Fun thought exercise: If I told you that we would turn the ball over 21 times against Dayton, Malik Thomas would play 13 minutes, and TDR would struggle from the floor/finish with 7 points… what would your prediction of the score have been?
Well, all of those things happened, and we still won a quasi-comfortable (that should have been more so) Q2 game by 13 points at a neutral site. What does this tell us? For one, we’ve got some serious depth on this team in terms of ability to score the basketball. Jacari White was a flamethrower, but 53 of our total 86 points came from the bench. Also, this is a team that still has so much room for improvement, but its natural talent sets the floor really high.
We got to see angry Coach Odom, especially later in the game, as the team struggled to inbound the ball and make good decisions against Dayton’s pressure. This was one of those games where our shooting prowess (60% from the floor AND 60% from beyond the arc) raised the tide level for our team – but I thought we did a really nice job moving the basketball to set up those looks in some really pretty ways. It’s funny, we were either making some head-scratching turnovers or playing some really pretty offense. There wasn’t much in between. After the loss against Butler, Coach Odom mentioned in his postgame comments (and players echoed after the fact) the need to pass and share the ball more. This likely stemmed from a significant amount of iso ball that we were playing – and we were struggling to get everyone involved. That point of emphasis appears to have stuck, and we’ll talk about that some today.
I view it as incredibly encouraging that we can do so many things, or at least one major thing, so poorly (every player who saw time had at least one turnover except Malik Thomas, interestingly enough, and TDR, Mallory, and White each had four) and still pull out a comfortable result. The margin was 21 points with 7 minutes to go in the game. We’ll talk about the turnovers today, as well, though.
We’re also going to spotlight the deserving Jacari White for his eruption, and then just briefly touch on a couple of miscellaneous topics of note. Alright, let’s get into it!
Jacari White – Playmaker
It may seem odd, considering that he just broke Kyle Guy’s UVa record of most consecutive threes made across games (now sitting at 12), to start with something that doesn’t just focus on his shooting. We’ll see a lot of those looks later in the ball movement section. His quick release and ability to shoot effectively from the spot up, off the dribble, or moving without the ball, are the full bag. But, when I wrote before the season that I thought he should be the starter (not clamoring for that now; the juice off of the bench is fine but I do hope he earns himself more minutes than he had been getting) and, the polarizing one, that I thought he was a better fit for the way Odom wants to play than Isaac McKneely, this section is mostly what I meant. It’s hard to compete with iMac as a pure shooter, although White is currently 6th in the country at 54.2% from deep (iMac is 60th at 42.9%) – I would expect that gap to narrow some as the season wears on (still, huge bonus at the moment). But, it’s all of the other things – the speed, the playmaking, the handle, the skill at getting into that deep shot off of the bounce without losing much efficiency that blend him so well into what we’re trying to do.
Here’s a nice look at his playmaking in the full court. He gets in there for the rebound and takes off, keeping his eyes down the floor. Hall is open for a while, you can see Jacari adjust the passing angle so that he can rifle one in there rather than trying to put air under the ball. Really nice look and exactly what our pushing after misses is trying to accomplish:
Here’s a similar look, below, only this time he sends the ball a much greater distance to get it out ahead to Sam Lewis on the leak out. Of note, Dallin Hall has the ball first and doesn’t spot the opportunity, choosing to get the ball over to White to help break the press. White is able to pick out the open Lewis while keeping his eyes up on the move – and the one-handed bomb he throws while on the move would make any QB proud.
Side note: Check out #5, the fan, in the stands on that play. He goes through the full-cycle of emotions, identifying Lewis has gotten behind the defense, gesturing frantically (and quickly) for our guys to see it, the two-handed rush of disappointment as they aren’t throwing the pass, starting to sit down in disappointment, only to hop right back up with the “touchdown” gesture when Jacari spots it. Well done, sir, a tip of my hat to your sideline floor generaling!
