re: Would anyone like to have an intelligent conversation regarding our D?

The first thing I would say that hurts us defensively is that none of our starters can stay in front of people on dribble penetration. Particularly Smart and Watford they just flat out lack lateral quickness. Thomas is only marginally better in that regard.

IMHO this leads to many of our issues, help has to rotate constantly to cover for this inequity and that compromises rebounding position and also leads to kick outs for open 3's.

Now we do have some guys on the bench who can do better but they have yet to show they can score enough to justify more minutes.

Now could improved technique and communication help our guys who are challenged in regard to lateral quickness? Yes I think to some extent and you can put that on the coaching, but the quicker players would still expose them even with better technique and communication.

I know some have said it's our defensive philosophy, that steals and deflections are valued and not keeping things in front of us. I would not discount that totally, but I don't think that's the reason we get beat so often on initial dribble penetration for the most part and I still think that's the biggest issue.

Also, I thought specifically as to the game last night the Aggies started running some baseline screen action to get some shooters open and our efforts at least initially, to get around the screens was half-arse to say it nicely. Perhaps some butt was chewed cause we did a little better in that regard toward the end.

This year, prior to Kentucky, we’ve been good at 3pt% allowed at 31%. Last year was bad 35% but this season we were at 28% until the Bama game which is very good. The problem we have with the 3 is that we give up too many good looks. Since we’ve gone mostly man to man, starting at halftime of the Kentucky game we’re at 27% which is outstanding. We gave up 1-9 vs UK in the second half and 12-38 last night. Our zone defense was giving up too many quality looks and even though last night ATM shot it 38 times almost none of them were good looks. Even during that spell when they got hot they were making 27 footers and moving 3s which is why it didn’t last long.

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No one wants to hear this but our 3 point defense isn’t that bad.

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Percentage wise yes but 3 point attempts against LSU is very high. Based off of watching multiple years of this It seems Wade is just ok with giving up 3 point attempts and banking on them being college players and they will miss a lot more than they make crash the boards and get rebounds (which this team is not good at doing). And probably 90 percent of the teams you play this strategy will work because most teams don’t have consistent outside scorers. This style does not match up well with teams like Bama that just want to put up as many 3’s as possible and has multiple guys that are good from 3.

With the struggles on D, and last two games against poor shooting teams, you keep it as simple as possible. Go with a basic 1-3-1 or 2-1-2. Focus on basic stuff and how to properly block out while rebounding. This may seem simple but in the current world with AAU Run and Gun some of these guys may not have been thought this stuff?

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It is crazy how slow they are on rotations.

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This by a WIDE Margin. Their rotations are absolutely horrible. Lack of focus on that side of the ball is lacking to say the least.

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Dribble penetration corner threes are this teams kryptonite.

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This all starts at the point. We can't even slow down, much less lock down the point of attack.

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I’m a huge Wade fan but it just seems like guys never know how to rotate no matter what type of defense we are playing.

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Until this is fixed, I can see LSU being a 2 and BBQ type team in the Big Dance consistently.

“I can see LSU being a 2 and BBQ type team in the Big Dance consistently”


The NCAA tournament is single elimination.

Aren’t you the same one last week that was saying, don’t talk bad about WW or our defense.

You didn’t want to have an intelligent conversation on the subject matter?

It looks like you did some research and joined what some of us already knew.

I’m proud of you. It shows some people can change.

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The NCAA tournament is single elimination.

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I know that. I'm saying they will probably win the 1st Game of the tourney by being flat out better than the opponent, but the 2nd game will on average be a tougher matchup, therefore, they will have played TWO games in the Tourney.

Reference: 2 and BBQ.

I honestly could care less about basketball

Thank you for your input. I would suggesting caring less then