Hey everyone – let’s shake off those football blues with some Cuts! This was an odd game in which we led 36-10 after the first 13 minutes of the game and 70-40 with about 7 minutes left in the game… and ended up winning by 19. There’s going to be a tendency to look at, say, N.C. State scoring 114 points on this team and winning by almost 50 points, and feel underwhelmed.
On rewatch… it doesn’t feel like it should have been this close. This was a really weird one in which some sloppy and, at times, casual, play, led to a lot of easy buckets for the Eagles. It’s a reminder that there’s still so much room for this team to tighten up, get comfortable playing with each other, and to grow. I’m here to say, though, that the dominant stretches did look dominant; and the vast majority of the mistakes were mental as opposed to physical.
I wouldn’t want to be in the heart of our conference schedule right now, given the evolution that’s happening right now with the players and with the tinkering that the coaches are doing. That being said, there was nothing about this game to give me any longer-term pause. The team would need to replicate these kinds of mental lapses consistently for a significant chunk of time in order for me to think that there’s anything about them inherent in the team itself or that it’s something a little repetition and chemistry can’t improve.
To classify this one in broad strokes (prior to getting into it), I’d say that NCCU’s zone, which is a Point-Zone (matchup hybrid) that can feel like any of a 3-2, 2-3, 1-3-1 depending on what the offense is doing, gave us some issues. We need to practice playing against it more, getting the ball inside more and, when our bigs did get the ball around the high post, more often facing the rim and attacking/then kicking out vs. looking for the kick out so quickly. Additionally, there were still a lot of defensive mistakes with communication that created breakdowns, and play became sloppy toward the end of both halves. All of those things can (and should) be improved with practice, reps, and coaching!
On the flip side, we flashed absolute dominance at times (the first half of both halves) and still made things seem easy despite clearly not playing our best basketball. Some might ask, but when will we play our best basketball for a full game? I’m not sure, but I doubt it’ll be two games into the season. I do know that letting off the gas when you’re crushing a team is pretty common; and I’d much rather have that issue to work through than, say, starting games slowly or, worse, never having any stretches where you look that much better than inferior competition.
So, we’ll bounce around a little bit here but will spotlight some of the stuff we were tying out, some things that were encouraging longer term, and some of the things that led to the margin being as close as it was. Let’s get after it!
Sloppy Play!
Let’s get the negative out of the way first so that we can focus on the positive stuff later. There was a good deal of sloppy and, at times, careless play. Obviously, we’re going to need to clean a lot of this stuff up; but the good news is that there isn’t anything about these kinds of plays where we shouldn’t be able to do so – but a lot of NCCU’s points came from stuff like this and here are some examples:
In this one, we’re up 36-13, NC Central has just hit a three after being down 26, and Thomas gets an advantage on the full court pressure. As he draws the defense, Grünloh points up for him to lob it, which Thomas does. He’s too strong on the pass, just playing too fast and trying to make too much happen, leading to a turnover. As NCCU runs out, we pick them up well and stop the break, but as the ball is in the post, Chance and Malik get crossed up on a screen away from the ball – with both taking the diver into the paint and leaving a man wide-open at the three-point line, where we’re punished.
All of this is self-inflicted. Sure, a more accurate pass from Thomas could have led to a dunk by Grünloh, but it wasn’t the easiest window to hit, trying to get the lob just over the help defender, while trying to keep the advantage on the defender recovering from the break. He really didn’t need to force that here (and whether he would have or not in a close game is unclear). Then, the other way, he and Mallory clearly miscommunicated on whether or not to switch the screen away from the ball. Thomas thought they should, Mallory stayed with his. It actually looked like, at first, both made to go out toward the eventual shooter and then both made the decision to go with the diver there. Either probably could have been correct with proper communication – it just has to be clear what you’re doing on the fly.
I will say that Thomas has appeared to be involved with the most of these kinds of mix ups early in the season; but there’s absolutely nothing about this that we shouldn’t be able to clean up. In fact, if Thomas and Mallory aren’t seamlessly navigating a screen like this later in the year, then something will have gone very, very wrong. It’s not a challenging play physically, at all, just a mental lapse at both ends.
