I don't think man is the best defense without any qualifiers. The best defense is the defense that your personnel plays the best. I also don't think you have to be excellent at a defense for it to work. If your decent 1-3-1 disrupts the team you are playing against better than your good man-to-man, then it works. I absolutely think there is enough time to practice all defenses... we used to do it in high school. You don't really see teams successfully switch defenses regularly because coaches don't use this strategy often. I'm not saying I think it should become the norm, but I don't think it's that hard to do.
I agree you don’t have to be excellent at a particular defense to play it in small spurts. But what you did in HS would get destroyed at the college level. You better be good at a defense to be a good defensive team in college because the players and the coaches are so much smarter. You can not play any defense well at the college level over the long haul if you don’t spend time practicing it. And there isn’t enough time to practice all defenses to the point of being good at all of them. again though I am a proponent of having a few different defenses you can play in small spurts to change a teams flow. But what you did in high school works because of the quality and intelligence of high school players and coaches. I was lucky enough to coach with a two time high school coach of the year in Florida when I first started out. We would dry run plays vs every defense and we were always prepared. We won a state championship and never once in my 5 years there fell out of the top 10 in our class in Florida. We never lost a district game while I was there and teams would try all kinds of different things. The fact is against good players and coaches if you want to be a good defense you better practice a ton on it. lastly, this is the reason man is the best defense in general to teach. With the basics you can teach you can do so many different things based on the other teams strengths.
I don’t know, Coach. I hear you and I respect your experience so I tend to think you are right, but I also know how quickly I picked up the defensive concepts. It didn’t take that long to understand. I thought it was easier to pick up than offensive sets. I did play at higher levels than high school but not at D1 level. I’d say roughly equivalent to JUCO and D3 levels. Maybe D2 even. We always had at least 2-3, 3-2 and man in our arsenal. We just wouldn’t switch that often. What my one high school coach did was unique we only did it in JV, not varsity… so there’s that. I’m definitely not saying that it should become a thing. I just thought it was cool.
I believe you were able to pick up the different defenses well. You probably have a good feel for the game. I have coached some great defensive players who for sure picked up stuff easier than other players. With that said, as I’m sure you know, defense is really about 5 guys working together to defend many different offensive actions. Its just hard to do as you move up levels unless you work on it a ton. How often do you hear people say they don’t play defense in the NBA. The truth is many teams play good defense in the NBA, the most complicated defensive game plans in the game. I was hanging out one night with one of the NBA players who was a veteran who had averaged over 20 pts a game for 6 seasons in the NBA. So a good offensive player. That season he was playing with the previous seasons rookie of the year and the favorite to win rookie of the year that season. He was telling me “Coach every game before the game I look over and see that we are playing a more veteran team I know we are going to get our asses kicked”. I asked him why and he said “because young players are just so dumb about the game”. Each level the game jumps the intelligence of the players and coaches jumps. So you better be really sound defensively as a team or you’ll be eaten up. I am close with Bama’s top assistant. Have known him since he started coaching. He has coached all over the world as a head coach in Europe to head coach of a G league team to assistant of NBA team. There is a reason Bama had the best offense in the country. He was their offensive coordinator. He has so many sets against any defense, in fairness he’s elite that way, but still for the best coaches if you play a defense the majority of the game that is not fundamentally sound they and the players will figure out how to beat it. I don’t want to lose sight of your main point though that having different defenses to take away other teams strengths is smart. It is and I totally agree. You just have to be smart about when you use them. It’s why so many teams even though they knew we struggled vs zone this year picked their spots when to play it. They knew since it wasn’t their main defense they weren’t great at it and eventually if they played it too early we would figure it out offensively and start to exploit it. That’s why I love man though, you can really have so many different calls that it can also take away different strengths. We just didn’t utilize all of them and I really hope that changes.
