Tommy Lloyd, Teambuilding, and Depth

[arxpert]

I see a lot of people thinking that they can play Mock "GM" here. Thinking that we need to have depth and we need to figure out who will take what roles and scholarships.

Let me tell you 1 fact of life that no one can dispute about Tommy Lloyd.

It does not matter what you think. We have had teams with 2 or 3 players per position that could start just about anywhere.

Tommy refuses to go more than about 6 to 7 deep. Playing Krivas for 5-7 minutes a game doesn't really count as "NEEDING DEPTH".

So if people are sitting around saying we are "Thin" at "PG, SG, SF, PF, C" --- Don't worry about it. Tommy will never play 9 or 10 guys. So if you just want to watch players sit around the bench like cheerleaders to feel better about something, fine ---

HOWEVER - Even WITHOUT Boswell and Conrad PLUS assuming no one uses their final year of eligibility with us:

Tommy will not even use all of the following players:

Bradley - Phillips
KJ - Sanon
Carter
Henri
Krivas - Dylan - Stephen

At least 1 of those players will have no role at all. So when you think about it, Whoever Tommy decides to bring in is already going to rock that boat. If Boswell for some odd reason stayed it will automatically destroy the playing time of someone on the list underneath the name Henri. There is really no reason to bring in any "Depth" other than for the sake of injuries or maybe literally 1 player who can come in from out of D-Block Prison league to play some hard PF minutes. The rest is just fluff. I think seeing Adama, Paulius and Boro over these years go is a heavy indicator that the players are done with the fluff.

Still, my point here is worrying about depth is utterly meaningless with Tommy Lloyd. He isn't that dude who will play 9-10 guys. So we can get the depth pieces to feel sexy, but the players I listed are the only ones who will even see the court MINUS 1 name --- That is if no one unlisted returns.

[mvpreed2]

For once, there is not a single point that I can bring up to try to have a friendly debate with you.
This team WAS deep enough to go 9-10 deep when you start to list names like Borovicanin/Muraskas on the wing and bigs in Anderson/Veesaar who did not see a single minute of time!

I saw Anderson in street clothes more than I saw him in uniform which means he was a redshirt.
Lloyd is never going to have depth and those guys that are 9-12 in the rotation are always going to transfer out of Arizona.
You want a fast-paced offense, yet you have a 6'8 shooter (Muraskas) and a 6'9 slasher (Borovicanin) sitting on the bench?
You cannot say it was because of defense because Love/Larsson was not always locked in on defense, yet they swallowed minutes?
I really want Lloyd to open up this rotation because it would have been more exciting to see Muraskas set McKale on fire and watch Borovicanin attack off the dribble and make plays.
Now I am going to be pissed while they do it for another program in 2024.
#BearDown

[arxpert]

For once, there is not a single point that I can bring up to try to have a friendly debate with you.
This team WAS deep enough to go 9-10 deep when you start to list names like Borovicanin/Muraskas on the wing and bigs in Anderson/Veesaar who did not see a single minute of time!

I saw Anderson in street clothes more than I saw him in uniform which means he was a redshirt.
Lloyd is never going to have depth and those guys that are 9-12 in the rotation are always going to transfer out of Arizona.
You want a fast-paced offense, yet you have a 6'8 shooter (Muraskas) and a 6'9 slasher (Borovicanin) sitting on the bench?
You cannot say it was because of defense because Love/Larsson was not always locked in on defense, yet they swallowed minutes?
I really want Lloyd to open up this rotation because it would have been more exciting to see Muraskas set McKale on fire and watch Borovicanin attack off the dribble and make plays.
Now I am going to be pissed while they do it for another program in 2024.
#BearDown

Coaching Depth takes a lot of skill, engagement, and guts. I think Tommy is just still too new at this, but like I said originally, even the players I typed out (Without Boswell or Conrad) will have playing time issues.

As far as I know there is potentially a chance a Pelle, Ballo, or Love could return technically I guess. I don't think they will or maybe Tommy wouldn't mind if they did because it's familiar and could be a good way to get started in the Big12 for him. It wouldn't make anyone on that list happy though so I doubt it.

