“This team has too many good shooters to all go cold at once,” I wrote in what seems like a distant life.
Whoops.
Technically, thanks to some Jacari White heroics, it was true in this game… but I’m shocked at how much it’s become a pretty consistent issue on a game-to-game basis during the latter part of conference play. These are the same guys who basically all came here with 36%+ career averages from deep. These are the same guys who, almost to a man outside of Malik Thomas, shot better than their averages in the early season. These are the same guys who are getting good looks at the basket from out there!
It was very relevant in this game, though, because of how FSU plays defense. The Seminoles run the following as a starting 5:
- Robert McCray V (6’4″)
- Lajae Jones (6’7″)
- Thomas Bassong (6’8″)
- Alex Steen (6’9″)
- Chauncey Wiggins (6’10”)
Basically, they don’t really have a true Center to matchup with our 7-footers and they’ve struggled on the glass and at rim protection throughout the season… but they have great positional size everywhere else. What this means is that they play a pretty unique style of defense in that they switch every single ball screen 1-5 and then aggressively help on the interior – even running some matchup and pure zones at times. They basically pack the middle… and even focused on double teaming Thijs De Ridder in this one, which allowed for plenty of clean looks from outside.
With 30% shooting from deep, though (which would have been much worse had Jacari White not gone 5-9), we were really struggling to punish them for this. In fact, the threes that we did make, felt like they were the most difficult ones that bailed out poor possessions, and the one we did make were more of the open clean looks. I wonder what to make of that… maybe the whole not thinking thing.
As a result, that was a hard puzzle for us to solve for the majority of the evening because the thing FSU was willing to accept wasn’t working overly effectively. So, in this piece, we’re going to initially explore how they were playing us, the struggles that caused, some counters we found but only sparingly… and then we’ll wrap by looking at the absolutely dominating final 8-minutes of the game we played; a 16-4 run where we turned a 9-point deficit into a 3-point victory.
Struggles On The Switch
As mentioned, FSU proactively switched ball screens with their lengthy defense. It felt almost like a Pack Line (it wasn’t) in the way that they would sag/help on driving lanes and collapse when we got the ball inside. They would double team TDR often when he’d get the ball near the paint, as well, saying in the press conference after the game that it was part of their game plan to take him away.
We’ve got a lot to look at and the tape shows what we’re talking about here quite well so let’s just get into it. In this first look, below, you can see the philosophy in action right out of the gate, the first play of the game. Every ball screen at the point, of which we run several, FSU switches and the two nearby wings pinch in on any drive attempts and then recover back on the pass. Notice how there’s a lot of stationary play from our guys without the ball; mostly standing around the perimeter sometimes with TDR posting up.
Now, we ended up with a three at the end of that because Johann Grünloh fired away over the closeout of the shortest player in the FSU lineup. Cool; we’ll take it… and good for Johann for knocking it down. We’re going to see, though, that this became a trend where we’d often have to hit contested threes, sometimes from deep, sometimes with acrobatics, to make up for the fact that our offense didn’t really make any progress all possession.
Here is another possession, much like the above, this time with more focused attempts to probe but a similar lack of success, ending in a logo three this time (I realize I’m starting out showing makes… but the takeaway should be that these are bad possessions with good shooting). Look at how extended and away from the three-point line, even, that the early passes are. Every time they hand of or exchange, FSU just stays home; offering no glimpse at driving lanes. De Ridder attempts to force the issue, but the collapse on his handle and force him to gather and kick out (they straight ripped this from him later in the game). Mallory doesn’t have a shot on the catch and ends up resetting the offense to Malik Thomas with 3 seconds left on the shot clock – probably 30+ feet away from the hoop.
You’ll start to see the issue that we ran A LOT of ball screens for an action that wasn’t really achieving much. As a volume creation engine.
There are a lot of these, so brace yourself, but we’re going to be looking through some of the different iterations. This next play is successful only because of offensive rebounding, which was valuable but, at just 32% of our misses, was also one of our lower numbers of the season despite the apparent advantage we could have had. Similar ball screens with no opportunity. One adjustment is we see TDR trying to more aggressively slip the screen… and we’ll see that had some moments later with Ugo, but still no real action inside. Ugo is moving around without much purpose. When Mallory takes the pass out from Ugo, he turns the corner and tries to attack the drive. It was a decent idea and it worked to draw some fouls for Lewis and TDR later in the game, but he just runs into the help here. Jacari ends up hoisting from the logo himself and De Ridder makes a nice play after securing the offensive rebound to go back strong and finish.
