Our Defense

[jibsey]

It’s been under fire all year especially on 3 point shots and I have been in the denial camp…. until today. We are no longer in the small sample time of the year. I am pretty certain it’s not for lack of preparation or effort from either coaches or players.
So the problem is the ability of the players to execute that defense. When we help Samson or Reed in the middle we are getting burned from 3 and when we cover the 3 point line they are scoring inside by driving past our guards.
We are now being talked about in print and media as a bad defensive team.
Defense brought us back to back championships albeit with tremendous offense but our offense is good now but without the defense.
We’re certainly better with Liam in there but it just doesn’t seem that it will be enough in the tourney.
And lately we have had 2 major players disappear for us Reed and Karaban.
Anyone care to put some sunshine out because even though the stretch was going to be tough without Liam it’s hard to see past this.

 

[Hi-Low]

KenPom D ranking is now down to 122...easily the worst in KenPom top 50 overall teams. So would say it's fair to say it's personnel.

 

[jdb50]

Reed can not do the high hedge like Samson. We need a different strategy when he is in and the opponent has a big like Kalk . There are quicker teams than Creighton but even so they burned us today. Our defensive rebounding sucks.

 

[Sonova]

Last year we had 2 elite level defenders in Castle and Clingan with Clingan making everyone better defensively.

I’d give Hassan an A-/B+ defensively. AK plays hard and is much improved, but he just OK on D. After that, we have some soft defensive players and DH doesn’t have the luxury to not play Ball, Stewart or Samson.

 

[boog204]

We legit start two bad defensive players in Solo and Stew. Yes, Stew was great against Dixon. He’s been really bad most of the other games. AK is also not a great individual defender and our bigs hedge to different zip codes for some reason. Hence, when someone says “why do these random guys have career games against us” I’d venture that that guy is primarily a Solo to Stew guard.

 

[jibsey]

Not to say this totally answers the problem but with Liam we should be better and able to hang with and beat most good teams? That’s adding nearly 15 points and 4 to 5 rebounds.

 

[FreeKlaiber]

not enough foot speed or size with this roster to do high pressure no help man= Iso's of the Teddy Allen variety, and lots of layups

We would be better served this year with a defensive philosophy adjustment where we stop attack/overplay man, especially without Clingan cleaning eveything up. Mahaney was able to play D for 2 years elsewhere, but is unplayable in this D scheme. I've said this in 9 threads it seems. I'll stop.

 

[gsmooth]

not enough foot speed or size with this roster to do high pressure no help man= Iso's of the Teddy Allen variety, and lots of layups

We would be better served this year with a defensive philosophy adjustment where we stop attack/overplay man, especially without Clingan cleaning eveything up. Mahaney was able to play D for 2 years elsewhere, but is unplayable in this D scheme. I've said this in 9 threads it seems. I'll stop.

Yeah, Mahaney was never this much of a defensive liability at St Mary's. It seems like Saxon and the others were able to help him out more. The help defense is no good either and I think it has to do with lack of athleticism but also bad positioning.

 

[uconngb]

KenPom D ranking is now down to 122...easily the worst in KenPom top 50 overall teams. So would say it's fair to say it's personnel.

Well, maybe the coach should realize this and come up w something different.

 

[dalydosehoops]

UConn’s toughness a concern as Huskies battle, but drop hard-fought game to Creighton

Although his UConn team remains near top of Big East, Dan Hurley is increasingly concerned with UConn’s toughness and tenacity, problems tha...

dalydoseofhoops.blogspot.com

 

[Shamon30]

Someone needs to gently remind DH we don't have Isaiah Whaley anymore. It might be time to end the high hedge

 

[Chin Diesel]

It’s been under fire all year especially on 3 point shots and I have been in the denial camp…. until today. We are no longer in the small sample time of the year. I am pretty certain it’s not for lack of preparation or effort from either coaches or players.
So the problem is the ability of the players to execute that defense. When we help Samson or Reed in the middle we are getting burned from 3 and when we cover the 3 point line they are scoring inside by driving past our guards.
We are now being talked about in print and media as a bad defensive team.
Defense brought us back to back championships albeit with tremendous offense but our offense is good now but without the defense.
We’re certainly better with Liam in there but it just doesn’t seem that it will be enough in the tourney.
And lately we have had 2 major players disappear for us Reed and Karaban.
Anyone care to put some sunshine out because even though the stretch was going to be tough without Liam it’s hard to see past this.

Holding an opponent to 8-23 is perfectly acceptable.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

We went from 6’5 Newton who was an underrated defender next to 6’6 Jackson and 6’5 Castle in consecutive years, both of whom are already great defensive NBA guards to 6’1 Diarra who is a decent defender and 6’3 solo ball who is somehow the worst defensive player of all time.

