We got run out of the gym.
It happens to most teams across most seasons at some point; but this was the first time this year that I was disappointed in the team. It wasn’t the 26-point margin, either… it was that we played scared. Not everyone. I thought De Ridder played pretty well considering everyone else, although I thought he may have been a little less than full health, and there were others who tried to make something happen and at least didn’t seem completely overwhelmed by the moment. but, if we’re talking collectively….
There were a couple of things going on here. Several looked overwhelmed with the environment. TDR said as much; that we weren’t ready to play and were bothered by Cameron. I thought their length and athleticism – especially on the perimeter – really bothered us and took us out of our game. But, we also let them dictate what we were going to do and were unwilling to challenge them/test them on their defensive end. We gave up 77, sure, we could have played better defensively, and they were hot from outside (50% for the game)… but this game was lost by our offense and its inability to get anything going. A lot of that was because we settled. 35 of our 55 shots from the field were from outside and we shot just 20% for the game. Some of that was due to their length and good contests… some of that was just missing wide-open looks. But I thought a lot of it was being unwilling at times and unable at others to challenge Duke on the interior.
Most frustratingly, there were opportunities there that we just passed up because we didn’t trust ourselves… and then we’d stall… and then we’d end up taking a bad jumper. The Blue Devils only blocked one of our shots all game! Sure, some of that was because we were taking so many threes… but some of that was because we just weren’t challenging them when the opportunity was there. Make them do it! Don’t cower and accept just not testing them. This was especially true for players like Ugo and Sam Lewis who I thought had some opportunities to make a play while going toward the rim and too often balked; resetting the offense instead.
We played like we were always flinching.
So, how do you write a piece like this? It is possible we just can’t compete with a team like that? Some just want to leave it at that and move on or tell you that it’s pointless to give a game like this much thought. And while that’s certainly possible and that’s the best team we’ve faced all year… I think there’s a TON of stuff that we could have done better and it’s worth talking about those things re: our longer-term prospects and IF we were to play that team again, how could we make it more competitive?
That’s what we’re going to focus on, then, just kind of going through both defense and offense and talking about things we did well and, mostly, areas for improvement. For the purposes of time and practicality, though, I’m just going to focus on the first half because that was when the game was at its most competitive and before any existential dread took over.
Defense
We’re going to start here because it was the lesser of the two evils. Of course, De Ridder picked up two fouls early. We only played him 9 minutes in the first half and, by then, the margin was already 15. That might have actually been our biggest mistake from Odom’s perspective is that we couldn’t afford to keep him out of the game for so long and De Ridder was doing a pretty good job on Boozer, for the most part, with some help. TDR finished the game with the two fouls. Just a waste to let the game get out of hand while playing him that little despite the two early ones. If we were to play them again… the primary goal has to be staying attached for as long as possible and so you can’t sit your best player for so long, period.
Boozer did have a ridiculous whistle, this we knew, but I thought that we showed we could challenge Duke and protect the rim when we had TDR and a Center in the game. Here’s Ugo, for example protecting the rim on a direct break out from Boozer, which led to a counter-break of our own and Mallory’s only three of the day:
Here’s one of Grünloh stepping up and blocking him on one of his drives after beating Tillis:
And here is a really nice look at Grünloh having to pick him up on a roll, absorbing his contact and blocking him straight-up. Then we do a decent job of swarming and pulling the ball out of there.
Grünloh was actually an insane -1 in plus/minus in this game in his 21 minutes given the 26-point spread. He also only played 9 minutes in the first half due to foul trouble. Ugo is normally a robust counter – and some of the issues were that he was being paired with Tillis… but when TDR and Johann were out there together, I thought there was some really stout play around the rim, and even some sneaky and timely double teams.
In the clip below, TDR attempts to contest the post up catch, and then Grünloh launches a very timely and wide double team. His quickness and reach allow him to deflect the pass out, forcing a steal.
In the first half, Boozer played 19 of the 20 minutes, the one being when he got hit in the eye. He didn’t have a single bucket from the field. Instead, he scored 11 points on TWELVE free throw attempts himself. Some of them were legit after nice up fakes that got our guys to jump. Some of them were absolutely bonkers calls as he forced his way through double teams and got phantom whistles. It was crazy. Still, our starting frontcourt playing fewer combined minutes in total to him in the first half was a huge part of the reason they ran away early.
But, in general, I thought we could complete with our rim protection, especially because none of Duke’s Centers are shooters (except for that heart-breaking Ngongba three). Here’s a nice look at Ugo just ignoring Maliq Brown (#6) on the outside and helping to support Malik Thomas on a drive.
This part of the defense game plan I liked. Keep a Center home, send them on a late double when necessary. The gap was just… you’ve got to actually play TDR to help stand up to the physicality even if the whistles are coming. We can only hope in a more neutral setting maybe they won’t come quite as frequently.
That was one of the few things I liked about our defense, though, and it was FAR less effective with Devin Tillis in the game. Also, Ugo wasn’t nearly as good at timing or coordinating his double teams. Here’s a great example with Boozer getting the ball in the post, this time vs. Devin Tillis. Now watch Ugo on this play, he calls out for Chance, who is caught between two defenders, to help with his… but what is Mallory going to do on a high pass to Maliq Brown? Furthermore, Ugo turns his back on Brown but doesn’t come hard on the double team. Instead, he just kind of lurks in no-man’s land, guarding no one. Chance reads wrong and sprints out to the corner, and Boozer just throws the easy lob up to Brown for the dunk.
That’s really just terrible defense and it’s mostly on Ugo. If he’s going to go, he needs to GO. All he did there was stop guarding his on man. But, it’s also the issue with Tillis being in the game over TDR. When De Ridder is playing, you can send the double at a good time or as a surprise… or not at all. With Tillis on the floor you have to double; and Ugo was just too antsy to do it.
Personally, even with either guarding, I’d like to hold off on the double team far longer. Make Boozer start to make an actual move then, when he’s kind of in it, send the shot blocker to hopefully get the shot or at least make the read come late. Don’t send the second guy when he hasn’t even picked up his dribble yet and is clearly surveying the floor. Oof. Like, that play is so terrible and just reeks of us being scared of him but not actually being willing to challenge him.
I think one of the biggest issues on defense, though, and this was true of the offense, certainly, was that neither Sam Lewis nor Malik Thomas made the trip to Durham, practically. They just both looked shell-shocked and we’ll see the most visible element of that on offense later, but it happened a ton on defense. For example, this offensive rebound is just from Lewis completely falling asleep away from the ball and Nikolas Khamenia (#14) flying by him.
I was literally just raving about Lewis in the last game we played about how good he’s been on defense and how locked in… it was like this wasn’t even the same player.
Here’s another look, this time just unacceptable urgency from both Lewis and Thomas. Initially, he defends the ball screen. His man attempts to throw a bad lob pass that gets cut off. Ngongba barely reaches out enough to touch the ball, but Lewis has no alertness nor reaction to get the ball. Then Thomas, covering Isaiah Evans, who had already scored eleven of Duke’s 15 points in this game at this point with three three-pointers, starts to leak out and then is outrageously lackadaisical on this recovery and close out.
I didn’t catch this live, I just knew I was pulling my hair out that no one could cover this guy who had virtually all of their early-game points. But watching this play on replay just made me irate. How is that your effort staying attached to this guy given what he’d already done?
Argh. Anyway, the thing that is pretty interesting about Duke’s offense in general, especially in contrast to what we’ve defended all year, is that they don’t run a ton of ball screens and, when they do, it’s often with Boozer initiating. Instead, they run a lot off screens away from the ball to free up other players. We were clearly not used to this and were very poor at defending it. Two looks, below.
In the first, Duke just runs a simple stagger pin down screen for Evans. Lewis, defending, gets by the first but then just plows right into Ngongba for some reason trying to close out. Grünloh playing our standard sagging off of the Center isn’t going to get there, and Evans gets a really easy look.
