Coach Oats made a bad hire for his defensive coach.

I said Luke Yacklch should've been the hire.

When you play fast pace you are going to give up more points. If you grind out 10 minute drives in football, you give up less points than if you have 2 minute TDs. Its just math.

As per the defense overall, we lost our top big man for the season early on didn't we? The teams we seem to be having problems with are the bigger teams like UF. By this I mean big wing types. The bigger problem is us not hitting the threes consistently like we did last year, Stephenson has almost been invisible all year long.

Wrightsell was probably our best perimeter defender. Reid is probably #2 and of course is still working his way back from his injury.

It's as much about the players as the coaching. Bama has not been good at defense in 3-4 years. Herb Jones helped that a few years ago as he might be the most dominant defender in college I have seen.

This year's defense is not as bad as you think. Check out the article.

LINK

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The Brandon Miller season, 2 years ago, Bama had a top 5 defense.

This year Bama is 29th on kenpom currently. Which is good enough to win the title. Our biggest issue is transition defense. Teams that can also get out and run hurt us tremendously, especially if it's one of the games where we are turning the ball over constantly.

Having a top 10 3pt defense, being #1 in rebs and top 10 in Orebs helps.

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In my opinion, transition defense problems are almost totally a function of our on and off relationship with ball security and smart passing. When we're clean with possession, teams don't usually put up big transition numbers.

Our defense has improved a lot since around February. Injuries have robbed of us a lot. Wrightsell was a reliable albeit not elite defender lost for the year. Philon was limited but playing hurt for most of the SEC schedule. Derrion Reid probably should have been easing into a timeshare with Youngblood at the 3 but that was sidelined due to Reid's injury. I don't think it is any accident that we became a much better defensive team when Philon returned to the starting lineup. However some games Youngblood is just going to get eaten up by bigger 3s since he's more of a G/F wing. Reid getting back into the swing of it is a big factor in these late stages..

Ken Pom Adj Def: 29
Torvik Adj Def: 27

We aren’t where we should be, but we aren’t a disaster defensively like we were last year.

Doesn’t help with an undersized perimeter guard group who tend to get lost frequently.

Statistically Torv says our interior guys are lights out defensively, but the guards are a major defensive liability with some of the worst scores left in the tournament. If we want to clean up our defensive looks we need to start there.

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It’s mainly two of our guards getting torched. Sears and Holloway just aren’t good defenders and Philon gets confused on who to take after a pick is set on him. Overall Philon is a good defender and if we can get Sears and Holloway to play a little better...

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The data backs up Philon being the best defensively of the group, but they’re all minus defenders to the point that you do have to wonder if it’s somewhat scheme or coaching because Philon is way too athletically gifted to not be able to at least be average defensively.

The guy who really stood out with limited data was Houston Mallette. He would on paper be our best defender whereas Wrightsell and Youngblood statistically would’ve been our worst defenders which is both surprising and disappointing for veterans.

One thing I'm surprised nobody had mentioned is how bad Cliff was at the beginning of the season. He took several games to adjust to okay drop coverage and being a roaming rim protector, vs playing man vs lumbering big 10 centers. But the light bulb went on, and he's been looking great. That definitely has an impact in our defense improving throughout the season.

I agree Cliff has acclimated defensively to playing in space, but I’d actually argue his biggest change has been offensively.

Teams had begun pressuring the perimeter to take away the three point looks from our shorter guards including holding on the picks.

The adjustment and answer has been to some degree to lean harder on the lob game. If the teams are overplaying the shot look outside it leaves them extremely vulnerable to the lob over the top for the automatic dunk or foul.

My final take is that Mo D needs to start. The numbers are so clear, he has an incredible impact defensively, but recently has been a major factor on offense. I frankly don’t care who loses a few minutes, he needs to be on the court more because even on the plays where it doesn’t show up in the stats he’s making a Herb Jones type contribution every night.