Santa Clara Men's Basketball - "The Best Laid Plans"

 

       

It was a tough week and a half for the Broncos losing two of three games.  Our perceived momentum from the great BYU home win quickly disappeared with a blowout loss at St. Mary's and a lackluster loss at home to Pacific. 

The plan it seemed for 2022-2023, was success in the preseason with a more difficult schedule that could propel us to third or fourth place in the WCC.  Overall, notch 21 or 22 wins and be in the conversation for another NIT invite.  Looked perfect on paper until last Saturday's loss to # 222 ranked Pacific.  

As they say, "The Best Laid Plans....."  will now be put to a much harder test the last eight games.  IMHO it's not the planning that's at issue, it's consistency executing the plan.  Here's an example from our St. Mary's loss.  St. Mary's has the lowest total scoring average in the WCC but has the best record 12-0.  What?  How?  Execution.  They are ranked near the top in the NCAA in both offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency (4th).  While most would say the way they play is boring, winning and NCAA berths are never boring.  Witness the recent St. Mary's front page newspaper ink that a national ranking brings.  We barely can get our game time announcements in print.  

Our style tries to be the polar opposite.  Go fast, not slow, and we never seem to see a shot we don't like.  At 16-7 we've done pretty well, but in key games we go off script for long stretches.  A number of those games we've won due to shear will power, hustle and streaky hot shooting.  In our seven losses, only three of those teams have better athlete's.  St. Mary's is not one of those three.  

For those Broncos able to attend the Bronco Bistro pre game, a coach comes in and draws up the game plan on a whiteboard.  The Pacific game plan called for; control the boards, make sure we defend against their elite top 3 point shooters particularly # 20 Boone and # 21 Avdalovic, and get out in transition to get easy baskets.  Also in the Pacific game plan, we wanted to pound it down low to our bigs since Pacific has smaller post players.  

The Pacific game recap shows our bigs scored 16 of our 89 points, we had 5 more rebounds,  just 5 fast break points, but gave up 17 three pointers.  That's not a typo.  Boone and Avdalovic made 11 of those three's.  I believe, that's the most we've given up in the Coach Sendek tenure.  OK, these are college kids and mistakes always happen, but we weren't able to "reset" our game plan and execute.

In the WCC, we now rank last in 2pt FG % and 9th in 3pt FG%.  A testament to out grit in overcoming execution lapses.

January and February have not been kind to the Broncos over time.  In our past two 20 win seasons about half our losses are in late January and February, including six straight losses in 2019-2020, four of which were not against the top three in the WCC.  

This February is key, if our aspirations for post season are to be met.  There's no easy answer.  Some say we play our starters too many minutes and as we get into the heart of the WCC season, we're playing with tired bodies.  Season to date in conference our starters have logged 76% of the minutes and for the entire season 77%.  Add in Knapper as the sixth man, it's 84%.  I Have no idea of the correlation, but in our loss to San Jose State at home it was our third game in 7 days.  The first loss to St. Mary's at home was on 1 1/2 days rest after just playing USF.  Our second loss to St. Mary's again 1 1/2 days rest after the BYU victory.  Anyway, I'm not buying the minutes argument.

Others think it's that our opponents have figured us out and game plan to have anyone other than Keshawn, Carlos, or Podz beat us.  It's a lot easier to guard 3 vs 5.  On offense our opponents are more successful at fighting through our perimeter screens or doubling our guards off the screen.  They're not too worried about our bigs making a three when we shoot it at 16% or handling the ball while rolling to the rim.  Consequently, they play our guards tough resulting in late in the clock looks that are hard to make.  Might be one reason our WCC shooting percentages are low. 

When we are on defense our opponents strategy is to catch our guards in a top of the key ball screen and force our bigs to switch, resulting in two mismatches.  A quick guard on our big and a small guard on their big rolling into the paint.  Evidence Mahaney of St. Mary's and Boone of Pacific lighting us up in those situations.  

Expect more of same opponent game plan the next eight games.  All have a good balance of scoring guards and bigs.  It will take our best effort to win these games with five on the road and three at Leavey.  

