When the final horn sounded Sunday evening in John Gray Gymnasium, there was plenty of room in the stat sheet to place blame for the 71-61 loss to Missouri State in the opening round of the Cayman Islands Classic.
For starters, the offense was discombobulated all evening.
Shooting?
The Panthers shot an absolutely dreadful 3-17 from behind the arc, just an awful number.
Efficiency?
High Point committed 13 turnovers and never really felt like they got into a rhythm offensively.
Some of this is the result of finding the right mix with some new pieces: Bobby Pettiford and Terry Anderson made their much anticipated regular season debuts.
Terry is going to take time to get back into game speed, but Pettiford might have had one of the best games of anyone on the floor in this one; a silver lining in an otherwise rough night for the Huss Buss.
At the end of the day, a loss in a nonconference tournament in November is not the end of the world. The Panthers are playing for March. Any talk about "running the table" or an "At-large" NCAA bid was ludicrous.
So other than the disappointment of not getting a shot at Boston College or Boise State the loss itself is not really that detrimental to the team's goals this year. There's even still a quality win opportunity in Duquesne on the loser bracket side, if the Panthers can get by ODU.
But let's put all of that aside and talk about the biggest issue at hand: Rebounding. The Panthers gave up 16 offensive rebounds to the Missouri State bears, a new program record under Coach Huss. They tallied only 4 offensive rebounds of their own.
Of course this comes after allowing 12 offensive rebounds to American last Monday. And 15 offensive boards to UAB a few days before that. And another 12 offensive rebounds to Coppin State a week earlier.
It's new territory for High Point under Alan Huss.
When the Panthers loaded up last March to play at Longwood in the last regular season game of the season, they hadn't allowed a single opponent all season to get 12 offensive rebounds.
So what took opponents four months to figure out last year, has happened four times already this season before the Thanksgiving turkey has even been carved.
It's no surprise that KenPom has the Panthers coming in at 262nd in the country on ORBs allowed rate, a drop of nearly 200 slots from the impressive 65th that the Panthers end last season at.
So, what is causing the rebounding issues this year? Well in my opinion, which along with $3.23 might get you a cup of coffee, there are four main issues going on with the Panthers on the offensive boards. And they are, in no particular order:
1) Perimeter Defense & Recovery
2) Slow/No Post Rotation
3) Weak Box Outs
4) Poor Effort
I went back and watched all 16 ORBs from the loss tonight and there wasn't a single one that couldn't be attributed to one of the issues above. In fact here's my analysis:
The first two can be corrected, to some extent, with proper fundamentals and practice. The Panthers are routinely getting beat by quick guards on the perimeter and not doing an effective job of recovering and following a play to the end.
Notice that 6 of the 16 ORBs above started with a player getting beat on a dribble drive. It was absolutely maddening going back and watching some of these rebounds where the rebounder was simply the shooter, who beat a Panther off the dribble, missed a layup/floater and then got their own rebound.
That just shouldn't happen.
So step 1 for the Panthers to correct these rebounding issues is to play tougher defense. Beat your man to a spot every now and then, and recover like crazy when you get beat. Don't just assume Bodo will be there to clean up the mess.
Interestingly enough I chose the clip below because it was the one time Bodo held off and didn't go for the block. I'm not picking on the Big South POY, but this ORB was created when we completely lost the man on the perimeter and didn't get a recovery (from Kezza) or a rotation (D'Mar).
Speaking of rotations, all of that getting beat off the dribble is leading the second issue, which is bad post rotation.
When guards are getting beat of the dribble, the majority of the time Bodo is leaving his man to go for the block.
The Panthers are not reading this and reacting quickly enough to slide into the post and pick up the abandoned offensive player, leading to a game of keep away under the basket with Bodo swatting at layups and no one grabbing the board.
Teams are starting to understand this and are just driving and throwing up prayers at the board (see gif below) knowing there will be an offensive rebound opportunity. Presuming we're not ever going to ask Bodo to not go for blocks, High Point has to recover or rotate down quicker and put a body on a body.
Thirdly, if I'm being honest, there were just some bad box out technique in this game.
Looking at my chart a couple paragraphs up, I counted at least 7 guys that had a bad box out lead to an ORB. It's simply not enough to just stand beside a guy or put an arm on them.
Missouri State was scratching and clawing at every board. You might argue they were a little too rough at times...BUT you're not going to get those calls when you don't look like you're putting in the same effort as your opponent.
We seemed content at times just to be in the vicinity of the ball.
There's really not a whole lot of Xs and Os here. You find a body, you get in a stance and don't get pushed out of the spot then you jump up and grab the board. And you do it consistently all game.
I mean why play 20-25 seconds of solid defense and just let the other guy take the ball back?
Finally, I hate to even say it, but there were a handful of boards where we just didn't match our opponent's effort to the ball.
I don't think it's as consistent of an issue as the prior three points, but it's something that has to be addressed. Way too much standing around watching the ball go up or moving down to the offensive end before we've secured the rebound.
The play below was an example. The Panthers worked the Bears late in the shot clock, get them to jack up a horrible shot, Bobby has the post guy boxed out...but we don't secure either of the guys on the wings.
So somehow number 1 comes all the way across the court to tap the rebound to a teammate that was already halfway heading back on defense and not even going for the rebound? Simply not a good look.
Whew....okay we made it through that. Hopefully I didn't come off too critical but there's just a lot to unpack in that performance.
With two games left over the next two days, the Panthers probably aren't going to figure it all out. But they can definitely address points 4 and 3 with a better effort, and probably be a little better at their perimeter defense as well.
This team has the athleticism and size to be just as good, if not better, as they were last year on the boards and defensively as well. They have shown glimpses of their rebounding and defensive potential in virtually every game, before today, dating all the way back to the ETSU exhibition. It's just a matter of consistently performing to that standard.
Of course more importantly the Panthers will need to get the offense going and shoot a lot better than they did in game 1 to come out of the Caymans a respectable 2-1. It won't be the result they wanted but maybe the benefits of some lessons learned will be worth the cost of an early loss. Only time will tell how this season's version of the Huss Bus will respond. 5PM Monday against Old Dominion...lets get it.
Go Panthers!
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