Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Analysis: Tweener Moses Wood could find home in UNLV frontcourt

Rebels Practice with New Coach

Wade Vandervort

Moses Wood (1) and Vitaliy Shibel (22) practice at Mendenhall Center at the UNLV campus, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019.

One of the themes of the offseason for UNLV — maybe the biggest theme — has been upgrading the team’s skill level, particularly in the frontcourt.

It was a necessary change. By the end of last year, UNLV was rotating Mbacke Diong, Jay Green and Vitaliy Shibel at center, and by virtue of shooting 29.6 percent from 3-point range, Shibel was actually considered the “offensive-minded” option at the position. Yikes.

The 2020-21 Rebels won’t be left so shorthanded. The team added juco prospect Edoardo Del Cadia as a small-ball frontcourt weapon, and he’ll bring an intriguing element of scoring and ball-handling to the roster. And he’s not the only new name in the mix.

Moses Wood will become eligible after sitting out last year as a redshirt transfer from Tulane, and while the 6-foot-8 forward may not be a true big man, he can bring something that last year’s collection of bigs lacked: shooting.

Wood, a Reno native, mostly came off the bench for a bad Tulane team (4-27) and averaged 4.5 points in 18.1 minutes per contest. Despite the modest numbers, he showed off his picture-perfect shooting stroke by making 37.3 percent of his 3-point attempts; that would have ranked him as UNLV’s most accurate shooter last year.

The Tulane coaches recognized Wood’s outstanding jump shot and mostly stationed him in the corners as a kick-out option, but they also ran plays designed to get him the ball in rhythm as a shooter. He's got beautiful form:

Wood can shoot it, and the Rebels are going to want him on the floor because of that. But where does he fit in terms of position?

Wood is a bit of a tweener. Aside from his jumper, the rest of his offensive skill set doesn’t quite work as a perimeter player.

He is long and gangly, and when he put the ball on the floor at Tulane the results were not pretty. Wood's long limbs leave the ball exposed when he dribbles more than once, and his long strides give defenders a chance to anticipate his attacks.

Again, Tulane mostly used him as a spot-up shooter, but on the 11 plays where Wood worked in iso situations or as a pick-and-roll ball-handler, he committed six turnovers. In the games I watched, his drive attempts ended with him on the floor more often than not:

As a passer, Wood can handle the basics. He can execute dribble handoffs and hit occasional cutters; on-script passes are no problem. When he is forcing the issue and trying to create, however, the results were sketchy:

It is possible Wood improved his ball-handling and his passing during his redshirt year, but if they still lag that far behind his shooting ability it seems like power forward is the best spot for him.

Another aspect of his game that seems to have Wood ticketed for the frontcourt is his defense. With his long levers, it takes him a while to unfold. There were a bunch of plays in 2018-19 when Wood simply couldn’t move his feet quickly enough to defend at a credible level on the perimeter.

In space, opponents were able to turn him around and leave him flailing on a regular basis:

Wood probably isn’t cut out to chase smaller, quicker players around on the perimeter, but if he’s playing forward he won’t be asked to do that as often.

Wood is listed at 210 pounds now, so he’s not quite the stick figure he looked like during his freshman year, but he’s not a banger by any means. The good news is that he doesn’t shirk his big-man responsibilities when called upon to hit the glass.

At Tulane, he showed a good grasp of the fundamentals of rebounding. When a shot went up, Wood could be relied upon to turn his head to locate the nearest opponent (the Green Wave played a lot of zone defense) and box them out. He was good about getting a body on someone; securing the ball was a different story, as his skinny frame made it difficult to outmuscle opponents for position:

Though he was usually stationed far away from the basket on offense, Wood liked to crash the glass in search of offensive rebounding opportunities. His favorite move was cutting along the baseline from the corner and tipping rebounds away.

Some of his forays didn’t result in much — he posted an offensive rebound rate of 5.1 percent in 2018-19 — but Wood is charmingly active on the boards:

In addition to rebounding, the other thing a small-ball big man needs to be able to do is defend the rim at a useful level. If a forward can’t deter shots at the rim, the coaches might as well replace him with a guard to improve offensive versatility (which the Rebels did, often, toward the end of last season).

The early returns weren’t promising for Wood. As a freshman at Tulane, he allowed opponents to shoot 60.9 percent on attempts around the rim; among more than 1,500 Division I players with as many attempts against, Wood ranked No. 1,424, according to Synergy Sports data.

Some of that can be attributed to how bad Tulane was; team defense was nonexistent and players were left out of position and scrambling to catch up on just about every possession.

But when Wood did get a chance to contest shots at the rim, he didn’t make much of a difference:

The Rebels will be more than happy to have Wood on the 2020-21 team. His shooting alone should make him a plus addition, especially since he has proven it at the college level (in a small sample size, of course). With Wood stretching defenses and knocking in 3-pointers, UNLV is poised to take an incredible leap forward in terms of outside shooting.

The rest of his game still requires work, and that’s why a redshirt year was probably a good thing for Wood’s development. He presumably got stronger, and another year to grow into his body will help in terms of coordination. That physical advancement, combined with the game slowing down for him, should help him catch up somewhat as a defensive player.

Wood probably won’t work as a small-ball center, but as a stretch-4 he will make the Rebels a better offensive team. And if his ball-handling and passing improves — which, with three years of eligibility remaining, it very well could — Wood could develop into an impact player.

Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy