Well hello! Our first postgame recap of the 2026-2027 season (or, preseason) and it was played in an outdoor stadium in September!
There have been some differing opinions on the value of playing in a venue like this but I, for one, enjoy the spectacle! Our team informally kicked off the college basketball season in a pretty interesting setting and, for a moment, gave the college hoops heads something to talk about. From two closed-door ultra secret scrimmages a year to participating in an event like this, I appreciate the pivot.
Of course, the game itself was sloppier than a normal scrimmage as a result. Shooting splits especially from the perimeter and especially the free throw line were worse than you’d expect. The ball was apparently a little slippery, the Sun was on half of the court with the other half in the shadows and WE sat in the Sun on our bench the whole game! Side note: why does it feel like Byington always finds a way to pull out the gamesmanship at these things? He was miced up last year.
Anyway, Chance Mallory (and Christian Harmon, for what it’s worth) didn’t play in this game due to a lingering ankle injury, per Coach Odom, that is nearing full recovery. Two of our starters from last year in Thijs De Ridder and Johann Grünloh played barely over 1/4th of the game, we went twelve deep in our rotation despite missing two anticipated rotation guys, barely played any established starter in the second half (aside from Sam who I think they tried to give a few more reps as an initiator), ran hockey substitution patterns often (full line switches), and basically ran no offensive sets with heavy middle ball screen actions and mostly freestyle play. This is not a game that we were playing to win, nor to really put anything worthwhile on tape – but it was a game that we were using to evaluate our guys, especially our bench.
So, for you, kind reader, I would not put any stock in the actual score or outcome of the game. I would, pretty much in no way, allow it to shape your overall opinion of the potential of the team – at least in terms of the outcome driving that opinion. There are some insights that we might take away from looking at the contest, though. So, first I’ll start by talking high level about some things that happened in the game that weren’t positive that either outright don’t concern me or that, ideally, shouldn’t require much assessment. From there, I’ll spotlight a few main topics that were worth consideration with some Cuts to support.
It’s funny, I wasn’t sure I was going to do a full postgame assessment for this one – instead preferring to write about the whole preseason once it was over. The venue itself was different enough that I wanted to put it on site. Then I told myself I’d limit it to 10 clips and keep things pretty high-level… and I ended up with 22. The more things change….
High Level Concepts To Hand Waive
Shooting, in general, was poor on both sides which was to be expected given the environment – so I don’t really hold any trends there against anyone if they were off. That being said, there were some guys who converted at a decent clip despite the circumstances and I thought that was impressive/a good sign for their confidence.
The most glaring thing, if you watched the game, were the blatant runouts and easy baskets that Vandy generated from things that they shouldn’t – like simple defensive rebounds. They were cherry-picking in a lot of instances, we were often sending all five to the glass with no defensive responsibility back, we were losing assignments, and there was confusion around responsibility in transition. I believe they outscored us by 15 points in this area alone which is 6 more than the 9-point final spread (give or take a point or two here, there have been some slight discrepancies in the box scores). I am not worried about this at all. Sure, it was an occasional issue last year where every few games the opposing team would get a few easy baskets that way (or, the UNC game where they actually made a strategy of this), but by and large it was an effective gamble that correctly weighed the value of crashing the glass without giving too much up the other way. The team had only been formally practicing the week prior to the scrimmage, and Odom has famously commented on offseason workouts primarily being about just running and letting guys show what they can do without doing anything schematically defensively. This is something that will almost assuredly get cleaned up as we march toward the regular season – and Odom said as much in his post-game presser with a similarly low level of concern.
The halfcourt defense itself also looked disjointed at times. Others, it looked pretty darn good. Systemically, though, there were quite a few breakdowns playing 1-5 (PG and Center) ball screens where we either weren’t very polished in our coverages or we didn’t have the effective personnel to run said coverages. Odom also highlighted this after the game stating, again, that this isn’t practiced during the offseason but also noting that we had more room to improve in this area than he anticipated. We will be talking about the backup Center position in a bit, which is a separate issue, but in terms of scheme and getting the defense to function cohesively as one, I am not concerned about that either. In fact, there were many times that our collective length looked downright terrifying and gave me plenty of hope that once we start getting some reps in as a team executing our systems, there’s a lot to work with across the board. Sloppiness now, but something I’d expect that we can clean up.
