I would call this our best and most intentional performance of the season so far… and we were still pretty sloppy for the first 6-7 minutes of the game or so, and seemed to have some fatigue later. We also got the deep bench into the game with three full minutes left to go… all on the way to an easy 38-point victory over a Hampton team that, while not a true test yet, was a step up from our previous two competitors.
It’s a good sign that a player like Thijs De Ridder can have an off night (5 points on 2-7 shooting) after averaging 20.5ppg in the two games prior, and we can still score our season-high of 91 points. There are definitely a lot of different ways that this team can beat you, and we’re starting to see some cohesion on both ends. While still there, there were absolutely fewer defensive breakdowns. The offensive play was a little sloppy early on, but settled in to make things look very comfortable at times. No, the team hasn’t really been tested yet; but you’d certainly rather they look like this.
There are still so many things to sort of intro within a new season with a new roster, but I do want to focus some efforts and actually only want to talk about three core topics today (although we do always get into broader ideas when we focus on payer lenses); Malik Thomas, Ugonna Onyenso, and our full-court pressure. But first…
One Gratuitous Offensive Set
Most of our offense I’ve tackled through player spotlights so far, but I did want to take a quick moment to showcase this neat play from Tuesday:
We’ve got our starting lineup on the floor: Dallin Hall, Malik Thomas, Sam Lewis, Thijs De Ridder, and Johann Grünloh. Hall brings the ball up the floor and Lewis Iverson cuts across the wings to take the pass while, at the same time Thomas sets a cross-screen for TDR away from the ball to free him up in the post. Thomas’s man jams (pushes, really) TDR as he crosses the lane but gets a little too far removed from Thomas, who runs off of a pin down screen from Grünloh. Lewis could have fed Thomas here and probably gotten an open look, but instead he gives it to TDR in the mid-post. Meanwhile, though, the Hampton defense reacts to the space Thomas gets and both decide to go with him, leaving Grünloh open just to dive to the hoop. TDR does a nice job of keeping his eyes on the floor, and he quickly finds Johann for the easy bucket.
Nothing crazy there, but a nicely thought out set that had multiple options. Lewis missed the first one, but TDR playing out of the mid-post is a threat in and of itself and then Grünloh playing off of the defense which was reacting to the opportunity created for Thomas was nice. I also like how, despite the movement being clearly scripted to start out, the guys weren’t afraid to just play basketball – with Johann recognizing the dive opportunity and TDR seizing on it rather than getting caught in a silo trying to back his man down.
Good stuff! Okay, now to the main focuses.
Malik Thomas
The first three games of Malik Thomas as a Wahoo might be a good litmus test for whether you’re a glass half-empty or half-full person. Thomas was expected, with De Ridder, but probably even more so, to carry the offensive load of this team as the volume scorer. So far, after three games against poor opponents, that hasn’t been the case. Thomas has averaged a modest 10ppg, tied for 5th on the team with Jacari White who has played 7 fewer minutes per game. A career 38% three-point shooter, he’s started off in a bit of a cold stretch, shooting just 25% on 16 attempts.
You could choose to look at that and feel disappointed, thinking that he’s not going to live up to his billing, OR you could look at that and feel encouraged that he’s been far from his best and the team has still scored over 80 points in all of its games in comfortable victory. Personally, I’m not very worried about Malik Thomas on the offensive side… at all. He’s had too much experience and volume (and against plenty of good competition in the WCC, as well) in the past, and when the offense comes less easily for other players, he should be able to fill some of that space. We actually saw this in both scrimmages where he played a larger role in the offense, shot better, and was almost a calming presence there.
But, it is worth looking at where his game is at the moment, what’s going well and what’s not; and where I’d like to see his game go over the span of the season.
Let’s first start by acknowledging the shooting. Small sample-sizes are just that. What’s important is that good shooters don’t let the droughts discourage them from continuing to shoot. I don’t have that worry about Thomas, who I haven’t seen hesitate once when the moment is there. He’ll keep shooting and, I’ve no doubt, will start to see that percentage tick up given enough opportunity. He was actually 1 for just 2 in this game – but he was playing within the flow and this catch and shoot looked very comfortable:
There are a few areas in which I’ve noticed that Thomas appears to be pressing trying to make a play, and that could be affecting his shot-making early on, as well; but it hasn’t led to him forcing bad threes. This is an area where we have so many deadly options, but he is absolutely one of those.
