What I Think I Saw

[kneepadmckinney]

I watched a few of the posts from the Euro trip and so probably saw about a hour of gametime or so. Here's what I think I saw:

• We played straight man, with a lot of help defense but a lot less switching. I liked it, except for...
• We still close out on three point shooters like bees are chasing us into the bleachers, and we leave the shooter wide open for long rebounds because our guy has gone flying past the shooter. I've yet to see this result in a blocked shot, but have seen it result in countless offensive rebounds. I wish to god this could be an area of focus, but am not holding my breath.
• Our offense looks pretty damn good with TJ at the high post
• Our offense looks less damn good with Kwesi at the high post
• Kwesi (and Grant) will rebound "out of his zone"
• Demonte forced his shot/drive sometimes but is confident and able to get to the rim, and finish there
• Grant can run the floor, for real
• FREE THROW SHOOTING!!!!! UGH!!!!
• Marshall still looks one-dimensional on offense, and still looks slow on defense. I was hoping for more.
• Rotation appears to be: SDJ, Khwan, Julius, TJ, Marshall, then Buck, Sherod, Golden, and Kwesi, with Jessie and Paul to get mop-up time.

All in all, very glad we got that experience to expose some areas of weakness. I hope it accelerates our development because the schedule looks challenging pretty quickly.

 

[URSpider95]

Thanks for the write-up. Is Golden also playing the 5 (high post) or is playing more out of the 4?

 

[97spiderfan]

• We still close out on three point shooters like bees are chasing us into the bleachers, and we leave the shooter wide open for long rebounds because our guy has gone flying past the shooter. I've yet to see this result in a blocked shot, but have seen it result in countless offensive rebounds. I wish to god this could be an area of focus, but am not holding my breath.

Good lord, yes. Our defense last year was bad on a number of metrics, but the number of times, I saw our guys running and jumping helplessly at a 3 point shooter was amazing (Deion Taylor stands out as someone who did this alot).

This shouldn't happen often with the defense we run, except when you are unable to execute the defense we run. Mooney's been a defense first guy and I know last year must have killed him on a number of levels seeing our defense struggle as it did.

I continue to believe it was largely a personnel issue last year and was baffled by those who pushed the theory that Deion and Trey played so much because they of their defense. Deion and Trey were as bad on defense as they were on offense. Sorry, if that offends some, but I watched these guys last year and they were just not very good on either end of the court.

I don't know if our defense will be better or not this year, one thing I do feel confident about is that not having the option to play Deion or Trey this year, makes us a better team on both sides of the court.

 

[Spiderbymarriage]

If we do play more man to man, shouldn't that cut down on the sprinting toward 3 pt shooters? Man to man, you should always be within a few feet of your guy, unless he's Steph Curry....

 

[spiderman]

man has it's weaknesses like any defense. someone gets beat, others have to help. and there's that open shooter again. plus you have to deal with screens. fight through or switch? fight through doesn't always get there. switching can lead to pick and roll mismatches.

I like man when my team is more athletic than the other team. but then any defense works when you're more athletic.

 

[Eight Legger]

My technical sense here may be all wrong, but essentially we have always played a man defense with LOTS of switching, right? Last year we seemed to fail at the switching part very often. So I'm ok with sticking with the man and just switching on fewer occasions. Of course, knowing how and when to switch (and how and when not to) is the difficult part. I get why Mooney's defense is not easy to learn, because you have to understand that stuff. Maybe if we dial down the switching a little this year, it becomes easier to handle and we can tighten things up a bit.

 

[spiderman]

in man you're following your guy around wherever he goes. we generally stayed in our area (zone), playing man with whoever came there. we were more zone than man. I hope we stay with it and just do it better.

 

[urmite]

Defending against the three, we were:
254th in 2015-2016
16th in 2014-2015
9th in 2013-2014

Defending all shooting, we were:
219th in 2015-2016
46th in 2014-2015
48th in 2013-2014

Hopefully the staff has figured out how to turn back the clock.

 

[Ulla1]

Defending against the three, we were:
254th in 2015-2016
16th in 2014-2015
9th in 2013-2014

Defending all shooting, we were:
219th in 2015-2016
46th in 2014-2015
48th in 2013-2014

Hopefully the staff has figured out how to turn back the clock.

