Insane turnaround for a game with so much content. I thought about how best to do this one and decided, we’re just going to go narrative of the game again, talk about the key issues, and then show a few highlights of each as we get there.
This was a wild triple OT loss in which the refs were about as one-sided as I can remember in a game in terms of letting contact go; especially on the glass and with illegal screens. Tech was in the bonus shortly after the first TV timeout in the second half and we weren’t until 1:30 to go in the FIRST OVERTIME. Some of this was due to how many outside shots we took; but a great deal of it was just an imbalance in how much contact they let go around the rim. They also called a phantom goal tending at the end of regulation and a phantom foul on Ugonna Onyenso going for a defensive rebound that sealed the game. We also shot the ball about as poorly as we have all season – aided by not being able to get a shoot around in before the game due to a random traffic stoppage.
All of that being said, and we’ll talk about it some, to set the stage; everything was still in front of us and we didn’t do a great job of adjusting. I thought this was, by far, the worst coached game Odom has had for us. After first watch, I was confused as to why we made some of the decisions that we made. After re-scouring the game; I’m less confused… but still convinced that we were misevaluating what we needed to do in order to be successful in this game, and were too afraid of a few mistakes.
That being said; it’s been my impression that Coach Odom learns these kinds of lessons very quickly and is rarely shy about applying the necessary changes/lessons learned. We’re going to talk about what some of those were in this game.
Overall, I’m not really concerned about this outcome long term, nor do I think we should let it inform our opinions of this team’s potential – IF we learn the lessons we should from it. The reason being that we were tied 55-55 after regulation. It’s only the second time all year we’ve been held under 80 and it was almost entirely because we just missed open shot after open shot. All season long, we’ve proven that we can shoot the ball at a high clip over a full game that isn’t played in a dimly lit cave with weird backdrops, which will be most situations we’re in moving forward. But, in both of our losses so far, we’ve been slow to adjust or find consistent answers when the shooting isn’t there. We found some answers on New Year’s Eve, but didn’t consistently apply them.
So, let’s go ahead and start talking about this game in detail; which, of the things over which we had control….
Atrocious Shooting
Certainly, this had the biggest negative impact on the game. Collectively, we shot 22% from deep on 45 attempts (the OT aided this volume). This wasn’t a situation where we were just taking and missing a ton of hotly contested threes, though. We were getting and missing, often badly, open look after open look. It was so bad that VT adjusted their defense throughout the game to pack the lane even more and collapse on our drivers while allowing more looks from deep.
I mean, we weren’t just missing shots we normally make at a high clip, we looked completely uncomfortable doing so. Take a look here. TDR has a wide-open look early and misses terribly off of the front of the rim. When he gets the ball back on the long rebound, he hesitates and doesn’t take the second open look, clearly not confident. Instead he swings it over to Thomas, never lacking in confidence, who barely hits the back rim. Lewis then skies for his own offensive board only to miss the put back point blank.
Absolutely nothing to do with Virginia Tech’s defense – just guys not coming close on clean looks. De Ridder is shooting almost 40% from out there on the year, ended up 3-11 in this one and never looked comfortable as illustrated above.
Here, we get a nice little two-man game between Mallory and Tillis on the wing. Tillis passes up his open look to drive and kick to Mallory. Mallory, shooting 41% from deep on the season, has no one in his zip code and clangs it terribly off of the back rim….
That shot had zero chance. Chance finished 1-5 from outside; with the only make being a hugely clutch one in OT. This was not an anomaly, though, SO many looks like this that just resulted in terrible bricks.
Here, we run a play to set a pin down screen for Tillis to catch and shoot on the wing. The look is there and clean… but the release isn’t natural. He looks like he was trying to strong arm it because it seemed farther away to him and the shot doesn’t even draw iron – clanging off of the back board on the other side of the rim.
Tillis is a 41% shooter from deep and he went 2-7 in the game (and 3-12 from the floor).
And here’s actually a nice look at hustle on the glass with a good and determined two offensive rebounds and his lone FG from inside the arc from Tillis. Nice grind from him here, but it shines a light again on how just nothing was falling. De Ridder and Mallory miss super clean looks from deep and then Thijs misses another push shot in close prior to the Tillis grown man layup.
