Syracuse Game Provides a Glimpse of Buzz Williams' Strategy for Coping Without Joey van Zegeren

The Virginia Tech basketball team was pitifully small in the frontcourt before Buzz Williams suspended starting forward Joey van Zegeren. Now the squad looks positively Lilliputian.

Williams says van Zegeren has been suspended indefinitely for an incident during practice, but won't get into specifics.

But after the team's narrow 68-66 loss to Syracuse this weekend, he admitted that his starting big man won't be back for Tuesday's road trip to Florida State, and that he can't really say when van Zegeren will return.

"Joey's a really, really good kid," Williams said. "He didn't handle himself well, and there has to be right and has to be wrong, and he was wrong. He knows he was wrong. Our team knows he was wrong."

That presents Buzz with some vexing tactical questions. How does a team that's already woefully undersized cope with losing the second tallest player on the roster?

Williams provided some answers to that question Saturday with his lineup combinations against the Orange, and a cursory glance the numbers doesn't look particularly promising.

The Hokies allowed Syracuse to grab 42 rebounds in all, including 15 on the offensive end. For some perspective, the Orange normally average about 39 and 13 per game in those two categories respectively.

One player, Tyler Roberson, even grabbed 17 boards all on his own, so it would seem that van Zegeren's absence was costly for the Hokies inside.

But the game bears some closer examination. There are some encouraging results visible within the box score, and they provide a roadmap to how Williams might choose to compensate for van Zegeren's absence going forward.

His most visible change was inserting junior forward Shane Henry into the starting lineup.

Henry only stands at 6'8", but he's been one of the team's better players on the interior this year, piling up 47 rebounds and 18 blocks.

However, early foul trouble kept Henry on the sidelines perhaps more than Williams would've preferred. He ended up fouling out of the game, costing the Hokies some valuable size inside.

Even still, he was effective when he was on the floor.

The starting combination of Henry and four guards in Devin Wilson, Ahmed Hill, Justin Bibbs and Adam Smith was one of the team's best on both ends of the floor.

The starters scored 16 points together while allowing just 13, one of just two units to finish with a positive margin among Williams' lineup combinations.

They were also decent on the glass. The combination grabbed 10 rebounds in all (three on the offensive end) and allowed the Orange to pick up eight, with two coming on offense.

With Henry sitting for large stretches, Williams often had to turn to freshman forward Satchel Pierce, the team's lone seven footer.

Pierce has played sparingly this year, averaging just a little over 11 minutes per game, but Williams has started to up his workload recently.

He gave Pierce a season-high total of 23 minutes on the court against West Virginia, then an additional 16 minutes against the Orange, his third highest total of the year.

Pierce certainly had a few good moments against Syracuse, gathering four rebounds and blocking a shot, but he certainly showed his inexperience at times.

"By far, these are the two highest minute games he's played," Williams said. "I'm not sticking up for him because we don't have time to stick up for anybody. Justin Bibbs plays more minutes than anybody on our team, but nobody talks about him as a freshman, but Justin's also had more game reps than Satch. So I think he's coming around."

With Pierce playing in place of Henry with the other starting guards, the unit allowed 12 total rebounds (three offensive), the highest total of any lineup combination that played any significant stretch of time. The combo also allowed 20 points while scoring 15.

He did help the Hokies on the glass, notching 10 total rebounds with three coming offensively, but he certainly played tentatively in the post at times.

Williams attributes part of that to his frequent matchup with impressive Syracuse forward Rakeem Christmas, and the fact that this was Pierce's first taste of ACC basketball.

"When you look at Rakeem Christmas who's all-conference something in nine weeks and you've never played in an ACC game, you might pee down your leg a little bit too," Williams joked.

While Henry's foul troubles likely forced Pierce onto the court more than Williams would've liked, it's clear he has faith in his freshman and will keep giving him extended time.

"I just think it's game reps," Williams said. "He's gaining confidence from his work, he's spending more time in the weightroom."

Other players have also noticed some improvement from Pierce as the season's progressed.

"He's a lot more alert. One thing you could tell, he always had his feet in the mud and he was thinking more than just playing," Wilson said. "Now I think he's starting to play a lot more than he was just thinking, and that's really helped him a lot."

