Author: bygeorgemason

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!

Squishing the Spiders

By: Pete Buckets

With just the one game this week, the breakdown is a little shorter. Since the one game was a road win against the first place team, the breakdown is a little happier too! Also, more pictures and fewer stats, since the numbers we reviewed last time haven’t changed. Let’s get started.

Jalen had a fantastic first half. On the first possession of the game he backs Cline down far enough to where Otis’s man comes off to help (red arrow). Jalen delivers this pass right to Otis’s chest and Otis cans a wide-open three:

A few possessions later, Cline plays off Jalen and concedes the jumper. Jalen hits the jumper:

Here’s my favorite play of the game. A little bit of luck and a little bit of smarts lead to a wide-open three. Marquise brings the ball up. You can see Otis setting a downscreen for Jalen. Otis’s defender (red arrow) switches onto Jalen:

When they switch back, Otis’s defender goes to double team Marquise at the top of the key instead of going back to Otis. This looks like a mistake. Otis is open, so the weak side corner defender scrambles to cover him:

Otis reverses the ball to Boyd as Otis’s original defender has taken himself totally out of the play. Boyd cans a wide-open three:

I heard the announcers talking about TJ Cline as an A10 Player of the Year candidate but that can’t be right because he got turnstiled on consecutive plays. Here’s where Jalen starts this play with the ball, isolated on Cline:

A simple spin baseline, and here’s where he ends up. Somehow Cline starts this possession between Jalen and the basket and ends it behind Jalen, who has an easy layup at the basket:

Here, Jalen has effectively screened Marquise’s defender out of the play. Step up TJ! Your team needs a stop!

Nope. Easy layup:

Kier’s prayer three as the clock expired. No breakdown, just including a picture because it was awesome:

Writing about the bigs on the bench is probably going to be a weekly thing, since the team’s ceiling hinges on their development. I promise I’m not picking on them, I just want to track their progress over the course of the season. Relvao still has a long way to go. Here he catches this pass in great position and somehow gets stripped. He did a good job feeling the defender behind him and ducking the block attempt, but the guard (#2) gets in there and takes the ball away from him:

Temara gave us a glimmer of hope for the post-Jalen future on this play. Cline has him isolated in good position here:

Cline spins, and Troy gently nudges him a little too far under the basket. Cline is pinned and gets stuffed by the underside of the backboard. This is good defense:

Apropos of nothing: I don’t love when we abandon a corner shooter to send a simple double team into the post. In this picture Otis (blue) leaves a corner shooter (Julius Johnson, red). Cline kicks out for an open three. Johnson misses, but this still doesn’t feel like a smart strategy in this spot. This is a scheme thing, not an Otis thing, since we do this all the time:

Here’s a play I want to highlight to show you all why I love Justin Kier so much. This is a 4 on 3 fast break with Richmond pushing. Kier and Otis are two guys stuck choosing four guys to guard (Jalen is only kind of in the play):

Otis stops ball. Jalen collapses on the ballhandler’s left. Kier feels that Jalen is cutting off the open shooter on the left, so he swims under Otis to stop the cutter heading to the rim from the right:

The result is that Kier deflects a pass intended for the cutter. The pass bounces off the backboard and Mason recovers. A fastbreak opportunity passes by harmlessly. We’ll be talking about Kier’s IQ plays a lot in this space.

TJ Cline can’t be the A10 player of the year, part two: he gets a post-up on Marquise on the low block. Quise is 6’2″, he’s 6’9″. He’s in great position. He’s licking his chops at this opportunity:

Marquise tosses his shit back at him with some weakside help from Jaire. Don’t tell me your A10 POY is a big man who can’t post up a 6’2” guard.

I suppose I have to acknowledge Richmond’s comeback at some point. I think the comeback was a product of Richmond pushing the pace more than anything – they got to the line, hit some threes, and got Mason out of their game for a stretch. It also looked like Mason was gassed towards then end. That’s one of the perils of riding your starters so much. There were some mental errors, some slow rotations, and a lot of trouble keeping Richmond out of the paint that we didn’t see early in the game.

