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Message: [QUOTE="auror, post: 4502491, member: 1329"] We've been going more and more to drop coverage, less hedging, and going under screens as the season has gone on (though Clingan was dropping from day 1). I don't think the results have been any better, and perhaps worse. As far as I can tell, our highest rate of drop coverage has come during this 4/5 game losing streak. The brilliance of the hedge is that it forces opponents to play your game. It opens up a major weakness, so there's an obvious way to beat it, so all opponents try that. But you can practice recovering and so you can get really good at protecting the weakness. It's like, yeah, the death star has a trench where fighters can go through to blow it up. But we know about the weakness, so we can build a million cannons in the way instead of just the normal ones on the surface of the station. Go ahead, try the trench. Some of the better coaches can find other places outside the obvious trench, but there's a really strong floor. Switching between the hedge and drop for your different personnel with different strengths/weaknesses is also really strong as it can throw your opponents off. But it's really taxing on your own players to keep themselves focused and organized and in the right scheme. I think in the beginning of the season we were really focused and attention to detail was strong. We got figured out a bit more in Big East play in a couple different ways defensively (going 1v1 vs. Karaban without PnR, attacking Sanogo in drop with roll man floaters over him, a lot more teams outside Iowa St back-cutting us), and also going up against some offenses that can't really be stopped reliably (Xavier and Marquette). We've made tweaks here and there and adjustments here and there, and now we're in a ship of Theseus situation, where we've tweaked enough that our team identity doesn't actually fit the defense we're playing. Overplaying the 3-point line works great when your bigs are able to prevent penetration or offer help with good rotations covering it all up. When other teams are able to get into the paint against drop coverage or back cuts or whatever, now overplaying the 3-point line means there are just big gaps that teams take advantage of. Think we need to go back to version 1.0 or move on to version 2.0. Version 1.5 is broken. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach