacteristic 1-8 from the floor while making mistake after mistake (despite only being credited with 1 turnover).
He played 37 minutes.
Now, look, he’s going to have a lot better games than this one in the future and, for all we know, this may be his absolute worst (I hope it is); but as a coaching staff, a team, as fans, the media – we need to start changing the way we think about him as a player. Isaac McKneely is viewed as our only source of offense. The narrative is that he’s the only true shooter other teams are afraid of. Teams plaster to him and run him off of the line because they aren’t worried about anyone else. We need him to shoot at least 14 shots a game and to “realize he can dribble” – shifting more playmaking responsibilities into his hands. This is the wrong way to think about his role, in my opinion, does not suit his skillset (or his personality), and isn’t doing him, nor the team, any favors. In fact, I think it’s limiting the way we play by trying to rely on him too much.
Look at this game, as an example. We scored 61 points in the game and McKneely had 3 of them and I’d argue this was much more in spite of his contributions than because of them.
His shot was way off (the airball on this kind of quality look for him should have been a hint to Sanchez as it’s very uncharacteristic):
But he was also taking bad shots. This next one was right after Cal had pushed its lead up to its largest margin of the game at that point – four. We needed a bucket to stay attached, and got one from a good offensive rebound from Buchanan, but this is a terrible shot selection from iMac. A deep fadeaway two-pointer from the baseline over a solid contest with over half of the shot clock left.
And this is where I think it comes back to coaching; not only in our over-reliance on him in general, which we’ll talk about, but he’s clearly feeling the pressure/burden to carry this offense. He’s been drilled enough to shoot any open look – but that’s not translating, as it should, to any open three, it’s translating to crazy-degree-of-difficulty-worst-shot-in-basketball-long-twos. We don’t need and shouldn’t want this shot from him – and what it also does, I strongly suspect, is explain some of the reluctance to shoot from other players this year (and last year). If we’re constantly drilling iMac, iMac, iMac, get him 14 shots, he’s the offense, etc., then guys feel less empowered to make a play themselves. I know this was happening last year as it pertains to Ryan Dunn’s lack of willingness to shoot and how in his head he got. It’s because the message was that shots from worse shooters were opportunity cost from shots for better shooters – even though a wide-open shot from a worse shooter is typically better than a closely contested, or difficult shot (or turnover, for that matter) from a better shooter.
It’s that thing when you convince yourself that your best option is one thing, and then all opponents have to do is defend that thing vs. when you place emphasis on things they aren’t guarding as closely (like, for example, Rohde pick and rolls, and Saunders and Cofie post ups) the other thing might start to open up more organically.
I know this: the answer isn’t trying to force-feed so much through McKneely and it isn’t having him make more plays off of the bounce, which is just not his strength and, more often than not, ends up stalling a possession like we saw earlier than it does help to create something.
This fast break was bonkers to me, like probably the most glaring play of the game. Yes, Rohde had a poorly executed pass to Cofie earlier in the game where he threw a pass high as opposed to throwing a pocket pass (he also learned from that later), but on this play McKneely just kind of ignores all fast break norms. Saunders makes a nice play on the ball and Rohde makes a heads up bat of the ball back to Saunders to start a break out. Elijah looks for a guard and finds McKneely. This is a three-on-one fast break with Blake trailing. There’s good spacing, and Jovan Blacksher Jr. (#10) who is 5’11” is both the only man back AND he commits to McKneely on the elbow. This is an EASY, easy, easy, easy pass back to Saunders. It’s fast break 101, honestly, get the ball back to the better finisher and more athletic player around the rim unless the defender just takes that player away and ignores the ball handler. Isaac could hit him with a lob at the rim, he could flip the pass over Blacksher’s head when he attacks the dribble, he could wrap a left-handed bounce pass around him (probably the harder of the three options, but still better). Instead, McKneely jams the dribble down the left side of the lane himself and takes a fadeaway jumper of a layup that gets swatted out of bounds.
What is he doing? The decision is either uncharacteristically selfish, or just a complete lack of floor awareness. Not to mention, it was the correct basketball play, but if there was no defender there you should still reward your teammate for creating the steal and running the floor. It would be hard not to be demoralized as Elijah Saunders while watching that ball get swatted.
He’s SO casual with the ball here, below, and almost relaxed (in a lethargic way, not a comfortable way) with his movements. He’s just jogging lightly throughout, and he even gears down and is loose with the ball on the catch before turning it over.