Here, Richmond sends a weakside double team at Jalen for the first time all game. It’s hard to tell if this was an intentional wrinkle or if this is just circumstance, but either way Jalen isn’t ready for it. You see Kier jumping up and calling for a pass since it’s his man that left to double, but Jalen doesn’t see him and it’s too late:

Here’s a mental flub from the team. Richmond shot goes up, and all five Mason players are packed below the blue line I drew. Richmond gets the offensive rebound, kicks out to the player at the top of the key, and he drills a three. The comeback was on at this point.

Mason tends to have trouble with speedy scoring guards, and Richmond’s ShawnDre’ Jones took advantage. Here he gets a ballscreen from Cline. Jalen stays home on Cline because Cline has hit three threes so far. The screen is effective and Jones gets a step on Marquise:

Kier’s help is late, Marquise is behind the play, and Jones rockets into the lane for a layup:

Let’s end on a happy note. Here’s the matchup zone that Dave pulled out of his back pocket to flummox Richmond. You can see Richmond attacks it by putting Cline on the baseline, a player in the high post, and shooters on the wings. For Mason, Jalen is anchoring the paint. Looks standard so far:

The ball swings to Cline (circled), which draws Jalen out of the paint. The guard in the high post moves to the rim, flashing open, guarded only by Kier. Jaire looks ready to come help Kier from the weak side if necessary. He’d have to leave number 3 open on the wing to do so. From this screenshot you can see how a pass or two can put a ton of pressure on this defense:

The problem for Richmond is that Cline elects to shoot this contested corner 3. He misses, and the comeback is halted.

A couple final thoughts:

Otis’s slump is weird. He had three absolutely filthy finishes at the rim in traffic and missed several wide-open jumpers. It’s scary and exciting that we pulled out a win on the road against a quality opponent where he didn’t even have his A game. His mid-range game has abandoned him. If he finds it, Mason becomes a very dangerous team. However, at this point, you have to wonder if the wear and tear of the long season is taking a toll on him.

Jaire didn’t have a great scoring game (9 points on 12 shots) but he finished with a career-high twelve rebounds. These weren’t run of the mill rebounds either – he grabbed some strong ones in traffic. He’s not mentioned much in here because rebounds don’t make for cool pictures, but maybe someday I’ll learn how to make gifs and he’ll get his proper due. The same is true for Marquise – there’s not a ton to break down because a lot of his points come off of really simple ballscreen/pick and roll action. It’s just that teams can’t stop him from getting to the rim.

Until next week, Mason fans. Go Mason!

1/16/17 – The Breakdown 

by: Petey Buckets

Welcome to the first edition of Petey’s Bucket of Knowledge. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m sort of a Mason basketball hipster die hard. One of the first things I did when I got to campus was join the Patriot Platoon, and my freshman year turned out to be the final four season. I’ve had season tickets since I graduated eight years ago. I post a lot on the masonhoops boards, and the By George guys asked me to start doing recaps, which you may have seen, and those recaps have turned into this weekly breakdown in front of you right now. Who needs another recap writer, right?

Despite being a big basketball nerd, I don’t have a playing or coaching career to speak of. I’ve always been drawn to basketball as a fan, and I find the intersection of statistics and strategy fascinating. I’ve acquired everything I know about basketball by watching as many games as I can at all levels, and by reading copious amounts of analysis from all sorts of authorities. I like to be able to explain what I’m seeing on the court using statistics, x’s, and o’s. It’s not usually enough for me to know that a team or a player is playing well – I want to know how and why, and it’s my goal to use this forum to share those thoughts.

I want to be the first to acknowledge that you can fill encyclopedias with everything I don’t know about basketball. I am purely a fanalyst, and not an expert of any sort. That said, these posts should still be fun, informative, and will hopefully help all of us increase our understanding of Mason basketball. These will be heavy on stats and visual analysis, so they aren’t for everyone, but I hope you’ll like them. Leave a comment or find me on twitter (@peteybuckets) and we can talk hoops. Now let’s get to this week’s breakdown. I’ll do two sections – chalk talk and stats – so if one section is boring you skip down to the next and maybe that’ll be better.

