I never concluded anything. I was pretty clear in saying that IF IT WERE MY TEAM I would start him or Sydnor at the 4.
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Miteo
- Thread starter Bob Chaewsky_rivals
- Start date
There is no bait. That doesn't even make sense. I just asked the two of you a simple question and you both refuse to answer it. If I'm debating with someone over man to man defense, something that I've PROVEN to be pretty good at on both the high school and college levels, I want to know something about the person I'm debating with. I think that's fair. I assume you went to Rutgers. Would you argue the benefits of a college education with someone who didn't finish high school? I have a BA in Psychology. I wouldn't think to argue abnormal behavior with a clinical psychologist. I'm interested in giving opinions and hearing them, but I'm not interested in going on and on arguing with someone about man to man defense whose only background might be as a Rutgers fan or as an eighth grade CYO coach. I'll leave it at that.
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Man, you guys crack me up in the mornings lol... interesting season to come with so many unknowns beyond the guards. Even the guards are an unknown with the anticipated development of the rising sophomores..
Not sure why you would go on a fan forum to discuss the team if you are going to completely dismiss the opinions of fans out of hand simply because they are fans. Moreover, if you are knowledgeable that should come through by explaining your position and providing insights rather than simply telling everyone that you’re an expert.
This is an anonymous forum on the public internet. I opt not to share much direct personal information in that setting,so it’d be hard for me to answer that. All I will say is a grew up in a family that lives and breathes basketball (playing and coaching) and now my kids are following that legacy too.
For the reason above, I offered instead, a widely known philosophy about the importance of coaches, not only teaching man early, but playing it in youth ball even if it costs you wins. You tried to play this off as - what do 12 year olds have to do with this? And I explained that the whole logic behind it is the widely accepted belief that it very often takes many many years for man scheme concepts like switches and help D to become innate. I’m not “making this up” myself or expressing a personal opinion, rather I’m repeating philosophy that is spelled out on many a youth basketball club website.
But the funny part is we don’t even know if this was Powers issue or not. All we know is that he was a deer without headlights out there on D last season. He was ok in the press schemes, but simply horrendous by all counts as a halfcourt defender.
If you think Powers D last season was comparable to Geo’s defense at any point in his 5 season RU career, then I really don’t know what to tell you.
Oh please, giving a general background isn't exposing personal information. What you gave me is kind of what I wanted to know and close to what I expected, It doesn't take older kids (high school and up) long to pick up man to man defensive fundamentals - maybe it takes years for little kids, I wouldn't know. Help positioning is no more than seeing man and ball without having to turn your head, and always staying between your man and the ball, then beating your man to the ball if he cuts toward it. The hardest thing to teach defensively is getting over screens because ideally you don't even want to switch. The great man to man defensive coaches only have guys switch when they can't get over the top of screens. I found it difficult to get older kids to block out because the natural reaction is to go after the ball. If you don't do block out drills religiously kids stop doing it. You can make an older kid a pretty good defender in one season if he wants to learn. Except for defense on the ball, you don't even have to be a great athlete.
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Whatever you say. Your entitled to your belief that commonly held philosophies about mastering man to man D are a myth, but you cannot dispute that what I’m referring to is, in fact, a widely held philosophy. You also can’t dispute the real data out there from many a past player in our program who have struggled to adjust from zone systems to man systems. Dercack and GG to name a few.
The bottom line is you can “teach” man concepts all you want - that’s not the challenge with having limited exposure to it prior to college. What you can’t teach is the natural instinct to react immediately without having to think for a moment with the right read on switches and help. If you have to think - your almost always a moment to late. Often times, the only way to improve this is with more and more reps. Again - this goes back to why so many youth programs prioritize man to man. There are only so many hours in the day. You can’t “make up” lack of years and years of those reps which build natural instincts over time. Yes - I’m sure there are some kids who “get it” right away, but a lot do not. And some never do. The data is out there. You don’t need my personal background to verify - Jordan Dercack was the picture child. Peter Kiss another example of a kid who couldn’t cut it in a man scheme but excelled when he transferred to Bryant’s zone.
Didn't mean to imply that, only that Geo was also not a good defender. Rutgers fans tended to overlook Geo's deficiencies, of which there were more than a few, because he hit so many game winning shots.
Hah, you don't know the commonly held philosophies. I've been trying to tell you them. Not would I expect you to know them. I wouldn't expect a fan and a youth basketball coach to know how to perfect a college players defensive abilities.