This next clip, below, is similar, and also highlights some inexperience against the zone, too. Firstly, they end up with two quality looks from outside and just miss. Sam Lewis airballed a corner three – he was 3-6 from deep for the game. Dallin missed a three from the wing before that and we got an offensive rebound. It was an empty possession but still with two quality looks. My focus is about 9 seconds into the clip, though, when TDR gets the ball in the high post. On the catch, he immediately kicks it right back out to Hall for the three. It’s not a bad decision – it could have gotten him an assist; but what I’d like for him to do is turn and look at the basket first, and force the defense to collapse more. When you get the ball into the high post vs. the zone, that player should turn and see the floor toward the rim. If TDR does that he would know that he probably has an oop to Ugo at the rim, or could have driven the ball on the back line defender with his suite of moves around the rim. If the defense did collapse, then the kick out to Hall would have been deeper and even more open to take the shot. So, out of the gate, having TDR (who is really a great player to get the ball in the high post) to turn and face and try to make a play before he passes back outside is a pretty easy adjustment that should help against the zone a lot. Then, as they get back, White and Lewis miscommunicate on their assignment. At first White has defensive balance with last man, but Lewis is also running on that side of the floor. Instead of having one (likely White but, again, could be either they just need to talk) stay with the man back, they both leave to find and locate the unguarded player on the perimeter, leaving the original cover wide-open for an easy dunk.
That play alone is a potential 4 to 5-point swing. But Sam Lewis hits that shot almost half of the time (and did half of the time in this game), TDR had an even better opportunity, and communication in transition, again, is something these players should improve with some more time playing together. There’s nothing about either Lewis now White that should keep them from sorting out that recovery down the road, and they’ll probably learn from this very mistake as part of that process.
Here’s another look where we didn’t approach the zone ideally. There aren’t a ton of ideas on this one. De Ridder and Ugo both set some ball screens for Thomas and Hall respectively, but those don’t lead to anything. Ugo roams around and then directly in the high post for a while but, again, he’s really not the ideal player to have up there. If you are going to have him there, he was open, so it’s worth trying and seeing – otherwise, he’s a non-threat flashing there. De Ridder ends up taking a pretty contested three without a ton of build-up, and that leads to a far too easy run out dunk the other way for NC Central as we don’t keep any defensive balance and Hall is slow to react and recover to NCCU getting the defensive board.
The last one I’ll show is probably the most glaring, where Chance and Thomas miscommunicate on a pass to the corner, Thomas tries to save it but ends up generating a fast break for NCCU… and then when Hall inbounds the pass after the make to Grünloh, Johann has his back to the play and casually passes it back to Hall, allowing NCCU the easy steal on the pressure. Sloppy passing into reckless saving and bad transition defense into a lack of communication from Hall and an obliviousness from Grünloh on the press.
I don’t mean to sound overly dismissive; but all of those plays are kind of flukey. Yes, they absolutely happened and are things our team needs to clean up prior to playing games we could lose. They’re absolutely the root off our margin getting eaten away much faster than it felt like it should have been. But, like, they’re also textbook examples of what coaches mean when they say that it can take teams a little while to “gel” or “find their chemistry” or “figure out how to play together.” They are game situations where they’re learning how to communicate defensive coverages, they are figuring out where your teammates want the ball and how you can get it to them, they are trying to be a little too aggressive in some instances because the margin is so comfortable… they are things that can and should be corrected over time. This was just a small sample size of these kinds of mistakes in this game. While I understand that the preference would be that they’re already in midseason form and some teams, like NC State, looked in midseason form vs. this same team and ran up the score; it would take these mental issues/growing pains persisting considerably farther into the season for me to worry.
At this point in the season, I’d much rather this be the kind of thing we need to polish than our ceiling/talent level just not appear to be that high. That’s not the case. The potential is very high and has been visible in sustained glimpses. Alright, let’s move on to the interesting strategic adaptation of….
Two Center Lineup
The early question for the season is what to do about the absence of Devin Tillis as the backup PF. I’ve been a little lower on what Tillis contributes to the team than many, but there’s no doubt that he has a clear and important role when TDR comes out of the game. In the first game, we experimented with playing Sam Lewis down in size at the PF (which is likely the best overall option, in my opinion) and with using Martin Carrère in that slot as well. As a 6’8″ guard with quality ball skills and shooting, Carrère is exactly the kind of guy you like having to develop on your roster. I don’t think he’s playable against good competition, though, due to his defense. He hasn’t shown that lateral quickness to stay in front of guys and also still needs to work on his strength.