Chalk Talk

First we gotta talk about how St. Joe’s chose to defend Mason with Marquise on the floor. Marquise’s defender was basically playing a one-man zone as an extra body in the paint when Marquise was off the ball. Teams usually give Marquise plenty of space on the perimeter, but St. Joe’s took it to an extreme.

Demery (25) is guarding Marquise here. Marquise is above the three point line, about to get the ball. Demery is in the middle of the paint, going about eight feet under the screen:

Here’s Demery again basically playing a one-man zone when Marquise is off the ball. Demery is #25 in the middle of the paint. Marquise is out beyond the three point line. From this still it looks like St Joe’s might be in zone, but they are not:

Mason got Marquise moving in some other ways, including having him off the ball while Otis initiated the pick and roll. Here Otis and Relvao start the pick and roll. Marquise has only just crossed halfcourt:

Casper and Kimble switch, so Casper, a forward, is caught guarding Otis at the three point line when Otis kicks to Marquise. Marquise only has Demery in front of him:

Casper hesitates to leave Otis, and it’s already too late. From the setup above, Marquise barrels into the paint and gets this shot plus the foul:

St. Joe’s was also sagging off shooters pretty hard. Look at the three weakside defenders here. Five of their six combined feet are in the paint. Again it looks like it might be a zone, but it’s not. It’s man defense with an aggressive eye toward help defense. They seem utterly unconcerned about Mason shooting threes:

Marquise adjusted to this look in the second half – he had 9 points and 2 assists in the first, and 15 points and 5 assists in the second. This screenshot started as a pick and roll with Marquise and Relvao – both defenders chase Relvao into the paint, which is a moronic choice, and leave Marquise wide open at the free throw line. I don’t know if this was a miscommunication on a switch, or if Demery was conceding jumpers to cut off the paint, but either way Marquise hits this:

Here’s a possession that starts with Relvao setting a simple ball screen. Marquise gets a step on Demery and charges into the paint. Charlie Brown’s help is late (circled), and Marquise gets an easy layup over the guard who slid into the paint:

A couple possessions later we run the exact same play. This time Charlie Brown is faced with the same decision – leave a shooter to help, or stay home. He chooses to help. Good grief. Marquise hits Jaire (circled in blue), who drains the catch-and-shoot three:

Later in the half, the action starts in the same spot on the floor. Casper is circled in red – he’s guarding Kier (blue), but he started the possession as an extra paint defender, a full 15+ feet away from Kier. Marquise penetrates, sees Kier wide open, and Kier drains a three that’s as wide open as he’ll see all season.

I would like to introduce this as evidence in Marquise Moore’s case for A-10 player of the year. He’s absolutely wreaking havoc on St. Joe’s. When they guard him one-on-one, he scores. When they double him, he finds open shooters. This is textbook stuff that sounds simple but is all predicated on Marquise’s exceptional ability to get into the paint despite defenses diverting their resources to prevent him from doing that. He’s been brilliant all season long and the truth is that Mason is probably a somewhere between a ten or twelve win team on the season without him.

Some other tactical notes:

It’s no secret that the team struggles when Jalen goes to the bench, so I paid attention to Relvao and Temara to get an idea of what exactly they’re doing or not doing. There are some freshman mistakes here, but nothing that can’t be fixed with more time in the system.

Here is Relvao catching an entry pass with great position on a much smaller defender, the 6’0” Kimble. You almost can’t see Kimble in this shot because he’s entirely to Relvao’s left. If Relvao turns to his right, he’s got an easy layup at the rim, but he’ll have to finish it with his left. Instead, he turns left (to finish with his right) and gets fouled. This is a small thing, but worth noting. Plenty of college bigs are Zoolanders (can’t ambi-turn) but if Relvao is going to reach his potential here he’ll need to finish great looks like this without relying on fouls. The foul isn’t a bad result, but a clean look in the paint like this should be an easy two or an and-one opportunity.