That depth and the finish from TDR is exactly what FSU was trying to limit all game and we can see why, because we had room to be effective there once we got it.
Okay, let’s look at a couple that didn’t actually end up in buckets so there’s no confusion that all of this was just working out well. This play we try some screens away from the ball rather than on it, which is good… but FSU still switches everything. The flaw here isn’t the idea. With about 10 seconds left on the shot clock Onyenso gets a favorable switch, being guarded one-on-one by the 6’4″ McCray V. He initially tries to present for a lob… we should have made an effort to throw him the ball there. Yes, there was a play earlier where McCray stole an entry pass to TDR, but he should not be able to cover Ugo one-on-one and forcing the issue, and maybe even some fouls, would have been desirable on this switch. Instead, we allow FSU to work some more help toward the back side, don’t make an aggressive skip pass to Lewis in the corner to punish, and end up with Jacari White trying to take the 6’10” Wiggins (#7) in isolation with one hand. He loses control and Ugo can’t convert the rushed put back.
The most glaring thing about that video other than I can’t wait for White to gain access to both hands is how easily Onyenso ended up catching that ball over McCray when he was forced to. Instead of having him hang out in the opposite short corner, we needed to be doing everything we could to punish these switches by throwing him the ball high on the interior with the mismatch.
Alright, this time we’re able to get the ball into Thijs in the post. He draws a second defender, which causes Hall’s man to pinch down and Lewis’s man play middle between Lewis and Hall. Now, if you pause at 17 seconds to go on the shot clock, I still like the idea of throwing the ball up to the rim for Ugo. McCray shouldn’t be able to guard him there. But, you can see that the real decision is to make Martin Somerville (#1) have to recover to either of the two guards. Hall is probably the correct first pass, because he has to cover more ground to get there, but he’s probably the player you want shooting that shot the least, certainly of the guards. So, TDR tries the pass to Sam who is too far back of the line, and then the recovery is there and the touch pass over to Hall has effectively created nothing and the defense is entirely reset. TDR ends up jamming a drive down the lane into a double team that could have been a more controlled shot.
We just needed to play more confidently. It wasn’t the best matchup for Dallin Hall in general if they were going to play us like that, but if you’re not going to try the lob to Ugo (I still think you force them to defend that), then you have to be willing to skip it over to Hall and he has to be willing to shoot it. I also think Sam needs to be closer to the three-point line so the ball has less distance to cover and ready to shoot on the catch, too.
Alright, this next one was one of two poor travels by Malik Thomas. The thing is, this paint touch is exactly what you want. He uses his cross-over and strength to get into the lane and collapse the defense around him… and at 13 seconds left to shoot, he’s got to defenders around him and one trying to cut off the baseline pass to Tillis. If he can split the double, it’s a dump off to Onyenso here. He’s also skilled enough that he should be able to hit that pass out to Tillis… but Chance, whose man has gotten a little lax, sliding down near side is the best pass here. Thomas just gets lost in the sauce, panics, and moves his pivot foot.
So, even when we were able to do exactly what we should have wanted to do… the pass itself wasn’t executed well. Also note, this would still rely on another three-point shot to beat the defense… which, I want Mallory taking that all day, but it’s still a challenge when they aren’t falling.
This one, below, ends up leaving Jacari hung out to dry in the corner having to shoot with time expiring on the shot clock. We get there, again, because there’s a lot of standing around on the perimeter, some probing drives that go nowhere and back out. Jacari’s drive as probably the most promising, but he ran it into Ugo. TDR has space on the back side, but it’s hard to see over all of the traffic. The ball stuck with Dallin for far too long, and then eventually his drive leads to the blocked shot. This was after Jacari had been heating up, so FSU was also using McCray to shadow White and make sure he wasn’t getting looks:
The fact that FSU was defending so aggressively in the paint also caused us to turn the ball over quite a bit trying to force things to beat their rotations… which, in turn, caused us to be more hesitant – probably why some of these lob passes weren’t attempted (because we did try a few that didn’t work out).
We turned the ball over 14 times – here’s one example where White tries to split the switch with a bounce pass but is too late:
Now, those clips, above are basically all looks at our offense not really being able to solve their defense even if something good happened at the end of the play. These next clips, however, show how we were able to create some really open threes that we just weren’t knocking down… which compounds the offensive issue because we were often taking what was being given and just not capitalizing.