Where I think Thomas has showed some promise early on is attacking space, especially in transition, and his body control in those windows. He has a way of being slippery in traffic, navigating toward a shot, and either finishing or drawing contact.
Here he is after getting a steal on the break. Thomas got a lot of steals at his previous stop because he is aggressive in passing lanes and was very focused on ball-denial of his man. There are some pain points from that, especially when he loses sight of the broader play, but here Hampton throws it right two him. It’s the following runout that’s notable to me, though, as if you look at the numbers it’s just TDR with him, there are two Hampton players ahead of both, one more trailing him closely, and another ahead of any of our other three guys. This is ostensibly a 2-on-2 at its most charitable and a 2-on-3 or 4 through some lenses. Thomas, though, thrives in these situations where he has the ball going downhill, stays ahead of the chasing defender and splits the other two, drawing a trip to the FT line.
He does this on break opportunities regularly, but you also see it in half court settings when the defense is scrambling. In the clip below, there’s a scramble after an offensive rebound (side note, after our game, we had the #1 offensive rebounding rate in the country, which I’ll talk about a little more later!), Lewis grabs the board and kicks out to Thomas. With the defense recovering, he just shows the ball, blows by, and it’s nice body control to hang and finish through contact.
Thomas has been described as “crafty” at previous stops and those two clips are a great look at why; his pacing in how he slows or quickens his movement and then his adjustments in the air with his release point all make him a difficult player to stop in open space.
The other element of Thomas’s game that I’ve been encouraged by and seems to have made some strides since his time in San Francisco is with his ability to create for others. This is something I’d speculated on him being able to improve – but he is an intuitive and creative passer – now that he has so much scoring talent around him. He’s done so; already setting his single-game assist record against NCCU.
Here’s a fantastic look that he generates for Sam Lewis. Building upon the previous thoughts of him driving and finishing through traffic, his gravity allows for some nice instances where he can draw the defense and then kick the ball out. In this case, it creates a fantastic look for god-tier spot-up shooter Sam Lewis from the corner.
That’s a really nice one-handed pass, wasting no time or motion, across the floor. I’d also like to take a quick second here and comment on the offensive set. Because TDR and Grünloh are both such shooting threats, as TDR moves to set the ball screen and Grünloh straddles the three-point line, the only player near the paint at all is Lewis’s man (Sam is chilling in the far corner). So, this is a really sharp decision by Thomas to reject the ball screen and drive to where the defense can’t really help without leaving Lewis WIDE open. That’s good stuff from Malik.
Here he is, this time in transition again, but he runs a nice pick and roll with Onyenso as the ball handler himself. Again, good gravity as you see how the Hampton defenders respond to him touching the paint, but it’s also good feel and manipulation of the defense as he gets his defender’s hands in the air, then gets a nice angle for the feed behind the defensive lines.
Now, I actually think it’s quite good that he hasn’t been taking as many midrange jumpers so far. Those are the kinds of shots our defense encourages because they’re not efficient. That being said, we’re absolutely going to need him to be able to go get a bucket at times in the midrange game against a very stout defense. There are ways to play off of that threat, though, and to attack from different angles. Thomas is a strong guard and has historically been effective at posting up smaller guards either on the block or in the mid-post. In this clip, below, Sam Lewis had an opportunity to feed Grünloh earlier in the possession and probably should have – but Thomas deciding to take his man in the mid-post forces Hampton forces them to respond and they send a double team. Malik then kicks it back out to Hall who now finds a completely open pass to Grünloh for the easy dunk due to the Hampton rotations.
That’s a nice pass by Hall and a quick find, and it’s a good example of Johann’s constant need to be accounted for with size around the rim – but the grease that got everything going there was Thomas’s gravity in the post. TDR does this for us regularly which is awesome; our Centers have had a few back-to-the basket moments, but those are usually deeper – so it’s really cool to have the positional flexibility to have a guard give us some of those same looks and force the defense to respond.
So, I’m not really concerned about Thomas’s offense longer term. He’ll find his shot (and should have the ability to shoot it given all of the other shooters), he’ll be reliable at getting to the line and punishing a defense that’s scrambling, he’ll give some different ways to attack, and he’s got a ton of potential as a facilitator when he takes what the defense gives because he does command so much attention himself.