In the age of endless three point shots in HS basketball, man to man D is played plenty unless you want to quickly lose a game. Plus a lot of these guys play EYBL, etc. and I don't recall seeing much zone there when I've watched. Though defense seemed optional in some of those games...lol.
Somehow GG came in looking like he’d never played man to man before. To be clear, I’m sure he had. What I’ve been trying to say is that there’s a whole school of thought out there that not learning and primarily playing man to man D from a young age can stunt development and make it harder to pick up later in life. Maybe it’s just a myth, but this isn’t something I’m “making up”. Now - this wouldn’t apply, of course, to kids who first started playing the game later in life. The premise is that zone can teach bad habits and instincts that are contrary to man principles which are difficult to undo. It’s definitely the case that some kids never “get it”. Hard to know going into next season whether Powers will or not.
That said - it’s also hard to take anything seriously coming from someone who is comparing Geo’s D to Powers. Geo might not be Caleb, but if Geo’s D was “bad”, Powers D was flat out unplayable (which actually it probably would’ve been on most other Pike coached teams). It was just that Grant, Denis and Zrno couldn’t defend either.
I think we can agree that playing man D in HS and college are two different things because the speed is much different. In your example GG wasn't ready for the speed of the game on D and couldn't cover his guy as a result. Too much thinking because things weren't coming naturally made him slow to react but he did get a little better towards the end as his recognition improved.
Yes - for sure. And to be clear, whether GG, Powers or others were less prepared for collegiate man to man D could be a result of any number (or combination of multiple) reasons. Bob had suggested the possibility that he was transitioning from zone to man. I was only pointing out that if that’s actually true, it’s not all that likely to be as simple as needing a year under his belt and suddenly it all just clicks. He’s really making light of the task of developing the defensive IQ necessary to be able to play Pike’s defense. Tariq came in more prepared that Pike expected in this regard, and he said as much. This isn’t nothing and it’s far from a given that Powers will automatically get there in one off season. Plenty of guys never do and whether they have the athletic tools or not doesn’t always matter.
To the first point, there's a reason why they call it adjusting to the speed of the game. It's mainly used for football with true freshman but really applies to a lot of sports especially basketball where we see many freshman disappear when league play starts and some emerge towards the end of the season.
As for when it clicks with players, I agree there is no given to when it happens. It all depends on how much work they need to put in on the court as well as film prep so they know their opponent and their tendencies. The latter doesn't get discussed much for basketball like in football but I believe that every great defender is watching film on the guys he's going against and looking for certain things that tell them what move is coming and then they beat them to it because they are anticipating and not reacting.
You’ll hear guys saying - defense is “just effort” which makes it sound like anyone who wants to be good at it can. It doesn’t work like that, and while it’s not impossible, the odds of an awful frosh defender like Powers was (not an average run of the mill one, but someone who stood out as clueless) suddenly turning the corner the other way as a sophomore aren’t all that high. Some improvement? Sure. But there’s a good long ways to go for him to move out of the horrible category into the mediocre bucket. Conversations of him beating out a 17ppg scorer who was much more efficient than him just don’t make any sense. He’d have not not only improve his defense drastically but also his offense.
An 17 year old Larry Bird, one of the best to ever play the game, did not make much an impression on Bobby Knight, one of the best to every coach the game. Projecting talent is a difficult business. Like horse racing, the experts are only slightly better than the random guesser. I see in Miteo tape with a kind of aggressive impatience, that no one on this team has. He is big. He is athletic. Hands, feet, shot selection? I don't know. I don't think they can be terrible. There is no way his light is buried under a bushel this season.
If it wasn’t for Bobby Knight, Larry Bird wouldn’t have the opportunity to drop out of school and work riding around on a garbage truck before resurfacing at Indiana State. That being said Pikiel seems as high on Miteo as you seem to be. Miteo does look pretty darn good on tape and is only 17 so hope you, Pikiel and Jerry Carino are right about him.
...and there is nothing like working the back of a sanitation truck in French Lick's stinging winter wind to smarten you right up. Once you open a lid to see you've woken up a rat family, you never complain about suicide drills again. My man came back to college with a fresh understanding of angles and release points. Because he'd taught them to himself, they were innate. The lesson isn't "believe in yourself," it's "work your *** off to earn the right to believe in yourself."