This defense that calls for Moses to switch out up high on a guard away from the bucket makes no sense. You take your best shot blocker and rebounder away from the rim.
That’s coaching. Hurt us last year. They r killing us on the offensive glass
Moses might need to come off the bench. His poor starts can be overcome against average teams, but not good teams. Poor BB IQ one thing, but lack of coaching development inexcusable.
Tonight we really witnessed the difficulty in our style of defense, especially when we play such a short lineup. With Kingsly often 20 feet from the rim, we pay a terrible price in easy second chance points. Our press generally produces a lot of uncontested three point shots and few turnovers. We create matchup disadvantages with our constant switching as well as leave a lot of open shooters by repeated attempts to double team. Maybe more talent will remedy some of this, I hope so, because i don’t see Mike changing his style. Today has been a tough day for Hog fans, made even worse with Kevaugn looking good for the Gators and that other guy showing out for the Cats, not to mention Bret’s boys going awol in the second half.
Any decent coach licks his chops playing against us. A good team will get open threes, drives to basket, they will exploit the mismatches we give them
I totally agree. CMA’s style takes superior athletes, but any team that matches us with talent and plays fundamentally sound ball will beat us the majority of the time.
Mike loves to mix up defenses and having bigs switch is one of the two most common ways he likes to defend the pick-and-roll. Moses is agile enough to be effective, but you’re right that ll does take him out of the paint and negate the only shot blocker on the team. He used to have Bobby switch a ton. Theoretically, this can work well if you have a long lineup with mostly interchangeable guys. But obviously Arkansas has a lot of 6-3 guards.
The other tactic he tends to use, showing/blitzing, requires Moses or whoever the big guarding the screener is to slide with the ballhandler while the guard fights over the screen. If they do it effectively and are aggressive, this can lead to a trap. But it leaves the rest of the defense playing 3 against 4 and requires a help defender to suck in and bump the offense’s big man on the roll, leaving an open shooter. They’re susceptible to giving up open 3s in this.
A third option, one he never/rarely uses, is having the big drop back into the paint and play center field so to speak, keeping the ballhandler in front of him and preventing the big from having a free roll to the rim. The guard defending the ballhandler fights over the screen and stays attached to his hip. This allows the rest of the defense to stay at home and encourages long 2-point jumpers by the offense. Lot of NBA teams do this.
He likes to be multiple on defense to keep offenses on their heels. Sometimes it wreaks havoc. Sometimes it leads to breakdowns defensively if everyone isn’t on the same page since there isn’t one set scheme.
I haven’t made the time to post on this thought, but as some know, this has been one of the things most criticized by me - PNR defense.
I know we’ve seen some success playing ‘multiple’ off the PNR, but I’ve chosen to be quiet regarding that success due to us not playing teams that have had high major talents at the PG and screener positions. Last night, we obviously did, and Kasey Hill ate our lunch.
Against teams that run it constantly from here on out, and many do, if we don’t hedge hard, retreat hard with our bigs, I fear we’re going to be in the same spot as we were last night a lot more.
For those that aren’t familiar with that technique, it’s where, say, Kingsley helps on defending the dribbler aggressively, not to give up the drive or open jumper, and allows the dribbler’s defender to get over the screen and remain guarding that dribbler. While this is happening, our wing defenders ‘sag’ off of their man to help on the screener who typically rolls hard to the paint. Once the primary defender recovers over the screen enough, Kingsley sprints back to his original defender, the screener.
In our run two years ago, we did that a lot, if not the majority of the time, after the bad loss to Ole Miss at home, at which they absolutely put on a clinic with PNR offense.
It’s the most fundamental way to play the Spread PNR offenses that many teams use these days because bigs are typically not athletic enough to switch or trap the dribbler effectively. Our bigs are relatively athletic so we have a better chance than most switching and trapping, but the proof is in the pudding this year and last.
3rd option you mentioned is most common in BBall and seems to be more suited to the talent level we have and as you say MA rarely uses it. So are these defensive options dictated on the fly by our players depending on what the opponents offensive set does or by instructions from the bench and they stick with it till instructed otherwise?
Was just about to come back and add that they’ll occasionally hedge, too. Posted observations, went to take a shower and realized I forgot to even mention it. I need sleep ha.
Do you prefer having the big hedge or drop? All things equal, I like dropping the big. But if we’re strictly talking Arkansas basketball, I feel like that’s too conservative of an approach for Mike’s taste.
I prefer aggressive defense, so I prefer hedging. But, ultimately, I would coach it based on the matchup. Is the ballhandler a knockdown shooter? If so, you have to show/hedge. If not, I’m not opposed to playing back a little.
Hard hedge all day, every day. Also like trapping on PnR D
Hard hedge then drop back to the paint quick. Trap the ball if our pressure is working, but know who has responsibility for the paint and who has the perimeter after the trap. Our defense fails most often when switching leaves one of our guys in no man land, not guarding or in rebound position… this happens to the same guys again and again, Moses, Dusty, CJ. It’s one thing to switch on screens. It’s another thing to have one guy switch and the other guy standing around lost. Moses shouldn’t switch off a true post player because when the ball goes to the post we are then forced to trap and good teams pass out of the trap until they find a wide open shot.
Fair enough, I’m probably a little more conservative. And yeah, couldn’t afford to lay back against a guy like the North Florida guard, but could’ve dropped against Hill and probably could against De’Aaron Fox next week.
Mike is constantly barking out orders from the bench on defense.
Yeah, their rotations out of traps and doubles are often pretty shoddy.
This sequence against Texas jumped out at me so much because they actually played everything pretty perfectly, which is rare. Barford sinks down as Cook doubles (they doubled Allen on a lot of his touches) and Beard rotates in time for a decent contest on a nice skip pass from Texas.
https://twitter.com/NWAJimmy/status/810655382590881793
And if the ball had been swung back up, Dusty was in good position. But this has been more the exception than the rule.
I don’t mind switching at times if you have the personnel to do so. Next year’s team might with the added length. This one doesn’t.
Help me understand why you aren’t our coach or any coach in the league since you know so much. I just don’t understand. Why are you not our coach? My first thought is you have no idea what the heck you are talking about. But my second thought is you absolutely have no idea what you’re talking. But then I had a third thought and the light bulb came on…
Lots of great info and analysis in this thread. I prefer to see a strong hedge as well against the PNR, however I understand a teams ability to do so is somewhat limited by personnel.
But this is precisely why I have little confidence in this team making a strong run in conference and making the NCAA. Defense will continue to be our ahcilles heel–and many of the teams we’ll face in conference will attempt to exploit this weakness just as Florida did. I do believe we are good enough that there will be games, particularly at home, where we will shoot well enough and generate enough steals to overcome. But I fear that will be the exception rather than the norm in conference play.