A lack of fundamentals on both sides of the ball, atrocious defense and a complete inability to create assists. Perhaps it was too much to ask for an entirely new basketball team, but they need to show improvement at the very least.
This game convinced me that it's likely not a schematic issue. Seems that our defensive talent cap is lower than expected, which is obviously disappointing but explains why this team doesn't resemble the one starting the season.
Maybe a deep dive comparing our win at SC and loss at Cornell would be illustrative? Probably not a coincidence that SC was Omot's last game.
We went all-in on help defense and got punished. We tried ratcheting up intensity and drew too many fouls to make it a sustainable strategy (and think we just run out of gas as well). I didn't see a lot of blatant defensive lapses. We just get beat.
I think our defensive struggles boil down to one thing: We have no defensive-plus wings.
Modern basketball defense requires being able to handle switches. Last year we had Tyson and Newell and Kennedy to provide us enough versatility to stop the ball (and our biggest challenge was on offfense).
This year, with Omot mostly sidelined, we're down to Ola-Joseph, Petraitis, Mahoney and Stojakovic being put into switches. O-J is the only one who has even slight wing defensive skills, but he is undersized. The rest have significant issues from a talent and effort perspective. So once a team runs a switch that draws the big out of the paint it's blow-by after blow-by. When we changed it up and tried trapping on Clemson, the off-ball wing would struggle to rotate to the open three pointer.
Just like Cal improved everywhere but offensive line in football, we have to upgrade at the wing in the portal next year.
A lack of fundamentals on both sides of the ball, atrocious defense and a complete inability to create assists. Perhaps it was too much to ask for an entirely new basketball team, but they need to show improvement at the very least.
This game convinced me that it's likely not a schematic issue. Seems that our defensive talent cap is lower than expected, which is obviously disappointing but explains why this team doesn't resemble the one starting the season.
Maybe a deep dive comparing our win at SC and loss at Cornell would be illustrative? Probably not a coincidence that SC was Omot's last game.
We went all-in on help defense and got punished. We tried ratcheting up intensity and drew too many fouls to make it a sustainable strategy (and think we just run out of gas as well). I didn't see a lot of blatant defensive lapses. We just get beat.
Thanks Nick!
I think our defensive struggles boil down to one thing: We have no defensive-plus wings.
Modern basketball defense requires being able to handle switches. Last year we had Tyson and Newell and Kennedy to provide us enough versatility to stop the ball (and our biggest challenge was on offfense).
This year, with Omot mostly sidelined, we're down to Ola-Joseph, Petraitis, Mahoney and Stojakovic being put into switches. O-J is the only one who has even slight wing defensive skills, but he is undersized. The rest have significant issues from a talent and effort perspective. So once a team runs a switch that draws the big out of the paint it's blow-by after blow-by. When we changed it up and tried trapping on Clemson, the off-ball wing would struggle to rotate to the open three pointer.
Just like Cal improved everywhere but offensive line in football, we have to upgrade at the wing in the portal next year.
Interesting because since Omot went down, we have been on a big slide. What exactly is his injury and what's the prognosis?