Above all, at least for me, it is Tommy's unwillingness. He didn't want to coach multiple defenses. He didn't want to try to mix and match on offense. He had the full tool kit available.

Some Analysis:

Some members here believe that the success of a PM or Boro was all due to garbage time. Well the fact of the matter is the ball goes through the hoop regardless. If they missed shots vs "Starters" then guess what they missed all the same as our normal starters were missing.

Opponent Starters may or may not have guarded a PM or Boro in those moments just to see. Maybe Tommy gives a Paulius 2 attempts and if he hits even 1, then Clemson has to respect it and that opens things up for everyone else. If PM misses both, then it's no different than watching anyone else brick it up. Tommy was hoping that we could get maybe 4 3's down the stretch from Love, Pelle, Boswell combined and in the end it was what? Bradley hitting the 3? Come on Tommy.

Also, if opponent Starters are paying attention to PM or Boro... that means PM and Boro learn to pass to open players like Love, Pelle or they use their height for much easier passes inside to Ballo which is a MAJOR reason we lost and had problems all season with Ballo.

A lot of our guards this year were afraid to pass high into the post to Ballo because they were shorter players and the pass lanes/angles were made tougher by smarter Coaches who essentially forced it to be that way.

What happens as a result? Tommy coaches our guys to find ways to bounce pass the ball into Ballo and then what happens? Ballo goes up with it, gets hacked, can't complete any And-1's, misses most of his FTs and we get drained of possessions. Teams didn't usually hack Ballo when he gets the ball deep in the post HIGH because he can much more easily perform the And-1 Layup.

PM and Boro on the court, like a Henri would have easily been able to get the ball in to Ballo HIGH and ready to turn in for the quick layup. We saw it a lot with Tubelis and Ballo playing together. Tubelis was able to help keep the ball up High. We didn't see a lot of Hack-A-Ballo with Zoo Tube around.

Purdue mastered doing this with Yao Edey. Edey gets a lot of And-1's and he can hit FT's so that is why he is the National Player of the Year. He is unstoppable. The concept is key though. Passing high in the low post is very difficult and the taller you are as a passer the easier it is.

Passing high to the post was never a strength of this team, but again - using a PM/Boro to spot shoot or just to funnel the ball inside was an asset that Tommy refused to explore.

Then again, we had trouble closing out on the perimeter all season defensively yet Tommy had 2 guys 6'8 and 6'9 on the bench who could easily have played in Zone defenses, collapsing on drives, but with their length getting back out to close out when a team performed a drive + dish. We also could have tried Krivas and Ballo together in short spurts.

Anyone who thinks that we couldn't run and gun with Krivas and Ballo is fooling themselves. Tommy had no problem deploying Koloko and Ballo together in Year 1. In fact that season really turned around once he started trying it. This year he wouldn't even try in in a 3 minute spurt at all. Not even for the sake of conversation. In the regular season he didn't give it even 1 chance.

How many times do you think we did any true Run+Gun with Boswell hop stepping down the court casually in transition?

The only player who truly led a FAST break in transition with any speed was Bradley. He was the maniac who got into the lane with over 23 seconds left on the shot clock habitually. Boswell is much more methodical than people were willing to recognize.

Tommy is a serious control freak. He wants to win his way. Even Bradley and KJ showed flashes in the 1st half of how to beat what Clemson was doing and Tommy yanked them. It was really only a few minutes into the 2nd half that Tommy finally let Bradley just go hambone. Then, just like the Purdue game, as soon as the PLAYER figured out how to get the game back in our momentum, Tommy subbed them out / went back to the original Losing strategy. We lost these games because the game plan was bad and the execution was worse. We could have won if there was some willingness to adapt earlier.

Tommy simply did not want to coach multiple strategies in that way. Rotations do need to get tightened up when it comes down the stretch, but there is no reason to ignore the players entirely and especially throughout the regular season.