This team can improve in leaps and bounds without even physically practicing.
What this team needs is a substantial period in the video suite.
Our guys hustle. We will not improve just telling them to hustle more.
Our biggest issue on defense is NOT the individual effort on the ball; on ball or on ball screens. Yes, we could use more zing here but that will automatically come when we can start taking some pride in our defense again!
Our biggest issues on defense are mechanical issues. Mostly... spacing and hedging. I've sort of given up hope of ever seeing a Self team understand hedging. But floor spacing is another issue.
Look at where we screw up most on defense; the trey ball.
The issue is spacing, mostly with our weak side help. Go back to really any Big 12 game on your DVR and watch again, paying close attention to weak side spacing on d. Our guys make the classic mistake here. When the ball moves to the other side and our guard defenders give weak side help they end up in "no man's land." What has happened.... they end up in a place on the court where they are of NO assistance whatsoever. They aren't in the paint enough to really help out there, and they are 15 ft away from their man poised on the trey line so not close enough to properly close out on the trey shot.
This one fact has bothered me all year with this team.
There is no way of playing good defense unless it is done as team defense. Every player needs to understand the role of every other player, too.
This is particularly important when it comes to spacing on defense. Yes.... we play a M2M defense. But... in reality this defense is a hybrid of M2M and zone. On ball defense is M2M and every man is responsible for his man, another rule of M2M. But the help defense, the weak side defense, is more like a zone, playing in between offensive players to help guard someone else while remaining responsible for a single man as required in a M2M. This is where it gets tricky.... this is where we have taken a truly stud lineup with guarding capabilities and turned them into a very average defending team.
Our guards are not properly positioned on their weak side help. One big problem is we have over-compensated for our post because we don't have a true shot blocker and we have depth as an issue in the post.
But in reality, the only big help our guards give our post player is the appearance of the lane being too busy so teams are less likely to feed the post or drive the lane.
They either need to play their man on the trey line closer, or the guards on the other side on the ball need to turn up the intensity to make it harder for them to pass cross court. The added pressure makes it tougher for them to throw a rifle pass to the other side for an open trey, and when they do pass they are more likely to throw the ball a bit off-target, throwing the shooter's rhythm off and making him take longer to finish his shot because the pass to him was off.
Playing good defense is like choreographing your defense as a dance team.
This is where you need old game footage in order to better tweak your defense.
Our defense can be helped immensely just by viewing tape and setting players up with better positioning and making sure to go over how aggressive they need to play.
This team should have 3-times more steals every game. Our defense has been completely under-performing except in the final couple of minutes.
If we get our guys spaced properly and knowing their roles on how intense to play and how they need to play it.... not only will you see a huge jump in the effectiveness of our defense, you will also notice our guys have turned up the hustle considerably because that extra 2% effort is what makes you a national championship or not. That last 2% is the hardest hustle to obtain because it really needs to happen through emotional inspiration.... which comes from seeing the optimism of good execution, all of this drives momentum.
I've never questioned this team's desire to win. It's written all over their faces. Frank and his team has but one goal now.... bring home the hardware!
