Opals’ Rio roller-coaster

MELBOURNE (Paulo Kennedy's View from Downunder) - The Opals came into the 2014 FIBA Women's World Championship with a plan, and it showed. Can we say the same about the Rio Olympics? Let's have a look.

Heading into 2014, new coach Brendan Joyce had studied the international game, studied the Opals' previous performances and devised a style he thought would work for Australia's women.

Despite the publicly expressed doubts of many - including myself - the Opals not only wiped every team not named the USA off the floor en route to a third-place finish, they did it playing beautiful basketball at both ends.

Joyce was incredibly proud of the way his team performed and the success of his style, and rightfully so, starting at the defensive end.

"We're looking for the athleticism and the agility, because at the international level it comes into play more," he said post-Turkey.

"The other important factor is length, it's not to say we won't have any small players in our team, but across the board if your players are long it gives you so much versatility."

Joyce selected players he believed were best suited to carry out this game plan. His starting five of Marianna Tolo, Laura Hodges, Penny Taylor, Rachel Jarry and Erin Phillips at point guard was an excellent balance between length, athleticism, lateral speed and the ability to score at the other end.

"Rachel Jarry was my two-guard at 6ft 2in (1.88m) and she could guard 1-4 with her length and versatility," Joyce said at the time.

"You look at Rebecca Allen, she's 6'2 and she's got a wingspan of 6'5 or 6'6. She can gap a player and they'll think they can get their shot off but she gets a piece of it. From a team point of view it gives you versatility in how you can coach."

The Opals had to make some last-minute adjustments in the frontcourt after a warm-up game injury to centre Liz Cambage, but defensively it seemed to help them.

"Marianna Tolo's defence, her lateral quickness and her mobility in the five-spot matches up with the best players in the world," Joyce said.

What length?
Why have I listed all these quotes? Those who followed the Rio tournament closely will already be shaking their head, because that much-hyped philosophy of length and athleticism was sadly and strangely absent.

Tolo only averaged around 14 minutes per game at centre despite being a revelation there two years earlier. Joyce chose to play Cambage longer blocks instead of the shorter, sharper bursts he had previously advocated for his star centre, which would have allowed her defensive intensity to be greater.

Jarry averaged less than 14 minutes per contest in total despite the retirement of Belinda Snell opening up extra minutes on the wings. With Allen not even selected, those minutes instead went to undersized players who couldn't disrupt defensively as per the supposed game plan.

Consider the Rio starting five of Cambage, Natalie Burton, Taylor, Phillips at the two-spot and Leilani Mitchell at point guard. It is considerably undersized at both guard positions, features a small forward regularly targeted by opponents defensively and a centre without any sort of lateral quickness. Hardly long and athletic.

The mobile Burton was given a start as a foil for the slower Cambage, but while Nat has proven herself a solid international defender given the right match-up, she is a long way from a specialist who can cover the inadequacies of others at this level. 

The lack of length and speed meant the Aussies couldn't effectively pressure the ball to force turnovers and poor shots, and couldn’t rebound and run as they did two years earlier, putting far more pressure on the half-court offence.

Lessons not learned
Not surprisingly, the Opals' best game of the tournament by far was their 18-point rout of a quality French team. It was also their best all-around defensive effort, holding France to 42 per cent shooting, forcing 19 turnovers and scoring 27 points off turnovers as they burned the Europeans for speed.

NOTE: Only in one other game did they score more than 18 points off opponents' miscues, and in the Quarter-Final loss to Serbia they managed just eight.

In the France game, Cambage got into early foul trouble and, as a result, four of the five leading minutes getters were Tolo, Hodges, Taylor and Phillips - a reunion from the 2014 starting line-up.

Taylor had by far her best game of the tournament, but that was hardly a surprise, getting to play the majority of her minutes without a centre clogging up the key, instead having two bigs in Tolo and Hodges who could space the floor and punish the help defence.

Sadly, by my count those four players spent 30 seconds on court together against Serbia. 

"In the offence the girls were allowed to put the ball on the deck and get in the paint, come off the on-ball and make reads and that's the hardest thing to guard," Joyce said two years ago after the World Championship.

Taylor excelled in that system because she is at her best being able to read the defence and getting into the cracks, where she can either finish or create for others. Cambage is at her best close to the hoop, where she can score with ease but also crowds the opportunities for the penetrators of the team.

Just a glimpse
In 2014, those penetrators were chiefly Taylor and Jarry, who caused much damage playing together. In Rio, the only time they shared notable minutes was the third quarter against Serbia.

In those fabulous five minutes, again with Cambage on the bench in foul trouble, the Aussies burst out to a seemingly match-winning nine-point lead, with Taylor and Jarry the genesis.

Incredibly, the combo ended when Joyce subbed in little-used Steph Talbot in a key moment, who coughed up a basic turnover as the momentum fatefully swung back Serbia's way. It was a horrific coaching move in a horrific 26-turnover game.

Therein lies the crux of the Opals issues in Rio. They didn't go in with a cohesive plan that utilised the strengths of their players and their strengths as a unit.

With most of the speedy 2014 team back and the giant Cambage added they could have been a deadly two-speed team, but sadly they turned out to be little more than a jumbled mix of different styles that was highly-susceptible to quality pick-and-roll offence and pressure defence.

Their combinations were often unbalanced, and in trying to repair the damage the coaching staff substituted reactively, leaving their own players confused trying to figure out what kind of line-up they were playing with at any given moment.

Keeping it simple
With Taylor and Phillips coming into the squad just days before the Olympics, they needed to step into something as similar to the 2014 style as possible. That meant playing with Jarry, Tolo and either Hodges or Burton as much as possible.

With Cambage the only major change to the line-up from two years ago, the key was for Joyce to use the pre-Olympic European tour to find players comfortable alongside Liz in a slower version of the Opals’ style. For mine that was Burton or Tolo (depending on opposition power forwards), Mitchell running the point and two of Taylor, Jarry, Tessa Lavey or Katie Ebzery on the wings.

Much has been made of Joyce's selections for Rio, but the team he picked was fine - as Turkey 2014 showed - had they been playing a similar style to 2014.

The problem was this team had no such identity. If this Opals line-up wasn't going to be about length and mobility then the likes of Jenna O'Hea, Abby Bishop and Suzy Batkovic should have been in the team.

Joyce will now almost certainly lose his job. The sad part for him is he will fall because he departed from what he believed in, the style that had worked, the combinations that had worked and the reason for his controversial selections in the first place.

After planning so meticulously for Turkey 2014, Joyce appeared rudderless in 2016 as his team fell to fifth. He wasn't able to incorporate Cambage and maintain his core philosophies, leaving the Opals without a defined style - and it showed.  

Paulo Kennedy

FIBA

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