Small Ball, Notre Dame & Defending the 3

[Patrick Lilly]

Swish Appeal has a great article on Notre Dame forced into playing small ball and how difficult it can be to defend, as Geno and the Huskies found out. Story Link

With the emergence of Golden State, Princeton, and now the new ND, it looks like this trend will continue to grow, imo.

 

[meyers7]

Swish Appeal has a great article on Notre Dame forced into playing small ball and how difficult it can be to defend, as Geno and the Huskies found out. Story Link

With the emergence of Golden State, Princeton, and now the new ND, it looks like this trend will continue to grow, imo.

Screw small ball.

 

[Dillon77]

Swish Appeal has a great article on Notre Dame forced into playing small ball and how difficult it can be to defend, as Geno and the Huskies found out. Story Link

With the emergence of Golden State, Princeton, and now the new ND, it looks like this trend will continue to grow, imo.

Really interesting article. As you can guess, it's getting some attention over at the ND board, as well.
ND's personnel of guards and/or wings currently fits well into this approach, with the Mabrey sisters, Madison Cable, Lindsay Allen, Arike Ogunbowale and Mychal Johnson all capable of drilling it from three-point land, and Marina Mabrey, Ogunbolwale and Allen all capable of dribbling around defenders to drive, dish and/or shoot. And it will benefit from having injured point Ali Patberg return next year, joined by incoming wing Jackie Young and Erin Boley, who is described as a "stretch 4" who can shoot, drive and rebound.

I bring up the rebounding because that's one of the worries...a team can score a boatload of points, but are they vulnerable on defense and the boards. ND is not suffering too much on the boards so far because Cable and Hannah Huffman hit the boards surprisingly well, but let's see what the ACC match-ups bring.

For ND to truly thrive at this, I think they need to get Brianna Turner back who could be the forward/post "spoke" behind a small-ball attack. Not only can she rebound, but she is superb at altering and/or blocking shots. Plus she's got some deft moves in the paint, which could keep defenses from pushing out too far.

As for the future of this kind of offense...my friends who are middle school and high-school friends coaches say anyone who is athletic wants to face the basket now and let it rip....

 

[UcMiami]

Swish Appeal has a great article on Notre Dame forced into playing small ball and how difficult it can be to defend, as Geno and the Huskies found out. Story Link

With the emergence of Golden State, Princeton, and now the new ND, it looks like this trend will continue to grow, imo.

It is an interesting 'trend' but it has actually been around for a long time out of necessity for a lot of schools in both the men's and women's game - there have never been enough 'bigs' to populate the college ranks of either gender. Not quite as desperate at the pro level, but still occurring. In the men's game teams like Princeton of the old days usually had five players on the floor at all times capable of long range shooting and passing with accuracy and precision. Villanova and Depaul in the old big east were always height challenged, but usually very accurate from distance. And it isn't just teams without any tall players - Europeans for years have had success with bigs who could shoot threes and played more as wings than the typical american 'power' post players. Until recently on the men's side they caused huge problems for the USA national teams. On the women's side, you see a player like Dolson who with a different coach might have become your standard low post player, expanding her range to the arc, and those players who have been around internationally for a long time, are becoming more normal in HS and college.

What is unusual specifically to ND, is that you take a team with two strong post players and mid-season because of injury they are being forced to alter their style - they look at this point more like a typical DePaul team because they just don't have their bigs available.

What it really comes down to is if you have a Shaq or a Paris you play your offense through the low post and hope they are not too much of a defensive liability when you play against a 'five out' type of offense, and if you don't have that kind of a post player you figure out a different offensive system to run.

Basketball is typically a game of adjustments - both teams try to go in playing 'their style' and hope that style will give them a scoring advantage - a few minutes in good coaches who are losing, start to make adjustments either to improve the defense or to attack on offense differently, and the chess game is on.