It wasn’t just them or isolated to these clips. Thomas was 2-9 from deep, Sam Lewis is shooting 39% on the year and was 0-2 – and both of those misses barely grazed the rim short, Dallin Hall is shooting 40% on the season from outside and went 1-4 and the lone make was a bank! Our Centers were a combined 1-5 from outside, looked incredibly uncomfortable and, by the end of the game, neither were looking for their shot out there – which allowed VT to adjust their defense to more aggressively defend the paint.
Virginia Tech’s Sagging Defense
Because we were shooting so poorly, it allowed Virginia Tech to pack the lane aggressively. Notice that last clip in the poor shooting section, above. We were setting a lot of ball screens and Tech was collapsing both the Guard and the Center on our ball handler while leaving our Center alone at the three-point line. They were also sagging hard off of all of our shooters; just packing the lane. This limited the effectiveness of most of our guard drives. If you pause 5 seconds into that clip above, you’ll see that Mallory is swarmed by three VT defenders with Onyenso wide open at the three-point line and them leaving both TDR and Tillis open too. The ball goes back to Onyenso, but even though he’s proven he’s a capable shooter this season, he’s unwilling to shoot at this crucial juncture in the game and with the shooting conditions going so poorly for us. So, we weren’t able to punish them with this ball screen strategy as effectively as we wanted simply because the shooting was so poor. That’s not a formula for success when you play our team this year, it’s circumstantial to the rare games in which we’re not shooting well. Keep that play going and you’ll see the ball reversed to Dallin Hall who curls around a screen from Onyenso who this time dives to the rim. This draws three VT defenders; both Hall and Onyenso’s men, but Amani Hansberry (#13) also sags entirely off of De Ridder to help on the dive. This shot it generates, an open three for a 41% shooter, is exactly what we’d want under normal circumstances… but our struggles shooting neutered the efficacy.
Similarly, VT played this compressed style, to help themselves secure the defensive glass. For as much as we’ll talk about them having success on the offensive glass themselves, they got 20 offensive rebounds to our 17 for the game. It’s still a strength of ours, as shown in several of those highlights above, but this rim protection allowed them to help mitigate it.
For reference, here’s how they were playing earlier in the game, below. They were still going with the ball-handler on the screen, but notice the increased priority on recovering to Grünloh on the shot as well as the off-ball defenders playing much more closely on their men on the perimeter.
They certainly didn’t concoct this idea of leaving our Centers because we were shooting so poorly, but it did embolden them to be much less urgent about recovering to the bigs and the help defense off of the other shooters was the biggest change.
Then check out this clip from the second OT. Look at the complete lack of comparative urgency from Christian Gurdak (#32) to close out on Grünloh when he got the ball at the point, because he knew he wasn’t going to shoot/wasn’t worried about it at that point. Also note how congested that lane is with VT defenders on the second Hall drive; around the 16 second mark, leaving De Ridder completely alone and sagging much more aggressively off of the others:
I could see some teams seeing this and deciding, hey, we’re going to live with UVa taking a lot of threes through their Centers. Both are capable and I believe need to be willing shooters when they’re that open in most games… but that’s a risk/reward more teams may test. That being said, the ball screens off of that where the bigs dive to the hoop (and, man, our depth perception was even way off on lob attempts in this one across multiple players) should always be a counter because you really can’t rely on cheating so much off of our other shooters in most situations this season.
Which brings us to what our counters should have been vs. what they were. What we mostly tried were a lot of those ball screens anyway; either forcing some things in traffic or continuing to trust and rely on the three-point shooting that wasn’t there. We saw Mallory have nowhere to go earlier and there were some other big moments where he ended up jamming things into traffic and either turning the ball over, getting blocked, etc. He’s a great change of pace option who still did some fantastic things in this game (including the awesome tip in to send the game to a third OT); but he can’t be a player you’re jamming into sagging coverage amongst towers and help defense in the lane. He turned the ball over twice to only one assist in this one because of how the lack of shooting impacted the way VT could defend him.