I do think he’s been pressing some right now, trying to force things a little bit, though.
It’s natural enough in a new role with a new team, trying to find the balance between being the offensive focal point you were paid for (yes, paid for), and marrying that with quality team play. To his credit, he’s shown a continued willingness to get others involved – but this is a great example of what I mean, below.
This comes on successive plays where Thomas tries to thread a slip-screen to Ugo that gets read and stolen… we get back on defense, he grabs the defensive board and pushes it up the floor… decides to try to take his man off of the dribble and gets swatted off of the backboard.
So, like, you’re going to make some mistakes like these over the span of the game if you’re pushing the envelope… but do we need to be pushing the envelope up 38 points? This sequence isn’t the only one by any stretch, but if you watch it all together, it feels like Thomas is pressing here to try to make things happen rather than letting the game come to him. Perhaps he’s putting pressure on himself to contribute up to his own expectations; but I think if he can just accept that he’s one (very talented) part of a team with a bunch of talented pieces and be a little less forceful choosing his moments, that could be the thing that puts our offense over the top.
He’s also appeared mentally out of it at times, too, mostly on the defensive side which we’re about to get into, but also sometimes on the offensive side too where he’s just a little careless with the ball:
Again, I think there’s a good chance he’s in his head just a little bit – thinking about what he wants to make happen rather than just playing. Here he just kind of fell asleep on his defender in front of him.
Now, that’s the offensive side and I’ve no doubt it’s going to come together. The team is sharing the ball collectively and Thomas is a part of that.
The defensive side is where I have a little more “concern.” I use quotes there because I’m not wringing my hands about Malik Thomas’s defense at the moment. That’s not because I think he’s going to be a lock down defender, it’s because Odom’s defensive system is designed to chase guys off of the three-point line and into our shot blockers. Ideally, while defending closely as well, but having our guards chase, take risks, and gamble is not the end of the world so long as they aren’t blowing assignments. That’s what Thomas does pretty well defensively – take risks, gamble, try to make plays proactively. I’ll show you what I mean where he’s not been great but it’s been okay collectively, vs. where he’s had lapses that have hurt us glaringly.
Here’s Thomas playing consistently bad defense, but it really doesn’t hurt us at all. Initially, he gets caught on a screen away from the ball on the pass back to his man on the wing. His recovery angle is poor and not quick enough, starting to run toward the player at first rather than seeing where he’s going to drive and trying to cut him off. He’d basically have just gotten blown by here if not for some great help defense by Grünloh, sagging to cut off the drive while also deterring the pass back to his man. Having to stop there, Etie Strothers (#5) passes the ball back out and watches for a bit before rotating to take another kick out pass at the point. Thomas is again slow to recognize the threat and then, once again, takes a bad angle on recovery to allow for another drive by him, this time into the lane. Guess what? Grünloh is there again and easily rejects the shot, killing the threat on the spot.
Now, this is absolutely bad defense from Thomas, has been consistently giving the most room for the defender to work with of anyone on the team, and we’d rather he do a much better job on his man. That being said, it’s also bad defense we can live with in this system. He’s still in the play. He can still get back to his man in a relatively short amount of time after Johann stops the threat. At the end there he’s in good position to recover to the opposing Center after Grünloh swoops over for the block. We’ve got great support behind him and we can get by with some of this stuff – maybe not consistently and it’ll be worse against better competition – but he should be able to improve on this at least a little and it’s all within the structure of what our defense is trying to do.
Now, what we can’t live with are the just complete mental lapses that lead to baskets that our bigs don’t have an opportunity to contest well (or open shots). There have still been far too many of those. This clip, below, has been fairly common where he gives up an offensive rebound because he just either gets caught not looking at the play while defending his man, or falling asleep, or not communicating a switch well.
This one, below, is probably more on Sam Lewis than Thomas, because they don’t communicate the switch and Thomas has his eye on his own man while the other runs behind. Still, Thomas absolutely should have been on attack for the rebound and if you watch the play, he’s got his back to the action a ton. He used to do this at SF too, where he’d miss out on help or rotational opportunities or be surprised by shots, cuts, etc., because he was too focused on playing denial. But then, on the long rebound, you see how he’s kind of slow with all of his steps which keeps him on his heels and has him moving backward as his man goes into his shot… keeping him from getting a decent contest there.
