Working double duty between this game and the B.C. game, it seems. Hopefully that one won’t be nearly as interesting as these last two! In many ways, this game felt a lot like a continuation of the UNC game – from the opposition’s hot shooting, to some of the team’s struggles, to who had their A games. We also found a very different solution in this one and ended up with a much more positive outcome.
100-97 in two overtimes. It feels foreign. We watched our Hoos spot the Fighting Irish a 19-point lead, battle all the way back to take the lead ourselves, only to go down 6 with about two minutes to go, tie it up to send it to OT, hit an incredibly difficult shot in OT just to send it to double OT… where we finally ground out the victory.
The post-UNC collapse hangover was real. The team started out of the gates pretty low on energy, compounded by the fact N.D. couldn’t miss in the first half. They shot 61.5% from deep on 13 attempts in that half… and we’re not talking all clean and comfortable looks. They absolutely ran some clean offense at times and we didn’t do our job sticking with them, but there were MANY other opportunities where they just hit difficult shots with a hand in their face, often from standstill, often from DEEP (like fully within the logo deep).
I thought it was a testament to our guys’ mettle that we found a way to withstand such a body-blow, on the road, after such a hard-fought loss. You could just feel the intensity when it shifted. A couple of guys stepped up big. Coach Odom was throwing lots of things at the wall, from going deeper into his bench to using a lineup strategy we really haven’t all season – playing without a Center. That, really, was the story of this game and so we’ll view much of it through this lens.
Small Ball (Eep!)
If you’ve read my stuff since, well, the beginning of the site (March 23rd, 2022), you’ll know that I am hardly a fan of small ball… and neither is Coach Odom. His entire defensive system is based around having a long, bouncy, rim protector to sag into the lane and bother whatever goes in there. It’s why we have two of the best shot blockers in the country on the roster and why our two-point defense has been so good.
But, perhaps the thing I admire most about Ryan Odom as a basketball coach is that he is laser-focused on finding and using ANY strategy that is most effective to win any single game. He tailors what he does to who is on his roster and game situations rather than trying to tailor those things to what he’s most comfortable doing. Odom’s defensive system this year has revolved around always having a Center on the floor. Funnel the offense into the middle and block shots. The thing was, he tried out playing without one in this game, found success… and then worked it back into what they did until it was the primary way we closed the game in regulation and the overtimes. The change worked, and they were able to win a game they might have otherwise lost. Considering how starkly different it was from how we’ve preferred to play this year, I was impressed at how we found it and trusted it.
Now, you may be tempted to wonder, especially given our love for using these kinds of lineups in recent history, is this one of our better options moving forward? It is one we’ll likely often utilize? I would suggest, resoundingly, no. Notre Dame is a unique roster due to their structure and their injuries. Their primary healthy more traditional interior presence is the only 6’8″ 250(!)lb. Carson Towt, who only played 17 minutes in this one, including the OTs, because he fouled out of the game. They have a little length otherwise, but mostly physically weaker guys who basically all play outside-in face-up games. This meant that, really no matter what lineups we had out there when Towt was out of the game, they really were no more of a threat to score starting from the interior. Sure, we offered less resistance at the rim on drives, but that was struggling in this game anyway and was often compensated by our ability to switch 1-5 rather than playing drop coverage when N.D. was mostly, not exclusively, shooting jumpers. So, this was more about the form of our Centers in this one game while also aligning with Notre Dame’s unique lineup vulnerabilities. And, while I don’t think it’s something that we’ll turn to often down the road, it is certainly a positive that we found the option and should be able to dust it off in the right situation moving forward.
So, why go to it? We touched on it briefly but it was primarily a few things:
- Our Centers, especially Johann Grünloh were not having their best games – especially defensively.
- Playing either Lewis, Tillis, or De Ridder (normally the last two) 4-5 allowed us to switch every single ball screen, really regardless of who N.D. was running it with, disrupting what had been working for them.
- Offensively, this allowed De Ridder more space to operate in the low post without help because our 1-4 were more credible shooters than our Centers AND Notre Dame didn’t have a single player on their entire roster, including Towt, who was capable of guarding TDR one-on-one on the interior.