This first of these looks, we benefit from getting the ball up the court quickly, and Dallin Hall drives the lane and collapses the defense. It’s a simple kick out for Malik Thomas from there, clean look, he just doesn’t knock it down.
Where did that scorching hot early-ACC Thomas go? We need that guy back.
This next one is kind of insane that none of these shots went in, aside from the Thomas force-up at the end. It’s really good ball movement that put FSU into scramble… but it’s also over-passing and giving up quite a few good looks, too. Chance has a three-point opportunity that I’d want him to take at 23 seconds on the shot clock. Instead, he drives it and whips it over to Dallin, who goes back to Thomas again. Thomas finds Tillis who should absolutely shoot that shot at 20 seconds to go. Instead, he passes back to Chance, who drives it again, and passes it back to Tillis who this time takes the quality shot. After Malik gets the offensive rebound, this time Tillis drives it and, this is what I wanted us to do more, makes a nice pass to the sealing Grünloh. I don’t want Johann taking a little baby hook there. I mean, it’s fine, but go up strong through contact and score and maybe draw a foul. Then Malik just kind of loses patience and tries to force a shot up through bigger bodies.
This was right around the time Johann as blocked at the rim with an anticipatory 6’6″ defender. He needs to watch the patience with which Ugo plays, often keeping the ball secure, confident that he has the advantage, and letting anticipatory would-be shot-blockers fly by before calmly finishing. Play stronger and more confidently.
Okay, here’s a really nice skip pass from Hall to Thomas that creates a look we’d want:
That’s perfect – he plays off of the switch and reads the help side defender from the corner dropping down to help, and whips the pass out there. Have to want these kinds of looks.
This last one, below, we get everything we should want out of the TDR post up again. He finds Thomas in the corner, who could shoot this, but passes to Hall, who could shoot that, but passes to Mallory, who should shoot that, who drives and kicks out to TDR who rushes his look and misses poorly as a result.
Why are he passing up good for worse? ALL of those guards, especially Mallory there need to have the belief to let those shots fly, even if we’re not hot.
It’s not like we were entirely without counters, but we didn’t go to them/try them enough. Slip screens, beating the switch and confusing the hand off were there. We got a big one later in the game, but Ugo was doing a really nice job of catching and finishing over the help.
I’d have liked to see us be more intentional about hunting these and not actually setting the screen.
The other thing we were pretty terrible at most of the game, but it worked wonderfully when we actually did it, was cutting into the lane without the ball to help out these drivers against the help defense.
Here’s Tillis beating his man back door from the corner once his man has his attention occupied by the Mallory drive. It’s a really nice layoff from Chance for the reverse layup – one of the easiest buckets of the night.
And then here’s something very similar, but from Malik Thomas to Sam Lewis. Sam reacts to the Thomas drive and Malik delivers an even more difficult pass.
Pretty!
Far too often, like you saw so many times above, when one of our guys would attempt to drive the switch or in isolation, three other guys would just stand around the arc typically with one of the Centers stationary around the hoop. Move without the ball! Playing off of these drives by moving to empty space away from the help was effective but hardly utilized.
Now that we’ve covered the FSU defense and our general offensive struggles, now it’s time to explore the three things that I thought were most key in us shifting the balance and taking over the game late.
Closing Time
Jacari White’s Offense
I won’t bury the lede here, Jacari White’s attack and sniper tendencies broke up a lot of the above. It’s not like we played much better offense in a lot of these; a lot of these were just him making a nice play and feeling confident enough to hunt his offense.
Here’s a similar look to what you’ve seen earlier. Jacari does do a nice job of moving without the ball this time, but around the arc to fill the vacated spot from which Chance drove. That part was good… but this is still a really difficult shot, on the move, squaring up, with the 6’10” Wiggins (#7) jumping out to contest. We saw how much his contest bothered TDR earlier – this is great body control and concentration from White coupled with smart movement:
That one was before the big comeback started, as will be the next one, and he’d hit another before against a zone, but I thought it was worth showing how he started to heat up.
Okay, so this is the heat check and it’s just awesome individual skill in isolation with the dribble between the legs into the step back three over to heated contests.
That has nothing to do with team offense… that’s just a guy who is feeling it carrying.
Now we’re at the point in the game I’ve been highlighting – the 9-point deficit with 8 minutes to go. It’s from here that we go on that big 16-4 run and you’ve seen that White is really our only guy who is hot offensively (Ugo is also playing phenomenally defensively, which we’ll see soon, but good as a finisher too).
