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Official Meltdown thread

I didn't get to watch the Drake game. But I checked the box score. The minutes are alarming. Danny has gone all in with this 4-guard this and it's clearly not working. We're negating the big advantage we have over mid-majors - size. We were outrebounded by Drake. It is totally unsurprising that Moore and 17 and 17. He's good and huge. We need another big in the game as well against teams like this. We have the personnel to win these games. But Danny's not getting the meta-strategy and this is deeply concerning. We do have a coaching problem.

Minutes
Guards: Woods (34); Crawford (36); Brown (27); Chill (27); Wilbekin (21)
Bigs: Moore (25); Thomspon (11); Sarr (11); Eggleston (4); Okeke (4)

I posted this on the Liberty thread after a re-watch of the game to critically break the game down. Still relevant, sadly:

I watched the replay of this game after watching it last night. It's pretty obvious what needs to happen right now. First, we need to play the our starters/team with size longer. Woods, Crawford, Moore, Thompson, Brown with Sarr, maybe SJM, Okeke, maybe Melo, all getting run. Moore scored our first 4 points of the game. His size is the difference, particularly against mid-majors. Then we subbed in and ran a lineup of Chill, Wilbekin, Donovan Mitchell, Sarr, and Crawford. That lineup was awful and we fell behind. Sarr is going to be fine. It's his first game, but damn he's fluid for his size.

Chill is size limited. Wilbekin is size and speed limited. Woods is speed limited. We cannot have three of those in a game, let alone two. We absolutely get smashed, even by Liberty talent. Wilbekin, our Sr, got lost multiple times on the perimeter leading to 3's.

Bottom line is we need to use our size. Donovan Mitchell hasn't shown he's awful yet. He's fluid. He can guard the perimeter. We cannot commit to this 4 guard thing. Manning has to realize this or we are doomed. 9 minutes into the game, we were down 4. Doral had 6 of our 10 plus a great bit of D on his man. And he probably only played 4-5 of the 9 minutes.

I did notice that we sometimes just swapped guys on the perimeter even when there isn't a pick. I have no idea if that is intentional or what. But it resulted in guys being wide open on the perimeter. And it wasn't even big-small swap. I noticed one situation where Chill's man started up top and went to the right perimeter. Crawford's man went from right perimeter to the top. Chill let his man walk free. Crawford was down on the block. Everyone else was matched up. End result was that guy just posted up at the 3-point line and hit a wide open 3.

We also just missed a TON of wide open 3's. And I mean WIDE open. Rough when you're relying on experience guards to hit those shots and they don't. Chill is offensively trying to do way too much, forcing drives and pushing bad passes.

Okeke has the size and the hustle. He needs to play more.

Moore and Sarr are going to be players. But we really need to rely on our size more, particularly against teams like this. We need to focus on the process and just get better and get our lineup down. Manning is seeing what a lot of these guys can do. If we figure it out, we'll be a better team. The parts are there.
 
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There's a good chance I don't watch a minute of wake basketball this year. I don't have time for this shit, so I'm not really motivated to go out of my way to watch us stumble around looking like shit every game we play. Fuck it.
 
We are in a huge conundrum here folks, Manning has had enough time and needs to go YET who here wants to see Wellman hire another basketball coach? I sure don't
 
Carolina might win more games in March and April than Wake wins all year.
 
sportsnut said:
We are in a huge conundrum here folks, Manning has had enough time and needs to go YET who here wants to see Wellman hire another basketball coach? I sure don't
Click to expand...

The other part of this equation is we have an outstanding 2018 class signed.
 
Drake “picked to finish last in mvc”
Haha

making excuses for these losses is ridiculous. Wake just really sucks
 
I just can't believe people are still so invested in Wake hoops to have a designated "meltdown" thread over it. The road to ruin started about 12 years ago and has steadily lead down to oblivion despite having blips of apparent recovery like one of those WWI airplanes going down in a tailspin.
 
Things seem bleak, yes, but everyone seems to conveniently forget that this team beat Queens College of Charlotte just a couple weeks ago.
 
Remember that thread last year asking if we'd rather miss the tourney and have Collins stay versus make the tourney?
 
I know others have said this, but watching last night I finally understand why Manning plays such weird (ie terrible) rotations early in the season. I think it is because he always adjusts what we do based on what the other team is doing (rather than dictating). This tends to be more dramatic in non-conference since its usually smaller teams etc.

Drake played basically 4 guards and a "center." Their strategy with each possession was to push it hard up floor and try to beat our bigs. If not, they then worked it around and around until they finally got a 3 point shot on a smaller guard or backdoor cut etc late in shot clock.

Manning felt comfortable playing Moore/Sarr on their "center" since that player couldn't really shoot, hence all of the extra minutes. However, he essentially played 4 guards the entire game. This included large stretches where Chaundee was 2nd tallest player. I'm sure the thinking was that playing guards was best way to limit their fast breaks and 3 point shots. Manning went into season thinking our guards were our best players (maybe they are) so one can see how he could fall into this trap.

