The guys played the packline a little bit better last night. It wasn't surprising to me that Tony started Shayok with Nolte being one of the first off the bench - I suspected that he might play the guys more that had game experience with the packline since the team apparently didn't practice the defense this past off season like they usually do. Tony even alluded to that in his post-game interview, saying that he wanted to start with some guys who had more playing experience in the system. But, we still need to get a lot better defensively. We were still slow hedging on screens and rotating and, as the game wore on, some of our off-the-ball defenders started straying again outside the packline. That straying is simply laziness in our system. This is the second game in a row where the other team spread out their offense and we "let" them spread us out and lazily went outside the imaginary 16-foot packline in our off the ball defense so that we wouldn't have to exert as much effort in closing out if our man got the ball. This has led to the penetration that our opponents have been able to get and has been the root cause of many of the bad foul calls.
I learned a long time ago that, as a defender, you are more likely to have a call go against you and to have phantom fouls called on you if your defense is fundamentally poor. Yes, there were some ridiculous calls the past 2 games, but refs, like players, tend to make more mistakes early in the year and get better as the season goes on. Most (not all) of the bad calls against us came when we were slow to rotate or get out on the hedge and the offensive player gained an advantage on us. As a contrast, remember in the second half when Jack Salt hedged on a screen in the key area and drove the Bradley player out and away from the basket ala Akil Mitchell and did not get called for a foul? It was because Jack got out ahead of the guy and remained in good defensive position.
We have a lot of practice to do to get better defensively - this is not going to happen overnight and I fear that we're going to lose a couple of more games here soon because our defense is simply not being played well enough. But last night's improvement was encouraging and I feel like by year's end, we'll be ready to make a good run in the tournament.
I learned a long time ago that, as a defender, you are more likely to have a call go against you and to have phantom fouls called on you if your defense is fundamentally poor. Yes, there were some ridiculous calls the past 2 games, but refs, like players, tend to make more mistakes early in the year and get better as the season goes on. Most (not all) of the bad calls against us came when we were slow to rotate or get out on the hedge and the offensive player gained an advantage on us. As a contrast, remember in the second half when Jack Salt hedged on a screen in the key area and drove the Bradley player out and away from the basket ala Akil Mitchell and did not get called for a foul? It was because Jack got out ahead of the guy and remained in good defensive position.
We have a lot of practice to do to get better defensively - this is not going to happen overnight and I fear that we're going to lose a couple of more games here soon because our defense is simply not being played well enough. But last night's improvement was encouraging and I feel like by year's end, we'll be ready to make a good run in the tournament.