We turned the ball over 11 times – which isn’t a crazy amount – but felt like it was more during the game likely due to the fact that some of them were on the messier side. TDR had two that looked familiar from last season (trying to do too much in the open floor and having it pecked out from behind and mistiming a dribble handoff), Adekunle got sped up a few times in transition, Eli had a couple of execution issues, sailing one quarter court pass attempt to Dixon and mishandling a pass off of a pick and roll…. Johann had the ball taken away from him in the post, Vide sailed one into the stands on a kick out attempt, Dixon was over-aggressive on a backdoor pass attempt…. You get the point. On a surface level some of those things might seem concerning from the return guys when they echoed issues they had last season and, specifically, if there’s one area of De Ridder’s game I think he could stand to clean up heading into this season it’s limiting the more careless turnovers. All of that said, reports were the ball was hot and slippery, our starting PG who should handle a lot and play around 30mpg was not playing – and this was the first organized game many of these guys had played together with only Vide as any player on our roster with established primary ball-handling skills. Not to mention, it was a scrimmage and they weren’t playing quite as buttoned up as they would in, say, a conference game, and they weren’t really running any of our set pieces or designed actions. And, despite all of that, the overall number was still not that bad and only two more than Vanderbilt had with Tyler Tanner on the floor for over 16 minutes and a tighter bench rotation in terms of guys played and amount they played. Point being, I don’t actually know if this will be a key point of concern this season but, if anything, I’d lean toward it being less of a problem than I would have prior to watching the game despite some of the sloppiness and certainly isn’t something for which I’d look at this game as indicative of concern.
Items That I Would Be Concerned About If I Expected Them To Sustain
Quite the section header there. Martin Carrère served as our backup PG in this one behind Jan Vide with Chance Mallory out of the game. Neither Elijah Gertrude nor Jurian Dixon took on this responsibility often; occasionally pushing the ball up the floor or helping to attack in transition, but rarely as the focal point setting up the offense. The team has been shadowing for a while now that they view Carrère as a 6’9″ PG and, Sunday, so he was! And I’ve long said that I love that idea because having a player who is positionally that big and who, by all accounts, is one of the best shooters on the team (not on display in this game as he was 0fer outdoors… but not something I put any stock in). AND, he actually acquitted himself pretty well with NO turnovers in almost 21 minutes played, an assist, a steal, and a couple of free throws chipped in. I thought he was a considerably improved defender than last year, not being an obvious point of attack for anyone and even hanging with Tyler Tanner on the perimeter enough to contest his shot at the rim and force a miss. Plus/minus is notoriously fickle, but Marin was one of only four players in the positive when all was said and done (including De Ridder, Johann, and Ibe) at +2; so it’s not like things went awry when he was on the floor.
All of these things are positives, and all point to his development and potential. The thing is, when he was the lone PG on the floor and Vide wasn’t out there with him, it just felt as though the offense was clunkier and didn’t run as smoothly. He had to be more methodical bringing the ball up the floor and withstanding pressure, which he did without giving the ball away, I want to reiterate, but it forced the halfcourt offense to start more slowly with his back often to the basket out by the halfcourt logo and sometimes throwing passes to the very extended wing to initiate the offense. I think he can play the role but isn’t necessarily ready for it at volume at this level yet while being able to elevate an offense. Given that he took it on with very little intervention from other teammates, it doesn’t appear that our coaching staff feels like they would be preferable alternatives as well.
Now, the reason I don’t consider this much of a concern for this year is that Chance Mallory should be playing 3/4th’s of the game and Jan Vide, who I’ll shortly feature in a bit, has looked capable as the primary backup. My tune on him has changed and I consider it a lock now that he’ll be eating those minutes and will do it well enough. Of course, Vanderbilt wasn’t playing a scout defense, so we will have to see when the games matter and teams start daring him to shoot from outside, but I was happy with the solution. I’m also not even sure that Carrère will be in the final rotation. It seems that they want him to be in how much they played him (second most on the team behind Vide), but that could also be because of the circumstances with Mallory. There are a lot of hopeful guys this year and only so many minutes with a high-quality four players returning already holding down a lot of minutes. So, we’ll see where he fits in, but I don’t expect it will have to be as a solo PG and, if anything, if he does play he’ll offer some solid secondary ball handling/protection. Plus, I don’t mind how he looked defensively with that length and expect he’ll shoot better in a gym and with a bigger sample size. TBD there, but worry I do not.
