Defense of Pac-10 Championship
by Telemachus on Feb 22, 2009 9:12 AM PST
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PrintHow about just DEFENSE?
We gave up 82 points to a Wazzu team that was averaging 58.5 points a game for the season. Our defense allowed the Cougs to shoot a blistering 59% (53% 3-pt) compared to their season average of 43% (35% 3-pt). Hey you folks that were grumbling about our terrible offense - you happy about our 81 points today?
Give credit to coach Tony Bennett and fifth-year senior Taylor Rochestie. Coach Bennett seems to have figured out the Bruins defense and Rochestie scorched us for a career-high 33 points, playing all 40 minutes. Playing a lot of minutes doesn't seem to bother Rochestie as he averages 36 minutes a game, and scored 14 of Wazzu's last 15 points down the stretch.
Our team needs to get our focus back and get back to basics.
That's spelled: D-E-F-E-N-S-E.
The following video from the first half shows how poorly we defended against the Cougs, giving up 35 of 42 first-half points on essentially uncontested shots. I imagine CBH will be going over similar video with the team. If we are going to have a deep run in the tournament, we will have to get our defensive mojo back.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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Defense starts with DC
Defense is the calling card for UCLA Basketball under CBH. I’ve noticed the last few games that the point guards from the other teams have been taking it to DC and therefore cause our defense to collapse.
Glasser from ASU, N.Wise from UofA, I. Thomas from UW, and Rochestie from WSU had great games against us. They seem to drive around DC with ease. This allows them to penetrate and score or kick out to the perimeter shooters.
Also, I don’t think we need to double team the post so frequently. I noticed against ND, PAA guarded Harangody one on one and we stayed with their perimeter shooters.
We doubled Baynes too often and he was able to find Thompson and Rochestie for open 3 pointers. There is no way that Baynes is better than Harangody, so why did we double him?
I don’t know if our defense will improve simply by adding extra intensity and pressure. It could be that, but it could also be our personnel (no LRMAM, LRMR, Westbrook) is not capable of the defense we are used to, or the other PAC-10 teams know our defensive schemes and are becoming familiar with it. We are at our best this year when the team can create turnovers, but if it is not there, we can be in trouble.
I am all for mixing up the defense once in awhile (I know CBH won’t play the zone), but the full court press should be used often, we have the depth and athletes to play a pressure all out press several minutes a game. It is frustrating watching other teams pick apart our defense.
by UCLA Championships Made Here on Feb 21, 2009 8:15 PM PST reply actions
regarding DC
I think after the last couple years, where when he got into foul trouble our team seemed to fall apart on the court, he’s pulled back a lot on being as active on defense. A thing I remembered was how he had machine guns for hands with how active he was there – but that also got him into foul trouble and put the team in tight spots, especially since we had much less depth. That said, our lack of an interior defense is what enables point guards to drive as easily since we don’t have a big body underneath.
DC's minutes and defense
Since his sophomore year, DC really hasn’t had much backup at point. DC’s minutes have increased from 19.2 to 33 to 34.7 to 31.5 this year.
The reason he has played so many minutes is because we really haven’t had an effective backup point. RW wasn’t ready his freshman year and then in his sophomore year played with DC instead of behind him. This year, JA has struggled as well in the backup role.
Without a backup that CBH can trust to run the team, DC knows he has to stay on the floor. This means not getting in foul trouble which inherently means playing softer defense. This fact, coupled with CBH’s desire of strong on ball pressure means that DC plays up on the other teams point guards, but knows that he cant be physical or reach in guarding them. This has led to him getting beat off the dribble by these guards.
The problem is that there really is no solution to this issue. We cant afford to have DC get in foul trouble, but at the same time opposing point guards are killing us. Hopefully with ML getting more playing time JH can move over and play backup point letting both DC and JH be more aggressive on defense.
Positives
I know that there were a lot of negatives to take away from this game, and those certainly need to be addressed if we want to win the Pac-10 and make a run in March, but I just wanted to point out some positives from today’s game.
1) Nikola Dragovic: He is truly developing into one of our most reliable players. The accuracy of his threes is so amazing now that I am shocked when one even hits the rim, and he is finally showing that he is more than just a first half player with his two clutch 3s in the final minutes. But more importantly, his defense, passing, and hustle have come a long way. Ever since the Notre Dame game when he helped shut down Gody he has been all over the court, pulling down strong rebounds, taking the ball inside, and hustling to lose balls and creating turnovers. I think that this was his finest game as a bruin, not just because of the 23 points, but because of his overall effort and undeniable impact on the game (btw he has amazing hads too-did you see that lob catch?!?)