It’s hard for me to understand how bad that close out attempt is by Lewis there. He doesn’t go over or under… he almost just takes it on like he’s trying to blitz a QB and is getting picked up by the left tackle… and easily concedes the right-handed dribble and shot.
And then, this last one was really weird. I saw this getting diagramed as a genius play design by Scheyer… and it’s a good one… but it’s just SO poorly defended. Here’s what I’m most confused by – they set up Malik Thomas to be chasing a cutter to the perimeter and then having to defend a ball screen coming back the other way. Meanwhile, Darren Harris (#8) moves like he’s going to set a back screen on Ugo but pops back. Sam Lewis just completely abandons Harris and runs out to the ball handler, Caleb Foster (#1). Meanwhile, Malik Thomas, who is covering Foster and trying to recover under the screen, is no lost. He sees Lewis has stepped up, but has no idea where Lewis’s man is. He looks around and temporarily goes to cover Brown, who Ugo is covering. Harris takes the opportunity to fly out to the corner, Boozer seals TDR, and the shot is just the easiest.
This, to me, is a Sam Lewis issue again. Why is he abandoning his man to pick up Caleb Foster on a ball screen? We’ve defended ball screens similarly all year with the Center in drop coverage and the primary ball defender either chasing over or going under and recovering to the ball. How was Thomas supposed to identify a switch there and even know where to go? His back was to the play behind him. Surely, he could have done a better job of recognizing that it wasn’t supposed to be Maliq Brown and looking around with urgency, but I’m sure he was also pretty confused as to where Sam Lewis came from and why. Just so weird. It’s like both, but especially Sam, were just in some sort of mental cloud all game.
So, yeah, it was already going to be a tall ask to defend probably the best player in college basketball. But I don’t think that’s actually what killed us. It was a certainly poor decision-making allowing us to go down far too many points on the scoreboard with our best two interior defenders in this game on the bench with two fouls. Tillis tried his best, but was a nightmare defensive matchup against Boozer and it warped our defense when he was in. Just as much, though, it was a stunning lack of discipline defending on screens away from the ball along with a couple of guys, Lewis and Thomas being the biggest offenders, just having no concentration or intensity.
These ARE things that I think we could improve. Duke shot an insane 50% from three in this game. Some of those were clean looks like the above, but there was also some difficult shot-making. Just playing De Ridder a lot more time would go a long way on this end of the floor. One of his early fouls was avoidable and another was borderline – but even still… you just can’t afford to sit him for over half of a half. That was a truly wild decision… especially as we were getting run over – and he ended up logging only 20 all game. On the other hand, though, you’ve got to think/hope that the rest of our guys will learn from this. It’s a different style of offense to guard… but I also just haven’t seen them look so lost since before conference play for Thomas… probably never for Lewis. There’s a ton of opportunity to improve our play and to have things shake out for us more favorably on this end. Those weren’t the only who struggled. Mallory and White also were rough in this one and, along with Ugo, had the most devastating score differential when they were in – more so than Thomas, Lewis, or even Tillis – but I didn’t think their defensive lapses were as glaring for inclusion. But even though Duke is a hard team to defend, those clips above, and there were a lot more, were not us getting overwhelmed – they were mental mistakes across.
The other side of the ball, on the other hand, is going to require a lot more tenacity….
Offense
Oof. Standalone paragraph.
Next thought, this is not the blame of just two players but Thomas and Lewis were 0-14 from the floor and had the defensive issues above. White was 1-7 from the floor, as well. These are the guys who probably need to catch fire to beat a team like this and they did… well, the exact opposite of that.
The biggest issue was that of our 55 shots, 35 were threes, and we shot just 20% from the field on those deep shots. Now, some of that is due to the elite defense that Duke plays, which we’ll talk about coupled with their broader athleticism and size. But, in other ways, those matchups shouldn’t need to be such mismatches and there were plenty of opportunities to challenge Duke more around the hoop that we opted to pass up. We’re going to get into all of it.