Silas Barksdale appears to be on the redshirt track; so the option Coach Odom chose to explore in this game was playing both Johann Grünloh and Ugonna Onyenso together in the frontcourt rather than having them purely sub for each other. Grünloh played 26 minutes in this one, which would normally leave 14 for Onyenso; but he got 20 in total, marking 6 shared minutes between the two.
Let my start off by saying that, while Chance Mallory may be the player I was farthest off in minutes played from my preseason primer, Johann Grünloh is the only player whose game I feel like is playing out significantly differently than I was anticipating. I thought it might take him some time to adjust to the college game; and he already looks a lot more fluid with his movements and his defensive impact than he did in a lot of his tape in Germany. My thought was that he and Ugo would both be very good – the strength of our team – but that it would be more of an offense/defense trade off from them than it appears to be. Turns out, they’re both pretty good at both; but Grünloh’s ability to act as an offensive play-making hub, has been supplemented by very good defense (and we’ll look at some of this closer later, too).
So, given that Center is such a strength, it makes sense to try to get both on the floor if it’s viable. I thought that it actually worked pretty well in this one! Grünloh’s mobility at the 4 was good enough (albeit against competition that wasn’t really testing him), they were still able to provide solid spacing between the two of them on offense, and they really created problems around the rim on both sides.
Here’s a look early in the game when NCCU was still playing man-to-man. It starts out a little awkwardly with Grünloh’s pass to White getting deflected and pushing him out near halfcourt. There’s an action away from the ball here (although White is too far away to realistically make a pass off of it) where Chance back screens for Johann and then comes out to get the ball. Grünloh trots down to the block while Onyenso comes up to set the ball screen. With better vision, we probably could have just thrown the ball up toward the rim here as Grünloh was in nice position with a huge size advantage; but this four around the top with one of the bigs on the block was pretty common. Chance draws two defenders after the screen and Ugo is in pick and pop positioning! Notice how aggressively NCCU closes out on him and doesn’t sag off into the lane. Absolutely worth noting that when Onyenso is on the court, his willingness to shoot has kept teams from cheating and we can be versatile around how we play. If you pause the clip at 11 seconds to go in the shot clock, you’ll notice that Ugo has the ball and Grünloh has drifted out to the corner; creating an actual 5-out look with both of our Centers on the floor! Jacari drives the ball and collapses the defense, kicking out to Hall for the open three-point attempt. As he misses, note again that both Ugo and Grünloh have crashed the offensive glass. That’s a terrifying duo to try to keep off! Onyenso comes down with the ball, keeps it high, and finishes through the contact (and makes the free throw).
I really don’t have many concerns about this lineup offensively. We tended to play more ball handling with them; so both Dallin and Chance with a third like Jacari or Malik. We had Eli with them some in the second half; but I would avoid the shooting element of that.
Here, NCCU has already gone to their zone. It’s absolutely worth noting that we still beat up on their zone, especially early in the game. It’s the same group on the floor with the monoliths (Monolith Lineup, anyone? Let me know we can keep workshopping). This is a nifty little coordination where Hall cuts through to the opposite corner but, as he’s doing this, notice that Ugo is sealing the nearside low post and Grünloh cuts in behind Hall. White finds Grünloh in the space cleared by Ugo’s intention, but when he gets the ball both NCCU players collapse on him. This allows for a nice little low-to-low pass back to Ugo who finishes cleanly.
I’ve absolutely loved Ugo’s touch around the rim in these early games – which was a question about his game coming in. I also love how much pressure these two can put on the back line of this zone, though. It was absolutely a coordinated play as Ugo’s initial role was to represent the post up while sealing the closest low defender and Johann knew to duck in front of the opposing low big prior to trailing Hall into the vacated space. Really nice understanding on how to make the interior size advantage work for us against a zone.
NCCU goes back to man here, and this time you can see the gravity of Grünloh on the perimeter. Hall draws two defenders after the screen, Grünloh pops and takes the return pass, NCCU rotates, the ball swings to White who has an easy time driving against the rotation. Note that Ugo is just hanging out in the short corner the whole time; which doesn’t create any issues, because even though his man steps up to contest Jacari; the shot is still quality and then there’s no one there to deal with Ugo’s presence on the offensive glass on the miss.