Now, I don’t want to belabor this point much and don’t like to drag guys, but it does need to be said. Carter Lang getting over 11 minutes and being the first backup Center off of the bench ahead of both Favor Ibe and Silas Barksdale would be concerning if it continued/was the plan for this season. Like, really concerning. I am hopeful that this was a nod to his hard work on the team in practice, against his old team no less much like last season, and in a nod to his seniority over the other two guys, especially Ibe as a Freshman who still has a ton of development to do. But, his minutes were really bad. Virginia was +9 with a Non-Lang Center on the floor (+6 with Johann, +3 with Favor) and -20 with Lang on the floor in just over 11 minutes of game time. And, agreed, caveat as always that +/- can be deceiving… it’s not here. It was really, really, rough. A chunk of Vandy’s transition points happened during this window which was a larger symptom and not fully on him (although his shot selection and decision-making played a role) – but the main concern was that the team just really struggled to rebound and offered very little rim protection when he was back there. Surely, he could shoot better in the future… I don’t see that mattering to me given our other options. Even if we deem that Ibe (who I’ll talk about later and I do think we should play) isn’t ready, I would just as soon play De Ridder, who is more mobile, athletic, shoots better, and is a better rebounder and offensive threat at Center flanked by Anya and Adekunle – or even Barksdale who showed pretty well at times himself. Not only would those be better solutions now, in my opinion, but there’s more potential for growth and upside from any of those options as well. I’ll drop that point now because, there are limited slots and I don’t expect he’ll shake out in the rotation, but it’s worth noting because of when he subbed into the game and it was not good.
Okay, so what to focus, then?
The Starting Five (+Vide) Looked Good
In their limited time all together, mind, but without Chance Mallory and with Jan Vide going against Preseason All-American Tyler Tanner, our starters were up 7-3 before the first hockey sub put in all second stringers. I thought they looked big, imposing, created some good things, and still had plenty of room to play better despite missing a key cog.
But, let’s back up a second, who was the 5th starter? Aside from Vide ostensibly taking Mallory’s spot, Nolan Adekunle rounded out the starting unit at SF with Sam Lewis playing SG. This is significant because it confirms what we projected in the offseason that Sam Lewis will often be playing the SG with his improved handle, and that Adekunle got the first crack with the group despite being the newest member to the team.
Let’s take a look at some of the pros of this group who, when played with Vide (and got some run with Carrère later) were absolutely massive. Here’s a first look to help calibrate from underneath the shadows of Mordor… er, Charleston. You’ve got Sam bringing the ball up after a rebound and he gives the ball to Thijs early. Vide is in the top corner, Adekunle the bottom, and Johann handing around the three point line. The first thing I’d note is De Ridder initiating the offense. I think we’re going to see more of this this season. We played with him through the post some in this game, we experimented with him at the SF briefly, but with a lineup like this – he’s going to be a threat to play off of. He dribbles at Adekunle in the corner, freezing the help man, and Nolan cuts baseline. Thijs hits him with a nice pass in stride. Now, the Vandy help defender is a guard and jumps immediately past Nolan on the hesitation. I’d like to see Adekunle be aggressive and just go up and dunk this since he’s right there – but it does speak to unselfishness and awareness that he’s quickly spotted the pass to the corner. This is an area I’d like to see him develop, though, because he’s got the hustle and teamwork on lock already – be confident taking this opportunity. Anyway, the ball goes to Vide who isn’t really a shooting threat out there. If it’s Chance in a normal starting lineup, we’re very happy. Here, he passes up the shot, fakes the close out, and drives for the easy lay-in.
There’s pros and cons here – mostly pros. We got an easy bucket as a result of good ball movement on the back of our PF initiating offense, our newest player cutting off of it, and our backup PG cruising in uncontested. It does highlight Vide in the sense that, a team playing with a scout may just not close out there and force him to take the three; and it does highlight Adekunle who you’d prefer to be a little more confident scoring the ball. Nevertheless, you’ll take easy buckets!