It all starts tonight at Gonzaga then a quick turnaround at USF.  The Zags had their 75 game home winning streak snapped by LMU recently an let's hope the Broncos can pull it off as well.

Hopefully our "Best Laid Plans" and execution are with us the next eight!

Santa Clara Men's Basketball - Eight The Hard Way

 

The first four games in league play proved what our Coaches have known, and said since pre-season, there are no "gimmies" in the WCC.  Not long ago, Mark Few called out all the other WCC teams not named St. Mary's or BYU saying they "suck."  At that time, I'm not sure he thought he could have been 1-3 to start the 2023 league play.  Had it not been for his deep stable of 5-star recruits making improbable NBA level threes in the waning seconds, they would have lost the games against USF, SCU, and BYU.

Every team is better.  The Broncos know they have to bring it every game.  The next eight will be a huge test and tell fans and season ticket holders what this team is about.

Our schedule is stacked as we play seven of our first twelve games against our top four rivals:  Zags, Gaels, Cougars, Dons.  No other team has this challenge.  The consensus top 3 teams get a lot of "layups" early on.  We could use a "hard way" eight (4-4) or even better, an "easy eight" (5-3) during this next tough stretch.  Long odds, but possible.

Of the eight games, St. Mary's, USF, Zags, and Pacific are road games.  All these teams are beatable, but much harder to win away.  We need Leavey to be our friend in the next four home games versus Pacific, LMU, San Diego, and BYU.  In addition to the above, most every team is now healthy as BYU, Pacific, LMU, Portland, and USD had injuries to top players that caused early losses.  Witness LMU taking down BYU last week.

I think the coaches and players will use this stacked schedule as kindling for motivation to prove who we can be.  Playing the Zags down to the wire at home is great, but not a "W."  Pacific won't care about how we played Gonzaga as they want their "creds" and taking us out is a notch they want.

BYU needs to recover from the shellshock of literally throwing away a win over Gonzaga in Provo.  ICYMI, with under a minute left, a BYU unforced turnover and missed free throw resulted in two Zag three pointers.  The last was the dagger with 9 seconds to go from 35 feet by Julian Strawther.  That's what 5-star recruits can do at crunch time.

For the Broncos, Keshawn, Parker, and Carlos have been on a roll and Podz will be doing his thing, scraping the boards, diving for balls, and draining some threes.  Add some blocks in the paint from Bediako and we can beat the odds. 

I like our chances.

Santa Clara Men's Basketball - Breakthroughs and Breakdowns

 

     

The first week of WCC league competition for the Broncos included a breakthrough win over USF and a loss versus St. Mary's.  A game we let slip away.  

With the success USF has had against us the past six games we've played them, followed by St. Mary's, an 0-2 start was staring us in the face.  With the USF game tied at 38 at halftime, the Broncos went on a gallop in the second half sparked by Braun and Bediako knocking down 10 of 14 shots and Podz burying 7 of 12 to cap a 62% FG shooting display that sent the "Don's" looking for Luca Brasi to bail them out.  Result, Broncos win it by 12.

Saturday, we had a huge opportunity to knock off St. Mary's', # 16 in the NCAA NET rankings on our home court.  We saw first hand that experience is huge as the Gaels used a 13-3 run mid second half to win.  Frustrating, in that St. Mary's had a a season worst shooting percentage, but found others ways to win.

Pregame, our coaches wanted to accomplish three things critical to stealing the win.

#1 Rebound:  We had more overall rebounds (38-35) but they had 15 offensive rebounds that resulted in 12 second chance points.  

#2 Get through their high ball screens to prevent two-way mismatches that result in a quick guard against our bigs and an SCU small guard on their bigs:  Their ball screens are Velcro, they catch us and force switches.  Randy Bennett used his best guards, Aidan Mahaney and Logan Johnson, to take advantage of the two-way mismatch described above resulting in 5 layups plus 8 assists from that duo.

#3 Defend the 3 ball, especially against Mahaney and Ducas:  Although we held their team well below their shooting averages, Mahaney and Ducas were 5 - 10 combined from three.  BTW, their other main shooters were 1-11.