Dallin Hall, similarly, struggled to make much headway given these defensive developments. Here you see him driving the ball into the lane late in the second OT, but Tech collapses four players around him in the lane – disrespecting all of Thijs, Johann, and Sam from deep. Oddly, Hall, probably panicking from the swarm, tries to get the ball to the one player they didn’t leave, Mallory, and turns it over.
Hall had just 4 assists to 3 turnovers and only took one shot from inside the arc, which was blocked (although I thought a clear foul). His lack of finishing, as well, made it hard to rely on him to generate offense given the lack of respect that was being put on our shooters… for good reason in this one.
Despite all of that, we tried that kind of penetration a lot – throwing guard to Center lobs in traffic that landed occasionally, but missed more often, Chance was off on his floaters, and we generated a ton of nice kickouts that normally would have resulted in three points but, not on this day.
The other thing we tried to do with consistency as a way to generate some offense was to play through….
Devin Tillis In The Mid-Post
Devin Tillis started this game for Sam Lewis – the first change to the starting lineup all season. I wish someone had asked Coach Odom why in the post-game presser. There was some speculation that Lewis was under the weather; but that wasn’t confirmed and he still played 24 minutes. Lewis had one turnover where he stepped on the baseline and one ball he should have let go out of bounds that he touched. I thought there were some defensive things that Lewis offered, like the ability to guard Avdalas and relieve Dallin Hall – he made a few nice defensive plays in OT and secured 7 rebounds in his 24 mins, as well as the ability to slash some on offense… but Sam Lewis was -27 when he was on the floor this game in a contest that went to three OTs. So, maybe the right answer wasn’t Sam and there was something going on there (although, we know game-by-game +/- can be finnicky. The eyeball test on Sam on rewatch did seem to show that he was off his offensive game just like most others, but didn’t show him as any significant kind of liability anywhere. He did give up a couple of Schutt threes) – but it could have been some more Malik, as we’ll discuss – and even Eli was +10 in the game and his ability to slash and defend was worth trying more.
It was just, I mean… it was a LOT of Devin Tillis in this game. He played 39 minutes, third most on the team, and primarily at the SF. The problem was, with nobody shooting, not having a third guard capable of driving the ball made us less threatening in that way. Tillis often would attempt to drive it, but those were slow enough that it allowed the defense to recover easily and, again, kickouts were not effective.
What we apparently thought was a good solution to our struggles was to play through Devin in the mid-post; have him back down his matchup and then facilitate or try to score. In watching the game back, I believe we primarily did this because De Ridder had a high volume of turnovers (6) from playing too quickly at times. There was also a moment early in the game where Grünloh was stonewalled and had to take an awkward fadeaway and a moment earlier in the second half where an entry pass to him in the post was stolen. I don’t believe that any of these should have been the deterrents that they appeared to be, especially because we ended up playing through De Ridder a lot anyway, but they did appear to be a big reason why we went this route.
Tillis, to his credit, was the only player outside of Onyenso and Gertrude who didn’t turn the ball over. But, I just didn’t see the value that they saw. For example, here’s one of the positive looks where he has an actually mismatch with the 6’5″ 200lb shooting specialist Jaden Schutt (#2) guarding him. This is a designed clear out as he backs Schutt down from the point and we stagger four around the arc. The problem is, VT still is willing to live with our outside shooting and jams the lane with help, including a double team from the 6’10” Gurdak (#32). Tillis finds a kick out to Hall, who ends up jamming the ball into traffic and not even getting a shot up again.
This, effectively, was no different than our ball screen offense, just without a guard having the ball, because of how much help VT was still willing to send into the lane.
This next one, below, was better and was actually probably our best outcome from all of these Tillis looks – primarily just because it was De Ridder who he was able to find out of the double. But, he is able to command the double team and then it’s VT having to close out on TDR plus TDR’s willingness to drive the ball that creates this advantage.
I think those two plays, above, are kind of what they were hoping to get out of this and thought might be a solution (aside from the Hall drive going poorly, it still caused a double).
