DISCLAIMER: I wrote this after the loss to Marquette and decided it was too negative to post. In the interest of self-care, I wasn’t going to watch the Georgia game. Of course, I couldn’t resist. I’ll put a few post-Georgia thoughts at the end…
As I’ve aged, my attitude has drifted to pessimism. I try to be self-aware enough to know when I’m being a cynic. That’s why I’m here to beg the 18 Stripes community to help me out. Help me find the light with the Notre Dame’s mens basketball team. Tell me this isn’t as dark as I feel about it.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve had wild swings of attitude around Mike Brey. Let me also be perfectly clear up front: ND has run some fun offense through the years and has an ACC banner hanging in the gym. These are very good things, and Mike Brey deserves the credit for them. It is a hint of sickness that compels me to look at that gift and wonder if it could have been so much more. This article isn’t to daydream about if Jerian had actually kicked it out to Pat off that ISO. This article is to peer in to the future and see if there’s hope to return to some of the glitz and glamor of those heady days.
In 2018, the Irish program still bathed in the glow of their back-to-back Elite Eight appearances in ’15 and ’16. An early NCAA Tournament exit after a bad WV matchup stung in ’17, but they signed the deepest class of high school talent in recent memory. It seemed Brey had every opportunity to stir the cauldron with the perfect mix of talent in 2018-’19. Experienced juniors TJ Gibbs and John Mooney would compliment the one-man sophomore class of DJ Harvey. Rex Pfluger would provide the link to the past and senior leadership to put it all together. It all felt like the perfect mix to wipe away the bitter taste of that year’s NIT appearance.
The freshmen that came into the 2019 campaign are now the super seniors finishing out the 2023 season. While Prentiss Hubb moved on, and Robby Carmody saw his career derailed by injuries — the remaining guys are playing over 30 minutes a night for Mike Brey. Based on the losses to Syracuse and Marquette, it is easy to believe this heralded class will exit their extended careers with a single NCAA tournament bid.
This is where I’m trying to community-source my optimism. Help me find it. Last year, Blake Wesley slashed his way into that bid. Paul Atkinson provided enough athleticism down low to give that team enough of a boost to convert Wesley’s youthful exuberance into two NCAAT wins (if you count first 4). Where is that with this bunch?
I know JJ Starling is a higher rated recruit than Wesley was. He looks the part of a young guard with room to improve. Ven-Allen Lubin has the vibe of a crafty undersized big. I want to watch these guys with hope and optimism. I really do. However, when I turn on the TV and waste a few hours of a Saturday watching them, all that optimism disappears. Maybe blame finals. December Saturdays after football season are sleepy in South Bend. We all know this. The beginnings of the Freeman Era have sucked up most of the campus oxygen. Hopefully, that’s it. This is just a doldrum before running through an ACC conference that features only two currently ranked teams. Right?
The numbers don’t create any warm, fuzzy feelings. Ken Pomeroy’s model projects 9 conference wins. Look at this stretch in February:
Projections from kenpom.com
Should leave a hell of an impression on the selection committee.
This is where I struggle wildly with Brey. If you’ve known me for a while, you’ll know there are themes of frustration. The wasted timeouts after made baskets and adjacent to media stoppages are maddening. The unwillingness to develop a roster that has more the 7 playable guys at any time is tough to take. Maybe I’m just still bitter about that Xavier loss in 2001. I want so badly to see some defensive improvement and some focus on rebounding technique. I’ve tried to come to some state of peace. Tried to accept that a fun offense is worth some frustrations in other facets of the game. I even wrote odes to his offensive prowess and professed turning my attitude around. I talked about him building an ACC powerhouse on this website. I gave him credit for a lot of late game heroics in a video breakdown.
Maybe I need to go back and listen to CW’s amazing philosophy of fandom pod again, because when I watch ND hoops, I want to scream at my TV. Against both Syracuse and Marquette, you see the same themes bearing out. For so long, people slurped up the “get-old-stay-old” ways. Brey professed his short bench was the key to keeping turnovers down. Shaka Smart came to town with a team that went 8 deep with 2 freshman and 3 sophomores. They turned it over on 5% of their possessions. ND gave it away 16% of the time in that same game. Syracuse ran out 2 freshman and a sophomore in their road trip to South Bend. ND turned it over 17% of the time. The Orange coughed it up on 7% of possessions.