Credit St. Mary's using their defense and experience finding ways to win on the road while having the worst shooting game of their season.  It will be a much harder challenge when we play them again on January 21st in Moraga.

The road ahead is full of more great opportunities and potholes.  Three of the next five games are away:  this Thursday at Pepperdine, the 14th at Pacific and the 21st at St. Mary's.  We are home on this Saturday vs the Zags and the following Thursday, January 19th, against BYU.

Pepperdine on the road is a big challenge.  At 7-8 on the year, they are much better than their record.  They, like SCU, beat UC Irvine and then shot 52% from 2 point and 40% from 3 point range and lost to Gonzaga by 23!  BTW, the Zags shot a gaudy 61% and 46% from 3 point range in their 111-88 win.  Pepperdine can flat out shoot it. They can and will score inside and from deep up and down the roster.  We'll need every bit of grit we can muster.

Saturday night we get the Zags at Leavey.  Another chance for a breakthrough win.  The Zags have all but one of their main pieces back AND more talented newcomers.  We've played them tough at home and must play our best 40 minutes to have a good chance.

Expect a big dose of Drew Timme as the offense likes to run through him in a variety of sets.  There are few great defensive options and our coaches will have to pick their poison.  My guess is we might double Timme and the other bigs in the post and force them to kick it out for a long two or three point attempt.  Timme shoots 66% around the rim versus everyone else who shoots it at 38% from three.  

We have to pressure and contest the threes without fouling and basically hope they miss.  Gonzaga loves to run and beat you in transition just like us; so should be fun to watch.

Last season, after 25 years, we had a breakthrough season earning an invitation to the N.I.T.  We'll need another two breakthrough wins and can't afford breakdown losses.  I'm still going with "eight is enough" wins in the WCC to get us into the conversation.  I like the fight in this team.  Each player "expecting" the other to get it done and are vocal with each other when we are not.  Accountable. 

Let's hope we have something great to "count on" this week!

 

Santa Clara Men's Basketball - Eight Ball

 

The Broncos open their WCC season tonight against the USF Dons at home after a successful 12-3 preseason record.  The team seems to have found a winning formula with strong wins against UC Irvine and Boise State by rebounding, moving the ball to open shooters and playing tough defense at crunch time.  While our overall defense is decent, we are # 259 defending the three ball.  We've be able to overcome this by averaging nearly 16 assists the past three games.  

It will take all of this, and more, to make some noise in the WCC standings; where we are "picked" to finish anywhere from 4th to 7th.  One thing for sure, there are no "layup" games in a much stronger league from top to bottom.  It's going to take at least "eight" to get us into a position for another post season nod.  

We got hosed in the league scheduling this season putting us behind the "eight ball" right out of the gate.  We are the only team who plays their top rivals (USF, St. Mary's, Gonzaga) when our students are away on Christmas break!  Witness St. Mary's plays USD, LMU, and Portland in addition to us.  Five of our first seven games are against the consensus top four teams - St. Mary's twice, USF, Zags, and BYU.  I hope our team uses this as motivation and plays with an extra chip on their shoulders.  We will have to earn respect.  

It's going to take crazy eights to get it done.  At least eight wins (8-8), contributions from eight or more deep in our roster, eight or more three's per game, going 4-4 in our eight home games and two upsets against the top four teams in those eight games.  With those results, I think "eight" is enough.  

While eight might be enough, it's not what our coaches are after.  They are ultra competitive, and IMHO, tired of the league status quo.  They'd like nothing more than to disrupt the pecking order of the WCC.  

Tonight vs the Dons will be like a Gunfight at the OK Corral.  Whoever shoots often and best wins.  They play up tempo like we do, shoot better from two and are ranked #20 in defending the three.  They have a more experienced and deeper roster.  If it comes down to a free throw contest, we have the edge.  It's a great test and tonight we hope "there's no place like home!"

Santa Clara Men's Basketball - I Want the "Broncos" to Lose

 

                            

Sounds terrible doesn't it?  A staunch supporter of the team wanting the Broncos to lose.  Well it's true.  The Broncos need to lose so our Broncos win!  This Thursday is one of those rare nights when our Broncos will play another team of Broncos - The Boise State Broncos!

