EXCLUSIVE: Ryan Young talks about his transfer
- Thread starter lou v
- Start date
"But he was a back-to-the-basket, low-post player who didn't seem like a good fit for Collins' vision of using Nance at the 5 and playing a five-out system"
Collins failed to adjust to the players he had, to maximize their potential. That's a failure of coaching.
Collins failed to adjust to the players he had, to maximize their potential. That's a failure of coaching.
Well, he adjusted his system to Nance, didn’t he? He decided Nance was the better player and built his offense around him and his skill set.
I still don’t understand how Nance and Young could not play together, with Young in the low post and Nance working the outside in. Nance’s ability to hit the three and mid-range jumpers seems a perfect complement to Young’s work underneath, which was effective against move big men in isolation.
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He didn’t inspire confidence in the coach or program. And I wouldn’t have expected him to do so. Hits keep coming. Thanks for asking, Lou.
Yeah. Neither can I. Seems like it should have been a big advantage for us.
On those rare occasions when they did play together it seemed like they never practiced together.
Massive missed opportunity for NU.
The offense has not changed much. You saw Pardon doing the same type of high screens even if he didn’t have the shooting to roll to the 3 pt line.
I think it was definitely preferring to plug in Nance and Beran instead of Young and Nance. Not really building a new offense.
One could easily argue that Nance fit Collins' approach perfectly and thats why he played and Young sat.
One could easily argue that Collins is completely rigid in his approach.
All it takes is an acknowledgment that Young is better at basketball than Robbie Beran.
Once you get there, you wonder why Collins didnt adjust his beloved approach.
And the answer is pretty obvious.
I would have liked to have seen them try it more often, but I kinda get it. To me, Nance was the mismatch and NU's best player, and he should have always been the focal point of the offense. To do that, they ran a five-out set, or they put him in the high, or sometimes even low post. He was at his best when he could face-up against a slower center, play pick-and-pop, or use that little jump-hook in the lane off the dribble. Young is an old-school, back-to-the-basket center who would only bring another body into the paint and clog things up. He can't really play anywhere but the low post, and when he's not, you're playing four-on-five because no one will have to guard him away from the basket. So he became the second-team center, and they ran a low-post set with him in the game. The other thing is, I think Young was very effective in part because he played limited minutes. He would have had a lot more trouble defensively, and foul trouble would have been a chronic issue.
Maybe you are right! Not sure myself! Now college wrestling, that is a different matter!
The Nance mismatch:
1) Non existent against mobile centers like Bingham or Omuruyi
2) Against more traditional centers solved by moving a smaller guy to cover Nance. Mismatch down low? Nah. Why? Because Nance is not, and has never been an inside guy
3) #2 means Beran is now being covered by Edey. Beran, who does not attack the basket, period. Edey out, at best creates some space, but is, surely not going to mean we get 10 offensive rebounds.
On defense? Well we saw multiple abuse of Nance down low. That was nice.
So yeah, Nance mismatches. What an advantage.
1) Non existent against mobile centers like Bingham or Omuruyi
2) Against more traditional centers solved by moving a smaller guy to cover Nance. Mismatch down low? Nah. Why? Because Nance is not, and has never been an inside guy
3) #2 means Beran is now being covered by Edey. Beran, who does not attack the basket, period. Edey out, at best creates some space, but is, surely not going to mean we get 10 offensive rebounds.
On defense? Well we saw multiple abuse of Nance down low. That was nice.
So yeah, Nance mismatches. What an advantage.
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Do you disagree that Nance was NU’s best player and should have been the focus of the offense? I thought we didn’t go to him nearly enough or maybe it was Nance being passive.
I think having Nance and Young on the floor together would open things up for Nance because the defense has to account for both of them.
No. I completely agree. Nance was our best player, by far.
We talk a lot about "style of play" and I've been one to mention it all the time, but, imo, our sets incorporate enough for Nance to be the focus of the offense. As they incorporate enough to get the ball to Young if we wanted to. It's a matter of what plays are called and when. And the interpretation the players make of those plays. Greer (random) looks at Nance or Young and he can give him the ball or look elsewhere.
In most cases, despite of what we might think, play call falls on the PG. Coaches are not calling the plays from the sidelines more than the PG is. I know Jerry Sloan used to call every single play, but that's the exception. Having said that, the PG play calling is driven by what the coach tells him, in practice, before and during the game. So, in the end it's on the coach if the adequate plays are called.
