Hurley Presser

[Excalibur]

Any well run man to man has to have a philosophy. I’m sure that we have one but quite honestly it is hard for me to figure out. It is about denying floor space for any offense to operate. I like fanning to the sideline but never giving up two things - baseline and allowing a penetrator to get back to the basket line. I hate to see the drop step that allows a ball handler to go wherever they want to gbviously you aren’t going to be able to get it done all the time and when you get beat your have to rotate and cover down effectively. I’ll say again too that when Mahaney is on the floor guarding someone who takes him right to the block, expecting him to defend bigger stronger people is unrealistic.

You don't know what the philosophy is? Everything we do is designed to limit 3 point attempts. You can see it when Hurley gets pissed at Ross and Stewart for helping off of perimeter shooters. We're deliberately giving up dribble penetration to limit the 2 point shot. You can argue that it doesn't make sense with this roster, but the strategy/philosophy is pretty clear if you have eyes and a functioning brain.

p.s. I know that your post was just a lousy attempt to paint yourself as some basketball guru. It wasn't convincing.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

Can you tell me of a team that flipped its roster almost entirely in one year and packaged 4 five stars along with 3 portal guys as the core to their team? This is new, and they went out and acquired the majority of the roster in one offseason. I haven't seen a roster overhaul like it in the portal era. Yes one of those freshman is unique. Most programs don't have the luxury of this strategy, and if anything would prefer Duke not setting a successful blueprint that only they can manufacture.

You're looking at this from a very strange angle. A team that can get any player it wants got every player it wanted. That's not really a "blueprint" in the traditional sense of the word, because it's not establishing something that other teams can replicate. I would bet that Duke has had more five stars on their roster in the last 3 seasons than UConn has had in the history of the program. So what exactly is Duke teaching the rest of college basketball about roster construction?

 

[superjohn]

I hate Duke as much as anybody -- but Sion James would've fit really well on our team. That's a great example of somebody we should've targeted in the portal.

Sure he would help but he would be coming off our bench if we're at full strength. Duke is really good because Flagg is incredible. The rest of that roster isn't anything special and they would be going through it just as bad or worse than we are if Flagg went down like McNeeley went down.

 

[superjohn]

You're looking at this from a very strange angle. A team that can get any player it wants got every player it wanted. That's not really a "blueprint" in the traditional sense of the word, because it's not establishing something that other teams can replicate. I would bet that Duke has had more five stars on their roster in the last 3 seasons than UConn has had in the history of the program. So what exactly is Duke teaching the rest of college basketball about roster construction?

We have a team of ballet dancers and we're going to be young and dainty next season. Hurley really needs to be looking to John Scheyer who forever changed the formula of how to dominate college basketball.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Success hasn't softened them. Their styles and personalities are finesse.

Kataban a finesse player, Stewart, McNeeley, Ball are finesse skill first. Reed and Johnson aren't naturally aggressive people.

The only guy who is a pest on the floor is Diarra. There is no one in this team they the oppoonets hate.

They need a Cam Spencer, Andre Jackson type instigator.

Maybe it is Ross. I don't know.

But Solomon a matador on D. One of his defensive misses was comical. I mean, get him in a defensive stands. Bent at the legs and move your feet.

He will never get in an nba floor with that kind of D. No matter how good a shooter he is.

 

[Deleted at users request]

What is unique about Duke’s roster makeup besides having arguably the best freshman prospect in 20 years? They have a roster of uber talented young players balanced out by veteran tough guys. It’s a good approach. Every coach in America would feel a lot better about their squad with a Cooper Flagg on it. Scheyer didn’t crack some secret code here.

Aye you know 20 years include the Kevin Durant’s, Derrick Rose’s etc.? Lol

Flagg is probably the best freshman since COVID was a thing. That’s how far I’d personally go with it.

Cade Cunningham with Oklahoma State was about as perfect a PG prospect you can ask for.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Sure he would help but he would be coming off our bench if we're at full strength. Duke is really good because Flagg is incredible. The rest of that roster isn't anything special and they would be going through it just as bad or worse than we are if Flagg went down like McNeeley went down.

Flagg is the personality we miss. McNeeley has a little of that in hin too. I wish Stewart was one of those chip on the shoulder guys.

 

[HooperScooper]

We have the #8 offense in the country. I'm sure we could tweak it, but I don't think that's the end we need to worry about at all.

