The Hoyas Have Some Glaring Red Flags

The Georgetown Hoyas got blown out by St. John's on Tuesday night at Capital One Arena, 66-41. It was the Hoyas second straight defeat and their 6th in the last 7 games. The only win in that stretch was an absolute escape job at Villanova. The Johnnies scored the game's first 11 points and ultimately jumped out to a 23-3 lead. The game never came close to a single-digit margin from there, even accounting for an 11-0 run by the Hoyas between the end of the first half and beginning of the second. St. John's had runs of 23-3, 16-3, and 11-1. It is hard to win, or even be remotely competitive, when playing from that big of a deficit once, let alone multiple times in a game.

There is little to write about this game specifically. St. John's is really good, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. They looked like a top 15 team and a top 5 defensive team in the country. The Hoyas looked scared to go up against their speed and, in particular, their size on the defensive side of the ball. They had no idea how to attack the St. John's defense and the Johnnies could smell it and were in all out attack mode pretty much all night on that end of the floor. St. John's shot the ball well (especially in the first half), Georgetown decidedly did not, and this was just never a competitive basketball game. Georgetown's effort in the first half was poor and sluggish and St. John's capitalized. The Hoyas showed fight in the second half, especially on the defensive end where they held St. John's under 20 points for the half, but it wasn't enough given the way they started the game and the way they shot the ball. Sometimes, especially when you're a rebuilding and relatively young team, you get your ass kicked. Last night, the Hoyas got their ass kicked.

The only other thing to really call out about last night's game is this fairly lousy tidbit from Jake Foote:

So, yeah, it was a pretty bad game for the Hoyas!

The real take away from last night though was the continuation of some fairly concerning trends for the Hoyas over the last several games that are worth digging into a little bit more.

The Offense

Since last night was the worst offensive game of both the season and of the last nearly 30 years, let's start with the offense. In short, the Hoyas' game plan on offense seems flawed at best and nonexistent at worst. Since Matty wrote about how Ed Cooley seemed to be bringing some of his better sets from Providence into the fold, the Hoyas' offense has looked stagnant and lost. Teams are pressuring the Hoyas pretty consistently and they've yet to adjust. Even against token full court pressure, the Hoyas take too long to get the ball across the timeline and then get into slow moving and predictable sets. We've written before about how bad the Hoyas are at entry passes and they continue to struggle getting the ball to Thomas Sorber and they end up involving him in action at the top of the key that hasn't been generating anything going downhill towards the basket.

There's too much standing around, too much dribbling, and not enough action-driving passing. It doesn't help that the Hoyas have not shot the ball well or enough from deep so there is essentially zero spacing on offense. Georgetown is making themselves extremely easy to defend. Against Providence, Micah Peavy was automatic from midrange and as a result had one of his best games of the season. But against St. John's he did not have the same touch and never course corrected to attack the rim. There were multiple times throughout the game where he turned the corner on a defender with a clear look to attack the rim, but instead pulled up for a midrange jumper. Up and down the lineup, the Hoyas looked hesitant to attack the rim for whatever reason and this has been a fairly consistent problem throughout this stretch of play.

The ball has to move quicker, the Hoyas have to attack the rim, whether to convert layups, draw contact, or simply put pressure on the defense, they need to protect the ball, and they need to find ways to space the floor better. One of the really frustrating things about the way this team plays on offense is, interestingly enough, how they play defense. The team has a clear plan on defense, they all seem to know the plan, and they execute on the plan, at least for the most part, the first half of Tuesday's game aside. They adapt throughout the game and the defense has largely improved in league play. They're a legitimate top-30 (top-25 on a good night) defense. The offense has gone the complete opposite direction. It looks less-well-coached and increasingly lost with each passing game. There is a Plan A (we think) but the secondary and tertiary actions never materialize and that leads to aimless dribbling and bad late-in-the-clock shots. Something has to change on this end of the floor.

Jayden Epps

Related to the offensive struggles is the play of Jayden Epps over the last couple of games. Epps was undoubtedly a difference maker against Villanova and the Hoyas sorely missed him when he was injured, particularly against DePaul. But over the last couple of games, he's started to regress a bit and look like the version of Epps from last season that held the rock for too long and gummed up the offense for too-long stretches of play. There have been several moments over the past couple of games, whether in transition or in the half court, where the ball is moving well with three or four quick passes and the defense is on their heels a bit but then Epps gets the ball and it just kind of stops, giving the defense time to recover and bogging down whatever action the Hoyas had in play.

