2-3 clips from all 9 of our core rotations guys showing things I found encouraging from that “get right” game.
8 Likes
Yeah, you didn’t have any fun putting this together did you?
2 Likes
Thanks, Cuts! Great work on the clips as usual, and I will keep my editorial mouth shut.
I liked a lot of what I saw - there were a few highlights where I might disagree with the decision (like Chance passing up that shot when he created a lane instead - I’d rather he let it fly), but there were very few errors, so it’s very minor, and on reflection, I’m not sure there was rebounding in place, so he probably made the right decision (thinking back as I type, but I’ll leave the stream of consciousness in place).
The one that made me laugh out loud was the first Lewis clip – I also loved the aggression/cheekiness in taking that rebound back to the arc, but in basketball, you’re supposed to dribble when you do that. He takes like five steps in that reset without putting the ball on the floor, but it worked. I didn’t notice during the game, but when it’s isolated like that it stood out like a sore thumb.
Back to the central theme, though, totally agree. It’s natural for fans to pick favorite players and focus on them, but what could make this team so special is the collective. When Grünloh and Ugo and DeRidder are all on, it’s a fearsome interior. Tillis changes the pace and adds shooting (from the frontcourt). When Mallory replaces Hall it’s a jolt of energy. When Jacari comes in, his gravity distorts the defense. It’s the combination and complexity of multiple lineups that truly elevates this team.
The group I think is our best five is good. But mixing and matching them across the next three with a fourth for complexity? That’s what could make this team better than other teams that probably have a better starting five.
3 Likes
Odom got asked a question in the postgame about TDR’s left hand drives, and he ended up talking about how they’ve been working with TDR on the tempo and nuance of his drives, which I think is showing up in the clips.
2 Likes
Thanks for reading and the thoughts here!
Sometimes in games where you manhandle a team you still have some guys who are crushing it and others who still feel off.
Sam, Jacari, and Chance were closest to that re: their shooting… but all 9 of our core guys actually played really well overall, I thought. And some guys who I thought really needed to see the ball go in the basket a little more, like Hall and Thomas and TDR… and even Grünloh, had that happen for them.
It’s possible the step back up in competition will make the game feel more like it did against OSU or FSU again… but I don’t think so. If nothing else, and Odom talked about this post game, they really made an improved effort to get the ball up the floor faster again and then to give fewer shot fakes and take more looks. I think that’s a positive sign.
4 Likes
Good stuff, Cuts. But I’m a very negative person, or at least a contrarian, so I am going to argue with this statement, specifically the part at the end which I’ve bolded:
Is this game informative of how we’ll match up with, say, Duke in a few games? No, not really, other than it’s clear that we are a very good team with a high ceiling.
I think (1) we are a very good team, and (2) putting a beat down on various teams on the road (including kinda meh, or very meh teams, like GT) is one way we know that.
But I also think: (1) I don’t know how high our ceiling is, and (2) games like GT, when viewed in the totality of the rest of our schedule, tell us next to nothing about our ceiling.
Evidence for our high ceiling is:
- @Texas
- @NC State
- @Louisville
- UNC first half
But two of those four have big “buts”
- Louisville - we beat them w/o Brown Jr.
- UNC first half - UNC second half
This three-game stretch will be very informative as to our ceiling. (I will admit that I’m kinda skeptical of our ceiling, just because I’m skeptical of our top end talent. But we play the games on the court, not in my contrarian brain).
1 Like
TLDR Haney – we have played one top 25ish team, and we played them w/o their best player. As a result, I don’t know that much about our ceiling and neither does anyone.
Our ceiling is as nebulous as Carrere being good as a rotation guy this year
1 Like
Thanks for reading and the thoughts! I do disagree, though.
Our talent is very good, in my opinion. It’s not, hey we have that lottery guy on the roster… and that’s fair… but we literally have the best rim protector in the country on our team and like a top 10 guy as the alternative. On top of being great at protecting the rim, we have the best three-point shooting defense in the conference. We’ve got the two best assist to turnover guys in the conference running the show, and we’ve got a slew of guards/wings who have proven that they can absolutely go on insane heaters from deep. And on top of all of that, we have TDR who does a little bit of everything on defense and who is incredibly efficient offensively when he’s playing his best basketball - and can compete with the most talented guys at the position (i.e. he outplayed Caleb Wilson in a close contest of high-level talent and has absolutely shut down a lot of quality players along the way).
The quality of the best guys, especially in the front court, is pretty consistent - and then the depth is very good in that you could have any of Malik, Lewis, Jacari or Chance go for 15-20 and it wouldn’t be surprising. Rarely needing to rely on any one or two players creates a higher floor - but also a high ceiling for when all of those guys are on at once.
