Hey everyone, really tough turn around with the next game just two days removed, and I wasn’t able to watch/record live… plus, it’s the holidays, so there really isn’t time to grind out the same game review in the way I normally do, broken down into categories of areas with the same number of clips.
Instead, for this piece, I’m going to just sort of tell the story of the game in one long stream of consciousness, what I thought about what it meant for us, and integrate the clips within that. We’re not going to have subsections, we’re just going to talk… then will have some more time after the American game to return to some normalcy after the holidays… hopefully.
Alright so, despite this being Maryland and a rivalry game – it was actually a Quad FOUR contest because of how bad they’ve been this year. We won by 8 against a P5 school (up by 16 late and they lit a flamethrower) and dropped by 7 points in the NET. We played some of our ugliest basketball of the season, to the tune of scoring 24-points, and then went off for 56-points in the second half; keeping our streak of scoring 80 in wins alive. On the flip side, while we only allowed 19 points in the first half, we conceded 53 in the second. Given all of that, what should we make of this game where we clearly underperformed on the scoreboard vs. what we were expected to against Maryland.
I’ll spare you the “Maryland’s been playing better” and “they were up by 9 in the second half against Michigan,” stuff. Also the, “this won’t be a Q4 win by the end of the season,” discussion. While those things are probably true, they ring a little hollow and are more about Maryland and not us. Still, I thought this final score and the general sentiment from the game was a little misleading. Yes, our offense was atrocious in the first half… but it really was just an example of horrible shooting on pretty quality opportunities. We only turned the ball over 8 times all game. For the most part, with some exceptions, we weren’t running low on opportunities or forcing things that weren’t there. We were just outrageously cold, to the tune of 11% from three in the half and 27% from the floor.
Here are two examples – the first being Mallory getting a steal, hustling from behind in transition, pushing back the other way, and finding Jacari White for the cleanest of looks.
That’s your literal 50% three-point shooter on the season getting the red carpet rolled out for him. You live with that result.
But aside from the poor outside shooting, guys were just missing bunnies around the rim too; and guys were also passing up some open looks from outside that they’d normally take. There just seemed to be a general tightness and discomfort that we haven’t before seen.
Here’s a good look at all of the above, with Jacari White finding Tillis in the corner. Devin could have taken this shot, but instead pump faked and drove in prior to kicking it to De Ridder. TDR misses the open three pretty poorly but Onyenso is there for the offensive rebound – only to rush the put back attempt and also miss badly himself.
These are the looks you want… but all throughout the game we were just missing ones we don’t normally. De Ridder, especially, had his worst offensive game of the year, by far, with only 5 points but on 1-8 shooting from the floor. Plays where he’s normally efficient, he was missing around the rim. He mostly just felt off – but it wasn’t just him. Mallory’s shot wasn’t there, Lewis was missing some bunnies, Grünloh missed a wide-open dunk at one point. The last time we saw shooting this poor was in the ball room… fortunately this did not continue for two halves and it was good to see that so many players have the ability to step up and carry, when needed. We’ll talk about some of those in a bit.
What I really liked about this game is that it was our defense that stepped up and carried us until we could find our offensive footing – and even helped the offense get there at times. That might sound surprising given the 53-point concession in the second half, but Maryland actually shot a pretty insane 50% from deep on 20 attempts in the second half, and it wasn’t from a ton of wide-open looks. Most of them were challenging shots off of the bounce or with a quality contest and three of them came in the final 2-minutes. Like, this is the kind of stuff that they were making:
And, look, if you can make that shot; more power to you. We’ve seen Jacari do it a few times this season, and it was a nice move to get some separation from Lewis on the shot. Still, you’re pretty comfortable living with these attempts most of the time. We’ll see another later.
But, I thought the general effort and ability to disrupt on the defensive end was quite good and allowed us to weather that insane scoring drought. Here’s a good look early in the first half at a quality forced turnover. Early on, Malik Thomas does a much better job than he’s historically done this season of fighting through a screen and recovering to his man’s hip. This forces a kick to the corner where Sam Lewis recovers. All of this forces the Terrapins to reset their offense, trying to set a high ball screen on Dallin Hall around the logo. I liked how Hall was more proactive in trying to disrupt the dribble here, doing so, rather than sitting on his heels. He fought over one screen successfully, but then on the second, Grünloh does a really nice job of flat hedging and cutting off the driving angle without fouling.
