Let’s do a little level-setting here. Queens became a Division I school for the first time this year. That being said, they’re much closer to Marshall in terms of quality of competition (if you believe KenPom) than they are Rider or NCCU. This was a game we should have won comfortably… and did… but there are almost as many worse teams in college basketball as there are better ones. I’m not calling this out to put any kind of great stake on the victory – but just to add a little context to the discussion since the name of the school as a newly minted DI team inspires… well, a little less credibility.
This was our last tune up after the ball room tourney prior to two solid challenges, in @Texas and vs. Dayton on a neutral floor. In many ways, it should have absolutely helped our confidence. Specifically, our three-point shooting went from looking like we just had no feel at all at the Greenbrier, to a scorching 45% on 33 attempts for the game. It was spread around, too. All of Lewis, De Ridder, Tillis, Mallory, White and even Grünloh hit multiple threes and Thomas and Hall were a combined 0-8… which tells you how well everyone else shot it.
There was a big point of emphasis coming out of Greenbrier to share the ball; which was evident not just in Coach Odom’s comments nor the players’, but also in how they played on Friday night. That being said, I was glad they didn’t take that lesson and neuter their aggression or willingness to shoot. I thought they found a pretty good balance of making sure the ball moved more, while still taking the opportunities that made sense. Of course, some of that was opponent – so I’ll be curious to see if they can maintain that playstyle against upcoming stiffer competition.
So, what can you learn or take away from these kinds of games? Plenty. But I’m going to focus on four things that most grabbed my attention and I’ll be keeping an eye on moving forward: Wanting us to play inside-out more regularly, defensive rebounding, the return of Devin Tillis, and Dallin Hall’s game as it relates to our PG position.
As always, there’s always so much to talk about, so I’m having to laser my focus, but you can look at previous pieces to see how all of the thoughts are shaping up as well as to note takes on other topics. For example, we’re the #2 ranked offensive rebounding team in the country right now (by rate, not aggregate), and were #1 immediately after the game. At some point, I’ll need to carve out some dedicated time to that. But, for now….
Get The Ball Inside
I’m never going to balk at us shooting the three-pointer. This team is going to shoot it well and it’s probably going to be the great equalizer for us in many competitions as the season progresses. That being said, our ability to stretch the floor creates opportunities for mismatches on the inside which can either command the need for help or allow for the proper spacing for our bigs to make moves, earn trips to the free throw line, etc. We have one very capable player in Thijs De Ridder with this skillset, but Grünloh, while having been a little more disappointing as a play-making hub in recent games (I think he’s been out-quicked and muscled, at times), is a very good passer and I’d like to see him assert himself a little more. Basically, I’d like to see them make an effort to assert themselves inside-out more. TDR doing this was a big reason they were able to beat Northwestern and, with him dealing with an eye injury much of the Butler game, I thought we got away from it far too often/was disappointed that Grünloh wasn’t more proactively involved. Specifically, with Queens’s tallest players being 6’9″, I was surprised that we played outside-in as often as we did.
Here’s a look at what I mean – it doesn’t have to be crazy. We start this possession by getting Grünloh a touch on the block. At 7’0″, Queens was sending double teams at most of our post players; which then allows us to pass out of it and make them recover. This pass went a little high across the court to De Ridder to allow for a shot, and most of this was quality drives and then ball movement off of it from both Lewis and TDR, ultimately with Thomas finding Lewis in the corner for a smooth look… but it’s a good glimpse at how the defense felt it had to react early on.
Here’s a better look at Johann’s passing ability, later in the game, in the clip below. This was out of the “Two Big” lineup with Onyenso also on the floor; which didn’t work very well on the whole, IMO, in this game. Watch as Grünloh gets the ball near the block, waits for the help defender to come, puts the help defender to a decision, and then absolutely rifles that one-handed hook-pass across the floor to Malik Thomas; who is then able to attack the closeout off of the dribble and draw a trip to the foul line.
Johann absolutely loves to hand-grenade those kinds of passes across the floor – there’s tape of him doing it all over Germany (and in other European Cities as well!). I really like that it gives us another angle from which to attack; and can often force the defense to get out of balance proactively, which in turn can make those drives easier or can lead to just an open three itself. Thomas could have shot this, and may have had he been shooting better on the night.
