This reminds me of last season

[joober jones]

First off, we were just barely beaten by a very good team. The loss itself doesn't bother me so much as the way in which it happened. It very closely followed the script of so many 2014-15 games where we had a huge deficit followed by a great surge in the second half that just barely fell short. That seemed to be the MO nearly all of last year and I can't say I was missing it.

 

[UConnSwag11]

First off, we were just barely beaten by a very good team. The loss itself doesn't bother me so much as the way in which it happened. It very closely followed the script of so many 2014-15 games where we had a huge deficit followed by a great surge in the second half that just barely fell short. That seemed to be the MO nearly all of last year and I can't say I was missing it.

Not even close. We couldn't score last year. We've been putting up 70+ every game. Our perimeter defense and switching is terrible

 

[CTBasketball]

We haven't found "the guy" yet.

 

[Ts5034]

On a neutral floor, I dont think last years team claws back like they did today. The defense has been an issue but we saw in the second half that this team has a lot more options compared to last year.

 

[Yankees32123]

Our defense is bad, and our leader, Hamilton, still makes dumb decisions like pulling up when he has a driving lane down 1 with a minute or so to go. Purvis also threw the game away, literally. We need Adams to rise.

 

[Stainmaster]

I believe we've lost close games in almost every year of this program's existence. The sky isn't falling yet.

 

[Letsgohuskies11]

We haven't found "the guy" yet.

not sure we really need one, we have 4 or 5 guys a night scoring in double digits. The transition defense has been bad the last couple of games, and way too many 3s have been taking

 

[James]

hamilons biggest issue isn't shot selection, its the fact he is the worst defensive player on the team. him and cassell are a special kind of bad on defense, calhoun is even better than those two.

 

[UConn990411]

Last year's team actually defended - it just couldn't score close to 70 with any regularity. This year's been the opposite so far.

It's too early to panic, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I've never seen a UConn team look this soft on D. Things need to change, and quick.

 

[Vuce]

It's too early to panic, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I've never seen a UConn team look this soft on D. Things need to change, and quick.

Not completely the reason but some of it has to do with the way officiating is now. The whistles are very quick this year as they are trying to allow freedom of movement for offenses. We shall see how it goes moving forward.

 

[Dooley]

Defense is coachable. As the season goes on, I expect the defense to improve. At the very least, the coaching philosophies (man vs zone) to change to best fit the team. We're scoring 70 on everyone we play. We can continue to score 70 against anyone in the country. If we can keep scoring, the defense will sort itself out. I'm not worried...yet.

 

[gtcam]

I agree the defense is not good right now. To say DHam is the worst defender is just not so - Omar is by far the worse closely followed by Gibbs the past 3 games.
As said before defense can be coachable and adjusted - scoring really can't - that said, I'd rather have to work on sharpening the defense vs finding scoring options.
I'm not on the path to panic mode but the team needs to pick up the defensive pressure and toughness.

 

[Gurleyman]

DHam has some stuff he needs to shore up defensively, particularly how to get around screens, but he is actually very good at closeouts. Whereas Purvis often does a flyby and Gibbs never gets there, Hamilton usually closes out on shooters under control and then stays with the dribble drive after he forces them to put the ball on the deck. Often when we got our stops in the last 10 minutes, DHam's ability to close out and recover, without forcing defensive rotations, was a big reason why their possessions got bogged down.

The couple times a game when he gets caught on a screen or out of position, and ends up too far out of the play for his closeout to matter - that he needs to eliminate.