I wish it was just a statistical thing and I could feel hope watching the team. I don’t. Defensively, they just don’t have an answer for interior athleticism. Athletic bigs are the key to the modern game, and ND just can’t handle them. It is worrisome that between Zona, Campbell, and Sanders ND doesn’t have another playable big body to give them something on defense.
I suppose you could argue that defense doesn’t really matter when your philosophy is to be so good on offense, your efficiency wins out in the end. Cool cool. I’m all for this. So what’s the offensive philosophy then? Both Syracuse (82nd) and Marquette (64th) are above-average defenses. Each play unique styles that can be tough for younger teams. I want to write this off as unlucky, but this is an old team. They have more than enough veteran leadership to be able to carve up a 2-3 zone they’ve seen a bunch of times. They put at least 4 guys on the court that should be above average ball handlers and passers. In theory, they should turn Marquette’s pressure against them. Instead, they looked clueless against both.
Rather than rail against individual players, I look at how they’re being put in position to succeed. To be fair, players have to execute, and there have been untold failures in execution. I haven’t had the stomach to go back and watch both games, but in real time, I noted a disturbing number of possessions that featured no weakside movement at all. I watch enough NBA to know that modern offenses frequently leave the weak side guys in the corner and at the break to promote spacing. The key to this modern offensive philosophy is having a set of guys on the strong side that can stress a defense with pick-and-roll (PnR) or dribble hand-off (DHO) action. ND hasn’t developed this yet. There isn’t an Irish combination that scares a defense enough to commit a help defender. If the weak side defenders can confidently stay home on shooters, it is tough to generate good offense. Instead, you get a bunch of perimeter passes and weave motion 28 feet from the rim. With a rotation that features the fewest bench minutes in the country (by a whopping 4 percentage points), you can’t afford to run and play in transition. Without a PnR/DHO combo that distorts a defense, you need some motion. Two guys resting on the weak side isn’t a luxury this team can afford. Modern NBA offenses at least roll a guy through the dunker spot or back-cut the strong-side corner guy. ND is content to just roll off most of the shot clock above the 3 point line. The ball isn’t touching the paint on a drive or post entry against good defensive teams. To borrow from soccer, if you can’t disorganize the defense with the ball, you need to do it with player motion. You need pin downs or flashes on the weak side to generate some easier looks. Maybe my confirmation bias prevents it, but I’m just not seeing it.
The offense looks out of whack. The defense looks to be in that bottom 2/3rds of the country again. Help me Irish fans. Fandom should be about optimism and hope. Someone somewhere must be seeing that ray of light. Someone must see a map that includes a path to a bid and some fun basketball. Please share it with me and with us all. I could use it.
So that Georgia loss, huh? Well, that pretty much seals any dreams of this group riding into March glory. Much of what you read above held true in Atlanta. There was a lot more weak side player movement, but it resulted in the second worst offensive efficiency of the season. There were a few feeble attempts at pin-downs, but the guy being screened for did nothing to set them up. The screeners often whiffed and it did nothing to stress Georgia’s defense. The Irish couldn’t even muster a point per possession against the Bulldogs. The 22% turnover rate is pretty impressive for such a veteran team. While there was indeed more movement, the offense still seems to be built around nothing. The primary motion seems to be a guy taking 2 non-threatening dribbles towards the elbow and kicking it out to someone 24 feet from the rim. Repeat that for about 25’ish seconds of the shot clock and hope for the best. Even a little bit of pressure seems to rattle this team, although they did find a few scant transition buckets against pressure Sunday.
The “defense” just kinda is what it is. If you have athletic bigs, there’s just nothing ND can do. If ND somehow manages to stay in front of them to force a tough shop, you’ve got a nearly 1-3 chance of rebounding it if you miss it. Marquette had a 39.5% OREB rate and Georgia nabbed 28.6% of their misses.
The pessimist in me is being well fed by these last few performances. While I can possibly see Marquette as an impressive opponent, Georgia doesn’t look like a tournament team. The Bulldogs kicked ND’s ass as completely as the Golden Eagles did last weekend. Please allow me to preempt any shouts of, “MSU!” While it looks good on paper, one has to remember they were coming off three tough games in four days in Portland and were missing their two best players.
If you’re out there and feeling good vibes about all of this, please shout me down. What am I not seeing? Am I too spoiled from the good times? Have I set the bar too high?