De Ridder, we’ve seen, can thrive across all areas of the court – but he makes some of these look so easy. This spin move was so clean and quick live – and he had the perfect feel to wait and see if Queens was sending the double or not.
And here’s another look, below, at De Ridder driving, but taking his time around the elbow with his back to the hoop, forcing the entire Queens defense to collapse around him, and then actually finding Grünloh for the kick out punish:
It’s worth noting how Grünloh’s presence on the floor (and teams are having to play Ugo like this as well because he’s also been shooting) means that teams have to make a choice when defending TDR inside. In this case, Grünloh is able to get a nice spot up (and his release point is so high that the 6’9″ Avantae Parker (#6) can’t really bother it that much despite being reasonably close on the shot).
Those were some nice examples of us going to this and having some favorable results off of it. I just thought it was far too little of a priority and we had opportunities to go to it more. Here, for example, below, we push the ball in transition and Thomas gets it on the near wing. Give the ball to TDR on the post there! He’s open and anyone on Queens trying to cover him one-on-one is a mismatch. Thomas sees it but for some reason passes it up… and we end up settling for a really long, still contested, three just a few seconds later.
I love us shooting threes, full stop. I don’t love us shooting contested threes well-beyond the arc when we had an opportunity to get it to our professional PF on the block in a one-on-one situation ahead of a set defense! I want everyone on our team to throw that entry in that situation.
Here’s a look from a play just before that last one. Queens had just hit a couple of shots to close the gap in the game early on, and we took a step back deep three without really moving the ball much or looking to get it inside at all.
I want to reiterate that I love our guys being aggressive, but this is one of those situations where we should be able to run more quality offense, especially against a team like this. Chance can hit this shot 100%; but we need to exhaust some other options first (and there’s also no one under the hoop to rebound).
It doesn’t need to just be TDR or Johann playing with their backs to the basket, although those are the examples I gave earlier and I suggest they’re good options. It can be Ugo. It can be Tillis with a mismatch. It can simply be more of our perimeter players trying to touch the paint and look for a finish/drawing the defense before kicking it back out. But, let’s do try to make it a greater point of emphasis to force a defense to react to our interior presence a bit more than we have. My general take is that we haven’t been shy about doing this with De Ridder in any game where he hasn’t been bloodied. He was 8-10 from the floor for 21 points in just 21 minutes in this one – so efficient. But there are still opportunities, like we saw above, where we should be making it a point of emphasis and I would also like to see other players (especially Johann) leveraged in this way.
Again, doesn’t need to be every possession… we can still take what’s there and play outside-in, too. But, a little more balance in that direction would be helpful (and take some pressure off of our ball handlers). I believe it would more commonly start the ball off moving from a greater position of advantage; or just yield an easier shot opportunity.
Defensive Rebounding
There’s going to be more of this in the other two sections, but I also wanted to call out this as an area we need to clean up. Defensive rebounding has been an area we haven’t been sharp much of the season. In this one, we gave up 18 offensive rebounds to a Queens team that, again, had decent size across the board but was undersized at Center. Two pieces of good news are that our smallest player, Chance Mallory, is also one of our best rebounders—he grabbed eight boards, seven of them defensive—and that, in most cases, the issue doesn’t appear to be physical.
The bad news is that it is often mental and we need to start cleaning this up in a hurry! For example, here’s a shot that Queens gets in transition, below. Both Sam Lewis and Johann Grünloh are in great position to box out and secure this rebound. Grünloh even has eyes on the eventual rebounder when the shot goes up. Instead, they both kind of fall asleep, get lulled by ball-watching, and Lewis actually jumps in front of Grünloh (instead of both fanning out), allowing the Queens player to slip behind both for the boad.
That’s a combination of a lack of urgency, maybe under-estimating your opponent a bit, but also poor awareness as to where you and your teammates should be to secure the glass (and neither boxing out).
Here, below, is a rough stretch from Malik Thomas, but also everyone around him. Thomas gets beaten badly on a drive to the hoop. He gets caught misdirected on the catch on the perimeter, juked twice, and then is fully on Jordan Watford’s (#0) hip on the drive. Now, Sam Lewis is there to help on the drive, but rather than cutting off the driving lane or jumping straight up to contest, he kind of lets his momentum take him past the play, jumping right by Watford. Meanwhile, Thomas is so focused on keeping straight-up to keep from drawing a foul, that he walks himself backward away from the play entirely after the shot. De Ridder is there on the back side but doesn’t crash down aggressively to try to help. All of this results in the 6’5″ Watford being able to easily clean up and tip back his miss unbothered.