Here’s the thing, though. Duke’s starting lineup runs 6’5″, 6’6″, 6’8″, 6’9″, 6’11”. Ours runs 6’4″, 6’5″, 6’7″, 6’9″ 7’0″. We’re also a really big team! It really shouldn’t have been a size issue, at least to the level that we let it be. Really, it was more the superior athleticism that showed up – and especially across the guard positions.
Let’s take a look at our very first possession of the game, which did a nice job of framing where we could have been good and then where we struggled. So, defensively, Duke does a really nice job of hedging ball screens, smothering the ball, and shutting down driving lanes. They like to try to keep you out of the lane to begin with, and then close out with their length on the perimeter. On this first play, Malik Thomas brings the ball up the floor in transition but Duke is set four wide with one trailing. As we set up our offense, Thomas has drawn the 6’11” Ngongba (#21) on the perimeter, a clear mismatch. He does a nice job of driving by his defender and splitting that intrusive reach from the help defense in the corner (take a look at how quickly they try to shut down that space, despite the Center defending on ball). Now, here’s a good first look at the bad. The 6’6″ Isaiah Evans (#3) crosses to pick him up on his drive. Evans is in the restricted area directly under the hoop and Thomas, who is only listed as one inch shorter, practically more likely two, gets all the way to the circle as well. Rather than challenging Evans, going up, drawing some contact, and trying to finish at the rim, instead Thomas kicks it out to De Ridder on the perimeter. I don’t hate a kick out to a great three-point shooter, which TDR hasn’t been… but I don’t hate a kick out in general… but this is our first offensive play of the game. Why aren’t we testing this opportunity? Why didn’t Thomas take this up into Evans and try to make a play? He had beaten him there. So, that will be a theme of this piece and gripe of mine. We had many opportunities to challenge Duke at the rim that we balked at – potentially intimidated or worried about their ability to block the shot… but we didn’t get a chance to see if they would (they only got one all game). Anyway, TDR does not make this shot, but Thomas actually out scraps Evans for the rebound and saves it to Lewis. Now we see the very good Duke perimeter defense as the ball resets to Dallin Hall, who has to deal with a Ngongba hedge with Foster (#1) trailing. He probably has a cross-court pass to TDR again, but sight lines aren’t good, and when he picks up his dribble, there’s really nothing there and he has to reset to Lewis. Lewis passes to Thomas who, this time, takes a ball screen from Grünloh with Boozer stepping over and the lane shutting down, Thomas decides to stop short and take the mid-range pull-up jumper, which misses badly.
Now, I’ve seen Malik Thomas take a lot of mid-range jumpers this season and this was one of the ugliest. It just didn’t look or feel right for him. He stopped unnaturally early, it was a bit of a jerky release, and he was actually kind of recoiling (not just fading away but suddenly jumping backward) when he was shooting it. I think Thomas was basically just flinching all game. He wouldn’t test Evans, he seemed to rush because the 6’8″ ultra-athletic Sarr (#7) was on him here and because Boozer was stepping over… but neither of those players were really that close to him in this play. He could have just taken his normal shot and, at least, would have probably come closer to making it. I think our guys told themselves a story that they weren’t going to be able to try the things they normally try; our shooting guards especially. Anyway, Duke played good defense here, but the only thing that was really imposing was the hedge on Hall which was quite smothering. Thomas had two opportunities where he could have and should have made a better attempt. TDR could have gotten that second offensive rebound, too, and did appear caught off guard at a couple of opportunities like this.
So, when I say the offense was disappointing – that’s what I find disappointing. We didn’t trust ourseves.
Here’s the next clip I want to look at comes a little later with three backups, Mallory, White, and Onyenso in the game. Now this grouping was giving up a lot more size in general – but not Ugo who had 3-inches and tons of reach on Maliq Brown here. Anyway, this play design shows it off; Ugo sets a ball screen for Mallory who runs into a had hedge by Brown. The design is for Ugo to then set an away screen for White to potentially get a shot, but Evans is able to deny that from out of position on the catch due to his own length. From there, we set another ball screen for White, but Duke clogs the lane on Ugo’s roll and Evans and a helping Foster are nightmare fuel for Jacari to attempt to isolate – and a pass over to Chance there is unlikely to yield a cleaner look. He ends up taking a low percentage pull up over the lengthy defender.
