✂ Cuts From The Corner - Georgia Tech

Men's Basketball
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Positive vibes headed into the tournament.

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Thanks, as always . I think you may need to change the video settings from “private”

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Really? I show visibility as public. You’re unable to see them? Hm.

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Could be a “me” issue.

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I can see them now, previously I saw the same thing @haney did.

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Okay, thanks - weird… I did go through and change all of the videos specifically from “site default” to “Public” just now… but the page default WAS “public” so I’m not sure.

Glad it’s working.

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On Taine: I think it’s no coincidence that he and Reece are the ones we’ve seen flare out to the corner on what is normally a pindown in Blocker-Mover, as that’s a read that takes some experience to be able to make (unless you’re Kyle Guy and have a virtuoso ability to move off-ball).

I like that he got a bunch of minutes, not just because he made shots, but I think it lines up well with the most available path to the team being passable on offense, which is to maximize Reece’s impact by giving him shooters to work with. I think it’s worth trying to steal as many minutes for the Reece-IMac-Taine-Dunn-Groves lineup as we can, despite the defensive flaws, because it puts Reece in the best situation on offense to be the difference-maker.

Other stuff:

  • Thought Groves’s basketball IQ really showed in these clips. He does all sorts of smart things, like flipping screen directions, continuing to move and re-position off the ball to occupy attention, posting a mismatch hard to create off-ball discomfort.
  • Dunn being an active driver/cutter and Reece hunting 3s are some green shoots for our offense.
  • I think our best NCAAT matchup would be against a team where their PG is their weak link. Reece can be an absolute bully on defense and blow up actions before they start. I saw a mini version of this in the Nova-Creighton game last weekend where Mark Armstrong was overwhelming Steven Ashworth with defensive pressure.
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I agree with almost all of this except for trying to prioritize Small Ball in normal circumstances. There are matchups where we can get away with it and we can probably also lean into it some when opponents have bench players in the frontcourt out there… but Ndongo is only 6’9" and GT is pretty small and he feasted inside and we lost the rebound battle by 9. We’ve seen that lineup (more with Rohde than Taine but with some Taine too) struggle inside over the first part of the season and also more recently defensively against Pitt. Of all the teams left in the tournament I think really the only one I’d want us to play small against for a prolonged period is maybe Syracuse.

Just playing Taine over Rohde helps the offense in general because you’re dramatically reducing your bad shooting lineups and Taine is just better at getting to the rim. Then I think if you really need to make an offensive push you can play him (Taine) out there along with Groves at the four, Blake at the 5 and that can be the stretch you rest Dunn.

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I’m still a believer that our best lineup involves one of Blake/Minor at the 5 and one of Dunn/Groves at the 4, assuming Blake and/or Minor are actually playing okay that game. Without at least one center on the floor (and I think we all agree Groves doesn’t count), our defense and rebounding just suffers too much. We’ve had power forwards before who could play small-ball-5 (Akil, Zay, even Braxton) but I don’t see either Dunn or Groves have that in them.

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Yeah, I agree.

It does feel like we’re coming full-circle a bit on the season where Minor’s minutes are decreasing and we’re starting to see the Small Ball lineups pop up more often - but my hope is that we remember why we got away from it early, why playing with a Center was such a benefit for us, and focus more on just playing as we were but with Taine the key sub over Rohde. Work some spacing lineups in here or there, sure, but more as a change of pace once in a while rather than anything that gets bulk minutes.

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Freshs AI made em private to see hoo really pays attention

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Fair. I would operationalize “stealing minutes” as playing the spacing lineup against:

  • Backup bigs
  • Lineups that don’t attack the offensive glass
  • When our offense is in the mud

I’m thinking like 10 mins for the spacing lineup, and then 30 mins split between Blake and Jordan.

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Yeah, that seems safe - but it should be noted that we can run a good spacing lineup with Blake or Jordan on the floor too. At that point it becomes more of a discussion around “who do you want guarding their center and setting ball screens?” and I don’t think that answer is always (or maybe even often) Dunn.