That's a wrap (HV Weekly: 4/13/21)
Baylor national championship breakdown + HV off-season plans.
Welcome back to the HV Weekly!
Well, that’s a wrap on the 2021 college basketball season.
A season marked by covid pauses, scheduling mayhem, and five-out offense ended with a convincing national championship victory by Baylor.
In today’s edition we look back on the championship game and ahead to the off-season:
New video breaking down the Baylor national championship win
More thoughts on what went wrong for the Zags
A look ahead to the Hoop Vision offseason content plan
Baylor wins it all
In the national championship game, Baylor went wire-to-wire against Gonzaga. The Bears jumped out to a 9-0 lead and never looked back.
Interestingly, Gonzaga’s two-point percentage was actually very Zags-like, as they still shot 63% from inside the arc in the loss.
There were only 43 games this season (via college basketball reference) where:
A team shot over 60% on two-pointers
That team still lost by 15+ points
Besides from Gonzaga-Baylor, Maryland-Alabama was the other NCAA tournament game to fit the criteria.
Before last week’s game, the last time Gonzaga lost a game while shooting over 60% inside the arc was back in 2017 — to another (eventual) NCAA champion. Villanova’s 16-point win against the Zags in December of 2017 was eerily similar statistically to the Baylor game.
Over the weekend, we published an eight-minute voiceover video detailing the X’s and O’s, coaching adjustments, and players behind Baylor’s national championship win.
Video topics include:
Baylor’s combination of three-point shooting and offensive rebounding
Gonzaga cross-matching Drew Timme onto Mark Vital
Baylor exploiting Timme by putting him in ball screens
Gonzaga’s defensive adjustments (switching screens, 2-3 zone)
Jalen Suggs’ early struggles against Baylor’s no-middle defense
The Gonzaga offense coming to life after the first 10 minutes of the game
Efficient one-on-one play from Davion Mitchell, Jared Butler, and MaCio Teague to hold off any Gonzaga run
What went wrong for the Zags?
A lot of the in-game analysis on social media focused on Gonzaga switching ball screens with Drew Timme and Anton Watson — leading to the talented Baylor guards attacking the two bigs in isolations. I’ll admit: I had similar thoughts while watching live.
But after a rewatch (and some charting), there are a couple other points worth making:
Gonzaga didn’t start switching with Timme until about 10 minutes into the game. The early damage was done against Timme’s hedges and drops
Baylor’s guards were actually even more efficient when attacking one-on-one against Gonzaga’s guards
Simply put, nothing was working for Gonzaga on defense.
During the middle portion of the game, the Zags played well enough offensively to make a run — but Baylor’s offense was even better.
Gonzaga defenders couldn’t stay in front of Davion Mitchell, MaCio Teague, and Jared Butler. And when Gonzaga adjusted their defensive in order to help keep the guards in front, Mark Vital was active on the offensive glass to extend the possession anyways.
The content grind
Running an audience-funded media business can be mentally challenging. The nature of the business model — 44% of HV+ subscribers pay on a monthly basis — creates an ever-looming pressure to produce more content.
At times, it can feel like a weekly (or even daily) fight to keep our customers satisfied — particularly during the slower parts of the basketball calendar.
Last year, that feeling was exacerbated by the abrupt ending of the 2020 college basketball season. The spring and summer months turned into a fight to keep Hoop Vision going strong and steady.
Thanks to your amazing support, we ultimately had a successful summer. But for me personally, it did come with a cost.
Towards the end of the summer and into the fall, I started experiencing the first signs of burnout.
After months of trying to put out as much high-quality content as possible to drive subscriptions and limit churn, I started feeling low on creativity.
For the first time since launching Hoop Vision, I felt like some of the newsletters were “filler” — just writing for the sake of getting something out there.
Those burnout symptoms lingered into October and November, but the start of the season helped remedy the situation. With the season underway, there were new teams, games, and current events to analyze. I felt better about the content being produced again.
However, the one thing I haven’t really done in the almost three years now of Hoop Vision is take a break. I could probably count the number of true days off I’ve taken on one or two hands.
In the past, I’ve thought about Hoop Vision’s sustainability strictly in terms of revenue. We needed to meet certain monetary goals to keep the business going.
So the goal for this summer is to expand on that definition of sustainability. Short-term subscription growth is important, but so is longevity and preventing personal burnout.
Off-season plan
Starting in May, we will be sending out a members-only HV+ newsletter every other week during the off-season.
Those newsletters will consist of three different types:
1) Hoops Dictionary
In Hoops Dictionary newsletters, we pick a more advanced basketball term and explain the who, what, when, where, and why.
We’ve already published two of these in the past on stunts and empty ball screens and they are one of our most requested pieces of content.
If there is a specific term or concept you would like us to cover in a Hoops Dictionary, please feel free to send us a request by replying to this email.
2) Stats Leaders
With 350+ DI college basketball teams, there are so many different teams and styles of play that we don’t get a chance to cover during the season.
In these newsletters, we’ll pick a team that led the country in a statistical category — for example, Coppin State in adjusted tempo or Abilene Christian in defensive turnover rate — and examine the schematic causes.
In addition, we may use these newsletters as a jumping point to then examine that statistical category from a more general standpoint as well.
3) Q&A’s with Coaches
Last summer, I shared some of the statistical reports we used during my time on different coaching staffs.
This summer, we will be doing Q&A-style newsletters with other coaches around the country on their own ideas, reports, and workflows.
If you are a coach interested in sharing, please feel free to reach out.
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By having a set schedule of recurring features, the goal is to continue to provide our subscribers with high-level content on a regular basis while also balancing longer-term videos and projects.
The next YouTube video…
For the first time ever last week, our YouTube subscriber count passed our Twitter follower count, meaning YouTube is currently our fastest growing customer acquisition source.
It’s taken a couple of years of (much-needed) editing practice, but I think the video essay is currently our best format for deep-diving into an advanced basketball topic or philosophy.
One of my favorite videos from the season was The 5-Out Basketball Revolution. It checked off a few different boxes: A little bit of history, X’s and O’s, and statistics.
Our first off-season video will be in a similar format, but on the Flex Offense. I’ve been planning this one out in my head for a long time, and I’m excited to start making it!
That's a wrap (HV Weekly: 4/13/21)
Any chances podcast will be back?