But ceiling isn’t how good they will play in any given game, and it’s not how consistent they are… it’s how good they can be when they’re playing at or close to their best.
The UNC first half you mentioned - that’s a great look at ceiling. That team was healthy, talented, playing their best basketball, beat Duke not long after, and we were absolutely working them. Sure, the second half… but all that means is that we aren’t as consistent as we need to be (which is why I would never say we’re a final four contender even though it would be surprising, but not shocking).
GT is bad. We handed them the third worst loss in DI this season or whatever that stat was. They’re ranked like 160th in kenpom… we didn’t work Rider nearly as hard. I’d argue you have to have a pretty high ceiling to be so sharp on offense and defense - we didn’t just blow them out… we handed them one of the worst losses across DI on the season.
Being 4-0 in Q1A games when the only other undefeated team against that grouping is Michigan at 5-0 is indicative of a high ceiling. Absolutely drubbing a quality N.C. State and Texas team on the road is indicative of a high ceiling.
Even just conceptually - being elite nationally at rim protection, being elite nationally at offensive rebounding, having 3 guys who are threats to be on fire from deep in any game, 4-5 guys who are threats to score 15-20 in any game, and two PGs who take care of the ball and facilitate very well… that all screams high ceiling.
I’d actually argue that these next three games would be very hard to be more informative re: our ceiling, given what we’ve seen this season. If we wax Miami or N.C. State, we already did that to N.C. State on the road, and I don’t think doing that to Miami would be any more impressive than some of those wins we have already. If we beat Duke, then that’s pretty clear, and that’s probably the lone exception where it would be more obvious than it’s already been.
But even if we lose all three of those games - all that tells us is how we played, not how we’ve shown we can play. It will be more informative of our form, not our potential.
The only caveat I would add is if we seem to be firing on all cylinders and still get dealt a convincing loss at Duke, then I might say okay maybe we really can’t compete with the very best teams when they’re on… but I think that’s pretty unlikely. If we’re firing on all cylinders, I’ll be surprised if the game isn’t competitive.
It’s uncertain where we will end up, for sure. We could get upset in the first round of the NCAA Tournament if we play like we did against VT or ND or BC. Our floor is definitely lower than some of the better teams in the country. And, clearly, we don’t have the same ceiling as a team like Michigan - but I don’t even think we’ve seen this team play as well as it’s capable of playing and, when it’s played its best, I think both the eyeball test and the metrics have been pretty convincing.
There was also that whole early January stretch where we were literally playing like the best team in basketball metrically. Again, we might not end up there when the games can eliminate you, but I think that’s another quality piece of evidence that the ceiling is high.
To me, there might be things we could see from here that would make things more obvious, but I believe we have enough information now.
10 Likes
Thorough assessment. You could just copy-paste that and drop it in your next blog post, in a section on “Ceiling.”
2 Likes
Do you really believe that? How many of those were against a healthy top 25 team? We would likely only play zero or one of those teams in the madness. Yes there could be 1 or 2 of those that make it in and upset someone in the first or 2nd round. But usually there ain’t many non top 32 teams left in the sweet 16.
It’s great to play well against non madness teams or bubbly teams - and a little enjoyable - but what’s your opinion of how we would do if we played a top 16 team that played as well as Miami did yesterday?
For point of reference Miami is #35 in Net so not even favored to get a single win in the madness right now?
Here are the current projected seeds of the best teams we’ve played so far:
7,8,9,9, 11(bubbly),
Healthy Louisville is a 6. Probably like an 11 or 12 vs us.
UNC a loss to a 6 - they were playing like a 3 or 4 when they played us.
I mean, I believe the totality of what I said, yes. I think blowing out at large tournament teams is a good signal for a high ceiling regardless of whether or not they’re top 25, yes.
I think Miami would beat many top 16 teams the way they played yesterday.
And yes, I really believe the team has a high ceiling and can compete with anyone when playing our best. Not that our best is better than every other team’s best - I wouldn’t argue that, but I’d define that as our range of outcomes is first round loss to Final Four.
If I’m predicting, I still say Sweet 16. But, yeah, I definitely think the upside (i.e. ceiling) is there.
12 Likes
I am partially responsible for this tangent, and one thing about it is that we are talking about different things with our ceiling:
- Dave and I are correctly pointing out that we have played only one top 25 team (by using whatever metric or grouping of metric you like to use), and we played them w/o their best player.