The problem was that it was just too congested in the lane for it to really work; see below (even though we did draw a foul on this after resetting):
But the other, and probably more glaring issue, was that Tillis wasn’t actually effective at getting his own bucket out of this set… ever, but especially against Avdalas, which we seemed to think was a mismatch in our favor, but Tech didn’t really send help on it.
It’s important to remember that, despite the weight advantage and Guard/Forward dynamic, Avdalas has a good 2-3 inches on Tillis. The first time we tried this was at the end of the first half. It wasn’t by design, we got an offensive rebound and then Tillis took it on himself to try to score. It’s not a terrible look, he could have made this shot, but it didn’t come easily and the length could have bothered him.
But, later on, it was clear that the length was a factor and he tries this again only to get blocked from behind by Avdalas:
To me, this is a sign that this is not a great matchup to attack because he actually beats his man here but it still doesn’t go well for us because of the physical disadvantage.
So, it kind of blew my mind, especially after TDR started cooking at the end of regulation, that this was the look we went to at the end of regulation to try to win the game:
Now, to be fair, this may not have been by design. It looks like Grünloh starts to set a ball screen for Tillis there prior to Devin going into the back down which means it may not have been the design and Tillis just decided he wanted to try to make a play. Either way, though, this isn’t what you want – and he forces it up in traffic and really gets blocked twice. Given the game flow, this ball needed to be a shot from De Ridder.
It just wasn’t an effective source of offense to turn to so often. The case for minimizing turnovers isn’t a good one when the upside of the play isn’t that reliable. He wasn’t able to score much himself and the creation was doing less than our ball screens, which also weren’t very effective.
So, what should we have done more? Two main things, in my opinion. The first of which…
Play Through The Interior
I think we got scared off of this by some visible turnovers. Which, fair… IF your other offensive options are working well, but they weren’t. You’ve got to take some turnovers when the other results are more easy baskets than you’re getting anywhere else. Specifically, De Ridder as the primary point of the offense as a facilitator for the Centers/trying to score himself was the best way for us to get buckets given how we were being defended.
When he got the ball on the block not just on the outside, De Ridder required a double team, which allowed him to facilitate. He was very effective at doing so around the rim. It was moving too fast on fast breaks and some other mental mistakes that were the primary source of his turnovers. The most glaring and relevant to this situation, he relaxed and had the ball pecked out from behind with his back to the rim once. He still had 22 points, five assists, and was 6-9 from the field inside of the arc.
Here’s another look. This time it’s TDR backing down from the perimeter instead of Tillis. Watch how credible the threat is, how quickly the help comes, and how well he finds Johann around the rim. Also, how comfortable Grünloh was at finishing when he actually got the ball deep, around the rim.
Okay, that’s more methodical post play, but now let’s check out this go-ahead basket near the end of regulation. Watch how VT defends the Dallin Hall ball screen with Grünloh and then immediately contrast with the ball screen, also from Grünloh, for TDR.
With this 4-5 ball screen, Tech’s willingness to help off of other players, while still there, isn’t as pronounced even this late in the game. Additionally, where Gurdak is imposing help on players like Mallory, Hall, and Tillis as facilitators who might opt for their own shot, not so much on De Ridder who is able to both blow by and finish over his shot blocking. We should have been prioritizing this De Ridder/Grünloh two-man game all game long, despite the turnovers, and we should have given both (along with Onyenso, even) more starting opportunities with the ball on the block rather than around the perimeter. There were mistakes trying to feed Grünloh once, and De Ridder didn’t play a clean game, especially early, but at some point, especially once it was clear how we were shooting and being defended, these kinds of looks should have been the go-to virtually every possession, IMO, until VT proved they could reliably stop it. It also would have helped pressure their bigs, who had little depth, with foul trouble.
One last look, this was what we drew up after a crucial time out in the first OT. I absolutely loved this design and, again, think it should have signaled that we needed to play 4-to-5 more. This time with Thijs immediately attacking from the high post, drawing the help, and finding Ugo for the lob as, again, the help is coming 5-to-4 as opposed to elsewhere.