This offensive set goes nowhere with all of the similar issues as in the first section – but White just gives himself some more depth and shoots from farther away!
This next one ends in an outrageously difficult midrange jumper, with a 6’7″ player right on his shooting hip contesting his look. He works into the lane with his cast hand dribbling, by the way. That shot as crazy… more so because notice how many threes our guys could have taken but passed up prior to ending in that shot:
So, on one hand, man… Jacari was just awesome here… but on the other hand, man our guys were way too hesitant to shoot the ball! All of Dallin, Chance, and Thijs should have probably let a three go prior to this craziness.
This is the part here Jacari starts to look at his hand and realize that the power was inside of him this whole time (probably)! First, check out that insane offensive rebound as he climbs the ladder off of the Chance miss. Then, after another unsuccessful Mallory attempt, White just clears out and executes that slip screen with Ugo very well for the dunk.
Next up, now you see that the ball is “finding him” as Coach Odom said post game… it’s finding him because his teammates are looking for him because his right hand is a fully operational blow torch at the moment. This one Hall intentionally sets up the drop off to Jacari at first but he misses one… Ugo again, just showing up huge as we’ll see more of soon, with the rebound, and then Dallin goes right back to White for the second chance.
Lead already down to two and still 5 minutes to go. That’s one thing you’ve got to love about Dallin Hall – he’s aware of these kinds of things in game and makes a point of trying to exploit it as much as possible. Don’t give Jacari time to cool off… just keep feeding him!
And then, the coup de grace! I’m sure I’m not the only one who was holding my breath considering this was how he broke his wrist to begin with, but this of all things was actually what proved to be the game-winning basket. One-minute to go, down 1, FSU is mostly back and has to be thinking we’ll try to run some kind of play. Instead, Jacari “Jacari White” White just sticks the blowby dribble and dunks it on some Seminole head!
Absolutely electric stuff! Shades of the Dayton game.
If you’re a UVa fan, I think a reasonable concern is that we absolutely needed Jacari White to go full ham in order to win this game. Secondarily, we didn’t really solve the FSU defense outside of generating some open threes that we weren’t hitting. There were probably some more solutions in there, like cutting without the ball or forcing things to bigs after switches that we should have sought more often. That being said, there are a bunch of guys on this team who can go off from night-to-night, and we haven’t had this one available to us at full-strength in a while.
So, that’s really exciting that we now do.
Ugonna Onyenso – One-Man-Zone
FSU kept building up leads when Ugo was out of the game and then we’d cut them back when he was in the game. It’s no shock that he closed the final 8 minutes except for one play where we were trying not to give up any threes. It was his absolute terrorism of the lane that held the Seminoles to 4-points in that span (and you saw some of his offensive contributions). Jacari White was the most visible piece to our success in this one – but Ugonna Onyenso was every bit as important if not more so.
Okay, let’s do the same thing where we show a couple of early clips to show that he was being impactful early. Here’s a crazy-quick reaction and great reach to deflect a return pass after playing sag defense:
And here’s just an awesomely smothering defensive set on Chauncey Wiggins (#7) from the perimeter as he sticks with his man and blocks the shot cleanly at the rim after the isolation:
Wiggins averages over 12 per game and scored 2 in this one on 1-6 shooting.
But late in the game, and I thought this was a pretty sick adjustment, we often played Thijs De Ridder, and I’ll say more about his defense in a moment, on the 6’10” Wiggins throughout the game because he shoots 33% from three and Thijs had no issue bodying him/chasing him. We put Ugo on the 6’8″ Thomas Bassong (#3) who shoots only 26% from three and had zero points in this game (this front court defense, man)… and as the game neared its end, increasingly treated him like a non-shooter and ignored him on the perimeter. This allowed Ugo to basically act as a one-man zone. Watch in this clip below how Ugo just stays in the lane. Bassong calls for the ball on the perimeter, but Onyenso challenges the shot and then collects the rebound without worrying about going out there:
Here he’s guarding Alex Steen (#25) who is actually a non-shooter from deep, having only taken one on the season. FSU has decided to go a little smaller without Wiggins for the time being, and White actually gets beaten on a back door cut by the 6’7″ Lajae Jones (#10). No matter, because Steen can’t shoot from deep, Ugo can effectively guard to Seminoles at once. He’s there on the Jones catch and then the pass goes back to Steen… what’s Steen going to do coming down hill on Ugonna Onyenso?
