Watch the Tape: Texas A&M Aggies

There is no such thing as an ugly win in the Southeastern Conference. That is especially true when playing on the road. On Wednesday night, Kentucky went into Reed Arena and defeated the Texas A&M Aggies 64-58 to move to 15-3, 5-1 in the SEC. The Aggies were a perfect 10-0 at home entering last night’s contest.

Kentucky was able to overcome their worst shooting performance of the season, plus a season-high 17 turnovers, to grind out a win in a hostile environment. A couple of big baskets down the stretch by TyTy Washington, as well as timely plays from Jacob Toppin and Davion Mintz, helped the Wildcats secure the victory.

Learning how to win is an important skill for teams that have Final Four aspirations. To win consecutive games in March you will have to win with different styles. Kentucky would prefer to score in transition and dominate the paint. However, that is going to be the emphasis of every opponent scouting repot as well. There will also always be nights where you simply don’t shoot well. Being able to still find a way to win is the sign of a good, tough basketball team.

In today’s edition of watch the tape we will take a look at what led to the offensive struggles against the Texas A&M Aggies. Primarily, why Sahvir Wheeler turned it over eight times and how Kentucky can fix some of those issues moving forward. Let’s stop on inside the KSR Film Room.

Sahvir Wheeler Struggled vs. Trap

There is no doubt that Sahvir Wheeler at point guard unlocks the very best version of this Kentucky Basketball team. However, there are times where he makes poor decisions and his small stature really puts him in tough situations. Both things can be true at the same time. It was just a few days ago that Wheeler scored 21 points to go with eight assists against a top five defensive team in the country. Against the Texas A&M Aggies he had a season-high eight turnovers. He didn’t just forget how to play basketball, but the Aggies did a great job of exploiting some of his deficiencies.

The Aggies came out with a bit of an unexpected wrinkle as they aggressively trapped the ballscreens right away. Sahvir Wheeler was much too quick to pick up his dribble under pressure and it led to his highest turnover game of the year. The retreat dribble is the right move against the trap, but Wheeler needs to attack the high foot of his defender and try to beat the trap over the top. He is quick enough to get by his man. Instead, he dribbles to the corner which is the worst spot to pick it up. Once he loses his dribble he is too small to see over or around the trap.

It is more of the same in this clip. The Texas A&M Aggies were looking for every opportunity to trap after their early success. Once again, Wheeler should have turned and attacked the high foot to beat the trap instead of just picking up his dribble in the corner. His teammates needed to do a better job of quickly getting up to his vision near half court as a release, but his lack of size would make it hard to deliver the pass anyway.

Sahvir Wheeler made it way too easy on the Aggies to consistently trap him in ballscreen situations. Instead of playing in the middle of the floor he kept playing along the sideline which acted as an additional defender. His efforts to split the trap instead of retreating and getting around it led to a lot of issues as well. He will need to spend a lot of time with Coach Calipari and Coach Lucas in the film room to make sure he is more well equipped against the trap moving forward.

Excellent In-Game Adjustments

Coach Calipari and the Kentucky coaching staff deserve major credit for some in-game adjustments they made down the stretch. From around the 7:00 minute mark to about 3:30 in the second half the Wildcats scored on four consecutive possessions. There was one clear change that sparked the offensive run that ultimately won the game. The ‘Cats ditched the ballscreens in favor of dribble handoff action to eliminate the Texas A&M Aggies ability to trap. This led to better, quicker ball movement and allowed the ball handler more space to operate. Let’s take a look at some clips.

Kentucky needs to keep running more and more offense like this. When they run their dribble handoffs it creates quicker ball and player movement while forcing the ball to change sides of the floor. Texas A&M was consistently trapping the ballscreens and the switch to handoffs made them unable to trap. Great play by Kellan Grady and big time shot by Davion Mintz.

You can see Coach Calipari waving off Oscar Tshiebwe’s ball screen in this clip. When the ball got moved to TyTy Washington he had a lot of space to play with. We have seen his shot-making ability a lot this season and Wednesday night was no different. When it mattered most, the freshman knocked it some huge shots.

Once again Kentucky went to the dribble handoffs and got Oscar Tshiebwe to slip his ballscreen to keep the Texas A&M Aggies from being able to trap. The ball moved and changed sides of the floor to help open up the baseline drive by TyTy Washington. This is why you recruit the best players. Sometimes you just need a guy to get a bucket.

Free Throw Box Outs

This shouldn’t be something that you have to talk about on January 20th with a veteran basketball team. However, Kentucky gave up multiple offensive rebounds off of free throws last night which is unacceptable. We will break this down as fundamentally as possible.

Here is how you handle free throw box outs. Your two low guys need to take a big, strong step with their high foot and create space back away from the rim into the offensive player. With the two top guys, one will box out the shooter while the other will “pinch.” This means they crack down on the back of the best offensive rebounder. For Kentucky, Oscar Tshiebwe should always be left alone to box out while we “pinch” on the other side. Here, for some reason, Kellan Grady boxes out the shooter which leaves Keion Brooks one-on-one with an excellent offensive rebounder. If Grady and Brooks “pinch” they can probably get this rebound.

This clip starts out a little better because the players on the lane line at least have correctly identified who boxes out the shooter and who pinches. You can see Jacob Toppin and Davion Mintz pinching on #0 while Oscar Tshiebwe tries to box out his man. Tshiebwe definitely lets himself get pushed too far underneath the rim. However, this is actually on Sahvir Wheeler a little bit as well. The player that isn’t in the lane is called the “hawk.” His job is to be standing on the arc reading the trajectory of the shot and be ready to track down a long rebound. Wheeler has his hands on his knees as the shot goes up. That will get you screamed at in the film room. He then lazily steps inside the arc as the ball bounces off the rim and at that point it is too late.

As an aside, this should have been a lane violation on #23 for Texas A&M. If you pause the video right at the point where the shooter is about to release the ball his left foot is on the hash line while his right foot is kicked back above the line as well. That is a violation and should have been called.