I agree, man. People saying it had anything to do with “missing” on this or that player are dead wrong imo. This was a schematic and tactical gameplan issue. I didn’t see many situations where I felt that we weren’t capable of defending the play because we dont have Lamar Wilkerson or Caleb Wilson lol. Pope is going to have to be more flexible on defense, because whatever identity he thinks we have isn’t going to work, or at least it didn’t in the first half. Btw even JQ isn’t going to fix the issues on ball screen coverage that we had early in that game. Pope has been saying that we have struggled in ball screen coverage in practice and it shows. The good news is time can fix most of it, if the guys are willing to commit to communicating better, sprinting hard to prevent transition buckets, knowing your assignment, etc. I didn’t see anything unfixable on the tape so far, which should be good news for any Kentucky fan who believes we can be a title team. Now the bad news is we weren’t bad defensively—- we were atrocious by and large.I want to shout DOH!!! on so many of these.
But I guess the silver lining in so many idiot mistakes is it doesn't take Yaxel Lendeborg or AJ Dybto correct them. It just takes regular guys "getting" it.
And part of that may be playing in a frothing sold out Yum! Center thier third real game as a team. That can make you un-get a fair amount of the stuff you have already started to get——just don't really have it down perfect. Throw a monster like Mikkel Brown into that mix and imperfect means burned.
Amen and amen.I agree, man. People saying it had anything to do with “missing” on this or that player are dead wrong imo. This was a schematic and tactical gameplan issue. I didn’t see many situations where I felt that we weren’t capable of defending the play because we dont have Lamar Wilkerson or Caleb Wilson lol. Pope is going to have to be more flexible on defense, because whatever identity he thinks we have isn’t going to work, or at least it didn’t in the first half. Btw even JQ isn’t going to fix the issues on ball screen coverage that we had early in that game. Pope has been saying that we have struggled in ball screen coverage in practice and it shows. The good news is time can fix most of it, if the guys are willing to commit to communicating better, sprinting hard to prevent transition buckets, knowing your assignment, etc. I didn’t see anything unfixable on the tape so far, which should be good news for any Kentucky fan who believes we can be a title team. Now the bad news is we weren’t bad defensively—- we were atrocious by and large.
I’ll work on the second half when I get this kiddo to sleep and we will see how Louisville adjusted to our ball screen adjustmentsAmen and amen.
Louisville basically did that against us too. Aggressively double the ball handler on the screen. Lowe made a couple nice passes out of it for easy baskets but mostly it took us out of the flow of the possession, and then we’d get sped up with a shortened shot clock, leading to some of our turnovers.I really wish we could defend the screen like Houston does. I love the trap up top over the screen, usually forces a bad pass and always stops guard penetration. The pass to the roller is also hard to make. We have to use our defense to our advantage and get out in transition.
Post the guard. That’s one way to counter switching on screens. The Scheyer/Duke philosophy: relentlessly hunt mismatches and win one-on-one.2 - 2-5 ball screen switch between Garrison and Chandler eventually results in Chandler being posted up by Hadley after a couple of reversals. Oweh provides help and traps Hadley. Aberdeen doesn’t rotate over to corner shooter, which is McKneeley. Easy three (18:50).
Can't wait to see Quaintance play for us. Moreno has been much better than expected this early in the season, and is really good in the pick and roll, but we need JQ's rim protection "bad"Garrison in three games 64 minutes played at 6'10" and good athleticism .... has blocked ONE shot.
Moreno in three games 55 minutes played at 7'0" ..... has blocked ONE shot.
When healthy Jayden Quaintance needs to play 25 to 30 minutes a game.