Now, that defensive set was just disadvantage us, and with Duke playing such aggressive help defense because they could recover to Mallory and weren’t as worried about Hall’s spot up, there wasn’t much for Jacari to do here. It would have been better just to hit Ugo on a roll after the initial ball screen, to be honest. This guard trio wasn’t well-suited as one grouping for this matchup due to it being our smallest combined group AND having our worst spot up perimeter player among them.
Mallory, to his credit, I thought made a few aggressive plays… but this was a rough matchup for him. Normally with Chance, any size he’s giving up he’s able to compensate with athleticism and strength. Against these players, though, they match all of that and still have the size.
This was the kind of harassment of his dribble in isolation that, really, I haven’t seen the opposition be able to do to him all season:
And you could absolutely tell it did bother him, because there were moments where he got very clean looks, but he still looked like he was rushing the play. Here’s a great example of that, below. He gets a switch onto Boozer after a ball screen, passes it to Hall in the corner who drives baseline and draws help. Tillis smartly pops out to the three-point line and then swings it over to Mallory as Boozer closes out on him. That look for Mallory is glorious and as wide-open as you can get on this defense. It was created by arguably our two least athletic players – Hall and Tillis – not through anything explosive, but by smart basketball driving space, drawing help, and quick ball movement. Mallory could have taken all day to shoot this shot. I mean, not all day, there were only two seconds left on the shot clock when he did. But, still, he didn’t need to rush at all… and yet he kind of just fires into it.
Perhaps, he thought the shot clock was lower, or just wanted to stay in rhythm… but I think more likely our guys were just sped up and it was in their head.
Their perimeter defense was absolutely a problem, and there were times when they imposed their will on what we were doing. Here’s a look where Sam Lewis initially drives it into a sea of trees and has to kick it back out. Grünloh and Hall run a pretty decent two-man game, I thought, though, and Hall could have hit him on the roll after the second screen… but wasn’t even looking that way. Instead, he swings it over to Lewis via Tillis. Note, that’s a great and imposing close out by Evans on Lewis. He still absolutely could have and has hit that shot over other players. You need to be able to clutch up and hit these kinds of shots in games like this – but it is still a great example of why players tense up against Duke because of that ability to leave Thomas and make a nice contest.
But we still missed the roll and weren’t looking inside!
I think it’s perfectly fine to accept that the opposition is playing very good defense… but it’s not perfectly fine to stop trying to test them when you have those opportunities and to settle for so much on the perimeter… especially when you’re flinching on your shots anyway. It’s basically passive and giving in. This clip, below, is a good look at Lewis’s mentality. Ngongba gets switched onto him as he was Thomas earlier in these clips. It’s still only 15-7… we’re just not in this game because we aren’t scoring. At first, Sam just passively jab steps and passes it over to Tillis. Devin, and I love him for this, basically says, “no, you have the mismatch” and passes it right back to Sam. Wake up, dude! He gets by Ngongba and has a head of steam toward the hoop with Sarr helping in the restricted area. I’d have loved to see Sam jump right into Sarr’s body here, force the contact, force a no call (a charge isn’t happening) or a block… or at least a hotly contested miss. Make Duke have to actually make a play. Instead, he Euro steps away from the help and throws a terrible pass into their length toward Thomas (Devin was the one who was open).
This is what I’ve been talking about. Be aggressive, B. E. aggressive! Seriously, though, Sarr is maybe the best defender in the country. You can’t play scared of him when you have the advantage coming at him, though! The officials had an insane whistle for Boozer, but it’s not like they weren’t calling anything for us. Especially when you’re on pace for 28 points a fourth of the way through the game and no one is shooting, you’ve got to try to make a play at the rim and see what happens!
