Hat tip to Nicholson/Verhoeven for defensive effort

eastbaycat99

Sophomore
Mar 7, 2009
2,519
168
48
Tyson Degenhart came into yesterday’s game as BSU’s leading scorer. He moves around a lot, takes 3’s, and could have forced the Cats into the using Beran as the center. I thought both Matt and Tydus moved around well defensively. Nicholson, for his size, is always surprisingly quick in his footwork on defense. Both followed Degenhart out to the 3 point line and were able to retreat back when necessary. Degenhart’s game line: 4-8 shooting, 8 points (0–3 On 3’s), 3 rebounds. While they did not put up many points on offense, Degenhart was hesitant to leave them to hedge on the guards’ drives. I thought they made a huge contribution to establishing and maintaining control of the game.
 

Hungry Jack

All-Conference
Nov 17, 2008
37,181
2,672
67
Great points. My hot take on Big Matt, for whom I have an irrational admiration (prolly cause he was really nice to my son), was that he had no real role yesterday against that scheme. I should reconsider.

But Big Matt’s services will be vital against UCLA.
 

GatoLouco

Sophomore
Nov 13, 2019
5,636
116
63
Tyson Degenhart came into yesterday’s game as BSU’s leading scorer. He moves around a lot, takes 3’s, and could have forced the Cats into the using Beran as the center. I thought both Matt and Tydus moved around well defensively. Nicholson, for his size, is always surprisingly quick in his footwork on defense. Both followed Degenhart out to the 3 point line and were able to retreat back when necessary. Degenhart’s game line: 4-8 shooting, 8 points (0–3 On 3’s), 3 rebounds. While they did not put up many points on offense, Degenhart was hesitant to leave them to hedge on the guards’ drives. I thought they made a huge contribution to establishing and maintaining control of the game.
It was really good for us that BSU could not figure out how to stop the dribble hand offs and, to a lesser extent, the pick and roll.

The ball defender was instructed to not go under and honor the shooting ability on the pick and roll. The defender on, usually Mat/Verhoeven, did not aggressively jump the ball handler/receiver like we see our big guys do when we defend. Probably because, being short, they felt the lob was a dangerous proposition.

They first moved to zone for a few possessions, abandoned it when Boo hit a three and started jumping the handoff and pick and roll after.