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We are 19th in the country in defense fg% and 22nd in points given up per game. That's outta 350 teams. We are 13th in the country in blocks per game. We will become an elite defensive team when we start rebounding it better. This is how we are 7-0 right now. Howland got his name from great defense at Pitt and UCLA. He hasn't lost it. We get frustrated by the offense but the improvement in defense is phenomenal. Don't overlook it.
Wish we would grind it out longer on offense. It is not pretty and certainly boring, but it is effective. Howland only changed to up and down firing away offense his last or 2nd to last year at UCLA. I think we could be even better defensively if we ate up more shot clock
An issue we still have on defense is rotating and protecting the back door. We're not giving up a ton of outright free points there, but most of the time we're slow to rotate, giving up position down low, which leads to easier shots and fouls. Other than that, improvement on defense has been tremendous and anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they're looking at.
The problem is the 3's just aren't going in. If we would just be shooting something like 35% from 3 we would be blowing teams out and nobody would be bitching about our offense. We can't stay this cold forever. I love transition offense. It's basically the NASCAR HUNH type offense that Auburn runs in football. I am all for pushing the ball as fast as possible after the rebound. You get tons of easy baskets that way and with how poorly we've been shooting we need all the easy baskets we can get. However when that gets shutdown Howland most certainly needs to develop a better half-court system. This is when I want us to drive to the hole collapsing the defense and then dish it to Ado/Holman/Datcher. They can get limitless dunks by doing this. The defender either has to not leave his man thus giving the driver an easy layup or leave his man to help giving up the free dunk after the dump off pass. It's not complicated and Peters/Nick/Q can get to the basket anytime they want.Quote:
Originally Posted by msstate7
I only saw that last night for 10 minutes in the second half and a lot of that had to do with the officiating and the way they were calling it.Quote:
Originally Posted by thf24
Still don’t understand why we can’t stop the rampant lane penetration. Is it because we are worried about our depth?
Have you been watching this year? The Lane penetration for the most part has stopped. Last night was an anomaly based on the idiot refs calling every touch foul possible for the last 10-15 minutes in the game. We have been stopping it pretty well all year.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Garvin
Sometimes they let the guy go when they got the "trees" down low ready to block shots.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Garvin
Yep, once we break out of the shooting slump(I do believe we will be a good shooting team) this team will be rolling. They have a chance to be a pretty special group on the nights they are hitting shots.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawg61
This year vs. Last year (3PT %):
Q: 17.4% vs 37.3%
Peters: 12.5% vs 36.6%
They will get better. Everyone has been fine.
Great point! This defense is much improved. I am excited about the future of this team. Now if we can prevent injuries and suspensions we'll be ok.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawg61