re: Tide Hoops | 25-12 (13-5)

hogs wins

Nate Oats is a top 5 coach in the country right now in my opinion, and I will never have as smart of a basketball mind as he has. Having said that, I'd really like to see him switch up defensive strategies with this group. His defensive philosophy involves high ball-pressure and a lot of help defense as a result, but the over-helping this year with this group has caused us an enormous amount of problems. So many times every game we have perimeter defenders leaving their man prematurely to help out before the POA defender is even beat. Just the attempt at driving past their man collapsed our entire defense last night.

Drive, help defender leaves his man, defensive scramble as they swing the ball, an inevitable open shot, rinse and repeat. That type of defense seems to work well when you have an incredible amount of length and athleticism at the 3-5 to cover ground (like we had last year), but with our lack of size the result has been open shots galore.

I mean why the hell not run zone at this point? It can't possibly be any worse...