Nance might be Rasheed Wallace with the Blazers. I mention him because he made it public he did not like to be the focus. I've wondered that multiple times. But, what I saw was often long minutes of really not running or not looking for him on offense. If he's setting high screens at the top, and the roll does not give him the 3 pt shot, because the other teams executes and has a good scouting report, that's not running something for Nance. That's wasting time. And often we ran the same not working crap over and over again.
I agree this "play" in particular is the beginning of the Nance issue. But I don't agree that Nance is without responsibility once the screen blows up ... which it often did.
a) For as much as Buie and Nance ran that high screen, it took them FOREVER to set it up. This goes back to the details you outlined above.
b) If Nance wasn't able to work off the high screen, he became lost in the offense down low. He only seemed comfortable to get the ball back for another screen. He went back to this more as the season progressed.
Nance and Buie were either instructed to play a whole lot of the two-man game or they didn't know the limits of when to stop. It was pretty clear to me that Buie got pulled several times throughout the season when he didn't get more of the team involved off of Nance's screens/stepbacks.
However, we never saw nearly as much of the two-man game when Nance was on the bench.
To me, the limitations of Nance were one of the major problems on this team. The reliance on him was a huge coaching mistake. The only thing that might convince me he needed the ball more is that 3PT%. On the other hand, he lead the team in turnovers in the conference with fewer FT attempts than Boo and Young (Young played 200 less minutes). For me, that's not a guy that needs the ball significantly more.
Nance usually had difficulty scoring down low against anybody bigger than him, but was very effective shooting from "jumpshooting" distance. The point of the Nance/Young frontcourt combination would have been to have Young in the low post and Nance in the high post, freeing up Nance to get to the basket against a smaller defender or just shoot over him from the perimeter. Young ties up the opponents biggest guy and scores occasionally inside. And we rebound better on both ends of the floor.
The "foul trouble" argument against Young just doesn't hold any water. He fouled out of 1 game. He had 4 fouls in 2 other games. He had 2 fouls or fewer in 13 of our 22 games against the Big Ten. Fouls were not a problem, more like an irrational fear.
But since I just looked up his game by game stats, I want to point out how well Ryan Young shot the ball over our last 6 conference games... 23 of 34 from the floor. 67.6%.
I said before the season that the key to our success was that Nance and Young had to play together at least 15 minutes per game. Well, Collins never did that, but there were 3 games where they got 10 minutes together...
At Iowa, NU outscored the Hawkeyes 30-24 with the Nance/Young frontcourt but got blown out 82-61.
Hosting Indiana, NU outscored the depleted Hoosiers 14-11 with Nance/Young and won 59-51.
Against Wisconsin, with the right frontcourt, NU won 44-36 but lost the battle 82-76.
I don't blame Young for leaving.
I think you missed the point. Of course Nance didn't score down low against bigger players. The whole idea was to get him in the high post or play five-out, where Nance could use his speed and athleticism against bigger 5s. If you play Young at the same time, that goes away, because the 5 would guard Young and a faster, more agile 4 would be on Nance. Plus, having Young at the low post brings another defender in the middle, and you can't play him anywhere but the low post.
Also, Young didn't get into foul trouble because he played just 17 minutes a game, mostly against second-team centers. He would play more minutes against better players if he started. I don't think anyone would argue that Young had his limits defensively.
I would've liked to see NU experiment more with Young and Nance together, too. But I understand why they didn't.
I seriously doubt the bolded part. Because, you see, most coaches don't substitute the way Collins does.
I understand your point about Nance going outside to score from the perimeter, but of course that hurts our offensive rebounding. If you recall, we missed a lot of shots. In fact, the thought process you are ascribing to Collins aligns well with my oft-stated belief that Collins undervalues rebounding.
And if Nance is playing the high post, he is not clogging up the low post - we just have two big guys playing inside the arc, which would have been a welcome (and I believe productive) change.
Lots of space in the lane and running nance into puts the pressure on that stay at home center to not foul. Nance has opportunity to create greater lift than stand still center. Foul opportunities. And 1 opportunities.
Ultimately, what they ran led to losses. What we discuss is hypothetical because it wasn’t used enough to provide meaningful data. But you can’t get worse than lose. So either they lose again or maybe they win.