This stuck out to me. I completely agree. I’ve played with some very good basketball players… much better than me… who were out there just terrible on defense. I remember one guy who was a former D2 player that used to flex on me that he played college ball and would be completely out of position on 2-3 zone up top and teams would overload my side and I’m running around trying to defend 2 to 3 guys by myself and getting cooked. Then the guy would yell at me like I was not playing defense. Seems like he only had good cardio on offense. lol. I think that’s a good segue to effort, though. Defense heavily favors players who are in great cardiovascular shape and are willing to expend the same energy that they do on offense. Personally, I taunt people with my cardio. I rarely stand still and my goal is to physically wear out my opponent. A lot of times, you can shut down the other team’s best scorer by just never relaxing on defense. Many good scorers just exploit your defensive lapses.
absolutely, conditioning is so important. Another area the Gators need improvement. Also, another reason we were bad defensively last season. The good news is Golden is young and will get better. He thinks the game and I believe is constantly challenging himself to get better. Young coaches like that usually do. But you are right, defense has so much to do with effort. And effort is impacted by conditioning.
Yeah, I like how TFH is making the necessary tweaks each year. First year, horrible offensive pacing, lack of shooting, and poor rebounding. He went out and got the anti-Lofton/Reeves/Jones combo and got WC and ZP who push the pace and shoot well. Shored up our rebounding with Ty Sam, Micah, Condon, and Haugh. Now, he saw we need some more defense and I like his pickups. One thing I don't think is stated enough is how badly EJ's retirement from basketball hurt this team. With a player like that, I think UF was a Final Four team. We were borderline Elite 8 if Micah didn't get hurt. We might have made a deep run if we had survived the rotund dude from Colorado having the best game of his life.
This is the main issue sometimes. Some (almost all) players don't play all out all the time, so they pick their spots to catch their breath. Too many take that extra breath on defense. Couple that with most guys having a passion for the offensive side, it is more glamorous than the lunch-pail work ethic and discipline you need on the defensive side of the ball. And then there's basic fundamental disciplines like boxing out and not going for pump fakes and staying between your man and the basket, that some players just don't "remember" on every play. It would and still does drive me nuts how many backcourt players don't box out, even in the NBA. When it's man to man you can say hey that's your man you didn't box out, whereas with zone you have to find the guy in your space and box him out, but some don't or even look for someone to box out. Sometimes in zones it leads to guards boxing out bigs, but if you know how to box out properly (and early enough), you should be able to keep him off the boards. So many guards out there don't though. It's disciplined fundamentals like that and the effort plays like fighting for loose balls that make the difference in the game sometimes. Offensive rebounds and second chance points are killers, and yet it really just comes down to discipline and effort. See: Dennis Rodman. That effort and discipline is on the player, regardless if they're playing man or zone. Some players just get it and understand the importance, while others would rather avg 20 points a game a look good in the hope they make it to the league or get a bigger contract. But coaches notice those small things. It would be nice if more young players understood that. It's not just about the stats, it's about making winning basketball plays - on both ends of the floor.
You work with what you’ve got. Last year the individual strength of our players was offense. Defense? On most of our older dominant players, the cake is already baked and defense was left out a long time ago. Yes you can teach them the technicalities of zone defenses etc., but it will not result in a defensive epiphany. Our three new transfers play defense - a lot of it. Golden recognizes what his team needs and went out and got it. I am looking forward to seeing how that translates on the court. I too would like to see a bit of zone. We’ll see.
Dennis Rodman was born to rebound. Never, and I mean close to never, out of position. He was amazing. Rebounding is an art and Rodman was Michelangelo
Don’t mistake the following statement, I liked our 3 perimeter players + RK. I didn’t like them defensively. While a lot of the negative focus went to Riley’s defense , I was not very happy with Richard either….they didn’t box out well, as a group.
Kugel's defense? I thought he was our best perimeter defender by far, especially on the ball. Pullin really slowed down as the season progressed defensively.
I agree and thought RK was one of our better on-ball defenders, early on. Towards the middle and end of the season, I saw defensive breakdowns & just not being defensively connected as a group from the perimeter players. There weren’t huge mistakes, but a lot of small ones, that every team we played seemed to take advantage of against us. My two favorite mistakes were not consistently boxing out shooters and being slow/late on rotations. Those are both things they can work on and get better at, which is good. The fact that they’re also more about effort & execution is even better.