Here’s an instance where his help defense is really slow. You can see Chris Clover is in the paint and driving – Relvao is flat footed and below the charge arc. On a drive like this we want the big to close off the paint and make the driving player either pass or contest the finish. Since Relvao isn’t there, Boyd ends up fouling Clover to prevent the easy bucket.

Now here’s Temara defending a screen to the wrong side. Agbeko (St Louis) feints a screen to Marquise’s right and Temara reacts. Agbeko instead screens to Marquise’s left, and Temara is too slow to adjust. With Marquise effectively screened and Temara out of position, this becomes a layup for the St. Louis ballhandler:

St Louis also had a nice play drawn up to take advantage of our freshman bigs. Agbeko charges toward the ballhandler as if he’s setting a ball screen, then cuts to the basket instead. This play beat the defense twice. In this shot, Temara gets way out of position by following Agbeko over, probably because he assumes it’s a ball screen:

Here’s the look Agbeko gets off the pass. One dribble and he has an easy reverse layup:

They ran the exact same play against Relvao a few minutes later and got the exact same result:

St. Louis also ran a nice play that took advantage of our tendency to switch. Here, Agbeko screens for Crawford (St. Louis). Karmari gets switched onto Agbeko and chases him into the paint. Jaire, who is guarding Welmer on the perimeter, leaves to help cover Agbeko:

The result is this wide open three by Welmer, who drills it:

Since St. Bonaventure murdered us by getting the ball into the post quickly after ball screens, to take advantage of the paint when our bigs were high, I wanted to see if we made any changes to how we hedged. The answer is not really. Our bigs were still hedging very high, but Saint Joe’s didn’t have the bigs to make us pay for it. Here’s a simple ball screen with Casper (circled red) setting the screen. Relvao hedges damn near to half court, leaving just The People’s Rebounder patrolling the paint. There are plenty of instances of this happening in the St. Louis game as well:

Upon review of the St. Louis game, the freshmen had some trouble with defensive rotations. I’ve got one last collage to illustrate. Here, Karmari doubles the post, then runs out to the perimeter on the kickout. All good so far:

However, as soon as he gets there he turns to start running to the far side to cover 24, who’s all alone. This is a standard part of our rotation (the guard who doubles rotates out to the far side shooter after the other defenders all rotates over one) but here you see a problem:

Karmari is running away but Kier isn’t sliding over. The Saint Louis player gets a drive directly into the paint. Since no one replaced Karmari, Jalen is left all alone to contest the layup. Jalen actually forces a miss here, but SLU gets an offensive rebound and a putback:

This sort of thing happened frequently, and not just to Karmari (though this might explain why Karmari got only ten minutes in a game where we desperately needed offense). It’s part of the growing pains of playing with a youth-heavy lineup, and it’s part of the reason Mason isn’t good enough to win on off nights like against St Louis.

Stats

We’ll start with some per-game conference play only stats here.

Marquise Moore: 18 points on 12.4 FGA, 10.2 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 1.4 steals, 0.6 blocks.

Marquise’s ability to get to the free throw line has contributed to his efficiency – his 18 points come on only 12.4 shots per game, as he’s getting just under 8 free throw attempts per game as well. You can see the rest of his stat line shows how incredibly well-rounded his game is. Per college basketball reference, he’s one of two players in the country averaging 18 points, 10 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1 steal in conference play:

http://tinyurl.com/hxny5va

Jaire Grayer: 13.8 points on 11 FGA, 40.7% from three, 6.2 rebounds, 1.2 blocks.

Jaire is actually leading the team in blocks and is second in rebounds in conference play. He’s also had a very nice bump in efficiency, averaging 1.25 points per shot after averaging less than 1 in the out of conference slate. All of these are welcome developments – the team gets closer to reaching its potential when Jaire scores well, and his ability to rebound and alter shots at the rim has gone a long way toward keeping the four guard lineup viable defensively.

Jalen Jenkins: 11.6 points on 8.8 FGA, 5.4 rebounds, 3.6 fouls

Jalen has been unusually quiet in conference play so far, and foul trouble has been a big part of it. He spent large parts of the VCU and St Louis games in foul trouble, and he fouled out with three minutes remaining against St Joe’s. There’s a lot of pressure on him as the lone big in the lineup, so we’ll see if his foul issues get better as the season progresses.