There were a couple more offensive rebound clips like this and have been over the season, but I picked this one because of the clean runner moving behind him of which he wasn’t aware and the lack of attack on the board, coupled with how he played follow up defense on the ball.
But, if you’re feeling like you mostly want to blame Sam for that one anyway, here are a few more clearly obvious examples. This one is just, simply, he’s trying to play in the passing lane to his man. When the drive comes, he loses sight of his man due to the angle watching the ball come and completely misses that he’s getting backdoor cut. He can’t open and turn fast enough and concedes the easy bucket while fouling.
He can’t do that. He needs to be, in order of preference, repositioning so that he can see both or, leaving aggressively to help on the drive and try to make a play/get a steal, or even better would be letting the drive go and making sure he’s got eyes on his own man.
This next one’s even worse, though. This is after one of our made buckets. When Ugo dunks this ball, Thomas is the farthest back player of anyone on the floor, nearest to Kody Williams (#2). Hampton inbounds the ball on the sideline and Williams starts to run up the floor. Thomas takes a horrible angle, moving toward the front of Williams. Perhaps he’s thinking he wants to deny the ball here – but there’s nobody behind to cover so he can’t be aggressive like he would defending the inbound pass in the press. Also, he just completely under-estimates the speed (and can’t keep up with him) of Williams and gets caught like a DB with their eyes in the backfield. Williams takes the outlet pass and gets his only two points of the entire game with Thomas just completely unable to catch him.
There is no world in which this is okay, no matter what our pressing concepts are. As soon as Hampton got the ball inbounded quickly Thomas, knowing he’s the last man back, should have been sprinting as fast as he could toward our hoop trying to get back.
There have been more plays like this throughout the season and even within this game, but I think these should illustrate the point pretty convincingly. He’s got to keep his concentration on defense. The bigs are going to be able to help him out all year (and everyone else) – but he’s got to stay attached enough for that to work.
Please sanitize what I’m saying here; I’m still very excited about Malik Thomas and do think that he’s going to end up the confident and calming offensive presence that we need in tight games. I’m not that worried that he’s not the quickest defender nor that there will be matchups where he struggles to stay in front on that end. But, quite possibly, the most impactful team that could take us from a team that’s flashed brilliance but also been sloppy to a team firing on all cylinders is just Malik Thomas cleaning up the mental side of his game on both ends of the floor. He should ask himself to do a little less on offense and demand himself to do a little more on defense.
Ugonna Onyenso
Perhaps the most consistent pushback I took from my preview piece was saying that Ugo and Grünloh should be more of an even timeshare this season and that Ugo might even start. Johann has been farther along than I thought when I made that claim… but Ugo is also better than I thought when I made that statement – and I was still highest on our Center position out of any! Grünloh played 21 minutes in this one and Ugo played 18 (and some of those were together prior to the end of the bench minutes). That seems like a reasonable distribution to me!
From his presser after the game, “I’m one of the best shot-blockers in the country. C’mon now!” Yes, he is (and, paired with Johann have helped to get us out to an early 5th in the country in block rate)! That’s what I saw from him and valued with this team that I expected to be able to score at an effective rate. But he’s also much farther along on the offensive side than I’d realized, and this was a slow time coming to this realization. First, I’d noticed how his FT percentage had jumped from his year at Kentucky to his year at KSU and noticed that his form looked really nice on tape. Small sample size, I thought, but encouraging. Then we heard rumblings from the offseason that he could shoot the ball better than people thought. I put a little more stock in that than most given his form, but thought that might have meant you can’t leave him alone at the elbow or something. Then we learned that he was taking threes in practice and he made one in each of the scrimmages (and I even watched him draining them left and right in warm-ups before the Villanova and Rider games). Even in being thrilled about his ability to shoot from out there, I said right before the season started that it was good because he couldn’t be left alone out there – but he needed to be wide open to shoot it.
Well, turns out he’s just comfortable firing from the pick and pop, too!
Even at the end of the half!
Those were the first and second threes of his career. You wouldn’t have known it by just watching on mute, would you? They were fluid, comfortable, with no hesitation.
If you haven’t watched his postgame press conference, I would highly recommend it. In it, he talked about how previously, he was scared to make mistakes and discouraged from shooting the ball from outside even though he knew he could do it well. He talked about how Coach Odom has encouraged him to take those open looks and to play through mistakes, and how that has made him comfortable and confident at a player to take those opportunities because he knows he has the skill to make these plays.
