Cuts From The Corner - Review of the Villanova game.
How much of our effectiveness do you attribute to Nova’s drop coverage? In almost all the clips there’s a pretty solid through line from drop coverage to the quality look we generate. I don’t suspect we’ll see this level and persistence of drop coverage much more this season, so I’m wondering how much of what we saw is replicable? Just trying to calibrate my expectations …
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I imagine the days of Dai Dai doing the dribble right, abrupt stop, and turn left will end unless he shows that he can continue right and do something positive. That seems to be his go to move, and teams will be aware of it.
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I mean, a lot of these clips are us beating drop coverage… but that’s a double-edge sword, too. There’s a clip in there of them playing flat coverage against the zone and it leaves a nasty switch on Saunders which throws their help defense in disarray and creates a spot up for iMac.
If teams don’t play drop, we’re going to see more successful dives from our bigs and drives from Ames… so I do think it’s a series of tradeoffs for opponents. That being said, you can’t let McKneely just bomb on you all game like that so they’re probably better off not.
The defenses that will probably be most effective against us will be aggressive attack-style hedges - like our own or even more aggressive like a Houston.
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I think we will see it some. Haven’t watched much Cuse, but I’m guessing they aren’t trying to hedge with Lampkin. Cal was a drop team last season, going off a Hoop Vision post from last season. Georgia Tech as well. Wake used to be a heavy drop team but hasn’t been this season.
More broadly, even if teams aren’t going into a deep drop, IMac being willing to shoot those shots demands attention from the ball screen coverage; maybe it slows down the screener’s defender in recovering or it straight up keeps two on the ball.
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Haven’t read through yet, but just based on a quick rewatch of about 2/3 or so of the game, one takeaway was that Boakye was kinda hot garbage and really hurt his team in ways that showed up on the court but not the box score.
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Yes. It’s showing up in the on-off stats. Though the guy on their team with the most horrific on-offs right now is Longino. They’re 0.5 points-per-possession better with him on the bench, which is an absurdly large number. Caveat: the possession numbers are so small that this isn’t exactly interpretable, but it is a crazy number.
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Finally got to reading, and two things struck me:
- Woof, Nova’s defensive attention to detail is a mess.
- It is still good that we cleared the bar of “don’t make a bad defense look better than it is.” Hasn’t always been the case in recent years.
Small note, on the Rohde floater that came of a Blake DHO, I think the Dai Dai pin-down that created a little separation for Rohde before the handoff is planned within their new offense scheme. Saw it a couple of times against Campbell. I think Dai Dai has the option there to slip to the rim if his man switches/gets preoccupied with Rohde’s movement.
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Yeah, good news is we forced a bad defense to make tough choices and we benefited from their generally bad choices. Agree we didn’t really clear that much last year.
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Yep, totally agreed. I think our strengths are better suited to exploiting the tradeoffs of drop coverage than exploiting the tradeoffs of aggressive hedging.
Lack of playmakers and a cadre of good spot up shooters + many of our offensive sets initiating from the 3 point line. Will be tricky - Tennessee will be a pretty direct test.
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In this young season, Ames, Rohde, and Cofie have probably shot above expectations while Sharma and Power have shot below (meanwhile, McKneely shouts from the mountaintops things like, “What are these ‘expectations’ mortals?!??”).
But I’d take that trade off every time.
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I think it’s pretty clear that too many people on here were selling Dai Dai’s shot well short. We had many people thinking he was Dante 2.0 despite clear evidence of that not being the case. For a long time we could have benefitted from someone like Dai Dai. He will never be a 40%+ guy from deep but he’s someone that will always get and make 1-2 from deep per game on an acceptable percentage. We seem to either have elite jump shooters, horrible shooters, or guys who are okay but won’t shoot.
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Great article @Cuts_from_The_Corner but we need to have a talk with my doctor….
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Great cuts, as usual. One comment:
It’s kind of ironic that one of the arguments against starting Rohde at point is how he struggled to hold up to pressure and he was so methodical beating a full court press, delaying our ability to set up offense. And yet, Ames actually looked worse trying to beat full court pressure and often defaulted to Rohde (and other players) to help beat the pressure.
I wouldn’t call this irony. I’d call this “the plan” or what I will attribute to a plan anyway. First, yes, Ames struggled against that pressure. But I’d call it more boneheadedness and lack of experience than “oh crud, I worry for him out there.” Then, Rohde looked good breaking the press BECAUSE we didn’t make him do it for 30+ MPG and BECAUSE he was often doing it as the secondary guy to Ames.
Thanks, @Cuts_from_The_Corner. Good stuff, as usual.
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Was he actually secondary to Ames though? I didn’t track it possession by possession but I was very surprised how little Ames took this responsibility on compared to what I expected.
Felt like Rohde did it more when he was in but I’d need to revisit. Ames often deferred to players who are considerably worse than Rohde at this too.
Thanks btw!
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I didn’t track possession by possession either, but at the very least you have the better peskier defender on the primary PG for the possessions when they’re both in.
My main point is that Rohde looked better because Ron made the choice to make Ames the primary PG, not because he just looked better in that role in a vacuum.
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Was Ames covered by Brickus and Rohde by someone else? Asking because Brickus was pesky.
Either way Dai Dai seemed to get inside his own head a bit, a little too into on the one on one battle instead of just getting it up the court.
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At least in the half court, Cuts had Brickus on Rohde when they were both in. (To be clear, my comments were directed to backcourt pressure)
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Warning: Meta comment / question incoming…
I always enjoy reading these. I didn’t play basketball however but sorta wonder how much of the X’s and O’s of these plays are really deliberate v natural course of the game.
Sometimes I read these and it feels like chess-level strategy in a really athletic game.
I played soccer at a very high level and yes, there were concepts we practiced over and over and tactics but it always seemed like in game these were applied (sorta muscle memory-ish) through the run of the game.
Cc @DFresh11 @Ahooiam1 @chavlicek15 for players perspective
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Yea. When you are in a game you have your sets and general ideas but you are largely reacting and making plays. You see a guy sag off and Bang! You let it go. Maybe the coaches say “hey they are going under screens. Fly off thaf thing and shoot it”
I will say you hear better guys that see things more clearly. Especially NBA guys knowing little things and slowing the game down and seeing things in sorta slow motion
I think Ty Jerome plays more analytically and guy like Kyle Guy more off instinct
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