Otis Livingston: 10.6 points on 11 FGA, 2.6 assists, 1.6 steals

Otis was on fire during the nine game win streak, but his shot has abandoned him in conference play. He’s shooting 25.5% overall – 26.9% from three and 24.1% from inside the arc. I think he’s just going through a little funk right now and he’ll be fine. It was great to see him step up and hit that big three against St Joe’s after struggling to score all game, and he also had two huge steals in the final minutes. He’s a gamer and he’ll be back soon.

Other stats: The new common sense in basketball at the college and NBA level is that two-point jumpers are the least valuable shot on the floor. They are less likely to go in than shots at the rim, and when they do go in, they’re worth one point less than a shot from beyond the arc. There are all sorts of studies that show the expected point value of a shot steadily declines as you get further from the rim, then goes back up once you’re beyond the three-point line. As a result, many teams have offenses built around trying to get a layup or a three on every possession, and minimizing the number of two-point jumpers they take. The Houston Rockets of the NBA are an extreme example of this philosophy.

Under Paulsen, Mason has not followed that trend. Per data from hoop-math.com, in Paulsen’s first year Mason was 24^th in the nation in percentage of shots coming as two-point jumpers. That was despite the offense running through Shevon Thompson, a post-up big man. This year, Mason is 37^th in the nation in two point jumper percentage, with 36.9% of shots coming inside the arc but not at the rim. As a result, Mason is only 200^th in the country in shots at the rim (34.7%) and 325^th in percentage of 3 point shots (28.4%).

Now, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with this. Last year’s national runner-up North Carolina, for instance, had two point jumpers count for a whopping 45.7% of their shots, fourth most in the country. North Carolina is consistently near the top of the country in two-point jumper percentage, and they’re consistently very good. But I’m wondering if this is a philosophical thing with Paulsen or if he doesn’t have the horses to run the offense he really wants. In his final season with Bucknell, Paulsen’s Bison had only 28.7% of their shots come as two-point jumpers. 33.1% of their shots were threes, and 38.2% of their shots came at the rim. His other Bucknell years follow similar patterns, with shots at the rim leading the way, then two point jumpers and threes being about the same. Paulsen never ran a four-guard system at Bucknell, so it’s worth asking whether or not the shot distribution Mason currently has is what he’s really after. Personally I think we’ll see more threes next year as a matter of necessity. Karmari will presumably be getting more time and freshman scorer Javon Greene will be in the lineup. A lot of shots at the rim are leaving between Marquise and Jalen, and those minutes will be replaced by guys who can shoot (highly ranked recruit Goanar Mar is a stretch four type). Either way this is something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

St. Bonaventure wrap-up – Good Jaire, slumping Otis, and separating the A-10 from the OOC

by: Petey Buckets

• For the second game in a row, Jaire played the game Mason needs him to play. I’ll take 16 points on 11 shots, 9 rebounds, and 2 blocks from him any night. What’s more is how he did it – he was 4-6 from three and had a couple nice finishes in traffic for his other two buckets. Aside from the scoring, I love seeing him to get to the basket, rebound, and defend, since there will be nights when the three ball isn’t falling.

 

• Otis in A-10 play so far: 35 points on 10/38 from the field, 4/16 from three, 9 assists, 6 turnovers. He was playing at a very high level before conference play started, so I think it’s safe to attribute this to a little slump. I was surprised to look at the box score after the game and see he was 0-6 from the field (I thought his game was quiet, but not that quiet). Five of his missed shots were threes – I expect they’ll make it a point to get Otis into the paint to get him going next game.