That’s just kind of a rough sequence of small mistakes snowballing. First of all, we do need to discuss that Thomas should never get himself that far out of position on a simple pass and catch to his man on the wing. He’s over-anticipating and reacting slowly there. Secondly, Lewis needs to stay home. Jump straight up, contest, and then be in position to turn and fight for the position. Thirdly, Thomas needs to be ready to spring and attack the rebound if there’s a miss; he got out of position, but don’t compound it. Lastly, TDR also got caught watching the play a bit, would like to see him pinch down hard as soon as the shot attempt goes up.
Zero doubt that, between these three, they could have secured this rebound and had the ability to do so – it’s just the mental tenacity that they need to clean up and commit to.
Finally, it wasn’t just fatigued starters making these kinds of mistakes. In this one, below, Elijah Gertrude completely falls asleep in the 34 seconds he was on the court in the first half. Watch him away from the ball on this play at the end of the half. He’s supposed to keep eyes on both his man and the ball (which can be tricky, but you have to keep adjusting to get the angle right, gaining depth). As the ball moves to the wing, notice that he loses sight of his man, who starts to cut baseline. As the shot goes up, Eli goes back to try to find his man, only to notice that he’s completely past him, chases down the offensive board, and gives Queens a big three-pointer to end the half.
We closed the first half of this one very sloppily, and it turned what had been a pretty dominant performance with a 24-25 point margin (i.e. almost the entire spread) with about 4 minutes to go in the first half, to a 14-point advantage 35 seconds into the second half. A 10-point swing for Queens in about 5 minutes of game time. That’s the stuff we can’t really have against better opponents.
Anyway, back to Eli, this was unfortunate as his minutes appear to be dwindling. He got just 3 in total in this one and there was still another play in the second half where he was just blown by on a drive. I really thought (and still think) that there could be a significant role for Gertrude on this team given our need for athleticism on the defensive end. But if he’s not completely locked in and playing as a terror on that end during his limited time; I don’t expect that is going to materialize. There’s still plenty of time, and he really does fit into the system from a skillset perspective, but he’s got to make the most of his opportunities when he gets them and, for him, that means being a menace on the defensive end who locks down his man and creates disruption.
Alright – defensive rebounding is going to crop up in both of the next two sections, as well, so it will be a continuation of the discussion.
Devin Tillis
Devin Tillis has been back for three games now; but the 18 minutes he logged in this one was more than the minutes he played in his previous two games combined. The questions about where he’ll fit is starting to come into light – it looks like we’re still going to be rolling with 9 in the core rotation… and he’s primed to take most all of Elijah Gertrude’s minutes and then maybe a few sprinkled across the rest of the front court.
What’s that, you say? They play different positions? Sure, but not always. With Tillis out, they were making up for his absence as the back-up PF a variety of ways. De Ridder’s time likely won’t change much in big games, but he’s still consistently been in the high twenties/low thirties. They were filling by playing both Centers some, and then flexing Sam Lewis to the PF some. While they no longer need to do this, they still tried the dual Center lineup for a few minutes against Queens. Sam Lewis, correctly, hasn’t lost playing time despite not playing much of any PF with Tillis back. In fact, in the three games since Devin’s return, Lewis has logged his most minutes; averaging 26 mpg in games with Tillis and 18.75 mpg in games without. So, this is mostly where Eli’s minutes are going. Consider, before Tillis’s return, Eli was averaging 11.25 mpg and, after, has averaged 2 mpg, including a DNP (Coach’s Decision). Of course, all of this is colored by the fact that two of the three games since Tillis’s return have been against good opponents; which likely accounts for Lewis’s uptick (Chance, aside from the game where Hall fouled out, has been used pretty consistently throughout). But that’s not the sole explanation as this Queens game was never in doubt and Eli still only saw 4 minutes of play; and three of those were at the very end of the contest with the deeper bench.