This next look shows the great spacing that this lineup can provide even with its size and highlights Vide’s ability to touch the paint. When Jan is the primary ball handler, Vandy has to stay attached to each of the other four guys. Notice how Johann is going to set a very high ball screen – his pick and pop threat brings his man out beyond the three-point line on the action rather than sagging back in the lane. Most notably, Vide has the athletic 6’6″ Chandler Bing (ohmigosh that’s the same name as the Friends character!!! By the way, did you all ever hear that Ryan Odom used to be a ball boy AT UVa???) on him and is able to get fully by him with a ball screen rejection. This sucks the help defense into the lane because the Center is already extended on Grünloh and allows Vide to make the easy pass to De Ridder in the corner who buries the three.
Some notable things: the spacing is very real. Both Sam and Nolan are insanely efficient spot up shooters (each over 40% last season) and both De Ridder and Grünloh appear more confident in their shot which we’ll touch later. Because Johann is such a threat, these high ball screens are as well (he hits a nice pick and pop in this game too that I didn’t clip) and give a ton of room if the ball handler can get by his man. With Chance, this seems like a feast… but notably and encouragingly, Vide was also able to take full advantage of the space against DI athleticism.
I mentioned Sam Lewis playing the SG because of his improved handle and what that opens up for our lineup options. I didn’t think he always used it to maximum advantage in this one (got blocked a couple of times at the rim) but I did think that he put his new handles on display, got into the paint far more often and more comfortably than he did last season, and easily looked the part of a competent SG. There were some better clips of his handles than this one, but I chose it as it was within this starting group as the secondary ball handler and you can see him effectively in transition, easily beating a defender one-on-one to the hoop.
There are a lot of things that are going to help this team – but Sam polishing his handle and being able to play SG may be one of the most overlooked and most important. It gives us some really interesting lineup options and should allow us to play very flexibly in our matchups. Consider, Sam was already very good and we are certainly going to play him a lot of minutes next season. If he was locked in as a SF, then you basically always would need to have one of Dixon, Gertrude, Carrère, Harmon, Vide (and I don’t really want to do much of the two PG thing this year although Odom keeps foreshadowing it) with he and Chance. Now Adekunle is strictly his backup or has to downshift to the PF to find more minutes. But with Lewis being positionally flexible, now you can play any of those previously mentioned guys with him OR you can start playing him with Adekunle and even Anya – which allows for some absolutely huge and physically imposing lineups; especially when Vide is in at PG as he was on Sunday.
For the first four minutes of the game, this group was on the floor. They left up 7-3 with Vanderbilt’s only bucket being a three from their Center. I thought that their defense looked big, switchable, and imposing during that time. Due to Vide playing, no one on the floor was shorter than 6’6″ which allowed for maximum switchability. Here’s one look defensively (we’ll get some more later without the starters). You can see our size when looking at the lineup, but this primarily functions as a two man game with ultra-quick, listed at 6’0″-but-don’t-believe-it, Tyler Tanner (#3) and the 7’0″ footer Bangot Dak (#8). Watch Vandy represent a middle ball screen, not even really set it, and Vide passes of Tanner to De Ridder while taking Dak. Normally, this would create a pretty significant matchup issue switching PG to Center, but De Ridder is an excellent perimeter defender with imposing length for a player like Tanner to shoot over and Vide can bother opposing bigs with his size. Tanner does nothing with the switch initially and Vide and TDR exchange back away from the ball. Trying again, Vandy sets another screen and we switch it again, this time with Tanner forcing up an inefficient long two over Thijs rather than trying to take him off the dribble. Note Vide doing a really nice job of boxing out Dak as well so that Adekunle can collect the uncontested board:
There are other lineup combinations that offer intriguing defensive potential, but I really love the size everywhere in this line up and when we do replace Vide with Chance, what we’ll lose in switchability, we’ll gain in disruption and explosiveness on the offensive end. Mallory will really be able to try to blow up the dribble of opposing ball handlers with this group behind him to bother passing lanes and contest shots.
Alright, so those are the starters (-1) and I thought they acquitted themselves very nicely even without one of their best players. But, let’s take a little look at this…
Huge Lineup!!!
Now, I’m not sure where everything will shake out rotation-wise, and we know that Carrère was likely playing PG mostly in Mallory’s stead, but replacing him with someone like Vide would still be massive here. Still, let’s just own this one with Carrère, Lewis, Adekunle, Anya, and Grünloh as the five on the floor! That’s 6’9″, 6’7″, 6’7″, 6’8″, and 7’0″ – and tell me this doesn’t look horrific to play against.
