Hi, there, remember me?
Okay, so maybe it’s only been one game. My intention was not to jump back in – and this is NOT a game recap, nor will it have any clips. I wanted to jump in to discuss that SMU game and, especially, the ending, though.
Firstly, absolutely fantastic to see Blake Buchanan playing as he was. I’ve been writing for a while that coming off of the bench could provide him a spark of energy… turns out, he just needed a bunch of games and THEN, then the crazy energy. It is strange to think about what could be different now vs. recently when he’s looked so unsure of himself vs. playing with all of the confidence and aggression in the world.
Ishan Sharma had a true “shooters shoot” game, going 2-7 from beyond the arc but saving one of those to tie the game at the end and knocking down 4 big free throws in crunch time (more to come on that, obviously). I loved his confidence – that guy never shrinks from the moment.
It was also cool to see a bit of a redemption arc for Dai Dai Ames who went from being in the dog house recently to logging 28 productive minutes. He contributed on offense but, more importantly, was able to hold up on defense well enough, which is where he’d been struggling most. He and Sharma were our best two guards on the night.
These kinds of performances are fun to watch, even in what I’ve accepted is a lost season. It’s fun to see guys who haven’t been playing as well or haven’t been getting much run have their moments.
For the most part, it was a pretty rough game (0-6 from deep for both iMac and Rohde) that we stayed in from some solid enough defense and some equally cold shooting from the Mustangs. There were a couple of interesting wrinkles, such as us playing both Buchanan and Cofie together. This has been one of our better pairings but we don’t utilize it often, ostensibly because we don’t want to sit Saunders for that long. As an aside, this is why you PLAY SAUNDERS AT SF SOME!
Ahem.
This would have been a perfect game for that with only two of our guards playing well anyway (Ames and Sharma). What was most notable about the way we used Cofie and Buchanan, though, is that we played Cofie on SMU’s 7’2″ Center, Samet Yiğitoğlu, defensively and let Blake roam around at the PF – which was often against their 6’7″ stretch PF, Matt Cross. I thought this allowed Buchanan to be more active and mobile and (although he did defend Center quite a bit, too) kept him from getting quite as bogged down.
It was also notable that we did not play TJ Power at all in this game and only played Taine Murray 7 minutes which I though improved the rotational flow, to a degree, although it didn’t go quite far enough.
The elephant in the room throughout the game, though, was coaching and, since this isn’t a full Cuts, I’ll just tackle two key elements (which really boil down to one over-arching theme of over-valuing “experience” for the sake of experience).
The Inability To Sit Isaac McKneely When Necessary
Isaac McKneely has, perplexingly, been in “unbenchable” status for really the past two seasons. When he’s fully engaged and shooting even reasonably like his normal self, this makes sense. He is truly a great shooter who can stretch the defense, and his offensive range will often give us offense out of sets that, otherwise, weren’t yielding much.
What seems to be lost in all of this, though, is that he contributes to the offensive sets not yielding much otherwise by his lack of ability to handle the ball well, get by his man from parity on the bounce, finish at the rim, etc. He’s a slightly below-average defender when he’s fully engaged, but he’s been pretty poor of late, especially off of the ball where his focus and energy seem impacted.
All of this means that you really need him to be shooting the ball reasonably well or, at the very least, not turning it over. If he’s struggling in both of those areas, you shouldn’t (and can’t) be afraid to sit him down just because he’s iMac. That was the case in this one where, not only was he 0-6 from deep, but he was missing badly – airballing multiple shots badly. He was responsible for some careless turnovers, and he wasn’t playing with energy on either end.
We stubbornly stuck with him until, and I was about to give Coach Sanchez some kudos, we took him out of the game with about 5 minutes to go; down 7. For that next two minutes of game play with iMac on the bench, we erased that 7-point lead to tie the game 45-45 on the back of quality play from Ames, Sharma, Rohde, Cofie, and most of all, Buchanan. Our response to tying the game was………. to immediately put iMac back in the game for Ames.
