What plan does McD have? What strategy do we use? Many say we are primed to be a full court team, but I do not see any focus on trying to utilize this style of play that much. We seem willing to try the half court 'sets' more. Now Duke was able to impose their will like no other team we have played, and their defense stymied our half court offense, but why is it they can get open shots when we can't? Team play, mental toughness, and a substitution plan.
Duke's strategy is to space the floor, have some motion by those without the ball, involve a lot of dribble penetration and be ready for kick outs to shooters.
Our strategy, set a ball screen at the top of the key with the occasional flex set like Tom Davis' Hawks use to run non-stop. The other three players stand around, but occasionally Brackins will post up, but the ball is not at an angle for him to receive it. He doesn't get pushed out to get it, he has to come out from the block toward the wing to receive it because our guards/wings are not in good position to get him the ball on the block.
I'm tired of hearing McD is great strategically and we run all of these 'sets'. I want an offense that has all the players moving in some way, shape, or form. That is the most difficult to defend. I recall a couple years ago, Bradley had a 7-footer who was pretty good. Their plan was their 3 guards would simply do the weave out on the perimeter, and the 7-footer would now and then make a hard post up after sealing his guy in the middle of the lane. The guards would pass him the ball, or dribble penetrate.
Colvin (despite apparently being 'called out') improvised some out of our 'sets' or made better reads. You need a talented players once in a while to 'alter' the set on his own. My best recollection of this was when he penetrated and dished to Hamilton for a nice little baseline jumper. However, I think UNI uses similar 'sets' now and they have better success executing them, as we know first hand.
Our defensive effort was poor, sloppy, and uninspired. We did not have good rotation on help side to assist with dribble penetration after the first half. We had some decent rotation in the 1st half, and we were able to get a lot of blocked shots that way. Duke started kicking out to shooters rather than keep it down low, and our close outs were slow and our shot contesting was slow/late/lazy.
Pick a number of players and play those players. Do not play Lucca a lot one game, then not much the next due to 'matchups'. The other team has to match up, so when you change your strategy to match theirs, you have already lost. If Lucca is a liability defensively against quicker guys, then pick someone better and replace him in the rotation, because the Big 12 may just be too quick for him to be where he needs to be defensively.
The video will be glaring, because it was last night when I watched (and it wasn't Kansas vs Cornell). I deleted it from DVR immediately after the game, because it angered me so much. Now what remains to be seen is how the coaches can get the players to see it and improve on everything that is evident. The players coachability is a serious question, because all of these problems have been there the entire season. Let's not forget that it is a 2 way street, but the initiation has to start with the Head Coach, and I think he is done trying the 'nice' or PC way.
I apologize for the length of this post.