I’d like you to consider our height and size advantage cross-positionally when watching this clip. Notice how reluctant Vanderbilt is to test their defender or go up with the shot throughout and how intersections with our guys as players cut past the ball handler give them visible pause. Eventually, Vanderbilt runs a two-man game vs. Anya on the ball and Grünloh, which Grünloh ends up having to step over to take, but think about the luxury of Anya as the initial ball defender, recovering on the play to contest the shot at the rim like this:
Sure, this is called a foul – but that’s a 50-50 ball that’s probably also not being called in a lot of games (and there was a really generous whistle in this one). As a recent example, I think back to that first Duke game last year and how their defense really seemed to bother us because of their collective length. Some of these lineups above are considerably longer than what they were putting on the floor last year. It’s going to be a problem for some teams when we pack the floor with size like this even without including Martin in most cases – especially when we get more reps as a team within our defense.
Okay, this next one, below is with the same group but Eli is in for Sam, instead. I’m still going to allow this as a “HUGE” lineup given the rest of the grouping. I love De Ridder as a defender and an all-around player so you could easily have him out there and have it be very imposing. There is something really exciting defensively about playing Anya and Adekunle together, though, (which you could also pair with De Ridder, I imagine in some instances) and they were both tenacious on the defensive end in this game.
Check out this defensive set after Vanderbilt inbounds from the baseline. First, Eli is up pressuring on the ball, trying for the steal well-beyond the three-point line. He’s clearly comfortable extending his pressure here. Anya’s man goes to set a ball screen, but Anya jumps the dribble (which is pretty cool because I was just seeing something that focused how jumping the dribble on a hedge like this is one of the best times to steal the ball because it’s the most predictable dribble). Watch him pounce on the ball and then lead the break the other way. Nolan fills behind, takes the pass, and slashes to the bucket, drawing the foul:
It wasn’t always easy to see because of how deep we went into our bench and how many different things we tried. We only played Johann just over 11 minutes and, to this point, his presence is pretty essential for all of this effective size to come together right now (which we’ll talk about how that could change or how to consider that shortly) but there is so much potential to have some just really bothersome defensive lineups on the floor. Consider, Sam was the only player on the roster last year with a similar wingish defensive skillset as Adekunle and Anya – but he was still transitioning from a program that didn’t emphasize defense as much and still skews more guardish in his covers. Now, we have two of these strong, quick, lengthy, athletic, high-motor guys… and really more like an army of them if you assume Sam has improved and also consider De Ridder’s positional flexibility. This is much different than last year’s perimeter defense and I’m excited about it.
De Ridder and Grünloh’s Outside Shooting
Very quick section, but Thijs was 2-3 from outside in this one and Johann was 2-2. They were very efficient shooting the ball from deep. Last season they both were also were capable and shot the ball from outside. This felt considerably different, though. I know that both focused on their shot heavily in the offseason. There was a higher level of confidence on display. Last year, Johann would normally take the shots that were begging to be taken. De Ridder was also a willing outside shooter who, occasionally, got hot and took more volume (like at the end of the Tennessee game). But this year feels like the difference between being a willing outside shooter and with confidently hunting your shot. They were much more proactively looking to get those threes up, to my eye.
Here’s a good rip from De Ridder over a contest that was really right there on the catch.
I don’t think he would have pulled that one most of the time last season.
And here’s one from Grünloh that’s a little bit audacious while trailing the play and stepping right into the shot very early in the shot clock over a defender who lands right in his hip pocket.
If these guys take and make shots from distance like I think they will this year, that’s going to be a huge boon. It will open up De Ridder’s ability to make more plays off of the bounce, attacking close outs, exploiting shot fakes, and from Grünloh it will create the kind of spacing we saw early in this piece when his men have to chase him well outside of the three-point line. For all ball handlers, but especially for a player like Chance Mallory who is quick but sub-6-foot, having that much more space to run into and make a play/decision will increase his potency exponentially.
Talking about how much the “Core Four” have improved over last season as a lens toward how good we can be, we talked about Sam’s handles as a concept already. Similarly, Chance’s strength and conditioning has been a significant theme given that he should be playing more minutes over a long season. I think that the improvement in outside shooting across our starting frontcourt, who were already credible at this last season, is going to be another one of these themes and a significantly positive factor for this team.