It was different coverage than their standard deep drop and 1-5 everyone did a much better job of sticking to their cover and being more aggressive on their cover.
Here’s another early look with Thomas, again, doing a better job defending the ball. Then De Ridder denies an Elijah Saunders drive, which leads to a kick out that Sam Lewis closes out on, absorbs another drive attempt, and gets a really good contest on the turn-around jumper. Shotty violache!
Here, toward the end of the 1st half as we were finally building some momentum, you see Grünloh’s impact as a roamer. We also get a look at Jacari White looking the most aggressive and natural as a defender as we’ve seen most of this season. He does a nice job of pressuring but then, after the screen Grünloh does a nice job contesting the shot. We give up an offensive rebound, which we’ll talk about more in a moment and wasn’t good, but then Grünloh roams down and suffocates the shot from an unsuspecting help position and gets the outlet going.
The team was just much more active across the board on that end and making stuff happen.
It wasn’t just the first half, either, though. Here’s a really good possession in the second half, that wasn’t atypical. Keep in mind that we forced 19 turnovers in this one, including shot clock violations, and had 15 steals. That fueled some of our offense as we’ll discuss in a moment, but here, it’s just really nice stuff. Hall pressures the ball up the floor, wasting some time, and then does a nice job shutting down the drive off of the rejected ball screen. By that time there’s already only 10 seconds left to shoot. De Ridder is right there on the catch by Elijah Saunders, and slides with him perfectly into the corner. Then Sam Lewis is also right there on the catch by his man, and TDR peels off of Saunders in the corner to help with the crazy contest (and block) on the three-point shot the soars over the back board.
That is suffocating defense with our guys being in the hip on every catch – and that level of pressure added up, helping to break our offensive slump.
Here’s a great look at White playing really nice on ball defense, Mallory taking advantage by swooping in for the last of his five (they say six here but it’s five in the box) steals, running out, blowing the tire (he was checked out and came back), but Hall hustles, collects the ball, and finds White with that cross-court pass:
Poor Chance man… writhing in agony and the crowd erupts in cheers! Glad he was okay and his efforts led to this, though.
The main area of concern on the defensive side was rebounding. Shockingly, despite our prowess on the offensive glass nationally and we’ll still take a look in this one, we gave up 17 offensive boards to our 16 collected. That’s far too many second chance opportunities; especially with the size advantage we had in this one. Here’s a look at the most glaring of the possessions during the game:
I mean, that accounted for three of their 17 ORs right there, and gave them an inopportune three. This one primarily came from having Onyenso actually switch with White on the ball screen – keeping him on the perimeter and White trying to box out the much bigger 6’7″ George Turkson Jr., and shows you some of the concerns with Tillis’s lack of verticality on the glass. But, even still, he’s at the SF here with Onyenso and TDR on the floor too – this should be a good defensive rebounding group!
They had trouble across the board in this one.
Where they actually found their offense was interesting. Dallin Hall, who averaged just over 5ppg on the season (now at 7.1) went for 20 on a perfect 8-8 shooting from the floor. All but two of them, these two below, came in the second half as he clearly took it upon himself to be aggressive and help carry the load when others were struggling.
He did hit a three, but it was mostly him going to the rim, several of which were utilizing these nice Gortat screens/seals from Grünloh and then attacking:
Interesting that was his only bucket of that half, which was our first bucket of the game, and then he didn’t take another shot until the second half, where he kind of took over.
But what I really liked about our offensive revelation in the second half is that we clearly put such an emphasis on attacking in transition and trying to get buckets ahead of a set defense. Where our guys were clearly rusty after the break in the first half and seemingly were thinking too much in the halfcourt, this gave them the opportunity to generate much easier looks and simply play ball freely.
It came from defense into offense as we saw earlier – and here’s a really nice Onyenso block that turns into a secondary break three-pointer. White collects the ball, pushes it ahead to Hall, who draws a shot contest on his pump fake, reverses through Tillis, back to White, for the deep ball.
But it also came after rebounds and just getting into offense quickly. This look below isn’t a traditional fast break, but how quickly we get into it keeps the defense scrambling after recovering. Onyenso collects the board and outlets to Hall who pushes the ball up and gets into a ball screen action with Ugo quickly. The pick and pop frees up Onyenso at the three-point line, but Tillis shows off his savvy by cutting back door with his man watching the play, and Ugo shows off his passing skills, finding him smoothly for the easy bucket.
