One home loss and one road win this week. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
All of the film breakdown comes from the GW game this week because I can’t find a replay of the UMass game online. You’re getting what you’re paying for! Also, we’re moving into the year 2008 by using gifs instead of pictures. As always, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments:
Chalk Talk
Let’s start with the bad stuff. GW’s length killed us in a lot of ways. To me, the story of the game was how hopeless we looked on defense, rarely getting stops and almost never stringing two or more together. We switched our smallest guards onto GW’s bigs without much resistance, and I don’t totally understand why. Here’s a gif from GW’s first possession of the game. You can see GW’s Cavanaugh, guarded by Jaire, comes up to set a ballscreen. Otis and Jaire switch, which leaves Otis on his own to defend Cavanaugh in the post. To call this a mismatch would be an understatement:
This kept happening throughout the game and explains how Cavanaugh scored 20 points in only 20 minutes of action. He didn’t score on this highlighted play, but he scored on several others just like it.
The defensive rotations were a little bit of a mess too. In this clip Cavanaugh screens the ballhandler (Sina). Otis fights under the screen and doesn’t want to switch, but Jalen has to hedge Sina so he doesn’t have an easy path to the basket. With Jalen and Otis both chasing Sina, Cavanaugh leaks to the top of the key and hits a wide-open three:
Here’s an open three that’s a little more complicated, and looks like a clever play from GW. Otis leaves his man (#14 Roland) to double the post. Steeves (32) comes up from the weakside block to the foul line, bringing Ian with him. The pass from the post goes back to Roland, so Ian chases Roland. Otis starts running across the lane to the weak side, leaving Steeves with a wide-open three:
After we double the post, the guard who doubles recovers back across to the far weak side. That’s what Otis is trying to do here. Every perimeter defender rotates over one so that the other team doesn’t have a simple kick-out three. Mason’s rotation is usually sharp, but the wrinkle here is that this is a big man who came from the low block out to the corner three spot. Ian recovers onto Otis’s man, Otis doesn’t realize the rotation has been busted (Marquise and Jaire haven’t moved), and the result is an open three. Credit GW for a well designed and executed play.
When GW opened the floodgates in the second half, it was due in no small part to Mason’s discombobulated press. Here’s a good example that leads to an open three. Watanabe gets open behind Marquise and takes the ball to the top of the key. For some reason, Marquise, Otis, and Karmari all chase Watanabe. When Steeves comes into the paint and gets the pass, Kier and Boyd collapse on him while Karmari and Otis are recovering to the weak side. Roland is left wide open in the corner. We only pressed on a few possessions, and it looked just about this ugly each time:
Dave, what’d you think of the officials in this game?
Random Mason fan – your thoughts?
Staring contest!
The defense was a mess but there was some legitimately fun and exciting stuff that came out of the GW game. First, Ian Boyd with a pretty assist to Jalen on the pick and roll. This is a heady play, and one that can be dangerous in college ball – making the other team pay for hedging pick and rolls can lead to all sorts of positive bends in the defense:
Second, Boyd rebounding like a monster and drawing the foul. He’s out of the frame when the shot goes up but jumps in between four GW defenders to grab the rebound. He certainly plays like a guy who had football scholarship offers:
Here’s the gorgeous fast-break and-one play from Kier to Karmari Newman. Kier throws an absolute dime here – he moves to his right, throws back to his left, and threads the needle between two defenders, hitting Karmari right in the numbers. Karmari double-clutches, draws the contact, and finishes. This is a really fantastic play from both of the freshmen:
I also loved Karmari flashing his scoring chops on this play. He gets the ball at the three point line with a step on Sina. He barrels into the lane, jump stops, pump fakes Watanabe up into the air, goes up while Watanabe is coming down, and avoids Smith’s block attempt. This is impressive:
Not to pick on anyone, but other guards try stuff like this occasionally, and more often than not it gets blocked to the moon. If Karmari develops the way we want him to, his ability to drive and finish will be a great complement to his stroke from deep and make him a very dangerous scorer.
Last one – Otis’s size can be a disadvantage in certain situations. Longer guards can shoot over him, particularly at the rim, and his shot gets blocked a fair amount. However, this is a cool example of Otis using his size to his advantage. Watanabe (6’9”) is guarding Otis when Temara sets a ballscreen. Marfo, also 6’9”, hedges. There’s an Otis-sized hole between them, and Otis splits it beautifully and completes the finish at the rim. No, he does not go between Marfo’s legs, but I can see why you might think that:
Stats
The big numbers story of this week is Otis getting his groove back. He played well against GW, but still a little below his A game, but was absolutely on fire against UMass. UMass is a loss without Otis returning to form. Here are his numbers from both games combined:
39 points on 14/28 shooting, 1-5 from three, 10-13 from the line, 7 rebounds, 4 steals, 3 assists.
It’s big that Otis put up these numbers without the three ball. When he finds it again he’ll be dangerous. He didn’t have any assists in the GW game, which explains why the assist total is curiously low. Mason shooting 1-8 from three is a big part of that.
Here’s what an off week looks like for Mason’s first legitimate A10 Player of the Year candidate, Marquise Moore:
25 points on 10/28 shooting, 5-10 from the line, 18 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 steals
Marquise also failed to record an assist against GW. In fact, Mason only had five assists as a team. Our assist rate is lower than many teams because a lot of our offense is isolating Marquise or Jalen, but that’s still the sort of box score oddity I don’t expect to see again the rest of the year. Perhaps more concerning is that Marquise didn’t get to the foul line against UMass – free throws are incredibly important to his style of play. Need to see him get to the line early and often against St. Louis.
Now we’ll just go through some random things I find interesting:
- Justin Kier is a fantastic passer, as seen in the clip above where he assists Karmari’s and-one, but turnovers are a problem. His turnover percentage in conference is 36.2%, higher than all the regulars except Relvao. I don’t think there are any long-term concerns here, as most of his turnovers are of the mental mistake variety, but it’s something to watch for down the stretch. As a team we have a very low turnover percentage and Justin kind of sticks out in this regard.
- Our leading shot-blocker in conference is Jaire with nine. In second place is Marquise with six. In third place is… Ian Boyd with three. Jalen only has two blocked shots through eight conference games so far. He’s asked to do a whole lot as the only big in a four-guard system but you still want to see a little more rim protection out of him.
- Troy’s four points against UMass were impressive. His monster slam on the fast break was the WOW play, but he had a really nice reverse layup right before that showed balance, coordination, and craftiness around the basket. Temara and Relvao have only combined for nine total field goal attempts in conference play, or about one every ten minutes of court time. Having one of them become a threat to score, or at least evolve into someone you have to pay attention to on defense, would be a luxury.
- After shooting 14/49 (28.6%) out of conference, Jaire is shooting 17/36 (47.2%) from three in conference play. Ian Boyd (7/16) is at 43.8%, and Kier (5/8) is at 62.5%.
- Jalen has almost as many offensive rebounds (59) as he does defensive rebounds (67). He had six of each against UMass. He’s the second leading rebounder on the team by way of being first in offensive rebounds and fourth in defensive rebounds, behind Marquise, Kier, and Grayer.
- My favorite stat: Marquise has 183 defensive rebounds this season. In second place is Kier with 77, about 42% of Marquise’s total. That’s crazy.
That’s it for the breakdown this week. I’ll try to get the next one out on time (Monday morning) but I promise nothing with the Super Bowl on Sunday. Until next time – go Patriots!