Favor Ibe
At this point, the single biggest concern that I have for this team is what we do when Johann Grünloh is out of the game. Hopefully, that will only be for 10 minutes or so because Johann should have a greater minute share this season without a player of Ugo’s quality behind him. But, given how much Odom’s teams run, which is harder on bigs to begin with, and how Johann has a tendency to get in foul trouble from time to time (I do expect his address strength will help here but won’t entirely solve the problem), we need to have someone who can hold down the fort. Someone who, ideally, can function well within the same defensive scheme but, at the very least, offers a stabilizing defensive presence. It can’t be Lang. His presence undermines our defensive advantages at its core. It could theoretically be Silas Barksdale who looks comfortable with his outside shot, but that’s a considerable size dropoff at the position and Barksdale is scrappy but not the springiest player. It could be that we play smaller – perhaps running that trio of Adekunle, Anya, and De Ridder as a trio – but I think if that’s the route we go then we’re going to need to add a lot more variability into our ball screen coverages (potentially switching everything if we have our other big guards on the floor or adding some hedge/blitz style looks).
But I believe that the least complicated, most stabilizing (as the season progresses, likely not early on), and likely highest upside option is to put everything we have into getting Favor Ibe ready to fill most of this time. Ibe is incredibly raw and has a long way to go. He’s not the shooting threat any of the other options are. He would regularly take himself out of position on plays and had some players swoop by him to collect rebounds. I didn’t think his hands were great and he bobbled some contested rebounding opportunities. He’s still got to spend a lot of time learning drop coverages, finding that middle ground and understanding how far he has to go to deter a shot vs. how much he needs to account for while recovering.
Here’s a great look at him just staying far too close to his man, dropping way back and just giving the guard coming off of the screen way too much space (especially with Barksdale helping in the lane behind him).
This is bad but it is also very coachable.
But he IS one of those players, with his 7’1″ height, and 7’8″ wingspan(!!!) on a muscular frame, who is just very imposing. He’s the kind of player whose presence can bother the other team and who commands more attention. As a result, good things often happen with him on the floor, even if he is still learning, making mistakes, and has so much room to grow. It’s because, even if he’s not playing perfectly, he’s still a threat. A threat to get to a shot and block it. A threat to take a lob or put back a rebound if he’s not generating a lot of attention.
Here are some examples. This is on offense. It’s really a Thijs De Ridder clip (although worth noting Martin breaking the press). Thijs shot fakes from the corner, backs his man in, and then feeds Adekunle in the corner with a fantastic pass for a three. It’s a great look at how De Ridder can initiate and facilitate for the offense across lineups. Ibe doesn’t really do anything. He’s on the opposite block, just hanging out. But, watch much attention he’s getting from both his man and Adekunle’s, pinching down from the help side. They’re both bracketing him because of the rim pressure he’s providing simply by being around the bucket. The shot from Adekunle is as open as it is and not stolen nor contested better because his man is so focused on the team defense for Ibe (combined with De Ridder being a plus matchup himself and requiring Ibe’s man to shade him some in case he needed to help).
Paired with some of our skilled offensive players, like De Ridder, like Lewis and Adekunle… like Mallory who will benefit from Ibe’s length in many ways (throwing lobs, being able to get under a ball handler), I fully expect that our offense would be worse with Johann out of the game – but I don’t think it would struggle. It didn’t in this game.
But it’s really on the defensive side of the ball where I’d expect him to make an impact and where we’d want him to make that impact as the season progresses. He flashes so much potential there.
Here we see him affecting the play without accumulating a shot block. His man pops out to the three-point line in attempt to pull Favor from the hoop. I like how Ibe lingers on the screen here a bit but, rather than chasing, identifies the drive and slides back toward the rim. Watch how the driver rushes just a bit and goes up earlier, feeling Ibe coming over, which forces the miss and then Ibe secures the rebound and quickly outlets.
In a world with a little more experience, perhaps he gets there just a step earlier, gets the shot or keeps it from even going up – but that’s a really nice start in reading the play, presenting at the hoop, and you can see the driver flinch.
Here, below, in drop coverage, this time you get to see that condor-like wingspan go to work. He’s much better in dept this time, gets up quickly, swats the attempted lob pass, and creates a break opportunity the other direction.