I absolutely love that.
There were exceptions. Players like our championship team who were iron forged in fire; but by and large the most accurate criticism that you could probably level at our program over the past 15 years, and there weren’t many, was that players played tight, which was magnified in big games. Some NCAA Tournament games with uncharacteristically woeful shooting. Many players, especially recently, who started the season playing much more confidently on offense than they were by season’s end. Fear of mistakes.
That’s not something I’m sensing from any of our guys this year… with Ugo outright saying that it is different here than it was at either of his previous two stops. Now, there are tradeoffs. A few of those Malik Thomas plays above, and he’d have been sitting right by CTB on the bench. And so, I’m pretty confident that some of that stuff will persist longer now than it would under CTB. But, maybe there are some tradeoffs and Thomas’s morale stays higher on his journey to get there. I do know this, though, Odom’s teams do typically improve dramatically over the course of a season – and when I saw that VCU team play live for the A-10 title last year – they were physical, aggressive, and completely locked in on that side of the ball, with minimal mistakes across the board and a ton of intensity.
Circling back to Ugo, this is huge because the previous discussion we’d been having is about how Odom’s offensive system doesn’t need all five players to be three-point shooters; it just needs four and a rim-running Center who can crash the offensive glass.
Well, Ugo can do all of those things incredibly well. He’s a constant lob threat that puts pressure on the rim:
And he’s a nightmare to keep off of the offensive glass, especially in the pick and roll. This next clip, below, Jacari White draws the defenders, takes and misses the runner, but Ugo is there for the easiest put back.
So, those things we knew he could do incredibly well, but with the confidence to shoot that deep ball, that unlocks our ability to play with 5-out, keep our floor spacing, and play the vast majority of our offensive bag with him on the floor… and even with him on the floor with Grünloh, which we’ve done quite a bit.
He’s even made a few nice post-up plays this year, including this one with the very nice catch and finish with the turnaround jumper (good feed from Martin Carrère too):
I didn’t see Ugo attempt any threes last year; so that whole development has been new – but I did see him with some back-to-the-basket opportunities at KSU last year and this is night and day. He looked so uncomfortable then. It’s just awesome to see him playing like this one the offensive end.
And, lest we forget, his rim protection on the defensive end is absolutely fantastic (he did a pretty nice job securing the defensive glass in this one, too)!
He’s so mobile for his size and has fantastic verticality for a man with his reach and length; so he can cover a lot of ground… and he’s got great anticipation when timing his block attempts. Here’s a look where Hampton tries to isolate Hall in the mid-post. That’s 6’6″ Christian Watson (#1) trying to take advantage of a size mismatch. I thought Hall did a pretty nice job here of staying physical and routing Watson to the baseline without fouling, but as Watson tries to pull back to the main court and shoot over Dallin… I mean, there’s no chance, Ugo just volleyball spikes it out of bounds.
We showed earlier how Grünloh helped Thomas when he was beaten pretty badly on both driving angles – but look how easy Ugo makes the help look when our guard is making the offensive player work on their drive a bit! Also, really cool element of this clip if you look closely – Ugo blocks the shot, and then slaps the backboard for fun on the way down afterward. Watch it – full block motion and follow through… then why not slap the backboard because I’m still up here!
Even when he’s not blocking shots, which he did four times in this game in 18 minutes, his mere presence is such a deterrent! This might have been more impressive when you think about opportunity squandered than any of his blocks this year. Jacari White (who has also had his fair share of mental lapses on defense this year) gets too far away from his man in the passing lane and can’t get back into defensive position in time. Ugo is at the opposite elbow and Strothers (#5) has had the red carpet rolled out for him right at the basket. As Onyenso stalks his prey, Strothers wants nothing to do with that shot attempt and instead passes it back across the lane to Ugo’s initial man, who is diving. That’s the 6’7″ Xzavier Long (#25) who looks absolutely tiny by comparison. As Long attempts to dive with Ugo occupied, Onyenso just slides over and completely stonewalls him. Long has to come to a complete jump shot, has absolutely nowhere to go with the ball, and gets lucky, honestly, that the ball is stripped out of his hands out of bounds by Mallory and it’s not called off of him.