When our offense is on its normal game, it’s absolutely best to play as we did for most of this game. Run the offense, hit the open man, shoot those open threes… everyone eats kind of thing. But, when it’s become obvious that the outside element of our game is limited; and defenses are playing us like this, Thijs De Ridder needs to become the primary offensive facilitator and scoring option and we need to get our Centers much more involved inside as well.
And, similarly, when games are going like this, this guy needs to be our secondary option:
Don’t Ice Out Malik Thomas!
We need Ryan Odom to trust Malik Thomas again, at least in games like this. It’s funny because I’ve been very critical of Thomas’s defense this season and actually think it’s a fantastic sign that Coach Odom has noticed the same and been unafraid to adjust his playing time accordingly. I think it holds the team to a defensive standard and demands more of him. That being said, while he’s never going to be one of your better defensive guards, I did think Thomas was doing pretty well on that end in this game and has been consistently improving over the past several games. He was active, had a nice block, forced a steal, and was in good positioning most of the time. He gave up a few buckets here and there, but no more than our other perimeter players and not many (if any) from carelessness or a lapse of concentration. He was actually considerably better at chasing Schutt around than either Tillis or Lewis in this one and was much better at exploiting that defensive matchup when it was given to him.
I get that trust has to be earned back, but this was exactly the game it’s so important to have a Malik Thomas on the roster; the kind where defense isn’t the issue (and Thomas’s defensive weakness is not his rebounding, generally, he’s pretty tough and physical in there as long as he’s not losing track of his man, which he wasn’t) but offense is hard to come by. You need his ability to get a bucket, to create offense for himself, and to make things happen at the rim… and we sat him from 3 minutes to go in regulation to when Dallin Hall fouled out with 14 seconds to go in the second OT.
This was the actual worst decision of the game, to me, both because of how things were going with Tillis handled and how much Hall was struggling to get the offense going. Thomas was the leading scorer, with 26 – many of which came after he was inserted in OT, but many also came before, and played only the sixth most minutes, at 29, while also not being on the floor during all of those crucial moments at the end of regulation and almost all of the first two overtimes. Here was possibly the most criminal part – Thomas generated 11 free throw attempts in the game. The rest of the team? FOUR. COMBINED.
Now, some of that was the poor officiating, to be sure… but most of it was just that you’ve got to play the dude who is attacking and creating opportunities! Not to mention, he had two leak-out dunks as well. Here’s a nice look at Thomas in this pick and roll game. Notice how VT still drops but, unlike our other ball handlers, he comfortably gets to this midrange jumper and makes it.
That’s quite the contrast with Hall not really having much to go to with his own offense in these situations, Tillis not getting much traction, and Mallory feeling rushed and missing floaters.
Here, I mean look at the contrast in this clip, below. You once again see Hall running the pick and roll with a Center and how VT defends it, sending multiple defenders at the diving Grünloh and just kind of giving Hall a buffer because he’s not normally going to shoot that midrange jumper or explode to the rim in traffic. Meanwhile, Thomas is all attack when he gets the ball. I love how he sets up his defender like he’s going to take a harmless pass out to reset, but is primed and already exploding to the basket before he even makes the catch. This clever timing allows him to get fully beyond his defender and then he has the offensive skill to finish through the help defender at the rim:
For what it’s worth, Thomas was also shooting the ball poorly from deep (2-9) but, he was the only player who never looked like he was hesitating to do so:
Side note: look at Eli’s first-step explosion on that play and how quickly he made Tech’s defense adjust to him/found Thomas. I can’t put too many eggs in the Eli basket yet because of the full season’s body of work and understanding that we’re not likely to overly rely on him in big games like these yet – but in a game where no one is shooting, having that kind of explosiveness on the floor more than the 11 minutes (in 55 played) would have probably also helped.
And then, there was his offensive explosion in OT to save us from losing outright in the 2nd:
And then to keep us in it early in the 3rd before not having any available PGs eventually tipped the scale:
Notice, again, how he was just an outright counter to their defense; in this case by being able to play one-on-one and then finishing in traffic.