 

• Through three A-10 games, it’s clear some things that were true in the out-of-conference schedule might not be true against the A-10:
  • Mason might not have a rebounding advantage
  • Mason might not have a free throw advantage
  • Mason’s defense needs some work, particularly against opposing 4s

 

Denzel Gregg absolutely murdered Mason. Some of his production came against Jalen, but most of it came with Ayeni or another big on the floor. Jalen spent most of the night not guarding Gregg, and in Mason’s four guard system, that left him to Grayer or Boyd, or getting switched onto Kier or Newman. There were several times when Jalen was guarding him that he’d screen the ball handler, Jalen would hedge hard, and Gregg would get switched onto a guard anyway. Mason’s big guards can handle a skilled four for a possession here and there, but if asked to do it repeatedly, time after time, the results will look like they did tonight. I’m curious to see how Dave handles this, particularly with St. Joe’s skilled but small frontcourt of Markell Lodge and James Demery coming up. The bench didn’t give Mason very much today, combining for 13 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, and 3 turnovers. Kier hit four free throws but didn’t take any shots, Karmari hit one three, and Kam hit a three when the game was out of reach. Mason needs more than that to survive off games from Jalen or Otis.

• Mason also allowed the Bonnies 23 free throw attempts, just two games after allowing 20 to VCU. Previously, Mason hadn’t allowed 20 free throws to an opponent since the JMU game, when they allowed 20+ to JMU, Bradley, and Kent State in the first three unconvincing games of what turned into a convincing nine game win streak. Doing it twice in three games in conference play is a concern – part of Mason’s formula is to limit opponent opportunities by keeping them off the boards and off the free throw line.

 

• Mason’s defensive rotations were really puzzling. Jalen was hedging the Bonnies’ guards to help up top, and he was often hedging well out past the 3 point line, and for longer than necessary, allowing his man to slip down. With Mason’s only big being so high up, the Bonnies would get the ball into their bigs quickly, leaving the rest of the defense to crash into position quickly so Jalen could recover. Frequently, this didn’t work. I thought maybe Jalen was doing something wrong but then Relvao came in and did the exact same thing, hedging a couple feet out past the three point line while his man ran to the paint. I don’t understand the point of leaving the only big on the floor so high out that he can’t hope to anchor your post defense. This isn’t something I noticed before tonight, and I hope it doesn’t continue.

• Speaking of Jalen, I think I jinxed him when I wrote about how well he’s been doing handling double-teams. The Bonnies kept throwing double-teams at him tonight and he had five turnovers to show for it. He also collected only one defensive rebound, which is a strange box score anomaly and part of the reason the Bonnies were doing so well on the boards. Mason will need him to hit the boards harder to mitigate the rebounding shortcomings of a four-guard system.

 

• Credit to St. Bonaventure for switching to zone at several points in the first and second halves. They used the 2-3 zone look to keep Marquise out of the paint for a big part of the first half, and Mason really struggled to generate offense otherwise.

This loss was frustratingly similar to the VCU game because it felt like Mason couldn’t generate stops when they needed them down the stretch. Keeping things in perspective, however, this game looked a lot different if Otis plays up to his standard, if Mason gets a bigger bench contribution, or if some other little things go differently. We’ll see how the guys respond on Tuesday in a road game against the always solid St. Joe’s.

UMass wrap-up – Jaire’s big game, and how the tightrope gets wider

By: Petey Buckets

Jaire Grayer finally had the game he’s been waiting for all season. 16 points on 11 shots, 8 rebounds, and two blocks, one of them a massively clutch stop with time winding down that put the game away for good. Jaire was 3-6 from three, and one of the misses went halfway down before popping out. The big criticism of his game is that he’s a standout talent who tends to not stand out – he’s a scorer who has trouble contributing in other ways if he’s not scoring. Tonight he gave Mason a turbo boost on both ends. He’ll always look fantastic when his shot is falling, but his effort on the boards and on defense was really impressive tonight. I wrote before the VCU game that Mason walks a tightrope, as its path to victory is limited. A 4 guard lineup that doesn’t shoot threes well, doesn’t force turnovers, and doesn’t run in transition needs a lot of other things to go right. If Jaire can consistently contribute at or near this level, that tightrope gets a lot wider.