It wasn’t just Sam and Malik, Ugo was driving me crazy. He’s like the one dude on our entire roster who could matchup and surpass them athletically and with his length… and he was also passing up clean opportunities. Here, he sets a ball screen for Sam Lewis and it works! Both defenders go to Lewis and Ugo takes a return pass moving toward the rim with Boozer sliding over for help. Pause at 8 seconds into this clip. Ugo is 3 inches taller than this dude and probably jumps higher. Try to dunk it on his head! Go over him! He’s also in the restricted area. The odds of him fouling Onyenso here if he just gathers and explodes toward the hoop are incredibly likely. Boozer is their most valuable player; try to get him in foul trouble. Go after him! The worst thing that could have happened here is that he gets blocked. So what? The end result was him passing up the opportunity and we ended up with a rushed TDR three.
You can’t have that. Your screening action worked perfectly. You got two players lingering on the ball with your 7’0″ athlete free running toward the bucket with the opportunity to draw a foul or score on the opponent’s best player. You haven’t been getting much inside. GO FOR IT! Yeesh. The reward far outweighs the risk. We were playing so overwhelmed. And, generally, I liked these wing pick and rolls away from the help against Duke rather the ones in mid-court where they’d sag off of the corners and we struggled to punish those.
Here was an absolutely dirty move by Chance that got Sarr to fall down. How, oh how, does he not find a way to get this ball to Ugo behind the defense? Brown pressured him to take away angles and obscure sight lines, but he’s passing it away before Sarr is even off the floor. Ugo faded away from the play too much, too… but Chance can make this play, he’s done it several times before, either lob it over or take a quick dribble into Brown to reduce the space and deliver a bounce pass.
If we’re absolutely breaking someone’s ankles and still not converting the opportunity to a completely open 7-footer standing by the rim because there’s a 6’9″ player going one-on-two… that’s a sign that we’re just playing far too timid and not trusting ourselves.
Okay, and this was sort of the logical conclusion, then, to all of the unwillingness to be aggressive. Mallory completely breaks down the defense going around a TDR screen. I don’t really blame him for not putting this up with Sarr chasing him and running into Brown, but there probably was an opportunity for an off-foot layup. Instead, he could have kicked it out earlier to Lewis in the corner, but maintains his dribble and Lewis relocates to the wing. Sam absolutely needs to be able to hit this shot but, again, is bothered by the contest and/or is just off. We get the offensive rebound, but Thomas just backs up on a scramble and you can tell he’s rushing/uncomfortable trying to get it off quickly… and he just misses everything except the backboard.
I want to make two points about this – it’s absolutely credit to Duke’s defense. They contest incredibly well outside and they just spooked us. We were not comfortable and it was a testament to them. That being said, we just made some terrible decisions in what we decided to pass up and we do need to be able to focus and hit some of these looks! The Lewis look, above, for example… gotta have it if you’re going to beat a team like Duke. The Mallory look a few clips above… absolutely have to have it. Those are very makable if you aren’t psyching yourself out. And we have to hope that a neutral court and/or after having some experience dealing with it, that we’ll be better about that.
But here’s the thing – when we went to it, it was often successful! We made over 72% of our shots at the rim… we just didn’t allow ourselves to take enough. Here, for example, Chance set up a nice ball screen, threw the pass, and this time it’s open enough that he dunks it. Notice that Boozer is still there for help, just a little later, but he’s not even close to challenging this. It’s a good play design, too, because it threatens a White back cut prior to moving into the screen for Mallory so the back side was more free.
Weirdly, I thought that Devin Tillis was one of our best at driving to pass on the defense, which goes to show that you don’t need elite athleticism to do so – just savvy and willingness. Tillis really struggled to defend in this game, but he didn’t play scared and I appreciated that. Here, below, Boozer attempts to jump a passing lane on a pass back out to him. He doesn’t balk or hesitate, instead Tillis drives it right down the center of the defense, forces Ngongba to step up, and lobs a nice pass to Johann for the easy dunk.
Funny, that, drive, draw help, get the ball close to the rim for one of your 7-footers. He didn’t have to be quick or tall to do it, it was just crisp passing and then being willing to attack a mistake.