- Finally, De Ridder, Lewis, Mallory, Tillis, and Hall were playing our best basketball in this one (by a long shot) so this just allowed all of them to be on the court together as much as possible.
There may be other times when this is a viable option, as I mentioned, but the kind of unique blend of these conditions came together to make this all happen. So, let’s start breaking down some of these factors all together:
The Traditional Defense…
… wasn’t as effective as it has been. This was both due to Notre Dame’s hot shooting coupled with both of our Centers feeling off on this end of the ball. Here’s a first look, below, at the schematic issue. We see here that N.D. sets a screen to force TDR and Lewis to switch men while then also setting up a zoom screen action on the top wing for Braeden Shrewsberry (#11). It’s a nice action that puts Hall squarely into trailing position – but because Grünloh is sagging into the lane and not hedging here (by design), the coach’s son gets a clean look.
Shrewsberry was 5-9 from deep, including some high difficulty shots while only being 6-15 for the game. Testament to the fact that he was burning us from outside but wasn’t hurting us much by driving even when we pulled our bigs.
This next one is a breakdown coming from the Center position. Here Ugo plays sag defense but he treats it like a switch; which it’s clear he shouldn’t be doing (from what we know about the scheme in general and also because of how Chance plays it). Once Logan Imes (#2) comes around the screen, Ugo is supposed to deter the drive while keeping depth to recover to his until Chance can work his way back into the play. Instead, he stays frozen on Imes without noticing his own man diving behind him and, despite Mallory getting there, he doesn’t turn and recover.
Whether or not he thought he switched or just fell asleep, this was an Onyenso mistake. It’s also pretty poor help side defense by Tillis.
Okay, keeping these clips going, now we’re going to showcase how Grünloh was just not as impactful – and often a step slower – as he needed to be. He had zero blocks in the game (Ugo had 3 despite also making concessions at times, as we’ll see) and just kind of felt sleepy around the rim. Here, below, he plays sag defense better than Ugo did, but he’s both a step slow to block the runner and then gets himself out of defensive rebounding position, and then can’t alter or block the put back by a 6’8″ player with limited verticality.
He’s not always been the best defensive rebounder, but normally Grünloh would have at least gotten his hand on one of these two shots.
That last one was some kind of combination of mental or physical slowness to process. This next one, below, is just not critically thinking. Grünloh is guarding Towt (#33) here – really the one non-shooting threat on the floor for the Fighting Irish. I say non-shooting threat… he’s literally taken ONE single three-pointer in his entire five-year playing career (and missed it). So, when Towt ghosts this screen and Jalen Haralson (#10) rejects it, Johann should have maintained depth. There was no point on closing out to Towt around the three-point line.
As things stood, Grünloh almost got there to block it anyway – but just keeping his depth (and awareness of who he was guarding) would have put him in much better position to help on the drive and contest the shot. That’s actually the whole point of this system so he should have been doing it. It really was just kind of like Johann didn’t make the mental trip to Indiana in this one – there was another play (not featured) where he just entirely spaced while rebounding on a free throw and let N.D. get the ball. He only played 13 minutes in this one; a season low, driven in part by foul trouble but also very much driven by these kinds of mental lapses.
Okay, now here’s Ugo, literally right after swatting Towt out of bounds, falling asleep on a curl screen and conceding the far-too-easy layup on the BLOB play:
This, followed by another play where Towt dribbled into his body and then used that to keep him from jumping as high on the contest, were two instances where he scored right over Onyenso. Ugo played 17 minutes – but really none after that, including the overtimes.
Finally, let’s take a look at Grünloh in the second OT. He didn’t play in the first (Ugo just played to try to win the jump ball in the first OT), but got in the second to help protect De Ridder and his four fouls defensively. Towt had already fouled out at this point as had the 6’10” Brady Koehler as had 6’11” Garrett Sundra (TDR ate these guys up)… so Notre Dame is literally all guards here and Grünloh is guarding the 6’6″ Sir Mohammed (#13). The problem is, that left him vulnerable to covering these players off of the bounce.
