Evaluating how the incoming wing fits the team.
Chris Collins has found his sniper. Max Green is a different player from Ty Berry so the sets will be different, but the Holy Cross transfer will join the roster as the most dangerous shooter from day one. The freshman wing took nearly half of his shot attempts from beyond the arc and canned 38% of them despite an abnormally high degree of difficulty on many of his threes.
In this article, I am breaking down tape from a late November game between Holy Cross and Virginia. There are a few reasons why I decided to cut film from this game. First, Virginia was one of the Crusaders’ few high major opponents last season, so Green’s performance is directly translatable to Big Ten basektball, especially on the offensive end against an always dangerous Cavaliers defense. Also, I wanted to break down one full game instead of a collection of highlights. Watching a full game allows me to see not just his strengths, but to find his weaknesses and see how he stays involved when he’s not getting the ball. If you’re looking for Green’s highlights, you can find them here. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
(Side note: If you read my film breakdown on Jayden Reid, you may have noticed I used highlights. That’s because I couldn’t find a full USF game anywhere. If you missed that piece, it’s right here.)
A few more things to note: This was just Green’s eighth game in college and his game grew a lot over the course of the season. I’m going to spend a chunk of the space criticizing Green’s defensive miscues, but with the important context that he still is very young and this game was early in the season. Holy Cross was a bad team (13-19, 5-13 Patriot) and the Crusaders lost this game 67-41. However, Green finished with 16 points on 6-of-14 shooting and 4-of-7 from three and added two points and two assists.
Offense
Green is an offense-first player, so it only makes sense to start on the fun side of the ball. He led Holy Cross in scoring on the season, averaging 14.9 points a contest on his way to earning Patriot League freshman of the year honors.
Let’s start with the good. Green flashes to the ball and tries to curl around a screen but finds himself facing a hard hedge. Instead of forcing the issue, he backs out and waits for the Virginia big man to clear out before flashing a series of dribble moves and getting into a step-back three which he calmly drains. ‘Cats fans should get excited watching this play because last season’s team didn’t really have anyone who could take and make a self-created three consistently. Jalen Leach pulled it off at times, but most of his off-the-bounce damage came in the midrange. Green has a deep bag when it comes to creating a window of space to get his picture perfect jumper off and Northwestern fans should get used to moves like this because Green’s bag goes deep.
Here’s a more conventional three, but the shot itself is actually not what I want to focus most of my attention on. Green starts the play off by tossing in a pass to the post. Instead of just drifting to a different spot on the perimeter — which happened way too often during Northwestern’s offensive possessions — Green sprints into a baseline cut before fading back out to the perimeter so he doesn’t disrupt his teammate’s post move with a second defender. As soon as Green’s defender takes one too many shuffles into the paint, he throws up his hands for a pass, which is delivered perfectly. Green’s off-ball movement is impressive in this play and his spatial awareness both of his own body and his defender’s are excellent.
As for the actual jumper, Green’s release is high and tight. It’s a very repeatable stroke and he is able to get it to the same release point whether off the dribble or via the catch. The best way to describe his footwork is timely. He doesn’t have the quickest release, but watching both this game and his highlights, he seems to set his feet with just enough time to get a shot off before the defender can block his shot. It causes unnecessary stress as a viewer, but it seems to work for Green.
Green can score inside the arc but he isn’t super efficient, shooting just 43.4% on twos. Most of his dangerous drives to the rim are a result of defense overplaying, like you see here. Defenses will be selling out to stop the three pointer, so there are opportunities to get to the cup. Green isn’t explosive on first step but he finishes high and isn’t afraid of contact. He’s a straight-line driver à la Ryan Langborg, so you won’t find him pulling off a series of dribble moves to mix up a defender.
Green wasn’t particularly effective in the midrange this season, but there are signs that he will improve. His release works well with a midrange shot because it’s difficult to contest and he gets it off quickly. The main issue will be creating enough space to pull up (and he took a few wild shots when he couldn’t escape a defender) but the step-back above and this stop on a dime showcase a few of Green’s moves for creating space.
Defense
Unfortunately, this is where it gets ugly.
While I praised Green’s spatial awareness offensively, he has a long way to go on this side of the ball. Green is tasked with guarding a knockdown shooter in Isaac McKneely. He lets himself get detached from McKneely and starts ball-watching, so he has trouble navigating a very soft screen. Instead of trusting the scouting report about McKneely as a shooter, Green tries to recover from the screen by playing a backdoor cut and gets turned around in the process. By the time he recovers, his close out is very late and McKneely drives right by him before kicking out to an open shooter.
In this clip, Green inexplicably loses track of his man. After seeing a pass go, Green takes his eyes off his guy and overplays help defense. Green has two feet in the paint when his man receives the ball back. He was never more than one pass away and should have been within three feet of his man. Instead, he decides to go under a screen and gives up a wide open three point attempt. On the shot, he doesn’t attempt to get in front of the screener — whose man had switched onto Green’s shooter — and gives up free position right at the front of the rim. Had the ball bounced differently, Virginia would have gotten a dunk because of Green’s lackluster rebounding effort.
There are elements to be hopeful for. Green is young and defense takes time to figure out. As long as he commits to effort on that side of the ball, the coaching duo of Chris Collins and Chris Lowery should be able to shape him into an average defender. At no point in this game did Green look overmatched in speed or strength. It mainly comes down to discipline, awareness and effort for him to transform into a usable defender. Green did grade out exceptionally poorly on Bart Torvik’s Defensive Box Plus/Minus statistic, finishing 247th out of the 276 players who played at least 80% of their team’s minutes. However, Holy Cross as a team was the 342nd ranked defense out of 364. Playing in a better system with more talented teammates around him should help Green improve defensively.