I love so much about that play. For one, you can see how he takes up SO much space in the lane when he’s well-positioned and alert. His reaction and jump is actually quite quick, aided by that reach. It’s a smothering type play. My favorite part, though, is that you can tell the offensive player is quite surprised that Ibe got to that ball. He just wasn’t appropriately gauging it – under-estimated, if you will.
And then this next one, is my favorite of all of them. Ibe isn’t just long and doesn’t just have good reactions… he’s also a strong guy and can use his leverage well. He’s not one of these more slender bigs who need to put on more weight – he’s a 20-year-old Freshman who has some muscle on him.
Now, in this next clip, below, watch how his man attempts to basically proactively box him out/screen him away from the driving lane. Ibe keeps his balance, fights through the contact with his left arm – basically manhandling his man – and sets himself up to get a contest that has no business being so imposing while having a guy attempting to sit on his legs. After the contest, he’s then out of rebounding position, but has the ability to pinch down and once the ball is deflected, seal some space, and get the ball batted out to Carrère.
Of course, you’d rather him secure that rebound with two hands and not lose control/have to knock it out to Martin. It would make securing the ball less contested and would also start the break opportunity sooner… but that’s really nit picking considering the individual effort here and, frankly, outrageous physical talent. Barksdale is beaten on this drive, staggering on his back foot. Ibe swoops in while fighting through contact to contest it and then, out of rebounding position, commands the space, umbrellas those scrapping, and gets the ball out. That’s just him individually blowing up an offensive possession.
So, yes, there’s a ton of room for development. Yes, he’s going to make mistakes and is very green/raw. But Ryan Odom is an excellent developer of big men within this system, especially defensively, and the physical tools are all there and are frankly pretty impressive. Recall the drastic difference between watching Ugonna Onyenso at Kansas State and then watching him in our system. Ibe won’t be that. I don’t think he has the same nose for the ball or anticipation that Ugo did. But he moves well, runs the floor, plays with physicality, and just has massive, massive upside. Odom is too practical to miss seeing the need or the upside… and he’s very good at empowering his players. I both hope and expect that Favor Ibe will be playing most of the backup Center minutes this year, especially as the season progresses and he gets more reps.
Jan Vide
While I’m still not sure how it’s going to go once teams start scouting to make him shoot, Vide has won me over as the backup PG and having a clear place within this rotation. If you read my piece on him, I wasn’t always so sure about that. Offensively, he was easily the most comfortable guy on the team (who played) at handling the ball with pace and volume, getting past his man, touching the paint, and making something positive happen… and he didn’t even hit his trademark floater! What’s more, none of the players who I imagined might be viable alternatives (and I don’t think Carrère is ready to be relied on in this way yet) really got much run at point at all. So, here we are! But, Vide looked solid. He was confident, his ability to use or reject the pick and role and make a nice pass was notable (as we saw earlier) and he had a few buckets in the paint and drew some free throws. He remains promising in transition, as well, and gets the ball up the floor and puts it into some nice spots. We will see how that part of his game evolves and if he’s put to the test from the perimeter.
What I wanted to spotlight, though, and what I liked better in the context of our team than I expected was his defense. This clip, below, to me, represents my hopes and dreams for Vide this season. He’s guarding the point, but because Ibe is guarding the 6’10” 260lb Berke Büyüktuncel (which, you can hear pronounced on their team roster, if you’d like… and I highly recommend) on the perimeter – that leaves Silas Barksdale as our PF covering the 7-footer Bangot Dak (#8). We normally switch 1-4 which, if we had Mallory on the floor, for instance, could have been a challenge here that we’d need to work around. But Vide just straight up switches onto Dak, contests the lob pass in, is physical with him to keep him away from the hoop, AND does a really nice job of contesting an awkward shot that he forced… Dak airballing the shot. Not done, Vide runs the floor, takes the pass in delayed transition, and works his way for a trip to the free throw line:
Having our PG be able to defend a 7-footer in the post like that without any help is really, really, encouraging – let alone turning the defense into offense the other way.
And then, here’s a look below that I appreciated because it shows his defensive experience despite the fact that we, collectively, weren’t defending ball screens the best throughout the game. Here, we deal with a double screen action that’s not technically a Spain screen either by design or because Johann kind of blows it up by ghosting to the right position. But, either way, Vandy ends up setting a ball screen on Eli and then another back screen on Eli with his recovery. I love how Jan and Johann read this, with Johann backing out entirely to gain depth and to be in great position to support the drive or help on the roller, and I love how quickly Vide recognizes this, communicates with Eli, and takes his man.
