An Excerpt From Cougar Sports Weekly, Poor Defense Vs. Gonzaga Edition

by Jeff Nusser on Nov 17, 2011 8:39 AM PST in 2011-2012 WSU Basketball News

Here's an excerpt from the latest Cougar Sports Weekly, sent to subscribers last night:

One of the really cool side effects of the Bennett era at WSU is that most Cougar fans now have a healthy appreciation for the role of defense on the basketball court. Consequently, there was a fair amount of hand wringing over at CougCenter (and I'm assuming elsewhere) in the immediate wake of Monday's loss to Gonzaga -- a game in which the Bulldogs scored 1.22 points per possession (1.00 is average) thanks to 13 threes, including a stunning nine by freshman Kevin Pangos.

So, I re-watched the game today to try and get a sense of what happened. WSU played three distinctly different half-court defenses in the game, in addition to the transition opportunities for Gonzaga, and it's pretty clear where the Cougars' major weakness was on this day.

It's interesting, because when a team is bombing away from three, it's generally assumed to be a problem with zone defense. But WSU played a basic 2-3 zone on just six possessions, and five of them were in the first four minutes of the game. They switched to exclusive man-to-man for the rest of the first half except for the final possession before halftime.

It didn't work -- at least, not where it matters most. Here's a breakdown of the points per possession in each type of defense.

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Comments

Ya I thought we would see a lot more zone

I liked the adjustment to the trapping zone, obviously it worked. It might be a coaching adjustment to teach the forwards to extend out a bit more on the zone. I really like how Bone’s teams double to low post, they crash hard and often force turnovers from post players who are not used to drawing good double teams in college. This could be applied to a match-up type zone. I have played in those types of defenses in the past and they really work to confuse passers because it is difficult for a passer to pick up the defensive rotation.

Again, not having a shot blocker hurts when you extend your defense out.

We will call him Zatara.....sounds fearsome....It means driftwood.

by cfischer01 on Nov 17, 2011 9:56 AM PST reply actions