Men's Basketball Musings: Excitement and Concerns

As we close in on the the follow-up season to Kevin Keatts' miraculous run to the ACC Championship and Final Four, I remain fascinated by the personnel he'll be leading in 2024-25. This team is different in so many ways than the one before it, and it creates some intriguing opportunities and fair concerns. Let's talk about all of it.

Defense 

This should be a good defensive team for a couple of different reasons. It was bizarre to see Keatts’ team last season transition from a good defensive team early in the year to a terrible defensive team late in the year, and then to an elite defensive team in the postseason. There is something to be said there for the intangible elements of coaching and playing defense, and Keatts found another gear. 

This team figures to have a strong personnel group defensively, so if it can maintain that level of intensity and organization, it should be great. It won’t have the liability that Burns presented, and that five spot that he occupied most of the time will belong to Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, who is a massive upgrade defensively. Huntley-Hatfield opens up the switch game for the defense depending on what guard is involved, he offers a semblance of rim protection, and he offers a real ability to be multiple in pick-and-roll defense because of his length and how well he moves. 

State does lose its best on-ball defender in Casey Morsell (I called the NCAA and offered them fifty bucks to give him an extra year, but they declined), but it retains Jayden Taylor, who was the team’s second-best on-ball defender. It also adds Mike James and Marcus Hill, two lengthy guards with solid defensive tape. This is a long team on the perimeter, and it can feasibly run a lineup where its shortest player is 6’4. Offensively, State will have some serious questions to answer with the departure of the DJs, but defensively, it has upgraded at both spots. 

The Frontcourt 

State’s five rotation is going to be sweet. I have firmly planted my flag in camp Huntley-Hatfield. This guy has first-team all-league potential. He is never going to be the back-to-the-basket unstoppable force that DJ Burns was, but he can absolutely score this way and do so much more within the offense as a rim runner, short-roll playmaker, and even potentially as a guy who can pop and make a jump shot. Huntley-Hatfield can handle the ball a little too, and I'm curious to see how deep this skill set goes and if it's something State could further unlock. In the event that they do, you start to open up some interesting variations on base actions like inverting pick and rolls and even playing him at the four with Middlebrooks, creating a huge lineup that can still space the floor. All of this is pie-in-the-sky of course. He'll be at his best as a roll man and playing around the rim. But the versatility excites.

Ben Middlebrooks should be one of the league’s better bench players. He developed a lot of chemistry with Michael O'Connell in the pick and roll, and he was really effective as a rebounder and scorer in the postseason. The man is physical and plays angry, and that's what I want from my bigs. He will probably get called for a lot of fouls, partly because of his physicality and partly because referees simply just hate the man. That issue leads us directly into the concerns up front.

The concerns here are the depth and the lack of height at what State considers the four. Depth-wise, State has BHH, it has Middlebrooks, and then the only other player on the roster over 6'6 is a guy who has never played a minute of college ball. State has to stay healthy and not disqualified here.

Four-man wise, State’s four usually operates out of the corner as a floor spacer. State will run hammer screens and shake actions with their four, involve them in pick-and-roll actions like a basic one-four, ram, and roll-and-replace. Last year, Diarra did some of this down the stretch, but operated a lot from the dunker spot as State played more through the post. I’d expect to play through the post less this year, bumping up the importance of having a good shooter at the four. Dontrez Styles might be the best shooter on the team. He’s a good player who was overshadowed by ballhoggery at Georgetown. Styles should start here, but Ismael Diouf is the wildcard. Diouf stands at 6’9 and can shoot the ball in some capacity. If State wants to go a larger lineup, it will need Diouf to be a factor.

Offensive Initiation 

Almost all of my questions with State center around how it will initiate offense. Traditionally under Keatts, State’s bread and butter has been the spread pick and roll. It has ran an Iverson screen into an empty side pick-and-roll more than anything else under Keatts. The volume of this went down last season as the Pack tried to leverage its specific skill sets. The team’s most used set was a post-up for Burns in the short corner and then a clear out, and it had a number of screening and movement actions off of this. Secondarily, it relied heavily on the zoom action to get its guards downhill and into the paint. True pick and roll became tertiary.

Keatts did not have a great pick-and-roll guard. It had elements of such a thing, especially once Horne became a drop-coverage killer, but it never had a strong paint finisher that put pressure on the rim. It’s possible that State could have this issue again, and without a DJ Burns, it’s a little less obvious what the adjustment is. With Burns and Horne gone, Keatts will have to redistribute his actions.

I think he has two advanced operators in the pick and roll. O’Connell is obviously skilled here, and Marcus Hill is underrated in that respect. However, neither is explosive off the bounce. It remains to be seen if O’Connell can maintain his perimeter shooting with more of those shots potentially coming off the dribble, and Hill is a 28% three-point shooter. 

Marcus Hill is not afraid to get to the basket. He led all guards nationally in shots at the rim last season. He's a very different scorer at the rim than some of the better pick-and-roll scorers that Keatts has had like Markell Johnson, Devon Daniels, and Dereon Seabron. He depends less on his athleticism and explosion to get himself shots and more on his ability to create angles and use his body. How that translates to this level remains to be seen.

Mike James is bigger and more explosive, and he’s a good candidate to get into the paint off a DHO or in some kind of curl action. He can take contact and get to the line for sure. The build is good, but he needs to be more controlled once in the painted area. He took 108 shots at the rim last year and made over 49%, so the numbers aren't bad. How does James fit into the offense? Is he on the ball more? Or is he more of what Jayden Taylor was last year?

How these new guards look and how each evolves in a new system under a new staff is hard to predict. This is the question for me though. Other than Huntley-Hatfield's versatility, where does State create mismatches and conflicts for the defense? I'm not saying they don't, I'm just saying that I don't think the answer is obvious right now. The question of what kind of skill set can be unlocked by a new (and significantly better in the case of the Louisville players) coach will always be out there in the preseason.

Keatts will try to play through Huntley-Hatfield some, and it probably will work. He has a legitimate back-to-the-basket and face-up game. He is not Burns, though. There was essentially no counter that was effective against Burns playing inside out other than having a 7’4 300 pound center. Keatts is going to have to redefine the offensive identity of this team. He did an excellent job of this last season. The skill sets on this team are a little different. What becomes the bread and butter in 2024-25?