In a game where we were struggling SO much to score and draw fouls, this, I’d argue, was the biggest oversight. Give him some of those Tillis minutes. Give him some of those 41(!!!) Hall minutes. In general, trusting our depth more would have benefitted us given that’s where we had the advantage over VT, but especially trusting your scorer to be able to score at least some in a game where points were at a premium.
Don’t get me wrong, I see the logic in why Hall was playing. He did a decent job against Avdalas when he was on him, and was making good team defensive plays like this one (there were several others; he had four steals in the game) where he read the play and came off of his man to help:
But here’s a really nice look at a defensive possession without either Hall or Tillis on the floor. It’s Mallory, Thomas, Lewis, TDR, and Grünloh in some rare minutes without either Hall or Tillis. This is just really nice team defense with Lewis doing a nice job on Avdalas and chasing him into Grünloh who can sag off of the non-shooting-threat Gurdak, Thomas is doing well to chase Schutt, TDR shuts down a drive, Grünloh helps linger, Mallory and Lewis have good back-side positioning, and Thomas eventually forces a turnover from Shutt on the bounce.
When an opposing team has a player like Schutt who is a big-time catch and shoot threat but isn’t much of a threat off of the bounce, that’s a fantastic time to play Thomas more minutes. Most of his defensive focus at San Francisco was ball denial and when he’s quicker than a player, his strength shines on the defensive side as well. Like, when we play Louisville, we’re probably well-served to put Thoms on McKneely (and to try to make Isaac guard him).
This was a significant miss which, understandably, came from the history of the season… but we need to update our thought process from, “Thomas is a bad defender and we need to limit his playing time,” to “Thomas is a situationally bad, but improving defender, whose value on the offensive end surpasses his liability on the defensive end IF the rest of our offense is struggling AND we’re willing to play him alongside just one of the PGs.”
It’s a wordy thought process.
We Need To Also Sanity Check The Idea That Tillis Is An Essential Defender
I know that his on/offs at the three are pretty good overall and, again, I think we played pretty darn well pre-shot defense throughout most of the game (Ben Hammond started cooking in the OTs but some of those were difficult shots). So, this isn’t a knock on his ability to play there in general. It does call into question how essential it is to have him out there, though, when our offensive game was going like it was shown, earlier. If his mid-post game wasn’t helping that much and he was just 3-12 from the field, AND he was a limited driving threat, then the amount he played would need to be justified by his defense. But, watching him; I thought he had more bad possessions on that end than most.
Here, for example, he’s playing the 4 and not the 3 but get’s beaten off the bounce from the perimeter recovering to Hansberry – who he should be able to stay in front of – which puts a foul on Grünloh:
Here, below, he’s at the three and, in turn has to matchup with Hammond in secondary transition in space and really has no chance to deal with the quickness/has to foul:
Here, below, the decision to have him chasing Schutt came back to bite us in a huge moment right after we’d made a big three in the first OT to take the lead. This is why starting him and playing him here was so odd, especially if Schutt was his primary defensive matchup.
Tillis isn’t the guy you want running all over the floor chasing, he’s a guy you want to be able to use his strength and positioning to bother bigger, stronger guards. If you’re playing him at SF to guard Avdalas because Lewis is off his game or something… I still don’t love that matchup but it makes a lot more sense. He was presented with the matchup a few times and did pretty well with it. But, if you’re going to make Hall the primary assignment (and even Mallory after the switch in this one), then it doesn’t make sense. You’re just flatly better with Thomas as the defender on this possession, let alone the offensive side.
And then, in double OT I mean… Tillis is help side defense here and just doesn’t rotate over at all giving up the uncontested dunk. Of note, we have shifted and have him on Avdalas after the Schutt three from earlier (which seems even later considering Avdalas’s ankle injury):
It’s possible that we advised not to leave the perimeter so as not to lose the game and were willing to accept a tie, here, but I’m not so sure given how Onyenso is flatting the screen as opposed to playing drop coverage. Maybe the coverage was not to allow any threes – but in a two-point game it’s suspect that the idea was to just concede easy twos, either. Most likely, Tillis is just late to the party on this rotation.