Here’s another look against the zone, below, where it’s not the best execution on the offensive side; but still shows the mismatch issues that the lineup creates. This time it’s Dallin, Thomas, and Eli with the Centers. For one, there just isn’t really enough shooting in this lineup in general let alone against a zone. Sure, really any of them will take an outside shot, but aside from Thomas, it’s probably the four worst shooters that we play, together. Ugo isn’t the best high post option, either; I’d rather Johann up there if the two are in together, as he’s flashing and not getting looks. Plus, even though Ugo’s shot is respectable, a free throw line jumper isn’t a result you want from the offense and he’s probably not going to drive it very often. So, you see the complications with this set… and yet, Hall does a nice job of attacking the close out. He does end up settling for the midrange jumper, but draws two defenders in the process, which leaves Grünloh clean for the crash and easy tip in:
It really does allow for some easy buckets, because any time you can draw even just one of the opposing bigs, there’s so much opportunity for your 7-foot wombo-combo to punish.
Last look on the offensive side of the ball, this time in the second half. Now it’s Chance, Jacari, and Eli with the Centers. I’m going to say that Eli’s minutes are probably best suited with TDR on the floor (or Tillis when he returns); and yet there was a decent amount of overlap with the Center duo in this one. Gertrude provides more defensive pop, requires a little less length behind him, but also isn’t that experienced facilitator yet with the ball and doesn’t require the same level of outside spacing. I think there was an opportunity for him to get it to Grünloh here over the top, but I do like that Ugo was willing to spot up in the corner and take this shot. He can make it and does regularly in warmups (and showed he can knock threes down in game situations in the scrimmages) – but it also keeps NCCU from being able to overload help toward Grünloh; he’s able to maintain his seal and draw the foul while going for the offensive rebound.
On the offensive side of the ball, I think there’s some room for improvement in execution and in lineup compositions. Some combo of Chance, Dallin, Jacari, and Malik seem like good groupings to work in with the Center duo. I’d like to see how Lewis would fare in that grouping as well, for extra length, although that could put some real pressure on the 1-2 guards from a ball-handling/playmaking perspective. It’s got some promise, though, because you don’t have to compromise your floor spacing, and they can pressure the rim so much on the offensive glass, that you can threaten to score a lot of easy buckets even when you aren’t running your cleanest offense.
Defensively, the group was pretty stout as a whole. Onyenso played the Center role with the center-field focus and the drop coverage on ball screens. Grünloh played the PF role. Normally, with TDR on the floor, our PF will switch most ball screens on the perimeter; but with Grünloh playing the role, he mostly offered a quick hedge and recovery. He wasn’t tested directly very often, but I thought his movement and positioning were pretty good. In this clip, below, Mallory, Hall, and White are the three guards complementing the Centers. NCCU fakes and slips a ball screen with Ugo’s man, and you can see him drop to the paint, to keep depth. As the ball is rotated through Grünloh’s man, who then sets his own ball screen, watch Grünloh give a quick hedge and recovery back, and then actually proactively switch out onto the perimeter with Hall recovering which ostensibly was to get him (Grünloh) back onto the bigger player. Meanwhile, the ball ends up going to Ugo’s man in the mid post on the baseline, who faces him up. This results in a non-threatening midrange jumper over a length contest from Ugo and an easy clean up from Grünloh, who is in good defensive rebounding position on the weak side.
Pretty solid from Johann playing in space in this one, and we see the benefit of having such length both discourage a drive, contest the shot, and secure the glass.
And then I pulled out this clip, below, mostly for the optics on the shot contest, but also because we get to see Grünloh in space a bit. Johann gets his back to the play for a little bit but mostly does a good job of staying attached to his man and recovering back to the perimeter. He gives another hedge on a ball screen – but look at that crazy double contest from both he and Ugo on the NCCU runner. That’s a nightmare of a shot to try to get up and over… and then even though the shot contests take them out of rebounding position, Lattimore actually puts the shot back up before landing on the offensive rebounding because he’s rushing so much knowing the length that’s around him. Then we see, despite being out of position, how Grünloh’s length comes in from behind, tipping the ball up and keeping it alive before eventually landing in White’s hands.
This is not the best gauge of how effective this will be due to the quality of opponent. With Grünloh moving like this, though, this is probably a pretty viable defensive lineup against any team that either likes to play two bigs or even whose PF isn’t exceptionally quick or confident off of the bounce. Playing like this against Clemson in past (and current) years could be pretty promising, for example. I’m thinking about our non-con schedule, and I think Grünloh could be kind of a nightmare for a player like Elijah Saunders, for example. Johann might be a step slower; but not so much that his length shouldn’t give Saunders fits either getting shots up or around the basket – and Johann crashing the offensive glass would be a scary thing for Maryland in that matchup.
