Upon Further Review: Miami

After each Purdue basketball game this season, GoldandBlack.com will take a detailed look back at the contest to highlight some of its finer points.

Today, Purdue’s 79-69 over Miami at the NCAA Tournament.

PDF: Purdue-Miami statistics

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PURDUE OFFENSE

To repeat the point made after Queens: Facing opponents who don’t know you well unlocks stuff, especially in that short-prep game.

After spending conference play largely playing off the basics, the basics themselves start clicking.

Purdue’s bread-and-butter DHO (“zoom”) action for Fletcher Loyer.

Miami did adjust on the fly, but the adjustment knocked its defense out of balance and opened an empty side for a pick-and-roll. Pretty nice chess match here.

Purdue runs this for Loyer all the time and in the NCAA Tournament, it’s been just this easy.

Purdue’s offense is dominating in the postseason.

Trey Kaufman-Renn has been a huge part of it.

He’s crushing as a post scorer — Miami never ran help at him — and short-roll scorer alike, but his decision-making and savvy have been razor-sharp. The pass-fake here …

His feel for things as Purdue’s deputy decision-maker when the ball is forced out of Smith’s hands is really something. Look at Miami’s bench reacting to how open CJ Cox is. Tre Donaldson might have gotten a bit overzealous in his help.

When Miami went to this zone-ish look, Kaufman-Renn just aced it. He’s been good this season playing out of the high post vs. zone. You shouldn’t zone Purdue, but Miami was doing a lot of different stuff.

DEFENSIVE OBSERVATIONS

Miami really wanted to iso Purdue defenders, drive into their chests hard and score through them, leveraging superior athleticism and explosiveness. It took some time for Purdue to settle in there, but Trey Kaufman-Renn in particular really did a nice job over time holding his ground.

Great job by Kaufman-Renn defending physically without fouling.

Highlighting this, too.

This late-first half turnover was a big play. It looks live like just a throwaway, but if you look closer you see how TKR influenced the roll man’s path to the ball and forced the turnover, showing his hands right away, too, to highlight that there was no contact.

TRANSITION DEFENSE

Purdue was determined to keep Miami out of fast breaks, and did it, despite its turnover numbers.

Looked like the plan was to send two guys back instead of the normal one. You see here that Omer Mayer is all over it in addition to Braden Smith, who as the deepest man here would be the designated safety.

Pretty clear here. Nice awareness by Gicarri Harris here sInce Mayer was the shooter and out of the play.

This was a great defensive game for Harris.

He kills this Miami transition opportunity, just by being a nuisance.

This is excellent ball pressure and attention to detail (to ice this ball screen) contributing to this turnover.

Thole sequence, from corner closeout to help against the dribble to the offensive piece of it … just winning stuff.

Loyer created this steal, but Harris’ D was perfect on the initial drive.

OFFICIATING GONE WILD

This should have ended the game then and there, one of two, maybe three, travels on Miami that didn’t get called, the phantom foul on Oscar Cluff, etc.

https://youtu.be/pAFn1x1gH-8

Purdue runs its guards off a ton of screens and thy often get bumped or even held. For some reason, Purdue never gets these calls.

Right in front of the ref …

This happened right in front of me and I can tell you there was more hip contact here than it looks like on the video.

Of course, the bump isn’t even remotely close to being the biggest blunder here by the officials.

Not exactly One Shining Moment here …

REBOUNDING ISSUES

Did Miami outrebound Purdue and stay alive with offensive rebounds because it was athletic than Purdue? In part.

But it was more matchups.

So this is again Purdue having its 5 man on the inbounder, which puts Harris on a big. Purdue never gets it switched back. (Sorry about the skip in the video here.)

Purdue’s guards have to do a better job bodying people up no matter how disadvantaged they might be.

This play should have been stopped by low-man Mayer.

All this said, when your biggest problem is your guards’ rebounding and rim protection, things could be worse.

MISC

• There was a group of Purdue fans in the front row (bottom right corner here) who seriously made this three-second call. They were yelling to the ref, then roared when he made the call. I can’t say for certain the ref wasn’t counting to himself and would have made the call anyway, but he had to have heard the voices right behind him.

• The over-inflated balls seemed to contribute to a few Miami turnovers. This dribble just takes off on Malik Reneau.

• This was not a great game for Braden Smith, all told, but even when he’s not great, Purdue still has a point guard who puts defenses on a string, like this. Don’t take it for granted just because it’s become so routine.

Creating depth enough to carry two defenders to the baseline …

Geometry class …

• Oscar Cluff is killing people just by running the floor hard. Look where he starts this play.