 

[Jaydumo20]

After the Georgetown game I thought i saw flashes of this team coming together. I have been optimistic all year because I have seen this staff turn things around almost magically. But there is only so much you can do.

Here is your silver lining: we like to play with a chip on our shoulder.

 

[CTBasketball]

Can’t play good team defense when 80% of the starting lineup has no idea what’s going on.

And Mahaney has actually improved his defense from the start of the season. Still gets physically overpowered but he makes the right reads most of the time.

 

[Pmac923]

Speed the game up. Full court press. Hit someone. Zone. There’s options out there. Stop playing Man to Man.

 

[CTBasketball]

Speed the game up. Full court press. Hit someone. Zone. There’s options out there. Stop playing Man to Man.

Our offense is not conducive to speeding it up. And if we play zone our rebounding woe’s will get even worse.

 

[Hunt for 7]

Well, maybe the coach should realize this and come up w something different.

Like what’s he or the coaches going to do. Ball is an off season project for sure as far as defense. There is no reason he should be that bad with his physical attributes. Even with effort he has no concept of basic defensive principles. He does not understand how important angles are not on offensive when going to the the hoop and also when trying to guard some one on the perimeter. If we had a better defensive team around him he would be in as good as Hawkins but we do not so his defensive liabilities are magnified.

 

[pj]

Holding an opponent to 8-23 is perfectly acceptable.

That's 35%. That's better than the NCAA average and shooting that for a full season would place a team 100th out of 364 teams.

It may be acceptable if your goal is to be an average team, but if your goal is to be one of the best teams, you need to be better.

 

[uconngb]

Our offense is not conducive to speeding it up. And if we play zone our rebounding woe’s will get even worse.

If we played zone maybe there would be some missed shots to worry about rebounding

 

[REB1094]

They are related, but our rotation defense was as bad as our man to man defense. There was some clear improvement on this post-Maui, but it wasn't good yesterday. We gave up a lot of decent-to-great looks on basic rotation issues (C hedges --> corner defender covers paint --> wing defender closes out to the first pass which is usually the corner)

You could see it a mile away. Someone would be in the paint to stop Kalkbrenner, and the corner was WIDE open and nobody knew they were supposed to be there. It's fundamentals

I don't like the zone idea. For some reason the only zone Hurley ever plays is a weird 1-3-1 or 2-1-2. It's clear they don't practice 2-3 or 3-2, so I don't think they would try it out for the first time at such a critical point

 

[uconngb]

They are related, but our rotation defense was as bad as our man to man defense. There was some clear improvement on this post-Maui, but it wasn't good yesterday. We gave up a lot of decent-to-great looks on basic rotation issues (C hedges --> corner defender covers paint --> wing defender closes out to the first pass which is usually the corner)

You could see it a mile away. Someone would be in the paint to stop Kalkbrenner, and the corner was WIDE open and nobody knew they were supposed to be there. It's fundamentals

I don't like the zone idea. For some reason the only zone Hurley ever plays is a weird 1-3-1 or 2-1-2. It's clear they don't practice 2-3 or 3-2, so I don't think they would try it out for the first time at such a critical point

I hear you on the fact that we don’t play much zone but i also don’t think it can be that much worse than our MTM…..and msybe keeps our bigs out of the perennial foul trouble they are always in

 

[gsmooth]

They are related, but our rotation defense was as bad as our man to man defense. There was some clear improvement on this post-Maui, but it wasn't good yesterday. We gave up a lot of decent-to-great looks on basic rotation issues (C hedges --> corner defender covers paint --> wing defender closes out to the first pass which is usually the corner)

You could see it a mile away. Someone would be in the paint to stop Kalkbrenner, and the corner was WIDE open and nobody knew they were supposed to be there. It's fundamentals

I don't like the zone idea. For some reason the only zone Hurley ever plays is a weird 1-3-1 or 2-1-2. It's clear they don't practice 2-3 or 3-2, so I don't think they would try it out for the first time at such a critical point

All the people saying play zone need to understand that playing zone defense requires practice time for it to be effective. That means Hurley is taking time away from practicing other things he feels they need to be better at. We all would have been really angry, and rightfully so, if he decided to go to a zone late in the game and then Creighton started to blow the game open with wide open 3s or by gaining offensive rebounds.

 

[imno1]

Our D is eye test terrible but boy do teams seem to hit really difficult shots against us too which doesn’t help.

 

[alphasigko]

IMO a few doses of the 2-1-2, 3-2 or Box+1 Zone internmingled with the m2m would add some differnt looks and cause the opposng offenses some difficulty in adjusting. And, as soon as they adjust, switch back to m2m.