Andrew Rohde - Official Thread

[Hooandtrue]

@AnonymooseHoo

I think Rohde at the 2 is fine if Reece and Bond are at the 1 and 3.

I think I’d like the starting 3 to be Reece, McKneely, Bond with Rohde subbing in for either the McKneely or Bond as first guy off the bench.

Tony loves lineups with 3 ball handlers. Brogdon LP Hall, Kihei Guy Jerome, etc. If Leon can be that third playmaker it makes sense but I think Rohde has the one up on that. That being said I love that the clips show Leon Bond operating as the guard in a pick n roll situation AND giving him the confidence to shoot the three when the defender goes under the screen.

[WFS_HOO]

You are all wrong. So so so soooooo wrong. Feel free to try to dunk on me later but you’ll just get swatted down.

[Hoos9412]

@ElliottHoo

So the range of what constitutes Hall-like offense has a really wide range. I guess if he produces around the level of 3rd year Hall that’d constitute a good transition year for him.

This is exactly what I was thinking

[Gna2r]

Thanks! Yeah I spaced on his name for a bit.

[Gna2r]

Updated Roster:

Reece/ Harris
iMAC/ Bond/ (Bond may be able to move up and guard 2’s, plus post them up) (Seen nothing of Gertrude yet)
Rohde/ Taine (Taine won’t have to handle the ball or guard faster 1’s or 2’s like Bond may be able to.
Dunn/ (I’ve seen nothing of Groves yet)
Minor / Buchanan/ Robinson

[Gna2r]

I could see the substitute of Rohde for Bond if TB wants to go more defensive to start the game vs. Rohde’s offense. Basically I think the 3 spot is Rohde’s to lose at this point, all depending on his defense.

[Galileo24]

I don’t think you’re wrong. Seems like folks think every guard can be our point guard and in my view not many point guards can be our point guard.

I currently don’t see anyone on our roster that will be the alpha scorer unless Dunn’s 3-pt shot blows up. I see several guys that can be the second and third scorers and Rohde I think could be the third scorer. He’s a nice piece on a team with several nice pieces that needs that one guy.

[Hoohoohoo]

I’ll never forget the Paul Jespersen comp that was made by a well respected poster here.

[Hooandtrue]

Happy Birthday Sir. You share a birthday with both Devon Hall and Ralph Sampson (according to social media)

[SlickAce]

@haney

Will put my thoughts on @Xavier_Venom 's Rohde piece here to keep the offseason chatter thread free for practice video reax.

As always, thanks for the work that goes into these! Very much appreciated. It seems others have issues opening on mobile. I mostly watch on my laptop, and it works fine. One simple idea (seems simple, don’t know about the execution) would be to just have separate pages for each aspect. Like, maybe intro and conclusions in one page, then separate links to offense and defense?

My thoughts:

• I have been a bit skeptical about Rohde compared to the LRA consensus because:

1. up-transfers are really hard to gauge. The Summit is not the NEC or the MEAC, but it’s probably closer to them then, like, even the A-10. (KenPom says it’s roughly in between the MEAC and the A-10 so )
2. I thought those expecting an ACC PG or even CG were kind of, if not way way, off base. But most of that chatter was before Reece’s return and before Bliss’s commit. After those two events, Rohde as PG/CG chatter has died down or is at least less relevant.

