I am responding to the story on the Fanpost. Differentiating b/t shots and posts is completely an arbitrary and capricious and now I am going to fight the man and go back to sabotaging the word requirements for Fanposts!

Now back to Harmeling’s pts. The stuff he is pointing out is spot on. Why don’t our beat reporters ask these simple questions such as how can pack D and ball deny co-exist? Hey I really don’t have a problem with playing pack D and crashing the offensive glass. Actually I don’t think pack D requires it as I view pack D as half-court D only but DB/TB used it also to slow tempo by getting all defenders back to prevent fast breaks.
I really hate hand check and deny D, like UW and K. St play and I think all it does is invite foul calls.
I would love to see Bone say goodbye to deny D and stay true to half court pack D, but allow crashing the board on offene. I am truly afraid that Bone will make us UW East and I just don’t think it will work, just like I don’t think the spread option offense will ever work at WSU, cannot get enough athletes at all the necessary positions to pull it off.
BTW: Watching our coaches interact, I have a crazy feeling that Johnson will be looking for employment elsewhere. I hate speculation, but man I’m not getting a good vibe in watching how they interact.

Saying that you’re “extending the pack” is an oxymoron. If you’re getting out in passing lanes to deny, you’re playing a totally different man-to-man. I think they are stuck in between right now. A lot of the intricacies of the Bennett defensive system make NO sense if you get out in the passing lanes.

In fact, until he went to UWGB, Bennett ran a much much more aggressive pressure half-court Man D. I’ve got a coaching tape from when he was at Stevens Point and it’s all about denying ball reversal + forcing the ball baseline. Tony explained this philosophy at a coaching clinic as being based on: (1) having better athletes than the competition + (2) breaking down the intricate, screening-heavy, Bob Knight influenced offences of the late ’70’s + early ’80’s that were based on ball reversal. Deny a pass and those offences clogged down.

When Dick went to UWGB he didn’t have athletes that were as good, and he noticed that offences were relying less on ball movement and screening and more on dribble penetration into the gaps that were created by denying the ball. So, he reversed pretty much everything he did on D. Instead of forcing baseline, he forced middle. Instead of denying the wing and reversal, he tape a line on the floor and put everybody inside 16’.

Anyhow, the point is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want to play a more aggressive half court D, that’s fine. With the perimeter quickness and lack of beef the Cougs have, there’s a pretty good argument for it, but you can’t keep trying to force middle and do some of the other things that look like relics of the Bennett system that just don’t fit in with an extended D.

The basic philosophy of the pack is to force a bad shot. The biggest win in that defense was to force a shot clock violation. It’s goal was to keep the off ball defenders inside a certain distance from the rim and in the lane, helping where necessary. Everyone gets back, gets within the 16’ and in line, and gets set in their halfcourt defense as soon as possible. They then funnel everything into the middle where 4 other guys are ready to help. The worst thing that could happen was a quick open shot in the lane.

The basic philosophy of Bone’s ideal defense is to force a quick shot or turnover. The defense is used to set up the tempo of the game. Using heavy on ball pressure and jumping passes causes turnovers, mistakes, and sometimes poor shots. More often than not, it forces quicker shots, too. The defenders aren’t in the lane, but rather sag some off the ball and are close enough to get back and jump the passing lane. Once their man has the ball, they are in their face and hounding with pressure. They don’t want teams passing around and running down the shot clock, hence the pressure and jumping the lanes. The goal is to get back on offense as soon as possible while not just clearing the way for easy buckets. In that case, I would argue the worst thing that could happen is a 35 second possession ending in a dunk.

Those of you who don’t want a UW East defense are bound to be disappointed. The defense and offense UW runs are, in part, because of Bone. Many feel he was the brains behind the gameplan when he was there at the beginning of Romar’s tenure. I know many fell in love with the pack because it brought us success, but with it the defense also brought failures. Now that we have athletes, we can successfully run an aggressive pressure based defense with a high scoring offense.

Dancing Football brought up the point earlier about whether it’s defensive effort or confusion in the system that causes lapses. It seems to me it’s some of both at this point in time.

I’m going to use the Gonzaga game as a prime example of the problems. I don’t have the stats in front of me or a game tape to look at so I’ll do this from memory. In the first half, we played a high level of defense and outplayed our opponents. We saw multiple possessions where the defense forced turnovers by jumping the passing lanes and creating steals or deflections. This is the strength of Bone’s ideal defense. In addition, we were worried about Sacre burning us, so the strategy from the beginning was to double him from the weak side post. That meant every single time he touched the ball, the 4 was coming over to double him, with the weak side perimeter defender sagging in to cover the gap. This worked fine, as evidenced by Sacre’s lack of effectiveness. This defense was more like the one Bone wanted to run. We took what we knew about Gonzaga, put it into a gameplan, and executed.

Let’s move to the second half where it all unfolded. Gonzaga switched Sacre out for Olynk, going smaller with an interior of Harris and Olynk. Olynk plays more of a combo guard instead of being a strict interior player like Sacre. So now we have Harris down low with basically 4 guards outside. We decided to double Harris every time he touched it now, instead of Sacre who was on the bench. The problem with it was that Few adjusted and moved Harris more towards the high post. We would big-big double again, and it wasn’t pretty. I believe Harris had a top ten play when he avoided the pathetic double by Enquist into a wide open lane for the dunk. I bring up this play because it illustrates being caught between the defenses. We were double the same way we do in the pack, except in the high post, but nobody slid into the lane to clog it up. This allows a kickout, but does not allow an easy dunk. To me, that showed confusion in the system.

Finally, the biggest issue I had with the GU game was how the high screen was defended. You have two basic ways to defend a high screen: hard hedging with the big or switching. Hard hedging leaves an opening if done incorrectly, switching leads to a mismatch, but also helps avoid the ball man getting an open look from deep. In the pack, the high screen was almost always hedged by the screener’s man (Baynes). The one thing you NEVER do is go under the screen against a hot shooter without a hedge man covering you. We did and you saw the results with Bouldin. \

Finally, you also saw the screener slip the screen, receive a pass with a wide open lane, and finish with an easy bucket. In the pack, the lane would be clogged and that wouldn’t happen. With the pack extended, though, the lane was wide open and led to easy buckets. This was a failure of the system moreso than a lack of effort. Guys were caught between clogging the middle and staying with their man in case a pass came that way.

So, in my opinion, the second half of the Gonzaga game was a prime example of what happens when a coach makes an adjustment to our defense, and we try to adjust the pack back. The team ends up with confusion in the defense leading to two guys beating us. Harris and Bouldin played a two man game to perfection and lit us up by exploiting the holes in the hybrid defense. Some of the defensive mistakes have to do with poor effort, but I’d also argue that confusion over the system, over placement on the floor, and over who helps where contribute to the problems we see.