Here’s another great look from him, again taking advantage of how over-aggressive the Blue Devil defense was. We’re in that weave again. He did have an open look that he probably should have taken initially on the pass back from White; Boozer is slow to recover. But after that, this is just a beautiful little show and go where he fakes the dribble handoff, both of Duke’s players jump at the presentation, and he pulls it back and attacks the basket. Now Tillis is like the least vertical finisher we have on the entire team… but does he balk at Brown trying to pinch down around Grünloh or Foster coming over to help? No. He goes up… it’s kind of a crazy reverse layup attempt, but he draws the foul in the process.
I’m not actually sure he even got fouled there! But, when you take it with purpose, you will sometimes get that call just like Boozer would. If Devin Tillis can at least earn two free throws challenging the Duke interior, everyone should have made this a bigger priority.
The other thing comes back to the lack of De Ridder minutes early. He finished 5-11 for 16 points and 2-4 from three. There were a couple of takes where he was challenged at the rim and missed… sure. That’s fine! He also showed that he could have success taking the ball to the rim. This play below is a little bit of what we saw a lot. Mallory probably had Ugo on a roll and should have given him the ball… but Duke did defend it better than previously. Hall makes a nice drive but is met by two defenders. Ugo is also probably open here for a dump off or a lob, but that’s hard to see and Hall had turned his back to the play. By the time TDR gets the ball, it’s really just an isolation matchup against Boozer… but he’s more than up for the challenge!
That moment when TDR explodes into his shot through the chest of Boozer and knocks him back before the finish, you don’t see that very often. De Ridder is very good at this and very good in isolation… so I don’t understand why, if Duke was going to post up Boozer and try to get our guys in foul trouble/play off of him, we weren’t more determined to give De Ridder more opportunities to test Boozer’s defense. Given our offensive struggles, I’d have loved to force this a little more often. 11 shots isn’t nothing, but 4 of those were from three-point land.
If we ever end up in this matchup again, I’d love for us to, yes, don’t sit TDR, but also, let’s try to attack Boozer on the defensive end. Playing through Thijs when our guards are struggling so much anyway seems to make way too much sense.
Finally, this was Jacari’s lone made three of the game, but it was a much better look for him. We got it not by playing through ball screens which we were trying all game without much luck, but by a designed play away from the ball, losing his man on a simple pin down screen out of horns.
I would still want us to make a much bigger effort getting the ball inside in a future matchup, but these kinds of actions making them work away from the ball rather than just being able to play the gaps and help on ball screens has to be a key. Of course, we’d still need to shoot it a lot better – but getting more space like this rather than the pull up we saw from Jacari in isolation earlier is night and day.
In Conclusion
That’s a tough team. The best we’ve faced all year, by far, and one of the best in college basketball over recent years. I wouldn’t predict a favorable outcome against them should we match up again. That being said, I think we could do a much, much better job than we did on Saturday.
Yes, we were bothered by their athleticism… but we also have the tools to compete. We have length and strength on the interior and, while it will be tough and require quality execution, we HAVE to be willing to attack the rim and force them to make a play on the ball. If they do, we have to be willing to go back to it. It’s the only time I’ve seen us play scared all season, and I have to think that’s something from which they can learn and, hopefully, improve upon. It was true of our shot selection and our shot execution – even when the quality looks were there – which was more often than the scoreboard made it seem.
As for coaching… I think that we need to realize that against teams like this it’s not just another matchup. We are the underdogs. We can’t play the standard game where we save our cards until later… we have to play like we have nothing to lose. Because, candidly, against Duke… we really don’t have anything to lose. If TDR fouls out, for example, and then you start to get blown out, that’s better than keeping him out half of the game and virtually guaranteeing an insurmountable hole. Against most other teams, I think we have every reasonable expectation to compete with a normal game plan and be able to win. Against Duke (and probably most of the likely 1 seeds), we need this team to play as free as we’ve seen Odom’s teams play in the past; and we need to take some chances along the way to do so – not forgetting we’re going to need to scheme up some more stuff away from the ball and play through TDR more.
Hopefully, this game will give that perspective to the staff and the players the next time we run into such high-quality competitors. We’re going to learn a lot about how we respond to adversity, though, with this game tonight.
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