- Howevuh, we have played a decent number of 25-35 or so teams, and played very well against them
- To a certain extent, I think you are using ceiling as “how good could we play if everything works at a high level together”, but it’s late February. And I think the statute of that limitations for that type of thinking is done. And it has to be a full game! The fact that we played like a top 10 for a half against UNC is kinda pregnant, isn’t it?
And I’d also like to be clear on a few other things, that will hopefully be a bit more optimistic:
- My position earlier is that we didn’t know that much. I still sorta feel that way. (And yeah, this blends into my other hobbyhorse that extends to football, which is I really get super annoyed when fans think they’re playing 3-D chess by praising our meh (hoops) or absolutely horrid (football) schedules as great strategic moves. That’s bad and dumb and everyone disagrees with me even tho I’m right so boo-hoo for me. In time, they’ll compose odes to good ol Haney, but for now I suffer…)
- Howevuh, yesterday was really good. And it’s even more evidence that we do tend to play to our competition level, at least recently. It’s hard to analyze stuff like this, but, for example, Hall is kinda mediocre on offense and then he’ll have an amazing drive in crunch time so … what can you say…
- Not sure why you disagreed with this yesterday, but we learned more yesterday, and we will learn more v NCSU and Duke.
- Jacari continuing to play well seems to be our wildcard, if you will. As he gets healthier again, I think our ceiling goes up
- I don’t share some of the more optimistic assessments of Elijah, but I do regret that he was not able to develop or we were not able to use him well enough. I thought in the offseason that Jacari being great or Elijah or Chance emerging was our path to our ceiling… Well, as Jim Steineman and Meatloaf always remind us…
And now to be neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but just to engage in pure Haney ego management:
- my original point is/was this: we didn’t learn that much about our ceiling v GT, certainly not as compared to any other non-cupcake game we’ve played all year (and ESPECIALLY in light of the fact that GT came after all those).
2 Likes
Trying to respond to all of your thoughts briefly but…
Ceiling as I think about it is where a team can get and who they can beat if it all clicks and they’re playing their best sustainable basketball - at least how I’m defining it.
I think that’s Final Four, which I’d designate as “high.”
The Miami game didn’t convince me of that any more than I already was.
It did encourage me that the team is playing well now.
How we do against Duke depending on the form both teams are in is really the only thing that will probably change things that much for me from here unless the wheels just fall off, though.
4 Likes
I was giving this a little more thought - I think part of the reason I remain convinced that the ceiling is high isn’t just because of some of these vacuum statements like we blew out Texas and NC State on the road, we handed GT the third worst loss in college basketball this season, etc.
Or the counterpoints that we haven’t played many top 25 teams, caveat, when healthy, etc., etc.
All of those things are true - but I think you can still tell a lot from the body of work with how it’s gone down.
The baseline things that we do incredibly well - protect the rim, generate second chance opportunities, run people off of the three-point line, are very valuable and have shown up all season.
And then, in a world where Jacari White is healthy and back up to speed and not wearing a brace, there are several guys who can carry high scoring games and, importantly against good defenses, a lot of guys who can give you points even when the offense’s execution is being disrupted - Chance, Malik, Jacari, Sam, and TDR have all done that this year at times prolifically. It means that we have some threat redundancy and where we attack the opposition can come from most positions.
The Jacari piece is important, too, because we had games we played well without him, but both of our losses outside of the Butler game came either without him entirely or with him limited/playing much worse defense - which shrunk our scoring diversity and made us more vulnerable to drought. This is entirely unprovable, but if Jacari is what he is now against UNC, I think we probably win that game - his minutes (along with Tillis’s) were very costly in a high-quality contest… and now he’s a strength.
This is a team that has ground out some sloppy wins and played well at the end of games when needed. This is a team that has lost concentration in games where the outcomes seem decided. But this is also a team that has put some incredibly impressive stretches of basketball together where the points come in a flurry and the defense is suffocating. Outside of maybe the top 5, all good teams have had similar fluctuations in quality over the year.
And so, yeah, I remain convinced that when you put these pieces together, we’ve seen a team very capable of making a deep run, though not quite consistent enough to expect that.
6 Likes
everyone? nope
1 Like
If zero points all game is mediocre - we need a new definition - he was terrible on offense - and is generally terrible on offense - would it be different if he scored 2 points early and then nothing else? Same same. However - if he were to score early then maybe the opponent would lean toward respecting him more and it would open up others throughout the game? Maybe so?
Kinda amazing to me that a do no harm player leads us in minutes. I had kinda thought we were past the Bennett era.
No love for the leading assist to turnover guy in the conference, eh?
4 Likes
Man, ten bucks to anyone who can guess who coached Providence in 1984. He was in his second of two stints. Right before Pitino. I never would’ve guessed