In advance of Friday’s NCAA Tournament matchup with 14th seeded Louisiana, we scoured the interwebs to find as much footage of the Ragin’ Cajuns as we could. Here’s highlights from six of their games over the last two months, with some comments, timestamps of key plays to fast-forward to if you don’t want to watch the entire packages, and some screen-shots to show key breakdowns defensively.
January 25, 2014 | Western Kentucky 79, Louisiana 70
In this game, ULL jumped out to a huge lead early but poor defense let Western Kentucky come back on them and win on the road. Luckily, since this highlight package comes from the Hilltoppers, we get to see several of those breakdowns, which I’ve highlighted below along with a couple of nice offensive plays by ULL.
Plays of Note:
At the :15 mark, Elridge Moore (#22) steps in front of a pass and leads a fastbreak, where Elfrid Payton (#2) finishes at the rim.
At the 1:40 mark, consecutive plays show the limitations in the game of J.J. Davenport (#44). First, on a Western Kentucky fastbreak, he struggles to get his 325-pound frame down court and the play is over before he crosses half-court. Then on the very next play in this package, he tries to body-up a smaller player driving the paint, and the offensive player instead goes right around him and scores before he can react.
At the 2:02 mark, Western Kentucky runs a really nice play where they run one shooter off a screen, taking a defender with him, and Payton (#2) is really slow to rotate — leaving a shooter wide-open, who buries a three.
At the 3:10 mark, Western Kentucky’s Trency Jackson blows past Payton 35 feet from the basket and is able to drive all the way to the rim uncontested because the one defender is glued to a shooter in the corner, while the other three defenders are standing in a cluster with three offensive players, flat-footed and unable to react. Take a look:
March 2, 2014 | Louisiana 102, South Alabama 76
Throughout this game, a couple of things jump out at me. One, they really did a nice job of pushing tempo and running in transition. Two, while their shot selection wasn’t always the greatest, they hit the boards hard and gave themselves easy second-chance points time after time, and that’s reflected in the box score — they outrebounded USA 47-27 in this game, including 21-12 on the offensive glass. Watch for that in these clips.
Plays of note:
At the :50 second mark, South Alabama’s Aikim Saintill (#20) does a drive-fake, then backs out for a wide-open three when the defender bites. That’s a play we’ve seen Doug McDermott make how many times this year? 20? 30? To a lesser extent, Austin Chatman’s done the same.
At the 1:20 mark, we see a defensive breakdown — a South Alabama player drives the baseline, and the entire ULL defense collapses on him, leaving three shooters open on the perimeter as you can see in the screencap below. He kicks it out to Ken Williams (#1), who buries a wide-open three.
At the 2:15 mark, we see ULL’s J.J. Davenport bury a long jumper. That’s something I didn’t expect to see out of the 6’6″, 325-pound forward who hasn’t attempted a three-pointer all year. It’s a nice-looking jump shot.
March 6, 2014 | Western Kentucky 75, Louisiana 72
In the second meeting with Western Kentucky, they gave up a ton of open looks on the perimeter, although luckily for them, the Hilltoppers weren’t good enough to make them pay. At the 1:12 mark, we see a breakdown in their zone where all five defenders are on one side of the court, leaving two shooters wide open on the other. Western Kentucky kicks it out and drills a three with no defender within eight feet of the shooter.
On five straight plays in this package (not necessarily five straight in the actual game) they lose track of a shooter and give up wide-open three-pointers. On one such play at the 2:03 mark, the defender overruns a jump shooter, then stands and watches him bury a mid-range jumper. Then on the very next play in this sequence, they don’t pay attention to the perimeter in transition, and give up a wide-open three. And on the next play in the package, they once again allow a shooter to sneak out onto the perimeter without a defender following him, and a wide-open three results. On each of the next two plays, they give up wide-open threes from their halfcourt defense. Are you sensing a trend here?
March 14, 2014 | Louisiana 91, UT Arlington 85
Now we’re into the Sun Belt Tournament from last week, so this is super-recent footage of them. This first game, against UT-Arlington, doesn’t feature much defense as you’d expect with a 91-85 score where the two teams combined to make 23 three-pointers. The first minute of this footage shows several bombs from ULL, some defended well, some not, but that’s no surprise — no one ever accused them of struggling to score.
Plays of Note:
At the 1:02 mark, we see a bad pass from ULL get intercepted, and in transition, they lose track of UTA’s Jamel Outler (#3), who buries a wide-open three. On the next play, they once again lose a shooter in transition, and Brandon Edwards (#35) nails a wide-open three.
At the 1:25 mark, ULL’s Bryant Mbamalu launches a 75-footer at the halftime buzzer, and it goes in. It came after the horn, so it didn’t count, but that’s a LONG damn shot. Wow.
