Anonymous Coaches on UK’s Defense
- Thread starter LXWildcat
- Start date
I bet this is comical with thoughts on how to fix it and why Cal hasn’t tried.
I have said this repeatedly, but here are the facts...
A. Overwhelming majority of freshmen suck on defense. As the coaches in the article even mentioned, they are concerned with scoring, not playing D, coming out of HS.
B. Playing college ball at 18 yrs old for the first time is hard enough. Having to play against 23-24 yr olds makes it even more challenging.
C. Freshmen suck at communication. That is a well documented fact across the sport.
D. Cal has chosen to construct his team this way.
Those are the facts. People consistently say Cal needs to change defense and play zone periodically throughout the game. It will not matter. You still have to communicate and rotate in a zone. Something all these freshmen suck at. Not to mention it makes rebounding even more challenging, which again, is something these freshmen suck at.
On the flip side, Cal chose to construct the roster this way. If he can't get the freshmen to turn the corner defensively, it ultimately falls on him.
A. Overwhelming majority of freshmen suck on defense. As the coaches in the article even mentioned, they are concerned with scoring, not playing D, coming out of HS.
B. Playing college ball at 18 yrs old for the first time is hard enough. Having to play against 23-24 yr olds makes it even more challenging.
C. Freshmen suck at communication. That is a well documented fact across the sport.
D. Cal has chosen to construct his team this way.
Those are the facts. People consistently say Cal needs to change defense and play zone periodically throughout the game. It will not matter. You still have to communicate and rotate in a zone. Something all these freshmen suck at. Not to mention it makes rebounding even more challenging, which again, is something these freshmen suck at.
On the flip side, Cal chose to construct the roster this way. If he can't get the freshmen to turn the corner defensively, it ultimately falls on him.
A lot of Cals freshman teams have been decent at defense though and never have been this bad. How is every single player including the older players this bad at defense? It just doesn’t make any sense to me how all the players on the team can be this bad at it
In 15 seasons, he's had 13 young teams. None of them were this bad, and some were pretty good by the time February rolled around.
it’s very alarming how every player on this team gets beat off the dribble. I just don’t understand how none of them cannot stay in front of their man.
I don’t understand why a coach would always stick with running just a man to man defense with the roster turnover we have each year. I would run whatever suited my roster and whatever was best against our opponents. I believe had we ran a 1-3-1 defense against Calhouns last title team, we would have won the national championship that season. Louisville destroyed them that year running that defense. Look at what the 1-3-1 did to us in Cals first tournament against WVU.
Fans who think zone is automatically the answer, they just don't get it.
A bad zone is guaranteed to get you beat. Even good zones are beatable - how many national titles in 30+ years of coaching does Boheim have? Who's the last team that won a national title relying on zone?
Each time you go zone, you're limiting your improvement in M2M defense. Each time you put zone defense in your practice plan, you're taking time away from improving your M2M defense
Fans and posters on here clamoring for a zone defense, especially with all our size. I'm willing to bet those were the same posters terrified that Cal was going to play "2 bigs at the same time and ruin the offense."
Now, do I agree with having a zone "in your back pocket". Yes, absolutely. But zones get beat ALL THE TIME. Tre Mitchell has routinely knocked down jumpers against the zone this year. Cal used to run the backscreen lob play against zone and it was a bucket every time. Low stack play against zone, bucket every time.
Another poster noted WVU beating us in the tourney with the 1-3-1 zone. They did, absolutely. They also gave up A TON of open perimeter looks. We lost by 7 in that game, missed 13 FTs, and shot 4-32 from 3. Now I know that team wasn't an elite 3-pt shooting team, but that was 12% on the night. Just shoot at 25% as a team and you win.
I think a few things on that:
1. This class of freshman is very overrated, compared to past top10 players.
2. Freshman in 2024 are far more entitled than they were in 2010.
3. College ball now has 5th and 6th year players, making it more of a grown "man's" game.
4. We decided to change our coaching philosophy for the first time, bring in an "OC" essentially, and focus on offense first, defense second. Not only did defense take a back seat, but this implementation wasn't going to work overnight. A coaching/coordinator change sometimes takes a few years.
5. The SEC was kind of crappy for Cals first few years. John Wall and Co were very fortunate to not lose to Miami OH. The SEC this year seems to be better than any of Cals first few years when he was making nice runs (but I'd have to go back and check).
