The best four teams in college basketball will play in Saturday’s Final Four.
For a majority of the season, the consensus was Auburn was the best team in the country. Then in early March when Auburn stumbled, most in basketball circles started to concede the best team in the country was probably Duke. Then Florida turned in such a dominant performance in the SEC tournament that some jumped to Florida. The one team in this Final Four that never had that “best team in the country” title is Houston, the preseason AP No. 4 team, which has won 30 of its last 31 games, the one loss coming in overtime.
This week I interviewed coaches who have faced these teams this season to provide scouting reports of this weekend’s action. I asked them all who they thought would win. Most picked Duke and Florida in the title game, with a majority picking Duke to win and a few going with Florida. Only one coach picked Houston to knock off Duke, then had Florida as the title winner. One thing every coach agreed on: The best four teams made it to San Antonio. Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty details of what makes them good and how to beat them.
At least three coaches who played each team this season — a mix of assistants and head coaches — were interviewed to provide an in-depth scout. They were granted anonymity in exchange for their candor. For brevity, I’ve combined their thoughts into an aggregate breakdown.
Duke
You have to decide how you’re going to guard Cooper Flagg. Is it your big? Which means now you have to deal with him on the perimeter. Is it a smaller guy? Which means you’re going to have to deal with his dribble back-downs, and they’ll still put him in the pick-and-roll.
But I think generally you have ask yourself, do you want Cooper to try to get 60 or 70 points and do your best on Kon Knueppel, Tyrese Proctor and Sion James, or do you want to try to take Cooper out to the best of your ability? Maybe Houston is the one team that can do both, but I don’t think you can do both, and it’s really hard to do one.
(Duke head coach) Jon Scheyer’s growth from last year to this year has been impressive. Last year they were very basic and I wasn’t really impressed with him as much as a coach, but this year he’s running some good s—.
You have to take away their pet plays. He’s going to come in with some stuff specifically for the opponent, but then he’s got a handful of pet plays like many coaches, but his work a lot. They’ve got a great flare slip play, they’ve got a back-screen lob play that they run always later in the second half. If you’re not ready for those, they can kill you.
And you have to be able to defend the flare screen. It’s probably one of the brilliant things they’ve done is they do a lot of pick-and-roll, they do a lot of five-out zoom that everybody’s done, but they’re probably the best flare screen team in the country. Knueppel’s as good as it gets in those actions, and if you’re not prepared to defend the flare screen, it could be a major problem.
Then their play-after play is much improved. If you take away the first action, they’re willing to keep moving it, but they’re not blow-by guys. If you have a couple guys that can get underneath the ball, you can bother their halfcourt offense.
Ball pressure is critical. They do such a great job sharing the ball, moving the ball that you’ve got to make them dribblers as much as possible, because if you allow them to pass and play in their space, it’s going to be a problem.
I would want to defend the 3-point line, and that means you’re going to give up some layups occasionally, but I’d want them to make some tougher twos — floaters in the paint — and really do a great job at choking the 3. Then with Khaman Maluach, our big was stuck. Should I help up? Should I stay back? We should have just told him to stay at the rim and take away those dunks.
With their defense, you feel their size in every aspect. Sion James is strong as hell. He’s the world’s strongest man. His body’s ridiculous. You turn the corner on a ball screen, and you just have this massive f—ing human back there cleaning everything up in Maluach, you got big guards chasing you off screens, and maybe you drive by one of their guards, and Cooper’s rotating over and he’s a high-level rim protector. They’re all big so it makes them that much more switchable.
It’ll be interesting to see what they do with their ball-screen coverage. Khaman was mostly in deep drop against Alabama, and he might not be that deep against Houston because those guards are so good in the midrange.
Flagg’s unbelievable. I mean, he deserves every accolade, but he’s still a freshman, and when they play him at the four defensively, do you have a big guy that can pound him inside? Because there’s a 35-, 40-pound weight difference. That’s something Houston should try with J’Wan Roberts.