I mean, that play is insane and I just keep watching it starting at about 7 seconds in. There’s SO much open space around the rim. He takes away two players effortlessly without either being willing to even attempt putting it up – despite it being a two-on-one break in all practicality. That’s true rim protection right there that will never show up in a stat sheet because nothing was blocked – but what should have been two very high percentage shots weren’t even taken.
Okay, so let’s take a nice little look at how it flows together for Ugo on both sides of the floor within everything we’re trying to do. Firstly, awesome drop coverage there where he deters a two-on-one with Hall chasing the play. This is what this defense wants to be doing, Hall staying close enough so that the defender doesn’t shoot the three but still trailing, Ugo there to deter a shot at the rim, but able to recover to his own man when he takes the return pass. That’s Josh Ogundele (#23) who, yes, it’s a not a major conference player, but he’s listed at 7’0″ 275lbs(!). Ugo absorbs the contact from the drop step and is still able to get his hand on the shot to block it pretty easily. Next, he outlets the ball and runs the floor behind the play, timing things beautifully so as to follow up the TDR miss at the rim perfectly and with authority!
Drop coverage, shot blocking, good outlet, run the floor, offensive rebound/put back… it’s just such a perfect fit for what we’re trying to accomplish systemically!
Alright, one bonus Cut of….
Thomas and Onyenso Putting Their Rings Together and Uniting Their Powers!
The subsection header says it all…
… but if you do want a little more flavor – it’s an easy block, again, from Onyenso (and you can see how they come more easily when the defender is more attached and making the offensive player work). Then Malik has a nice run out, crosses in front of the defense with just a really creative overhead bounce pass to Hall, who then swings it back to White for the transition three. That pass from Thomas might have looked like all flair – and it WAS really creative – but it also served the purpose to make it look like he was going up, freeze the help defender and get his hands in the air, which helped with all the timing of the subsequent pass.
A glorious sequence.
Full Court Pressure
Okay, this is when things start to get a little niche and you know you’re reading a Cuts piece. Stay tuned if you want a few looks at just our full court pressure strategy and how we’ve supported it. In the Rider piece, I talked about our full defensive strategy from pressing full court into how we run our half court defensive sets.
So, let’s talk about the system first of all. We put a man on the to try to make the pass difficult – usually it’s TDR or Lewis but it’s normally whoever’s man is tasked with inbounding. Everyone sticks to their man-to-man coverages but aggressively tries to steal the ball on the inbound pass. If they can’t the man-to-man defender guards the ball handler up the floor, making them work, while the others retreat into their defense. This is also true after missed shots when the other team rebounds; we aren’t able to pressure an inbound pass, but we’ll typically try to pick up closest and pressure them up the floor. We haven’t trapped off of this action yet, but Odom has indicated that it is something they will implement over time – likely in more important games.
So, what’s the point if we’re not trapping and if some of our guards, like Hall and Thomas, aren’t as great at sustaining pressure on the ball? The primary goal is to make the offense work and eat their shot clock so that they aren’t able to run as much effective offense in the half court. If nothing else, if they get across the timeline with about 21-23 seconds left on the shot clock, we’ve accomplished what we started out to. Secondarily, but just as importantly, we give the opposition an opportunity to make a mistake. We might not get many steals off of these actions – but not pressuring the ball at all will yield zero turnovers (at least forced, the other team could always dribble off of their foot or something). The thing is, even though we don’t have to create turnovers off of this pressure for it to be helping to accomplish what we want, we still often do! It has happened in every game so far, and any possession that ends without a shot for the other team, especially one that could turn into an easy bucket for us, adds up!
Here’s a great example of Hampton just getting sped up after the Hall make. Nothing fancy here, TDR just picks his man up after the quick inbound, makes him work, and gets him to move too quickly; forcing the error.
And here, let’s take another look after a make. First, I kept on another sweet pass from Carrère and a Jacari White dunk because – yes, and Martin had a few nice passes worth showing. But then watch the following – the play happens quickly enough that Mallory is still getting up the court. He’s unable to pick up his man right away and gets caught in the congestion of White pressuring the inbounder. This looks like it would be ideal for Hampton, but they’re moving at full speed again and Jacari White is able to chase the ball down from behind, peck it away to Onyenso, who in turn makes a great outlet back to Mallory, who finishes through contact for the hoop and the harm.