Of note, Onyenso hit a three earlier in this game, but generally being able to play 5-out like this with him on the floor is big because you don’t need Grünloh out there to do it. Also, his (Ugo’s) skill as a passer continues to impress.
But they were just being really aggressive and trying keep their foot on the gas the whole half. Here, Mallory comes up with the ball after a scrum and, with a Maryland player on the floor, we just push the ball ahead, getting it to Tillis in the corner who gives the nice shot fake, side-step, shot.
It’s worth mentioning that, despite shooting that 11% from deep in the first half, we finished 35% from outside on 6-11 shooting from deep in the second half – so they did shake the rust off.
Of course, I can’t pass on showing THE DUNK. Jacari White is absolutely electrifying – but, again, this is on theme. He’s just breaking Maryland’s full court press here and then not settling when he gets an advantage but, rather, attacking the basket at full-throttle:
So, yeah. I was paying close attention to what we turned to in order to get out of the offensive doldrums of that crazy 15-minute drought in the first half. Some of it was just that the shooting variance shifted – but a lot of it was the notable determination to punish the press and to attack after turnovers, rebounds… even after makes. The bad news – this may have caused Jacari to miss some time. The range of timelines I’ve seen (non-shooting wrist) is wide enough I don’t want to speculate more – but we’ll see tonight and hear more soon, I’m sure.
This second-to-last clip, below, I thought pretty much epitomized the entire second half (aside from the fact that TDR was the one making the shot). Maryland (Saunders, for that matter) makes a tough three over a contest that’s right there from TDR… but then we fire the ball right up the floor, TDR attacks Saunders in transition, rejects the screen, and drives, gets the hoop, with the foul along with it:
Transition basketball after made baskets is a culture shock… but shows how much we were trying to attack.
Really cool to see that kind of constant attack mentality that, sure enough, put up a huge scoring output in that half. The last thing I just want to linger on before closing, though, is offensive rebounding once again. While we gave up one more than we got, we still pulled down 16 offensive rebounds in this one. There’s talk about how we send 5 to the glass at times; which is true sometimes, but often it’s more that where the rebounder comes from and how we attack/keep balance is surprising and strategic. Here in this clip, below, Thomas does a nice job of rejecting a screen and then keeping his man behind him as he weaves into the lane. Take a look at Grünloh and Hall in this one. Around the 7 second mark, Grünloh does a really nice job of observing his man is stepping up to contest the shot, and sealing/navigating behind him to proactively box out for the board. As he’s doing this, Hall notices that his man is crashing down on the glass, so he, in turn, dives down the lane. Grünloh gets the board but misses the tip shot (cover on the rim)… but Hall’s dive leaves him in perfect position to collect Grünloh’s miss and put it in easily – because everyone on Maryland was trying so hard to collapse on Johann to stop the tip.
Thomas’s momentum on the shot was going away from the basket – but notice that neither TDR nor Lewis crash here. TDR provides defensive balance and Lewis hovers; keeping himself flexible if something come off longer, with the ability to still recover back on defense because his man is closer to the rim – and giving him eyes on the play after the make to pick up our full court pressure.
That hustle to follow the shot to the glass was all of the difference and gave Dallin an easy put back – and the ability of all of our guys to attack hard has given us so many second-chance opportunities this year.
In Conclusion
This win was ugly and had some really gross moments… but I don’t think it was indicative of a broader concern. The 56 points in the second half should give enough comfort in the offense’s ability to turn it on; but I actually thought this was one of our better defensive performances, which got masked a little.
The final score is always reflective of what happened in a game, but it’s not always reflective of how likely the way it happened in the game is likely to forecast. I think there’s evidence we actually showed some growth in some ways, considering that we found some different ways to thrive, through Hall, White, and Tillis’s scoring rather than finding much through De Ridder, Mallory, or Thomas.
My only concern at the moment is for team health – which we’ll hopefully have some time to navigate after the American game and doesn’t sound like a long timeline – but is still pretty murky and unclear at the moment. At least we have a lesser opponent and then another 9-day break after prior to kicking off conference play.
If we do see our guard rotation shortened for the near-term; the silver lining is that could give Malik Thomas an opportunity to get back into his offensive flow and maybe build on some of what felt like improved defensive momentum in this one. Lots of speculation for now as info is limited and varied – we’ll know more after tonight.
Happy holidays, everyone!
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