It’s fair to say that the team has entered a bit of a mid-season slump, of sorts. Fortunately, while doing so, they’ve managed to still win two (more challenging than they should have been) more games after the UNC defeat. The “slump” can be taken quite literally; after shooting 30% from deep against UNC and 34% against Notre Dame, we rolled into Boston and shot a season-worst 17% from range on 4-23 shooting.
The fact that we still managed to win the game… and fairly comfortably in the end (though never as comfortably as you’d have hoped)… speaks to the adjustments we made to force the issue inside. I think back to the last not just bad, but catastrophic, shooting game we had – 22% on 45 attempts at Virginia Tech… you’ll notice that we shot almost twice as many threes in that game despite similar struggles. Granted, some of those attempts were bolstered because of the three overtimes, so it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples. That being said, a frustration in that game was that we never really altered our strategy and tried to get the ball inside when the shots weren’t falling. We talked about it at length back then – how our lack of adjustments to our core strategy cost us that one. Well, we’ve updated our portfolio, if you will.
As in-depth as these pieces go, it’s always shocking to me when figuring out what I want to write about how selective I actually have to be. I have to choose a few things that feel most relevant for the moment, get into those, and then tackle other things in other games. For example, you’d think I’d sit here and showcase how Thijs De Ridder, Chance Mallory, and Malik Thomas made a point of getting the ball inside; especially in the second half. But, given that those guys have been doing that for a few games now and we’ve talked about it some, it’s not going to be one of the focus areas. Just know, though, that lately Mallory and De Ridder have been the consistent players who can take over a game and make things happen… and then we’ve had a cast of other players; last game it was Sam Lewis, this game it was Malik Thomas… it’s been others step up to augment.
Since it’s not going to be the focus, here’s one good look at TDR passing up an open three to force the issue inside – and he cemented his ACC Player of The Week in this one:
The interesting thing, to me, is that despite UVa’s poor shooting, their offense across basically the entire season has stayed pretty similar in terms of efficiency. Heck, we scored 46 second half points in this one after making the adjustment to go inside and B.C. is not a bad defensive team (53rd in the country on Kenpom). We got up to 80 in the loss to UNC in regulation – and out-raced N.D. by getting to 100 in double OT. No, the difference between our dominant stretch from the N.C. State game to the SMU game to the more disappointing 2.5 game run recently, has been the regression of our defense.
So, what has caused that? Has it been our insanely high foul rate? Well, certainly that hasn’t helped – as we continue to both get a bad whistle (likely due to reputation) and also make some really poor frustration/overly-aggressive fouls. But, no, that really has been pretty consistent all year. Has it been the return of Jacari White to the lineup after being out? Maybe a little bit. His defense has been quite poor in spurts, lacked some urgency, and some of our rotations/communications haven’t been great. But, no, he hasn’t been drawing enough minutes, especially when his defense has been poor to make things so dramatically different. No, the biggest thing, at least to my eye, has been that the defense of our Centers, to some degree, but mostly from Johann Grünloh has been slumping and very much not in the same form it was earlier in the year. So, let’s start there.
Grünloh’s Defensive Struggles
This isn’t to put it all on one player, please don’t mistake me, Ugo is playing much more impactfully on that end right now, but still hasn’t been quite as dominant as he was earlier, and there are still plenty of mistakes from our perimeter players; but the lack of comparative quality of Johann’s defensive minutes has been the biggest driver in our overall defensive decline, in my opinion. Consider, Grünloh has been our most impactful defensive presence over the full season when considering team performance with him in the game; followed by De Ridder, Mallory, and then Onyenso.
But, his impact has been nothing like that recently. In the UNC and Notre Dame games, both of our Centers struggled some in terms of their defensive impact (especially with the 5-out-never-challenge-the-paint style that N.D. was employing) – but Grünloh’s struggles, which had already been more pronounced upon watching the film, were considerable in this one AND showed up on the scoreboard. He finished at -9 in +/- in this game… the only player in the negatives on the team, while Onyenso finished +16; the highest on the team.
Yes, yes, universal disclaimer that individual game +/- can be very misleading. It’s not for this one. Let’s take a look at some of the issues. I should also preface by saying I have no idea why this is the case for Grünloh recently despite him being so impactful earlier. It could just be the grind of the schedule, something mental, something physical (illness, unreported nagging injury)… it could just be a lapse in form. I will say that, given the totality of the year, I doubt this is something that persists throughout the remainder of the year; we’re just going to look at what is happening now.
Alright, here’s a first look where B.C. just isolates Grünloh on the block and scores over him with a left-handed quasi-drop step. This is Jayden Hastings (#22) who out muscles Grünloh but who is also only 6’9″ and only averages 6.3ppg. Now, Johann isn’t the only one who had a couple of isolation or quick shot buckets scored on them – Ugo did as well – but this was early in the game and this is not a quality contest on the shot given his positioning.
