You guys know I’m a little obsessive about basketball coaching. In-game operations and the X’s and O’s of the game fascinate me. I love taking something as beautiful and chaotic as basketball and breaking it down. Pile on love for my dear alma mater, any you have a recipe for obsessiveness.

Let’s apply that obsessiveness for good by breaking down Mike Brey’s press conference following the Wake Forest game Tuesday. If you want to re-live the skid-breaking win, check out Paddy’s excellent recap here. Brey provided a treasure trove of program insights in his postgame comments.

Let’s go through his message in order…

Opener

The emphatic opener is part and parcel with his foray into the Lep Legion after the final buzzer. The weight of losses often hang heaviest on the coach, and Brey wanted everyone to feel that weight coming off the program. His traditional praise of the opponent is always wise, and stumping to get Manning’s team in to the tournament is just plain good karma.

The fact Brey takes so much pleasure in seeing “88 on the board,” is indicative of the kind of basketball he loves. Flowing offense with healthy pace is Brey’s natural inclination. Seeing his team find some flow and put up their most efficient performance since December 4th was a great relief.

Brey also admitted that his desire to find some flow and putting up 52 points in a half comes at a cost. He’s perfectly willing to trade out rebounding deficits for offensive efficiency. Brey designed his program to out-score you, not out-leap you.

The fatigue he and his team feels is real. Brey lives and dies on the sideline every possession. He plays his top guys over than 80% of the minutes in conference play. It was a big deal that the ACC wouldn’t accommodate the Irish and push this game back to Wednesday. Of course, as Brey notes later, by winning Tuesday, he buys an extra day of happy rest before facing FSU. You can’t overestimate the fatigue of losing. To their credit, this group expects greatness. They assume their going to win. Four in a row and five of six had to be wearing on them.

Strategy Insights

Brey indicates he’s falling in love with his small-ball lineup. For the vast majority of the second half in Greensboro, and throughout most of Tuesday evening, Brey played a single big man. By moving Martinas Geben and Austin Torres out of the starting line-up, Brey is defaulting to his “downshift” group. Throughout the night, Geben and Torres played a combined total of six minutes. Four of those minutes were with Bonzie Colson off the court. Only 2 of them coincided with Colson in a two-big look.

When the Irish go with Colson at the 5 and either Beachem or Vasturia at the 4, things start to look more like the ACC Championship team. However, instead of 6’10” Zach Auguste playing the lone big, 6’5″ Bonzie Colson is called upon.

I know Brey loves offense, but let’s start with the defensive impact of this shift. First, you’re asking Colson to guard a traditional 5-man, as he had to Tuesday. While it isn’t ideal, Bonzie’s prolific wingspan allows him to bother shots around the rim. He came up with five blocks Tuesday. You’d love to see Colson with a little bulkier lower body (sand in the pants) to be able to bump for position down low, but he makes it work. For all the amazing things Colson does, defensive footwork is not his jam. Keeping him around the rim where his reach can bother shots and he can collect misses is wise.

Speaking of defensive footwork, Brey also talks about how his smaller line-up puts VJ Beachem closer to the rim. Brey went to this defensive look against Syracuse, and did again Tuesday. By putting Beachem around the rim and asking him to alter/block shots, he’s doing two critical things. First, he’s keeping VJ from getting worked on the perimeter. He’s struggled throughout his career to keep agile wings in front of him. That job can be left to Rex or Steve Vasturia. Second, he’s making it much easier to get VJ involved on the defensive glass. When closing down shooters or working on the perimeter, Beachem tends to be less engaged in defensive rebounding. He only grabbed one on Tuesday, but he did keep some critical balls alive and at least gave a second body in the mix to fight for the ball.

Let’s be honest. These are secondary considerations in the Irish basketball program. The first and foremost priority is offensive efficiency, and the 5-out lineup with Colson is almost impossible to defend. Unlike Auguste, who was most dangerous when going downhill towards the rim, Colson is at his best when he gets to bounce the ball a little. When Bonzie catches the ball on the perimeter, you can try to play him straight up with your 5 man, but he best be comfortable away from the rim. Wake’s bigs struggled with Bonzie all night. The obvious solution is to hedge some help towards Colson when he puts it on the floor. However, where do you bring that help from when ND has 4 other guys shooting 40% from deep? If you help off him, you give up 1.2ppp, but if he’s abusing you, he’s easily good for 1.5ppp or better against your big. If Bonzie starts stroking the three himself, God help you.

Before you start going all Charles Barkley on me and saying jumpshooting teams can’t win consistently, let’s talk. If you have 1-2 guys on your roster capable of going off from deep, that’s probably true. If, somehow, you amass 5-6 of those kind of guys, different story. The Irish aren’t dependent on one hot hand. This season, Vasturia, Farrell, Ryan, Beachem, Gibbs, and Pflueger all shoot better than 38% from deep. They can truck guys out there until they find the one ready to fire at will. With six legitimate options, you’re bound to find one or two that work any given night.

You are going to see a heavy dose of the 5-out look the balance of this season. Brey is going to challenge opponents to figure out how to stop Bonzie while still covering up four shooters on the floor. Whether they use a pick and pop motion to get Bonzie the ball or make a straight entry pass to the block or high post, Bonzie is going to drag his man away from the rim. Once he has you out there, the full array of moves go on display. In particular, the ball fake and step-thru he scored on Tuesday sent my heart pitter-pattering.

