Hahaha! Yes, I do sometimes chat with Seattle Hoo - he basically stopped watching this season after, I think, the Notre Dame game. Lifeās too short kind of thing. Very similar incredulity around the offense.
And youāre right - itās not just about the ball screen - itās that the people setting that screen either have to roll or have to pop and canāt do bothā¦ AND they arenāt even that great at it AND when Dunn and Minor or Buchanan are playing together there are even more people in the lane.
They probably should run more ball screens than they do (though like Iāve said before, a Sides curl can be a de facto ball screen), but to the point @Cuts_from_The_Corner is making, teams are going to help aggressively off ball in a bunch of our standard lineups. They ran a functional ball screen to end the first half against NCSU that led to an open Groves 3, but it was with Dunn-Groves-Taine-IMac-Reece; not a totally unusual lineup, but definitely one of our more shooting heavy ones.
I think this was the case pre Minor breakout. Now that heās here I believe having 2 bigs who can play around the basket gives us the advantage on those dump off passes to bigs we havenāt had in a number of years tbh.
Yeah, theyāll sag off anything we do, because most of our guys canāt** shoot, and theyāll hug up on iMac because he canāt do anything but shoot. Thatās our basic issue, but do you think other teams with this personnel would be running an equally bad offense? I think thatās my basic concern. I mostly only watch UVa hoops, so I struggle to answer, but it feels much worse than it needs to beā¦
** ācanātā as used in this post means āmostly canātā
Not sure. I guess Iād say there are teams rated above us who shoot similarly from the field as us (Villanova, St Johnās, Houston, SMU, St Maryās), but the ones with better offenses than us tend to hit the offensive boards harder to compensate. Are they running better offense? I dunno. Theyāre maybe making better tactical decisions in terms of what tradeoffs they are accepting.
Iād imagine our style of play prevents from doing too much to offset our personnel limitations. Iād imagine trying to score more in transition and generally attacking sooner in the shot clock are other strategies that teams use to overcome offensive limitations.
I think thatās my major complaint about our offense. Our philosophies are geared toward a goal: scoring more points more consistently than our opponents. But sometimes we seem more loyal to the philosophies than the goal.
Yeah - most of my non UVA basketball watching is Celtics games and highlights and they donāt have anyone who canāt shoot ā¦ so what they do wouldnāt help the Hoos methinks.
Or have some sort of screening action on the back side with Dunn to keep the defense from totally ignoring himā¦like him setting a flare screen perhaps for a shooter
In all seriousness, Iām not so much a Sides defender as much as I am moderate skeptic about how big an effect the particular offense they run can have given the personnel they have. If any of our perimeter rotation outside of IMac had showed up with a functional 3pt shot on even moderate volume, I think that would have had the biggest effect.
I think the transition points and offensive rebounding are stones left unturned. We like to knock TB for being dogmatic about such things, but I would be genuinely curious to see examples of successful coaches who have been more chameleon-like on offense not just in terms of the sets they run, but with bigger picture strategy like that. My default assumption is that most college coaches are fairly dogmatic, just about different things from each other.
Eh, Groves at 42% on some volume. He was a lot better at the start of the season, but in conference heās still averaging 35% on 2 attempts/game. Which, now that Iām thinking about it, isnāt all that much. If heād averaged that all season, heād be 13/38 or so on the season.
The issue isnāt so much hitting 3 pointers as attempting them. UVA, thanks to iMac and Groves earlier efforts, hits 3s at a respectable percentage. But the team is, per KenPom, 292th in % of 3s among all FGA, which is pretty darn low.
But thats an aside. We are talking tradeoffs of flow with our offensive personnel. But a huge part is the trade offs on defense. For flow, youāre asking more of Groves. But heās become such a liability on defense. I donāt think Tony is willing to make that tradeoff, for better or worse.
Saturday Dunn got kind of caught between two defenders under the basket and was able to make a nice pass out of it to Minor for the finish. Was a nice play
So he said. It could have been hyperbole in the moment - he still seems very aware of whatās happening and if I canāt record for whatever reason, he hooks me up with film.