There’s definitely something here if we can figure out how to optimize it. It’s always good when you can find a way to get two of your better players on the floor if they don’t have conflicting playstyles. Of course, as Coach Odom said in the postgame press conference – you have to be mindful of how you do it; ensuring you’re not wearing both out. You can’t turn to small ball because you’re playing both and they’re tired or get in foul trouble – that would defeat the point and put more pressure on De Ridder minutes again. This is also not likely to work against some teams with exceptionally quick or mobile PFs who will be able to run and lose Grünloh away from the ball, or exploit him off of the dribble, though.
I do like the creative problem solving. It should give us an option to navigate this Tillis absence and, potentially, unlock something we can turn to even when he’s back, if we figure out the best matchups against which to leverage it.
Rim Protection
We’ve spent some time looking at the wrinkle to play both of our Centers together – but let’s also take some time to showcase some of what they’ve brought to the table individually as the Centers in this defensive system and how they’ve helped to create fast break run outs and helped to make up for some of the defensive issues on the perimeter. Both of these players add such a safety net that keeps the floor of the defense pretty high.
Here’s a good look from Onyenso as his man sets a ball screen on Mallory’s man. Mallory starts to get over top of the screen, but NCCU reverses course and pins him while getting over top. Thomas’s man comes up as if he’s going to screen either Ugo or Mallory as well, and you see Onyenso react to the Thomas communication by opening up to that screener, but at one point almost getting his back turned to the ball handler. Despite all of this, Ugo is still able to open back up to the ball and block the shot despite the NCCU defender trying to use the rim as protection by going to the reverse layup. Mallory is then able to run out and find White in transition for the pretty three.
That clip is what they’re trying to do in a nutshell and Onyenso was at the Center of it literally and figuratively.
Here’s one more from Ugo, but there’s some nice defense from others, as well. Chance does a nice job of hounding the ball early in the possession, jumping under one ball screen and then cutting off a drive despite a screen rejection. There’s a really nice piece of communication here as Ugo’s man sets the final ball screen on him, and Ugo is sagged into the lane, but Dallin is there in proximity, so he switches and cuts off the dribbler with Chance quickly identifying and rotating back to Hall’s man. That’s the kind of proactive rotation we’re looking for and of which we’re capable. Ugo’s man slides down into the paint, and Ugo attempts to deny the entry, but doesn’t get to the ball. Still, he’s such a looming presence he’s able to get back in and the NCCU big rushes going up with the shot, losing it on the way up. De Ridder crashes down and helps secure the board, giving the outlet to Mallory. Watch Ugo run the floor here! While the play itself turns into Mallory feeding Thomas for the nice three, through his hustle Onyenso also draws the foul on the rebound that’s counted after the shot is made!
Grünloh
Even though it’s just the two of them, I wanted to dedicate the big part of this section to Johann. He had seven blocks in this game and, as I mentioned earlier, has really impressed me with how little of a drop off defensively around the rim there’s been from he to Ugo considering how accomplished and imposing Ugo is in that area.
Here’s a great look at him playing that drop coverage after the ball screen, cutting off the passing angle back to his man (such that it would have to be high arcing back to the perimeter), and meeting the ball at the backboard – also leading to a TDR run out the other way.
We’ve been talking about sloppy rotations on the defensive side and communication mistakes; here’s a great look at how Grünloh helps cover for those. This time he’s not even directly involved in the screen! Chance gets caught on a ball screen and TDR switches. Mallory doesn’t realize he switches until far too late (again, communication issues and Chance is involved in quite a few of these too, like Malik). This would be an open dunk at the rim, but Grünloh recognizes it, leaves his man in the corner, and recovers in time to contest the shot with a straight-up jump around the basket. Chance corals and is off the other way.
That’s impressive alertness from Johann and his ability to close that ground pretty quickly in time to make what would be an easy shot miserable, is really nice for us.