Now, I’d love to see Eli become a part of the rotation as the season progresses, and I don’t think this development means that he can’t. That being said, having Tillis on the floor with a healthy knee; though he still appears to be moving somewhat gingerly on it, appears to have some significant value. For one, his ability as a shooting threat from outside is among the best on the team; and is the lone area in which the other bigs don’t represent an upgrade. Check out this neat little play, below, starting out of horns (both bigs near the arc, representing ball screen threats). Hall passes it to Tillis who flips it back to him and looks like he’s going to screen his man. This causes Queens to switch despite the ball screen not really being there. Meanwhile, Tillis crosses through an Ugo screen away from the ball, catching Hall’s initial defender unaware as he’s just started switching back. This allows Ugo to pin down and Tillis to step right into a pretty three.
That’s a really pretty play design. It’s one we could certainly run for De Ridder or even Grünloh if we were feeling spicy out of the two big sets… but Tillis likely converts this at the highest rate of any of them and has the savvy to properly take advantage of it.
And here’s another look with him out of the high post (speaking of playing out of the interior some more) alongside three guards and Ugo. I like that pairing with Ugo when Devin is in at the 4 because it helps with the interior defense. This was a turnover, but the vision was there and with just a little less zip/Ugo being a little more ready, this is an easy dunk and some of those coveted “easy” points inside.
Now, TDR only played 21 wildly efficient minutes in this one, so 18 may be a bit high for Tillis longer term… but Odom has also been experimenting with playing him at the SF some, too. Here’s another look, below, this time with both Grünloh and De Ridder on the floor with Tillis. Thomas runs an Iverson cut, Tillis sets a cross screen for TDR, then Grünloh sets a pin down for Tillis. Thomas could look to either TDR or Devin here, depending on who is open, and correctly reads that Queens completely lost Tillis on this one. It’s an effortless looking shot from Tillis on the catch and shoot and adds another nice dynamic to our offense (with size).
Interestingly, we’ve run this exact same play with Malik Thomas in Tillis’s role in games prior – but Tillis is a much bigger screening threat while executing it and puts more pressure on the opposing team to defend De Ridder’s post up prior to needing to recover to him.
I think there’s something brewing there; especially with Mallory at the point as your most ball-dominant handler to try to make something happen if your overall ball-handling is lacking. Playing this group with Thomas is also interesting as it could pose defensive mobility issues on the perimeter, but also just kind of makes us a huge lineup capable of getting the ball inside and better securing the glass, as we talked about earlier.
Here’s a look at that on the defensive side with the same grouping. He’s not really tested off of the bounce here, but he keeps good positioning throughout, and then as a SF stepping up to stop the dribble, he’s a brick wall in the lane there. Johann actually got credit with this steal, somehow. Thijs appeared to be the one who got his hand on the ball to dislodge it; but Tillis did a really nice job of cutting off the drive, securing the ball, and then pushing in transition the other way. This isn’t the fastest or most athletic group we put on the floor, but it kept the ball moving and eventually ended in TDR free throw attempts.
Now, the question against better competition is going to be whether or not this is viable on the defensive end; which is really always going to be the biggest question around Tillis. Can he slide with an opposing SF and keep them out of the lane. So far, despite his lack of comparative quickness, I’ve been pretty impressed with his ability to stay in front and deter. Having him at PF, you’re often conceding some size and athleticism to opposing frontcourts… but if you can get by with playing him at SF, now you’re huge and physical and can contest the paint like the above from a non-frontcourt position. He finished third on the team with 5 rebounds in his 18 minutes in this game. I will say that I think Tillis is our smartest player from a basketball sense; and he’s usually locked in and uses his anticipation of the game to make up for some of his lack of first step burst. That being said, the upshift in athletic ability from Queens to, say, Texas is real and we saw him struggle some in the pre-season scrimmages against P5 athleticism (although some of that could have had a little to do with the knee; it’s hard to say).
I absolutely think it’s worth exploring, though, and am liking this direction for the time being. If nothing else, our biggest weakness appears to be our concentration and ability to stay locked in mentally; and Tillis helps us to make more fundamentally sound plays with fewer mistakes.
Dallin Hall
Sigh. What to make of Dallin Hall?
On one hand, he’s been our best assist guy throughout the season, can provide a steadying presence, gets more guys involved on our team when he plays, and just recently came up huge at the end of the game to help beat Northwestern when both Mallory and De Ridder were on the bench.
