Easier to learn as a D1 college baller: offense or defense?

[Jaydumo20]

*Not only offensive schemes/defensive schemes but the physical skills necessary to play the position.

Like Mayor Quimby's nephew once said:
"I'm gonna enjoy 'dis

 

[RuffRuff]

Not sure it’s close. Think about this premise - kids for the history of time can go into the driveway to practice their offense, and enjoy it. Who goes out and practices defense, and then also enjoys it? Defense is also truly a team concept, sum of all parts and you need to work on it with your teammates. It has to work together in symphony. Offense less as much. Offense much more natural to want to get better at, especially in today’s world of tic toc.

 

[Umami Zen]

According to Dan Hurley. It's much easier to recruit better shooters/offensive players and then teach them defensive skills than the reverse. Per his stated/quoted approach on the 2025 recruiting class.

 

[willie99]

Easy, coaching and running a program

 

[Lefty2one]

Depends on the systems. We ran Princeton's offense in college 20+ years ago and we had juniors getting pulled from games because they couldn't remember all the reads, even in their third year in the program.

 

[dogpause]

I would think HS players don't get noticed unless they either score a lot, or have exceptional size.

 

[husky429]

The answer is easily defense. Offense is millions of reps of the basics. Defense requires another level of processing speed to understand. It takes a very, very long time to understand at a high level. And some never do.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Defense much easier to teach.

Offensive skills and instinct take times. Any coach worth his samr can take length and make a defensive system.

Now, great defensive players like Clingan are rare abs valuable. But its easier to turn a McNeeley and Karaban into a competent defender.

Always take ball skill and talent first.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Defense is easier to learn and teach. There will be second and third reads that will be different for every coach, but the base defensive system for man-to-man and even 2-3 and 3-2 zones will be similar across coaches.

Offenses can be radically different, and most college playbooks are huge. A kid teaching himself to shoot in the driveway is very different than playing in even a high school caliber offense. Offense is harder to learn on a new team.

I am beginning to feel there is just too much experience and skill on UConn for Hurley not to turn the defense around.

 

[husky429]

I was thinking about this more. I think your question boils down to your classic lawyer answer.... it depends.

The physical skills required to play defense or offense? In that case it's offense. The physical skills on defense mostly happen in the weight room. A lot of the "skills" people talk about on defense like which hand to block with, never crossing your feet, boxing out etc. are actually kind of myths or are at least in the "it depends" category as well. Defense is all S&C and between the ears learned in practices.

Now if we take that question as "what is harder to learn?" it also depends on how you interpret the question.

I could give someone with motivation individual coaching a couple hours a week to refine their form, and then have them track their time and repetitions for the skills. With enough motivation you're going to get pretty darn good unless you're an absolute clutz. 20 minutes of dribbling drills a day, hundreds of shooting reps, and layups with both hands will get you pretty far. You still need team reps to learn the ins and outs of spacing and passing and such, but quite a few offense skills can be learned on your own with work ethic.

Defense isn't something you can learn on your own... ever. It's all feel for the game, heart, and having an insane IQ. I can't give you a plan to make 500 3s with good form a day, and voila, you're a shooter in year. You just have to play, play, play and get feedback from coaches and watch film. Couple all that work in practice with the mindset to murder someone on the court, and you get Steph Castle.

Learning passing on offense is much more like learning defense. It's all feel and repetitions. There's no shortcuts.

 

[Scottobot]

To improve at either requires work ethic and intelligence. Recruiting players with right work ethic seems to be #1 priority.

To become a good shooter requires having correct form and 100s of hours of repetition before improvement happens. If a talented player comes out of high school with bad form and bad habits they might be reluctant to redo their short form and take a step backwards in order to go forwards later.

On flip side you can’t teach what Castle and Andre Jackson could doon defense, but if you have have average defenders that are smart, know the defensive scheme and don’t make mistakes they can be good at defense.

I think Hurley’s winning formula is to get one elite wing defender that shutdown that superstar guard, 1 elite rim defender, and then just have 3 other average defenders that know where they are supposed to be and can follow team scheme. Further he wants those 3 guys to be scorers and passers.

 

[Jaydumo20]

I was thinking about this more. I think your question boils down to your classic lawyer answer.... it depends.

The physical skills required to play defense or offense? In that case it's offense. The physical skills on defense mostly happen in the weight room. A lot of the "skills" people talk about on defense like which hand to block with, never crossing your feet, boxing out etc. are actually kind of myths or are at least in the "it depends" category as well. Defense is all S&C and between the ears learned in practices.

Now if we take that question as "what is harder to learn?" it also depends on how you interpret the question.

I could give someone with motivation individual coaching a couple hours a week to refine their form, and then have them track their time and repetitions for the skills. With enough motivation you're going to get pretty darn good unless you're an absolute clutz. 20 minutes of dribbling drills a day, hundreds of shooting reps, and layups with both hands will get you pretty far. You still need team reps to learn the ins and outs of spacing and passing and such, but quite a few offense skills can be learned on your own with work ethic.

Defense isn't something you can learn on your own... ever. It's all feel for the game, heart, and having an insane IQ. I can't give you a plan to make 500 3s with good form a day, and voila, you're a shooter in year. You just have to play, play, play and get feedback from coaches and watch film. Couple all that work in practice with the mindset to murder someone on the court, and you get Steph Castle.

Learning passing on offense is much more like learning defense. It's all feel and repetitions. There's no shortcuts.

I agree. I look at A Jax and in order to be a good defender he could have the worst, handle, and worst shot, it wouldn't matter. He has the only 3 things that do: athletic coordination, drive and instinct. And as you say, a lot of that instinct comes from playing a lot. But.... you can't learn to be a great shooter even if you're a supreme athlete i.e.........Andre Jackson Jr. Ha. I use him as an example in half my bball conversations.

 

[husky429]

But.... you can't learn to be a great shooter even if you're a supreme athlete i.e.........Andre Jackson Jr. Ha. I use him as an example in half my bball conversations.

Andre's inability to learn to shoot is an example of something I say on here that tends to piss people off. It is REALLY, REALLY difficult to improve skills in college due to the lack of practice time and generalized nature of the coaching. That doesn't mean you can't improve... it's just harder. Players can improve decision-making and learn the Xs and Os in college, but truly learning a new skill at an elite level is tough.

In the league, Andre has a full-time, dedicated coach for shooting as much as he wants all off-season, and he has improved. Whereas in college, he worked with Kimani in limited time in the off-season. There's just only so much the coaching staff could do in between recruiting visits, game planning, etc.