Vandy makes a difficult shot over a good contest… but the coverage is quite nice at a point in the preseason where it often wasn’t and lack of practice was showing. I would continue to stress, and please think about the Villanova scrimmage defense trying to guard Acaden Lewis last year, that our defense is going to be behind our offense at this point in the season due to what we work on over the Summer.
So, yeah, Vide is almost assuredly locked in as the backup PG unless something really goes sideways… and I’m comfortable saying that’s likely to be the best.
Elijah Gertrude
Last but certainly not least, I wanted to spend some time talking about Eli. It wasn’t perfect. He overthrew Dixon on a run out pass once and it looked like the ball slipped out of his hands one of the few times he was operating as the lead handler in the pick and roll. All of that being said, I think this is the year that he cracks the core rotation. I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m like the boy who cried “Eli” in how I often cause for him to get more run than he has… but he was moving well throughout, and looks to have grown his offensive shot making. Historically, we always felt pretty confident with him as an athlete, even when he was twice working himself back from injury. That being said, he did not have a reliable outside shot nor great feel for the offensive side of the ball. Teams could play off of him more and his presence seemed to kind of gum up the offense as a whole as he sometimes over-dribbled, didn’t keep the ball moving, etc.
Well, for one, his outside shot looked much smoother to me, and he got into it (making 2-4) without hesitation. He can’t come up with the ball with momentum on his back door cut here, but after passing it out and relocating to the corner, the catch and shoot is very comfortable in this one:
And here, just casually taking the corner spot up.
You can camp him in the corner now, teams are going to have to close out and he can attack that, too.
He seems comfortable getting to the midrange now, and we’ve seen this shot in quite a few practice highlights – but it shows off his first step because it’s just a jab step and drive… and he also makes it over an athletic contest.
This next clip, below, he absolutely dusts his man in the open floor with the cross-over and then has the control/ability to stop and hit the floater over the contest:
And this next one, below, he uses the shot fake in the corner to drive and draw and then hits Grünloh for the easy dunk:
What I most like about that one is that he’s effectively creating for others. I do feel as though, in addition to the shooting issues historically, when Eli created it was often something for himself… but he didn’t always have the best vision or ability to manipulate the defense away from the ball – and then take advantage of that by finding a teammate. Much better here.
Let’s not forget the element of his game that he’s always used to provide a spark that fits right into Odom’s game plan – his ability to be a one-man fast break at times. And no, I don’t mean running out like Vandy was doing… I mean having the defense almost set and still using those burners to create an advantage. Here he grabs a rebound and collides with Dixon prior to getting going. Four guys on Vanderbilt are ahead of him on the floor with their eyes up, including the 6’6″ Gabe Nesmith (#1). It doesn’t really matter to Eli as he has that knack for turning the burners on creates an advantage, and draws a trip to the foul line anyway.
You’ve absolutely got to think that if Eli gets some real run this year that he’s going to be able to generate quite a few of these “free” points so-to-speak where he creates something out of what should be nothing in transition.
I can’t pretend to know how the lineup will shake out yet, that’s to be determined and I think guys still very much can play their way in or out of the rotation. That being said, leading the team with 13 points on 50% shooting from the field AND from three while being active and athletic on defense is a good case to be making. I do think he’s going to prove worthy of a spot as maybe the last guard option and we’ll finally get to enjoy a season of Eli as a staple rotational piece.
In Conclusion
There’s still so much more to learn and see! Of course, this is just one game and these are first impressions and inklings. They can and will change as we get more information, which is also why I really only focused on a few key things that caught my eye and seem like they will actually be relevant.
The next pre-season contest will be at home against the Richmond Spiders. Not as much of a challenge, but more normalcy around the circumstances. Hopefully, we’ll get to see how the team looks with Chance at the helm of the offense, at least for a little bit. My main hope, though, is that we’ll get a little more clarity as to how some of these bench competitions are shaking out – and I especially hope that Ibe continues to get some reps to build that feel and confidence.
We’ll see about doing another FULL piece after that one or, maybe, waiting and talking about the final two games together. I couldn’t resist chopping up the first contest back and in such a cool venue but, you know… I’m often persuaded.
See you then!
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