Lets talk about....fouls | Page 2 | The Boneyard

Lets talk about....fouls

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We put the opponent in the bonus way too quickly. We do get screwed sometimes but I think its just been a constant since Hurley has been here (I don't have stats the back it up, just my observation).
 
How many times have we heard Hurley say we have to learn to play tough defense without fouling? It seems like he say it a lot.

So he is aware of the problem. But it never seems to get solved.
 
Palatine said:
How many times have we heard Hurley say we have to learn to play tough defense without fouling? It seems like he say it a lot.

So he is aware of the problem. But it never seems to get solved.
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Seems to me this more a personnel type of thing where individuals need to not do certain things that get called for fouls. I'm sure they are told not to ..... also maybe lack of lateral foot speed to stay with man leads to some of these things.
 
We don't draw many fouls because we don't go to the hoop all that often, and our players aren't guys who use their bodies to "draw" them. It's Silas/Solo going full speed into a 6-11 guy or AK getting beaten to the spot. Stew got hammered on one play that wasn't called for sure, though.

All in all, I think the foul whining on this board is freaking embarrassing. It's constantly the "freedom of motion" crying. Guess what? We do it, too. In fact, go to another team's forum, and you'll see them crying about how we are constantly clutching, grabbing, and setting illegal screens. I feel like almost every screen Samson/Donovan ever set was technically illegal. So basically, it's an NFL holding situation on every play. We legit got a gift, a "5" second call to ice the game. Silas blatantly pushed off for an "and-1," and there have been very fortuitous calls for us each game.

For why we commit so many fouls, it is because the system that Dan Hurley wants to employ, essentially a tight man on an island style and hedging/rotations, requires good athletes and/or smart players. We do not have great athletes and the ones that should be good defenders (Solo, Stew/Ross <-- I know both have improved) tend to be a step slow or make dumb decisions. A perfect example is Mahaney last year. I believe without question he is a smart basketball player. He is, however, slow and not very physical. So he was asked to guard on an island and would get beaten. He'd scramble to recover and body his guy into fouls. If you watch Cam early on in 24, he committed a lot of fouls before he realized how to play this type of defense and trust his rim protectors.
 
One problem with our defense is our guys are most likely used to defending the UConn offense that gets run in practice which doesn’t include a lot of drives. Then we get to a game where the other team just drives on us non-stop. We probably don’t practice or see that 1-on-1 defense as much as teams that drive the ball all the time do. We’ll see plenty of it in the Big East and I expect our defense will improve even more. Right now we have the 7th ranked defense according to KenPom and that likely still includes some data from last year where we weren’t good defensively. Also, Reed has turned into a pretty good post defender and he’s been out more than he’s been in, so the interior defense should improve as well.
 
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Jaydumo20 said:
Often a topic after every game. Many complain, many others say "stop complaining"
Whatever your side, one thing is clear:
This team, as well as the two natty teams under Dan Hurley, shoots less foul shots than their opponents quite often.

Why?

Our offensive style?
Defensive style?
Lack of discipline?
Anti-UConn bias?

To claim it's a combination of these doesnt come close to explaining such huge disparities between us and the other teams.

What's going on with the whistle?
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It is because WE FOUL WAY MORE THAN OUR OPPONENTS.
 
rashadray11 said:
It is because WE FOUL WAY MORE THAN OUR OPPONENTS.
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Yes. I agree. And as @boog204 said, we may not have the quickest defenders and I don't think Dan cares. He prioritizes toughness and aggression. The reason we won is because of his defensive substitutions. This team IS very deep. A fresh legged Ross is going to be better than a wing who has to play 30 minutes. Our rotations allow us to foul (even though i don't think he enjoyed situations like Mullins got into)

But it works for us. We are disciplined enough to force a lot of shot clock violations. Id wager we are up there with the best in the country in that metric so there are times when we play great clean aggressive d.

lastly, Dan Hurley rarely complains about officiating anymore.
I think he understands.
 
