What is your X’s and O’s critique of McMahon and MBB?

He suX alOt

No shooters. EOS.

I did a whole video on this a few weeks ago, explaining what offense LSU runs and why I think it doesn't work. Some reasons are the players, and some reasons are just the approach.

LINK

But to put it into words, I said this the other day, it's a book:

quote:

---

Just to give a more detail, I would start with this. Apologies when this turns into a book. Matt McMahon carried over the same offense he ran at Murray St. It’s a ball screen motion offense that is typically ran out of a 1-4 look or Horns. It’s predicted on ball screens, spacing, shooting, paint touches, and high percentage looks. The basic idea of the action is a “roll and replace” action where one big sets a ball screen and the opposite big replaces the screener as he rolls to the rim.

Will Wade talked about adapting to your players nearly every year he was here. Every year he was here they played a different style based off his personnel. But McMahon hasn’t done that here, and that’s what I mean by adapt. He continues to run that ball screen motion offense even though he doesn’t have guards that are a threat out of the PnR, doesn’t have shooters, doesn’t really have low post threats, doesn’t have bigs (aside from KJ) that are threats out of that roll and replace action, and so on and so on. I’ve charted multiple games this year and the percentage of possessions they run ball screen actions is mind boggling considering they don’t have the personnel to execute it. When you’re as bad as they are, it’s not just about the players.

Another point, if you’re super effective in the half court I understand slowing the game down. But LSU is 12/14 in offensive efficiency in the SEC and they’re also 12/14 in offensive pace, or 273rd in the country. So many people think pace is just about getting out on the fast break and highlight reel dunks or spacing for threes on the break, but it’s not. Take Willie’s and Monty Williams .5 second offensive philosophy for example. That’s not about getting a shot up early in the shot clock, it’s about being deliberate and decisive in your movements. No wasted movements, defense is always moving, etc. LSU’s offense is the exact opposite of this. They walk the ball up (the amount of times McMahon has slowed down their pace after a missed shot is infuriating) and often take up half the shot clock while the ball handler waits to get a play call in. It’s not the least bit uncommon that veterans like KJ and Hannibal are having to direct guys where to be either. My personal favorite are the two bigs pointing to each other trying to decide who should be on each block and who is going to set the ball screen. But this slow pace is a staple of Matt McMahon, his offenses ranked 211th on average during his 7 seasons at Murray St, and in four of those seven they were 280th or lower. Again, if you’re an efficient half court offense I don’t mind it, but if you aren’t, you should have constant movement, not letting the defense get set, trying to create easy baskets, etc. But McMahon clearly prefers a slower brand of basketball.

If you want a more recent example of something that had me questioning McMahon, the final inbounds play vs Georgia. I had two coaches in HS and we ran different variations of this play with both of them, and I ran it when I was coaching. Although it’s rare. I’ve never seen that play ran where the first look isn’t for the guy who is trying to replace the inbounder, if he can get it to him it usually involves the initial inbounder stepping back into the legal playing area and receiving the ball back when the defense presses the ball handler, and then you’re into your press break. I believe it was Reed and Ward, but Reed never even looked for Ward. So is that on Reed for missing the look? Or is that first look not even part of the action? Both are an indictment on McMahon, imo. It was the exact same inbounds play they ran to “beat” KState early in the season and that wasn’t even against pressure, so I’m thinking that action is just not built in, which is very odd.

And that’s just a few examples. There are clear lapses in fundamentals. There are way to many possessions, on both ends of the court, where all 5 players aren’t on the same page (I slightly referenced that earlier). There are questionable personnel decisions (like having two Freshman that haven’t even played a combined 600 minutes this season run your final BLOB play when you have a chance to get an SEC win on the road). You can blame these things on players, but these are things that can be cured by good coaching. Look at the difference between Kelly and Orgeron.

