Lots of doom and gloom here and on the Twittersphere last night, and while I don’t want to invalidate your totally rational in game reactions, I thought I’d offer my thoughts as a coach of this sport.
90% of teams do not have a big man that can stop Toppin/D5 destroying their team with points in the paint, if you do have one, you can play us straight up man to man.
UNCW falls into the 90% who don’t, which leaves a coach 2 choices, try to 1v1 Toppin/D5 and die a death of 1000 papercuts, or instantly send a double team and hope we miss 3’s.
Obviously UNCW chose option 2, and even took it a step further with their ball screen defense. They absolutely dared Hawkins to shoot on every PnR with Toppin, there was no hedge, it was sag-off double team Toppin on the roll where he can’t even catch the ball.
So UNCW placed their bets on two 40% 3pt shooters, one 35% 3pt shooter, having an off night, and dared a 32% 3pt shooter to make shots. That was their best bet and credit to them it nearly worked, if not for Dr K.
Problem with that strategy is statistically, most nights, we will murder teams that do that (TCU away being an exception). Panic people, WE WERE NOT TAKING BAD SHOTS, we were simply missing WIDE OPEN 3’s on an off shooting night. Christian Anderson had enough wide open looks to drop 5-6 3’s himself, I’ll give him a freshman pass in his first game. D5 was 0-4, again a very rare occurrence.
As a coach you do not tell your great shooters to “stop shooting wide open 3’s”, you just don’t. I know the tendency from the couch is “take it to the basket!!”, but when a team isn’t closing out on the 3, and is sagging everyone to the lane that is NOT the answer. Look at the degree of difficulty Anderson had on his and-one finish inside, is that the shot you want each possession over a wide open 3??
Bottom line, if Anderson or D5 has a normal game, or McMillan plays, UNCW’s game plan would’ve led to us dropping 100+ on their head. I pray teams try this approach if McMilly can comeback in-form.
One adjustment I thought we went to too late was posting D5 instead of Toppin, D5 is such a good passer, I thought we could’ve manufactured some easy ones on cuts to the basket off his post ups
Defense could’ve been better, but UNCW also dropped some very high degree of difficulty shots.
In basketball, as in football, you take what the defense gives you, and if teams want to give us 35+ wide open looks at 3 balls the whole tournament I’m here for it. Embrace it, don’t panic!
(Btw haslammetrics had us winning that game by 13 with Chance factored in)
90% of teams do not have a big man that can stop Toppin/D5 destroying their team with points in the paint, if you do have one, you can play us straight up man to man.
UNCW falls into the 90% who don’t, which leaves a coach 2 choices, try to 1v1 Toppin/D5 and die a death of 1000 papercuts, or instantly send a double team and hope we miss 3’s.
Obviously UNCW chose option 2, and even took it a step further with their ball screen defense. They absolutely dared Hawkins to shoot on every PnR with Toppin, there was no hedge, it was sag-off double team Toppin on the roll where he can’t even catch the ball.
So UNCW placed their bets on two 40% 3pt shooters, one 35% 3pt shooter, having an off night, and dared a 32% 3pt shooter to make shots. That was their best bet and credit to them it nearly worked, if not for Dr K.
Problem with that strategy is statistically, most nights, we will murder teams that do that (TCU away being an exception). Panic people, WE WERE NOT TAKING BAD SHOTS, we were simply missing WIDE OPEN 3’s on an off shooting night. Christian Anderson had enough wide open looks to drop 5-6 3’s himself, I’ll give him a freshman pass in his first game. D5 was 0-4, again a very rare occurrence.
As a coach you do not tell your great shooters to “stop shooting wide open 3’s”, you just don’t. I know the tendency from the couch is “take it to the basket!!”, but when a team isn’t closing out on the 3, and is sagging everyone to the lane that is NOT the answer. Look at the degree of difficulty Anderson had on his and-one finish inside, is that the shot you want each possession over a wide open 3??
Bottom line, if Anderson or D5 has a normal game, or McMillan plays, UNCW’s game plan would’ve led to us dropping 100+ on their head. I pray teams try this approach if McMilly can comeback in-form.
One adjustment I thought we went to too late was posting D5 instead of Toppin, D5 is such a good passer, I thought we could’ve manufactured some easy ones on cuts to the basket off his post ups
Defense could’ve been better, but UNCW also dropped some very high degree of difficulty shots.
In basketball, as in football, you take what the defense gives you, and if teams want to give us 35+ wide open looks at 3 balls the whole tournament I’m here for it. Embrace it, don’t panic!
(Btw haslammetrics had us winning that game by 13 with Chance factored in)