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1) Our offense is designed to generate wide open looks, either at the rim or the 3-point line. Our guys do their work before they receive the ball. Other teams have adopted the 2010's Seattle Seahawks approach of constantly clutching and grabbing, knowing that the refs are afraid to call everything, especially off the ball. So the actions on which we draw the most contact, we don't get whistles. And then we just don't generate a lot of those actions (contested drives to the rim) where the refs might actually blow the whistle.

2) Our defense emphasizes physicality -- no easy buckets. A coaching mentality that preaches toughness isn't always able to dial in the savvy that goes with it (this was much worse early in the Hurley era where he was compelled to almost entirely coach effort rather than intelligence on the floor). I think we live with this to an extent.

3) Anti-Hurley/UConn bias, in the Big East and nationally. There isn't much to debate here, it's been well documented.
 
boog204 said:
We don't draw many fouls because we don't go to the hoop all that often, and our players aren't guys who use their bodies to "draw" them. It's Silas/Solo going full speed into a 6-11 guy or AK getting beaten to the spot. Stew got hammered on one play that wasn't called for sure, though.

All in all, I think the foul whining on this board is freaking embarrassing. It's constantly the "freedom of motion" crying. Guess what? We do it, too. In fact, go to another team's forum, and you'll see them crying about how we are constantly clutching, grabbing, and setting illegal screens. I feel like almost every screen Samson/Donovan ever set was technically illegal. So basically, it's an NFL holding situation on every play. We legit got a gift, a "5" second call to ice the game. Silas blatantly pushed off for an "and-1," and there have been very fortuitous calls for us each game.

For why we commit so many fouls, it is because the system that Dan Hurley wants to employ, essentially a tight man on an island style and hedging/rotations, requires good athletes and/or smart players. We do not have great athletes and the ones that should be good defenders (Solo, Stew/Ross <-- I know both have improved) tend to be a step slow or make dumb decisions. A perfect example is Mahaney last year. I believe without question he is a smart basketball player. He is, however, slow and not very physical. So he was asked to guard on an island and would get beaten. He'd scramble to recover and body his guy into fouls. If you watch Cam early on in 24, he committed a lot of fouls before he realized how to play this type of defense and trust his rim protectors.
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I agree. We don’t drive to the hoop enough. And, we don’t force TOs and get out and run enough either.
 
Coach J said:
It seems like forever we get called for at least 1 moving screen a game by our post players at the 3 pt. line. Against Fl last year in the tournament, we had a key made 3 wiped out because of one Samson Johnson got called for. It's easily correctable and it's one less foul before our opponents are in the bonus. Something we need to limit.
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Why would we correct something that gets called once a game but gives us an advantage 30 other times a game? We set illegal screens on purpose in many cases (though the Reibe one against Florida was egregious).
 
This made be difficult to understand. We have certain players who can't defend well without fouling. When those players are guards, they put extra pressure on our centers who can't well without fouling.

Reed has improved noticeably on this front but when he is up against a larger front line (ours is less brutish by design) he's going to pick up extra fouls.

Last year, he and Johnson were both foul machines. Reibe looks like he's more solid on the defensive end than Johnson was. We should only have real foul problems against bigger teams similar to Florida when Koroma can't be used to steal a few.

In the back court, we have two guys who can defend decently and one that's better than before and one that needs to figure it out.

On the wings, AK, JS and JR have figured it out but their will be games where each picks up early or cheap fouls that cause issues.

Early and cheap fouls are really the problem here. They can be aware but that's about it. A lot comes down to rotation mistakes and unfriendly whistle.

It was a much bigger problem in previous years, especially last year.
 
HW611 said:
Personally, there’s easy ways to defend yourself from it and draw attention to it. If we let guys freely get into our shirts and do nothing about it that’s on us.
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We need to sell the grabbing more. Make the cut and throw your head and shoulders back. Flail your arms. Do whatever you can to draw attention to it.

