Chief’s Briefs - Iona Edition

[Excalibur]

Why do something you need to recover from? That’s like having to recover from a drug addiction. Why get addicted in the first place, if you can avoid it? Our objective should not be to create mismatches for the other team. While most Bigs prefer not to match up against a guard 23 feet from the basket, because Adama has relatively quick feet, views it as a challenge. He almost always switches to the guard. Then his man rolls to the basket and Adama is left on that crazy treadmill running back to the basket but defensively out of position.

You literally want us to play defense using a tactic that is used by no other team in the country. We attacked the ball screen in the second half, and rotated to cover the roll. It was an adjustment that worked. Full stop.

That aside, be ready for more hard hedging on Sunday. Before the injury, VCU’s hard hedge was very disruptive against St. Mary’s.

 

[Hunt for 7]

I’m probably the only individual who was happy with the minutes Diarra gave the team yesterday. Yes he missed a layup that was open. One was blocked. And he took a three early in a possession with an open Joey to his left. Not a problem for me. He had 3 assists to one turnover.

The one boneheaded defensive play where he slid off his player to double a player AJax had locked down with time running out on the shot clock giving his player a wide open three was my biggest grievance.
Otherwise his defense was good.

What Diarra did was put pressure on their defense to run back to their basket. He’s our quickest guard and I felt he contributed to the process of demoralizing and tiring out Iona along with the rest of our bench.

This is our way! I have spoken!

FWIW we are going to need him tomorrow. St Mary leading scorers is the point guard Logan Johnson and you need to stay in front of him to guard him effectively. If he gets an angle on you he uses a combination of strength and quickness to get his shot off. AJ may end up guarding him if for some reason Newton or Diara have trouble. But he is key to their success. Diara does a real good job of staying in front of the man he guards. The only issue is that Johnson looks like a big 6’2” and Diara may be too small to guard him. Thank goodness Hurley has so many options.

 

[Chief00]

You literally want us to play defense using a tactic that is used by no other team in the country. We attacked the ball screen in the second half, and rotated to cover the roll. It was an adjustment that worked. Full stop.

That aside, be ready for more hard hedging on Sunday. Before the injury, VCU’s hard hedge was very disruptive against St. Mary’s.

You lack the technical understanding about how a defense should be executed. When you play 4 out and 1 in and the 1 in guy is chasing the point guard 25 feet from the basket you are typically rotating a 6-4 guy against a 6-9 or 6-10 guy going to the rim. It is a situation that creates fouls and mismatches.