At the end of the day, coaching is all about adapting to your personnel each and every year, not the other way around. There is never a time where personnel is going to fit a coach to a T, and how good of a coach you are is dictated by how well you can adjust and adapt. Will Wade did it, and while McMahon has not shown he can (or to be blunt, will), I’m still hopeful. And damn, that was a book. But I’m passionate about this and feel like I’m capable of speaking on it. It’s completely possible McMahon just misjudged his roster

---

quote:

---

said this the other day

---

i agree with most of that, that they dont have the players to execute the plans, but i am not sure a different plan would be any more executable with the current talent. they dont make shots, and they dont have good ball handling. its lack of talent.

Typically our guards dribble too much up top or make useless passes well beyond the arc. This means the shot clock is under 8 seconds before a light bulb go off and these guys realize that they are running out of time to do something. Then we jack up a long 3 and miss badly.

On the off chance our guards want to get the offense going early in the possession, we can’t get the ball inside due to extremely poor cutting and lackadaisical movement inside by our big men. This means the ball doesn’t go inside and we throw up a 3 and usually miss.

The only times we can get anything done offensively is if we force a pass inside or our guards drive to the goal. It’s basic basketball to know when you get the ball inside your whole offense opens up, but for whatever reason this team refuses to do so and constantly settles for 3s.

Basically it doesn’t look like there has been any coaching this season. Either the coaches aren’t telling the players to get the ball moving and to force it inside or the players aren’t listening and doing whatever they feel like with no repercussions, which is usually throwing up a terrible 3. Either way its 100% on the coaching staff.

Any way you look at it the entire coaching staff has failed miserably this year in every phase of the game.

quote:

---

There are different offenses that you can run that are predicated on different things. For Matt McMahon, he shouldn't run an offense that largely depends on a two man PnR game when you really have one player on the entire roster (KJ) who is skilled enough to run that.

I come back to flex offensive sets a lot. There's no team that I know of that really runs it as their primary offense, but it's a large part of what a lot of teams do. Bruce Pearl at Auburn, for example. It's based around screening, cutting, ball reversal, doesn't make players overly reliant on dribbling (which McMahon's offense undoubtedly does), etc etc.

The way I always put it is this. Does this team lack talent? Yes. Do they lack talent so bad that they should have two wins in the SEC and consistently lose by double digits? Not even close. This team has enough talent to where they should at least be somewhat competitive. Losing by 13 to Ole Miss or by 9 to South Carolina, for example.

People can say it's a lack of talent all they want. But until McMahon learns to adapt to his players he's going to struggle at this level.

---

Here's my 2 cents from somebody that coached on the HS level until I went into private business. McMahon brought over the same offense he ran at his previous school. It's a ton or PnR roll and replace actions where they look to clear out High/Low or run "shooters" off of staggers. There is some misdirection with running guys off pin downs trying to get the 1v1 matchup in the post for KJ. The problem was we had success early and even against Arky early. Then the blueprint on how to guard our stuff with the guys we have got put on tape. It was too late in season for McMahon to just abandon ship and put in an entire new offense. So he has two choices at the point. Find guys that fit his system or adapt his system. Next year will be very telling. I'd like to see him put some Princeton elements in such as Point Away and Over as well as some of the shuffle actions into pin downs. He needs something more free flowing and not nearly as PnR driven. PnR's are great but you better have a really good player attacking off the screen and a really good player rolling or popping. It's too easy to guard if one of those 2 guys has glaring weaknesses.

Team has no talent outside of KJ

My intuition is that preconference no one could threaten LSU even though they failed to dominate the terrible teams. When he finally got to conference play with teams that have staffs that break you down and gameplan at the highest level in the sport, it took precisely two games for teams to see that LSU was going to try and defend and grind to win a game in the upper 40s. After that, teams took away what LSU wanted to do on offense and broke down their youth on defense and exploited some pretty average guards on defense. McMahon was either unable to adjust schematically or does not have the players to execute the planned counter-punch. Regardless of which, both are his responsibility. LSU isn't talented enough to have one plan, isn't talented enough to simply run DDM like Cal does most years, and isn't talented enough to survive a single deficiency in what they do. Thus, absent perfect circumstances (such as Arkansas inexplicably playing a first half behind the arc), they are not able to execute their current style of play to wins.

A lot of what happens on the floor with this team may have a lot to do with the cumulative IQ of the five on the floor.