I thought this was a pretty decent effort and a hard shot by the flame-throwing Cole Certa (#5, 34 pts on 10-19 shooting) in this one; but it was still a challenging cover for Johann to stop on a dime like that.
Plus/minus is a notoriously fickle statistic that can either tell you exactly what happened on a game-by-game level or be entirely misleading. I thought it was pretty informative in this one, though, as Johann and Ugo were -4 and -7 respectively… and do you know who was second highest on our team for this one at +10? You guessed it… Devin Tillis! A good sign that the small ball strategy was working pretty well. A game removed from having a terrible game against North Carolina, especially defensively, Tillis played 30 minutes in this one, scored 12 points, and was much better. It’s a reminder that the matchups really matter with some guys – and Notre Dame was the kind of team who wasn’t quick enough to take advantage of him, nor strong enough to play through him.
So, contrasted with the above, let’s take a look at that…
Small Ball Defense
We regularly talk about how our defensive scheme pretty indiscriminately switches 1-4. But, with no fear when guarding the interior, typically when Towt was out of the game, playing without a Center allowed us to switch 1-5 and keep pressure on their outside shooters. We most commonly did this with De Ridder at the 5, Tillis at the 4, and Sam Lewis at the 3, providing some length to help support the other two. Not exclusively, though. Sometimes Lewis sat (though not often, he played 43 minutes), but sometimes we even played Tillis at the 5 and Lewis at the 4.
From an interior presence standpoint, it didn’t really matter that much among those lineups – which speaks to the fact that this was mostly a Notre Dame issue – but that first lineup with all three was our best defensively.
We first found this option at the end of the first half with Towt on the bench in foul trouble. Notre Dame had 36 points with 6:08 left in the half. We subbed out Grünloh at that point and went small… and N.D. promptly hit a three to take their biggest lead of the game, 39-20. From that point, we went on a 15-5 run to close the half and cut their lead to 9 (shades of what UNC did to us, but more extreme). It was this strategy that got us there… and that we eventually turned to down the stretch of the full game after going big again for most of the second half.
Let’s go ahead and get some glimpses here. Watch this defensive possession below with TDR at the 5, Tillis at the 4, and Thomas at the 3 along with Mallory and Hall. We switch every single effective screen (we still worked through the ones that didn’t stick), including De Ridder finishing on Shrewsberry and Malik Thomas finishing on the 6’11” Sundra (#12). De Ridder’s perimeter defense is incredibly good for his size, as we’ve discussed, and acts as a deterrent here, and despite Thomas conceding 6-inches, his strength and Sundra not being a great post-up player keep them from even trying it in there. Hall plays physical defense on the ball and I’d rather Tillis be more alert and get his hand on that pass, but his contest is effective enough to force the miss. Everyone converges on the board.
Much different. No sagging. There on any catch. Not worried about matchups because we just trusted any of these five could cover any of theirs.
Here’s the next look, this time with a sneaky Sam Lewis at the 4 line up (same as last group just without Tillis). Watch De Ridder jump Shrewsberry after the ball screen. He does a nice job staying with Braeden. I was really worried they were going to call a foul live with the forward jump to contest on the pump fake – but he does land and re-establish before contact.
When TDR is your defensive Center, things look entirely different defending ball screens than with our traditional Cs. We lose the rim protection (as we’ll see later); but are able to better shut down driving lanes.
One thing that might appear to be one of the bigger vulnerabilities to this strategy is getting Chance Mallory switched onto the wrong matchup. He’s really our only guard not at least 6’3″ and, with Jacari not playing as much, everyone else offers some more strength/size to stand up to some of these switches. The thing is; we don’t appear to be overly worried about it!