Check out this nifty little subtle change of pace. Jacari takes the outlet from Ugo and gets up the floor. The defense is well-set, so he sets up a high ball screen with Ugo. TDR is center lane around the foul line with Mallory and Tillis in the corners. Dayton decides to switch the action, which probably wasn’t necessary, leaving the 7’1″ Amaël L’Etang on White with De Ridder plotting yet another screen on him. At about the 7 second mark into the clip, watch how White slows his pacing a little bit to make L’Etang think he’s going to pull it back out and to allow for TDR to get aligned. He then accelerates back up and into the smooth finish.
I’ve often suggested that we have plenty of decent PG options if there are issues or foul trouble with either Hall or Mallory (or if either are off); White’s vision is good, his pacing and body control are great, and he brings with him a fluidity of movement and energy that can make these kinds of things happen.
One last look for the purposes of this specific spotlight (White’s creation). This one definitely feels the sweetest and segues into his insane shooting performance quite well. It’s the subtle things that add up, though. Watch at the beginning of the clip that White pushes the ball up the floor with pace and then just interchanges with Sam Lewis. This looks harmless, but it actually gets Dayton to switch, moving the ultra-athletic, 6’4″, De’Shayne Montgomery (#2), who decided to turn the game into a dunk competition at one point, to Lewis, and leaving 6’10” PF Jacob Conner on White. The possession itself gets kind of bogged down with Tillis looking to exploit the mismatch on the surely-not-5’10”-but-listed-that-way Javon Bennett (#0) and our spacing cluttering the lane a bit with Ugo diving. Never fear, they just reverse the ball to Jacari and he is able to take advantage of his mismatch by getting Conner on his heels with the dribble and then pulling up:
Awesome shot-making, but also fantastic self-creation, having the confidence to build on the advantages that forcing the switch created!
Don’t worry, we’ll see plenty more Jacari – but I wanted to take some time to highlight his full game. He’s not a one-dimensional shooter despite being elite at that trait so far through nine games.
Ball Movement
I mentioned earlier that this was a huge talking point after the Butler loss. In that game, their pressure of our passing lanes and disruption caused us to default to dribble creation/isolation more often than we’d generally like. This is an area where our continued practice and collective unselfish play appear to be making some gains. It’s also a big reason why we shot the roof off of the Spectrum Center. There were a couple of individual moments like the Jacari pull up above, but we had 21 assists on 27 made field goals – and many of these looks were clean. Let’s take a gander, shall we?
This first look, below, is an interesting around the horn that stems from De Ridder looking to exploit a mismatch when the small Bennett (#0). De Ridder is patient, and waits until the double team from Macolm Thomas (#1) comes. When it does, he skip passes to Thomas in the corner, who sends the ball around to Hall, to Mallory, and back to De Ridder for the midrange jumper.
Generally, I wouldn’t be thrilled with a two-point jump shot after having such a mismatch forcing a double team in the post. That being said, it’s a set one that TDR has in his bag, and it’s positively self-reinforcing that he can make a smart pass out of the double team, even when having the mismatch, and the ball can/will find him again for an open look. Also note the smart back screen that Onyenso sets on Thomas’s man, which forces the rotation from Hall’s man on the pass, which starts the snowball rolling.
One thing we’ll start to notice from these clips is how unselfishly everyone is playing. Thomas, despite seeing a reduced role recently, has been no less willing of a passer. It’s great to see.
This next one isn’t the same level of ball movement across the full team; but I did want to showcase Ugo as a skilled passer. Playing 4-around-1 with Onyenso on the floor and he’s not the low post presence is such a luxury and comes from his willingness and ability to shoot the three this year. TDR gets to work in the post in space, Ugo’s man does not cheat off of him, and when Tillis reverses the ball back to Ugo at the point, all TDR has to do is pivot and seal.
That’s a really nice one-handed delivery from Ugo to a good spot and De Ridder does well to finish through his man.
Another look here at Ugo as an intuitive passer within the broader quality movement from the group. Tillis, who we’ve known is a very good passer and has put that on display for the majority of his career is in the mix here as well. Dayton mixes up their defenses a lot from various man-to-man to zones. Considering how we played against NCCU’s zone during the second game of the season, you wondered a bit if this would slow us down. The presence of Tillis adds a knowledge of where to move in space, though. Hall draws to defenders on the wing and passes to Ugo, again at the point. Then Tillis notices the opportunity and cuts in behind the moving zone to the high post. Ugo again threads a nice bounce pass into him, he faces, draws the center, and delivers a nice bounce pass of his own to Jacari’s cut on the baseline for the easy layup.
