So what adjustments do you think Hurley and the team can make to counter what McDermott and Creighton did on both ends of the floor to our guys on Tuesday?
I consider myself a hoops junky who has a solid understanding of Xs snd Os, but I'm not sure what adjustments Hurley can make in light of what a team built like Creighton can do when they play their A game, and with the mix of players we have on this year's team.
Of course, somehow getting Clingan to defend well without fouling as much would help, but I'm not sure what more the coaching staff can do to help him at this point. I hope they can. Though hard to prevent bad and/or borderline calls against him.
One thing we do know, when the opposing perimeter players curl around the high screen at the top of the key, they have to do something different than having our bigs hedging on screens, our weak side perimeter defenders leaving the opponents sharpshooters to temporarily cover the exposed bigs dropping back towards the basket until our big re-engages back into the paint. Creighton exploited that most of the night, especially when Clingan was on the bench.
Now there are not a lot of teams that are built and coached like Creighton that can knock down a lot of threes and successfully do rive to the basket the way they do. Creighton won't always shoot it as well from deep as they did, but hope that there is something UConn could have done differently to get more stops.
Now on the other end of the floor, Creighton did a good job of taking away some of our perimeter shooters and defending the back cuts that usually result in some could percentage shots in the paint or drawing fouls. It didn't look like they were running their half court motion as well as they usually do, but much of that might be the result of how Creighton defended it. I'd like to watch part of the game again to watch more closely at what they did.
I wish we had a 5 who could come off the bench and at least defend the paint close to how Clingan does. Johnson seems to have digressed and too often goes too far out with his help D or too aggressive on his hedge where he's either left too much open space behind him or picking up over aggressive fouls. And even with Clingan out on the floor in the second half, Creighton's sharpshooters kept on knocking down some big 3s.
Spencer struggles at times on the defense end since he doesn't have high end quickness and athleticism but it's hard not to keep him out there when he usually does so much on the offensive end. At times Hurley puts Diarra in who defends more aggressively and has been making plays on both ends, though I think he usually comes in for Castle more often than for any other player.
So what adjustments do you think can be made to counter what Creighton did?
