BS Film Review: Purdue vs Louisville
If you avoided the internet after Purdue’s loss at Louisville, I don’t blame you. We’re going to dig into the details of Purdue’s struggles here (with some picture and video evidence), but first here’s Boilerdowd right after the game:
I sound pretty down on my Boilers because they had another great opportunity to start compiling resume builders, and they looked half-asleep for 30 minutes of this important game. Games like this and Villanova are the difference between a 4 and 6 seed. I don't think Purdue has the horses nor the team identity to rip through the B1G this season and earn a high seed by winning the conference...IU looks long, athletic and skilled, MSU has NBA talent and grit to match, Wisconsin looks like Wisconsin again; tough sledding.
All isn't lost, but Purdue is surely not the 15th best team in America as they stand now...and they left no doubt that they don't belong in that fraternity tonight.
Purdue’s leading trio let them down tonight. Though Biggie Swanigan put up decent numbers, he was incredibly turnover-prone and pensive most of the night. Vince(nt) Edwards and Isaac Haas were irredeemably bad. Purdue had 18 points in the paint, compared to Louisville’s 32. It was awful, terrible, horrible…and Purdue still had a chance to steal the win as Louisville played anemic (ever-so-slightly better than Purdue) offense. That means there’s still a ton of room for this group to grow, but man am I sick to my stomach typing that sentence for the thousandth time.
Now that we’ve given the Louisville loss a little a little time to breathe, we can examine some of the trenches Purdue seems to dig while struggling. These issues (and some solutions) have all appeared during the first few weeks of the season, but every single one popped up during the Louisville loss, making the first half (in Coach Painter’s words) clearly the worst half Purdue has played thus far.
Let’s take a closer look at how Purdue struggles, find a few solutions, and highlight a few of the ways Purdue almost dug their way out and stole the victory anyway.
Vince PJ pass, Vince aggressiveness
Two great quotes from Caleb Swanigan after the game:
"At a point it just becomes being uncoachable. We can't just keep saying "we're growing from that", we've got to learn from it. And if we don't learn from it, it's just us being uncoachable."
"Vince Edwards has to get Vince Edwards going. It’s on him, we can’t force him to do anything he doesn’t want to. He had a good game against Auburn, we thought that was some good momentum for him, but Vince is just going to have to get himself going.”
Man, I miss Aggressive Vince. He’s been completely invisible most of these first few weeks, and it’s been the most disappointing deficiency of the team so far. We saw a glimpse of Aggressive Vince to start the second half, where he demanded the ball on the wing and immediately attacked the paint:
After drawing the attention of all five Louisville defenders, Vince rises and delivers a beautiful pass right into PJ Thompson’s shooting pocket for an easy corner three.
This is the Vince Purdue needs to be successful. He finished the night with 1 points on 0-4 shooting, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block, 3 turnovers and a host of missed opportunities in 22 listless minutes. Purdue needs a Swiss Army Knife of a forward, who can score and distribute and lead this team alongside Swanigan and Haas. If Purdue is going to get anywhere close to its ceiling this year, Vince(nt) is going to need to be VINCE again.
Missing clean shots
A huge source of frustration in the first half was a seemingly stagnant offense that ran into a chaotic Louisville defensive scheme. The Cardinals were trapping the ball in the corners, aggressively fronting Biggie Swanigan, and baiting the pass into Haas only to immediately send an aggressive double team his way once the ball got into his gargantuan hands.
With Louisville prioritizing shading towards Biggie, Haas, and Vince(nt), the guards were left fairly open from beyond the arc. Take a look here:
Biggie got the ball at the elbow and was immediately doubled from the wing. Swanigan shovel-passed it to a wide open Spike Albrecht, who clanked a fantastic look. Purdue was clearly flustered in the first half, but missed so many of these open looks that they couldn’t take advantage of Louisville’s bad offense.
Spike, PJ Thompson, Dakota Mathias, Ryan Cline, and Carsen Edwards are all going to get their share of 3-point looks like this throughout the year, and while Cline (3-3) and PJ (3-4) were on tonight, the others (collectively 1-10) were ice cold.
Biggie entry passes, the good and the bad
We’ll start with the good one, and my favorite place for Biggie:
I really love it when Biggie is facilitating from around the free throw line. He’s so dangerous here, because his shot has improved, he can drive a short lane, he can bully his way down in a Mark Jackson-style post up, or (in this instance) he can find a gap in the pressure and facilitate to Haas for an easy bucket.
Haas has his man beat if the pass arrives on the far side of the lane, and Biggie delivers a perfect pass after a slight hesitation to get his defender’s long arms out of his way. When executed well, that’s a dunk or a foul for a 7’2” 70% FT shooting Ent.
