There could also be a lot of nuance I’m missing here, I want to be an optimist about the prospect of them playing together because I think it happens a lot
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I think Cuts can address them playing together but my memory is that he likes Warley at PG but hates him at 3 which is where he would probably be playing if they are playing together.
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Yeah I guess my thinking is if Ames can shoot respectably from 3, then Warley is on ball 1 on O and 3 on D, Ames playing off ball then guarding PG
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IIRC from Cuts’ transfer breakdown on Ames, he really struggled in an off-ball role at K-State and it too Jerome Tang most of the season to figure that out and make Ames the primary ballhandler and push their other guard into an off-ball position.
So the issue with Ames and Warley together is that it puts Ames in a position that we know he struggles in and Warley doesn’t have the shooting ability to be a good wing for us.
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My overall hope is that the lineups can be matchup-dependent in the same way that we saw in 2019. That is, there was the big 3 (Guy, Jerome, Hunter) and then other pieces fit into the lineup based on the opponent.
We won’t have a big 3 this year, but perhaps McKneely and ____ can form a big 2, at which point other pieces can be inserted alongside them.
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Of course, with the grain of salt that he was a freshman. Which is kind of a massive grain of salt. Like a statue of salt.
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I’m legit flattered that you know my take on this and appreciate it!
This is a good summary re: K-State was much better when they used Ames as the primary ball handler instead of off-the ball and he struggled in that area. He absolutely was a Freshman - to others’ points - but there are a lot of reasons why I don’t want to do this:
If Warley and Ames play together on offense you basically have to have Warley start as the PG because if he’s off you have the same spacing issues that you had with Dunn. If Ames is there to be a secondary initiator and he’s doing that often - that still creates the same spacing issues with Warley when he cycles off the ball.
Ames is much worse off the ball (that could improve - but I don’t think it’ll improve such that he’s better there and you’re wasting his skillset not being the primary initiator) - and we have many players who would be better suited to knock down an open look than he.
But also, defensively, Warley is such a huge asset when he takes the PG and he’s just okay when he’s off the ball. So, either you play him on the PG and now Ames and McKneely (who we know is going to be playing a lot) are probably giving up positional size to whoever they guard (especially Ames) or we play Ames on the point, and Warley on the biggest guard and you just lose the special sauce of Warley’s defense.
Meanwhile - all of McKneely, Murray, Saunders, and Power should be able to beat their men on a straight-line drive to the hoop when they get the ball with an advantage after the defense is rotating (not necessarily taking them one-on-one). So, I’d much rather have one of the two PGs setting the table for everyone else and then they just play off of him.
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I’d like to agree, but I’m wary because we saw the “one playmaker does everything” story play out last season, and Reece showed more self-creation than Warley has so far. But if one of those 4 you mentioned can do something with the ball, the Warley as solo PG lineup does look really appealing for the defensive reasons you mentioned.
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I’d actually argue the opposite. We played one of Harris and Rohde with Beekman most of the time and they were supposed to be alternate playmakers but it was at the cost of shooting. Things bogged down.
The times we did things like roll and replace and had 3 shooters and one screener and one ball handler the offense looked much better; but it was at the cost of defense.
I’m hoping for the latter this season without the cost of defense because of the roster.
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Check me on this because I might have messed up the filter, but this is what I get on Hoop Explorer for Reece with no secondary ballhandler (Harris or Rohde), which was around 25% of the team’s possessions:
And then this is what I get for Reece with a secondary ballhandler, which was more like 55-60% of possessions:
Yeah, low key the offense scored 7 points per 100 possessions more with Rohde on the floor last year than with him on the bench which is the highest mark on the team and probably speaks to these data.
And I’m not nearly as low on Rodhe as many (although I don’t have him playing this year which is probably the area I’m going to regret)… but having watched how it all went down I’m not necessarily crediting him as being the key factor for that much of the time.
But as long as we’re not running a lot of Sides or isolation style basketball (the former we will still probably, the latter we won’t), I’m pretty comfortable with not wanting those two (Ames/Warley) to share the floor much.