This is the kind of thing where having Devin Tillis as a connector of the team is valuable and can pick up easy buckets. Worth emphasizing, again, that having Ugo out here as a passer hasn’t limited our ability to move the ball crisply (although he did struggle some on the catch, which we’ll see in a later section).
Here, below, is a neat little three-man game with Mallory, White, and Onyenso. Chance dribble penetrates and passes back to Ugo, then moves to the corner while White rotates up and takes a ball screen. His shot gravity (and this was before he’d even made one three), draws two defenders who jump at his shot fake. This allows Ugo to slip, and then the quick pass to Chance in the corner allows for the quick pass back to the diver. Onyenso finishes the opportunity well:
That one isn’t overly complex and kind of just segments a half of the floor in which they work; but it still shows the struggle of navigating quality movement, ball screens, and quick passing.
This next one was a sick play out of horns that was probably my favorite of the day. Thomas initiates the offense with Mallory and Lewis in either corner. He passes to Grünloh and takes the return pass. Grünloh then cuts across a screen from De Ridder and takes a pass from Thomas/begins dribbling toward Lewis who appears to be coming through for a hand off. Instead, Grünloh holds the ball and screens for Lewis, curling around him, and then delivers a pretty sick two-handed pass to him for the pretty layup.
I’m going to need to give Sam Lewis some more shine soon, because I love all of the little things he’s doing well for us, even when he’s not shooting the ball well from deep, which he normally does. This is primarily a Grünloh play, design, though, as it takes advantage of his size, his threat to shoot (pulling his defender out of the lane), and his passing. All of it leads up to him being an effective hub with the ball.
There’s a lot of dribbling on this clip, but there is continuous movement and ball screening, causing switching. After Jacari drives the ball to the baseline, I like how Mallory circles around and then drives the vacuum there. This has the effect of sucking in some of the same defenders who were already in proximity; pulling them away from White and leaving him open for the nice kick out:
Tillis is at the three in this lineup, so I really like White paired with Mallory so that you can still utilize the bounce while flowing the offense around it. It’s so valuable that both are such good, and quick, and deep shooters, because it means you really can’t give the guarding depth that we’ve seen some of our other guards in recent years get who have the handle and speed but not necessarily that shot confidence/quick release.
Aside from the lack of mustard on the final kick out from Tillis to White, which he buries anyway, check out just the quick decision making on this play, and keeping the defense on skates. Lewis initially drives and touches the paint, kicks it out to Grünloh who immediately flips to White and moves to set a ball screen. Jacari rejects it, blowing by his defender and drawing help. As the defense collapses on his shot fake, Dayton has three defending two. White stops and kicks it back out to Mallory, who swings it around to Tillis, who fakes the pass to the corner, drives the lane himself, draws more defenders, and finds White again, who had relocated from his drive.
This is kind of just textbook stuff here where you know what an offense is trying to do and you just keep working together to make that happen; adding incremental advantages as they rotate until you get a nice look. The lane probes to collapse the defense followed by the quick ball movement after, into more probing…. It’s a great way to keep a defense just behind the play enough.
Okay, this last one was a huge play in the game. We’d just squandered a 21 point lead down to seven. Jacari was sitting for a decent chunk of that comeback. He comes back on the floor and immediately cashes another huge shot. But, the lead up to this was fascinating to me from a strategy perspective. We’ve noticed that Dayton is switching everything right now. Watch how we run three consecutive screens to start this play out, with no intention of driving… basically with the sole purpose of getting switches and putting guards on bigs and bigs on guards. The third time through, Hall aggressively drives on the catch, attacking the slower forward and driving away from the recovering guard. This completely collapses the defense so De Ridder can take the kick out and have no one around him on the corner three. Unfortunately, he was off much of this game and couldn’t connect; but now with all of the switching, no one’s really contesting Grünloh on the offensive rebound who tips it and keeps it alive. Chance, always hunting, slips in there after the deflection, skies for the board, saves to Hall – and White knows to immediately hunt space on the perimeter given the scramble. Hall finds him and the rest is history.