Chance’s aggressiveness and strength still make backing him down a difficult proposition. Remember in the last article clips of him fighting fairly successfully behind Caleb Wilson (although he did pick up a few fouls and it wasn’t ideal). But, look at this clip below with the same lineup – there are no switches here. We already use a system where our guards matchup with the nearest guard in their vicinity after a make or rebound; which tests Chance against a lot of different matchups already. Here he gets the 6’7″ Jalen Haralson in the full court who decides that he’s going to try to exploit the size differential by backing Mallory down. Not only is Chance disruptive early; consistently adjusting and trying to take the ball, but then he bodies Haralson around the elbow. Sam Lewis creeps into helping position and a rushed pass to the corner results in a turnover:
You would think given how often we switch and how many big guards there are in the ACC that teams would try to do this to us more often… but they really don’t. Mallory might not guard up in size as well as Lewis or Thomas or even Hall – but he’s still very tough on the ball and disruptive and isn’t a matchup most teams are looking to exploit. Plus, he’s the best on the team at avoiding the need to switch because he’s quick around screens.
Alright, here’s the tradeoff – when someone does get a little momentum/penetration… there’s really nothing there to help contest:
And it also becomes harder to secure the glass and easier for the opponent to put up second chance attempts when they do get the board. This one we jump ahead late in the second half with Tillis in the game instead of Thomas, below. This isn’t a rebound, but it is a scrum around the rim after a deflection on a pass. Hall gets beaten off of the dribble but Tillis does a nice job of stepping up and Hall does a nice job of recovering too cut off the pass to Towt AND Sam Lewis does a nice job of stepping off of his to help disrupt this pass as well. That being said, when N.D. is able to come up with the loose ball; there’s no one able to contest the put back effectively – especially with TDR having been switched onto Shrewsberry again:
Most of the time, and against quicker and more physical teams, those tradeoffs above aren’t going to be worth it.
But the juice WAS worth the squeeze in this one. We even got away with sitting TDR at times and playing Tillis at the 5. This clip, below, is in the first OT and despite Tillis giving up probably 5 inches to Sundra, he actually outweighs him by 10lbs and Sundra isn’t an offensive threat like that. This means that, despite the potential for mismatches, N.D. still played this entire possession through the perimeter and ended up settling for a contested and rushed logo three as the shot clock expired.
Sure, Certa hit one earlier… but it was also one he had time to line up (and you still live with it given the contest we had)… but this one was off of a bobbled pass and rushed. You’re thrilled this is the shot we forced in this situation if you’re us. That’s a high pressure possession, up 2 with 2 minutes to go, to settle for a shot like that.
Similarly, here’s an even higher leverage possession for them, down 1 now in the 2nd OT with one minute to go in the game. This time it’s TDR, Tillis, Lewis, Hall, and Mallory. Haralson (#10) is guarded by TDR and tries to build up a head of steam by a ball screen, but Hall shuts it down well on the switch… and then this is the shot they settle for to try to take the lead.
I know they were hot earlier in the game but this just screams that they were settling. If they couldn’t get Haralson going toward the basket early, there was a lot of launching and praying.
It wasn’t perfect, but this small ball line up was the best defensive solution/idea for the moment. That being said, it also had some benefits offensively, which we’ll talk about below, including keeping the guys who were playing their best on the floor. So, let’s quickly spotlight some of what they were doing well and then look at it together on the offensive side of the ball.
De Ridder
Thijs was a man on fire Tuesday night. Not from three-point land, no, no… just in ever-present motion toward the rim and the ability to draw contact (and insane 14-15 FT shooting!).
He was getting downhill.
Mallory
Mallory (3-6 from deep) was shooting the ball in big moments as well, as we’ll see, but he was also thriving as a creator. This was a wild look at some of the craziness where he got the ball deep into the lane, hung, and finished in traffic despite N.D. contacting the ball:
That look was really going nowhere until it got to Chance at the end of the shot clock and his creation off of isolation was different.
Chance was showing good interplay with…
Lewis
The two were creating for each other and Sam shot a completely wild 5-8 from deep (and a quality 7-13 from the floor). I thought this stretch, below, was probably the point in the game where we convincingly got back in it; cutting a 12-point lead to 6 in just two possessions with one stop in between. First, Chance sets up Lewis on a baseline drive, then after a good defensive possession from Sam, Mallory runs the floor again, this time Lewis probes and returns the pass and Chance is ready with the quick release.
Electric!