On the other hand, he just fouled out in eleven minutes trying guard Buter’s Finley Bizjack. Bizjack is a really nice player who is averaging 20.6 ppg in the five contests where he’s gotten at least 29 minutes (the two games against cupcakes bring his average down to 17.6). But, we’re going to face better guards this season and these are the kinds of players we’re going to need to defend if we’re going to reach our ceiling. And then he laid an absolute egg on Friday – scoring 0 points on 0-4 shooting from the floor, not looking threatening as a driver, shooter, or defender. In fact, we were -11 in +/- with Hall on the floor against Queens for his 21 minutes – which means that we outscored the Royals by 36 points in the 19 minutes that he was on the bench. It should be noted that he did still lead the team with 5 assists.
Now, I don’t want to completely pile on here and I also don’t want my point to get lost in all of this so I’ll state it here: there’s absolutely an important role for Dallin Hall on this team, he’s also had very good games, and prior to the Butler game the team had been playing its best basketball when he was on the floor. He does pose a quickness concern on defense, especially when paired alongside of Malik Thomas, but there are ways to mitigate that, he is very strong which is beneficial in a lot of matchups. I’m not even suggesting that he lose his starting role, because I think there’s value in getting everyone else involved and setting a pace to the game… and then injecting Mallory as a bolt of lightning around 4-5 minutes in. But I will make the case (and will get into it a little later) that there’s an opportunity to shave some of his minutes here or there when the matchup dictates or when he is off his game; and that we can do so without necessarily putting an untenable workload on Mallory.
What alarmed me most about this game against Queens is that normally Hall’s greatest asset is that he’s a solid, steady presence, who limits mistakes, gets his teammates involved, and then steps up when needed. He just didn’t seem to have his mind in the game on Friday, though.
For example, this was very early in the game on the defensive end. Note, that I understand our guys are typically fighting over ball screens; but they do have the option of how to pursue away from the ball, given how the play is unfolding. Watch here as Hall starts away from the play in the opposite corner with the ball on the near-side wing. He ends up fighting over two different elements of a stagger screen, despite the angle leaving him incredibly vulnerable to that curl. With the ball where it is on the floor, if he had eyes on the play, he should have been easily able to duck under both of these screens and stay between his man and the hoop – it’s actually the path of least resistance and is right at the ball. Once he’s in front of his man on the catch, he could switch ball screens guard-to-guard with Thomas, as necessary, or fight over a ball screen if one came from Grünloh’s man and let him play drop coverage. He ends up getting caught on that prison dribble and forcing Grünloh to guard two; picking up the foul on the contest at the rim.
That one’s so frustrating to me because it’s not Hall not being quick – it’s completely avoidable. Just get your head around and see the ball, see the stagger screen unfolding, and then take a good angle to get in proper defensive positioning. You don’t need to chase over the top in this situation – heck, Thomas left a veritable chasm between him and his man to let Dallin through, and he still chased over the top. The two could have also called out a switch there. Just so many elements of this were unforced and not a core requirement of the defense.
Speaking of giving up bad offensive rebounds; here’s Hall just completely losing track of his man and defending no one. Watch him off of the ball; he’s guarding Nasir Mann (#1). He gets too far away, sits far too high in the passing lane, and loses sight of Mann. As a result, when Queens sets a screen on his blind side, he gets caught on it while also losing sight of the ball and losing track of his man. At the 14 second mark on the shot clock, Dallin is trying to fight through the screen and recover to the corner, which he never actually does, he just recovers to space on the wing, when his own man has actually just snuck by everyone and is waiting to gobble up the offensive rebound and put it back in.
I’m going to just say it: that’s alarmingly bad defense off of the ball. Like, he might as well have gone and sat down in the first row there for as much as he was impacting the play. And, while I do believe (given more really poor clips that we’ll see) that he was just having a really bad night mentally, you still can’t have that kind of lapse from your veteran leader.
Here’s another on the glass that doesn’t end up burning us, but probably would against a bouncier opponent. Hall gets caught in no-man’s land help side – his eyes locked on the dribbler, but doesn’t commit to bother the shot and, in the process, loses sight of his on man who streaks right by him to the glass.