It’s too passive. So that’s an initial look at the lack of physicality or assertiveness on the shot block attempt that we’re more used to seeing from Johann – whose block rate has really suffered over the past few games (he’s had 1 in total over his last three and averages over 2 per game).
This next one, below, we see the lack of change-of-direction and mobility on the perimeter that showed up more in his time overseas but that he’d improved dramatically earlier in the season. This time he switches onto the perimeter, bites on the pump fake, and allows the blowby with absolutely no resistance.
It’s a struggle for all players to flip from closing out to then guarding the blowby – even harder for 7-footers – but this was something Johann was doing better earlier in the year, retreating better, keeping able to contest the shot, sometimes even cutting off driving lanes. Here, it’s matador-style.
In the pick and roll, he’d thrived earlier in the season in drop coverage; doing a good job of gauging the distance needed to contest or block the ball-handler while being able to recover back to his own. He isn’t playing with the same feel or disruption now. Here’s a look, below, of him backing up and giving up way too much ground and then, he realizes he’s on the back foot too much, steps up, and gives up the angle for an easy pass to his man on the finish.
The other two weren’t bad, but this one is the most concerning to me because it’s the staple of how we defend and he’d once been playing it SO much better than he is now. This looks like he’s still learning what he’s supposed to do and, again, it’s much more passive than what we’re used to seeing where he’d bait the shot or pass attempt, be in better position to cut off the passing angle, be in disruptive range earlier on the drive….
Here’s a similar look that’s not quite as bad, re: pacing and angling… but it’s still pretty bad. He opens himself up too much so that the pass can get back to his man, is a little late realizing the need to step up on the drive, and then jumps into and fouls his man in desperation on the recovery.
He just seems to be missing his feel here, to be honest, like all of the processing is on slight delay.
This next one is a similar feel but not directly off of a ball screen. There’s a skip pass that goes to Donald Hand Jr. (#13) after Grünloh’s cover, the 6’11” Boden Kapke (#33) sets a back screen. This leaves Johann in isolation while Lewis tries to recover… and he does effectively clog the lane at first to not allow the straight-line drive. The problem is, Grünloh allows Hand to cross his face and then, worse, he just kind of looks at him the whole time without really doing anything proactive. He doesn’t even contest the jump shot despite being right there, he merely watches Hand and turns to rebound.
That one is my least favorite of the clips so far because it’s really hard to explain what he’s doing. Sure, if he was worried about Kapke as a shooter and left early or something to recover it would make more sense… here it’s just a lack of alertness and effort/intensity to try to route hand or make his shot more difficult. That one is discouraging to see and makes me wonder if something was off physically or mentally.
In general, it just feels like he’s kind of late reacting to things. Here’s a look in transition, below, where I would have expected him to block this shot normally; or at least give a much more disruptive contest. Instead, he sort of turns away from the play at first to locate his man and then just never springs into action as I’d expect, given everything, to try to get to this block:
My best guess is that he doesn’t think Hand is going to be able to split White and Thomas there and is trying to cut off the pass… but he still takes himself under the basket with a reactive/retreating jumping angle when he very easily could have positioned himself to launch at the shot, given his recovery and momentum.
The other element is that he’d really shown some improvement securing the defensive glass since the Virginia Tech game – but he was struggling again in this one. Here, below, he’s just passive, a step slow with all of his reactions again, and just kind of feels lost.
And then this next one is probably my least favorite of all. B.C. decides to try to back down the Mallory size disadvantage after isolating in transition. Grünloh is right there and could take the opportunity to step up, try to contest the shot and bother passing lanes with his reach while doing so. Instead, he chooses the passive option of allowing the shot and retreating again… but his retreat doesn’t do anything! He still doesn’t keep his man from tapping the rebound back out to his teammate, and then the subsequent follow up is just a catastrophe of flat-footedness under the rim.
The alarm bells, to me, are that there were SO many opportunities for Grünloh to have a positive impact on that play and, instead, he kind of passes up every single one and, in doing so, basically becomes an observer. CTB would have benched him for a week (not saying that’s correct, just emphasizing the alarm of impact on this play)!
Something is off and I hope it can be corrected soon. My best guess is that it appears like he’s over-thinking everything and playing overly cautious. He was in foul trouble in this game; perhaps he was in his head about that – but I don’t think it can be solely explained by that and he was doing much better at all of these things for the majority of the year.
In the meantime…
Ugo To The Rescue?