Wow! Amazing differences! OSC

 

[kneepadmckinney]

Just looking at the video, the guys were generally pretty alert to help defense, but it came at the expense of leaving a three point shooter open. The difference between our help and that of more experienced teams was the rotation after the help. Good teams rotate such that the open shooter is two or more passes away, whereas ours was often the three point shooter open on the first pass. Our close outs are horrible (and I agree 97 on Taylor and Davis last year, but I think Wood is pretty bad at it this year). But again--encouraged by the seeming change to a more traditional man-to-man, and hoping against hope that close-outs become a point of emphasis in October practice.

 

[WebSpinner]

in addition, we give up plenty of easy shots off of the offensive rebounds we give up. if we can cut down on those points, got to help us a ton.

 

[MrTbone]

Fwiw, the leaping wildly 3-pt close out was not new last year, we've been doing that for years. I think it just looked more noticeable because our switches and mismatches escalated.

 

[urfan1]

I believe you are correct Tbone

 

[ur2K]

My technical sense here may be all wrong, but essentially we have always played a man defense with LOTS of switching, right? Last year we seemed to fail at the switching part very often. So I'm ok with sticking with the man and just switching on fewer occasions. Of course, knowing how and when to switch (and how and when not to) is the difficult part. I get why Mooney's defense is not easy to learn, because you have to understand that stuff. Maybe if we dial down the switching a little this year, it becomes easier to handle and we can tighten things up a bit.

Yeah, calling our d a match-up zone is confusing when it has mostly been a switching man. What we saw last year is that when it breaks down and all players aren't in tune, it can be a mess.

 

[Rivercup]

What I saw on the videos was a man defense more like what Virginia runs. When the screen come up, the screen man's defender jumps out to push the dribbler out so the dribblers man can recover. Behind the play, the defense shifts to cover to pick and roll and the only guy left completely open is the offensive player farthest from the ball. This defense has been very effective for UVA and , while it, like all defenses, has some weaknesses, if run correctly, it can cause teams lots of trouble. Of course, the switching zone that we have run for years can cause problems, too, as the stats above show. It's not the scheme. It all depends on how your players perform.

 

[PhillySpider]

With all due respect to those who say we play or played something like a zone, we were last year and have been a man team almost exclusively. This is a common misconception. We have played almost zero zone defense historically. What Spiderman for example describes (we stay in our areas but play whoever comes in our areas) is a description of a typical match-up zone. We don't play a match-up zone at all but many (including many folks who end up announcing just a few of our games) think that's what it is. The reason is that at times in can look and act very much like a match-up zone based on what the offense does. That is, what a match-up zone would do against certain offensive actions is the same (or looks the same) as what our man defense would do against those same actions.

The defining characteristic of our man defense as many have noted is that we switch often and mostly that we tend to switch on ALL screens both on and OFF the ball. Some man defenses (Michigan State comes to mind) fight through virtually all screens, both on and off the ball. Some man defense fight through certain screens but switch others and some others switch based on personnel of both the offensive and defensive players. Look at Michigan State as a man team vs. Virginia (who plays the packline version of man-to-man) and they look nothing alike. And neither of them looks like what we have historically looked like in our verion of man defense. Our version with its switching virtually all screens on and off the ball has been the least common and that's one of the reasons it was successful - - teams didn't see it a lot and conventional man offenses sort of played into our hands.

