Bravado... That is the only word I can think of to describe Bob "Huggy Bear" Huggins.
Last night, Bob and his players brought their swagger into the "Sherronagon of Death."
How dare Bob come in and muscle around his old team?
Bob will tell you... he was forced to play "maul ball" with his old employer. Somehow, you get the feeling that Bob is no longer welcome in Manhattan, Kansas.
This is one of the strangest beginnings to a game. I believe WVU fouled 3 times within the first minute... and none of them soft fouls. It was obvious that Bob wanted his swagger to rule this game. He wanted KSU to focus more on how they were going to get muscled around and hacked instead of playing a game of basketball. His strategy worked. In the first 20 minutes, the purple kitties must have missed every bunny shot they attempted, and they attempted plenty.
Bob has taken a very different approach to basketball than anyone else in our league. His desire is to play a different brand of basketball (if you want to call it that) and force his opponents into his kind of game. And it is very hard not to fall into his trap, just like it is not easy to avoid his full-court traps.
Bob brings intensity to the game, and through his form of rough-housing intensity he wants to not only disrupt the typical play of his opponents, he wants to disrupt their identity in the process. He makes teams question their own strategies, he makes teams question their ability to play the basic elements of the game (passing and dribbling), and last (and perhaps most important) he makes individual opposing players question their manhood. That is quite an accomplishment to pull off in a game strategy, and Bob pulled it off masterfully last night. I had seen KSU before last night, and then I experienced what they became after Bob got a hold of them, and they were not the same team.
I'm excited to see how we do against the heavy pressure and tactics of this Bob Huggin's team. I know, in past years, we haven't always fared well against full-court pressure and traps. I'm recalling back to Villanova in the Bahamas.
There are different ways to be effective with full-court pressure and traps. One effective result is to force TOs. Another effective result is to get your opposition to speed up and lose their offensive identity. Sometimes both results can happen. That is what happened to KSU last night.
One of the keys to beating the pressure is to avoid certain situations. First and foremost, the worst situation is to have the ball trapped either against a sideline or your own baseline or half court line (after passing half court). All of these situations help the effectiveness of the trap by reducing 360 degrees around a player to 180 degrees... half the area around a player is now blocked out. It's like having 4 defensive players surround the ball.
One of KSU's major blunders was their hesitation when a player received the ball. As Coach Self states, "the ball was sticking." The ball stuck with the purple kitties and every time it did it allowed the defense more time to set their traps.
Should we attack out of the pressure? When we beat WVU out of their traps and we have a 2-on-1... do we attack the rim? Do we make them pay for running pressure? It seems like the answer is obvious.. yes... but it doesn't always work out to your advantage. Bob might be a rough-neck country boy, but he's no dummy. The beginning of the game is all about establishing the hard foul. Once he has done that it becomes much harder to make the bunnies. We experienced that with KSU. He did that because knew later that KSU would have plenty of bunny attempts. He wanted KSU to have bunny attempts. That is part of the allure, and part of what helps speed up a team and control the pace of the game as well as preventing them from establishing a set offense. And since Bob has "planted a mental seed" that there will be a health risk to taking the bunnies, he even knocks down the percentage of successful bunnies to a low percentage.
Poise is the key element to beating a Huggin's team. He tests your poise. He is not going to let you keep your normal identity. We better be prepared to be a different team for 40 minutes, because it is going to happen if we like it or now. What we have to do is keep our cool, and pay attention to Self and what he wants. Execute his game plan. In the beginning, we may attack the rim after beating the pressure. If we aren't successful at that we may later decide to just pull out and run offense and try to create our offensive identity in the half court.
We have several advantages over KSU. First... we have a superior coach who realizes many of these aspects that Weber missed. That doesn't mean we will be successful, but we will be successful if our guys follow the plan. We have more poise. Our poise has come from having the toughest schedule in the nation, and stepping up to different challenges along the ways. We have very good ball skills on the perimeter. The one guy I do worry about is Wayne, and this may be a game where he gets little PT. Devonte can really ice this game for us. Having two great ball handlers on the perimeter is the best way to challenge WVU. We also have improved our FT percentages enough to add in more points at the line. KSU would have won that game had they hit their FTs. We also have more depth. We have enough skilled depth to run rotations to keep our guys fresh. KSU was totally wasted half way through the second half. And last, we have a great half court defense. By limiting scoring from WVU we limit the opportunities they have to setup their full court pressure and traps.
I can hardly wait to play Bob this year. I don't see how Bob can win in AFH, but I do see us being totally tested in West Virginia. This is another great experience waiting to happen and we are bound to come away from it a better team, barring injuries.
Bring it, Bob!