Not much. We should be so impressed by this level of lane dominance and rim protection!
Okay, back to the strategy… this time Ugo is guarding the only 6’6″ AJ Swinton (#19) because, you guessed it, he shoots 28% from three and TDR is still on Wiggins. I love this series from them because TDR is on Wiggins to recover to the corner, but as Ugo basically ignores Swinton to help White on Jones and go get this shot block, Thijs ducks in ahead of Swinton so there aren’t even any dump off hopes.
Just such good help defense from them both!
Finally, this is just the logical extreme of all of that, down only one with 2-minutes to go, needing a stop. Ugo just literally camps the restricted area and ignores Swinton. Hall rotates over to give a contest so that he can’t just sit there all day… but that’s the shot we wanted and Onyenso is right there to grab the easy rebound rather than having White have to fight off the taller Jones.
It was just such a good strategy not only to allow Ugo to keep FSU from getting anything inside and taking the correct calculated gamble that none of these players would beat us shooting it… but it also helped to negate a defensive mismatch they had in their favor with White needing to be in for his offense but also having to cover the much bigger Jones who was the game’s leading scorer at 21.
Thijs De Ridder’s Switchability
I wrote about this in my last piece so it’s was neat to see it be so impactful in this one. De Ridder spent much of the game marking Wiggins when he was in, as I mentioned earlier, holding him 10 points under his average, to just two-points on 1-6 shooting. This allowed Ugo the flexibility to guard worse shooting smaller players and to keep from being pulled away from the hoop. But just like De Ridder can guard up on a 6’10” player who is a shooting threat, he also switched onto Robert McCray V, who really just did everything for FSU in this one, several times at the end of the game in crunch time and was successful all but one bad foul call.
Keep in mind, McCray had 20 and was effective as a three-level scorer in this one. All of our guards were struggling to contain him. Also note, though, that since TDR is guarding Wiggins, who FSU likes to use as a pick and pop option, he gets to switch onto the ball handler in these as opposed to if it had been Ugo he’d have had to have sagged. Some really good defensive matching up from Odom!
This first one is more careless from McCray with the bobble, but then it’s good hands from TDR to deflect the ball off of him out of bounds, forcing the turnover.
This next one… there’s just so much coolness packed into this play… I love it so much. First, TDR on Wiggins to start, takes the switch with McCray. Hall goes with Wiggins, but because Ugo is hanging out in the lane because Swinton is in the corner, it’s not overly tempting to try something in there. TDR does a really nice job shutting down the drive but, meanwhile, Swinton has set a screen for Somerville (#1) who shoots 34% from deep. Ugo would have probably let Swinton alone as you saw in the clips above… but he recognizes that it’s not Swinton and then closes out on the shot enough to block the three-point try out of bounds!
You can see there’s just a beat of hesitation where he’s not expecting to close out, identifies, and then swoops in like a condor. I just thought this was so impressive across the board. Odom with the correct matchups, TDR switchable on literally any of FSU’s players, but cutting off probably the hardest for him to guard, and then Ugo reading the play and having the ability to react and stop it so conclusively. Man.
This last one, though, is the best look at TDR in isolation against the Seminole PG. He’s so quick on his feet for his size and with his strength, and he shuts down the angle on to different changes of direction from McCray, and then just stone walls it at the end.
Ugo again with the board!
Again, this was the second consecutive game that TDR had just 9-points – but his defense was awesome throughout. It’s such a luxury to have a versatile defender like this who you can count on to lock up a big or the opposition’s best ball handler.
In Conclusion
The offense wasn’t good… but the defense really was. There’s a reason people thought this might be a trap game. FSU had won four out of five before this including a game at Miami. Their one loss was by three at SMU. This was a team that put up 87 points on Duke.
That’s not to say that FSU is amazing or that we couldn’t have beaten them by more if we’d, again, put a complete game together on both sides of the ball… which we haven’t really done in a while. They have been paying MUCH better than their yearly results suggest, though, and this will end up being a solid Q2 win that has an outside shot at moving up to a Q1 if they keep it up.
Thank goodness for Jacari White and Ugonna Onyenso being the ones to have huge big games. Hopefully, there will be more in Nashville carrying the torch against Ohio St.! I’d love to see similar defense to what we’ve been playing in our last few… but with some renewed offensive purpose, vigor, and confidence.
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