Last years awful defensive performance can be attributed to a number of things (and all played a key part). First, teams figured out how to attack us a little better. This wasn't because people focused so much on how to beat our defense as much as man offenses have been changing in general and many of the newer concepts simply work better against our type of man than more traditional ones. Once some teams had success against us, it was on film and others could easily follow the blue print. Second, our players were absolutely terrible at 2 different element of defense. One was we simply had very few players who could simply keep their man in front of them and away from penetration on their own. This required lots of help defense and help defense means the helper's man is open (often at the 3 point line). The second issue was that we were absolutely the worst team I have ever seen at closing out on shooters. Bad in every way fundamentally. Thats what led to all those "fly byes" on the perimeter. Its really hard to imagine how we were so awful at this. The fly bye itself was just the end product of being totally unable to properly close out on a perimeter player. Our guys were out of defensive stance right from the get go and thus too tall at the start of the close-out and certainly didn't seem to understand basic close-out fundamentals (sprint, chop, level-off ). The pack line defense (that UVa uses) is a help and recover (close-out) defense. Clsing out effectively is absolutely the number one element of that defense! Virtually every packline team practices close-outs every single day and players off the ball who get out of defensive stance position (and are thus not prepared to close-out effectively) or who can't or won't close out properly EVERY SINGLE DAY don't play. This is one of Bennett's (the dad who originated the packline) prime teachings on packline defense. You must execute it properly and to do so, you must practice it HARD every single day and hold people accountable. We have been much more about scheme historically than execution. Packline is much easier to learn and understand than what we have done. We spend our defensive practice time learning the scheme and assignments (where should you go) less on the execution (how should you go there) of the physical things needed (like keeping your man in front of you and closing out). This can work if your scheme so confuses the other guy they are not able to take advantage of the lack of defensive skills or if your players, despite the focus on scheme are still pretty fundamentally sound at the core elements of defense despite the lack of focus etc. Both of these were us historically. Now the scheme is less confusing and last years players very clearly needed a whole lot more time working on defensive fundamentals.

To get back where we were will likely require some scheme adjustments to counter offenses changing and a lot of renewed emphasis on fundamentals (or players who already have them ingrained!).

 

[97spiderfan]

I think our defensive scheme works and Mooney has proven it works over a period of years. Last year, it certainly didn't work and again that goes back to me to personnel and the options Mooney had to play with We had a bunch of players who both individually were not great defenders and collectively we're even worse. Khwan was the only player on last year's team, that I felt we could count on to make some defensive plays.

So, I really don't want (nor do I expect to see any big changes in our defense). I like the defense it works. With that said, my beef with Mooney last year, was you could tell our defense wasn't working early on and he was very slow to make adjustments knowing the defense wasn't working with our personnel mix last year. You have to be more adaptable to your skill set that we showed last year.

Our defense will be better this year because it works and frankly it would be tough to be worse than it was last year.

 

[spiderman]

Philly,
My only issue and the reason I consider it closer to a matchup zone than a man to man is that we don't just switch on screens. We switch, or hand off to another defender, our offense player without the ball when he cuts from one area to another. Our defense sets up in a 1-2-2 kind of set with TJ and Marshall for example on the bottom regardless of where the big guys on the offense set up. But we're not a zone as we don't stay in a set zone. We adjust to the offense. It's different, and kind of defies the label of both zone and man.

 

[SpiderK]

• We still close out on three point shooters like bees are chasing us into the bleachers, and we leave the shooter wide open for long rebounds because our guy has gone flying past the shooter. I've yet to see this result in a blocked shot, but have seen it result in countless offensive rebounds. I wish to god this could be an area of focus, but am not holding my breath.

Good lord, yes. Our defense last year was bad on a number of metrics, but the number of times, I saw our guys running and jumping helplessly at a 3 point shooter was amazing (Deion Taylor stands out as someone who did this alot).

This shouldn't happen often with the defense we run, except when you are unable to execute the defense we run. Mooney's been a defense first guy and I know last year must have killed him on a number of levels seeing our defense struggle as it did.

I continue to believe it was largely a personnel issue last year and was baffled by those who pushed the theory that Deion and Trey played so much because they of their defense. Deion and Trey were as bad on defense as they were on offense. Sorry, if that offends some, but I watched these guys last year and they were just not very good on either end of the court.

I don't know if our defense will be better or not this year, one thing I do feel confident about is that not having the option to play Deion or Trey this year, makes us a better team on both sides of the court.

Thanks 97. You nailed it.

 

[SpiderK]

Just curious, where did we rank in free throw shooting last three years

 

[SFspidur]

2015-16: 302nd (66.1%)
2014-15: 180th (69.0%)
2013-14: 268th (66.9%)

 

[SpiderK]

2015-16: 302nd (66.1%)
2014-15: 180th (69.0%)
2013-14: 268th (66.9%)

I figured, can't be much worse. That has to improve. First thing Nancy Leiberman brought was Freethrow shooting. Thank you SF