Popes defense
- Thread starter billygera
- Start date
Ill hold judgement until he has at least another year under his belt. Thess weren't exactly the top choices for Pope. It's king of all that was left. Plus Jrob is out now, and Butler is playing at like 75%. Still no Kerr.
Kind of doing what we can, with what we have.
Kind of doing what we can, with what we have.
It has to improve for sure. Recruiting better athletes going forward will help.
I about had a heart attack in the bama game...ball hits the floor, 4 blue jerseys standing around it, bama still gets the board.
It's simply a want to on some of these things.
Watch Almanor...he literally just watches the ball
It's simply a want to on some of these things.
Watch Almanor...he literally just watches the ball
I have no doubt he'll get better athletes. They don't seem to fight through screens, they don't recover, they leave 3 point shooters wide open, and just stand there. Effort is my worry
It’s just not the players if you know anything about basketball, we are very poorly coached on the defensive end everything from defending screens to help defense to positioning just very poorly coached
Have you not watched or followed his career? He’s an awful defensive coach
Outside of Butler and maybe O, we can't guard fast guards, but at times he needs to throw a zone in here and there, just to mess up the other teams and maybe save a foul here and there.
Pope has got to bring in a defensive guru next season.
He can’t possibly be working on Defense and Rebounding in practice. Both are Pitiful
An awful coach doesn't make BYU the 60th rated defensive team last year in D1. He has Kentucky at 60 playing in the best conference we've ever seen.
I'm sure his defense can improve.. but i think he's a coach who prioritizes offense first and that's what I prefer. He's also going to be better better players than he ever got at BYU.
So I'm still willing to wait a year or two until he has his team around him.
60 is garbage dude. His byu team last year was the same. Couldn’t win games in the 70s. That’s a problem. If anything a team like byu finds success on the defensive end
Soft? It’s non existent.
I got us at about 74 possessions this game.
Oklahoma PPP - 1.11
That's not good by any stretch, but it's definitely not our worst defensive effort this year lol.
On the flipside, this was one of our worst offensive games in SEC play.
Oklahoma PPP - 1.11
That's not good by any stretch, but it's definitely not our worst defensive effort this year lol.
On the flipside, this was one of our worst offensive games in SEC play.
It’s not elite good. It’s not UK good. If it ain’t uk good then it’s garbage. It’s not something to build on. Most elite coaches are great defensive coaches FIRST! This giving up 80-90-100 to bad teams is garbage
Pope's one pretty good defensive team at BYU was when they had Matt Haarms at center.
The biggest thing in the off season will not be who Pope can get out of the portal it will be if he can find a defensive guru to add to the staff. Our defense is atrocious. We lack sound defensive fundamentals and we don't have any rotation on the defensive end. That is why the other teams seem to have wide open shots. No one is rotating on the back side of the defense.
They've played really good defense a few whole games but usually just for a half or stretches, I'm not worried about Pope coaching defense, I think the SEC you see such athletic guys every night and we really don't have that freak athlete and they can really shine against us.
I agree but sometimes players who struggle with man to man defense are even worse in a zone defense. Coaching staff might not have any confidence in the ability to play hard and get stops with the zone. Definitely would cut down on some of the foul trouble though..
Better athletes will help, for sure. But I agree that Pope needs his version of Billy Donovan's Larry Shyatt.
I wouldn't mind seeing Pope make a push for Paul Lusk from Purdue as a defensive specialist. (And take Braden Smith for next year's PG1.)
I wouldn't mind seeing Pope make a push for Paul Lusk from Purdue as a defensive specialist. (And take Braden Smith for next year's PG1.)
I'm not saying it shouldn't be better than 60. Just that I think it's a little critical for his first year at UK with a rag-tag team thrown together in April.. where 3 of our top8 players are injured.
Have to remember also we're playing top50 teams every night. They're going to score points. I wouldn't worry about the defense this soon.
I guess last year wasn’t “UK good “ either. Because I believe it was worse. Actually, I believe it’s been years since we had an elite defense. So what exactly is “UK good” ?
The past couple of years Miami and Alabama have ranked 100 or lower in defense.
Both went to the final four.
This point can't be made enough. This team also struggles with defensive rebounding, and it's harder to rebound out of a zone because the man you need to be boxing out might be 9 feet away when a shot goes up.
I'm all for mixing in 3-5 zone possessions but don't want to sit in one all night with the way some of these teams shoot the 3.
A lot of BS in this thread from either trolls or fans that don't know jack... So we have been begging for fluid offense and offensive sets and we have that now you want a defensive oriented team... Look there is give and go. These guys are playing their butts off and the last few games have moved up tremendously in defensive stats. We don't have the athletic guards to play "elite" defense that will come.. Why don't you guys enjoy the ride because Pope certainly knows how to coach and will only get better as he gets better players from portal and guys to stay.. Shaking my head at some of these posts.
The poor defensive issues above are further exaggerated by abysmal fundamentals on rebounding and boxing out. We see shots go up, and simply watch the ball then jump for it. Good teams see a shot going up, locate their man, establish contact, and position themselves in a proper orientation to screen them off, THEN go get the ball. Ideally if everyone is boxing out, the ball can hit the floor between the defenders.
We don't even come CLOSE to showing good fundamentals on rebounding.
We don't even come CLOSE to showing good fundamentals on rebounding.