Then if there’s one perimeter guy to try to pick on, initially in our league watching film, people thought it was Knueppel, but it’s not. It’s Proctor. Put him in a bunch of pick-and-roll. James is elite on the ball, but you can get him on some head-turn back cuts. You can catch him sleeping and run a guy off of a staggered double. Now, you can’t make a steady diet of it, but against Duke, they’re so good, you have to be creative and manufacture different ways to score.
Your court alignment also matters. If you’re just going to play four-out or five-out, their wingspan, their width, they can cover all the gaps. If you have two guys in the low post, now there’s more space on the perimeter to drive.
It’s a hard team to get an advantage against, but the guard-to-guard stuff that Houston can do is the best way to try to get an advantage and then play off of that.
Houston
Houston’s unique because they’re pretty easy to prepare for. It’s just extremely hard to execute. If you’re gonna use ball screens, you gotta be willing to just move the ball before they swallow you up with their coverage. They’re pretty much going to hedge or trap everything.
Then their bigs can recover, but the reality is, Joseph Tugler and Ja’Vier Francis are just so good at getting back, and they’re probably the most connected and fastest-rotating team we played this year. If you think you have a quick advantage, they’re right there covering it up.
Kansas had success in the short roll popping the big behind the screen and playing four-on-three as they’re rotating, but you just can’t get caught trying to constantly play against their ball-screen coverage because over time it’s gonna wear you out.
You also can’t throw it to the normal post spot or mid-post because they’ll trap it, so you have to try to stay in the middle of the floor and play in isolation. Texas Tech had the balls to throw it in the post, but then JT Toppin got booted for the leg-kick. I’d stay away from anything that puts two on the ball, because their shell defense and what they practice every day is so elite.
They’re not gonna beat themselves, so you got to be really good on the glass and getting to loose balls, because they’re the best in the world at beating you in the extra-possession game and doing it in a timely manner. It seems like in the crucial moments, either LJ Cryer or Milos Uzan or Emanuel Sharp are going to have the confidence to take and make big shots because they know they have extra protection on the glass.
At the end of possessions, they’re as good of a guard trio as anybody in the country. And when they shoot, you don’t even feel good if they get a shot up. Like, it feels like it’s going in. Their defense gets a lot of credit, rightfully so, but they’re good offensively and know exactly what they want.
Cryer killed us with stepback jumpers, which he’s consistently done all year. The only thing we should have done a little differently is try to put as much size as you can on him and really try to make him have to play inside the 3-point line.
They’re extremely tough with how well they’ve shot the 3 this year. It’s forced a lot of teams not to want to double J’Wan Roberts, and if you don’t do that, he’ll just destroy you. He’s really good, especially if he gets to his left hand.
Auburn
They run their flex stuff so well and call a set almost every time down the floor. Their guards can make hard shots and it looks great, but what really hurts is they’ll run their flex, get an easy layup, then a quick steal and transition layup and they start to stack up all those easy baskets that it makes it hard because they’re always playing ahead and they’re never behind.
If you’ve got size on the wings and you can switch kind of three, four, five, that is the best way. That way you’re not giving up the layup and you’re also trying to take away the duck-in. It’s just, most people’s personnel aren’t built that way.
The other guy’s a problem is Chaney Johnson. He’s so good that he would be a star on most teams, and for them sometimes he gets forgotten. I think you got to switch it. And then if it is a mismatch, you’re probably going to be in a double-team situation. If we played them again, we would try to heat the perimeter up and try to do some things to not let them pound the ball inside.
With Johni Broome, you have to be physical with him. He’s not tough. He doesn’t like being hit. He doesn’t like being touched. You can’t allow him to be comfortable. Instead of letting him catch it at 12 feet, make him catch it at 22. He’s an offensive-minded guy. He wants to score. So make him have to pass the ball in situations he’s not accustomed to.