At the 1:45 mark, we see the frightening athleticism of Elfrid Payton on full display. He blocks a shot on defense, lulls the defense into ignoring him initially in transition by jogging up court, then turns on the afterburners and blows past the entire defense, catching the ball mid-stride and scoring easily. Really impressive play.
At the 1:55 mark, a UTA player drives the lane and gets four defenders to collapse on him, leaving shooters wide open on both wings. He kicks it out for a…well, I think you get the point. They’re not so good at closing out on shooters.
March 15, 2014 | Louisiana 73, Western Kentucky 72
In their third game with Western Kentucky, ULL finally slowed them down just enough and won by a single point. Many of the same trends we see in the previous games rear their heads again, though. Time after time, they don’t rotate well on screens, do a poor job of communicating on defense, and leave shooters wide open.
At the 1:27 mark, WKU’s George Fant catches the ball in the paint and draws the entire defense’s attention, leaving Chris Harrison-Docks — their best three-point shooter — all by himself on the perimeter. Fant wisely kicks it out to the shooter, who buries a three.
Then at the 1:33 mark, we see something interesting. Up by a point with about two minutes to play, WKU puts on a full-court trap, and ULL panics. Elfrid Payton (#2) gets doubled in the backcourt, and instead of calling timeout, trying to dribble out of the trap, or waiting for a teammate to come help him, he instead throws a long baseball pass 30 feet downcourt that overshoots his intended target by a fair margin. It’s picked up by WKU, they’re fouled, and they go up two.
On the next play, Payton makes up for it with a nice dribble-drive to the rim for an easy layup to give his team the lead 73-72 in the final minute, a shot that winds up being the game-winner. Then at the 1:53 mark of the video, Payton is dribbling out as much of the clock as he can, and with the game clock at 12 and the shot clock at 3, he launches an air-ball from 10 feet away. It’s scooped up by WKU, and the entire 94 feet of the court, Payton face guards the ball handler, managing to stay in front of him all the way to the rim, ultimately contesting the would-be game winning shot nicely.
This is a terrific microcosm of Payton’s overall game — at times, he’s capable of being a really, really great player, but at other times, he makes silly mental mistakes that hurt his team.
March 16, 2014 | Louisiana 82, Georgia State 81 (OT)
In the Sun Belt Championship game, we see ULL take on a really good Georgia State team with the sort of offensive weapons that can make ULL pay for their defensive lapses. In the game’s first moments (at the 36 second mark of this video), they let a shooter get 15 feet away from their nearest defender, and he buries the shot. Then at the :55 mark, Georgia State’s Devonta White breaks them down off the dribble, gets into the paint and four defenders collapse on him. He has his choice of wide-open perimeter shooters to kick it out to, and picks Manny Atkins, a 43% three-point shooter. Atkins buries the three.
In the second half of this game, Georgia State built an 11-point lead by driving it to the rim almost at will, and from the 1:40 mark of this video to about the 2:40 mark you can see a clinic where they do pretty much anything they want to offensively, scoring on an array of short-range jumpers and layups.
ULL came back from down 10 with 3:45 to play, starting with a nice three by Xavian Rimmer (#3) at the 2:39 mark — Elfrid Payton dribbles into the defense just enough to get them to collapse, then kicks it out to Rimmer for a wide-open three. Payton drills a contested three on the next play. Bryant Mbamalu (#0) takes the ball to the rim on the next play shown, and makes a tough shot in traffic. Then Payton drives into the paint, makes a nifty bounce pass around a defender, where Shawn Long is waiting — and he dunks the ball to make it a four-point game.
On the next possession, ULL comes up with a turnover and Payton scores on a fastbreak, streaking past the defense. Then he does a nice job defending, forcing a tough shot which misses. Long gets the rebound, Payton brings the ball up court, and is able to drive all the way to the rim where he puts up a good shot to tie it. The shot misses, but Long grabs it, draws three defenders, and dumps it off to Mbamalu for a game-tying layup.
At the 3:55 mark, we see Payton make another big play. With his team up 78-77 in overtime, he steals the ball at the top of the key and races up court for a layup, sealing the win and an NCAA berth for his team.
What I take away from watching these games: Louisiana has some good offensive weapons. Elfrid Payton is a gifted offensive player, a good defender with the ability to be a great defender when he wants to be, and a player that makes far too many silly mental lapses. As a team, they give up far too many open looks defensively, particularly on the perimeter. And most importantly, I see a 14 seed capable of pulling off the upset IF Creighton has an off-night shooting. This is no pushover.
At the end of the day, though, I think their penchant for over-committing on defense in the paint, allowing shooters to get open, will be their undoing. If they do that on Doug McDermott, Ethan Wragge and Jahenns Manigat will be open all night long. Good luck with that.