And I think it was #2 before McNeeley went down. Hopefully he comes back strong and the offense goes back to what it was.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Aye you know 20 years include the Kevin Durant’s, Derrick Rose’s etc.? Lol

Flagg is probably the best freshman since COVID was a thing. That’s how far I’d personally go with it.

Cade Cunningham with Oklahoma State was about as perfect a PG prospect you can ask for.

Flagg is best freshman I have seen since Lebron. Durant was a great shooter, but flagg looks like the entire package and has an incredible motor:competitiveness.

It sucks he is at duke, but he dwarfs every American prospect since lebron, Melo.

Doesn't matter, Victor is gonna dominate league and will bring Castle with him to the hall of fame as a great No. 2.

 

[GlastonTim]

Has anyone posted the post game presser yet? Some good stuff in it.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

Aye you know 20 years include the Kevin Durant’s, Derrick Rose’s etc.? Lol

Flagg is probably the best freshman since COVID was a thing. That’s how far I’d personally go with it.

Cade Cunningham with Oklahoma State was about as perfect a PG prospect you can ask for.

I do, yeah.

 

[RuffRuff]

We have a team of ballet dancers and we're going to be young and dainty next season. Hurley really needs to be looking to John Scheyer who forever changed the formula of how to dominate college basketball.

Duke has 3 guys currently mocked higher than our highest mocked guy. Given we are consensus that Liam is our best player, not sure that they have limited talent beyond Flagg. But yeah, he is what makes them different.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10150092-2025-nba-mock-draft-full-2-round-predictions-and-pro-comparisons

Roster building in the portal era is very interesting as it's a new feature, and has leveled the playing field to offset programs that have historically hogged all the blue chip HS talent. It's a different evaluation, and Hurley has been a magician in the portal the last few years. Yet he seemed to lean more heavily on his HS recruits and HS recruiting this past cycle. I'll be very curious as to how he evaluates current roster versus available options this upcoming cycle and if he sticks to loyalty/continuity, or if he does some overhauling (like Scheyer) to upgrade talent if it presents.

Scheyer did in fact pull something pretty unique this past off season. The guy proactively said se la vi to multiple starters (Mitchell, Roach), along with 2 highly recruited freshman, to overhaul his roster. You basically have 7 new players as the core of a team. Would Hurley do that? Probably not with his continuity & culture thing. Question has been whether this Duke approach can work year over year because it generally says continuity means jack, talent is everything. I've been curious to see it play out. If anything I'd prefer Duke not having a successful blueprint only they can manufacture.

You also have Pope whipping his program up with nothing but new faces out of the portal. Seems the continuity thing is overrated, and talent takes precedent.

 

[87Xfer]

Yeah, sure, we might have several guys on this year's team that were part of previous title teams, but only 2 of them (Diarra, Johnson) averaged more than 10 minutes a game outside of Ball for a 5-6 game stretch last year. And McNeeley just is that good too.

Did you watch a lot of Connecticut basketball last year? I think the Karaban guy played some minutes...

 

[Deleted at users request]

Flagg is best freshman I have seen since Lebron. Durant was a great shooter, but flagg looks like the entire package and has an incredible motor:competitiveness.

It sucks he is at duke, but he dwarfs every American prospect since lebron, Melo.

Doesn't matter, Victor is gonna dominate league and will bring Castle with him to the hall of fame as a great No. 2.

Kevin Durant averaged 26 and 11 at Texas. Nobody freshman or not may ever put up those kind of numbers again. What are we talking about?

Flagg isn’t even a refined scorer yet. Not the best scorer in his own class.

 

[Inyatkin]

Kevin Durant averaged 26 and 11 at Texas. Nobody freshman or not may ever put up those kind of numbers again. What are we talking about?

Flagg isn’t even a refined scorer yet. Not the best scorer in his own class.

Michael Beasley put up 26 and 12 at Kansas State as a freshman. Took one entire year for someone to put up those numbers.