I mean… they’re having to work for it, and this is where the conditioning comes in, but these are basically like free points because you’re ending your opponent’s possession before it even gets going and that’s leading to an easier-than-normal basket for you AND it’s amping up the crowd.
A question I’ve seen raised is whether or not this is worth it, given Hall and, in some cases Thomas not being the quickest players. Can’t good teams just blow by them with a head of steam in the full court and get an easy bucket? I mean… maybe? We saw it yield a lot more benefit than harm against a team as good as Villanova but we haven’t seen it tested a ton. I’m here to say, though, that I don’t think that’s a big concern.
For one, all of our guys, from Mallory, to Gertrude, to the others have been beaten in the full court and have been left chasing the play. Our defense has eyes on this at all times and is looking to help accordingly. For example, watch this clip below where Thomas is picking up full court. His man gets him going the wrong direction, eventually running beside/trailing the play. But, as soon as he crosses half-court, watch how both TDR and hall pinch in, basically in unison, to stop the ball, allow Thomas to get back into the play, and then fan back to their men:
Really nice team recognition there to stop any advantage and then recover back to their men.
Here’s one where Mallory is beaten while crossing half court. Again, TDR and Hall are hyper-aware. TDR actually switches onto the ball handler, Hall switches to his man, and Mallory locates and runs to Hall’s man.
Keep in mind that they’re switching screens 1-4 anyway, so this isn’t a big deal, and they also have the whole Center-stays-home-for-rim-protection strategy going on for support on the back end.
Here Eli, our most athletic and probably the quickest/fastest combination of our guards is on the ball. He’s disruptive there and almost gets a steal, but ultimately ends up trailing the play too. It happens a little deeper in the court, but sure enough, Chance Mallory and Sam Lewis pinch on the drive, Lewis takes the ball, Mallory recovers back to his man, and Eli locates and switches back to Lewis’s man, who ends up getting the ball.
Zero harm, the defense had a couple of chances to force a turnover throughout this sequence, we sped them up and made them sprint down the floor, and the defense gets to set up shop with just 19 seconds to defend in the half court. Ugo’s still back there in case anything had gotten sideways.
The White steal above and this next play just go to show that sometimes getting beaten can be the thing that causes the other team to make the mistake or allows us to make a play. Here, Hall gets beaten down the floor, but De Ridder switches over and Hall replaces… and this very easily could have been called a travel as Michael Eley pauses awkwardly while ending his dribble and trying to process where to go with the ball.
So, yeah, the risk-reward ratio seems very low on the risk side and, I wouldn’t say very high on the reward side – but likely to net you at least a few extra quality shots a game on offense and a few extra turnovers forced on defense – and at the very least to erode the time with which our opposition has to run their offensive stuff in the half court.
All of our guys are going to get beaten coming up the court from time-to-time while doing this… but the help defense is keyed into this. Is it possible we’ll run into a team here or there who are better able to exploit these situations? Sure it is – and no matter how much this is accounted for, it’s certainly not the preference to have our guards trailing their man across half court for that reason. The Thomas blown defensive coverage earlier came from him not really recognizing the situation as it was unfolding and then taking a bad angle on his coverage. But, when you think about it, it’s a very similar concept as our half-court defensive strategy, too. We’re okay if we have to be slightly trailing the play if it’s speeding up the opposition and we have quality help defense playing behind.
If this somehow becomes a problem this season and we don’t adjust, then we’ll definitely revisit, but I find that very unlikely. More likely, I think, this will be something we continue to tighten up and add some wrinkles to with more time to practice, and it’s going to be one of those elements of what Odom designs that just drips incremental value to us throughout the year.
In Conclusion
Marshall on Saturday will be the best opponent we’ve faced so far this season and will be a nice tune up prior to the Greenbrier Classic. I’ll be continuing to look for cohesion across the team on both sides, but especially with their defensive rotations and help outside of the Centers.
Hopefully, Malik Thomas will continue to flesh out his role on this team and become increasingly comfortable with when he needs to step on the gas or when he can use his presence to make things easier on his teammates. But, most importantly, I’d like to see him (and others, too), just polish up some of the sloppy mental mistakes. I’m very much half-full on him and what it means for our potential.
Mostly, I’m just excited to see how the vision for this roster is unfolding and how all of these pieces are starting to come together. It’s fun to have so much new meat to dig into.
Thanks, as always, for reading. Chat next week, friends. Until then!
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