The Ball Briefing: Kiki Rice's Problem Solving, Maryland's Box-and-1.5, And West Virginia Gets Wrecked
Your weekly dose of basketball X-and-Os, OMGs and everything in between
Ball and Order is a newsletter with basketball analysis, reporting, and takes that strives to cover the game no matter who is playing. My name is Gabe Ibrahim (twitter: @gabe_ibrahim). I cover the Washington Wizards for Bullets Forever, women’s basketball for Her Hoop Stats, and coach the JV basketball team at Meridian High School. Subscribe for freand tell your friends! Also, check out our YouTube channel!
Welcome to The Ball Briefing, where I learn stuff about basketball and share it with you. Today’s all about women’s college hoops because it was a wild week. Let’s go!
PnR Problem-Solving with Kiki Rice
Kiki Rice was one of the nation’s top recruits this offseason and is now one of the best freshmen in the country for UCLA. She already ranks among the best distributors in college basketball with an assist-to-turnover ratio in the 94th percentile. She’s the only freshman in the Power 6 conferences with an ast/tov ratio over 1.7 on 22% usage or higher.
However, Rice has a flaw in her game. She can’t shoot from deep. She is just 8 of 46 from three this year and 83.4% of her shots come within the arc. Basically, she struggles to hit any shot outside of the paint. But Rice is potent once she gets to her spots.
Obviously, Tara VanDeerVer and the Stanford Cardinal tried to exploit that weakness in their matchup with UCLA this week. Here, Haley Jones just gives Rice a wide-open three, which Rice misses after hesitating to take the shot.
The Cardinal also disregarded Rice as an outside threat in pick-and-rolls. Stanford employed an under-and-drop strategy against her and deterred any paint pressure with their length and physicality.
UCLA mounted a furious comeback in the second half and nearly pulled off a huge upset with some key adjustments from Cori Close. One of those adjustments put Rice in a position to score. Instead of trying to attack immediately off a pick, Rice would run her defender into a re-screen and pull up from a more makeable range.
Rice set these opportunities up with great patience and timing. On the play below, she asks for the screen toward an empty corner to force Stanford into a switch. Rice waits just a beat to allow Christeen Iwuala to roll and seal a defender on her hip. Then, she attacks the basket and gets fouled.
This isn’t rocket science or even particularly complicated basketball. But it’s what a coach should do with a smart player whose game is still rounding out. Close put Rice in a position to use her many gifts rather than asking her to do something she’s not great at. In turn, Rice helped UCLA impress a national audience as we head to March Madness. Also, this type of smart basketball will differentiate Rice when she does find her shooting stroke.
Maryland’s Box and 1.5
The Maryland Terrapins might just be the hottest team in college basketball. They’ve lost just twice in the calendar year 2023 and beat the living daylights out of two top-10 teams (Ohio State and Iowa). The Terps have ridden their offense most of the season. Over the entire year, they’re in the top 10% of offenses and merely above average defensively. Maryland has turned up the heat defensively in the last 10 games.
Against Iowa, the Terps logged their best offensive rating against a Power 6 team and really couldn’t miss. But their defense paved the way by shutting down Iowa’s two best players and generating fast break points off 15 steals. You can see how committed Maryland was to stopping Caitlin Clark and Monika Czinano on this transition opportunity.
In the half court, Maryland often employed a box-and-one strategy with one player glued to Clark and the other four stationed at the blocks and elbows playing zone. I call it a box-and-1.5 because the Terps hardly ever left Czinano untouched on the block and denied post entry passes as much as possible.
The box-and-one is fairly common strategy in college and high school basketball. NBA coaches have warmed up to it in recent years since the Raptors effectively deployed it against Steph Curry in the 2019 NBA Finals. Maryland seemed to take a page out of Toronto’s playbook by trying to hit Clark and Czinano every possession.
The ball denial, face guarding, fronting, and overall physicality neutralized Iowa’s two stars. The rest of the Hawkeyes could have made Maryland pay but struggled to hit shots or run a coherent offense. The Terps could play like this because they’re long, fast, and has that dog in them. If Brenda Frese can keep finding ways to utilize their toughness, they could make a deep run in March.
Take Me Anywhere Else, Country Roads
Enjoy or cringe at West Virginia snatching defeat from the jaws of victory against Texas Tech in double OT.
The entire game was bonkers, but let’s go over some of the wildness in the final seconds of double OT:
Sarah Bates sees a trap coming at her in a bad spot of the floor and heaves the ball to JJ Quinerly, who can’t handle it. The decision is defensible because Quinerly was open and Bates was about to be under serious pressure. But she should have just held onto the ball and either get fouled or take WVU’s last timeout. Hindsight is 20/20 though.
TTU Head Coach Krista Gerlich calls a sideline-out-of-bounds play designed to get a lob at the rim. The play actually works and would have been brilliant if there were two or fewer seconds on the clock. But there were six seconds left! That’s so much time and this play has a minuscule chance of success. Katie Ferrell throws a solid pass, but it ends up in West Virginia’s hands.
I can’t quite tell which Mountaineer catches the ball. But she gets hacked by her teammate in mid-air and has to get rid of the ball in the air to avoid a travel. She had no opportunity to even think about a timeout and, frankly, even thinking to get rid of the ball was kind of brilliant. It turned out extremely poorly, but still impressive
The ball finds its way to Rhyle McKinney, who calmly takes one dribble and puts the Lady Raiders up by 1. McKinney has overcome a lot of medical issues in her life to get to this point, so it’s pretty cool and not surprising that she converted the chance.
Somehow, the Mountaineers compose themselves for the ensuing inbound. Jayla Hemingway crosses Bailey Maupin into next week, but can’t hit the game-winner. Heartbreak city for WVU.
Hokie Hokie High
Liz Kitley with a late entry into the OMG section of The Ball Briefing!
Simple play designs that take prey on opponents’ worries will always be a favorite of this newsletter. VT coach Kenny Brooks knew that UNC would stay attached to Georgia Amoore, in part due to her hitting big shots against them in last year’s ACC tournament. So he draws up a little misdirection with Elizabeth Kitley looking at Kayana Traylor like she’ll set a pindown but instead she receives a pin-in from Amoore to get a look from the mid-range.
I made the diagram using the FastBreak Playbook, which is a playbook software I was introduced to by former Missouri WBB player Sydney Crafton. If you’re into drawing up plays, check it out and I’ll hopefully be making playbooks soon using the software!