Alex should try to backdoor on that cut -- going over the screener helps the defender conceal the grab, but if he cuts hard the other way it will be clear as day that he's being held.

If that doesn't work, hit their arms/hands when they grab you. If they keep grabbing your shirt their arms should be so sore by the end of the game that they can't raise them up to shoot.
 
Excalibur said:
If that doesn't work, hit their arms/hands when they grab you. If they keep grabbing your shirt their arms should be so sore by the end of the game that they can't raise them up to shoot.
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It’s really this last part. Rip moves, knock downs, etc. not hard to do.

It simultaneously draws attention to it too. But yeah if we just let guys get into our shirts and do nothing about it that’s on us.
 
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I really don't mind most of the fouls called on us, as most are fouls, it's the lack of fouls on the other end when we are getting held constantly without calls. I still can't believe refs let that jersey pull go.
 
auror said:
Why would we correct something that gets called once a game but gives us an advantage 30 other times a game? We set illegal screens on purpose in many cases (though the Reibe one against Florida was egregious).
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How about doing it without blatantly throwing your knee out and setting them correctly so you don't pick up a cheap foul? I don't know just a thought.
 
HW611 said:
I remember hearing or reading that Hurley would lightly call fouls in practice to prepare the team for Big East play.

Think the combination of that and our team being more shooters than rim attackers can lead to foul discrepancy.

Newton was the only guy in those back to back runs that really drove well enough to draw fouls and get to the line. Possibly Castle too but his useage wasn’t as high.
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Cam was actually pretty good driving too and creating offense inside. That team had great options with Cam, Newton and Castle with the ability to drive and create havoc. We really have not had this past 2 years but Smith is definitely trying to do that to create offense for others.
 
Excalibur said:
We need to sell the grabbing more. Make the cut and throw your head and shoulders back. Flail your arms. Do whatever you can to draw attention to it.

Alex should try to backdoor on that cut -- going over the screener helps the defender conceal the grab, but if he cuts hard the other way it will be clear as day that he's being held.

If that doesn't work, hit their arms/hands when they grab you. If they keep grabbing your shirt their arms should be so sore by the end of the game that they can't raise them up to shoot.
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Interesting you say. Ray Allen was very good with the hand fighting when moving without the ball. I remember Derek Fisher was trying to hold him and Ray just tossed Fisher to the floor 😅.
 
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Coach J said:
How about doing it without blatantly throwing your knee out and setting them correctly so you don't pick up a cheap foul? I don't know just a thought.
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If you want them to correctly set illegal screens, then I agree.
 
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I think it’s mostly to do with our offensive style, movement, and screens. It’s often a battle tip in with 50:50 foul depending on how good their big is or it’s a play drawn up for a 3. I feel like we haven’t seen much dribble drives into traffic. Our guys are pretty smart about that. I figured Demary would do more of that like Newton or Castle but I think we’ll see it more as the season progresses and his confidence goes up.
 
Palatine said:
Braylon Mullins has his shirt held in from of the entire MSG crowd and there is no call. It does make one wonder.
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Sure did. And Silas blatantly pushed off on an and-1. We could go eye for eye all game. Bottom line: the officiating sucks, usually for both teams, and it's pointless to cry about it every game. The chat is painful this way. Every single play is some egregious foul against us or a terrible foul call on us.
 
rashadray11 said:
We objectively do.
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And right here is where the debate becomes irreconcilable.

The officials call the fouls and it is only that data that is ever recorded. So, from that perspective we "objectively" commit more fouls.

When the argument is that the fouls that should be called are not called, it renders the argument "subjective", since that is what the observer has seen, but is never quantified.

I apologize for stepping in.

By all means, please continue.
 
uh-no said:
The stupid fouls going for low percentage plays like certain steals or blocks on fast breaks....
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Which are the easiest to call and the most obvious, and we do it so very much. I love our guys, but we just do foul a lot. And very clear obvious ones at that.
 
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