• Sticking with the positional theme: I think Rohde offers a lot of positional versatility with his size and length, but I basically see him as a wing / forward in the ACC. You offer some friendly excuses as to why he got roasted by Abmas and the other ORU guard down the stretch, but bottom line is that in his team’s most important stretch of the season, he couldn’t guard either backcourt player on ORU (to be fair, it was a very solid backcourt). (and also to be fair, it wasn’t that important, b/c they couldn’t have made the tourney anyway)
• Defensively, there’s a lot to like, again related to his length and good feel for the game. He uses his length to stall defenders and get into passing lanes and cause turnovers and otherwise bother ballhandlers. He’s, IMO, a slighter shorter Kody Stattman with better hips and a better feel for the game.
• But on the negative side, besides not being able to stay with the faster, dynamic guards he will see often in the ACC – you note that opposing teams often attacked other matchups. I don’t disagree with that, but it also doesn’t fully describe what I saw in the ORU game. Which is that Rohde’s coach deliberately hid him on one of ORU’s least impactful players for significant chunks of the game. He only covered Abmas and other ORU guard for a few minutes in crunch time (and as you note, it didn’t go well). Now, to be clear - he was playing almost all game and bearing a lot of offensive load, so it does make sense.
• Re: his success against Nembhard and Creighton defensively, I think part of it was that (1) Nembhard is a good matchup for Rohde (Abmas was the opposite). He’s not going to out-quick you. And (2) But mostly in that game, they just didn’t attack with Nembhard. They had much better matchups elsewhere on the floor.
• Offensively, I’d focus on the versatility again. I think Rohde’s highest value, at least in the near term, will be that he can exploit mismatches, big or small: he can shoot against bigs and can post or drive guards. He seems like a good, not great shooter. He makes solid decisions off movement.
• To hammer on the PG thing: part of the downside is “hey, someone has to do something here and Rohde is our best guy”. But I’ll be the jerk to say it: he hurt his team down the stretch v ORU. They often got better offense without him. I didn’t love his decision-making, and he had some bad moments of turning to ineffective hero ball.
• I love love love the Tommies offense. It really spaces the floor nicely and keeps guys involved. I think the PG confusion around Rohde (including mine) is partly because so many guys on that team brought the ball up and initiated offense. Frankly, it’s the type of “keeping everyone engaged and ready to attack” that sometimes we forget about when we are too focused on our typical error minimization stuff.
• Takeaway: Rohde has great size and great length and a great feel. He’s a solid and willing shooter and can make plays off the dribble. He has all-ACC upside and will be a great piece on offense on defense. But I remain skeptical of any prediction that has him as one of our top scorers this coming year, or has him initiating our offense more than our two guards (which he won’t be one of). I’d rather see him shading big, tbh. I’d love him as a 3, or a small ball 4 in certain lineups.
• Bookmark this post so you can all dunk on me when I’m wrong.

Great stuff, Haney!!! Rock solid my dude!

[SlickAce]

@Hooandtrue

Yeah I just dont think it’s that big a negative or a knock on him.

Well it will be if he’s Carson McCorkle slow on D. Let’s hope not but we won’t know, until we know. Lol

[SlickAce]

@crossedsabres8

Something I dont see mentioned enough is his passing. Not that passing alone makes you a point guard, but it does mean he should spend plenty of possessions initiating offense.

I would confidently say he’s an elite passer and will be the second best playmaker on the team. And when Beekman sits I’d rather see Rohde initiating the offense than Harris.

Is that you, Dionne Warwick??

[crossedsabres8]

Personally I’ve been arguing that Rohde is enough of a PG that he can be on the floor with just Beekman and someone like Bond or Murray in the other guard spot offensively speaking. He can satisfy the second playmaker role.

My comp since he was first on the radar was Michael Gbinije. But a better free throw shooter.

[SlickAce]

Gbinije was a defensive wiz especially at Cuse and was very athletic with a so-so jumpshot. I thought Rohde was supposed to be a very good shooter and elite scorer with avg defensive ability?

[UVAdrian]

What I like about Rhode is that it looks like he’s going to give CTB lineup flexibility, which is a quality our guards have been lacking since Ty and Kyle were here.

If I squint, I can see Rhode/IMac being a duo similar to those guys.

[Cuts_from_The_Corner]

Thanks! And yeah, I may have to figure out something in the future. This was one of my longer pieces and I’ve heard that some mobile devices didn’t love it.

