The Advocate - Will Wade on defense

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“Some of the defensive stuff, a lot of it is my fault.

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There he goes throwing people under the bus again

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Some of the defensive stuff, a lot of it is my fault.

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MUH EXCUSES

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“Some of the defensive stuff, a lot of it is my fault. We try a bunch of different things to just see what sticks. We’ll try to get very good at one or two things defensively; if teams beat us on other stuff, they’re just going to have to beat us.”

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My thought has been most of the season is that the defensive gameplan has been too overly-detailed at the expense of execution. You can see it over and over again after a defensive lapse. The coaches are yelling at the player who screwed up and, in return, the player is shouting back at the coach essentially saying he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Maybe simplifying things will allow them to be much better overall because...

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“We just have to be 10 or 15% better, that’s four or five possessions a game.

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He's 100% right. Despite playing horrible defense, LSU has still been within striking distance in every game they've lost (absent the ETSU game). Assuming they can keep up the same high level of efficiency on offense, we're talking about LSU only needing to get about 4-6 more defensive stops per game to turn those close losses into wins.


We can discuss the talent level. The lack of a PG. The absence of a "big man". But the reality is this team is still pretty good and not far away from being really good. That has been the most frustrating part. With even just a marginally better defensive output this team would likely be leading the SEC and a top 15 team. They are one of, if not arguably the most balanced offensive team in the nation. They have 5 starters averaging at least 12 points per game. NO ONE else can say that. FIVE guys that can get you a bucket any time one-on-one. They are a nightmare to defend because you can't double team anyone. Now just imagine if they could hold teams to just 8 less points per game.

(no message)

He has two resources at his disposal:

John Brady - his teams had no offense, but they could play defense.

Dale Brown - bring back the triangle and two or diamond defense or whatever it was he would use occasionally that would really stymie opponents.

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Some of the defensive stuff, a lot of it is my fault

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I was never in the camp that thought Will Wade 'threw guys under the bus'; I think he's a stand up guy; I was also not in the camp of people who thought Will Wade was/is a great coach. He is clearly better than what we've had the last decade, but that's a very low bar. He has a lot of learning and growing to do to become a top tier coach.

Saying the problems are "my fault" and actually correcting the problems are two different things. Good coaches do both.

Things have and continue to go awry, but I do believe we will fix them.

Let's stop pretending that WW still is not putting out a better product than JJ and Trent because he IS. We can hit warp speed all we want and pretend we are Kentucky or Kansas but we arent. Still, we can be a basketball school called LSU. We still have to build the brand.

We need a rim protector and a true PG and top of key defender for next season. We should have both. And defense will pick back up. And it still can. We run that 1-3-1 at the right time? Alabama got bit by it. UK did not. Wade should work on that defense all off season. Need depth to utilize it. We will have that.

Hard to play solid D with 7 guys.

I said something very similar to this in an earlier post a few days ago about trimming 8-10 points by improving dribble penetration defense, better communication on screens/switching and rotations. Hope they can get those issues fixed because they can be really good if so.