But Pierce admits he's focused on cutting down his own fouls, since he too fouled out against the Orange with a few minutes to play.

"I've got to work on foul troubles," Pierce said. "I had three fouls in the first half, that can't happen again. So I've got to work on that, just play aggressive the whole game."

Henry and Pierce notched two fouls apiece just seven minutes into the first half, and that gave Williams a chance to test out a concept he's used only sparingly before: the all-guard lineup.

Buzz put out several lineups featuring all guards, in various combinations of Bibbs, Smith, Wilson, Hill, Will Johnston and Malik Mueller. Jalen Hudson missed the game with a back injury, taking him out of the mix.

They had varying degrees of success, both offensively and defensively.

In all, the all-guard groupings come out looking pretty average. They outscored the Orange 17-14, as might be expected, but allowed 18 rebounds while grabbing just 11.

Individually, some groups were disastrous: the pairing of Mueller, Johnston, Bibbs, Smith and Wilson allowed the Orange to grab seven rebounds (three offensive) and just two of their own in very limited action.

But one grouping was the spark that fueled the team's furious comeback down the stretch.

When Wilson, Bibbs, Hill, Smith and Johnston shared the floor, the Hokies outscored the Orange 15-6. The bulk of that production came as Tech went on an insane run with less than a minute remaining, cutting a nine point lead to just two.

The group wasn't necessarily good on the boards, grabbing seven total rebounds and allowing the same, but it wasn't a total trainwreck.

It's worth nothing that this came with very little time remaining, and Syracuse was undoubtedly playing differently to protect a lead rather than build one, but it's encouraging to see that the Hokies can still perform when their tallest player on the floor is 6'5".

"We knew that when we played with five guards, we've got to be faster than them," Wilson said. "We can't be slow, so we tried to play a lot faster and get the ball up the floor."

Syracuse's Jim Boeheim admitted that the Hokies were downright frustrating to defend when they went super-small.

"They're a difficult team to guard with their small lineup," Boeheim said. "In the first half, we were able to guard them and yet still get some offensive opportunities going over the top, but in the second half, they did a better job pressuring us."

Williams says the team put an emphasis on generating that pressure before the ball got to the low post.

"We're going to struggle, as you saw. I mean, a man had 17 rebounds, so obviously we weren't matched up really well," Williams said. "But whether it's Syracuse or whomever, we've got to do our work early and try to play before the pass. Because if we're waiting until after the pass, we'll get annihilated inside. I thought at times we worked really hard."

The team's hard work showed when the smaller guys were matched up Syracuse's post players, particularly the skilled (and 6'9") Christmas.

Mueller often found himself defending Christmas, giving up six inches to the forward, but other Hokies praised his resiliency.

"Malik did incredible. He had some matchups where he had to guard Christmas and Malik is all solid," Bibbs said. "He had a little trouble on that end, but we can all help each other out."

If the guards can avoid the fatigue that comes with the increased defensive role while van Zegeren remains sidelined, then Williams will be able to keep leaning on the small lineup to create offensive havoc.

"It's something you have to do," Bibbs said. "Devin played inside, every guard played inside. And I think we did really good."

The team's remaining big men certainly appreciate their help.

"They stepped up crazy," Pierce said. "It was a tremendous help what the guards did to shut down the bigs they had."

So while the team's admirable performance against Syracuse provides only a limited sample, a blueprint for the van Zegeren-less Hokies becomes clear.

A heavy dose of Henry seems to be in order to shore up the defense, but Pierce can certainly fill in for him off the bench.

Williams likely won't be starting an all-guard group any time soon, but when the team needs offense, adding Johnston's shooting to his starting four guards can give the Hokies a major spark without sacrificing too much in the way of defense or rebounding.

All this doesn't mean that the team isn't eager for van Zegeren to rejoin the squad, however.

"Joey's obviously a good player and when he comes back, it'll make us better," Bibbs said.

Adding another forward to the mix will certainly be a significant boost, particularly considering how well the team played in the second half against the Orange.

But so long as van Zegeren's absence doesn't drag on too much longer, it seems like Williams' creativity should be able to keep the team afloat.

"This all we have and we have to go with it," Bibbs said.