For the first time in the CougCenter Era, we preview a tournament game.
For the first time since the inception of this website, the Washington State Cougars are playing in a tournament game.
However, the time for the romanticism of that fact is over, and the reality that we’re in- and more importantly, that there are still games to be played, is here.
WSU heads to Omaha to take on Drake in what is virtually a road game for the Cougs.
Drake, the Missouri Valley Conference champions, are one of the most picked upsets in this year’s field. According to Marca.com, 57% of people who are filling out brackets on Yahoo are picking the Bulldogs. This WSU team is no stranger to being underdogs but being underrated even as the higher-seed is at least somewhat surprising.
This game isn’t about who is getting picked the most, though. It isn’t about what fans from across the country think, or what they want, or what their bracket says. It’s not about whether or not the flyover states feel slighted by the Wheatfield Underdogs twitter picture, or whether this WSU team that has been out of it for 16 years has fans that just want it more. It’s about two teams on the floor at 7:30, in the heart of the American Midwest, battling with everything they have to keep their season alive.
Drake’s Strengths
A quick stroll through the Bulldogs’ Kenpom page will reveal some obvious strengths. Most apparent is that Drake is the best defensive rebounding team in the country. They are able to accomplish this by crashing 5 every possession and preferring not to risk offensive rebounds for the possibility of runouts for layups. They also have two dominant rebounders in Darnell Brodie and Tucker DeVries, who are 23rd and 173rd in the country in defensive rebounding rate, respectively. However, there’s another sneaky thing that helped them accomplish this feat…
The Missouri Valley Conference sucks at offensive rebounding. The best offensive rebounding team in the MVC is the 194th-best offensive rebounding team in the country. WSU is going to give them way more of a challenge there as the 62nd-best offensive rebounding team nationally. That is not to say WSU is going to completely dominate the glass, but they are going to make it much harder on Drake than their conference opponents. It’s also worth noting that the two non-conference teams who beat Drake (UAB and Stephen F. Austin) are both top 50 offensive rebounding teams.
Drake is also an incredibly efficient offensive team. They shoot 55.1% on twos, 36.5% on threes, and they almost never turn it over (14th in the country in turnover rate). They protect possession well and get through their sets to create shots. They have three strong shooters in DeVries, Atin Wright, and Connor Enright, and a solid but inefficient shooter in Kevin Overton- who will all play a majority of their minutes. That group is at their best playing around the chin actions that Brodie operates.
On Darnell Brodie
Darnell Brodie, while not their best player or leading scorer, is arguably their most important offensive player. He’s a hub for them as a playmaker, both in the low-post and at the top of the key or elbows. He operates a lot of handoffs and zoom actions from there, and he’s great at understanding the gravity his shooters have while utilizing it to create shots for his teammates from all over the floor. He’s especially talented at passing to cutters, so WSU will have to find a balance between guarding Drake’s shooters while not getting beat on cuts.
Drake’s offense is at it’s best when it’s playing through Brodie, and he can be a focal point as a scorer and playmaker. When Brodie is off the floor, the offense gets a lot more stagnant and features a whole lot more pick-and-roll stuff. DeVries becomes the main focal point of the offense when Brodie is out, but he also tends to get forced into a lot more mid-range shots while being the lead playmaker.
Defensively
Drake is a very good offensive team, and while far from an elite defensive team, they are solid on that end. Statistically, they have guarded the three well on the season, but I think this is mostly fools gold. There’s not a ton they do schematically to make opponent’s shots harder and they give up a ton of outside shots. Contrast this with a team like WSU, who guards the three well by preventing their opponents from being able to take them. Basketball pundits call good three-point defenses who don’t prevent them Jedi defenses, which is to say that either the defense is using the force to guard opponents or that the defense is fictional (and therefore based on luck). We’ll see how well the force works today.
Drake is going to have a slight advantage if Rice is still not making shots because WSU only has two truly capable shooters on the floor at most times. I’d be fairly shocked to see Isaiah Watts or Jabe Mullins touch the floor in this game, but there is a chance that WSU has to lean on those guys to get more shooting. This could be a game for the “go-small” lineup with Jones at center in order to try and get more spacing around Jones offensively, but that will lead to some obvious disadvantages defensively.
