Jon Jacobson
Multimedia Reporting
12/9/15
When Heroes Fail
The defender wants him
to go left. McLean wants to go right. There are four men in white uniforms stationed
haphazardly around the court, idly watching McLean battle his defender. These men in white are not event staff; they
are McLean’s teammates.
McLean goes right. He puts his head down and barrels into the
chest of the Albany defender. McLean is
jarred by the contact and he chucks an off-balance pass to a teammate standing
behind the three-point arc. McLean
regains his balance, then calls for the ball as he sprints back to the top of
the key.
Five seconds left. The ball is once again in McLean’s
hands. No time to glance at the
clock. His defender wants him to go
left. McLean wants to go right. Four white uniforms remain stationed around the
perimeter.
McLean goes right. He puts his head down and barrels into the
same defender. The ball comes loose and ricochets
into the air, then falls peacefully into the hands of an undersized Albany forward. McLean flails his arms in desperation and
looks to the closest referee for help. The
referee shakes his head and the Great Danes go on to win.
“Youthful” would be the
polite term for describing the endeavors of the 2015-16 Quinnipiac Men’s
Basketball team. Nine of their 14
players are underclassmen and McLean is just one of two seniors returning from last
year. The Bobcats are searching for an
identity as their head coach, Tom Moore, desperately seeks structure and
consistency within his rotations. His
top four scorers and rebounders from last year’s squad all graduated during the
offseason.
“I have to coach a
little bit differently this year with this group, and understand a little bit
more, and teach more and teach better, and talk more to them individually,
coddle more, bring along more, and just walk that fine line between laying the
whip down and nurturing.”
Nurturing is important
when coaching a young team. But so is growth. Replacing a top scorer is never easy; let
alone four of them. However last year’s
graduates only led the Bobcats to a 15-15 record, hardly a stellar
accomplishment for what had been one of the oldest and most experienced rosters
in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
Entering this season,
McLean seemed like the most obvious candidate to become the new face of the
offense. As a dynamic combo guard with explosive
quickness, flashy ball handling skills, and a soft touch at the rim, not to
mention seniority over his teammates, McLean is easily the best one-on-one offensive
player on the Bobcats roster.
“We put a lot of
pressure on him to be good,” says Moore.
“But he came out a little hesitant tonight… and he struggled with some
plays down the stretch.”
There are a lot of
words that could describe McLean’s 6-16 shooting performance, but “hesitant” should
not be one of them. His 14.5 points per
game leads the team and the younger players clearly respect him. However the Bobcats are just 3-4 on the
season, and all three wins have come in games in which McLean was not their
leading scorer.
Individually, McLean is
an undeniably talented player. But his style
of hero ball has no place in Division I basketball, where defense, ball
movement, and teamwork are critical to success.
Quinnipiac’s first two wins of the season came when their top scorer was
sophomore forward Chaise Daniels. Their
third win came when Daniels was sidelined by an injury, and junior forward
Donovan Smith stepped into the starting lineup with a team-high 14 points and
seven rebounds on 7-9 shooting.
“We’re getting better,”
says Moore. “We’re still trying to
figure out roles and situations, and who should shoot when, and what we can get
off certain looks… So it’s evolving.”
Unfortunately this
evolution process takes time. The low-scoring
loss against Albany featured just 112 combined points so defense, physicality,
and hustle were the most critical factors.
These are all important traits that must be consistently embraced if the
Bobcats want to succeed within the MAAC.
While McLean’s low field goal percentage against Albany was unimpressive,
his biggest detriment to the Bobcats was his failure to exhibit any of those
three aforementioned traits.
“We weren’t as good
keeping them out of the lane in the second half. Gio (McLean) got driven a few times… they ran
crisp offense, they really got into a good rhythm and a good flow.”
A few times is an
understatement. McLean’s lack of
consistent production on offense turned to frustration, which directly
channeled into lackluster defensive effort.