Finally, and we teased this from the defensive sets earlier, but we got a redemption game from…
Tillis
Devin still wasn’t at his most efficient (3-9 from the field with a few empty mid-post backdowns – but I thought this was easily his best game since re-injuring his knee against Cal. He was reading the defense and re-locating to good spots, like here:
And this “slow break” in motion was actually really cool – reminded me a bit of how Thomas pushes to the brink of control sometimes but when it works out, it’s a lot of fun:
That pass was dirty, came with very quick vision, and led Onyenso really well. Good job of catching the ball a bit low, too, which isn’t Ugo’s strength – and he’s been very good about finishing around the rim lately, too.
Package those four together along with Dallin Hall (who also had a few nice moments) and you’ve got the makings of the…
Small Ball Offense
At the end of the first half, second half, and much of the OTs this is where we landed with regard to our “closing” or most effective grouping within the game. Sometimes Malik Thomas was in the mix too… but he scored his only two points of the game in OT and struggled to be impactful in this one (hopefully he’ll reclaim his mojo soon).
One of the most effective elements of this offense was that it allowed De Ridder room to work all of his one-on-one covers without the ability of N.D. to help as much. The Fighting Irish finished with two-fewer fouls than we did (52 called in the game, dear goodness) but ALL three of their credible bigs fouled out because of having to deal with TDR. Here’s a look at Towt trying to cover him toward the end of the first half. Towt wasn’t often on the floor when we were in this lineup, but when he was Thijs was quick to attack him off of the bounce and look for contact on the drive:
Notice on that one how he was already moving toward the hoop on the catch; knowing what he wanted to do with the matchup. Perhaps that’s something he picked up from Thomas.
We didn’t get a ton in primary transition, but we did do a nice job of pressing our advantages and finding clean looks on the secondary break. We saw the look from Tillis above; here’s a game-changing look at the end of the game, down two possessions, with around a minute to go. We absolutely needed a stop, got a great defensive stand from De Ridder in isolation against Shrewsberry, then had Tillis push the tempo to Chance, who blistered with it up the floor, who attacks the baseline and finds the hot-handed Lewis trailing the play.
This three with 54 seconds to go, now, completely changed the trajectory of the game – and it was the tempo we could play with this lineup, fueled by the defense we could play with this lineup that generated it.
These are just going to keep getting later in the game and more clutch now. Here is the following inbound play after that shot above. This has a little bit of everything; Tillis’s smarts to cheat away from the inbounder and deny the pass, along with the pressure of the others almost forcing the violation. Then Dallin Hall with characteristic hustle to deny the pass and save it from going out of bounds. Aware and unselfish passing from Tillis and Lewis, and then De Ridder, yet again, attacking the rim downhill with a quality finish.
We went from down 4 to up 1 in about 8 seconds of game clock.
Next, we’re still in regulation, now down two again after N.D. hit yet another crazy three from isolation. This is a pretty sweet SLOB design that first gives TDR a look attacking off of the bounce but then, if he doesn’t make progress, which he doesn’t, we fake a stagger screen, preying on the common thought that De Ridder is our primary option. We never even get to the second screen as Tillis slips out of the first which leaves him with a good run at the rim due to the extra defensive attention on TDR.
Check out how much room to roam Devin has there because of the gravity of Lewis and even Hall who had hit one earlier in either corner. Not only was it a sweet play design, but Tillis made both clutch free throws in what would be the final points of regulation.
Alright, let’s move to OT. Odom used some nice subbing patterns, especially in double OT to keep TDR from getting his fifth foul. I was a bit worried in that final stanza that he was sitting for too long before coming in, but it turned out to be just the right amount to get him some rest and let him contribute maximally prior to actually foul out. This was in the first OT, though, and it’s a great look at the design to keep him involved as well as his ability to finish through N.D.’s weak contact. This starts as a horns set where De Ridder sets a back screen for Tillis, then turns that into a pick and roll with Hall, who does a nice job of taking the angle out wide and leading TDR toward the rim on the pass.
If you pause at 9 seconds into the clip, you’ll see the dramatic amount of space Thijs has to work with on the catch with our small ball lineup basically in a box around him.