WSU’s Advantages
As I discussed in the Path to Final 4 article, WSU’s biggest strengths in the tournament as a whole are their size down low, rebounding, and rim defense. Those advantages will be the ones they need to lean on throughout the whole tournament and in this game.
WSU’s biggest advantage is the depth of bodies they have to through at Brodie and to hopefully get him in foul trouble. If Brodie is effective scoring on Oscar Cluff, then they can go to Reuben Chinyelu, and if they need to give a different look, both Isaac Jones and Andrej Jakimovski could probably hold up. WSU should consider putting Jones on Brodie for stretches to potentially keep Cluff or Chinyelu at the rim to absorb cuts at the rim.
They also have a number of guys who can probably guard proverbial “best player in this game” Tucker DeVries. DeVries plays the 4 for Drake but with the amount of screening actions they run him through, I would not expect Jones to start on DeVries. Jaylen Wells or Jakimovski are more well-equipped to get through screens while still being strong enough to handle DeVries in the post or on drives. There is also a world where WSU just switches everything 2-3, asking Myles Rice to fight through on Wright or Enright, and switching everyone else to mitigate the screening actions. This would force Drake to be an isolation team, which leads to mixed results for them on the whole.
This also might just be a huge Kymany Houinsou game if the switching doesn’t work and none of the starters are excelling in their matchup with DeVries. Houinsou is built to guard a guy like DeVries because he is able to get through screens and pressure him as a ball-handler while also being able to bother him in the post and make his drives difficult. DeVries relies a lot on strength and mid-range shooting as an on-ball scorer, and either switching or Houinsou should be able to bother him there. If Drake’s offense comes down to DeVries taking a whole ton of long, contested twos, then WSU will be in a great spot.
This could also be a big zone game for the Cougs if the screening actions are proving effective. Drake is only average against zone (46th percentile per Synergy) and they’re generally content to just try and shoot over zones. While there is a chance that this is an effective strategy for Drake, there is also a world that it’s way less efficient than what they could get with cuts and post-ups against man.
On the other end of the ball, this is going to be a big time Jones game. There are probably some hidden frustrations at DeVries being dubbed the best player in this game, and IJ has something to prove. There isn’t anyone on Drake’s roster that can comfortably guard Jones because he’s too quick for Brodie and too strong for DeVries. It will probably be DeVries on Jones to start the game so that they can keep Brodie at the rim for help, but WSU has gotten clever about how to not get killed with their two-big spacing and Jones is great at finding angles and paths for good shots in a crowded paint.
Wells is also going to be an X-Factor in this game as a shot-maker. Drake has not had to guard a player like Wells all season. 6’8 tough shot-makers who can score off the catch and off the bounce are just rarely seen at the MVC level (aside from a player like DeVries) and some might even contest that Wells is a better player than DeVries, just in a smaller role. Wells will have a size advantage over whoever is guarding him, and, if he is just making shots, Drake is going to have a hard time containing him.
Who’s Going to Win?
March Madness is a truly special thing to be a part of, but it is also an anxiety-inducing thing to get invested in. As the chips fall, Drake is a more than solid 10-seed with a real chance to go on a bit of a Cinderella run. They also got a nice draw in terms of game location, which will bring a strong contingent of Bulldog fans to the arena. However, I think the matchup leans slightly to WSU. The Cougs have more size and depth and they are less reliant on individual players to carry the entirety of the load.
Now, it is March and at a certain point, it takes a lot to go right to win a game. WSU has to make shots and they have to hope Drake misses a few, they have to hope that untimely rebounds don’t fall into the hands of a bad offensive rebounding team, and they’ll need a little luck to fall their way throughout. But that’s a bit of the magic in and of itself. Coach a perfect game, make shots, play hard, and it still takes some luck. I expect a close, hard-fought, and fairly low-scoring affair with a lot of post-ups and a lot of late shot-clock possessions. In the end, I lean WSU here and I think I’m saying that with some objectivity, but who’s to say.
This is March baby, the Madness has finally reached the Palouse again and there’s nothing better.