 |
| Photo Credit: AP |
That was rough.
Some of our loyal readers (all of eight of you) may have noticed that I didn't post a customary post-game analysis following BYU's loss to Notre Dame, the second in as many days. There is a reason: I wasn't quite ready to weigh in on what I had just watched transpire in Brooklyn. I needed some time to ponder what I had seen, to dwell on the numbers and see what they might illuminate. And now we are here.
The Cougars' weekend trip to the Big Apple was often ugly and consistently disappointing. After being outclassed in every way by Florida State in the semifinals of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic on Friday, BYU followed it up with a halfway decent effort against the No. 20 Fighting Irish the next night — and still managed to lose by 10. Frustration, thy name is the 2012-2013 basketball team.
Contrary to the moanings of many on Twitter and CougarBoard during and immediately following the weekend games, this team is not fatally flawed. Is it flawed? Certainly. Can it be fixed? Yes. In fact, doing so shouldn't require rocket science. There is one very real area of concern that must be addressed moving forward, but there is no reason to believe coach Dave Rose is incapable of finding a solution.
First, however, a caveat: There is no shame whatsoever in losing to either Florida State or Notre Dame. Both are very good basketball teams, and both will undoubtedly find themselves in the NCAA tournament at years' end. It is natural for Cougar fans to be embarrassed by how their team lost — particularly to the Seminoles — but let's not pretend that we were getting embarrassed by the Little Sisters of the Poor out there. Those were the defending ACC champions and a Top 25 team, respectively. Those are good teams that BYU was probably supposed to lose to, Vegas' lines be damned. It is definitely disappointing that they didn't compete at a higher level, but the sky is not falling either. We need to keep some perspective.
Now that we've established that up front, let's turn to the largest and most glaring problem that needs to be addressed, in order to begin righting Rose's ship. It is very simple.
DEFENSE. DEFENSE. DEFENSE.
Most fans are offensive-minded, and there's a reason why: It's the most entertaining facet of the game. It draws the eye. It is easy for the casual observer to tell when his team isn't shooting well, and it's a quick and convenient scapegoat for any loss. We didn't score enough points. We turned the ball over too much. If we would have shot better and scored more points, we would have won. All of this is technically true, but it is also incomplete — especially when we're talking about this BYU team.
The Cougars have offensive problems — which we will cover shortly — but their biggest problem is a porous defense. BYU is giving up an abysmal 73.5 points per game, putting them 278th out of 344 Division I teams. Or in other words, the 19th percentile in scoring defense. When you can't stop anybody on defense, it leaves very little margin for error on the offensive side of the ball. Even if they were scoring at an above-average rate, BYU would still probably lose most games by defending this way. It is unacceptable.
But wait, some Cougar fans will say, BYU just has bad luck! Our opponents always seem to "career it" against us, and then they rarely ever shoot that well again! And again, they would be right about that — but we also need to consider the larger reason why this continues to happen.
Logic dictates that it would be highly unlikely (i.e., impossible) that disparate teams would consistently score and shoot exceptionally well only against BYU and nobody else, unless there was an independent factor in play that was helping to produce this specific outcome. That factor is BYU's terrible defense. This phenomenon is not random. It is not the result of bad luck. It is the result of bad defense.
What, specifically, is the problem? It all begins with the Cougars' inability to stop dribble penetration.
It is no secret that Florida State and Notre Dame both shot exceptionally well from beyond the arc against BYU, but those looks were largely dependent on first establishing a presence in the paint. Time after time, both teams' guards would blow by BYU's perimeter defenders, getting into the lane essentially unimpeded.
The numbers tell the story. The Seminoles took 30 two-point shots in the game, making an astonishing 60 percent and scoring 30 points in the paint. If you're doing the math at home, that means 15 of their 18 made twos came around the rim, a huge percentage. Similarly, the Irish attempted 35 two-point field goals, converting 54 percent and scoring 30 points in the paint. Cougar fans who haven't yet succeeded in blocking the entire weekend out of their minds are surely still having nightmares of Notre Dame's Jerian Grant slicing and dicing their team to bits on drive after drive. It was a horrifying experience.
It is a time-tested basketball maxim that allowing the opposing offense to get the ball into the paint — the very heart of your defense — is a death knell. This is especially true if your team is playing a zone defense, as you may have noticed that BYU likes to do from time to time. (And by "from time to time," I mean pretty much all the time.) So when the Cougars allow teams like Florida State and Notre Dame to essentially enter the most vulnerable part of their zone and score at will, that is not only a problem in and of itself, but it also creates a chain reaction of other problems.
After Jerian Grant or [insert your Seminole guard of choice here] slices straight through their defense and either scores at the rim or draws fouls on your bigs a few times in a row, BYU quite obviously has to react. Those are high-percentage shots at the rim, and they need to be stopped at all costs. So the Cougars start collapsing on the ball whenever it enters the paint — which is often, since the guards still can't stop penetration. This adjustment temporarily blunts the primary offensive threat, but opens up new vulnerabilities.
Now BYU is out of position to make their next defensive rotation. Every player on the floor has, to varying degrees, sucked in to help stop the player in the paint, leaving the ball-handler with a menu of open shooters along the perimeter to which to pass. All it takes is a simple kick-out and an opposing guard is taking a wide-open corner three — the best shot in the game.
You know see the problem, and it perpetuates itself ad nauseum. After getting scorched by a few open threes, BYU stops helping quite so hard on the penetrating guard in an effort to "stay home" on the perimeter shooters, but this just allows the slashing player a clear path to the hoop and two relatively easy points. And after that happens a few more times, they start collapsing again, only to leave themselves open to another three-point barrage. There's no good way to fix it.
Bottom line? As long as the ball is consistently finding its way into the paint, the defense is stuck between a rock and a hard place. You either allow a clear path to the rim, or you allow your opponent to shoot open threes. Most teams choose the latter, a lower percentage shot -- but this is Division I college basketball. These are good players. Most of them can make an open jump shot, which means your goose is effectively cooked.
This is what happened to BYU in Brooklyn. They couldn't keep the ball out of the lane, which put them in the impossible position of having to collapse on the penetration and surrender open threes, or to stay home on shooters and allow the opposing guard to go one-on-one against their post players. And against two good teams with perimeter players that can shoot the ball when left wide open, they were in trouble no matter what they chose.
The solution should be obvious by now: The Cougars have to stop dribble penetration at all costs. This is easier said than done. Rose isn't blessed with great athletes and an excess of lateral quickness. That's just not this team — but that doesn't mean that they can't do a better job of stopping people off the bounce.
It all needs to start with a deliberate, but under control closeout on the ball-handler when he receives the pass, allowing the BYU player to stay close enough to discourage and/or challenge a jumpshot, but not so close that the offensive player can easily drive around him. This approach essentially baits the offensive player into shooting a three, but due to the defender's positioning, it is a difficult shot with a hand in his face, not a wide open look. If you are BYU, you would much rather let your opponents take that shot than closing out hard, allowing them to drive around you, and... Well, we know what happens next.
That's the key to fixing this Cougar team. The offense will come around. Brandon Davies will learn how to stay on the floor. Matt Carlino will figure everything out. I'm not worried about that stuff. It will sort itself out eventually. But the defense — specifically limiting dribble penetration — has to be fixed now, or the results could be dire.
We should all hope that Rose has been drilling the team on closeouts since the minute they landed back in Provo.
Follow @PostJimmer
No comments:
Post a Comment