 

[superjohn]

Duke has 3 guys currently mocked higher than our highest mocked guy. Given we are consensus that Liam is our best player, not sure that they have limited talent beyond Flagg. But yeah, he is what makes them different.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10150092-2025-nba-mock-draft-full-2-round-predictions-and-pro-comparisons

Roster building in the portal era is very interesting as it's a new feature, and has leveled the playing field to offset programs that have historically hogged all the blue chip HS talent. It's a different evaluation, and Hurley has been a magician in the portal the last few years. Yet he seemed to lean more heavily on his HS recruits and HS recruiting this past cycle. I'll be very curious as to how he evaluates current roster versus available options this upcoming cycle and if he sticks to loyalty/continuity, or if he does some overhauling (like Scheyer) to upgrade talent if it presents.

Scheyer did in fact pull something pretty unique this past off season. The guy proactively said se la vi to multiple starters (Mitchell, Roach), along with 2 highly recruited freshman, to overhaul his roster. You basically have 7 new players as the core of a team. Would Hurley do that? Probably not with his continuity & culture thing. Question has been whether this Duke approach can work year over year because it generally says continuity means jack, talent is everything. I've been curious to see it play out. If anything I'd prefer Duke not having a successful blueprint only they can manufacture.

You also have Pope whipping his program up with nothing but new faces out of the portal. Seems the continuity thing is overrated, and talent takes precedent.

Liam is better than Knueppel, so is AK. I don't care about mock drafts but this is the first one that pops up when I googled it.

NBA Mock Draft - NBADraft.net

Specializing in drafts with top players on the NBA horizon, player profiles, scouting reports, rankings and prospective international recruits.

www.nbadraft.net

 

[husky429]

Any well run man to man has to have a philosophy. I’m sure that we have one but quite honestly it is hard for me to figure out. It is about denying floor space for any offense to operate. I like fanning to the sideline but never giving up two things - baseline and allowing a penetrator to get back to the basket line. I hate to see the drop step that allows a ball handler to go wherever they want to gbviously you aren’t going to be able to get it done all the time and when you get beat your have to rotate and cover down effectively. I’ll say again too that when Mahaney is on the floor guarding someone who takes him right to the block, expecting him to defend bigger stronger people is unrealistic.

Our man-to-man defense has a clear philosophy. On the perimeter, we're limiting 3-point attempts aggressively. And always forcing sideline/baseline. We don't stunt on the ball much and instead rely on the guy 2 passes away to help. This gives up more drives, and limits more 3-point attempts. This requires a big with good shot-blocking ability (Clingan) to clean up or otherwordly BBIQ (Sanogo) to pull off at a high level. It puts a ton of pressure on the big.

We also hedge and force to the sideline on ball screens rather than doing a packline and forcing middle. This means frequently the 4-man has a lot of pressure put on them defensively to defend the rim. It's why we prioritized shot-blocking 3s and 4s early in Hurley's tenure here before changing our recruiting philsoophy to focus more on offense.

There's a lot more detail to our defense, much of which I could guess at but am not 100% sure what the guys are being taught.

But at the end of the day, it isn't the philosophy that is a concern to me. Getting beat by a ballhandler is normal in basketball and planned for. Getting beat all the time is not. That can't be schemed for. Nor can forgetting where to be on the floor. Am I in help? Am I denying the shot? Is my man a shooter? Is anyone behind me to help on the drive?

Simply put: if you can't guard your man straight up and at least make the shot tough or give time for help, or if you don't know where to be on the floor in our defensive scheme... it doesn't matter what the philosophy is.

 

[ctbro1999]

Did you watch a lot of Connecticut basketball last year? I think the Karaban guy played some minutes...

Whoops, Karaban got Thanos-dusted from my mind when making that comment.
But my point still stands that while we may have "lots of guys with rings" only a few actually played legit minutes on those title teams.

 

[CL82]

Watching this now the only thing I take "issue" with is him legit saying we are a bad defensive team and that he's considered changes to the schemes but that previous years were very successful with it so we'll stay the course. It's a stubborn viewpoint imo and not really playing to the team's strengths/weaknesses, etc. I remember thinking JC was maddening at times because he ran the same stuff offensively pretty much regardless of personnel. Dan Hurley is following the same blueprint defensively. We have bad individual defenders, our help defense is non-existent (how many straight line layups/dunks do we give up?), our hedging is ridiculously aggressive and forces bad defenders to rotate. It's been the same thing since the Memphis game (with some improvement obviously) and the rationale is, "well, we've been successful with this scheme before so we'll stick with it."