It’s hard to watch that one (and many of the others) and feel like his head was in this game. The effort certainly wasn’t there.
And one more look where he gets sped up, doesn’t take his dribble very far or force much of a reaction from the defense, and then lasers a pass behind Saunders that flies out of bounds.
Those were two turnovers alone I would have credited to him; but he only shows one.
We sit every other player on this team when their play is hurting us. Sometimes, it’s longer, like Ames getting the hook for the majority of the game after his defense and offense were hurting us. Sometimes it’s shorter, like pulling Saunders for a play or two to get him to stop shoving guys in the back on offensive rebounds. But iMac has been mostly immune to playing time fluctuations based on performance because he’s viewed as indispensable, and he shouldn’t be. It’s true that he’s the best shooter on the team; but what about when he’s not shooting well? What about when he’s costing us possessions from both mistakes but also struggles to get off of his defender and struggles bogging down a play when he’s not able to do much with his dribble?
He’s on the floor for this play, below, but away from the ball. We’re cleared out running a pick and roll with Sharma and Robinson. Look at this nice pocket pass from Ishan to the cutting Robinson who made a nice finish and-1.
Ishan was 3-7 from deep in this game, was playing much better defense, and Isaac wasn’t creating anything like this. Why can’t we play Sharma FOR McKneely some if he’s playing like he was in this game?
Like, here again, for example, it’s ugly ball handling from iMac and he almost throws it away from Power. But once he’s out of the play, even Power is able to facilitate this hand-off to Sharma after a solid screen from Buchanan.
With good design and just shifting some of that responsibility around, you don’t need McKneely to get Sharma a look like this.
And, who knows, maybe Taine would take this shot with enhanced responsibility (although I suspect that’s a different issue for him and he just needs continual pushing on this – shoot the ball!). McKneely is out this play, but the ball is moving from Rohde in the mid-post, a skip pass to Sharma, I love the confidence to pull up off of the dribble from deep from him, he misses, but it’s a good rebound from Blake, Power makes a nice cut to the lane to outlet, and then finds Murray who needs to take this shot, but instead drives recklessly into the charge.
No McKneely. It’s a wild lineup with Buchanan, TJ Power, Sharma, and Taine Murray on the floor with Rohde. And yet the ball is moving and swinging much more than when McKneely was on the floor and we create what would be two quality three-point attempts if Taine had let it go.
Here’s a last look at a similar fast break to the above, but with Rohde running it with Saunders and Cofie. Note: McKneely is on the floor but is the only one not really involved in this play. Cofie has active and quick hands on the hedge, forcing a deflection. Sharma is on the spot to collect the ball and makes a nice outlet pass under duress to Rohde. Rohde gets good floor spacing with his three-on-one, slows down to wait for Cofie, draws the defender, and dumps it to him for a nice finish – rewarding the player who was responsible for the steal as well!
Here’s what I’d like the takeaways from all of this because I can hear complaints loaded that McKneely is the only player willing to shoot, we don’t have better options, etc., etc. I’m not saying we shouldn’t play Isaac McKneely, nor that he’s a bad player or doesn’t have a huge role on this team, anything like that.
If nothing else, the enhanced spacing he provides on the floor because teams face-guard him as opposed to play him like a normal shooter makes things easier for those around him. Of course Isaac McKneely should be one of our starters and get a ton of time – but he doesn’t need 37 minutes per game especially in games where he’s playing poorly. He’s better when he’s fresh anyway, he has to be held accountable just like we do anyone else when he isn’t playing well, and we have to stop sending the message to the team that, basically, they can’t do anything without him.
They can do things without him. Sharma has it within him to do more, as does Rohde as we’ve seen recently, Taine is better when he’s aggressive and takes it on himself to do more, and perhaps most importantly, we should be playing through Saunders and Cofie much more. Let them get the ball in the post where they’re already touching the paint, run off ball screening actions while they have it to create space for McKneely or another player like Sharma, Murray, Rohde, with the goal of them shooting it when the pass is there. Force the defense to react or make a one-on-one move if they don’t. Don’t hesitate to play inside-out a much larger portion of the time.
I’ve written a lot about casting a wide net and then playing the hot hands. “Hot hands” for this purpose not just meaning who is shooting well, although that’s part of it, but also meaning who is playing well. Who is engaged and hustling, who is playing smart basketball, who is resisting pressure and making things happen. This should extend to everyone. We treat iMac like he’s always the hot hand – but that’s just not true.