If you want hope it’s that there’s marginal improvements that can be made within the system they play with the people Brey will put on the court.
They have to rebound the ball more, and they could if more of the players tried to rebound the ball, or the ones who are currently trying improve their body positioning when rebounding. The team can play defense when they are locked in, like against Michigan State, they just don’t lock in frequently.
I have no reason to believe they will improve either of those things, so would suggest just watching the much more relatively talented women beat up on teams if you want some good vibes.
Brey has had a good career and done some really good things during it, but we’re 5 year years into time to move on to find someone younger and hungrier.
Last year was so much more fun than anything we’d had with these “super” seniors prior. Wesley made a lot of not-smart decisions, but he was at least fun to watch. Atkinson was also an incredible talent who provided such a needed inside presence. The fact that those two players could elevate these seniors to a position to be successful shows that we aren’t far off from being good. That said, we don’t have those types of players this year and the team looks horrible because of it. At this point I just want these seniors to leave. They don’t play well together. And for being an offensive minded scheme, we really struggle to score points. Guys miss open shots and take the entire shot clock to make bad shots. I think our schedule has been tougher than our normal out-of-conference slate, but we didn’t look good against it. I’ll still cheer them on…I’d like to watch FSU tonight, but if it looks ugly I’m not going to torture myself to stay up until the final whistle.
The only bright spot I can see is that if the team fails to make the NCAAs this year, Brey’s gone. I don’t know who we’ll get to replace him, but at least we’ll try something new.
I suspect somehow we make the tournament, because Mike Brey’s superpower is doing *just* enough to not get fired.
We’re really missing Hubb this year. No one bled the shot clock and then threw up an awful shot like he did.
I have some bad news to share about ND basketball and formerly 3-10 Florida State.
Yeah, that sucked. Now 105 in KP and projecting at 7-13 in the league.
DFL in the country in creating turnovers because they have to play such passive defense to avoid fatigue and foul trouble.
They’re also among the slowest teams in the country, which I suppose makes sense, but I think it screws them. They don’t have great athletes. We keep hearing about how these are high-skill, and high-IQ players. If so, the ball needs to move much much more quickly and they should be able to take advantage of broken-floor situations to create easy offensive looks. Instead they pound it for 20+ seconds above the break and hope for the best.
I know Brey loves to pick at the TO numbers, but if you look at the assist rate, it is pathetic for a team that professes to have a high basketball IQ and be willing passers. They shouldn’t be 280th in A/FGM.
The late-game thing is such a disappointment too. Starling was cooking going to the rim getting the bucket and/or fouled consistently. There was nothing TV Teddy wanted more last night than to call a critical foul in a critical moment. Get the ball in JJ’s hands. I understand Wertz is “old” and Brey prefers that, but JJ should have been driving the bus on that last possession. Put it in the kids hands in the open floor and live with it.
It really comes down to ball movement. Going back to soccer – one touch passing unlocks a defense. Next time you watch the Irish (if you can stomach it), watch for the number of passes that result in 1-2 dribbles, a hesitation, and then a non-threatening pass. They try to look like they’re moving the ball and sharing it, but it doesn’t ping around in a way that distorts the defense at all. They’ve got to start moving the ball with urgency, not fear.
The defense is just so awful but we are used to it. Wertz and Goodwin are abused. Lasz can’t defend on the perimeter or in the post, but he can take charges. Starling and Lubin have some upside, but are now average at best. Ryan competes hard in covering his man but is often beat off the dribble. ND’s best defender, but a low bar. Hammond have not seen enough. I recall Sanders looked competent as a frosh, but he never plays. IMO they should try playing with a bigger line up and playing zone with Lubin at the top.
On offense your comments about stagnant ball movement and just throwing it around 28 feet away is spot on. Versus lesser teams this season Lasz was able to cut down the lane to receive some passes for paint shots. Once the competition got better those cuts have been seen less partially because the guards struggle with increased ball pressure. Goodwin was a dependable mid range and low post threat in past seasons but is lost this season. Scouting reports must be content to let him linger at the 3 point line knowing they have time to defend him. Great shooter, but a very slow shot release. See if Campbell can be a low post threat by using his size for pin downs. Same with Lubin. Of course having a legit big man coach would help their progress.
