The NCAA Tournament matchup between Notre Dame and Kentucky this weekend is still stuck in my head. Even though the college level isn’t exactly filled with basketball chess masters, the tactical approach utilized by Notre Dame’s head coach Mike Brey not only fascinated me as a coach, but led to one of the most thrilling games of the tournament. To take this game at just face value misses out on a lot of things it tells us about the sport itself. By digging a bit deeper, we find that this epic showdown asked questions about things from coaching decisions to how we evaluate NBA draft prospects.

A few weeks back, I wrote (and have shamelessly plugged) an opus on doubling team the post in the NBA. Last Saturday night, Brey allowed a national audience to understand how hard it is to stick to a strict single coverage edict when a talented post player -- for the college level -- is rolling. Kentucky’s Karl Anthony-Towns finished with 25 points on 10-of-13 shooting from the field, with most of those shot attempts coming at point blank range. And while we witnessed and heard plenty about the brilliance of Towns, the real effect could be seen in Tweets like this:


Aaron and Andrew Harrison failed to make an impact until the final three minutes of the game not because of their play, but because of the fact that the game featured getting the ball into the post. That tactic nullified Kentucky’s perimeter talent, which was a key reason why the Wildcats only narrowly escaped with a two-point win. It may have been unbearable for Notre Dame fans to watch Towns back poor Zach Auguste into the basket time and time again, but it arguably was a better option than risking Kentucky’s backcourt taking over the game.

What’s really interesting, however, is that because of a robust stat line made possible by Brey’s approach, Towns elevated himself to the top spot on pretty much every draft board after the game. And for good reason as the kid can play. But before either getting enamored with the post brilliance of Towns or analyzing the merits of Brey’s approach, you have to take into consideration a distinct difference in how post up play works at the NBA and college level.   

In NCAA basketball, a post defender who places his forearm on an opponent will (should?) be met with the sound of a referee’s whistle. As you saw in the way Auguste was forced to defend Towns, a post defender's only manner to bother an opponent in the post is to wall up with his hands high. That type of directive gives a huge edge to players with a physical advantage; like the powerful Towns. Bigger, stronger players can bully their way through defenders forced into awkward guarding positions because of the rules. In the NBA, defenders are allowed to at least use a forearm (and plenty get away with putting their hands on guys). This small concession adds a whole new element to post defense. Not only does a well place forearm keep an offensive player from getting into a defender’s body, it provides a much more stable way to gain some leverage against a stronger player.  

Along with some of the latter exceptions in my follow up piece on doubling teaming, this is another reason why I’m not sure the factors that go into single covering the post are universal at all levels, especially given that one subtle rule difference. I know it seems strange, but a well placed forearm opens up a whole set of technical aspects used to mitigate an offensive players effectiveness in the post. Without it, like we see at the Division 1 level, post defense pretty much boils down to whoever has the strength advantage.

Now this isn’t trying to devalue what Towns accomplished. The reason he’s a top prospect is because of the fact he has the skill and touch to take advantage of the rules better than the vast majority of college athletes. Yet it’s important to keep things like this into consideration when using his production in games like this to evaluate his potential at the next level.

 

The same goes for his teammates, like the aforementioned Harrison twins. As I briefly wrote about with Andrew Wiggins last year, college systems, like NBA ones, can sometimes obscure talent. Now the Harrisons are hardly unflawed prospects -- just look at their numbers -- but that game hardly did them any favors. After all, if a team’s system or a specific gameplan aren’t conducive to a player’s skills, how much can an evaluator truly take away from their performance?

Kentucky has been a post-centric team pretty much all season long and were living through the post pretty much the entire second half of the game against Notre Dame. It’s hard to expect any perimeter player to thrive in such a limited role. Devin Booker and Tyler Ulis played a bit better, but their success -- and big shots -- also occurred because their skill sets overlapped with how Brey’s perimeter players were instructed to help on the post. Just imagine if one of the Harrison twins swapped places with Jerian Grant in Brey’s spread system at Notre Dame. It certainly wouldn’t make them future lottery picks, but it sure would likely drastically change the way people viewed their potential (and I say that not being a big fan of their games).

And speaking of Grant, this examination of the Kentucky-Notre Dame game wouldn’t be complete without reflecting on the factors leading up to his desperate heave from the corner as time expired. For starters, Brey burned his last time out in order to better organize his defense before Kentucky’s last possession. While this is certainly a worthy thing to use a timeout for, it was less up for scrutiny because of how, once again, college basketball’s rulebook impacts the game.

In the NBA, a team can advance the ball past midcourt on a timeout under two minutes. And while people have pointed out the relative absurdity and arbitrary addition of that rule for that level, there’s no doubt it massively boosts late-game offense and overall entertainment. Had this rule been in effect this past Saturday night, Brey’s decision -- or if you want to talk about a butterfly effect, his thought process behind it -- to use that timeout would have been much more open to second-guessing. But because college forces teams to traverse the whole length of the court in those scenarios, there’s no need to draw up a play because despite some clever sets that lead to some heroic and memorable buzzer-beaters, most teams rarely get looks better than Grant’s.

Given the scoring problems facing college basketball, I think this situation is good example of why the NCAA needs to seriously consider adopting that rule. Not only will it increase expected production from late-game situations, but it will challenge coaches like Brey to be smarter about their use of timeouts and more imaginative in their creation and execution of late-game plays.

With the Final Four approaching this weekend, fans are gearing up for another round of memorable contests like the one that took place between Notre Dame and Kentucky. But don’t get caught up just watching a game, because you’ll miss out being shown a whole lot more.