Other thoughts:

• Mental toughness has become a trademark of the Paulsen era. You’ve got to love that Mason went down thirteen in the first half and didn’t blink. I didn’t feel like the game was slipping away, but I didn’t expect Mason to go into the half with a lead, either. We moved to a matchup zone for some possessions in the first half, but I’m not convinced that’s why UMass cooled off. UMass is a poor shooting team (30% from 3 coming into this game) that hit a lot of contested shots in the opening minutes, so it might’ve just as easily been regression. Mason also led 69-61 with six minutes left and gave up a 9-0 run to concede the lead. Jaire answered with an and-1 and Mason never trailed again.
• The driving lines that Marquise and Otis love really open up when Jalen is in the high post. That’s not a skill Relvao has (not yet, anyway) and it’s noticeable how the offense runs differently when Jalen sits. The backdoor cuts and the lanes to the rim are available when Jalen pulls bigs out to the free throw line with him. When Relvao’s getting minutes, Mason takes a lot more jumpers and has trouble getting into the paint. This is one of the reasons why I think Goanar Mar has a decent shot at being a day 1 contributor next year – Relvao makes it too easy to pack the paint with defenders.
• Speaking of Relvao, he got lost on a Holloway dunk (not the one Holloway was T’d for) and Dave Paulsen was so mad he wound up and kicked the scorer’s table as hard as he could. Dave’s energy and passion is amazing, and so is his ability to get the most out of his players. The only thing I’m really worried about regarding Dave is that one of these missed defensive rotations is going to give him an aneurysm.
• Exceptional play is becoming the norm for Marquise. He posted 24 points, 9 rebounds, and 5 assists in 38 minutes just one game after looking a little out of sorts against VCU. I’m not really sure what else to say about him. Not much of what Mason does works without Marquise, and in my mind he’s the most valuable player in the A-10 by a country mile. There was one offensive possession in this game with both Marquise and Jalen on the bench, and it ended in Jaire rushing a quick jumper to beat the shot-clock. Mason can look like world-beaters when Marquise is on the floor and totally lost when he’s off.
• The Jalen-Holloway battle was really fun. Holloway is more of a big body than anything, but he has some skill, and he knows how to use his frame to rebound and get himself in good position. Jalen is the more skilled player, but he gives up about 100 pounds and clearly had his hands full. They battled to a draw with Jalen posting 18/7/4 with one block on 14 shots, and Holloway posting 17/10/1 with one block, also on 14 shots. They clearly frustrated each other at points, and Jalen even yelled back at Paulsen after Paulsen admonished him for letting Holloway get an offensive rebound.
• Starting with the Penn game, Mason is shooting 36-88 from three over the last five games, about 41%. From the start of the season through the UNI game, Mason shot 27% from three (30-111). This is a welcome evolution – hitting triples is something else that makes the tightrope a lot wider. Mason was 9-20 tonight, with Otis, Jaire, Boyd, and Karmari combining to go 9-19. I credit this to ball movement and patience, as most of the threes are open, and coming through the flow of the offense. I’ll also credit Otis’s corner three – I’m not sure he’s missed from his favorite corner all season.
• The Ian Boyd breakout game will have to wait. His box score was modest, 7/4/0 with a steal, but on the steal he looked like Ed Reed in his prime. He did a fine job of stepping up in Kier’s absence and I’m looking forward to him getting more run against the Bonnies on Saturday.
• It’s not reasonable to expect rebounding to be a strength of a 4 guard lineup, but this is consecutive games where Mason was outrebounded badly. I’m not panicking yet, but we need to accept that Mason’s rebounding advantage might have been a mirage that came from playing lesser competition. Both VCU and UMass have big 5s and bouncy 4s, and Mason didn’t play many teams like that out of conference.

This was a gritty win in a fun, fast-paced game. The Mason teams of the past few years would have happily folded after the first-half barrage, or after blowing an eight point lead with 3 minutes left in the second, but this Mason team is better.

VCU game 1 wrap-up – walking the tightrope

By: Petey Buckets

One of the things that will be hanging over Mason’s head all year is that the path to victory for this team is narrow. They need to win the boards, shoot a lot of free throws, and keep opponents out of the paint. They need Marquise to dominate on both ends and Jalen to stay out of foul trouble. If any of those things don’t happen the night gets whole lot longer. Last night, basically everything went wrong. Jalen picked up two (cheap/bad/really bad/awful/missed calls) quick fouls and only played 4 minutes in the first half. Marquise didn’t look like himself and after the game we learned his groin was bothering him. VCU dominated the boards, dominated the paint, and shot 20 free throws to Mason’s 8. Mason kept the margin close despite all that, but for most of the second half this didn’t really feel like a game Mason could win.