This doesn't seem to be the result of selfish play on Epps' part, a criticism he (rightly) faced from this group last season. But rather, it seems like his decision-making is a touch slow and when that happens he falls back on his habits of trying to make things happen on his own. He is not anticipating the next pass, not seeing open teammates until it's too late, and not seeing the gaps in the defense in time to capitalize on them. He's been a ball-stopper over these past couple of games and on top of that his shot selection has been poor and he's not making any shots. It is killing the Hoyas offensively right now and they've got to figure out how to get him unstuck. The Hoyas need him to play at a high level within the offense in order to hit their ceiling on offense (see: the Creighton game). Perhaps he's still shaking off rust and still figuring out how to fit in the offense given how much time he missed, but by this point in the season it should look better than it does.

Subs and Rotations (or lack thereof)

We wrote about this in the Providence recap, but it continues to be a major, major problem and it doesn't seem like it has to be this way. Let's go back to that Creighton recap linked above. Here's what we wrote on the sub patterns in that game:

The Hoyas's rotations and sub patterns in this game were outstanding. Obviously, not having Mack and with Kayvaun Mulready and Julius Halaifonua both hurt as well, a few guys not accustomed to heavy minutes (both Williamses and Drew McKenna) saw an increase in minutes and acquitted themselves mostly well in their increased action. But, importantly, Coach Cooley really timed his subs well, giving guys extra rest ahead of TV timeouts and trying to save fouls before stoppages. In particular, he pulled Thomas Sorber and Micah Peavy like a minute or so before TV timeouts to avoid them getting key fouls and giving them an extra minute or two of rest before inserting them back in the lineup coming out of the timeouts. It really played well for them. And as Miller Lite Mike pointed out, the sub packages played well together and even though Drew McKenna still looked a little uncomfortable in his minutes, he generally held serve too.

This, at the time, was a deep team. One of the starters was hurt and 8 guys saw meaningful minutes during the game. As has been the case since Julius Halaifonua got hurt, Thomas Sorber was the only true center on the roster and he only played 32 minutes in that game, against a team with Ryan Kalkbrenner no less! The last time he played that few minutes in a game was on the road against St. John's a few weeks ago, when he was dealing with foul trouble for long stretches.

Micah Peavy played 35 minutes in the game against Creighton. Understandably, he got a little more rest towards the end of the game since the Hoyas had such a big lead, but he still got rest at points throughout the game. Over the last 5 games, Peavy has played all 40 minutes in four of those games. He played 36 in the other (against Villanova) and he only sat in that one to avoid fouling out. He played 40 minutes against DePaul despite fouling out.

Jordan Burks played 22 minutes in the game against Creighton. He has only hit 16 minutes in a game twice since, once against Marquette (when he was truly a difference-maker on defense) and once against DePaul (when Thomas Sorber was hurt). He's played single-digit minutes three times in the last five games, including just four Tuesday night in a blowout loss to St. John's. The Hoyas had trouble contending with St. John's length and athleticism all night and their longest and most athletic guy played 4 minutes. He can be erratic and he can make dumb mistakes, but he's getting no rhythm without reps and his hook is way too quick.

Matty went in on Curtis Williams' lack of minutes in the Providence recap. As a team, the Hoyas shoot the ball at a dreadful 31.7% from three point range and really struggle to space the floor. Their third-best three point shooter (only 35%, but still) only sees the floor for 11 minutes a game.

This is truly unsustainable. These guys are gassed at the end of games and, even at the start of games, they look less fresh and energized. Three starters have dealt with injuries over the season and they're all routinely still playing 35+ minutes per game. Coach isn't even trying to steal extra minutes at this point either. He's grinding these guys to dust and not giving his bench any chance to improve or contribute. The games are close and he wants his best guys out there, but it's clear at this point that that plan isn't working. He's gotta find ways to get his bench involved and his starters more rest. Otherwise, the Hoyas will likely continue to fade over the back half of the season and none of the bench guys will be better prepared for either the Big East Tournament or next season and a bunch of them might not even come back next season. It's so glaring because it's regressed over the course of the season and it seems oddly retrograde for Coach Cooley. Get these guys some rest, let some more guys play, and give everyone some time to get into the flow of the game.

The Hoyas need to find ways to improve on these areas fairly quickly or they risk the wheels coming fully off this season and risk stunting whatever progress they had started to make back to respectability in the early part of the season.