Incredible awareness across the board from our guys here. White did a nice job of hunting his offense within our flow; not forcing things, and our guys did a nice job of looking for him when it made sense. The strategy, though, of not just hunting one switch, but hunting three switches and then attacking that off the drive prior to making your offensive rebounding easier was really cool to see.
This is the kind of stuff I nerd out about!
It did rear its head in extremes, though, as I mentioned the uncanny 21 turnovers. So, now we need to rip that band-aid off.
Far-Too-Many -Turnovers-And-Also-Inbound-Gaffes
Dayton has really good pressure; but the quantity of turnovers was disappointing. They came pretty balanced from everyone; especially the guys who handle the ball the most, as there should be no surprise. Mallory made some mistakes that, for the first time this season so far, made him look a bit like a Freshman. Hall made some mistakes that he shouldn’t have as a veteran. TDR felt sped up most of the day.
Perhaps most concerning, though, is that they didn’t really seem to be on the same page with regard to their inbound plays under their own basket. Players were late getting into their breaks but, worst, players were consistently not coming aggressively to the ball and were trying to complete longer passes over the top or were trying to fade to gain momentum up the court. It felt some combination of disorganized and also not really respecting the threat that was there.
Let’s go through a few of these, starting with the half court.
This was a pretty early sign, to me, that TDR wasn’t really feeling it offensively. He’d already missed three jump shots prior to this; so, he passed up this open one when the ball got to him. Personally, I’d like to see him shoot himself out of it. He should be able to adjust with the reps and a good shot is a good shot; but if he wasn’t feeling it, I get it. Unfortunately, he decided to spin a drive into a double team and rushed/panicked a little bit on his pass out; which led to a pick-6.
Taking an open three, especially so early in the game, is certainly preferable. I do like that he’s a team player and doesn’t want to just keep jacking up misses; but he also had only one official shot attempt in the entire second half, too. He’s shooting the three at 41% on the season – I’d keep trusting it.
Much later in the game, here’s another really bad pass in the half court, this time by Dallin Hall, in crunch time, with Dayton within 7, and the game under 4 minutes to go. That’s just such a terrible angle to try to throw a bounce pass to a 7-foot human on the wing. The pass execution was bad itself; but I also don’t get why we’re forcing something to Grünloh so far away from the hoop. What’s he going to do with the ball and a smaller, quicker player draped on him near the three-point line? He could act as a passer, but that’s not worth forcing it to him. TDR’s man has left him a huge gap. Perhaps it was part of a design, but Dallin needs to see when it’s not available.
These next few, though, were coming while trying to break the press. There were a lot of sins committed on these that just made it look like this was something we haven’t practiced against a ton – which is wild because we’re a pressing team!
This first one is an offensive foul on Dallin Hall. I don’t love it. His defender is arm barring him and he’s trying to make it obvious and gets called. It shouldn’t have been surprising – the officiating was the worst I’ve seen this basketball season in terms of being one-sided (and that’s all I’ll say about that). Still, I really disliked how no one did anything the first couple of beats when TDR had the ball and, when they did, it was like this walk into the burst. It’s almost three counts of the five second count before Hall even makes his break/commits his foul – and White and Lewis were even slower developing. Perhaps you want the PG to break first and the others after but, if so, don’t have the PG lull on the initial move.
That look itself – three different players basically trying to juke one-on-one coverage… I’m not sure. It puts three to four defenders all around the inbounder/basket at once. It also doesn’t allow for screening actions.
This next one as right before the end of the first half… and is a two-for-one. I’m sympathizing with Odom’s irritation watching these. The play starts with Mallory running across the lane from the ball at sort of half motion… half-juking along the way. I suppose this was to draw the defender near the inbounder, but it was not run hard enough to get open. Then White jukes in, but breaks out and up toward the sideline – running away from the ball and not toward it. It’s a tempting but too hard pass that would likely get stolen as the defender cuts underneath. Sam Lewis, then… simply tries to post up at the elbow? Mallory eventually flashes across the lane but it’s too late by that point, De Ridder has tried to lob the pass to Sam Lewis. Dayton tracks down the ball and scores before the end of the half. Nightmare considering we could have/should have held for the last shot. We’re not done, though! On the subsequent inbound pass, Mallory flashes across the lane again and drifts toward the foul line. This motion of fading away allows Dayton to find the ball right in their lap again as he was moving up court without looking. We’re only saved by the clock running out here and TDR very easily could have picked up another foul.