However, playing 4 guards actually hurt us way more than it "helped" contain their offense:

1. A huge % of the made 3s were directly shot over Wilbeken. Even when he closes out reasonably he is just too easy to shoot over. I can't for the life of me understand why Manning can't see this with his own eyes or at minimum look at the stats. He is truly having an awful senior year, but this problem has always been there.

2. Many of the 3s were shot with a guard in reasonable position---they were just shot over a 5'10"-6'2" player.

3. Once again our rebounding was nowhere near where it should have been---mainly because Moore is only player over 6'5" and often only other player over 6"3". They got multiple second chance points and we rarely had easy put backs on offensive side. We literally should have been able to chuck up shots in the lane and feasted with offensive rebounds (like the Ish/Farouq team used to do).

Lastly, I don't think Manning is a horrible coach. But, I think his chosen strategy for this year has failed miserably. He has stayed the course through 3 games, will he make dramatic changes?

I would play Crawford, Woods, Brown, Sarr, and Moore together. Don't care if we get beat a few times. We force other team to deal with two 7 footers. For once be the team dictating. Never have more than 2 guards in game. Play Melo/Mitchell/Okoke/SJM so that we always have length at PF/C
 
greekdeac2011 said:
What on earth is going on?? I don't even know if [redacted] stooped to this level
Click to expand...

I’m not saying we should be good or that we have players in the right places, but, we should have enough talent any given year to easily beat the likes of Liberty and Drake.
 
wfupdx said:
I know others have said this, but watching last night I finally understand why Manning plays such weird (ie terrible) rotations early in the season. I think it is because he always adjusts what we do based on what the other team is doing (rather than dictating). This tends to be more dramatic in non-conference since its usually smaller teams etc.

Drake played basically 4 guards and a "center." Their strategy with each possession was to push it hard up floor and try to beat our bigs. If not, they then worked it around and around until they finally got a 3 point shot on a smaller guard or backdoor cut etc late in shot clock.

Manning felt comfortable playing Moore/Sarr on their "center" since that player couldn't really shoot, hence all of the extra minutes. However, he essentially played 4 guards the entire game. This included large stretches where Chaundee was 2nd tallest player. I'm sure the thinking was that playing guards was best way to limit their fast breaks and 3 point shots. Manning went into season thinking our guards were our best players (maybe they are) so one can see how he could fall into this trap.

However, playing 4 guards actually hurt us way more than it "helped" contain their offense:

1. A huge % of the made 3s were directly shot over Wilbeken. Even when he closes out reasonably he is just too easy to shoot over. I can't for the life of me understand why Manning can't see this with his own eyes or at minimum look at the stats. He is truly having an awful senior year, but this problem has always been there.

2. Many of the 3s were shot with a guard in reasonable position---they were just shot over a 5'10"-6'2" player.

3. Once again our rebounding was nowhere near where it should have been---mainly because Moore is only player over 6'5" and often only other player over 6"3". They got multiple second chance points and we rarely had easy put backs on offensive side. We literally should have been able to chuck up shots in the lane and feasted with offensive rebounds (like the Ish/Farouq team used to do).

Lastly, I don't think Manning is a horrible coach. But, I think his chosen strategy for this year has failed miserably. He has stayed the course through 3 games, will he make dramatic changes?

I would play Crawford, Woods, Brown, Sarr, and Moore together. Don't care if we get beat a few times. We force other team to deal with two 7 footers. For once be the team dictating. Never have more than 2 guards in game. Play Melo/Mitchell/Okoke/SJM so that we always have length at PF/C
Click to expand...

This is why I find the calls for zones or packline defenses to be pretty laughable. Manning already has our guys playing help man and we switch all picks. When in help, our guards are playing really deep. Like a foot in the paint deep, which is a lot like a packline anwyay. I can only assume that after losing our starting front court, that's an effort to help our bigs avoid one-on-ones and foul trouble. But we've all seen the results - possession after possession of our guards trying to get out on a shooter and failing. Even when that shooter is a 6 foot nothing YMCA all star. For zones or packlines to work in the modern college game, you absolutely have to have long, athletic guards to defend skip passes for jump shots. We're the exact opposite of that - we'd just give up even more open shots.

Given that strategy, the failure at 4 guards should be getting beaten inside, not outside. It's not like Sarr is closing out on 3 point shooters if we were to go big. To me the question is this - if we'd dumped the defense and just gone to a face-guarding overplay man across the board, I'm guessing we win at least the Drake game. But against ACC teams with real big men, that's not likely to work - we're going to need our guards helping down low and recovering to their men. Call it stubborn or bad or incompetent or inflexible coaching - take your pick. Could be any of those.

Last year in league play we were routinely throwing in Manning's matchup zone - haven't see that once so far. Seems like this team is in basketball 101 still.
 
With Woods not playing and Wilbeken with early foul trouble we have only been able to play 2 guards. Magically, we are getting lots of rebounds and second chance points. Melo, Mitchell, and even SJM contributing and our size is the difference. Don't think it was Danny's plan, but hopefully he learns something.
 
Mitchell and Thompson shared PF. Moore, Sarr and SJM played center. Brown and Eggleston at SF. Decent size at all three front court positions. Win the boards. Defend the rim. Win the game. Whether it happens tomorrow is the question.
 
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