First time I've seen the Panthers live all season. Don't know if Pitt was looking ahead to Purdue, but defense was terrible! Very SOFT. Has blocking out become a lost art? Kent State has some nice athletes BUT they aren't an ACC type team and we got beat on the boards. Offensively we look fine. Defensively, horrible. Hope this was just a blip on the radar screen defensively. Thoughts?
Defense????
- Thread starter JRPITT
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Definitely a step backwards defensively. No one will confuse us with a great defensive team, but last night was below par. Hopefully just a post Thanksgiving hiccup.
Boxing out IS a lost art.
IMHO, it is the new rules enforcement. When every brush or bump is, or can easily be, a foul you cannot play truly effective old school defense because defenders are "gun shy". It is what it is; hence the higher scoring by everyone throughout the first month of the season.
There were a total of 28 fouls called all game yesterday, 15 on Pitt and 13 on Kent (and one of those was intentional). Neither team made it to the double bonus in either half. Pitt didn't even get to the one and one in the first half (and wouldn't have in the second half without the intentional foul). In the Cornell game Pitt was called for 15 fouls and Cornell 17. Again, neither team made it to the double bonus in either half.
Players are adjusting. Eventually you will too.
It's also interesting that one of the complaints is that with the rules being correctly enforced games were going to take forever to play. And yet the last two games were two of the shortest games Pitt has played in a long, long time. I can't remember the last time a 7:00 game like the Cornell game was over by 8:45. And yesterday's game was only a few minutes longer. It was also posited that correctly enforcing the rules was going to be a huge advantage for the favorites and make upsets that much more difficult, and yet over the first couple of weeks of the season there has been no dearth of upsets. So far what we are getting is almost all the upside that actually enforcing the rules was supposed to bring while almost none of the downside that the professional worriers told us would happen have come true.
Players are adjusting. Eventually you will too. Maybe even Harve too!
Players are adjusting. Eventually you will too.
It's also interesting that one of the complaints is that with the rules being correctly enforced games were going to take forever to play. And yet the last two games were two of the shortest games Pitt has played in a long, long time. I can't remember the last time a 7:00 game like the Cornell game was over by 8:45. And yesterday's game was only a few minutes longer. It was also posited that correctly enforcing the rules was going to be a huge advantage for the favorites and make upsets that much more difficult, and yet over the first couple of weeks of the season there has been no dearth of upsets. So far what we are getting is almost all the upside that actually enforcing the rules was supposed to bring while almost none of the downside that the professional worriers told us would happen have come true.
Players are adjusting. Eventually you will too. Maybe even Harve too!
I said basically the same thing in another thread. Players have definitely stepped away from the physical play. Foul counts are back close to normal, even though the rules are still being tightly enforced. THAT didn't happen last time.
I even predicted a week or so ago that the rule enforcement would result in more upsets, which may be happening.
That said, while I can recognize it, I'll never like it. You know me. Do I look like I was ever a speed and skill guy? Yet, I could play in a game with MUCH better athletes because of playing physically and with strength and effort. I could put a body on a better player and help level the playing field. I go back to the style of play when Gus Johnson and Dave DeBusschere battled in tge NBA for years in the late '60's and early '70's.
Basketball shouldn't be a no-contact sport, but rather a no collision sport. Jay Bilas favors a style where virtually ANY contact with the ball handler is a foul. I don't think he believes there EVER was a charge. I remember those old ACC games when spindly guards drove the lane with impunity because if a defender even looked harshly at them, the zebras called a blocking foul.
Basketball shouldn't be officiated like a youth soccer game. I don't want it to turn into RollerBall. We saw the damage that large men with the leverage that long arms swinging can do when Rudy Tomjanovich had his face caved in. But, there has to be a balance. Unfettered offense merely devalues every basket. An excellent move leading to a basket is more important in a 55-53 game than in a 85-83 game.
And, I'll accept that a hand-check should be called as a foul whenever the zebras start calling the offensive player for holding his arm out to hold off the defender.
Both are against the rules but the arm bar is almost NEVER actually called.
There needs to be a balance.
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Double ditties!! I hate this streetball! I am probably going to stop watching any games other than Pitt.
I like this... Unfettered offense merely devalues every basket. There is still much inconsistency between what is a foul inside and on a player dribbling and doing much of nothing. I don't need to see a wrestling match, but I don't care for a game of horse either. I prefer to not have the zebras interfering with the game they are noticed too much and I hate to see calls made every 30 seconds as many games start out that way.
this actually started with removing the coaching by the shot clock. I hate it as the game needs a variety of approaches rather than an appeasement to those that don't know what is going on and only want to see people run up and down the court shooting 3's adn dunking the ball
College basketball the last several years was much, much more physical than the NBA used to be. Watch some old game on ESPN Classic sometime. There was no one hand checking the ball handler as soon as the touched the ball, almost every time they touched the ball. There was no team that as a matter of course hit every player every time they cut towards the basket. Sure, post play was physical. But the rest of it? No.