In a way, it's fitting for this season, as so far, there has been nothing "usual" about this team except winning.  It's been "Forrest Gump" and some "Cinderella" as we head into our last preseason game with an 11-3 record.   Games with slow starts, fast starts, tough defense, no defense, can't miss, and can't shoot combined with terrific late in the game comeback runs just in time before the clock runs out.   Midday games, evening games, neutral sites, resort sites, and, soon, a game on New Year's Eve.  

You just can't make this stuff up!  To boot, guess what?  We are ranked #14 in the country in Luck.  Simply put, we are wining more games and close games than our overall statistics suggest we should win.  Why?  Well, there's not a stat for that.  We just are.  

I have a theory.  The Chaos Theory of selective short term memory loss.  Huh?  IMHO, we just don't care what happened minutes ago, only what can happen in the minutes ahead.  Examples:  Keshawn Justice starts the season shooting frozen tundra numbers only to go off like Steph Curry, making three's from anywhere.  Carlos Stewart (Los) struggled for a few games and then carried us to second half wins with clutch shots and 20 + points efforts.  Our bigs have rebounded well to a #12 ranking, but have had to overcome the "fumble-ruskies" when receiving passes in the paint for layups.  

Then there's Podz, Brandin Podziemski, who plays with a Mt. Everest size chip on his shoulder.  He's a gamer.  Dive on the floor to save another possession, nail a deep three when it counts, and make sharp passes to cutters as he did against CAL to Parker Braun for a helicopter two hand dunk in crunch time.  He leads the team in minutes played, rebounds, steals, assists, and scoring at 18.4 points per game.  Pretty stout when you consider every opponent game plans to slow him down.  

What sums up the selective memory loss and play on mentality for me is Keshawn.  Against CAL he was O-fer shooting in the first half.  Then, late in the second half, he goes off for 10 of our next 14 points with under seven minutes to go to give us an eight point lead.  After drilling a key off balance three point shot, he backpedals to play defense and he is pressing two fingers against the side of his head saying "don't think about it, let it fly!"  That's the mantra.  Don't think - just do.  

We will need any and all mojo against ranked #39 in the country Boise State.  It's a great test for what we will face in league play.  The WCC top seven contenders are NET ranked as follows:  Gonzaga (13), St. Mary's (19), LMU (92), SCU (113), USF (121), Portland (123) and the outlier BYU (141).  NET is the de-facto post season rating system.

For now, we just need our Broncos to take down the Boise St. Broncos for bragging rights and momentum heading into the WCC.  We will need all the "Chaos" we can muster.  So let's get at it and "Create Havoc And Out Score" Boise State. 

Next up.  WCC league outlook.   Go Broncos!

Santa Clara Men's Basketball - "Whoa Nellie!"

                                                                                                                         

The Broncos won two neutral site road games against Iona and Wyoming and a gritty home game versus Sac State.  They did it in impressive style having their best shooting performances of the season.  Iona, coached by two time NCAA champion Rick Pitino and Wyoming are two teams on the rise.  Both teams were not at full strength, but still the Broncos overcame stiff challenges and an overtime scare to prevail. 

Naturally, Bronco Season Ticket Holders and fans expectations went from "oh no,who are these guys" to "oh wow, who are these  guys!"  To this I say "Whoa Nellie!"  

It is great to see the team step up together and get strong contributions across the roster.  Our bigs played big, our shooters finally found their range, and we showed real moxie not fading away to close out these games.  Is this the new normal for this team?  We will find out in the next six games. 

Fans expectations are soaring for the next six.  They feel the Broncos have broken out the Corral and will run roughshod over our opponents.  Make no mistake, I like our chances, but we are still learning this team's identity, so hold your horses a bit.

Are we the team that has shot it at nearly 50% the past three games or the team that shot it in the mid 30% the prior six games?  Are we the defensive team that that is making key stops late in the game or the team that doesn't close out to shooters fast enough?  Our opponents are outshooting us season to date from both the two and three point areas.  Are we the dominant rebounding team with an + 8 offensive advantage season to date and 42 boards a game?  Are we a deeper roster than past seasons or are we a short roster, playing only seven guys more than five minutes team as in the past three games?