It just further calls into question the playing time distribution, especially around Malik Thomas, but, honestly, wouldn’t Elijah Gertrude just be a tempting defensive option here given his closing speed? Have him chase Hammond and bother his shot with his quickness and length? In this situation, I’m probably letting Gertrude guard Hammond, putting Lewis on Avdalas, and Hall chasing Schutt.
Tillis as one of your best three perimeter defenders when you just need one defensive stop seems absolutely wild to me.
And that brings us to the final piece but the other huge reason that we lost this game –
A Lack Of Defensive Rebounding
For my money, this is going to be the most pervasive issue this season and is the thing from this game most likely to continue to rear its head moving forward. Some of it is that Tech was just allowed to blatantly shove and clear out under the hoop in the most lop-sided of ways. That being said, we’ve got to play tougher and fight harder back the other way (despite being called for fouls when we did in this one).
Of note, though, not to keep harping, but playing Tillis at the SF you’d expect to help clean some of this up, but it really didn’t. Here he isn’t at the SF, he’s at the PF, but this possession is crazy. Firstly, Gurdak gets away with an absolutely blatant shove in Grünloh’s back, but then watch how ineffective Tillis is throughout at getting into better positioning against Hansberry. He’s just held off behind him and ends up kind of just spectating from behind. Grünloh is having to basically contest and fight with both bigs (although he needs to be stronger on the first board despite the foul) and even Thomas gets in there and gets better positioning.
Bad from everyone, but especially ineffective from Tillis.
Here, below, we have three bigs around the rim, but Johann still gets over-powered and gives up the rebound.
When I wrote the offseason piece about him, this was an area of concern – strength boxing out.
And, to be very clear, this was NOT A GOALTEND! HOW ON EARTH DID THEY MESS THIS UP EVEN AFTER REVIEW??? Ahem. But, this wouldn’t have even been an issue if Tillis had just secured the ball that was in his hands.
I don’t mean to just pick on Tillis and Grünloh although I do think they were the to biggest culprits on the night and in general. Johann because he plays a bit weaker and Devin because he doesn’t have that lift to really get up there and compete with some of these boards once he’s out of position (and even sometimes when he’s in position). But, like, look at that shove from Hansberry in TDR’s back, for example. That was happening all game long, and sometimes we’d get called for fouls trying to fight back. On the other end, our guys would get called for touch fouls while scrapping for boards. It was a wild disparity in whistles in this area of the floor (and you see some of the illegal screening action as well).
I’m not exactly sure what the solution is around this. Onyenso is stronger at the point of attack but he doesn’t have the best hands and defensive rebounding isn’t a huge strength of his, either. Lewis helps when on his game. Maybe some more Eli. Maybe just being much more physical on our own end even if they are calling it against us. But, yeah, of all of the things from this game, this is the one that’s going to be the hardest to correct, IMO.
In Conclusion
It’s going to be an important turn around against a very different style of opponent in N.C. State on Saturday morning. They’re probably one of the least imposing teams on the interior that we’ll face in the ACC so if we continue to have extreme defensive rebounding issues… that will be cause for concern. Similarly, we should be able to punish them on the offensive glass and if we aren’t being more mindful trying to get the ball inside, I’ll also start to have more pause.
All of that being said, we are a very good shooting team and we shouldn’t have to see how we perform without that weapon in our arsenal too often. We should also have Jacari White back before too long, which will also help limit droughts.
Games like this can be helpful if we take the lessons learned, though. Trust Malik Thomas when offense is hard to come by (and even in games where he’s not a clear defensive liability). Trust your depth more, in general. Treat Devin Tillis as more of a sometimes food than a primary driver of the offense. Play through De Ridder as both a scorer and facilitator for your other bigs; especially, again, when offense is hard to come by.
In general, I think our Plan A – move the ball, find the open man, take lots of threes – has proven to be a fantastic first option. We just need some calibration around our Plan B, C, D, Etc. when the shots aren’t falling; it’s happened so infrequently. Hopefully this will provide that.
Alright, we really cranked this one out! Looking forward to Saturday morning!
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