I think we are very soft and flawed and even if we had McNeeley throughout and were now 15-3 the same issues are still there. I feel like, for the first time in years, we've becoming fairly easily to gameplan/prepare for.

What I don't like about the hard hedge is that we use it consistently. Teams in the league have adapted.

 

[CL82]

McNeeley is great but he’s more of a maxed out Karaban in that even in HS he was more of an amazing secondary option than go to scorer

True but that first option was Cooper Flagg.

 

[6Nattys4Us]

Success hasn't softened them. Their styles and personalities are finesse.

Kataban a finesse player, Stewart, McNeeley, Ball are finesse skill first. Reed and Johnson aren't naturally aggressive people.

The only guy who is a pest on the floor is Diarra. There is no one in this team they the oppoonets hate.

They need a Cam Spencer, Andre Jackson type instigator.

Maybe it is Ross. I don't know.

But Solomon a matador on D. One of his defensive misses was comical. I mean, get him in a defensive stands. Bent at the legs and move your feet.

He will never get in an nba floor with that kind of D. No matter how good a shooter he is.

Karaban is a lunch pail guy. He runs out in front, can beat his guy to the basket, etc. Not exactly Kevin Freeman, but a more complete player with the same mentality.

The pests are Diarra and Ross - and Johnson when he's pestering the wrong guy at the 3.

They play D in the NBA?

 

[6Nattys4Us]

True but that first option was Cooper Flagg.

to quote 247's Finkelstein "McNeeley has a high natural feel for the game and is a good passer who can also facilitate for others around him. In fact, Montverde frequently made him the featured player of their half-court offense during his junior season and relied on his ability to make decisions with the ball in his hands, not necessarily as a primary ball-handler, but as the first domino in many of their actions."

We miss Liam tremendously.

 

[FreeKlaiber]

Our man-to-man defense has a clear philosophy. On the perimeter, we're limiting 3-point attempts aggressively. And always forcing sideline/baseline. We don't stunt on the ball much and instead rely on the guy 2 passes away to help. This gives up more drives, and limits more 3-point attempts. This requires a big with good shot-blocking ability (Clingan) to clean up or otherwordly BBIQ (Sanogo) to pull off at a high level. It puts a ton of pressure on the big.

We also hedge and force to the sideline on ball screens rather than doing a packline and forcing middle. This means frequently the 4-man has a lot of pressure put on them defensively to defend the rim. It's why we prioritized shot-blocking 3s and 4s early in Hurley's tenure here before changing our recruiting philsoophy to focus more on offense.

There's a lot more detail to our defense, much of which I could guess at but am not 100% sure what the guys are being taught.

But at the end of the day, it isn't the philosophy that is a concern to me. Getting beat by a ballhandler is normal in basketball and planned for. Getting beat all the time is not. That can't be schemed for. Nor can forgetting where to be on the floor. Am I in help? Am I denying the shot? Is my man a shooter? Is anyone behind me to help on the drive?

Simply put: if you can't guard your man straight up and at least make the shot tough or give time for help, or if you don't know where to be on the floor in our defensive scheme... it doesn't matter what the philosophy is.

good post. Counterpoint. I saw Mahaney probably play 6+ games in his first 2 yrs, and never thought he stood out as a terrible defender. Though slight, I don't remember him stranded on an island. This year, he's exposed. So the scheme has to play a role. Just having him (& stew & solo?) give a step, and have a man 2 passes away actually with a foot in lane would help. I'm confident we will either improve, or (more likely) it will soon be so clear, he will have to adjust. I mean Chuck Finley Lojack was made to look like Kolek last night.

 

[LBird33]

Success hasn't softened them. Their styles and personalities are finesse.

Kataban a finesse player, Stewart, McNeeley, Ball are finesse skill first. Reed and Johnson aren't naturally aggressive people.

The only guy who is a pest on the floor is Diarra. There is no one in this team they the oppoonets hate.

They need a Cam Spencer, Andre Jackson type instigator.

Maybe it is Ross. I don't know.

But Solomon a matador on D. One of his defensive misses was comical. I mean, get him in a defensive stands. Bent at the legs and move your feet.

He will never get in an nba floor with that kind of D. No matter how good a shooter he is.

100% agree about defense

 

[Excalibur]

What I don't like about the hard hedge is that we use it consistently. Teams in the league have adapted.

We didn't use it at all with Clingan. We should probably limit it with Reed as well.