In the final six minutes of the game, McLean played unconcerned on the
defensive end, constantly wandering away from his man and therefore allowing wide-open
looks from three-point range. The Great
Danes took advantage of McLean’s defensive lapses, consistently feeding the
ball to whichever player McLean was “guarding” on defense.
As a result, it is no
surprise that Albany‘s offense flourished in the final minutes while completely
dictating the pace of the game. They
scored 35 of their 58 points in the second half while essentially running their
offense through McLean’s indifference.
Perhaps Moore was
watching another game altogether. The
only reason that his Bobcats were still within striking range on their final
possession was because of Daniel Harris.
Quinnipiac’s junior swingman scored 17 of his game-high 19 points in the
second half, including a late pair of back-to-back threes to close the
gap. Yet Moore disregarded Harris’s hot
hand, electing to run an isolation play for McLean out of the timeout against a
tight Albany defense that had limited the Bobcats to just 54 points.
At some point, seniority
gives way to stubbornness. In the past, Moore’s
coaching tendencies have not reflected this style of hero ball. This young Bobcats team needs to learn how to
play cohesively in order to be effective.
All 14 Bobcats players
found their way to Hamden for the purpose of contributing to an NCAA Division I
basketball program. Few MAAC players go
on to professional careers in basketball after college. Moore’s role is not to help McLean inflate
his individual scoring numbers. His role
is to win games by fostering a winning environment. Moore has successfully put together a roster
stacked with young talent, so there is no excuse for them to not become
legitimate contenders in the MAAC.
Harris may not be a
senior like McLean, but he scored 17 of the Bobcats’ 28 second half points. There is no other player that should have taken
the last shot, especially on an isolation play out of the timeout. Furthermore, Harris’s head is in the right
place.
“Shooting the
basketball and scoring, that’s big,” he admits.
“But I’d rather have come out with the W.”
The changing of the
guard is never easy. Too often,
individual pride can get tangled up in the way of team-oriented
improvement. But Harris puts the success
of his team before everything else. Meanwhile,
McLean averages nearly five turnovers per game and his style of hero ball is
not working for this team. There are
nine talented Bobcats underclassmen on the team, each of whom was recruited
because they have something special to offer.
Something has gotta’ give.
“As a young team, we’re
learning,” says Harris. “We’re learning
how to play with each other.”
But now is the time for
the young Bobcats players to step up and look within themselves for leadership. The younger players were tenacious against
Albany. Their collective hustle, effort,
and defense will be far more critical to the team’s overall success than the
scoring of just one or two individual players.
Despite the small
sample size, the correlation between points in the paint and Quinnipiac’s wins
is also undeniable. Daniels, the
sophomore big man who led them in scoring during their first two wins,
attempted just two shots in the first half against Albany and scored just six
points before fouling out in the game’s final moments. It’s almost as if Moore forgot what had been
working for his team.
“I don’t think we got
it to (Daniels) as often as we should have because of some of the confusion on
the perimeter and what we were running.”
Moore’s decision to run
the offense through McLean’s scoring ability is not effective. The fact that it was still a one-possession
game in the final seconds is a miracle in itself for the Bobcats, as Albany
attempted 28 free throws compared to Quinnipiac’s seven.
“We didn’t play enough
defense,” says Moore. “I think we got a
little bit of our feelings hurt at the offensive end because it was such a
struggle offensively that I thought it affected our focus a little bit on the
defensive end in the second half.”
But it was not the
younger players that lapsed on defense. That
problem fell solely on McLean. The
Bobcats have a ton of young potential, but Moore needs to reorganize his game plan
and start emphasizing and utilizing the strengths of all his players.
McLean is talented, but
for the Bobcats to win games, he needs to use his skills and quickness to be a
facilitator on offense and a playmaker on both ends of the floor. He needs to be more than just a scorer; he
needs to be a true leader. Moore recognizes
talent. His roster has plenty of
it. It is time for him to start embracing
that.