I can see playing a 1-3-1 or a 2-3 for very short periods but both are extremely vulnerable to good passing teams. IMO a zone is a lazy man's way of not wanting to play M2M. M2M takes want two, effort, and communication, which most in coming freshmen have no clue. M2M also takes the whole TEAM on the same plain, communicating on picksetc. Lastly most zone team have problems rebounding. The way we play defense this year a zone would even be worse. Good post.
A lot of this can be traced back to the NBA. The warriors and Steph Curry/Klay Thompson changed basketball in 2015. No longer can a big man rebound, play defense, and live in the paint. No longer can a point guard be a pure slasher. Every player now has to shoot the ball and the 3 pointer at a decent clip to play in the league. This has led AAU circuits to shift from a well rounded 2 way game to an offensive approach. This is what the NBA does. And these AAU high schoolers are trying to imitate what they see in the NBA. Of course you can also point to social media and entitlement. It's a compound of factors. It's why most EU players are better than American ones these days. Luka even said they don't play defense in the NBA.
In my opinion the defense is bad for three reasons:
-players lack of elite physical tools
-youth
-lineup inconsistency due to performance, injuries, and Cal. Clear defined roles and expectations from teammates is obviously lacking.
Point 1 is the most important in my opinion. We don’t physically overwhelm any opponent and Cal’s teams historically almost always did.
-players lack of elite physical tools
-youth
-lineup inconsistency due to performance, injuries, and Cal. Clear defined roles and expectations from teammates is obviously lacking.
Point 1 is the most important in my opinion. We don’t physically overwhelm any opponent and Cal’s teams historically almost always did.
BS.
He's had several very young teams that played good defense. He's just not coaching it.
Bcg shares the same exact belief system as cal in terms of defense.
I rest my case
I rest my case
Zone is fine for a few possessions here and there. Definitely don’t want to “rely” on it.
But you also don’t keep playing man to man every game, all game long, when you don’t have one good defender on your entire roster.
You try something….anything different.
There's a combination of factors, but I think this is the biggest. The basketball meta has changed and the way he coaches defending is no longer as effective as it was.
I coached a junior high team with a 1-3-1 with the type of players I had and we won all but one game that season. Dominated teams that year. Why can't Cal figure it out at his level?
I dont know one person on here that thinks all we need to do is run a zone to magically start winning games. I can't and will not ever understand why people continue spouting this stuff off, like it's actually being said on here. Nobody is saying it. What they are saying is obviously, #1, our man to man defense alone is not working, and has not worked all year. So let's see. Maybe throw in multiple zone types, some traps, some full court press, and oh yeah, mix some man in there too. Throw the other teams off balance. The absolute easiest thing we can do for other teams is to continue failing at the same thing we've done all year long.
IF, IF, IF, a team is getting blistered by an individual player lighting up from 3, or a play the other team continually runs on offense that UK has no hope to stop, in game adjustments/ personnel changes HAVE to be tried!!!!!!
It's not that difficult for most to understand...
***** I think the guards HAVE to stop sagging and gambling to the lane to help out in the post (UGO doesn't need the help) and then being too slow to get back to the shooters on the 3-pt line. Sometime watching UK's defense is helter-skelter boggling!!!
***** I think the run, run, run that is pounded into the players makes them tend to not value EVERY possession. Coach says we just need to outscore them.
***** If a player starts out the game torching UK from the outside, Cal needs to put a player on him with no switches and tell him to NOT leave him, even if he goes to the restroom.
***** Throwing a zone, press, trap, etc. in here and there just to cross-up your opponent is not a bad thing. Your teams defense can't be so predictable.
***** The best Cal teams have had good veteran defenders to play alongside the youth and the freshmen were not defensive liabilities, 2017 (Briscoe/Hawkins/Gabriel), 2015 (Harrisons/Stein/Poythress/Lee/Hawkins), 2012 Elite freshmen defenders (Jones), 2010 (Patterson/Liggins/Hawkins/Stevenson). While UGO has been exceptional defensively, Reeves nor Mitchell are not looked at as defensive stalwarts!!
***** Cal needs to bring his buddy (if sober) Huggins in to teach and run UK's defense next year.
It's not that difficult for most to understand...
***** I think the guards HAVE to stop sagging and gambling to the lane to help out in the post (UGO doesn't need the help) and then being too slow to get back to the shooters on the 3-pt line. Sometime watching UK's defense is helter-skelter boggling!!!
***** I think the run, run, run that is pounded into the players makes them tend to not value EVERY possession. Coach says we just need to outscore them.
***** If a player starts out the game torching UK from the outside, Cal needs to put a player on him with no switches and tell him to NOT leave him, even if he goes to the restroom.