Fortunately, the ball came off hot and the crasher couldn’t get up quickly enough to secure the ball – but that’s another completely blown coverage where Hall doesn’t positively impact helping and also loses track of his own responsibility.
Here’s another pretty terrible rotation. Notice that none of these plays are just him getting beaten from parity, or due to a lack of physical ability. All of these are just him making poor decisions/having poor awareness. This one, below, is a broken play because Ugo swats the initial shot attempt out to the three-point line. You’ll notice that we have three players under the hoop on this – Jacari White, who is doing a good job of riding his man down the lane, Ugo, who is contesting the shot, and Tillis, who leaves his man and lingers on the weak side to help secure a potential rebound (I like that decision, by the way). Now, the shot, after it’s swatted, goes to the perimeter where there are three Queens players to our two defenders. It initially goes to Mallory’s man, who quickly passes it over to Tillis’s man. Hall just gives a half-hearted waive toward the shooter and then retreats back toward his man:
There’s too much linear thinking happening here and not enough common sense. What’s the point of making sure his man is covered if he’s leaving a wide-open shooter? Hall needed to recognize the threat, switch aggressively to deny the shot attempt, and trust his teammates (likely White) to recognize the rotation and get out to his man.
Really rough defense away from the ball across the board from Dallin where he was consistently neither effectively helping on the play nor even doing a good job of locking his own man down. It was the worst of both worlds.
Offensively, he didn’t seem comfortable with his outside shot (and was 0-3 on the night). This play, below, works to perfection. Hall represents a pin down screen for Lewis at 18ish seconds on the shot clock, getting Queens to proactively switch, but then Lewis rejects the screen and cuts baseline while Hall pops out to the three-point line. This should be a shot. Instead, he waits for the close out and drives it, getting out of control and in the air as the help comes, and ultimately forcing an uncharacteristic pass into traffic down the baseline that gets picked off.
You’ve got to keep shooting those when you get them – he’s still shooting 33% on the season and is 36% for his career – keep taking the good looks. If he’s going to be out there we need him to. That being said, he also didn’t drive this deeply enough to make the help defender commit fully; he got baited.
And this was the one live that made me ask aloud, “What’s going on with Dallin?” because it was such an obvious lapse in concentration and was the beginning of our sloppy collapse at the end of the first half.
Look, if you’ve played the sport, you’ll know that sometimes you just have an off night. Things feel… almost a little fuzzy, like your depth perception is slightly off, your reflexes are a little slow, the awareness/feel for the game just aren’t there. It happens. We should not fall into the trap of assuming that the most recent thing we’ve seen is going to be the thing we see next.
He’s still capable of controlling the game through pressing advantages and nice passing:
I fully expect there are going to be plenty of games this season, including the end of the Northwestern game, where he has absolute flurries of great quality. We’ve seen him take over against quality opponents in the Big 12 before, including against a very good defensive team in Iowa State last year. So, this should in no way be interpreted as writing him off or suggesting that he see a significant change to his status within the core rotation.
What I am suggesting, though, is that we don’t need to think of him as an indispensable part of the rotation just because he’s one of the two Point Guards; and can adjust his playing time as it makes sense within the flow of the game.
This isn’t just a Chance Mallory point, although he has been very good at about 25 mpg as the backup PG. Mallory and Hall bring very different things and are playable together. Hall typically brings more of the floor general element, while Chance brings the absolute explosives. This clip, below, is absolute fireworks and showcases the upside of Chance, between his handle and navigating his way throughout the defense and continuously probing into the lane, and then his ability to relocate and rain down the three after Grünloh makes a nice steal on the inbound pass:
His endless confidence as a shooter, but more, a quick and deep shooter, is an additional element to his game that Dallin never fully replicates even when he’s at his most confident shooting the ball. This play, below, where Chance probes the lane, finds TDR, and then relocates behind him for a quick corner three, is very much more in Mallory’s wheelhouse:
I’m pretty convinced that Chance would be fine with a few more minutes. But, given our pace of play and how the guys play, I do think there’s benefit in keeping Chance fresh and under that 30mpg mark. Against Butler, he got up to 34 mins due to Hall’s foul trouble, and both his efficiency waned and our ball distribution suffered. His play became less of a shock to the system.