If we take more of the burden off of iMac, I think we’ll find that it empowers our other guys AND actually helps iMac fit into the game as well. He’s not suited to be the guy all play runs through; but he’s very well-suited to be the guy who plays off of what others are doing. Cofie and Saunders can be those guys. Rohde can be that guy in spurts. Ames has the potential to be that guy if you can put the genie back in the bottle a little bit on him. It’s true that we’re always going to be limited this year due to personnel talent, especially as it exists through ball handlers. But there are paths to much more efficient basketball with this team, and it starts with altering how we view and use Isaac McKneely.
Frustration
Not a ton to analyze here – but worth calling out that visible frustration was at a high for the season, which feeds into all of these other concerns. I prefer players to be frustrated and still playing hard and with passion rather than just going through the motions or looking shell-shocked, though.
We saw it in a lot of places, but most visible with Cofie. I get why he was upset with this pass. It was an easy two for him in the making and a bounce pass would have been much better. I don’t love that he put Rohde on blast like this so much, though, from the mistake. This is the kind of reaction, frankly, I’d expect from Elijah Saunders when McKneely was a black hole with the ball on that break.
FWIW, I don’t think Rohde really cares about being shown up here. He seems to get the competitive nature of things and is usually quick to be supportive to try to pick teammates up – like how he’s quick to encourage Saunders after this bobble (which, you can see Saunders’s disbelief in himself).
But that frustration can start to creep to other players and it can also show up on the floor. This foul, which was out of pure frustration, was his 3rd and got him pulled for the next 8 minutes of the game.
And this brings us to the final point….
Coaching.
The decisions around how to use who and when… and why, were very poor in this game, and I’ve steered clear of classifying it that way until now. We already discussed using McKneely for 37 minutes despite him having one of the worst games on the team. We’ve discussed in previous pieces how quickly Dai Dai Ames fell from grace after his injury despite playing quite well beforehand, and how surely we could have find a better way to navigate that situation to keep him more engaged. We’ve also previously discussed the obsession with sitting guys for fouls.
Jacob Cofie needs to play with less frustration and keep himself out of foul trouble knowing this – but Coach Sanchez also needs to evolve on this. Cofie played only 18 minutes in this game and we were +4 while he was in the game – the only player in the positive. Plus/minus is a notoriously fickle game-by-game stat, so you always have to back it up on the small sample size with the eyeball test. The eyeball test was there. When he was playing, Cofie was also playing with energy that only Rohde was matching. Rohde may have been our best overall player in this game – but Cofie is the actual best player on the roster and his impact was felt when he was on the floor. It’s no surprise that when Cal went on that 10-0 run to take the lead back, it was right at the moment (the 4-6 minute mark) when Coach Sanchez tends to automatically pull Cofie for Buchanan no matter what’s happening in the game. Cofie had hit two early jumpers and was playing well (and so were we). When we pulled him we were up 9-3. When we brought him back in (three game minutes later and longer re: the clock stoppage), we were tied 11-11. We subbed him out, up a point again 14-13, with 9:45 in the game, brought him back in up 5:30 when we were up 19-18 – he immediately picked up his second foul and we sat him for the entire rest of the half. We started him in the second half, he picked up this foul, above, 30 seconds into the half and, third foul in hand, we sat him ANOTHER 8-straight minutes until 11:23 left in the game. At that point, we were down 55-40. That’s a sixteen-point swing over 13+ minutes of straight game time (aside from 30 seconds).
In order to keep him from picking up his 4th foul, Ron Sanchez let Jacob Cofie rot on the bench for roughly a third of the game while it went from a nip-and-tuck one point affair to a fifteen-point blowout.
What are you saving him for at that point? It’s negligence in the name of basketball philosophy. We lost this game by 14 points. We beat Cal by 4 when he was on the floor. He finished the game with four fouls and didn’t foul out. At some point as the game continues to get away from you, especially as you’re getting absolutely destroyed on the glass, you’ve got to be able to get outside of whatever your substitutional preferences are and say, “we need this guy now.” If he fouls out, so be it, but you better make sure you’re getting every possible minute of his energy, passion, and skill on the floor when so many of your other players were as flat as they were.