Let’s be clear, Onyenso wasn’t perfect in this one, either. Here, for example, he also drops too much on the sag defense, doesn’t cut off the driving angle, and over-relies on trying to block the shot so that when the offensive player uses the rim as protection, he gets lost:
And he gave up a few contested finishes to Hastings around the basket, too.
BUT he was generally much more disruptive and active on the defensive end throughout. Here he is sending one of the isolation attempts (he did have two blocks in the game):
And here, below, contrast the verticality and effort on this contest of the midrange jumper compared to that of Johann on Hand earlier:
There’s juice to his defensive game that isn’t there with Grünloh at the moment.
It’s unclear whether it was this discrepancy, or noticing how the game flow was going, or Grünloh’s foul trouble that accounted for the reversion of their typical minutes (Ugo got 24, Grünloh got 15), but it was good and important that it happened. And, in case you’re wondering, I don’t even think the offensive piece is a tradeoff at this point. Grünloh was fine, I thought, with 4-points on 2-4 shooting, finishing a couple around the rim… but Ugo has actually been going quite well, of late, converting his opportunities both as a rim runner and when he has to finish over someone around the rim. He’s also been quite active on the offensive glass.
Let’s take some quick looks at this. Here he does a really nice job of going up and after the offensive rebound, kicking the ball back out and then immediately setting up the ball screen, and finally being patient around the rim after taking an open return pass; knowing that he’s got the advantage as long as he doesn’t jam the ball into an anticipatory block:
I’ve really liked how calm and patient he’s been when he’s gotten the ball deep lately (to be fair, Johann has also been doing this pretty well offensively lately as well – but important to call off no trade-off with Ugo right now).
Here’s one of the plays of the game; but what’s most notable about this is how fluid the footwork is. A big Center could easily travel or hesitate here, but Ugo fluidly turns to the hoop on the catch here, rips the ball through and away from the defender, and explodes right into the powerful dunk (and 1)!
And here he is, also, with some light finishing work after Chance probes the defense – but a very steady and easy conversion point:
So, yeah, I wouldn’t hesitate to lean into this guy’s minutes like we did in this game if Johann continues to play like this defensively. I don’t actually think there’s much point in swapping them as starters. If anything, you’re potentially just hurting confidence there – and you can lean more into the Onyenso minutes without doing that just like Thomas kept starting but played less during his slump as well. That being said, the sooner Grünloh can revert to his previous defensive form, the better things will be for our depth, consistency, and overall defensive game.
Transition Run Outs
I mentioned that it was worth continuing to keep an eye on this. We saw it crop up a couple of times on Saturday; once notably breaking the press and another notable time here with all 5 of our guys compressing on the long rebound:
Ever since the UNC game we’ve gotten burned with a runout on a defensive rebound at least a couple of times per game. We still collected 39% of our misses with offensive rebounds in this one; below our season average but still very good… so the juice is still worth the squeeze here – but we have seen this more often recently.
Jacari White Brushing off Some Dust
Jacari played 17 minutes in this one and, as Coach Odom said after the game, it was the first since his return from injury where he looked more like himself. There were no glaring defensive lapses, he even dove after a loose ball at one point, and he was able to convert off of a drive (albeit all right-handed). The most exciting place that he added value was that he went 2-3 from three, though. Consider, we were 4-23 from deep in the entire game… and Jacari hit two of those.
It’s not that surprising when considering that White has sort of acted as our slump-buster for most of the season though – often being the lone guy shooting well during some of these off games. So, getting him spun up may provide a little more of a failsafe to our scoring; especially from distance.
I liked how we got him into these shots, too, as there were none of these awkward pull-up or step-back threes despite his brace. This one, below, is how I’d like to see us use him on offense more until he gets the brace off; heavy motion without the ball, running off of pin down screens and the like to free him up so that he can catch and shoot with a view to the hoop. This is reminiscent of an old CTB pin down freeing up a shooter, and Jacari effortlessly elevates into his shot to tie the game early.
Notice, also, the coordination of Lewis Iverson cutting to vacate the wing. It was a set play for White, and I’m here for more like it.
And then, later in the game, here’s kind of a unique pick and pop but with TDR as the ball handler and Jacari as the screener. I liked this action because of the gravity TDR should basically always bring for him now, BC lingered to make sure he didn’t turn the corner and White burned them again on the catch and shoot.
I’m not sitting here saying “he’s back!” given the sample size of what we’ve seen – this could just be a good game. Until the brace is off and/or he has more mobility in that left wrist, I’m tempering my expectations. That being said, this game was a glimpse at how I believe he should be utilized and can be most effective until that time; less time with the ball in his hands off of the bounce, more pressure put on the defense to stay attached to him moving without the ball (married to acceptable defense).
