Mike Woodson has gotten good amount of grief for how he runs offense as Indiana’s head coach, especially after the past season.
I’m sure you know the gripes. He starts two bigs. It’s too post-centric. There’s not enough shooting. The guards aren’t utilized enough.
Here’s the thing: some of that is definitely Woodson’s choice. If he can play two bigs, he’s gonna at least give it a try. He said as much at Huber’s winery this offseason. But I believe the way Indiana’s offense looked last year was almost more out of necessity than it was Woodson’s preferences.
Woodson, as advertised, is an NBA coach. What tends to work in the NBA is putting guys in a position to do whatever it is they’re great at. The more options you have, the better.
For Trayce Jackson-Davis, that was letting him become one of the best rim protectors in the country and getting the ball his way to either score down low or pass it out to a guy like Miller Kopp, who was best at catch and shoot 3s.
For Jalen Hood-Schifino it was mostly allowing him to handle the ball and create a favorable shot, which had extreme potential against drop coverage.
But sometimes the guys just haven’t been there for certain things. You’re not going to enter your Honda Civic into the Indianapolis 500 in hopes that it’ll run even with IndyCars, you’d be a fool to try.
Let me explain.
Fans and media, for years, have called on Indiana to shoot more 3s. Thing is, most of Indiana’s shooters have been off the catch guys who take shots from range when the conditions for doing so are ideal which is a long way of saying it was Kopp.
People saw Indiana shoot a decent percentage from deep in 2022-23 and wanted them to shoot more, but those numbers were inflated by Kopp shooting an incredible 44.4% from long range. He was one of just two Hoosiers to log over 100 attempted 3s with Hood-Schifino, who hit 33%. Tamar Bates was just below that mark at 99, hitting 37.4% of his attempts, but Bates’ minutes were restricted by defense.
Bates had the lowest BPR (Bayesian Performance Rating on EvanMiya, which quantifies how effective a player is, using advanced box-score metrics, play-by-play data, and historical information) because his defensive BPR was in the negatives without a good enough offensive BPR to justify it. You’d rather have Trey Galloway (who, it should be mentioned, hit 46.2% of his 65 3s) out there than Bates.
Bates was probably Indiana’s most effective movement shooter in a pre-Mackenzie Mgbako world, which meant most of Indiana’s attempts from deep were limited to catch and shoot. Why run, say, a pindown screen to get someone open for a shot when you don’t really have the kind of guy who can reliably hit that shot in motion.
Enter Mgbako.
To Indiana’s credit, it has run action to get open looks for Mgbako instead of the usual post kickouts or swinging the ball around the perimeter. He was able to make shots on the move off of screens in high school and the Hoosiers ran a few of those to get him open.
With guys like Mgbako, Luke Goode, Kanaan Carlyle and Myles Rice expected to be heavy contributors, I’d imagine the Hoosiers’ 3-point attempts take a leap this season. Because, unlike last year, there are guys who can shoot it.
Now let’s get into post play.
Indiana has run quite a bit of its offense through the post these past two seasons, with an uptick in 2023-24. It made sense to post up Jackson-Davis in 2022-23 because, uh, duh. He was one of the best players in the country at scoring the basketball and his sheer gravity created space on the perimeter for shooters (again, Kopp) he could pass to as one of the best passing bigs in the game.
In 2023-24? More post-ups. For a bit of a different reason.
For one you had two post guys, Kel’el Ware and Malik Reneau alongside a guy who could post up here and there in Mgbako. For another, running pick and rolls simply did not work last year.
Woodson emphasized how he ran PnR with Jackson-Davis, but the real catalyst for that was having ballhandlers like Xavier Johnson and Jalen Hood-Schifino. Last year that was Trey Galloway, who had to play out of position and wasn’t quite the PnR ballhandler Johnson or Hood-Schifino were.
Per Synergy* Indiana ran 631 PnR in 2022-23 and produced 0.905 points per possession, ranking in the 69th percentile. Which, not amazing, but definitely serviceable.
In 2023-24? Indiana ran 576 PnR and produced 0.854 points per possession which was in the *drum roll*…
… 31st percentile. Yuck.
Indiana posted up as often as it did because frankly that’s all it had going for it. Indiana was top ten in post-ups ran in 23-24 while still managing to be one of the more efficient units at running through the post.
In short, they kept doing it because that worked and PnR didn’t. PnR didn’t work because the wing-turned-point-guard wasn’t quite able to make it work. So, what happened?
Myles Rice and Kanaan Carlyle.
Rice comes to Bloomington as one of the very best guards in the country at running PnR. Carlyle brings a capability for doing so as well. Add in Galloway and you have three guys who can handle the ball at some level as opposed to just having Galloway.
With Rice and Carlyle in the starting lineup, Indiana’s going to end up running much more PnR than they did last season and probably more than they did in 2022-23.
Indiana will absolutely still post up Ballo and Reneau, but the massive backcourt upgrade should open up the offense considerably.
In short, Woodson has been running the stuff the roster can handle while squeezing what he can out of what it’s great at. Which, again, happens in the NBA more often than not, putting guys in a position to do what they’re best at.
Last year that was just the post, really. This year it’s a far wider range.
This also comes down to the real issue at hand with last year which was roster construction. Indiana’s guard depth was thin and it couldn’t afford an injury to its already erratic lead guard, which is what ended up happening. Add in a lack of shooting and two good to great frontcourt players and you have a recipe for all post play all the time.
Indiana did just about as much as it possibly could have done to fix the roster through the transfer portal. Now Woodson and staff have to maximize the pieces they have, with a variety of skillsets making that more enticing.
One way or another, the Hoosiers’ offense is going to be different.
