(12-08-2016 02:32 PM)Got Ribe Wrote:  

(12-08-2016 12:30 PM)WMTRIBE75 Wrote:  I am hardly an expert on the subject, but if Coach Shaver walked into my office right now and asked me what he should do, I would suggest that we spend the next three weeks before our conference opener making defense our one and only priority. We are blessed with a multitude of good athletes on this roster, players that teams a decade ago would have begged for, players that should be able to play great defense. Our mindset needs to change to one that demands that we commit ourselves to 40 minutes of great defense first on a nightly basis. Defense that shows passion and urgency. Defense that shows toughness. With the scorers that we can put on the floor, I do not believe that our offensive output would be impacted at all by expending great energy on the defensive side of the ball. To the contrary, I believe that the energy that we would feel from playing great defense would only make us better on offense. We have the players to win in Charleston, but only if we find the toughness to partner with our skill set.

Yeah, I agree with this, and I agree with the points about leadership too. Additionally, though, I'm beginning to question our quickness, especially on the defensive end. Mrs. R and I were talking over the weekend about how much we miss Tarpey's defensive quickness, in addition to his rebounding and intangibles. We always seem a step slow in getting to shooters. And as I think about, excluding Cohn and maybe Pierce, all of our guys have to defend opponents quicker than they are.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Effective defense is the result of effort and technique and generally is the by-product of the coaching staff. The best defensive teams have coaches that focus relentlessly on it. It is painful to practice and requires real discipline and attention to detail from the coaching staff. Every piece of a man-to-man scheme, from approaching shooters on the wing to playing screens, should be broken down into drills at least twice a week.

We lack both effort and technique at the moment. With our length we should be generating far more turnovers, deflecting more passes, and giving up fewer open looks. Our rotations are slow and the passing lanes are open far too frequently - generally because our off-ball position is poor.

One thing that may change with Seacat back is that we can give more fouls in the post. That hopefully will translate to more contested inside shots.

Also, seen a lot of chatter about zones. I think if you took a really good zone team (syracuse) and forced them to play man-to-man, they'd be one of the best in the country. You simply cannot be an effective zone team without a solid man-to-man foundation. We may see marginal improvement from a zone if an opponent is unprepared or shoots poorly, but over the course of several games, I think we'd end up right where we started.

CMU's Marcus Keene is definitely catching the national media's eye. Ollie Tot got caught up in the story.

Interesting stat from the article, CMU is the 348th tallest team in the country (of 351).


http://bleacherreport.com/articles/26803...asketball#

Story on Keene on Deadspin here: https://deadspin.com/get-to-know-marcus-...1790128386

He is blowing up early. We'll see how his season goes.