My feeling, is that we are a bit of all those team qualities and stats.  That's what makes us a difficult team to play and at times to watch.  One thing for sure, we'll need all of the qualities above to finish preseason in contention for a post season nod.  If we can get to 11-4 before the WCC league starts, we have a shot at another "N" bid of some type.  More on this in a later column.

The next four are very winnable and we need to get it done.  The last two are potential season builders against UC Irvine (63) and Boise St. (53).  Both are good Quad 2 games which help NET rankings.

It begins tonight against New Mexico State, who are favored to win the Western Athletic Conference this season.  They are talented and can score it from all areas; averaging over 80 point per game.  

We'll see where we are after tonight.  Hopefully a step forward and in the right direction - UP!

 

SCU Men's Basketball - We Need an "Ice" Breaker

 

 

                                                                                                         

It's hard to complain about a 4-2 record, yet evident that in both our wins and losses, we're as cold as ice.  Season to date, less than 40% FG shooting and 30% from three.  In perspective, that's a full 10% lower than last season and 6% lower than the past three seasons including the Covid seasons.  

You may ask, so what?  What's the big deal?  We're 4-2!  At issue this is the easiest part of our difficult schedule.  The road ahead gets much harder with no let up.  Two tough neutral site roadies ahead versus Iona tonight and Wyoming on Wednesday, then nine straight at Leavey.  Given our last performance against a very good DIII Menlo, nothing is a gimmie.  

To quantify, we are averaging about 73 possessions/game which is around #9 in the NCAA.  Really good, what the coaches want.  We're taking 63 shots per game, making 24.  If we adjust to our mean shooting percentage from the seasons above, that's 6-7 more shots made per game!  

While each team from the past is different, the system is the same, modified to fit the current roster capabilities which was built with depth at the skill shooting positions.  The plan is to create motion that frees our guards to penetrate and shoot or pass either to a cutter to the rim or a kickout pass to an open shooter.  Other options are to go down to the low block to a big who will work a post move and score or again kickout to an open shooter.  Good system, but Coaches don't take shots.   

So far, other than a few breakout performances, the most consistent thing is our inconsistency.  When the ball and players are moving the good shots are there, but not falling.  When shots don't fall, frustration builds and we devolve into one on one mode, where shots come late in the clock and are defended well and harder to make.  Opposing coaches game plan for this against us.   

When we go down to the low block to create space, opponents double us in the post, forcing us to kick it out for a longer shot, knowing we've been struggling from the outside.  The math works.  Our post bigs make 55-60% of their close-in five footers or get fouled; where we shoot 71% as a team from the foul line vs 29% from three.

That's why I say we need some ice breakers to step up and lead this team to the shooting they are capable of game after game.  When you're missing shots you usually make, it's easy to "press" the issue and take harder shots than normal.  Competitors want to lead, it's part of their DNA.  That's one reason we see more one on one play because they want to put the team on their back to get the team in a rhythm.  

Make no mistake, we will have to shoot our way out of this.  Every team we play will game plan to our weaknesses.

A bright spot has been our rebounding and overall defense.  Enough to get four W's with poor shooting.   Both were real focus areas for the coaches in practices and it shows.  Everybody is onboard to "board".  Our leading rebounder is a guard!  Of Parker Braun's 39 rebounds, 23 are offensive leading to second chance points - big.  On D, we're holding our opponents to 40% or less FG% and 28% from three, much better than last year's team.  This includes the Utah State game where they torched us from everywhere.

Maybe, just maybe, the Menlo game started the thawing in the second half.  Some threes fell for our shooters and both Keshawn Justice and Parker Braun dished out five assists, most for easy lay-ins.  That's good play for de-icing.  

Once Carlos Marshall III and Giordan Williams return, their added depth and experience will bolster our rotation.  

For now, our team needs to get on a "heater" the next nine games to get rid of the ice storm and be ready for a very tough WCC schedule.  What we can do as season ticket holders and fans is show up at Leavey and get loud to pump up our guys. 

We all have a lot of "hot air" in us.  Let's bring it!