Coach Sanchez just couldn’t help himself.
To be fair, this wasn’t the clear decision that cost us – that came later – but not sticking with the group that was creating such positive things together and erased a 7-point deficit over just two minutes when we only had 45 points in the game, to that point, is way too inside of the box as was not finding this and sticking with it earlier when he was playing so poorly. You’ve got to be willing to trust the guys who are making things happen in the moment (and trust when a player is clearly not on his game).
End Game
Then came the outrageous end game decisions – and this was a much worse sin. Taine Murray played 7-minutes in this game, including a 3-minute stretch in the second half from about 12-9 mins where we didn’t score a point and 31 seconds of that was the final stretch as we were trying to ice the game.
We all know what happened – he missed two key free-throws down the stretch with 7-seconds remaining and SMU hit the game-winning three in response. Taine also left Blake Buchanan on an island trying to contest a full-speed Boopie Miller from three as he ran right by him, didn’t call to switch or anything.
But, you really can’t put the outcome on Taine (I mean, you can, but it’s kind of a pointless exercise for a player who was clearly trying his hardest and doesn’t control when he’s playing and when he isn’t). It was terrible decision-making by the head coach for two reasons:
Firstly – it just ignores some basic things about coaching basketball. Taine had been sitting for 9+ game minutes, much longer in real time. You’re not loose at that point, you’re not as limber, you’re out of the rhythm of the game flow, touching the ball, working up a sweat, getting up shots. It’s really hard to go from that cold to being in a pressure shooting situation out of the blue. Sam Hauser, for example, has talked about how he has to specifically practice shooting cold in the NBA because it’s a unique skill to shoot well right off of the bench vs. after being more in a game flow.
In a similar vein, Murray was sitting because he wasn’t playing well. So why, then, are you bringing him onto the floor to provide something that your guys who were playing well to close were already doing? It doesn’t make sense. Ishan Sharma had just knocked down four free-throws in short time span. Coach Sanchez said it was for “experience” on defense – Ishan Sharma had been defending well! He’d been in the game throughout the comeback. So, just from a pure game flow and foundational thought process around basketball, this decision was perplexingly bad.
Secondly – it’s also a misevaluation of the talent you have on the roster, in my opinion. Not only had Sharma been defending better this game, he’s been a considerably better defender throughout the season:
Yes, I’d talked a little about how Taine has improved some defensively this year. He’s had a couple of games where his physicality has been able to show up while he’s also played with a good motor – but he’s still not even close to one of your better defenders and isn’t better than Ish.
Dai Dai Ames had been defending better and was warm, and shoots 85% from the free throw line. Isaac McKneely wasn’t playing well, but he was also warm, was 4-4 from the FT line, and you had him inbounding the ball rather than drawing the foul. You had Blake Buchanan on the floor for those stretches, who was playing well, but we needed to defend the perimeter at that point – and you didn’t always get him off the for offense. We CALLED A TIMEOUT to get Taine into the game over Sharma, and then used our last one when he was struggling to get open (but did).
Altogether, it was just an insane amount of poor decisions in a row that can really only be described as panic. We panicked trying to protect the lead and pressed all of the wrong buttons primarily because we thought we had to defer to tenure over who was actually playing well and clutch in the moment. It was the worst end game management I’ve seen from a strategic standpoint in a long time, and I don’t think I can overstate that – and that includes the ACC Tournament game against N.C. State last season as well as the way we were very fortunate to escape @Clemson despite ourselves that year. It’s because of the sheer volume and type of mistakes (not the import of the games).
In Conclusion
I had to jump back in just to document this one. I felt compelled to give shout outs to Blake Buchanan and Ishan Sharma for showing up after a really rough road trip out west, but also to collect some thoughts not far removed from that to remember how the decision-making right now is not up to what our standard should be.
Alright, see you next time I inevitably think I’m done writing about individual games and then decide to anyway!
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