I think a key distinction somewhere between “good” and “bad” (maybe “not good”) shooter is whether a player is a credible shooter. A guy can be only a decent shooter and still command defensive attention. But if a defense is going to leave a guy open and dare him to shoot, he better bring something else to the table like Dunn on defense.
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Agree with this. Right now, only Reece and Eli can create for themselves. Surprising in that Reece isn’t a good 3-pt shooter, yet he can still get in the lane. Not sure why defenders don’t back off him.
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Looking through the numbers, I came across kind of a surprisingly tidbit about how prolific Rohde’s passing has been.
Team ranking in assists: Beekman is #1, Rohde #2, iMac #3, and Dunn/Groves are tied at #4. I’m guessing this isn’t a surprise, given that Harris has been hurt.
To me, the surprise was the actual numbers: Beekman leads the team with 57 assists, no surprise. But Rohde is #2 with 34, which is just 1 less than iMac, Dunn and Groves combined (13, 11 and 11 totaling 35).
Rohde’s assist rate (per possession) this year is better than first year Beekman or Kihei, isn’t far behind third or fourth-year Kihei, and is better than anyone on Clemson or Miami this year. Rohde is genuinely in “2 PG’s on the court” territory in terms of making plays happen for other people.
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When (or will) Eli crack starting lineup? Is it tomorrow night? What say you?
I believe our best lineup is: Reece, iMac, Eli, Leon and Dunn. I believe that’s our best defensive lineup, and I also believe that is our best offensive lineup. Not sure it has even been used yet this year.
Believe Eli should be starting, and believe he should start tomorrow night. I like Rohde. This isn’t a knock on Rohde. He’s a skilled player. I just believe Eli is better.
Anyone else care to give their opinion?
Go HOOS!
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Personally love this idea for tomorrow but not every game
Coming off the bench could be great for Rohde too
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That’s an excellent defensive group, but it gives up a fair bit of size to the group we have now (Eli is 2-3" shorter than Rohde and Bond is ~4" shorter than Groves) while also having only a single player who’s a genuine threat from outside. Teams would pack the paint and I think we’d have a tough time scoring, like the 2020 season over again, only with weaker rebounding.
There’s probably an argument to be made that, post-the first 3 games, the entire team only has a single genuine outside threat. But at least the current starting lineup has 2 more guys who pretend to be outside threats and I think that helps.
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Feel like IMac is the key to our offense. NE took him away or at least made him uncomfortable. Id like to see him keep the defender on his hip if he lacks space after screens and drive the lane. Look to dish first or pull up for a 10 footer. Otherwise a 2nd reliable shooter needs to step up. Its not jacobs, dunn, harris, EG, rohde. Taine?
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I am largely just being an ass here but I dont think Leon and Elijah play 3-4 inches shorter than the other two, ya know?
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Nah Rohde is still the starter by a far margin because of the points others have mentioned.
Rohde is shooting 35% from 3 when not taking into account the game the other night in which 1) exam break and 2) 9 days of not playing due to injury.
He’s and Reece are in a different stratosphere of playmaking.
Gertrude has high potential for sure. But we need another playmaker besides reece. If you want Gertrude to start, you need McKneely to assert himself more as a facilitator which also means more driving and less standing around the perimeter. Which he has shown flashes of.
I think Syracuse and Texas A&M are more indicative of how we look in the kind of sets we are now running.
But I do want more ways to incorporate Leon & Dunn into the offense and for McKneely at attack and distribute more against the better competition we play.
Im also not worried about McKneely and pressure D because again everyone was playing bad and lazy and not cutting or moving hard. McKneely got two good looks and hit him down the stretch when the effort picked up. Took him a little bit to warm up as well.
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A refresher of what we are before the exam break when focused and what not
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I alluded to this earlier, but lineups with Bond AND Dunn have only scored 0.99 points-per-possession (adjusted for opponent); for reference, Hoop Explorer has our offense at 1.08 PPP overall. 47.8% on 2s, 31.6% on 3s. Sample size is 46 possessions, so that’s less than 8% of our total number of offensive possessions this season.
Defense has been weirdly mediocre in those lineups too. 0.98 PPP against, relative to overall defense being at 0.85 PPP against.
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Oh, sure. And that’s an important point. People talk a lot about UVA lacking size and thus being bad at rebounding, but that’s only true semantically. UVA’s starting lineup with Blake was, iirc, tied for 4th tallest in the ACC! And even with Groves at the 5, I think they’re still in the top half of the ACC in height.
The problem is they don’t play big. They aren’t big and beefy, and as a group they probably have average wingspan. Bond and Eli are certainly shorter than Rohde and Groves, but they’re more athletic (though Rohde is better than I expected), longer and I agree they play bigger despite being shorter (and probably lighter).
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From a quick look at the data, those Dunn-Bond lineups mostly happen on accident and not on purpose, and if we were likely to see them, we probably would’ve seen them more in the non-con, so I don’t suspect we will see them much. But maybe we will.
I both love and hate lineup data, but I just think ~5 possessions here and there in random games don’t really tell us much, even if the accumulation of possessions adds up to something that looks robust. I wish we tried to take advantage of some positive chemistry between the two, but we mostly didn’t, so now there’s not much game-time positive chemistry, so this will probably become a moot point.
And if one of them could shoot, it would be less moot, but they’re not/can’t…
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Man, we’d be a good offensive team if one of these things could happen, very good if two of them happen, and awesome amazing spectacular if all three happen:
- RD perimeter shot
- Bond perimeter shot
- iMac rim pressure
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Fully agree. I just think some times, certain games, the height across the board isnf what is most important. But I also dont think hoo starts isnt most important either
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I’ll add a 4th - Reece perimeter shot. He’s 10% below his average from last season. That upticks back to the mean from the past 2 seasons and that helps, albeit not as much as the other items you listed (but it helps, damnit!)
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My thought on starters/rotation:
- At PG, once Dante is healthy, things are pretty noncontroversial – Reece is 30+ mpg starter. Dante is 8-10mpg or so back-up
- Then, we have 7 guys with (key word) COLLECTIVELY (but not individually) a great skillset who you’d think based on first principles would be getting a fairly tightly packed minutes allocation, but instead ~4 of those guys are getting the iron man treatment (check that – more like 2 of them…)
- IMac busts out of that pack when he goes supernova, but when he doesn’t go supernova, he’s right at the top of the bell curve
- Our best chance to have the full package in one guy is Elijah, but it seems a longshot to happen anytime soon, and probably not this year, and maybe not if he can’t shoot
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Wait, you and Dave have been arguing that lineup decisions — or lack thereof — are conscious choices by the staff. But these particular lineups and lineup decisions are just accidents? Which is it, because you can’t have it both ways.
Bond needs to be on the floor for his perimeter shot to matter. Wish we’d play him more. I get his defense has been suspect but the athleticism is there and his offense has made up for it.
And of those 3 things I feel like Bond hitting 3s might be the most likely to occur (again, if he’s given the opportunity).
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Yes I can
(more earnestly – mean it more like “sporadically” or something similar)
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