Welcome back to the Hoop Vision Weekly — the first weekly edition of the new year!
We began sending weekly newsletters back in December 2018, meaning 2022 technically marks our fifth calendar year of publishing the HV Weekly.
This audience and community has grown exponentially since then, and we can’t thank you enough for your continued support and interest in what we do here at Hoop Vision.
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In this week’s edition, we discussed whether this season is providing a big man renaissance, some tasty Big 12 X’s and O’s, and broke down a massive matchup and result at the Division III level.
In today’s Weekly edition:
A quick recap of the latest episode of Solving Basketball, featuring a play-by-play voice you will likely recognize
A dive into yesterday’s mid-major marquee matinee between Loyola Chicago and San Francisco and how the Ramblers exploited an edge to take home a key victory. (Note: this game wasn’t even scheduled until earlier this week, and was played on a neutral court)
Revisiting the debate between substituting a player in foul trouble versus leaving them in the game
Some favorite links and other coverage from around the basketball world
Solving Basketball: Mike Couzens
The Solving Basketball podcast is presented by Hudl. Learn more about how teams and coaches around the world use Hudl’s technology to customize their video and data workflows by clicking here.
On Monday, we released a new episode of Solving Basketball with ESPN play-by-play broadcaster Mike Couzens (follow Mike on Twitter here).
Some of the topics discussed include:
Mike’s preparation and approach for calling games
The relationships between broadcasters and coaches
Communicating advanced statistics during a broadcast
The similarities and differences between the internet and TV audiences
Loyola Exploiting Foul Trouble
With just under ten minutes remaining in San Francisco’s game against Loyola Chicago on Thursday, Dons guard Khalil Shabazz picked up his fourth foul.
San Francisco head coach Todd Golden had a decision to make: Leave his starter in with four fouls or sub him out?
As we have covered in our previous newsletter on foul trouble, Golden is one of the the most aggressive coaches in the country when it comes to letting his players play through foul trouble. This season, he ranks 16th in Ken Pomeroy’s 2-Foul Participation stat. Last season, he ranked 9th.
On Thursday, Golden decided to pull Shabazz — but only momentarily. Shabazz sat for just over a minute, then returned to the game with eight minutes and three seconds left on the clock.
The decision to let Shabazz play certainly has merit. By relegating Shabazz to the bench for several minutes, Golden would have essentially been fouling him out anyways. Putting Shabazz in earlier maximizes his expected minutes. Also, Shabazz isn’t particularly foul prone — he has averaged 2.9 fouls per 40 minutes.
However, there were two important factors that add more nuance to the decision than just maximizing expected minutes:
Player behavior changes when playing through foul trouble
Loyola Chicago knew that and attacked Shabazz
As soon as Shabazz checked back into the game, Loyola Chicago head coach Drew Valentine had his team exploit the foul trouble.
Below, the very first possession after Shabazz re-entered:
By having the player Shabazz was guarding set a step-up ball screen, Loyola forced a switch and attacked Shabazz off the dribble — drawing a foul on Yauhen Massalski (the help defender) at the rim.
The very next possession, Loyola went back to the same exact action but on the other side of the court.
This time on the guard-to-guard screen, Shabazz attempted not to switch. The problem, however, was that put extra responsibility on Jamaree Bouyea to fight through the screen — leading to a key Loyola basket.
A minute later, the Ramblers continued their attack of Shabazz.
On the post-up, you can see Shabazz puts his hands up — looking to avoid the foul. Because of that, Marquise Kennedy got right to the basket.
(Side note: As Kennedy was pushing the ball up the floor, it sounds like Drew Valentine shouts “Nova!” — which, I would guess, is Loyola’s call for a dribble drive into a post-up.)
The next possession, Loyola went back to yet another guard-to-guard screen versus Shabazz.
Shabazz switched the screen, leading to another post-up. This time, the Dons gave Shabazz help by digging on the post. Lucas Williamson recognized his man was digging and cut to the basket, but missed the layup opportunity.
With three minutes and 19 seconds left, Shabazz picked up his fifth foul and was disqualified. San Francisco was down four when he re-entered the game; they were down nine after he fouled out.
Playing Devil’s Advocate
From a strictly results-oriented perspective, San Francisco’s decision to bring Shabazz back into the game backfired on Thursday. Loyola was able to exploit Shabazz’s desire to avoid fouling and manufactured a few pivotal easy buckets as a result.
Still, four minutes of basketball doesn’t necessarily prove (or disprove) that a particular strategy is right or wrong. We are dealing with small sample sizes here.
The most obvious piece missing from the analysis is San Francisco’s offense. Presumably, Shabazz gives the Dons a big boost on the offensive end of the court. He was the team’s second-leading scorer against Loyola and has shown an ability to score in bunches (most notably a 10-for-10 performance from deep against BYU in 2020).
Those same points that San Francisco lost due to Loyola attacking Shabazz on the defensive end theoretically could have been gained on the offensive end.
Another crucial factor is that there is a fine line between “exploiting a mismatch” and “hero ball”.
Loyola is a very good offensive team that generally relies on great ball movement. The Ramblers are ranked 26th in the country in assist rate.
By choosing to attack Shabazz, a lot of that ball movement went out the window. Of course, the strategy paid off. But it’s not hard to imagine an alternate reality where Loyola became too focused on attacking the mismatch — abandoning their normal scheme for isolations.
Links from around the internet
Brendan Quinn of The Athletic wrote about Tom Izzo’s pre-game ritual ($$)
A cool behind the scenes look at the TV production side of a CBB game
Continuity Ball Screen meets the Baylor defense
The basketball equivalent of play action
Purdue weave series progression
Wake Forest scored eight times off the same backdoor action in non-conference play