Florida State Basketball: Early look at what Caleb Mills brings to Seminoles

Defensive Strengths

When Mills is aware that an opposing big man is coming to set a screen on him, he is at his best as a ball screen defender. This is because Mills is able to quickly jump to the ball-handler’s right side (if the screener tries to send the ball-handler to his right) or to the ball-handler’s left side (if the screener tries to send the ball-handler to his left) so that the screener has to dive to the basket and let the ball-handler make a play on his own if he can.

This helps eliminate the major responsibilities that Mills’ teammates would normally have to fulfill, which allowed guys like Justin Gorham and Fabian White Jr. (who played with Mills in 2019-20) to follow the screener down to either block and think a lot less (which typically makes big men more effective).

At first, I thought that Mills was just jumping to his opponent’s strong side (if the screener was trying to send him to that side) so that they would have to use their non-dominant hand more often, but as time went on I realized that even if a right-handed ball-handler was preparing to come off a screen that would take him to his left, Mills was still interested in jumping to the ball-handler’s left side, and blowing up the screen entirely.

This makes it virtually impossible for teams to succeed in pick-and-pop situations because opposing big men can’t set hard screens on Mills, force communication issues, and dart out to the top of the key or either wing. And if a ball-handler is still set on trying to make a screen work, Mills knows that all he has to do is stay solid and wait for the ball-handler to charge straight into him, which will result in an offensive foul if the nearest referee is on his game.

When Mills is acting as an off-ball defender, there are a couple of things that he does particularly well. Although it may be enticing for Mills to leave his man and commit to stopping the ball-handler from getting deep into the paint, he simply stunts at the ball-handler to let him know that he’s there, before returning to his man promptly (which helps shorten his closeouts), and giving the closest big man a chance to make a play on the ball at the rim.

Additionally, when Mills is defending a player that loves to run off of screens, Mills stays glued to his side so that he can crowd his space when the ball finally arrives.

As an on-ball defender, Mills utilizes his first slide superbly which allows him to keep up with his opponents when they are trying to maneuver their way to the rim. Mills will get beat off the dribble every now and then, but most of the time Mills is able to stay in front of his opponents during every one of their moves and force them to give the ball up before they really want to. If Mills continues to get better as an on-ball defender (even though he is already very good in that area), he could raise his defensive game to an even higher level in the future.