In order to have a great defensive team, or at least a very good defensive team, it all starts with the individual players. Average defenders will never form a very good or great defense. Just not happening. Each has to have the necessary positioning knowledge and lateral quickness in order to be effective at stopping the opposing player from getting to where he wants to be. Some defenders, like Mario and Russell Robinson, were extremely adept at being disruptive not only with positioning but also with their hands, poking away passes and getting deflections that in turn made life miserable for the opposition. This individualistic philosophical fact about defense MUST be present before larger collective strategies can be employed.
We all know and remember just how effective the 08 team's collective and individual defensive prowess was - "Help the helper's helper". That's fine and dandy.
Villanova and Oregon were brought up in the other thread as well. There are only a few coaches whose systems give Bill a problem, and those two, along with West Virginia and Michigan State, give him the most problems. For some reason, those styles of play have elements (body composition and attitude of players, defensive schemes, etc) that promote difficulties for our coach to combat. A few months ago, I recommended that we start recruiting the types of players that give us trouble, but I doubt that will ever happen, and it doesn't necessarily have to.
I will offer a prediction. We have lost in Morgantown the last four years and each of those years (minus the Stanford loss) has resulted in a defeat at the hands of a similar team to West Virginia. This year, in spite of the absence of numerous players, WVU stil has Jevon Carter, Lemonte West, Elijah Macon and Esa Ahmad, all players that have given our guys fits the last few years. If we can secure a W in Morgantown, then I predict we will be headed to the final four. Why? Because it proves that our guys can compete successfully against tough, talented and defensive minded systems with HOF level coaches, something they have been unable to do the last few years.
Now the summary of our present roster. The last really good or very good defensive team Self had was the 2012-2013 team. Yes, they had a bad mid season slump, but every team goes through that. I advise you all to watch, assuming it is still there, their home game against K State from 2013. Their defensive level is a bit higher than the past three or four years and it is plainly obvious. Yes, I know about the rule changes and what not. But rule changes have zippo, zilch natta to do with good positioning and active hands. Let's stop making excuses for bad mechanics and fundamentals and say that the past few years have been under our, and Self's, normal standard.
It seems to me that after the mass exodus of the 2013 team that the defensive aptitude of the players Self recruited was lacking. And this is a very bad trait, IMO, to lack. Texas Hawk is correct - defense wins championships. In college basketball, I can think of a bunch of teams that went to the final four that relied primarily on toughness and defense, but I can't think of many that went there with primarily offense. And no, you should not reference Roy. If you haven't noticed, even he has amped up the level of D his teams play at, and it became noticeable to me in his 2009 championship team, and plain as day in 2016 and 2017, which by the way was his THIRD time taking a team to back to back final fours.
In order to see a title for this upcoming season, it all starts with Devonte's defense out front. His lateral quickness and agility, at least to me, has always seemed a bit short of where a point guard should be. I am not aware of how Bill teaches individual defense and how he relates lateral quickness to defensive aptitude, but I would imagine that he works on it. If Devonte and Svi don't get it together, there will be no title this year. Probably not even a final four. That's just how important it is for success. But there is little reason that I can think of why it can't be better, as in holding teams to 65 or fewer ppg, as Texas Hawk pointed out.
Like I said before in the "We Need a Title" thread, this next year is very important. We have a good combination of balance and experience plus three players that are capable of being first team all americans and/or Big 12 player of the year in Graham, Newman and Dok, each with an outside chance of NPOY. We have shooters, tons of offense, legit post presence, rebounding, shot blocking and speed. All we need now is some perimeter D and we are set to go.