***** Throwing a zone, press, trap, etc. in here and there just to cross-up your opponent is not a bad thing. Your teams defense can't be so predictable.
***** The best Cal teams have had good veteran defenders to play alongside the youth and the freshmen were not defensive liabilities, 2017 (Briscoe/Hawkins/Gabriel), 2015 (Harrisons/Stein/Poythress/Lee/Hawkins), 2012 Elite freshmen defenders (Jones), 2010 (Patterson/Liggins/Hawkins/Stevenson). While UGO has been exceptional defensively, Reeves nor Mitchell are not looked at as defensive stalwarts!!
***** Cal needs to bring his buddy (if sober) Huggins in to teach and run UK's defense next year.
The same thing can be said about any defense you run. I never said he should run it the majority of the time. I just said that we should run more than just man to man against teams that struggle against zones or aren’t great shooting teams. The 1-3-1 zone worked for WV, they beat us in that game because of it. That was a smart strategy for obvious reasons. We had a way more talented team. I completely disagree with you. “Bucket every time” lmao you’re just another one of those dudes on here that won’t admit that Cal makes mistakes. Thanks for the good laugh with the “bucket every time” sentence. Where was that against Saint Peters? That school no one heard of in 2013 Robert Morris?
Ball pressure is the key to disrupting any offense, they pushed up on Ole Miss and it affected their game plan and subsequently their shooting
Auburn often uses traps on ball pressure and makes non ball handler bigs catch the ball 30 feet from basket, it leads to a ton of turnovers
Aggressiveness is the only way to correct a soft defense
The worst thing you can do is present the same look all game long
Auburn often uses traps on ball pressure and makes non ball handler bigs catch the ball 30 feet from basket, it leads to a ton of turnovers
Aggressiveness is the only way to correct a soft defense
The worst thing you can do is present the same look all game long
Playing great defense is hard. You have to want to and take pride in it. We used to recruit the kids from the rougher side of town. That isn’t who we go after nowadays and I’m just telling you those kids with all A’s and B’s and great personalities aren’t the ones you go win at the highest level with,
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I see no attempt on the coaches to teach, preach or improve the defense, this season at all.
I think the idea that coaches have some magic command over their rosters is lunatic. The team is his responsibility, sure, but that isn't within 100 miles of control or choice.
I coached two seasons of soccer. When players are younger, age is the biggest driver of athletic success.
The 4 of 32 from three was worse than it sounds. I believe we missed the first 19 and at least a couple of the made ones were late and rather meaningless.
I know people who have been to several practices, plus I watch the same mistakes game after game after game, tell me you would think if they were working on this, some of those mistake would have been fixed by now.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda. They got beat. To not try anything different is dumb. If we allow teams to score 15 out of 21 trips we won’t beat anyone.
Especially when they run the same play over and over and over and we never stop it.
Coaches don't have magic beans to plant. Calipari's critics discount -- completely -- the effect of never having the entire team present. The team practices a month or so pre-season. Then, a month and a half into the season, 3 brand new players, with drastically different skill sets, attention spans, emotions, etc got thrown into the mix. The team doesn't get to go back and have a pre-season to integrate them into the mix. And the team doesn't get to plead special circumstances and get extra practice time.
On the fly, integrate 3 7 footers into the mix? Remake the way the team functions. During the season.
Calipari's critics are loony in lots of ways. And that's one of them.
Maybe he is coaching it (he is), and these guys (and a lot of these new breed of talented players, not just at UK), just are not used to playing defense. They have never played or been asked to play defense in high school. Their most important job is to save their self on defense, rest, not pick up fouls, and use all of their energy scoring. Several of the players on the team have stated Cal is coaching they just haven't been applying 100% effort into doing it. So you can coach it all you want, but its the PLAYERS who have to execute it. The coach can not go out there and defend for them. And save the "well bench the guy not doing it". Yeah, to bring in another guy who can't defend any better, but can't score like the guy you want to take out.
I think the young guys have finally realized that in order to win, they are going to have give the extra effort and play defense and communicate with each other. We shall see.
The problem is Freshmen. You can’t win with Freshmen.
The last two years we had Junior and Senior led teams and we dominated…
Oh wait.
The last two years we had Junior and Senior led teams and we dominated…
Oh wait.
Stupid excuses like that do not explain making the same mistakes over and over and over game after game after game. It is called practice and most teams have drills they run over and over early in the season to make it second nature, but from what I have seen and been told Cal doesn't do that kind of stuff.