Malcolm Lee: On a day when our overall defense was something short of pathetic, he came into the game and absolutely dominated the hottest player on the floor in Thompson by holding him to ZERO points for the rest of the game. He reminds me a lot of AA, and with more strength and offensive polish, I think he has the potential to be even better than our posterboy warrior.
Fight: In this game and in previous ones, our team never gave up hope. No one, especially the freshman (sans JH) ever gets down on themselves and our seniors led by DC alwaysplay with great poise. As horrible as we were playing at the end, we still managed to pressure one of the best coached teams in the country into near turnover after near turnover at the end and put ourselves in a position to steal one. Don’t get me wrong, we were the reason that we lost this game and not the SPTRs, but this team always fights. We just need to figure out a way to do it for all 40 minutes.
I know our Pac-10 chances took a huge hit today, but if the coaches can fix our defensive and intensity problems (which I have no doubts that they will), we are still a very dangerous team that can make a deep run in the tourney.
Good news, bad news
The good news is that our team never quit and would have probably won if they had not bricked a couple of layups near the frenetic end.
The bad news is that our defense is porous. Why?
Most likely the loss of LRM and Westbrook, but also, I think as pointed out by Marcus Johnson in his analysis, that our constant double-teaming is now familiar to Pac 10 teams and they are learning and executing how to defeat it with crisp passes to the open man.
Solution? I suggest a few, with full knowledge that CBH is probably already considering them. One, stop the constant double-teams and play more straight up. Two, go to a full court press early and often [a la the early Wooden years and we have the horses at almost ten deep] like we did late in the game, which was very effective. Three, OMG, try a zone or diamond and one, especially when it is one hot guy, here Rochestie, that made all their points.
I think we need to consider these other alternatives on defense. Our offense is fine. I only wish DC would shoot more threes and JRH could regain his confidence.
We will probably not win the Pac 10, though I wouldn’t count us out yet. We look like a Sweet Sixteen team, at best, although given how weak the whole country is, I’m hoping we go much further if we can get just a little better on defense. We look like a 4 seed right now, 3 if we get hot and lucky.
This team will have to win with a balanced effort at both ends of the floor.
Go Bruins!
I'm sad that we seemed to lack the defensive intensity this game...
but it really seemed like we turned it up 3 notches in the last 3 minutes of the game… if only we could apply that insane pressure earlier, like we did during our 4 game streak.
One glaring thing I have noticed this year
which was crystallized by the WSU game: teams don’t have “bad shooting nights” against us anymore. Over the last 3 years, Marques Johnson could always be heard saying (on the tv broadcast) great offensive teams always have bad shooting nights against UCLA. Look at Memphis in the Elite 8 in ‘06, Kansas in the Elite 8 in ’07, and numerous Arizona games in the past 3 seasons. Hot shooting teams would miss point blank lay-ups and open jump shots because they had to work so hard against our pressure D to get open. However, it felt like deja vu yesterday watching the game—it was like I was watching our early-season matchup against Wyoming, where every shot they took was wide open and uncontested and it seemed like they couldn’t miss.
Watching Tele’s video today reinforced that sense of deja vu. Our doubling of the post isn’t the problem—the slow rotation by the weak side defender is the problem. Our lack of intimidating bigs in the middle isn’t the problem (we have never had a strong shot blocking center and we’ve always struggled with quick guards penetrating to the rim)—it’s our lack of pressure on the perimeter. On Tele’s video you can see that with just a little more effort by our perimeter defenders, the wide open looks would be contested looks and perhaps the shots wouldn’t have fallen at a near 70% clip for WSU. I don’t buy the argument that Pac-10 teams know our defensive schemes and that is why our D is so porous this year. If our D is so predictable, why would it take 4 years for pac-10 coaches to figure out how to beat it? I don’t buy the argument that our personnel is so inferior this year that our D has to be sub-par by our standards. If Dragovic can make such a huge improvement in D, there is no excuse for Jrue and Shipp and DC. It’s all about effort, desire, and wanting it more than the other team. Afflalo was MUCH less athletic than Jrue and Malcolm Lee, but he was our defensive stopper because he wanted it more than his opponent. I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but this team is much to talented to let inferior opponents put up season highs in scoring and field goal percentage against them.
The talent is there, coaching is there—it looks like the desire is the only thing missing right now.
AA didn't become a defensive stopper
Until his second year. You should look up the defensive stats of our team from his freshman year. It’s pretty similar to what it is this year.
I still remember Salim Stoudemire
Hitting that game winning 3 over AA his freshman year at McKale. I think that was a turning point for him at least in his college career.
The defensive stats of the team notwithstanding...
