Washington executed its defense to perfection
by Jeff Nusser on Mar 8, 2009 3:17 PM PDT
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PrintSomewhere in the bowels of Hec Edmundon Pavilion, in the hours after the end of the celebrations, postgame press conferences and gladhanding, Lorenzo Romar sat down with his assistants to just relax and take it all in.
As the staff surveyed the box score, smiles crept across their faces once again as Romar and Cameron Dollar exchanged knowing glances, their eyes falling on the same two lines:
| Name | Min | FG | 3Pt | FT | Off | Reb | Ast | TO | Stl | Blk | PF | Pts |
| C. Forrest | 34 | 3-10 | 0-1 | 0-0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| N. Koprivica | 33 | 1-8 | 0-2 | 0-1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2 |
Their team had succeded in executing its defensive gameplan to perfection -- two unreliable offensive options had taken 18 shots between them, while Aron Baynes and Klay Thompson took just 12. The final result was predictable.
I want to be clear that this is not a Nik Koprovica bashing post. The guy played his heart out on defense, spending the entire second half on Quincy Pondexter and allowing just four of his 16 total points over the final 17 minutes of the game. He was tough and physical, which is exactly what is needed against a guy like Pondexter who can sometimes start to believe his own myth just a little too much.
But the bottom line is that there is no way on earth that Koprivica ought to be taking eight shots in a game, and the Huskies deserve a lot of credit for making it happen. Their gameplan was clear: Force the ball into the hands of lesser scoring options as much as possible and then make those guys take contested shots.
Both Venoy Overton and Justin Dentmon did an excellent job hounding and harassing Taylor Rochestie and Klay Thompson (when he was able to be on the floor) all game long. And once Lorenzo Romar wised up and double-teamed Aron Baynes every time he touched the ball, the offensive production ended up falling elsewhere.
Whether it should have fallen "elsewhere" is certainly debatable, though.
Koprivica and Forrest each took a number of shots that they could have passed up. Nik's drives were with plenty of time left on the shot clock, that midrange jumper was a terrible decision, and the late 3 attempt was inexcusable. And Caleb should know that he can't take a jumper when his feet aren't absolutely set.
Additionally, Tony Bennett once again elected to go with his veterans down the stretch, rather than finish with the youth that had served him so well over the past couple of weeks.I understood the decision to bench Casto -- he had done exactly what I hoped he wouldn't, flying in to attempt too many blocks and leaving his man wide open for offensive rebounds.
But the decision to leave Capers on the bench for the entire second half was curious, at best, as there's no doubt that Capers brings more to the offense than Koprivica. I've tried to put myself inside Tony's head, and the best explanation I can come up with is that Capers could have guarded Pondexter would have had to guard one of the guards, which would have necessitated Klay -- in foul trouble all day -- having to cover Pondexter. (Sorry for the original typo.) That would have been a 5th foul waiting to happen. So Tony decided that it was better to not risk having Klay foul out. When looking at the plus/minus numbers, it's tough to argue with that reasoning, although you have to wonder if Marcus could have made a difference in those final two minutes on Thomas.
Give a lot of credit to Washington. They really did dictate our offensive game to their advantage, proving once again that the reason this team is a legitimate threat to go deep into March is because of their improvement on defense.
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When Caleb's on, he really is great...but when he's off....
he’s really off.
Some of his shots were beyond his comfort zone. He should know that by now.
If Caleb gets going early with his shot, it’s almost always a very good indicator of things to come. He just could never find his stroke and it hurt us badly.
Unfortunately, I expect Nik to have rough shooting nights…but like you point out, he should not be shooting that much. I was getting very frustrated seeing him miss 3-4 cripples/layups during the game. At the very least, he has to make those or his offensive contribution is nil.
Nik's miss on his drives was beyond frustrating
Even if his drives were earlier in the shot clock, he got to the rim. From there, he needs to finish, and previous years Nik has shown that ability. To consistently miss driving layups and 4 footers destroys your team, as the defense can continue to ignore you as a threat and the possession gets wasted.
TB simply got outcoached today.
Man any outsider could see it was a brilliant move to force Nikki to bring up the ball. Yikes it is like a dog on rollerskates with that guy. I agree Nik played great D, but I would have rather had us gone big with Caleb, Casto and Baynes with TR and Klay. At one time I think we had Casto guarding Overton. However, TB again apparently maintains that this combo will not work regardless of the fact that UW was playing for a good portion of the 2nd half, Overton and Dentmon, Pon, Bryan-Amanning (or whatever his name is) and Brockman.
Force UW to go small, and then bring in Capers. Shoot, Caleb has a better long jumper than Nik does.
I don't agree with your assessment
I think Tony’s hands were tied to large extent by foul trouble. I really would have liked to see more Capers down the stretch, but I think I understand why Nik was in the game. And to pick on Nik for bringing the ball up yesterday just isn’t fair; there were very few issues with him in the backcourt. He had just one turnover all day, and it allowed Rochestie to not expend any more energy than necessary.
The game was played at 66 possessions
So UW did a GREAT job dictating our offense. We took a lot of shots early in the clock that were just unneccesary.
This is where per game statistics go to die.
CougCenter
It would be more fun to say...
Nik hit the rim on a 4 footer. Or, Nik made a shot. That poor guy couldn’t get wet if he fell out of a boat right now. I don’t think he’s the reason we lost at all. He better pick it up a bit or next year he might not get off the benefit of the doubt being a senior and all.
I thought Tony did a decent job. Capers and Klay forced him into decisions he didn’t want to make. I’d have liked to see Casto get more minutes though. I think Taylor missed the rim on about three of those running floaters. Not one of our better shooting exhibitions. The Big Aussie didn’t get anywhere close to enough attempts. We could have worked a little harder at getting him the rock.
