I dont think we would be undefeated without him. This team can dominate teams on both ends of the floor. I dont see us losing as many close games this year as we have the last few.
Doc Sadler
- Thread starter tyler24
- Start date
Color me unimpressed at this point in the season. Perimeter defense has been pretty poor during conference play.
Not impressed either. Poor, no awful, effort on defense and our perimeter defense is complete crap. The game planning makes no sense either. We double every post player against every team leaving wide open 3's which leads to long rebounds and hence all the offensive rebounds teams get against us. I'm not quite sure what he is teaching but so far we've gotten abused by most teams offensively in the big 12, even TCU.
LOL revives a thread praising an assistant coach for his positive effect on our defense after our worst defensive game of the season. Using, obviously, a sample size of one.
HA
Sadler has helped. Our defense has improved. I'd be happy to point out the improved challenges, rotations, and walled post positioning for you. Scoring D is slightly up, but I didn't have time to look at possession adjusted which I am sure is down (as our scoring is up, and our Opp shooting percentage is down). Use larger sample sizes if you want to make a point on a team characteristic.
In the game tonight, once we got in a hole, we were in scramble, double defense. This by nature, if the other team is able to pass out of it/swing the ball, creates open shooters. To WVU credit they were able to do just that and continued to knock in those shots.
We lost. It's ok, it happens. It was a Monday game on ESPNU at 6pm. It won't have critical ramifications. We win on Saturday and we remain top 15.
I really think its about the whole year of double down, letm have 3s, run to the other end and dont rebound for the WHOLE season which looks and works great when it creates turnovers and really really bad when they rain threes on us; but if we had two less losses or had won tonight I agree no one would be complaining..
Wow - I didn't see much "scrambling" out there, even when down by a lot. C'mon. We didn't fly at shooters, didn't hit the floor for loose balls, didn't block out, didn't rebound with any ferocity.
Defense is about playing percentages. Overall we are better statistically. Unfortunately WVU made the shots.
The defense is clearly better this year. If you don't recognize that, you don't remember last year very well.
Now, whether the better defense is Sadler or better defensive players - probably both.
Now, whether the better defense is Sadler or better defensive players - probably both.
Our main issue to this day is size. A rim protector would help a ton, as would more front court depth so that we could challenge more aggressively at the rim. With these weaknesses, we have to help and scramble and a team that moves the ball well will get open shots. And hopefully not drain most of them like tonight.
To be fair, it's no coincidence that almost every team we played in conference shot great from the peremeter. At least above their average.
With that said, WVU has shot out of their minds that game. Won't be as fortunate in Ames I am betting.
To me, from opening tip, many of the players didn't even appear to want to be there. Looked disinterested and when they went cold and WVU seemed to make everything, they shut down.
People need to quit saying this because it is wrong. Shooting above 50% is rare because being able to get wide open threes with your best shooters simply doesn't happen often. They could get any shot they wanted all game long. These were uncontested threes. If most major conference team could get their best 2 shooters wide open threes all game long more often than not they would hit 50% plus. We have no perimeter defense aside from maybe Morris.
I think this team has done OK defensively overall considering the lack of size and athleticism. Kane is big, but for a PG is not very quick laterally, Niang is limited athletically, Houge is a great athlete but is only 6'5, Melvin is only 6'6" and when compared to other major conference guys of that size is pretty average athletically. Thomas, Long and Morris are still learning, and MT certainly is below average athletically when compared to other SGs in major conferences.
Guys and teams can make up for physical shortcomings on defense, but the margin for error becomes very thin and if a team shoots well and executes on offense there's not alot you can do.
Oh for god's sake. Our defense has been solid for most of the year. Our defense kept us in the game against Kansas in Ames.
The defense was bad today. It wasn't great on Saturday. I am assuming they will get it fixed.
Our defense is much improved from last year. We play uptempo so we typically aren't going to hold opponents in the 50s.