Like, that’s terrible… and not once in any of that did any of our three guys actually break hard TOO the basketball, you know, like you’re taught since you start playing competitively. Chance started to but already after the first pass was thrown… and then he needed to take an angle right to TDR and let the clock expire with the second.
Look, I like that we’re looking to counter-punch on this. We saw in the earlier section how having our eyes up court led to some easy buckets and I didn’t even capture all of them. That being said, there has to be appropriate urgency placed on just inbounding and securing the ball first before trying to get our momentum going toward the hoop. That and we have to cut hard all of the time.
Okay, here’s one where we are effective at beating the press. This is actually a designed stack after a timeout. It works pretty well although Chance and Tillis kind of break to a similar space. Tillis helps to break the pressure and Chance leaks ahead, keeping Bennett (#0) on his hip, drawing the defender in the lane, and flipping the blind pass back to Ugo. It was a nicely delivered ball (Ugo dropped a couple in this one and some others were a bit lower but he should have caught all of them) that Onyenso should have caught. That’s the danger of playing so fast, for one… but Ugo’s awareness for when a pass might be coming to him and his reflexes are both a little delayed when in close quarters.
That is one risk of having him out there while attempting to break a press, though.
Two more you gluttons for punishment. Here’s another thing I didn’t really like was that Chance would kind of just like creep up here and camp right behind the inbound defender. He goes to spots where Tillis can’t throw it early on, and then drifts in front of where Lewis might cut, so Tillis ends up trying the pass over the top to Lewis, which doesn’t work out. Also, what is Thomas doing on this play? He stands the entire time and never makes a move to go somewhere Tillis can identify him. Literally at 1-2 seconds into the clip, he could either break hard down toward the baseline or break toward the elbow on Tillis’s side of the hoop.
Wild stuff. It’s kind of like everyone else thought everyone else would be the one to get open.
Finally, this last one was probably the worst of them all (although end of half was pretty bad). They move to trying to let Chance inbound the ball. This is concerning to me because you want your jitterbug-style guard to be the one getting open, you don’t usually want your smallest player being the one trying to pass it. The angles over the top of the on-ball pressure are worse and their reach bothers you more. Our guys could have also just stepped farther back some to not be as bothered by it. The problem was, Chance was struggling to get open in most of those clips above… so they tried this. It didn’t go better. Jacari catches it in the coffin corner and then rather than dribbling when he has space, just kind of waits and lets them trap him. He initially had Hall open down field, so to speak, but no one else and TDR wasn’t even looking at him for the ball. By the time he’s trapped, now the pass is harassed and we have both Hall and Mallory breaking toward the same spot, and Hall’s frantic pass carries both of them. Maybe it was to Thijs. Okay, so they miss a shot and we collect the rebound… up 10 with 90 seconds left to play in the game. Mallory sprints it up the floor and tries to throw a lob to Johann – sailing it out of bounds.
Fortunately, these are a lot of lessons to be able to learn without losing. Mallory, I thought, had some uncharacteristic Freshman play in this one… for the first time, really, all season. I was a little concerned about his lack of ability to get open, though, and for our team’s general malaise at going so/lack of urgency to sprint at the passer. They just, generally, looked unschooled on common press-breaking ideas; which should not be the case.
This isn’t really an issue I’m that worried about longer term, though. Most teams won’t be as skilled at this or employ it as aggressively. Also, most of this is just needing to be coached up and also learning from mistakes. It is an area I’d like to see some urgency around next time we encounter it, though, and some clear progression of mindset/better press-break concepts.
Okay, two more just very short touches on before we wrap this one:
Hedge Defense?