As to your takeaways, I don’t think they were hiding Rohde, to the point you made later, I think they were resting him considering he played almost the entire game and I do think he was most of the reason they could score against a team like Oral Roberts with such quick guards and Vanover in the middle (tendency for him to press sometimes not withstanding, their offense was way worse on the whole when he wasn’t the focal point. The Creighton game is a good example and is on Youtube in full. He played more passively early because it was his first game and their offense mostly ended up being really tough threes (some of which they made), they got down by double digits, and then he started being more assertive on offense and the comeback began). I can see your conclusion from the end of the ORU game, but in my opinion that was a culmination of a full season of valid necessity and he did sometimes make mistakes because that was a lot of weight on him. I imagine he’ll still have a sloppy or overly aggressive moment here, but that’s something that is probably the least of our worries considering the talent around him and our coach.

Generally, their defensive strategy against ORU was counter to their standard MO which was to mostly rotate him to whatever offensive player (other than center) was playing best and only occasionally rest him on a lesser impact guy. In that Creighton game, he took Nembhard out (and also Creighton didn’t play through him as much) but they also put him on Scheierman and Kaluma in direct response to when they were getting hot. Definitely the Abmas-type player is going to be his biggest defensive issue, but I think he can compete pretty well against those players because of his length and the cushion he gives, and I also don’t think he’ll have to guard that kind of player very often. I also really can’t stress enough how gassed he was during both of the Abmas clips I showed, which is an excuse but isn’t a situation he should be in very often for us.

But, Massner on Western Illinois is no slouch - he’s on a Summer League roster, has quickness (not Abmas-like quickness, but still) and Rohde completely locked him up down the stretch of that game. That’s one of the better examples, to me, because that was a team that couldn’t really afford to play through a different player so they had to test Rohde’s D and it went poorly for them.

I agree we wouldn’t want him on the Jeremy Roach or RJ Davis type players very often, but I actually thought of Proctor - Rohde will probably be a better defender on a player like Proctor than IMK without giving up as much offense so it’s nice to have that ability to flex him around and you could probably even do something like moving Bond up to guard Proctor and have Rohde take the 3. Of course, I anticipate they’ll probably do something like put Harris on Roach and Beekman on Proctor and so maybe this is just optimism that we can get away from that (although I do think Harris will be a much better matchup on Roach than Clark was).

Offensively there isn’t much I disagree with you on. He won’t often be the primary point, probably very rarely. He will initiate offense some on the break or if they want to try Reece off the ball or something cute, but it’ll mostly be Reece and Dante holding that down. I do think he’ll be one of our top scorers but I mean that in the 3-5 range at maybe 8-11ppg, not in the 1-2 range at 15-17ppg.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts!

[crossedsabres8]

Gbinije ended up shooting the 3 pretty well for his career (39%) which would be great for Rohde. I dont think he was actually a great shooter but the shots went in.

Rohde is plenty athletic and honestly would probably thrive in a zone defense. I dont know his wingspan but he looks pretty long from practice videos.

[Tooeasy]

@Cuts_from_The_Corner

I do think he’ll be one of our top scorers but I mean that in the 3-5 range at maybe 8-11ppg, not in the 1-2 range at 15-17ppg.

Entire post is great, but total aside—this sent me to sports reference. Hoos have had 9 instances of a player averaging 15+ PPG under Tony.

Only one player in multiple seasons. Only one season with two different players.

[TobaccoRdHoo]

Rhode has a chance to be an elite passer. His court vision reminds me of Ty Jerome. Thats saying a lot considering Rhode is just now coming into his 2nd yr. Im in pretty good company with the Ty comparison. J Willy also made that comparison. Is he Ty level now? Im not saying that but to be mentioned in the same breath with Ty is pretty impressive considering J Willy won a natty with Ty

[Hoos9412]

@Tooeasy

Only one player in multiple seasons. Only one season with two different players.

Dre and Kyle in 18/19. Who averaged it for multiple seasons? Are you counting Scott’s 9 game season or is it someone else?