What I suggest is that there could be some opportunity for others to play PG too in limited spurts. Malik Thomas, for example, played some PG for San Francisco. Getting some run there could help him get into the flow of the game more, touching the ball more, dribbling more, and he has improved as a passer. In fact, of all of our players, Thomas is the only one to this point in the season shooting significantly worse than his career average from deep. It’s seemed, to me, like his game benefits from being a little more ball-dominant than this team necessarily wants him to be. A few minutes there could allow for some creative lineup options, improve our size on the defensive end, and potentially help unlock his rhythm a bit.
But an additional element I want to talk about is that I really want to see more Jacari White time. He’s also instant offense, and is still only averaging 17 mpg on the season. His defense has also had lapses at times this season, but the quickness and willingness are there, and I thought he was much improved in that area on Friday. His ability to shoot and catch on the move is fantastic; and that coupled with his release point allow him to regularly make incredibly difficult shots, which translates well against higher levels of competition. If we were to shave a few Hall minutes here or there, Jacari could deliver more of this kind of magic alongside of Mallory (or maybe even Thomas):
That release and ability to shoot in the face of a contest is just so nice, and he made two more from out there in the game; but also had a nice slashing drive to the hoop for the finish at the rim:
Note the nice five-out offense there with Tillis at the PF, Lewis at the SF, and Grünloh at the C – there’s gravity around all five of these shooters. Eventually Johann dives down and seals his man while Jacari just takes advantage of the switch generated by some quality Tillis/Grünloh screening and beats the 6’9″ Avantae Parker (#6) off of the bounce.
But, with his handle and how well this team has the ability to play team basketball (and we could also play through the post more), I’m not sold you couldn’t even give White some spot PG minutes here or there. Check out this crazy pass to TDR, threading the needle after a strangely paced pick and roll:
I feel like I’ve put twenty disclaimers on this, and that’s mostly because I think there’s been a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss Hall and just most of the PG minutes over to Mallory. I don’t think that’s the answer. Hall brings a ton of value to the rotation and there are diminishing returns, IMO, in going too deep on Mallory minutes with this pressing style of play and this roster that has so many capable scorers. Keeping Chance fresh is in our best interest. That being said, Odom is a tinkerer, and he’s been playing with things like two Centers and Tillis at the SF throughout the season. I’d like to see this become part of the puzzle; trimming down on Hall when either he’s not making the offensive impact or when the defense is struggling. The same is true of Malik Thomas, for that matter… but I’ve already talked about him at length in previous pieces. I do think that some of these solutions; especially Jacari White’s microwave offense and energy, can be a bigger part of that solution.
In Conclusion
This is a journey and there are a lot of moving pieces. What looks like the best direction may not look the same by year end. That being said, I think we’re starting to see some things take shape and there are some flexible ideas we could tap into. I’ve said before and I’ll say again, Odom is a tinkerer; so I don’t expect him to fall in love with one specific way he wants to do things and lose sight of what’s happening.
It’s nice to have Devin Tillis back, even if it’s at the cost of some more Eli for the time being. That being said, I don’t think this means that Gertrude is going to be off the table as the season progresses. I do think he’ll be continually given some opportunities to show because there’s a clear need for what he could bring – but he’s going to have to do more than he’s done when those opportunities do come. For what it’s worth, I’m not even sure Carrère is completely off the table (although – probably) as more of a big PG mold which is where they’ve been recently piloting him when he has played (and that’s pretty intriguing long term).
This is going to be an evolution… and what I love about what’s happening right now is that Odom seems open to everything. Aside from when he fouled out against Butler, Hall did play his fewest minutes of the season against Queens in direct response to how he was playing. Let’s keep that tinkering – I do strongly believe there’s a sweet spot within the diverse skillsets and talents on this roster.
But, for now, a solid nine-man rotation appears to be on the near horizon, and I’d like to see us continue to tinker with it such that most of our 5 guards are between 20-30 minutes, depending on how they’re playing, with a little less prescribed PT to Hall and a little more consideration to White… and then, sure, let’s see where Tillis can have the most positive impact and whether that can extend past just the backup PF role. I’d have liked to see us be able to experiment with that a little more prior to Texas but, you play the hand you’re dealt.
Let’s go and right the ship on an ACC/SEC Challenge!
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