I made
a post on Feb. 6 looking at our poor defense over the previous 5 games. The highlights were that we were giving up a ton of 3s, teams were shooting extremely well against us, and we weren’t forcing turnovers.
Well, it’s been another 5 games, and despite the injuries we have been the 10th best team in the country over that span per Torvik - and it’s (mostly) not been driven by offense. We’ve had the 14th best adjusted defensive efficiency and the 24th best adjOE.
In terms of the factors mentioned above:
- we’ve improved to a 39.7% 3 point attempt rate allowed, which is just below average, but still a meaningful change.
- shots allowed at the rim have gone up a bit, but we’re still doing well at limiting those.
- teams are still burning the nets at the rim, but are shooting a much more reasonable 34% from midrange and just 23.5% from 3.
- we are forcing a 15.9% turnover rate, which is not exactly good; but it’s a heck of a lot better than it had been.
Maybe the biggest credit you can give this staff is diagnosing problems and fixing them - quickly. Earlier in the year we were fouling too much, and that’s been largely fixed (last game notwithstanding). Then we were giving up a million offensive rebounds, and that’s been addressed. Then we were playing terrible defense, and that’s largely improved. Not easy to fix this stuff midseason (or even mid game sometimes).
How much of our recent defensive improvement is related to scheme change and how much is just mean reversion/shooting variance is unclear - I suspect roughly equal parts both. Either way, really encouraging stuff, IMO, and portends well for the future.