And we’ll close by just acknowledging some of the absolute clutch shot-making from Lewis and Mallory. First, we were treated to this shot, which was a complete bail-out. To save the game. Not only was it off of the move, but it was awkwardly released over a quality contest from a 6’10” defender.
I really hope Sam Lewis runs it back with us next year because I’m such a fan. He’s improved his game in so many ways from his time at Toledo… most notably his defensive urgency and awareness… but also his ability to pull up from deep off of the bounce like he did here.
Rose to the moment.
Not to be outdone (although nothing really topped that shot in this game), Mallory also hit this huge corner three, down two, with under two to go in the second OT:
He was just lining it up mentally and was ready to shoot on the catch, but do notice in that clip how much Gravity TDR was pulling in the lane; making it easier for Mallory to take advantage of the space.
Finally, and this one might have been understated compared to some of the other shots in this game, but this little mid-range jumper to take the lead from 1 to 3 with just 16 seconds to go after running down the shot clock was huge from Lewis:
Sick behind the back dribble to get his man so much on the back foot that he had time to stop and measure the shot. I can’t stress enough how much his game off of the bounce has taken a positive step – and leading by 3 instead of 1 here virtually takes away your opposition’s scoring options unless they want to try to get a quick two and play the fouling game.
These final stretches were kind of like seeing the orchestra come together after having been tuning the strings most of the game. It was cool to see how Odom was just tinkering… tinkering all game until he found what needed to happen and despite that thing (what needed to happen) being so different than the normal thing we like to do, he full on embraced it throughout the end of regulation and most of both OTs.
Again, I don’t expect this will be something we should do very often, but it was cool to see it work well.
Miscellaneous
Okay, just a few miscellaneous points before closing. Jacari White still wasn’t playable but this time it was because of his defense instead of his turnovers and shot selection. He actually picked up two fouls immediately upon entering the game, including one allowing for a four-point play:
And then, later, just didn’t have the awareness or urgency to close out on this three:
So, that’s the bad news and, really, it’s not great, that it’s not just his brace that appears to be keeping him out of form. The more limited game run of late has cropped up across the non-injury parts of his game, as well. The silver-lining is that Odom didn’t let things get out of hand and only played him for 6 minutes in this one. We’re absolutely going to need him to reach our ceiling. Having him in this condition puts so much pressure on our other guards, and is rough when Malik Thomas is also not on his game… as was the case in this one. We did try to play both Gertrude and Carrère which was also positive to see when we most needed solutions, but neither was able to put a positive thumb on the scale – Gertrude leading to a poor end of shot clock three and too much dribbling on offense and Carrère having a key defensive breakdown. Fortunately (and hopefully) this next stretch of games should offer Jacari some lower-stakes opportunities to get back into form… as long as we’re similarly short with the leash if anything funky is going on with the scoreboard…. We really can’t mess around and let B.C. keep the game close.
The last thing I wanted to call out was that N.D. did get a run out from one of their bigs, and at a key moment early in the first OT, although it wasn’t an ongoing issue throughout the game.
Just like we were vulnerable against the run out against UNC, here De Ridder follows his own shot on the long rebound and gives up balance in the process. It wasn’t something the Fighting Irish were able to take advantage of with any volume like the Tar Heels did with Wilson and Stevenson, but it was still relevant and gave them a two-score lead early in OT.
Something to keep an eye on.
In Conclusion
Later today we should see our guys play a Boston College team that is surprisingly not in the cellar of the ACC standings… but Notre Dame actually is (tied with four others at 2-6), so you never know when you could be tested. I’m hoping that the wake-up call in this one will serve to sustain our intensity over this next group of four games, all of which are among the worst the conference has to offer and should provide some opportunities to get right. There are a handful of guys, three specifically, who are absolutely killing it for us right now – and their high level of performance can carry us through a lot – but the majority of the roster appears to be in a little bit of a funk at the moment and could use some confidence.
Here’s hoping this stretch brings calm and the game flows through us, rather than us pressing and searching for some of the answers we once had. Nothing has changed with regard to talent or outlook, but form can vary. Let’s solidify that form prior to a more challenging stretch run.
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