Transition Offense
This last section is something we haven’t talked about in a while. Much excited have we been (at least I know I have) that we’ve been more willing throughout the season to push the ball and take the easy points that present themselves. I think, when we’re making an effort to do this, good things still happen – and we saw this early in the game. I have noticed, however, that we’re doing this with less frequency and, at times, our execution has been pretty rough. I’m not fully sure of the reason. I would have said, recently, that it could be a depth issue considering White wasn’t playing as much and we’ve had moments where we haven’t played Tillis as much, either. This game had the full rotation of 9 at our disposal, though, so that couldn’t have been it on Saturday. Perhaps it was that we were trying to be more mindful about not shooting so many quick threes; given how that was going. It did seem like most of our transition offense came early, though, and then we either backed off of it or were just less effective.
Let’s look at some of the opportunities that we created early in the game. Here’s our very first bucket. It’s just us working the ball ahead, nothing blistering, before the B.C. defense is fully set and letting Thomas take advantage of his matchup in isolation with a sweet spin move:
Not much later, this is a really nice secondary break. Jacari’s man falls and, good gravy, I love Chance not only diving on this ball but actually coming out with it cleanly as opposed to just forcing a jump. He passes to White who pushes the ball, finds Ugo trailing, who then pushes a pass ahead to Mallory, whose man was still trailing the play.
Bingo! One more of our four made threes in the game. What I like most about that play is that it’s probing, sure, but it’s under control and it works through someone, in Ugo, who you don’t necessarily think of as a facilitator in transition. It was a pass with good vision and court-awareness, though!
Here’s a look at Chance forcing the issue himself and earning a trip to the foul line:
And even this next one, below, that doesn’t end as well – Thomas misses the three pretty badly and Ugo misses a put back he should have made – creates two solid opportunities:
Thomas pulling up from three before the defense is set could have gone, but also gave Onyenso a great opportunity to collect the board, which he did, and that was a quality shot he got around the bucket and just couldn’t convert.
You’ll notice, though, that all of those clips came within the first 11 minutes of the game. Those opportunities and attempts dried up from there – and the quality of those we did attempt was sorely lacking.
Here’s a look, below, where Malik Thomas pulls one of his earlier in the season moves and jams this fast break into a crowd; losing the ball in the process (and then getting blocked on the recovery).
Here’s a dual look at ugliness, below. First, Sam Lewis misreads the situation, puts his head down, and then tries to force a pass out to Thomas out in the corner (the wraparound dump off to Onyenso was there). Okay, so now we’re playing transition defense, force a miss, and get another run out with De Ridder leading a 3-on-2 break. The problem is, Thomas runs out to the wing to spot up rather than keep running at the hoop… and Lewis is just out of gas and late to fill, so the dump off pass to him gets deflected.
Two pretty poor decisions and executed transition opportunities there that, likely, should have at least yielded some free throws.
One more, and this is the one I’d imagine people who watched live remember the most. This steal leads to a two-on-one traditional fast break with Thomas and Hall, both having the size advantage on the 6’1″ Luka Toews (#10). Either of these guys should have been able to finish over or through Towes. Thomas, though, does the early pass to Hall, which guys do often when they want to take the pass back. It’s awkwardly executed where it doesn’t lead Hall, the bounce on the bounce pass hangs up, making hall wait up for it. Rather than break his stride only to restart again, Hall tries to immediately pass back to Thomas who, also, hasn’t taken a wide enough angle to create space between he and Hall. If he fans out a little more there, there’s more ground to cover. The bad and early pass makes the return pass predictable, and the angle run allows for the quick recovery time. Toews is basically able to be there on the catch, as a result, which Thomas bobbles out to the three-point line, and ends up taking that shot.
It was an open three and Tillis actually did a nice job tracking in for the rebound; so we had every opportunity to still make something happen here – but this should have absolutely been, at minimum, a trip to the foul line. Botched execution.
I don’t know. It did look like we’re dragging a bit, but I do want our team, who try to run so often, to better execute some of these high-quality opportunities that we’re getting and, ideally, to make more of them happen outside of the first quarter of the game.
In Conclusion
There’s nothing I’m seeing here that’s really concerning or not correctable. That being said, the form isn’t there at the moment and we do need to shake the funk – both the shooting slump but, more importantly even, the defensive form. If we were rolling into the postseason right now, I would be concerned. We just have plenty of time to get some of these things sorted out and have shown the ability to do so throughout most of the year.
We need to get confidence back in our outside shot, for sure, but we also need Johann back in defensive form, White to continue to recover, and to clean up a lot of our execution and concentration across both sides. Fortunately, neither Pitt nor Syracuse should be the most punishing of opponents as we sort through it… but, unfortunately, both could very easily give us stern tests (and even win) if we continue with our current form.
Here’s hoping we start to round the corner tonight!
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