While Brey hyped up Starling as a willing passer, we are just not seeing it yet. Most often it is rushed treys or drives where he is not looking to pass. I’d be fine with Brey giving more minutes to Hammond as the lead guard. IMO he is quicker than Wertz and has a better handle. Starling is just not ready similar to Demetrius Jackson his first 2 seasons. I initially dismissed Marcus Burton as a rotation point guard next season, but unless there is a solid option in the transfer portal he’s going to play a lot.
Bottom line: Brey has no plan B on offense.
So for now…just rinse and repeat the same mediocre offense with the even worse defense.
So has the shine officially come off Jack Swarbrick? His track record at this point is decisions that seem great in the short term but end up being disastrous over time. Under Armor is a mess and might actually be causing foot injuries (remember that part of ND’s compensation was in UA stock, which split once and then absolutely ranked); the ACC is terrible in football and getting there in basketball, is about to get lapped in TV revenue, and probably going to get raided for TV market teams in the near future; Kelly should have been fired after 2014 for hiring one of the worst coordinators in program history AND THEN RETAINING HIM, was forced to make changes after another fireable season in 2016, stopped putting in the effort after 2018 and was rewarded by an extension and prodigious effort to blow smoke up the guy’s ass when he was about to get the wins record at ND (OMG THE ALIGNMENT), and then pulled a shocked and left ND in the lurch last December, which Jack absolutely did not see coming or plan for; MBB has been a mess since those first couple years in what was a better ACC, as Brey keeps trying to coast off that last elite eight appearance while being half retired for years now. This isn’t even getting into the mess that the playoff has turned CFB into, NIL and transfer stuff wrecking the sport, the crappy NBC deal we’re still in, and halfhearted statements that ND can still compete in the minor league mega conference while not doing NIL or giving up on school. As far as I’m concerned, Jack needs to be out the door right after Brey.
Don’t forget the football playoff setup which is objectively *relatively* bad for ND, and he was part of the small group of people who proposed it. That the pro-Jack people were saying that was a savvy move by him goes to show that he could do anything and people will think it’s genius.
The case for him as a good AD boils down to two things: (1) a pretty good hiring track record (BK, baseball coaches, jury is out I guess on WBB but looking pretty good this year at least), and (2) football is still independent. The problem is people talk about (1) like his track record is great, which it is not, and (2) may or may not be good in the long term, and given that the price of (2) was the ACC deal: probably a bad trade!
I think the frustration some of us have with Swarbrick is the fawning coverage like he is a great AD when he clearly is not.
Man I would love to see this “fawning” coverage of Swarbrick. As somebody who no longer lives in South Bend and gets all of his ND sports coverage from blogs, all I see is people being overly negative about Swarbrick.
I think if he left ND tomorrow, there are maybe 5 schools in the country that wouldn’t want him as AD.
Swarbrick turned around the ND football program, to the most successful stretch it had in over 20 years. Lots of people would have fired Kelly after his bad hire. Instead, Swarbrick stuck with him for the most successful stretch of ND football since the early 90s. Retaining Kelly was an objectively good decision.
The ACC has had 9 CFP appearances if you count ND. PAC-12 has had 2. Big-12 has had 5. Big 10 has had 8.
Just to be clear, you’re mad at Swarbrick for NIL ruining the sport? Interesting choice to target him.
I will never understand all of the hate for Swarbrick.