I am referring to the attitude AA had with respect to defense. I think the comparisons between the defensive stats of this year’s team and AA’s freshman year (04-05) are feckless because these are two very different teams in two very different times in the program’s development. AA did not have a very strong supporting cast (freshmen JF and JS, Dijon Thompson and Michael Fey) in a new system with Lavin-era players and Lavin-era players’ mentality about defense. CBH’s defensive philosophy is team oriented and requires all players to work as one fully functioning unit. His system has been in place for a long time and he has only “his type” of players now.
I understand your point about AA’s development (i.e., he was not really anointed the defensive stopper until his soph season), but that is not what I am talking about. From the beginning, AA had the attitude that he was a defense-first type of player. This is very unscientific (and perhaps a bit revisionist), but check out the Wiki entry about his first year at UCLA:
Noted for being the first player recruited by current UCLA coach Ben Howland3 to play for Howland at UCLA, Afflalo, who helped lead Compton Centennial High School to a California Division-III title in 2003-2004, his senior year of high school, started 29 games the next season for the UCLA Bruins as a freshman, averaging 10.8 points per game and playing the role of a defensive stopper.
I am not criticizing JH or ML as human beings or as skilled basketball players. Instead, I am just pointing out that I think the problem with this team’s D is a lack of effort and desire, rather than lack of talent or game plan.
The lack of defensive intensity
It’s killing us. Call it urgency, focus, intensity, desire … we have not brought it on a consistent basis, other than the 4-game homestand that now seems to have happened so long ago.
We have won only one game (Stanford) on less than two days’ rest since we beat Oregon on January 4. In that period, we’ve lost to Arizona State, Washington, Arizona and now Washington State. In all of those games, especially the last 3, our defense has been sorely lacking (over 80 points scored against us).
Yesterday’s game was frustrating because we had played our way back into the driver’s seat for the conference championship on Thursday, only to fail to seize the opportunity by thinking that we could win without commensurate effort defensively that it takes to win.
I still hope we can turn it around and get some consistency on defense for the rest of the season. However, in part due to personnel (ND cannot be LRMAM defensively, Josh is only going to be okay) and in part due to the fact that if it hasn’t happened yet, why should we expect it to change, I’m not sure whether we will. Perhaps Howland can convince DC and JH to take some pride in their D and to bring it every minute of every game. But perhaps those two are playing poor defense because they are poor defenders.
Regardless, I continue to look forward to watching us play down the stretch. If we play well, we should be able to beat anyone in our conference and many teams in the tourney. If we don’t play well, we can lose to a .500 team that talent-wise, has no business competing with us.
A lot of it is about hedging
We don’t do it as often or as effectively, and for good reason. Opposing guards generally don’t burn us straight up off the dribble, they use a pick to get themselves space and then they get inside. The counter to that is the hedge which allows our guard time to recover and blocks off their first opportunity to get inside. The problem is that we used to do this on virtually every screen, and now we do it effectively probably less than half the time. There are a lot of reasons, but some of the big ones are:
1. Aboya was given a mandate to stay on the floor. It’s no coincidence that Aboya picks up fewer fouls and doesn’t hedge as much. He used to pick up a lot of fouls on this move. We used to be able to afford it because he had backup and because his hard hedges often times benefited us. So if he picks up a couple of fouls but we force a couple of turnovers resulting in easy baskets, that’s a risk we could take in the past.
2. Nik isn’t LRMAM. Drago is a much better on ball defender this season than in the past. Heck, he’s a better on ball defender now than I ever thought he’d be. But he doesn’t hedge (not all that effectively anyway), and LRMAM was very effective with this move. I’m not sure if Drago has it in him to add this to his repertoire, but he’s proven me wrong about his defense once already. I don’t expect to see it this season though even if it does happen.
3. No KLove/LMR. For a freshmen, KLove picked up defense awfully quick. A lot of that is that he’s just a really intelligent guy. He’s also a lot quicker than people give him credit for. Not fast, but quick. He was hedging like a pro by midseason. LMR was also more mobile than he is given credit for. He wasn’t the best at this move and like PAA picked up some fouls, but he was more effective than what we have out there now.
I suppose the good news is that the incoming class is full of wings and forwards. I hope they’re doing drills to help their lateral movement now, because that will significantly increase their chances of getting in the rotation next year. The bad news, of course, is that they’re not here now, and when they get here, they will be freshmen. We should all keep blinkshot’s post in mind next year when we will be dealing with a very young team again.
Side Note / Request
Is there any way to see the whole game instead of just highlights? I didn’t get a chance to watch the game and was hoping that there was a replay somewhere or, even better, internet video….?
Thanks!
Tony Bennett for Heisman!
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