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Trying to interpret this. I think it shows with two ball handlers last year (not just Rohde) we did somewhat better on some offensive metrics with a large sample, but generally about the same on offense? How does that track with the “things bogged down” conclusion? That should have implications for what to make of Warley/Ames pairing next year, no?
(asking in good faith, because I understand only like 75% of Hoops Explorer)
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Momentarily ignoring the rest of the convo, I think this is often under appreciated. It’s not just percentage that generates all-important gravity but also volume and ability to hit contested shots.
For example, there were seasons where Kihei’s three-point percentage was pretty good. But at the same time, his shot was slow, he wasn’t shooting them on high volume, and he wasn’t able to hit many contested jumpers. So the percentage was fine and all, and if you just looked at that you might be like “But we had good guard shooting!”. But really it wasn’t meaningfully warping how opponents’ defenses were playing us or creating more room for other guys to operate.
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Harris and Beekman was the least efficient pairing on the team - so it’s really a discussion about Rohde and what the offensive efficiency we saw when he played over others can be contributed to, if anything.
IMO, it was somewhat due to matchups given Rohde’s heaviest PT was early in the season against our weakest competition - but there really just aren’t many instances of Rohde effectively getting by his man and making something happen off of the dribble (especially later in the season) compared to how often he played and how often he’d probe and then have to just stop. He was a good passer and teams didn’t learn to sag off of him from deep like they did Dante despite his shooting woes, so he kept the spacing reasonable on his end - but I don’t think the conclusion that the offense was better because of Rohde’s skills as a secondary initiator over the span of the season would be very accurate.
Taine’s offensive rating, for example, was also very good and the majority of his minutes came against tougher competition and he often did play alongside McKneely when he did play. When Beekman, McKneely, and Murray were on the floor together during the second half of the year didn’t it usually feel like the offense was more threatening and effective than when Rohde was playing?
In a world where we have multiple players who are good at handling the ball, have good positional size, and are good shooters - I’m all for putting them out there together. But we’ve spent the past five seasons where we’ve sacrificed on either the size or the shooting or (in most cases) both… so I’m ready to lean into the shooting and size for a bit until we can get all of the above (and I think we’ve seen enough glimpses to believe it’ll be better when we do).
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This is a great point! Think of how many times over the years that the offense worked, generated a look for Kihei on the three-point line and he either couldn’t get the shot off on the close out where another player would have been able to, or didn’t feel confident enough to take the shot in that flow of the offense (leading to the advantage being squandered).
This happened quite frequently with Ames when he played off the ball at K-State.
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Oof, this is making me feel more skeptical about the Dai Dai pickup…
It wasn’t as often because of the height/reach thing (although that was sometimes). It was more because he’d just think about it a second too long and then the moment was gone. He really preferred to try to get into the lane or get to the elbow for the midrange so that was his default when he had to just react to the moment.
When he sort of had a moment to think about the fact that he was going to be shooting before the ball got to him he could get the shot up pretty quickly and that was normally better for him re: making it.
He just wasn’t a natural three-point shooter yet. There’s time - but I’m still for time sharing PG with Warley this year… not using him at SG.
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I actually like most of what Rohde brings to the table, and I still have a little bit of hope for him, but 25% from 3 is just not really acceptable unfortunately. Everything else he does as a playmaker and defender just can’t make up for the shooting.
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I like his vision/passing as well and really liked him as an over-sized on-ball defender at St. Thomas. He’s just not as good at many of the things as we ask other players to do and we play him in his areas of weakness.
His off-ball defense was pretty bad as well (especially second half of the season after the foot).
It’s just a lot that has to be improved.
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Great write up and interesting time allocation. Taine may be the “critical” player on this team. He has the experience, is more athletic now than when he arrived and has a swagger about him that with more PT could translate into real production. Particularly like his straight line drives when the D collapses off him- he has the ability to finish at the hoop.
Like to see Warley, IMac, Taine, Saunders and Blake, with DD, Power first rotation off bench.
Love your optimism on Cofie and Sharma!
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