I’ve seen some people bother him playing his high shoulder, forcing him baseline and doubling from the baseline. He wants to come over that high shoulder and try to whip that pass across. Take away the passing angle, now he has to make a move. On the other end, make him guard multiple screening actions and make multiple decisions. Don’t let him rest. You can frustrate a really good offensive player sometimes by just making him have to work on the defensive end.
With Tahaad Pettiford, I wouldn’t put so much focus on him, not because he’s not good. He’s going to make shots even against good defense. Try to force him to make an individual tough play and live with it. Sometimes that’s better than letting Miles Kelly shoot 3s and letting Broome score on the block.
The biggest problem going against their defense is Dylan Cardwell. I can’t imagine there’s a better defender in the country. He can guard one through five as good or better than anybody, regardless of size, and what makes it more extraordinary is the fact that he’s so big and he can do that. They can make a mistake, and he fixes it. The one thing that I’ve seen teams do is you try to get Broome in foul trouble because he’ll get passive. He doesn’t want to get in foul trouble.
People give Chad Baker-Mazara a lot of credit. I don’t think he’s a great defender. I think he is a good recovery defender, but I don’t think he’s great at defending, especially on the ball and away from the ball. Screen him. Have that dude come off of two pin-down screens. That’s why they’re an emergency switch team because a lot of those guys will bail on that stuff. You have to make him have to guard.
He makes open shots, but he’s a defensive liability. So make him a defensive liability and take away some of those open shots. And if they’ve got to play other guys, that’s a big drop-off. And let’s not forget a year ago, he was the same guy that got kicked out of the Yale game that caused them to be discombobulated. His antics can be an issue for that team.
Florida
Florida could play every style possible. Slow? Fast? Doesn’t matter. The ace in the hole is they’ve got Walter Clayton Jr., who can make tough shots and bail you out. He spreads out everything that you’re trying to do because it’s not just him shooting, it’s him dribbling into a shot. It’s almost a little bit Steph Curry-like where your point of pickup’s gotta be really high and now automatically you’re spaced out.
Clayton’s phenomenal, but the player on their team that I’m most impressed with every time I see him on film is Alex Condon. I think he’s a 10-year NBA guy. He’s tough as can be. His defense is really good.
They’re the best that I’ve seen this year at playing off a dribble-handoff, and it is because of the bigs. The guards set up the dribble handoffs better than anybody else. And you watch Clayton, Alijah Martin, Will Richard, and even when they put in Denzel Aberdeen, they’re so good at setting up that if you play it high, they’re going to back-cut. They know the counters.
Just their rhythm and pace of it, it’s really tough, and you make a mistake on a dribble-handoff with Clayton, it’s a 3-point mistake, and that’s where they kind of get you panicked and out of position. Next thing you know Condon’s going to the rim or the big fella Rueben Chinyelu’s getting something at the rim. You need to constantly have pressure and be ready to hard hedge and or trap those dribble-handoffs or ball screens that they’re stepping right into.
The combination of their fours and fives, they have four of them and the backups could be starters on a top 10-level team. They just keep coming at you in waves. Their guards aren’t great at guarding, but the bigs clean things up so well at the rim on rotations.
You have to keep them out of transition. They don’t really box out. They rely on two or three guys to get the rebound, and they go chase. We crashed really hard, and it really flattened out their offensive break. They want to try to leak out. Go ahead, but we’re going to have an extra guy rebound the ball, and now that guy doesn’t leak out as much. He’s trying to stay back to rebound. And guess what? That outlet pass is no longer at 22 feet. It’s at 10 feet. They don’t box out a few times, and now it’s an emphasis and the emphasis is no longer go, go, go.
You can attack Clayton defensively. When it gets late, he’s the one that’s going to be taking most of the big shots. And if there’s some way to wear him out, you have to do it. So make him defend. Then I would try to make those bigs make 3s, especially in a big arena like that. And if they miss a shot, you cannot let them get it back. Because that could be a putback or that could be a dagger 3. So if you’re trying to stop them, I would just put everything into those two things, setting your defense and the shot goes up, expect a miss and don’t let them get it back.
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