The following was posted on the UCLA forum, by a regular respected poster who has coached in the past. He explained why Oregon State is good defensively. I thought I would share it with you. I think he had one typo(which I will mention in red).
I thought it was interesting reading.
Pat asked me earlier to explain why Oregon State's defense is so good. I watched some of the 1st half last night. They don't do anything special; they just don't do the stupid things that most teams do. They take away 3s, protect the paint and invite the in-between shots. They game-plan for opponents well. Smith early in the game changed Stanford's approach with her ability to pick and pop; against their on-ball screen defense, that is the big weakness or area to exploit.
In terms of specifics, they trail shooters around screens and dare shooters to curl and attack the basket; they ice side on-ball screens to contain penetration and keep the ball on one side of the court; they go over middle ball screens to take away the three and force the ball toward the basket where they have defenders waiting in help. They do not hedge on screens; they play their posts off clogging the middle, which is why posts who can shoot the 3 are the biggest weapon against their defense. They ignore non-shooters on the perimeter in order to clog the paint. They don't foul. They rebound. And they play hard. No real magic sauce, just getting all 5 players to buy into a smart defensive strategy, but one which few teams employ.
Oregon State, more than anyone, appears to have followed the UConn plan: recruit bigger guards with a premium on shooting when every other program is fascinated by small quick guards who dribble; recruit posts who can shoot and play position defense when every other program wants back to the basket posts and shot blockers. With big guards and posts who have good positioning, they take away open 3s and protect the rim and don't foul much. They dare teams to beat them with of the dribble jump shots or posts shooting 3s or trying to create with a lot of dribble penetration into multiple defenders.
The difference between UConn and Oregon State is that Gabby Williams has a little more defensive versatility than Gabbie Hanson, and defends more positions, and Samuelson shoots better than anyone on OSU, and Collier is far more versatile offensively than UConn(it should be than anyone on OSU). UConn's just a more talented team with top 10 players, but they have similar philosophies and recruit similar players, it's just that Oregon State is hoping to get top 100 talent within their philosophy and UConn's waiting for the #1 players who fit their philosophy.
It would be fascinating to see what Reuck would do if he took the USC or Tennessee or some other very high profile job where he could compete for top 10 players. Would he be patient and only recruit the ones who fit his system, like Geno, or would he compromise his system with access to top-ranked players, like Howland did once he started to have access to the best players and he recruited for ranking numbers, not his system?