Speaking of rebounding – that was the second mind-boggling decision (more than how it relates to Cofie, as it did). For context, we were absolutely getting pounded on the glass for second chance points. Here’s one look, below, where you see us give up the first rebound of some deflections. Then Buchanan leave his man late to try to block a shot from the help position that he really doesn’t have a good chance of getting and has to abandon that before he even jumps. Doing so pulls him out of position, and he concedes the rebound the other way. You also see the lack of athleticism across this lineup and the cost of pairing Buchanan with Power at the C/PF. TJ doesn’t really have a chance to support Blake on this after he gets out of position and just fouls trying. This was a terrible linup to play against Cal’s physical frontcourt without ANY of Cofie, Saunders, or Robinson. Much better for Blake just to stay home and start boxing out as the shot looks like it’s about to go up here.
But that would require that he box out. Here’s the most depressing clip of this in the game, below, with us giving up three consecutive offensive rebounds and each one was due to Buchanan getting out-muscled and out-positioned by 6’9″ 250lb Mady Sissoko (#12).
Would you believe that Blake Buchanan didn’t come out of the game after this play? Because he didn’t.
It wasn’t until after this offensive rebound (and foul), almost four full game minutes later, after getting absolutely pounded (throughout, really, but especially when Cofie was bench-riding) for about 25 minutes of game play, that Coach Sanchez finally turned to Anthony Robinson to try to stem the bleeding.
And, while he’s still working through some of the growing pains we discussed last week, and it’s not like the game took a turn for the positive like it did with Cofie when he got in there, he did provide a much more impactful presence around the rim. Here’s a look at him rebounding and doing a much better job of holding up to the physicality of Lee Dort (#34).
If we’re being completely candid, I’d wager that Sanchez sitting Blake after that last offensive rebound was more of a gut reaction to him picking up a second foul than it was because of his struggles themselves. We hadn’t seen him yanked otherwise until then, including the three-offensive-rebound play.
I’ll say the same thing for Buchanan as I have others – he still has a role – especially if we’re going to be using the pick and roll and he’s a good passer out of the new offense, but we’ve got to be able to get away from him when he’s getting killed inside or bogging down the offense, or both. Automatically subbing him in at a set time each half to get him his run? Scrap that stuff. Bring him in when you need him, just like you should bring in Robinson when you need physicality and rebounding… as we didn’t in this game.
The last thing I’ll highlight in this section is the absolutely head-scratching decision to turn to TJ Power when we had pulled the game to within 10 with 6 minutes to go in the game. Jacob Cofie was back on the floor and he was playing well. Rohde was dishing to him on the break and out of the pick and roll as shown earlier. There was some hope. We sat Rohde for Power because Rohde picked up his 4th foul. This was the first play we got – a contested midrange jumper from Power in the lane – which flowed into the next defensive possession which concluded with a late and bad angle on a TJ Power closeout, allowing a clean driving lane, and ball-watching leading to McKneely being late to rotate up to help on the drive. Cofie was also confused on where to go. WAY too easy of an offensive possession when you needed a stop right after a bad shot.
You can, again, see Cofie’s frustration at that shot selection and I don’t blame him this time because he’d been working his tail off to get us back in this one, and then the defensive rotations were slow and… not alert. It was a backbreaker in terms of any hope/momentum. And, again, there’s less than six minutes left and you’re down 10 but have momentum. Why are you intentionally derailing that/breaking that continuity up just to protect Rohde from fouling out later? Who cares if he fouls out later if we can’t continue to get a foothold now? There’s a lack of common sense there. It’s rigidity.
I don’t love to speak to demeanor on the sideline from coaches. Coaches have different personality styles and it’s not inherently wrong to be stoic as long as you’re getting effort out of your guys. But to see how statuesque and… flat, I guess, our coaches, especially coach Sanchez was in the face of this effort was incredibly discouraging. Moreso, the decisions that lead to it around all of the rotational decisions we’ve discussed above. There just doesn’t seem to be any (at least good) read and reaction to what the game situation calls for outside of predetermined triggers that he’s set, like foul trouble. Sitting Rohde to get TJ Power in the game, four fouls or no (and even if you do – there’s still Taine who was at least defending Stojakovic pretty well when he played), being perhaps the most glaring among glaring decisions and inaction.
In Conclusion
Welp… that one wasn’t as much fun to write – but so it goes when things go like that. There was a lot to be discouraged by from player performance but, most notably, from the coaching. If the coaching improves, I believe the players will – and there’s enough heart there at least among some of the guys that, while you may not be competing for ACC titles and the ship has probably already sailed on the NCAA Tournament, you can play better. You can be better.
I hope for all of our guys sake, but especially those still really grinding and remaining bought in, that we make adjustments. It’ll have to be to our mentality and the way we strategically view the team, though, and those are tough to make.
Hang in there as fans, friends!
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