“We recruit really good offensive players now and we force them to play defense,” Hurley said. “We force them to rebound the ball like it’s a life-or-death proposition, because ball possession represents life in my mind.”
“It’s hard to win championships and it’s hard to win a tournament like the NCAA Tournament unless you can score,” he said. “It’s hard to get out of the first round if you’re in a rock fight, because you feel enormous pressure in the first round of NCAA Tournament games when you coach at UConn. The best way to mitigate that is to have a high-power offense that can go on runs… to blow up a game because you’ve got firepower.”
So the question is can any player be taught to play very good defense? Or do some players have physical limitations that prohibit them from being good defenders? Has Hurley overrated his ability to turn offensively talented players into very good defenders?
I was actually going to start a thread on this with those questions but figured I'd wait until the end of the season to see if the defense improved a lot.