Here’s an actual look at a limitation of Thomas on the defensive end. He’s guarding Gage Lattimore (#11) who deserves a shout out (along with Khouri Carvey (#7)) as the only real sources of offense for the Eagles on the night. Lattimore had 25 points on 7-17 shooting – but was a wild 5-6 from deep. At about 9 seconds into the clip, Lattimore gets the ball out near the logo with Thomas guarding him. He looks to use a ball screen, but doesn’t get the angle tight enough and Thomas is able to get over. The problem for Thomas here is just the footspeed. His angle gets a little too close to Lattimore making sure he can get over the ball screen, and he can never quite cut off the drive angle afterward because of the pacing. Never fear, Lattimore is moving full speed to ensure he can press the advantage on Thomas and runs right into Grünloh who swats the shot easily.
When I talked in my last piece about concerns around perimeter defense, I highlighted some of the missteps. This is also one of those limitations. Players like Thomas and Hall and, to some extent everyone else aside from Gertrude are going to have physical limitations on the defensive end. With Thomas and Hall, it’s actual speed and quickness at times – as you see here with Thomas being forced to chase down the play. That’s why our Centers are so important, though, and why having such mobile and high-quality shot blockers is a huge deal as I’ve spent a bulk of this piece highlighting when they’re both on the court, or solitary. Thomas doesn’t have to be perfect here – all he has to do is keep up enough to discourage a three-pointer, and chase Lattimore into Johann. That will be true throughout the season.
Here’s a similar look with Hall getting caught on the screen because he lost the foot race with Justin Edwards after the ball went to the post player. No matter, Grünloh’s rejection sends Edwards to the ground and demoralizingly knocks the ball off of him while he’s out of bounds.
I also absolutely love that fire after the block!
And this last one might have been my favorite of all of them. Initially, there’s the lingered soft trap on the wing that I showcased in the Rider game. De Ridder helps on the rotation and Johann recovers. Then, it’s right into drop coverage on the ball screen and we force a pull-up midrange jumper from NCCU that misses; great! Now, granted, I’d want Grünloh to pull in the defensive rebound here – there’s an element of that dealing with strength on the glass that I did speak about before the season that crops up here. But, undeterred, watch him shut down the baseline drive attempt, and then I absolutely love this next part: pause the clip at 23 seconds in. Carvey (#7) has gathered the ball off of a deflection. Grünloh has eyes on him but De Ridder and his man are between him and the ball with Gertrude on the other side as well. Grünloh has the anticipation and spatial awareness to identify the drive threat and where it’s going, and then to navigate through traffic across the lane to block the shot, secure the ball, AND find TDR for the run out pass prior to falling out of bounds.
That play was just awesome and gave me a ton of confidence in his ability to read and react to the game flow. He’s very often exactly where we need him to be on this end, which is great to see because his mere presence does a ton to make shots less likely to go in the basket!
All-in-all, I think both of these guys are such a huge asset back there on the defensive end. I can’t wait until our guard communication tightens up and all elements of our defense are working in concert, because that will make Johann and Ugo all the more imposing.
Because, as much as most of our mistakes in this one were mental and can be cleaned, there will still be some mental mistakes and there are still going to be some ability issues as well that will need coverage.
These next two plays are the kinds of things that could persist throughout the season. In this one, there is still a communication issue early on between Thomas and TDR on their ball screen. This one’s on Thomas a little for getting caught on the screen, but it’s absolutely on TDR primarily for either not switching or hedging this (he should have done one of the two as the PF. So that part seems like they can clean up and speaks to the general sloppiness earlier. Chance does a nice job of stopping the drive, Jacari could probably have shaded the pass to Chance’s man a little more, but actually gets a pretty darn good contest on the open shot, all things considering. But, watch Thomas away from the ball. He’s switched onto TDR’s man, but he’s also in a weird defensive position with his back turned to half court and without immediate urgency to get back into good defensive position/to box out this more difficult matchup. Sure enough, his bad angling allows his man to run through him for the offensive rebound. Meanwhile, Ugo has boxed his man completely out of bounds – we do want him on the floor able to contest for this rebound as well!.
Thomas and Chance do force the miss after conceding the rebound, and there are mental elements of this with the botched switch that can be cleaned – but this off the ball odd technique stuff and sometimes lack of awareness was a consistent thing with Thomas at San Francisco and this is the kind of thing that we’re probably going to have to fight through, as we did here, to make up for. One element with that will be Ugo not boxing his man into the first row bleachers; but rather putting himself in the best position to grab the defensive rebound such that we can overcome some of these lapses from our guards through his length and presence.