I’m with Mikey on this. I’m not here for Swarbrick bashing. To manage football independence and give all the non-football sports a great home in the ACC was a master stroke. The number of multiple-time CFP participants is miniscule. Our athletes continue to graduate at remarkable rates and (knock-on-wood) aren’t drawing the wrong kind of attention. There’s a LOT to be proud of. People love to rail on the UA thing, but they were a growing brand at the time and doing a lot of really creative work. They were immensely popular among younger athletes at the time the deal was signed. While Nike has certainly ramped up their spending and introduced the Jordan brand in to very awkward positions, much of that was in reaction to ND/UA’s threat. I’m bummed UA didn’t grow on the trajectory we hoped, but it was a solid bet. Just because it didn’t pay out explosively isn’t to say it was a bad call at the time. At no point will you ever hear me say, Swarbrick should fire Brey. Retaining Brey is is only option and has been for years. You don’t fire the guy who is popular with the media, has an ACC banner in the rafters, and has won (and sadly, lost) more games than anyone else. When I was a senior, it was the last year before ND joined the BigEast and I remembered thinking, “Damn, we’re going to get slaughtered.” Brey built that team into a legit year-in-year out contender in that conference. I also thought the ACC would be a giant leap up, but his first few years in the league were phenomenal. Also importantly, he did it playing a style of basketball that was fun to watch and not the Dick-Bennett-Style slog. If you’re suddenly given Swarbrick’s job, you’re firing Brey? Who would you hire? Who’s going to talk to you after dumping your winningest guy? Who wants to follow that at a football school that makes guys play class? Even Brey’s revered mentor didn’t have to make Kyrie, Ja, or Zion actually GO to Duke. This really isn’t a FIRE BREY! HE SUCKS! article. The intent here was to think about adjustments in rotation and scheme that might hold out some hope. FSU last night seemed to confirm the sad suspicion that this super senior class just isn’t who we hoped they’d be. They’re complimentary guys who never really complimented each other in the mix needed to be as great as the ACC Champs and E8 squads. I can really assure you I don’t side with any SWARBRICK SUCKS! JACK MUST GO! arguments. BK being a dick and bailing isn’t Jack’s fault. TBH, I’m glad Jack has a hand on the wheel while we navigate NIL. Notre Dame should be proud of what it offers athletes. The 4-years vs 40-years benefit of our “package” is critical. An ND education is worth nearly $320,000 alone right now. I trust Swarbrick and ND to build an NIL strategy… Read more »
There was a time when Brey was miles ahead of other college coaches on the offensive end of the court. He was running NBA sets when nobody else was doing that. He was getting guys to attack the rim or shoot 3s, and to only settle for midrange when it was wide open. When your offense is just so much more efficient than anybody else’s, you can completely bail on coaching defense. It’s college basketball, it’s not like most of these kids can shoot anyway. Coach great offense, hope you aren’t playing a team with a bunch of future NBA-ers, and you’re going to win a bunch of games.
But Brey sadly hasn’t been able to evolve as quickly as the rest of college basketball. As Steph Curry was revolutionizing offense at the NBA level, college coaches were taking notice. While college basketball can still be a slog at times, offenses are just so much more efficient than they ever used to be. Brey used to be the only guy in the Big East that would run anything close to an exciting offense. Now, he’s going up against mirror images of his offense night after night. Meanwhile, he still doesn’t coach defense. So even if he is able to make slight improvements on the offensive end or in recruiting, it’s easily negated by everyone else’s offensive growth. Unless he starts coaching defense too, there’s simply no chance we will get back to a success at the level he had with Jerian/Pat.
And that’s a real bummer. I was at ND for the worst 4 year stretch in ND Football history. ND Basketball wasn’t a powerhouse during my time there, but we never lost home games. We hosted college gameday. We beat at least 1 top 10 team in 3 of my 4 years there. For as much as ND Football sucked, ND Basketball provided a real sense of joy during the dreary South Bend winters. Mike Brey truly elevated ND Basketball. I fear he will never be able to get us back anywhere near that level.
Great analysis and interesting way of looking at it.
I’m originally from Milwaukee, so the resurgence of the Bucks under Bud and with Giannis has me watching 70+ NBA games a year and the spacing, movement, and shooting at that level has me averting my eyes when watching most CBB games.
Like I wrote back at the old place, sideline PnR, baseline drift, and floppy were not typical college sets 8 years ago. Was fun to be ahead of that curve.
We’re all biased by our time on campus. I was there for the MacLeod era and was pretty convinced we’d never be good at hoops again despite seeing both LaPhonso and Monty play in the JACC. Of course, I also saw the 93-94 football season and that was incredibly fun.
Bottom line inconsistent recruiting and misses is the biggest downfall for Brey. You need to have more than one athletic big on your roster even if it means the big can’t shoot treys. Brey was able to get away with it last season because Atkinson had low post old man game skills. Hubb, Lasz and Goodwin have never looked like for a sustained period as top 100 recruits.
Ryan because he plays at least respectable defense does.
The 3 recruits for 2023 just seem like role players, but who knows they may end up better than the 3 I just mentioned.
Cooley kinda looked like a role player until he popped. No one thought Bonz would become Bonz. There’s room for a marginal guy to pop, but it just hasn’t happened.
I agree with the recruiting inconsistency. To me, the turning point might have been the 1-man class with DJ Harvey. Right around that time, there were some big misses in terms of player development plateauing and transfers leaking edge talent out.
I don’t suspect there’s anyone on this roster likely to develop into someone memorable over time, but that doesn’t rule it out.
