Can Danny Wolf Be Stopped??

Danny Wolf is a 7 foot point guard, and a big questions has developed surrounding him. How do you stop a 7 foot point guard in pick and roll

A question as old as time (well actually like 2 months). How do you stop Danny Wolf in pick and roll?

The 7 footer has essentially been a guard for the Michigan Wolverines this year, and under Dusty May, the Wolverines have developed one of the most unstoppable plays in all of college basketball - a pick and roll involving two 7 footers. Teams have tried a bit of everything to stop it, but when you have a 7 foot guard that can drive, pass and shoot, and pair him with a 7 footer in Vladislav Goldin that is elite at catching on the roll, teams quickly run out of options.

I went and rewatched all 115 Wolf pick and rolls (per Synergy) and charted them based on a few things

• Style - Middle ball screen, empty corner ball screen, drag screen

• Defensive coverage - Drop, hedge, ice, stay, switch, under

• Action - Drive, Pass, Pull Up, Refuse, Roll

I’ll explain each of those a bit more throughout the article, but the general ideas were to look at if any defensive coverage proved more useful than any other, or if getting Michigan into certain looks worked better.

Per Synergy, Danny Wolf has been the ball handler in 115 pick and rolls this year (as of 1/22/25). This includes pick and rolls that result in shots from Wolf, fouls, or shot attempts from teammates out of Wolf directly passing and getting hockey assists (pass to the assister). He has averaged 1.17 points per possession, which is 134th out of all players in the country. If you look at players that average 5+ pick and rolls including passes per game, he’s the 11th most efficient player in the country. Out of those 10 players more efficient than Wolf, the tallest player is listed at 6’3. Danny Wolf is listed at 7’0.

There are multiple issues in guarding this action

• Bigs aren’t used to having to guard ball handlers in pick and rolls

• Danny Wolf can see everything and pass to anyone

• Michigan surrounds Wolf (generally) with 3 shooters and an elite rolling big

• Wolf is good at basketball

As mentioned above, teams have tried a bit of everything to stop this pick and roll. There are mainly 4 coverages that teams run, and then 2 others that have been sprinkled in. It isn’t uncommon to see teams try 4 different defensive coverages in one game.

Let’s get into some of the actual numbers and film.

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Ball Screen Style

In this section we’ll look at how Michigan runs their pick and rolls. There are basically two options for how I looked at these (but there are many plays to get them in these looks). The first one is a middle pick and roll (shown below).

This is your prototypical pick and roll, where the ball handler is in the middle of the floor with both corners occupied.

The next common is an ‘Empty’ corner pick and roll, where there is no player in the strong side corner. Generally three players are on the weak side of the floor (shown below).

The last one, which I didn’t see much of, is called a ‘Drag’ screen. This is where as Wolf brings the ball up the floor, a screen is set for him from a big that is generally trailing (shown below).

Now that we have the definitions cleared, let’s look at the numbers.

Glossary

• PPP - Points per possession

• TO% - percentage of possessions that end in a turnover

• Ast% - How many plays had an assist or hockey assist (pass to an assist)

Michigan runs the most out of middle pick and rolls, but they have empty corner looks they go too. The thing that stands out is that it hasn’t really mattered where they’ve ran pick and rolls at, good results happen. Wolf is assisting a bit more on empty corner looks, but I think that is more of a result of how the defense has to cover that compared to anything specifically Michigan is doing.

Defensive Coverages

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