NC State Men's Offensive Struggles Aren't Hard to Diagnose

NC State just lost to Wake Forest by 18. It is now 1-2 in the league and 1-6 against power-conference opponents, and a 59-point outing against defensive maestro (sarcasm intended) Steve Forbes isn't a great look for an offense that is trying to find some footing. Unfortunately, its issues are rooted in things that might be hard to adjust away from.

Basketball is a game of versatility and State lacks it. There is more than just that to point a finger at, but that’s what stands out when you watch this offense. Defenses in basketball want to force you to beat them with whatever you’re the worst at. As an offense, you have to minimize the available answers to that question. 

When State trots out a lineup of Michael O’Connell, Breon Pass, Jayden Taylor, Dontrez Styles, and one of the two bigs, it creates some compelling prospects as a spread pick-and-roll team. Pass is a floor-spacing off-ball guard who is shooting over 50% from three. Taylor is shooting really well right now and Styles, while hot and cold so far, profiles as a floor-spacing four. With Middlebrooks and Huntley-Hatfield showing some juice as short-roll playmakers and O’Connell being a strong operator in ball-screen sets, it seems like you might have something, but you don’t because of the lack of versatility in that lineup. 

Take Breon Pass. The scouting report on him is to close out hard. Run him off the line and you can bring help when he attacks the closeout if he does at all. Pass is small and doesn’t offer much as a finisher. Jayden Taylor, while having a much different body, offers a similar scout. He’s a better athlete who can take contact more than Pass can, but he’s not a great finisher and he's not a great passer. Close out hard, run him off the line, and you’re in good shape getting a big to challenge him at the rim. Flip to Marcus Hill, who led all guards in America last year in attempts at the rim. Great finisher, but a non-shooter. Bring a soft closeout, stay in front, and make him shoot or attack a defender with great position. When you apply ACC length and athleticism to that scenario, it becomes a real problem for State’s offense. 

So State can space the floor decently, but it doesn’t attack closeouts and finish. Michael O’Connell will create movement for the offense, but the products of that movement are pretty easy to defend. Here's a scenario . . .

State runs angle pick and roll with MOC and BHH. The defenses brings the big to the level of the screen and tags BHH from the strongside. Pass in the corner shakes back to the ball and MOC rises and gets the ball back to him on the wing. State might get a good shot here for Pass if it beats the defensive rotation. If the closeout on Pass comes fast enough to prevent him from shooting, the play might be cooked. If that's Marcus Hill shaking back to the ball, you get a soft closeout and everything is going to reset or he's going to shoot as a relatively poor shooter.

If you can stick Al Freeman where Marcus Hill or Breon Pass is in this scenario, suddenly you’ve got a guy who demands a hard closeout but can also get to the rim and finish through contact. Devon Daniels is another great example. He was never a great shooter, but he was good enough to keep you honest and he was an elite finisher. Suddenly, the defense can be made wrong no matter what.

You have to force defenses to make decisions that aren’t super obvious. State doesn’t do that. There is not a single three-level scorer on the roster, and I’m not sure there is really even a two-level scorer. It’s a lot of guys who do one thing. That’s the primary difference between last year’s run on offense and what we’ve seen this season. DJ Burns was the epitome of versatility. He was unstoppable one-on-one and the 1% of the 1% as a passer out of double teams. He forced defenses to make choices, and he made them wrong no matter what. 

O’Connell was good for State last year, and he’s been fine in his role this year, but most of his scoring came off the ball during the Final Four run. 15 of his 16 made threes were assisted. He was good in pick and roll with Middlebrooks, but that was really a tertiary action for State. Burns was the initiator, and Horne’s versatility in the zoom action gave State two offensive threads that defenses could not cut until one of them had a guy who was 7’4 and 300 pounds. You can’t go under the down screen or the DHO in the zoom action or Horne could fade back toward the corner and make a three. If you go over, you’re opening yourself to his floater. 

If O’Connell is going to be the main initiator, he needs to be surrounded with scoring versatility to keep defenses in rotation and pay off his distribution, because he himself is not going to create rim pressure. State has not found this. Its offensive initiator is a non-scorer, and we've seen struggles emerge against teams that don't rotate as much and sacrifice the high paint areas to minimize rotation. When teams rotate more, State needs versatility around O'Connell to pay off the rotation his passing exploits. Mike James actually appeared to offer some of it, but how much is impossible to say. I’ll be shocked if he plays this year at this point. 

That’s the long and the short of it. State runs some good stuff. You’re not going to create wide open shots via complex sets every time down the court. That’s not how basketball works. You need a throughline or two to build actions from. I don’t know what that is for State right now. It moves the ball well, but it does not create a matchup problem pretty much anywhere. Keatts has jettisoned all 77 actions from last year, but we’ve seen a diverse concoction of inside-out game, spread looks, zoom actions and DHO-based plays, and other stuff. State has no versatility.