The other thing this opens up, as it did Tuesday, is the 4/5 PnR. If you insist on putting 2 bigs on the floor vs. ND, they’re going to put you in a very uncomfortable position. Everyone practices defending PnR with a big setting for a small. Your bigs learn to hedge and recover or blitz ball screens all the time. What they don’t work on, however, is how to play the ball when their guy is receiving the screen. This is a fantastic way to free up Beachem for clean looks or getting him attacking the rim downhill. We saw this a few times Tuesday, and I hope we see more of it going forward. It could be particularly useful against teams like FSU and NC State, who leverage multiple bigs.

Nothing in this world is free, and the cost of this dangerous offensive combination is size and rebounding. The numbers from Tuesday night bear this out perfectly. If you look at the four factors, the Irish had a slight advantage in the turnovers, and the teams were dead-even from the charity stripe. Wake Forest rebounded a whopping 38% of their misses, leading to 70 field-goal attempts. Notre Dame only attempted 59 field-goals on the evening. That’s a massive disparity. You better be a well-above-average shooting team to survive a minus-eleven difference. Thankfully, Tuesday, Notre Dame was. By shooting an effective 60% from the floor to Wake’s 46%, Brey’s team closed that gap, and then some.

In Notre Dame’s five ACC losses, the opponent has grabbed over a third of their misses. North Carolina snared nearly half in Greensboro. While the smaller line-up is necessary to drive the ND offense, Brey needs to find a way to shore up the boards. Keeping Beachem around the rim could help this. Moreso, he needs to ask his guards to scrape back and rebound. I know we want to leak out and run, but if we could keep the OREB percentages down to a third or less, we’ll be in much better shape. We’re good enough in the half-court, that I think the trade is worth it.

Aside from X’s and O’s, the downshift line-up impacts game management. With the heavy minutes Colson has to log up front, rest becomes an issue. Brey is forced to use his time outs to get second half rest for his critical guys. This could be costly in a game where you need a timeout to save a late possession or get things organized. Those of us who like to see Brey keep 1-2 TO’s in his pocket for late game situations have to accept the trade-off of keeping Colson fresh and rested down the stretch.

Program Insights

Brey provided another peek behind the curtain of his program Tuesday night. When asked about John Mooney and Elijah Burns, Brey heaped praise on his young bigs. He said they were both good with the ball. He praised Mooney’s shooting and ability to stretch the floor. Along with NDN’s Kayo, I figured the thing keeping Brey’s young bigs off the floor was defense. I presumed they were struggling with help rotations and communication. Brey said it was actually the offensive movement keeping them strapped to the pine.

Brey likes how they’re coming along and he’s leveraging his upperclassmen to reinforce his plans for both young men. The barrier for them is understanding how to maintain spacing on the offensive end.

I’m curious how our readers feel about this whole thing. Alstein and I have had a running dialog about it. Both of us feel like Mooney gives you spacing with his shooting and another big body to bang around on defense. Unless he’s awful with the ball, which Brey says is false, I can’t see the downside of giving him some run. I also wonder how much this indicates that Brey is ready to move on from Geben and Torres. Their lack of minutes in a very critical game, against a team with size, is telling. Matt Ryan got another chance to impact a game on Tuesday and struggled to do so.

Looking at the ND roster, you have these options up front:

  • Colson – Junkyard Bonz is putting up All-ACC performances night in and night out
  • Torres – Good energy, but that energy needs to deliver some output. He hurts offensive flow because you don’t have to defend him with the ball. Needs to pull down big-time defensive rebounding numbers to get on the floor.
  • Geben – He’s made some big leaps forward and looks good from time to time, but he also clogs the offensive flow. He’s an underrated passer and ND could run offense through him on the block, but it seems they’ve moved away from that option.
  • Ryan – I’m not sure what to say any more. Matt Ryan has tremendous potential to stretch the floor, but to do that, he’s got to cut hard on offense. He’s got potential to deform the opponent’s defensive scheme, but hasn’t. Defensively, he’s struggled at both the 3 and the 4.
  • Mooney – Here’s a guy that seems like he could help with both spacing and defensive rebounding. I’m not sure what’s keeping him on the bench. His eligibility is burnt, so a little bit of ACC seasoning could be helpful.
  • Burns – Another guy who looks like he has the bulk and athleticism to be helpful on the glass. If he truly is good with the ball in his hands, Ryan Humphrey should be spending a lot of time with the red-shirt freshman getting spacing right. That’s a coachable thing, and he’s another one who isn’t saving any more eligibility.

Brey has certainly earned the fans’ trust, but I’m struggling to explain the downside of giving these guys a few minutes here and there. The closest I can come is guessing that he wants to preserve his messaging around “the plan” while keeping Torres and Geben engaged. What do you think?

Tuesday also revealed an endearing program insight. The “Loosest Coach in America” is anything but. Brey is a fiery competitor who cares deeply about his program and his guys. The losses tear at the fabric of his soul. In a moment of lovable candor, he admitted this has been ripping him apart. While feeling his insides tightening and churning, Brey put on a calm, loose, happy face for his squad.

I don’t know Mike Brey personally, so I shouldn’t pretend to be in his head, but I admire his ability to fake it until he makes it. To me, it isn’t surprising that the most successful post-seasons of his time in South Bend correspond with Steve Vasturia’s presence on campus. Onions has to be one of the most calm and chill personalities to come through Notre Dame, and that vibe helps his coach. I’m not sure you could get Vasturia wound up if you tried. He exudes confidence and calm all the time. That’s a good thing for Brey and has been a great thing for the Irish program. That Felix and Oscar pairing has delivered consecutive Elite Eight appearances. Let’s hope Brey can find the right levers to pull and strings to pluck to keep the success rolling for the Irish.