There are 2 absolutely critical skills in offensive basketball. First, can you force at least 1 and 1/2 defenders to have to guard you (even better if you can force 2 full defenders). The second skill is good shooting.
In order to be a great offensive team you need to have several guys that can do either one of these skills. Sure there are other things that help like good passing, spacing, court awareness and if you can also have those you can be elite. But if you can force multiple defenders to cover you or you can’t make a high % of shots then you just can’t excel on offense despite other characteristics.
ND has several pretty good shooters, but this year they have maybe 1 guy (Starling) who can get more than one defender to guard him and even he can’t do it consistently. This is the biggest reason they aren’t approaching elite offensive status which would offset bad defense.
The great ND teams had several guys that could do each of these two skills and they even had a couple guys who could do both at a high level but none of the current seniors have become a player multiple defenders have to guard and while they are mostly good shooters it’s just not enough especially when you are playing 36 minutes a game because you lose your legs for shooting and the consistency goes down with more fatigue.
I’ll try to post more later on reasons for optimism but these are the reasons I see for offensive struggles.
I like where you’re going with this. According to Ken Pomeroy, ND’s adjusted OE is 110.7. They have 4 guys shooting 40% or better and Wertz at 35%. At 33%, Starling is the only shooter who isn’t improving the OE by taking good 3’s.
Starling, however, can certainly distort a defense by drawing a help defender. I’d argue against some match-up’s, so can Goodwin on the block. He’s been good in the post in the past, but hasn’t really used it at all effectively this year. It could be because he’s seeing more athletic match-ups because of the predominantly single-big line-ups being used. He’s seeing a lot more big wings guarding him, making the post game much tougher than vs. perimeter guys.
Each and every one of those shooters is a much better stationary shooter, so their looks have to come on kick-out’s and good reversals. That’s why you’d love to see some effective ball screens for Starling and some nice post touches for VAL. Lubin isn’t going to get the kind of attention Atkinson did, but even a touch into the paint forces a defense to react before you kick it out and reverse it.
The problem is that the ball is too sticky to guys. Even if they’re putting it down for a dribble or two, it is allowing the defense to recover before moving it on. For as high as the basketball IQ is being advertised, they’re not passing like a smart, experienced team.
The frightening thing is that they’re not passing great but have the 34th ranked offense in the country. They could be so much more. The sad thing is that it likely wouldn’t matter. Everyone’s favorite year, ND was the 2nd most efficient offense in the country. To get from 34th to second on offense is sorta doable, but it will take some big steps up. The issue is that team was also 99th on defense. This team is 243rd. Not good. Hard to make up for that level of porous defense on OE alone.
One more note… for the most part, Brey has had amazing passing teams. From 2010 to 2013 (all with bids) the Assist Rate rankings were 9, 4, 8, and 4. This team is rated 280th right now and was 82nd last year and 55th the year before.
The measure isn’t a perfect one though. Brey’s deepest 2 NCAAT runs came with 2015 coming in 140th in Assist Rate and 2016 at 242nd (yikes). Those were both REALLY heavy PnR teams and 2016 used Bonz on the post a lot.
IMO the efficiency level of guard play has cratered since Ingelsby left. I can also see big man improvement waning with Humphrey gone. Solomon was supposed to be the defensive coordinator and was helped out last season with Wesley jumping passing lanes and Atkinson at least being able to use his bulk to push other bigs out a bit. This season I have no idea what he is doing. It sure seems Brey is petrified of opponents going off on treys to the point they are allowing any guard with a pulse to beat them off the dribble. In the Cuse game they waited way too long to double team Edwards because apparently they were scared of allowing more open trey looks.
Brey is pretty clearly on record that he wants his team hitting 10+ 3’s and doesn’t want to get beat on deep. The math behind hitting 3’s and surrendering 2’s does indeed work when you’re hitting. This team just doesn’t hit consistently enough.
Some statistical evidence… ND is 85th in 3PA/FGA but defensively 87th, so they’re in the upper 3rd of attempt rate from deep and give up 3’s at a much lower rate than the rest of the country.
The sad part is that they sit at 268th in giving up opponent two-point FG accuracy.They also sit 20th in the country in terms of % of opponent points scored from 2-point range. No interior defense. No rim protection. Tough way to win when you have to shoot > 36% or better from deep and at least tie the TO and OREB battles to win.