There are way more possessions in each UK game than anytime this century. We are scoring at an historic pace as well. When factoring possessions in, the defense is not as terrible as everyone is acting. It’s not great but still top 50 in the country.
UK defensive struggle factoids from Corey Price
- Thread starter Smashcat
- Start date
Every elite offensive team is only elite when the shots are falling. That's kind of how basketball works. The fact remains, this team is 4th in offensive efficiency this year. That sounds pretty elite to me.
And this team doesn't? This team's tempo is extremely fast, which leads to more possessions, so raw number of points allowed isn't the best way to assess a defense.
Trust in CCC lol. He’s lost it. Welch fixed the offense. Need somebody else to overcome his failure on D I guess.
I think are offensive rebounding is bad because of our 5 out on offense.
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To you every loss is a greek tragedy and every win was a scrimage against Transylvania.
Was it last year or the year before that we beat Kansas, UNC, and Tennessee by record margins? And people here bitched about the offense.
So, yes, people like to bitch.
I suspect the recent losses of Top 10 teams to ranked teams reflect the reality that focusing on pedal-to-the-metal offense is inherently unreliable. Particularly in an era when every dissatisfied player can pick up and transfer. Lots of teams -- like the upcoming Georgia one -- had to recreate themselves this year via the portal. And have improved. I've long believed that ranking players was insane. Outside of a vanishingly small subset of talent, that every other star player was just a breakup with his girl friend or a tummy ache away from being ordinary. On this forum we have pets who get over-praised and lightning rods who get belittled. But athletically they're indistinguishable from the players across a hundred teams. Probably more.
So, yes, people like to bitch.
I suspect the recent losses of Top 10 teams to ranked teams reflect the reality that focusing on pedal-to-the-metal offense is inherently unreliable. Particularly in an era when every dissatisfied player can pick up and transfer. Lots of teams -- like the upcoming Georgia one -- had to recreate themselves this year via the portal. And have improved. I've long believed that ranking players was insane. Outside of a vanishingly small subset of talent, that every other star player was just a breakup with his girl friend or a tummy ache away from being ordinary. On this forum we have pets who get over-praised and lightning rods who get belittled. But athletically they're indistinguishable from the players across a hundred teams. Probably more.
I'm not saying our defense is great or anything, but we also generate a lot more possessions in games, for us and our opponent due to pace.
This doesn't tell the whole story.
Having said that, we definitely need to get better at staying in front of opposing guards, getting lost of switches, and closing out on shooters. We also need rim protection from Bradshaw, which isn't happening like we thought it would. Ugo is doing good for what he is. We also need Edwards to defend better period, at all.
This doesn't tell the whole story.
Having said that, we definitely need to get better at staying in front of opposing guards, getting lost of switches, and closing out on shooters. We also need rim protection from Bradshaw, which isn't happening like we thought it would. Ugo is doing good for what he is. We also need Edwards to defend better period, at all.
For the life of my I have absolutely no idea why people keep saying A&M was a bad loss to a bad team. A road conference loss against a top 40 Kenpom team is not a bad loss. There's no argument you can make where that's a bad loss, and if you think it is a bad loss then almost every team in the top 10 has a loss just as "bad" so it doesn't make us unique at all.
Just pointing out the obvious that they shot poorly despite being wide open not shot poorly because they were well defended. Our defense was some better but still allowed way too many open looks. We were just fortunate they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
I think most fans look at the "bracketology's" that are on every sports site and see that we dropped a seed line in most of them after the loss and make that judgment. I have noticed that Fox Sports and CBS Sports now have us dropping to a 4 seed after that loss.
Because they need something to continue to bash this team when the entire college basketball world has us as a serious contender.
And if that doesn't work they'll just post some low effort attack on Cal.
No it’s disappointing that we have a coach that can take a more talented team and lose to St Peters, Evansville, and UNCW type teams.
And get out-coached in the NCAAT by Crean, Weber, Holloway, and Tang.
We also average 77.9 possessions a game. 10th in CBB. The speed of our possessions means the other guys get more possessions.
That's hard to disagree with. My point is about those games where shots are not falling. We are getting far too little offense from our bigs. We need both. I love watching this team run when shots are going in but it's not pretty when we struggle from outside.
Nailed it! Just what I'd expect the Dude to say...