And this next one – I do think we’re going to concede a lot of looks like this, this year. This is a play where we can still improve our team defense but also spotlights a physical limitation. Hall’s man gets run off of a stagger screen to take a DHO from Ugo’s man around the foul line. This creates a very threatening situation for us because Hall struggles with that quick first step and then recovering around the screens in time to impact the shot. I don’t see for it this year – we’re going to have moments if the defensive philosophy is mostly to try to chase over these screens, where many of our guys are going to get caught in this trailing position. Now, I want to see TDR and White handle this a little better. I’d like to see TDR respond more quickly, jab at the driver, bait a shot and even potentially help contest it, while then crashing the boards. White can then try to read the play and make a steal on any potential pass outs to he or TDR’s men while also looking to help crash the glass. Instead, TDR stays static and mostly focused on his own man as he crashes the glass.
But all of this is influenced by that Ugo drop coverage. Dionte Johnson (#2) has all of the clearance in the world of Hall, but has no desire to test Ugo and settles for the pull up jumper at the FT line. There are so many ways we can defend this better from a help perspective, but these are shots we’re going to concede some throughout the year, and having such quality rim protection means that, despite a vulnerability of ours being exploited, NCCU still has to settle for a less-than-ideal pull up jumper from the FT line instead of getting a layup or shot around the rim.
If we were playing small ball with TDR and a healthy Tillis regularly, as some speculated that we could, some of these defensive sets would absolutely terrify me. But, as we’ve foreshadowed and discussed all offseason, the Center is such a distinct and important role in Ryan Odom’s defensive systems and he has two quality ones. There won’t be many times that we don’t have at least one of Johann Grünloh or Ugonna Onyenso on the floor; heck, we’re trying to find ways to play both! That’s a relief as it will be immeasurably helpful as we continue to develop as a team on the defensive end and as we eventually hit our limitations with that group. The back line is robust enough to cover for a lot and to elevate us when our play improves.
Sam Lewis
I want to close the NCCU Cuts by very quickly talking about Sam Lewis. Lewis played only 14 minutes in the game on Friday (and Jacari White only played 17, as an aside). Now, there could be lots of reasons for that. We were experimenting with the dual Centers lineup, keeping Sam out of the PF spot much. We could be trying to give Chance and Elijah more run against worse competition to get them up and comfortable, for sure… but we’re going to want more run from Lewis (and White) in most competitive games.
I thought Sam played quite well, with 10 points in those short 14 minutes, including going 3-6 from deep. He had that quality spot-up option cooking in this one, which was nice to see. This one came from TDR commanding attention from the FT line and then Hall doing a nice job of sucking in the defense from the kick out and pushing it to Sam in the corner (Dallin has a pretty quiet 4-1 assist to turnover ration through two).
But it wasn’t just the spot up shooting – it’s also the length and intrusiveness he does offer on the defensive end and how he offers that uniqueness about his game. Like here, watch his defense on the pick and roll. He does get caught on the ball screen as we’ve seen happen with many others (and is going to be unavoidable in some cases). But look at how good his contest is on that pull up jumper after his recovery. He almost blocks it!
Aside from forcing a turnover or blocking a shot, that’s the ideal outcome for a Ryan Odom defensive possession (and for most any defensive system); a closely contested midrange jumper.
And here’s just kind of a nice look at how he fits into everything; he helps us a lot on the glass when he’s out there, nabbing the defensive board, and then as he starts the runout the other way and Malik finds TDR for the three – notice that Sam has found a really nice space where he could have taken a return pass as well, and then trots in as a formidable offensive rebounding threat if the shot had been missed:
I’m not writing this as any kind of hand-wringing about his playing time right now. We’re trying things out and he’s got a lot more collegiate playing time under his belt than many of our other guys. That being said, I have been pleased with what he’s showing during the games that count and expect to see that time share grow.
In Conclusion
There’s still SO much opportunity for this team to get better and improve – but that should be exciting because even this very rough draft of the team has been promising. When you are competitive against other high-major conference teams and making it look easy against low-major teams despite clearly having a long way to go before it all comes together, to me, that’s a very positive sign. There is uncertainty around how much we can improve
Not to look past the next two games by any stretch (and we’ll do reviews for each and see the continued evolution) but my eyes are on that Greenbrier Tip-Off. It will be the first game we see from this team in any format where we’re pulling out every stop to win a game that should be competitive. That should give us the best sense to date for where the rotation and lineup usage sits and how much Coach Odom wants to rely on individual players.
Alright, late tip off tomorrow night – looking forward to Hampton!
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