Here’s an entry pass after Purdue was good and flustered:
Haas has his man sealed pretty well, and is looking for Biggie to sail his pass over the four sets of super-long Louisville arms in between. The timing is off, Haas doesn’t move towards the basket despite having an empty corn field in front of him, and Louisville’s length causes Biggie to sail the pass out of bounds. Not ideal.
My solution: Bring Biggie closer to the FT line, and have Haas seal his man after PJ (the blur next to Haas) finishes his cut through the lane, giving Biggie more room for the pass. That, or a simple swing pass to Vince(nt) to reset Haas on the block instead of forcing a pass between four long defenders.
Carsen Edwards aggressively breaking a press, and immediately attacking
Purdue’s Achilles heel these past (dozen) years has been its performance against the press, but this season the Boilers have been fairly successful breaking and immediately attacking every permutation of full court press thrown at them. It helps to have Carsen “Get Buckets” Edwards:
Mathias fakes right, draws defenders towards the near corner, and instead throws the pass to an already-running Carsen…
…and sprints past every athletic Louisville defender to finish with an acrobatic layup around two crashing defenders. Carsen gets buckets, and will not be stopped if he wants buckets, and is the master of acrobatic bucket-getting (particularly in transition after breaking a press).
Haas can’t recover on defense, twice
I’ll give up my position on Haas right now: I think he’s got the highest NBA value of the players on Purdue’s roster, and might be a real threat to leave after this season. But as automatic as he is on the offensive end…he’s just brutal defensively.
Watch this simple handoff screen-and-roll:
Haas is busy looking at the weakside screen, locked in so intently that he completely misses Ray Spalding grabbing a perfect bounce pass and careening straight to the rim:
Not great. Check the whole video here:
Listen, I know it’s really unfair to compare him to AJ Hammons, who was a natural defensive force at the collegiate level almost instantly. But a lack of awareness (or AJ’s mobility to make up for lapses) really hurts Haas, as you can see here:
For some reason, PJ is seemingly wandering in the woods and Haas is just bodying anyone who comes near the lane, completely missing Spalding’s pass to Anas Mahmoud for an easy jumper:
Haas has to be able to jump out and at least contest jumpers with his 18 foot wingspan a little better than that, and if he can’t Purdue’s defense will surely continue to suffer.
Offensive rebounding issues
Here’s a minor one that’s been bugging me for the last few years:
Whenever Purdue sends more than one player to crash the offensive glass, they *always* crash on the same side. Look at this:
Biggie shot that three, Haas is on the block, and Vince is right behind. All on the same side, all waiting for a rebound that ends up on the opposite site of the hoop.
Against athletic teams, this sets up a transition opportunity that Purdue scrambles to defend because everyone is so out of place. Vince has to be smarter about balancing offensive rebound positioning and getting back on defense.
Mathias attacks, and Purdue looks good
When Purdue is being guarded by a trapping halfcourt team (whether it’s zone or man), someone needs to attack the nail of the free throw line and make a play from the soft spot. Biggie (as described above) or Mathias are my picks.
Vince has the ball on the wing, and is about to be insta-trapped by Louisville (who got inside Vince’s bones and zapped all of the basketball out of him). PJ’s defender is the trapper, leaving #45 to guard both PJ (who is a shooting threat) and Mathias:
After Biggie and Haas settle on either block, Mathais sees the opportunity and sprints for the nail:
Vince makes a wonderful pass to Mathias, who doesn’t hesitate and nails an easy open jumper with both Haas and Biggie ready to grab the offensive rebound if necessary. Fantastic execution.
Mathias also made the play of the game to Biggie, throwing an incredible behind-the-head pass to a crashing Swanigan for an easy dunk to cut Louisville’s lead late in the game.
If Purdue hits a few more shots down the stretch, Mathias’ aggressiveness kickstarts the run. Sigh.
Missed easy shots after defensive stops, chances to steal the game
After that mediocre-at-best performance, Purdue had two unbelievable opportunities to cut the lead to 6 and 4 in the final 5 minutes of play.
The first was from Haas, who had as clean of a jump hook as you’ll see him get against a defensively talented top 20 team:
Haas was off all night, not able to get great positioning and not going up strong after he finally got the ball on the block. These are shots he makes in his sleep, especially in close games like this. Purdue really need this one, and Haas just couldn’t get it to go.
And right after another Louisville turnover, PJ got this uncontested look in the lane:
Louisville’s Ryan McMahon would nail a backbreaking three pointer on the next possession, icing the game after Purdue had two great opportunities to start a run. After a first-30 minutes filled with mistakes, Purdue didn’t have much room for error down the stretch; unfortunately, despite some good spots, they were unable to finish and walked away with yet another frustrating loss to a highly ranked opponent.