At times we had three non-scorers on the floor at the same time and Washington didn’t have to guard any of them on the perimeter (Capers, Casto and Nik). I probably sound like I’m contradicting myself in regards to the job Tony did yesterday, but like I said it another post, 20/20 hindsight is a luxury only us fans get to take advantage of. Tony’s under the gun during the game and sees it from a whole different perspective.
You hit it on the head with your last paragraph
Awful tough to make your opponent play honest defense on your big man when we often had only one perimeter threat on the floor. Really, given the foul trouble we were in and the lineups Tony was forced to play for stretches, it was actually remarkable we were even in that game.
The fact that we lost to a pretty darn good team should not overshadow this gutty performance.
Capers needs to develop an outside shot
It’s just embarrassing to have a guy playing a 2 or 3 and have the defense completely ignore him as a shooting threat. When Kyle developped into a threat to make a 3, his offensive options expanded. At this point, everyone knows Capers won’t shoot the ball, and if he does it’s the benefit of the defense regardless of how open he is.
With that in mind, I have wondered if Tony has been too heavy handed with some of the young guys this year, yanking them after missing shots and such. That can destroy a shooters confidence, and it can be hard to get back. I only bring this up because next year we’ll be relying on young shooters, either freshmen or sophomores, to cover the hole left by Taylor.
Nuss, let me but it this way, I spoke with a Canadian yesterday
who has never seen the Cougs play ball, and inquired why we had Nik handling the ball so much for such a bad handler. I agree foul trouble forced his hand, but tell me why we couldn’t utilize the big 3 with Klay and TR? Again, I think my pt has been for many of the games where we have issues with foul trouble is that we don’t force teams to match up with us.
I agree that he looked like a zoo out there bringing it up
But he really did only turn the ball over once. We actually did occasionally play the three big men together for the first time all season, and it was outstanding defensively, but it still didn’t solve our problem of not having enough shooters on the perimeter.
I’d love for us to dictate things, but the reality is that our personnel doesn’t allow us to force anyone to do anything. Washington can do that because they always have 3-4 guys on the floor who can put it on the floor and attack the rim. They are so versatile. We are not. We have a lot of one-dimensional players who really limit what Tony can do with his combinations.
I must have missed it with playing our big 3, as there was about small part
of the game I was chasing my boys around. If you look at the tape, there was actually 3 or 4 times that should have been TOs by Nik but he lucked out by it bouncing off a UW guy or a Coug scrambling to save him. Sometimes stats don’t show everything.
I agree with the 1-dimensional thing. That is why we are the Cougs. We don’t get the 5 tool guys we get the 2-tool guys. I am okay with that as long as we match them together to create a 5-tool team.
Harmeling would have really helped in this game because he would have at least gave the threat of an outside shot. I’m more scared for next year more than ever. We need to recruit another PG big time and send Boehke on his way to make room. I wouldn’t mind a JC PG who could provide us some immediate experience.
The good news is that we've got some guys on the roster who will end up as versatile, impact players
Klay is already there, Capers will get there, I think Harthun will get there, Casto ought to be there as soon as next year, Watson by all reports will be there, and Thames and Brown are supposed to be those kinds of players, too. It’s an exciting time to be a Coug fan.
Its all conspiracy
Because we flat out got beat, I would like to add some conspiracy theory to the discussion to make it more entertaining.
Every Coug fan saw one of the officials hug Romar before the game. Romar knew that the difference between the ‘WSU they faced in Pullman’ and the ‘WSU they were about to face in Seattle’ – was the improvements of Capers, Thompson, and Casto. So the refs equalized the freshman with ticky-tack calls to get them out of the game. They would let the bigs bang down low, let Taylor and Venoy grab each others jerseys and trip over each others feet; but they would not allow sticky defense from the Coug freshmen.
It all makes sense. This is why Casto didn’t play much down the stretch. Tony actually did the best coaching he could – while working with crooked pac-ten officiating. After both Thompson and Capers got into early foul trouble, he caught on and had to change up his strategy.
By the way, the reason Harmeling didn’t play was a pre-game agreement between Romar and Bennett. Tony agreed to sit Harmeling, if Romar would agree to not wear that disastrous purple suit.
I like the last one best
Anybody in their right mind would agree to anything to keep that hideous thing off Romar.
MIKEY!!!!!
Dude! I just realized it was you!
I was thinking of you all during the game on Saturday, wishing I had one more ticket to pay you back for last year …
haha!
I was trying to see how long it would take to figure out it was me! lol. I forgot my last log-in name, so I had to start another one! ‘MarcusCapersPlusJumperEqualsWOW’ was just a little too long for my liking….
No problem on the game, I actually got offered tickets from a colleague that now works for the dreaded UW ;-) but I had a bachelor party all day Saturday (with the Coug game being the focal point of course!). So it all worked itself out. Thanks for thinking about me though!
Any time I can throw out a couple off-the-cuff comments about Pac-10 officiating and Romar’s ugly suits – I take it!
Whose bachelor party?
And one of the perks of being a blog manager is we can look at all of our members’ names and e-mail addresses … :-)
yeah I figured you would see the email address somehow!
It was actually Torey’s bachelor party. Dude is getting hitched!! Someday I’ll join in on the ‘ball and chain’ process ;-) I actually met a sports radio guy at the bachelor party that went to WSU at the same time as you, he knew your name from your Daily Evergreen days. His first name is Ian, don’t recall hearing a last name.
That's funny
Although, I wasn’t sure where you were going with the whole “someday I’ll get hitched” and “I met a guy” thing. Glad you cleared that one up for me.
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