As an example, in 72-73, right in the time frame you are talking about, a guy who weighed 150 pounds averaged 34 points per game in the NBA (and over 11 assists per game as well). You are talking about an era where teams scored points by the bushelbasketful, even though guys generally did not shoot the ball nearly as well as they do today. In 67-68 the average NBA team scored 117 points per game. And oh, yeah, there was no three point shot then to inflate scoring either. In 68-69 it was 112. Then 117. Then 112. Then 110. In the aforementioned 72-73 season it was 108. And still, no three point shot.
The NBA of that era wasn't some physical, defense first league. It was much closer to the free flowing, offense over all league of the early 60s than physical, banging league it would eventually become. It is ironic that they are attempting to make the style of play in college basketball much closer to that style of play and yet you still decry the attempt to actually enforce the rules. Oscar Robertson didn't average a triple double in the early 60s (and was kinda close to doing it five years in a row) because teams were playing hard nosed physical defense. He did it for exactly the opposite reason, that most teams were not playing anything close to good physical defense.
Street ball is until there's blood there's no foul. This is more like Olympic vs NHL hockey
I don't agree at all...I watched Xavier play 4 times this year.
They get every loose ball and are beasts on the boards.
The game against Dayton there were 55 fouls and they didn't change their identity one bit.
The only difference is you can't have just a 6-7 man rotation anymore.
Kent State out hustled Pitt to the ball all game long. That has to change.
Boxing out is the toughest thing to teach in my opinion because you have to spend so much time on it to make it habit.
They get every loose ball and are beasts on the boards.
The game against Dayton there were 55 fouls and they didn't change their identity one bit.
The only difference is you can't have just a 6-7 man rotation anymore.
Kent State out hustled Pitt to the ball all game long. That has to change.
Boxing out is the toughest thing to teach in my opinion because you have to spend so much time on it to make it habit.
Uh, not exactly.
During that era, much of the NBA didn't play ANY defense, until the playoffs and sometimes not until the second half of the series- clinching game. At that point, it became a take no prisoners gladiator match.
There were guys who did play physically most of the time. DeBusschere, Johson, Wes Unseld etc. would hit you as soon as look at you.There were plenty more who played the same way.
As far as college basketball being physical, nothing the last 10 years compares to the Big East in the 6-foul era. THAT was physical.
All the nonsense now is being generated by the same school of thought that thinks sportng events have to be high-scoring to draw an audience. They think the NFL has to look like the old AFL with 30, 40 or 50 points scored per team. Every rule change is to open up the offense.
Now they've started the same thing in college hoops. Bobby Knight devised a style of basketball that allowed players of lesser skill to beat better, more athletic players with better execution. Eventually, enough coaches realized this and adopted variations of his style. Offensive coaches couldn't come up with a system to beat Knght's style and they couldn' get their players to out-execute so they've changed the rules to permit what I see as a dumbed-down style to thrive.
Hey, lots of people see it differently. Maybe they're right and I'm wrong. But, unlike Steel
Curtain, Pitt79 and Del, I don't necessarily think an offense that scores 85 points essentially against matador defense, is better than a team that scores 65 against a tough, physical defense.
There's nothing wrong with tough defense as long as it's done within the rules. It has never been allowed by the rules for defenders to hand check the guy with the ball pretty much from the moment they get the ball until the moment that they pass it or shoot it. There has never been a time when bumping the cutters every time, one of our old favorite tactics, was within the rules. Post play has always been different, but there has never been a time that the defender constantly putting a forearm into the back of the guy with the ball has been within the rules. And so on.
I don't have a problem with changing the rules if that's the game that everyone wants. But to me college basketball has been slowly becoming like the NHL, devolving into the lowest common denominator. The game has rules. Officials should call the rules, consistently, the way they are written in the rule book. If the people that run the game don't like the way the game is being called then they should change the rules. And then the officials should call the new rules, consistently, the way they are written in the book.
I don't have a problem with changing the rules if that's the game that everyone wants. But to me college basketball has been slowly becoming like the NHL, devolving into the lowest common denominator. The game has rules. Officials should call the rules, consistently, the way they are written in the rule book. If the people that run the game don't like the way the game is being called then they should change the rules. And then the officials should call the new rules, consistently, the way they are written in the book.
Fair enough, but there has never been a time when the offensive player has been allowed to hold off the defender with his arm either and THAT is never called. As long as that isn't called an offensive foul, hand checks shouldn't be called either.
Both sides should be penalized equally depending upon who initiates contact. As it is currently, the offensive player can run into a defender whenever the defender isn't at a full stop and squared to him. It's never been called 50/50 as it should be.
I don't want to see a return to Georgetown fouling all over the court so often that the refs simply stop making calls. But, defenders should be allowee SOME contact, particularly off the ball. Bumping the cutters may be slightly illegal but beating them to their spot is not. Getting in front of them and establishing your position is allowed. That's what I taught my teams to do. I never believed the defense was supposed to give the offense full latitude to go wherever they wanted. And I never will. If somebody likes to post on the low block, get there first and don't let him get where he is comfortable. Make him take a shot a step away from where he wants. That's defense.
I'm with you. Anyone concerned with defense should not have to say excuse me I'm sorry for being in your way.