In the first half we changed up our pick and roll defense again; this time hedging some of the screen actions with our Center rather than dropping. It didn’t last long and wasn’t very successful; likely because we haven’t practiced it much and neither Grünloh nor Ugo did a great job of being obstructive on the hedge itself.
Here you see Johann do a nice job early on of gaining good depth to stop a standard drive… but then when Dayton reverses course, watch how far out (to the logo) Grünloh comes to defend. That’s abnormal… and he really doesn’t do well here. It’s more of a gesture than a hedge, and Bennett (who, as an aside, also would have been displeased with this hedge) blows by him on the drive to the hoop. Fortunately, and cooly, Grünloh has the closing speed and length to chase this down from behind and swat the trash-talker into the front row.
This next one doesn’t benefit from the same. He shows the coverage twice on this one… and stops the drive on the first, but again doesn’t get his body in front of the dribbler on the second. This one goes a little better design-wise in that Chance gets back into the play and is closer on the chase; but he’s no Johann and isn’t going to get to that shot in the same way.
The got away from this wrinkle in the second half because it hadn’t been overly effective, but it’s worth knowing that they experimented and may again sometime in the future. That being said, I’ll be shocked if this becomes any kind of staple.
Malik Thomas Defense
The elephant in the room is that Malik Thomas’s minutes continue to be on the decline. Despite continuing to start, he played a season-low 13 minutes in this one – five less than any of his previous contests. I was a little surprised because he scored our second and third buckets of the game and looked pretty fluid doing so – one was a put back layup and another was a midrange jumper. With De Ridder’s offense (he still played very good defense and got 9 rebounds) struggling, I thought maybe this was a game where Thomas took on more of a volume share. Some of that was likely due to White getting so hot, but some of has to be the continued mental errors on the defensive side. There were two glaring ones early – one, below, where he makes a nice little play to reach in and disrupt the dribble of the big… but then doesn’t get his head back around, takes a bad recovery angle to his man, and gets beaten back door for the easy layup.
That would have been completely fine and helpful, but he just kept his eyes glued to the ball and lost awareness of his surroundings and it cost a giveaway bucket.
And then here, below, he messes up navigating another would-be switch with Devin Tillis and then takes a slow/poor recovery angle back to his man, ultimately chasing and having to give a bad foul in the process.
I fully believe that we’re going to ride the hot hand a lot this season. Thomas having an offensive explosion could make him that for us in any given game… but, more likely, it’s going to have to come from him becoming a lot more consistent and reliable on the defensive end. He’s got to just stay locked in mentally. So often he’s getting caught losing sight of his man, making mistakes on switch rules (and struggling to communicate cleanly about it), and taking bad angles when attempting to shut down drives. He actually had a nice block in this one later in the game and snagged a few rebounds. It’s just that Odom has figured out he’s going to have to improve his defense for it to be worth it right now, given how everyone else is playing. Let’s hope to start to see some strides.
In Conclusion
What a week of basketball! And, look, we’re ranked in both polls again for the first time in a while. It’ll be interesting to see another tune up game after that stretch… and then 11 days before Maryland. I hope it’s not too deserted around the holiday break for the fans to give Elijah Saunders a warm welcome back…. After that, one more tune up against American prior to conference play.
I’m excited! It’s coming together a little differently than anticipated, as it always does, at least somewhat, but the team is playing a high level of basketball right now despite having so many thing they can clean up… and I think should clean up with more practice and time together. Coach Odom has pulled a lot of levers so far which have been in tune with a lot of the items we’ve discussed, here, together. It’s encouraging to see him adjust very real-time within a game and be willing to make some significant changes in rotational strategy, regardless of the talent or reputation of the player. He’s been very pragmatic about his choices… and I do love me some pragmatism.
I firmly believe that we’ve got nine guys right now who can all step up and have a hugely positive impact on the game on any given night. That kind of depth limits some of the volatility that you often have over a basketball season. Every player has off nights. We just had our two splashiest additions of the offseason in that situation… but with so many quality options, the odds are that you’re going to be able to find a group that’s playing well. Jacari White may just never miss again, you know? But, let’s just be crazy and assume that he does, there are a lot of other guys to whom we can turn.
Very thankful to have the quality back. Okay, let’s hopefully enjoy tonight!
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