Lots of Xs and Os. Pushing back some on the idea that we can’t be better NOW than we’ve been playing.
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Ack! When you catch a typo in the preview text!!!
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I imagine you’ve noticed that about 15 of your video clips are the same.
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Ack! Okay… not sure what happened there! Time to fix!
Videos have been updated - thanks for the catch!
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First clip on our off ball movement is baffling. Rohde gets it going driving left and Buchanan turns his back on the play to screen for RD 25 feet from the basket. Like Cuts said, how is he not diving to the basket into space.
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My only thought is that he’s just focused so much on where to go next within the offense that he’s not reacting to the play itself.
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Was just about to post this. See it a lot from young bigs in our system where they’re thinking not reacting. That’s why it’s so important to have veteran bigs in our system who can freelance when appropriate.
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It is exactly that. Pre determined moves not playing the play. Lots of times our wings just sprint to the other corner without a thought of doing something didferent.
The clip of Rohde to Dunn for lay up was great awareness by Rodhe backing it out to attract two defenders and making space. Dropped a semi dime to RD nicely
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We need to be ok with letting the players make some decisions outside of the offense. Tough balance but acting like robots sticking to a stymied in-game plan smothers what athleticism and instincts we do have. Certainly, there is a lack of joy and fire visible.
Yes but players need to make them. I think
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Groves is our second-best outside shooter and here he passes up a quality look from outside to, ultimately, take a much harder and strongly contested shot in the mid-range. […] I’d … like for us to stop compounding the issue of passing up good looks by settling for much worse ones with still over half of the shot clock left.
Feels like we’ve seen this a lot, where a player is open for three, hesitates, realizes (now a split second too late) that he should have taken the shot, and so “fixes” his error by forcing up a different shot. Mostly looking at Groves and McKneely here, but not exclusively.
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It’s the same thing we’ve been doing for years. It hasn’t always looked like this. So, yes, the players need to make those decisions.
So seems like we have two different takes on what directions we should go in:
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Run our stuff, let our guys take the lumps, because it’ll pay dividends in the future. The HGN take.
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Make more adjustments based on personnel this year. The Cuts take.
There’s middle ground, too. Like having Jake Groves chill out his hedge a bit but continuing to do what we are doing.
Mostly, I think if we solve for guys being in their own heads on both defense and offense, a lot of this stuff gets better as a function.
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Tony’s comments sound like he’s middle ground, but leaning more HGN than Cuts.
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Yeah, I mean I think my take is more of that middle ground. I don’t think we should keep letting our guys take lumps - the goal should be NCAA Tournament this year. I don’t think some of the adjustments are that difficult though or would prevent us from growing as a team that much long-term.
I do think we should get away from the standard assumptions around what lineups are our best and lean more into some bigger, longer, athletic looks for longer periods of time.
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Just a quick comment, because I’m still on the Burns double team stuff, and I rewatched the first half in the last day or so: I normally like the way you group the clips, as opposed to a more linear narrative, but I think the linear narrative of the 1H for me was more like this:
- Burns period 1 - he isn’t that much of a threat (you have a clip from this period)
- Burns sits (I think replaced with someone other than Middlebrooks)
- Burns period 2 - (~10 mins left in 1H) this was the key stretch. He exploited Buchanan twice in 2 or 3 possessions AND drew a foul
- KEY PLAY OF THE GAME (which you highlight) - So we double, and the double worked really well and came this close to causing a pick six, but instead, ball goes OOB, and then Parker Jr hits his heave with 1 second left on the shot clock
I think Burns period 2 (scoring way way too easy) and that nice Dunn double is what Tony had in mind by sticking with doubling at the three point line. Maybe they doubled out there rather than in close to avoid blocking fouls? Burns is very nimble on his feet for a big dude.
I’ll keep reading…
Like, for example:
The hedging piece is a compromise - but it’s not something they have to stop doing entirely - the could mix it up, go to it more or less in any given game, and continue to practice it. That’s an adjustment that we’ve made in the past (we did it for BVP and Jayden, too) that can help right now but doesn’t have to stop our long term development.
The double-teaming piece… I just don’t even really know what we were thinking there. We’re doubling the three-point line but not the post. That’s one of those things that you just correct in the film room and needs to be cleaned up regardless.
Movement without the ball and cutting to the hoop is already stuff they allow/want in their systems. The players do need more experience to have it come naturally, but it also needs to be a coaching point re: not just we have to execute our offenses better - “teams are sagging off of Ryan, when they do that, attack this way, everyone else look for it, etc.” Certainly on Saturday, they didn’t seem to know how to react to someone cluttering the lane that much and appeared to just be trying to execute as normal most of the time - so more situational/personnel awareness needs to happen.
I don’t think much of the above is out of bounds with regard to adjustments that are both reasonable and aren’t actual sacrifices - and I think it’s all plausible.
The part that I think CTB is still resistant to and that I think he’s less likely to do (that I wish he would experiment more readily with) is reconceptualize what combination of skills he actually needs on the floor at any given moment when his roster has limitations. The Dunn, Groves, Buchanan lineup against Louisville was bad in some areas but quite good in others, especially defensively. We used it out of necessity in CTB’s opinion in that game - but weren’t willing to bring it back down 15-20 at NC State when we were warping our double-teaming strategy to deal with their size?
And, at its most extreme, there are a good number of other lineups you can imagine where we could lean even more heavily into playing size/athleticism that seem off the table.
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The and-1 three to tie the game came before the key play of the game where we almost forced the pick six was also from us doubling Burns in the corner and broke like a 4 minute scoring drought from them where we’d played straight up - so it was something they tried before that play which deviated from what was working and had bad results.
The key play is the only time it worked, and it was when it was still surprising and Dunn timed it better when Burns wasn’t looking. After that, every time we went to that it created either much easier points than it should have or a wide-open three that they missed.
Furthermore - they weren’t actually doubling the post most of the time anyway. So it was even more head-scratching. They weren’t attacking the thing that was occasionally hurting them and instead were attacking something that wasn’t - but was because of how they were approaching it.
All because one trap worked? Regardless of the thought process, which we can debate, there was a lot of evidence that it wasn’t working but rather hurting so not getting away from it was surprising.
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I’d put more emphasis on what I called period 2 – Burns was able to impose his will on Blake twice in a row (maybe one play in between), AND drew a foul.
My point is THAT is the “but-for world” if we don’t double. Burns eventually getting in the neighborhood of 1.5 points per possession because we never disrupt his rhythm or timing.
(the trap that nearly worked was the cherry on the sundae).