Some other thoughts:

• VCU is the first good team that clearly had a game plan that revolved around trying to hammer the paint, and they succeeded. 26 of their first 29 points came in the paint and Mason couldn’t get stops in big moments all night long. Every other team has taken the cheese – ignore the post, and take those threes Paulsen’s defense is gently encouraging you to take – and as a result we didn’t know what it would look like if a capable team made it their mission to get the ball inside. Now we know, and it’s not pretty. The guards couldn’t cut off dribble penetration, and when Mason did force misses, they couldn’t collect rebounds.
• A telling stat is that even though VCU didn’t shoot well from three, they were 26-45 from inside the arc. My eyes tell me that most of those shots were in the paint, where Mason has defended well all season but allowed too many easy buckets last night. Mason shot 20-51 from inside the arc – lots of those were long twos – and this disparity pretty clearly illustrates why it’s so important to get high-percentage shots at the rim. Mason has had a lot of games this season where they’ve lost the three point battle but it didn’t matter because they shot so well from the rest of the floor and got more free throws. VCU flipped that script.
• The rebounding advantage Mason has enjoyed all season might have been a mirage. VCU, which is not a good rebounding team, grabbed 16 offensive rebounds on only 29 missed shots. That’s apocalyptically bad. As a point of reference, it’s even a little better than the offensive rebounding advantage Mason enjoyed against Prairie View, when they grabbed 18 on 34 missed shots.
• Alie-Cox and Tillman only had about 10 overlapping minutes (I’m estimating) but it felt like those minutes went very badly for Mason. I was worried that VCU was the first team with two skilled bigs Mason has played all season, and this was part of the reason why. When they were on the floor together, Alie-Cox was guarded by Jalen, Relvao, or Temara, which left Grayer, Boyd, and Kier to defend Tillman. Tillman only scored five points but he also grabbed eleven rebounds, five offensive, as a result of those much smaller guys being left to box him out.
• The non-Jalen minutes didn’t kill Mason, but I’m not totally sure why. In 18 minutes Relvao and Temara combined for 2 points, 3 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal. Most of those minutes came in the first half, after Jalen picked up his second foul, when Mason actually closed the gap. Their defense seemed mostly solid, but Mason is effectively playing 4 on 5 on offense when Jalen goes to the bench. Relvao and Temara both have a ton of potential but aren’t quite where they need to be yet. Quick aside – there was a moment in the first half when Relvao was waiting to check in. Paulsen watched a sequence where VCU got a couple consecutive boards, turned to Relvao at the scorers’ table, and yelled “Grab every fuckin’ rebound!” Having a real coach is fun.
• Behind Boyd, the bench is thin. Scoring from the starters was very balanced (12, 10, 10, 10, 8) and of the 14 bench points, 10 came from Ian Boyd. Boyd again impressed with his ability to scrap in the paint, fight for rebounds, and his defensive instincts, but the bench contributions need to be more consistent if Mason is going to compete with better teams.
• As if everything else didn’t go wrong, Mason’s backcourt combo of Otis and Marquise had their least efficient scoring games of the season, combining for 20 points on 8-27 shooting, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 steals, and 9 turnovers. I’m not concerned they’ll have many more games like this, but last night showed us how ugly the offense can look when neither of those guys finds a rhythm.

Given that just about everything went wrong, this game could have been a lot worse. There are some definite positives to take away – perimeter defense looked really good, Kier had another quiet but solid game, Ian Boyd looks ready, Jalen played very well in his limited minutes, and VCU’s press didn’t win the game. The issues that cost Mason this game are correctable, though personnel limitations will make them susceptible to games like this one. I’m curious to see if Paulsen considers going with two forwards at any point in the year to combat teams that are beating Mason on the boards as badly as VCU did last night.