Uh Oh....me thinks yinz defense, defense, defense guys got some splainin

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

to do......

Wow - 10 of the Sweet 16 teams have a top-20 Ken Pom offense. Lowest is Louisville at 74. Only 6 in the top 20 in defense.

No one is saying defense is not important, it is. And I am definitely not trying to excuse our defense for this year, which was beyond pathetic. But.....when won our 3 biggest games, the consecutive Saturday wins against ND, the Cuse and Carolina, we did not win those games because we defensively shut down the other team. In fact, our defense was, well bad. We gave up 72, 77 and 76 points, respectively. We scored 76, 83 and 89 points respectively. Notre Dame shot 53% against us. We shot 58.5%. Syracuse shot 50% against us. North Carolina shot 49% against us. We shot a sizzling 65%. In not one of these games was there a decided edge in rebounding. We just made shots, we executed on offense. We played with a real flow and confidence.

Again, this team was off the charts bad. Somehow, why do I not think as this team was finding itself offensively, Jamie's cold undead hand of defense reared itself in these infamous "intense practices" where guys regressed and lost this freedom, flow and confidence on offense to be replaced by this maniacal focus on defense, which this team at least this year just could not muster nor master.

I was so glad seeing UVa knocked off, against copycats copy successes. Bo Ryan's Wisky teams were like that but now have evolved and whoa....looky at this, Bo made a Final 4 last year and is a 1 seed this year.

Again, not throwing out defense. Of course UK, MSU, WVU and Louisville are defense first teams. They also have guards who can score, create their own shots and get a lot of layups. Question to a lot of you guys who really watch and enjoy a lot of basketball, do you not shake your head and wonder how so many teams have plays at the rims (layups) and as far as Pitt is concerned, we rarely had these plays? When was the last time we have seen an alley oop dunk? Not that this matters, but it is indicative of athleticism and an aggressive offense. Michigan State's defense was as suffocating as UVa's, but it was Trice who would hit the big shots, the "onions" shots. That won the game. Louisville played its typically tough defense but it was Rozier again getting to the rim again and again that was the difference. Kentucky is just on another planet. All of these teams have great offensive players whether guards or front courtmen.

I think we are doomed. Why? Jamie is not going to change. I am blaming the collapse down the stretch on Jamie effing this team up instead of embracing their strengths, he went back to what they aren't and they aren't Brandon, Julius, JB and Chevy. They aren't Wanny, Gil Brown, Gary and Naz. They are a bunch of guys who can hit quick mid range jumpers and the occasional three, and can't stop you.

Will the defense has to get better next year? Sure. But all of these guys when recruited here, their skills, at least the guys coming in with these high rep skills, like a JJ Moore, Keith Benjamin, even Gil Brown, their skills are "muted" and in some cases seemingly confidences destroyed, so they lose that innate ability and aggressiveness. I know "cause they can't play defense". Great, as the great Rade Butcher once said "what about our offense".

On that note, as I visited the Hickory High gymnasium last week, I am reminded by Coach Norman Dale and his 4 passes and emphasis on defense and team ball. And they sucked..,....until they got that shot maker, the guy who can take it and make it, Jimmy Chitwood.

Defense keeps you relevant, but offense, at least guys who can take and make the shots, especially when they count is what wins in a one and done tourney.

 

[JohnnyGossamer]

Didn't Pitt have very high ratings in the Pom offense when they lost to Butler?

Pitt's offensive efficiency was 12th in '08, 2nd in '09, 4th in '11, 17th in '13 and 19th in '14 according to Pom.

Pitt's currently rated 33rd for 2015. Pitt graduates one of it's least efficient offensive players in Wright and returns offensive weapons in D. Johnson and, hopefully, C. Johnson too. Also, a youngish squad with mostly SO and RS SO. Good times lie ahead, no? Pitt will almost definitely be in the Top 20 AdjO for Pom next season.

This post was edited on 3/23 11:24 AM by JohnnyGossamer

 

[KiwiJeff]

Who said offense isn't important?

 

[Pittbaseball11]

Counting on the offense to hit over 50% of their shots on a day-to-day basis is a fool's errand. If that's what you need to do to win, you won't win.

If Pitt averaged only 50% shooting from the field, not even >50%, they would have had the 4th highest FG% in the country. It isn't feasible. The defense needs to be able to hold opponents down around 40%, or hell, at least to their season average from 3-point land, at least some of the time.

This post was edited on 3/23 11:44 AM by Pittbaseball11

 

[DC_Area_Panther]

Recruits--you are way way way over analyzing anfd reaching an erroneous conclusion, IMHO.

This past season's relatively poor results had little to do with good or bad coaching. The results were almost entirely (IMO 80-90%) a result of a lack of overall team talent--particularly at the two most important positions (the 5 and the 1). We had no legit 5 and an offensively challenged 1.

Fix these *especially the missing 5" at least adequately and the results will be very different with exactly the same coaching.

 

[DT_PITT]

I don't recall a single person who said only defense is important (or is more important).

Seriously.

 

[SoufOaklin4Life]

So..I'm looking at the adj defensive ratings:

Kentucky, ZOna, Louisville, Okalhoma, Utah, Wichita State all in the Top 13 (6/16)

All but 3 programs (NCSU, Xavier, and UCLA) are in the Top 50 of adj defense..and UCLA is the worst at #68.

It's true all but 1 are in the Top 50 in adj Offense (louisville) #74.

You know what that tell me?

You want to make it past the first weekend..you better be good on both ends. Which everybody should know.

#Breaking News.

 

[Pittbaseball11]

Originally posted by SoufOaklin4Life:
So..I'm looking at the adj defensive ratings:

Kentucky, ZOna, Louisville, Okalhoma, Utah, Wichita State all in the Top 13 (6/16)

All but 3 programs (NCSU, Xavier, and UCLA) are in the Top 50 of adj defense..and UCLA is the worst at #68.

It's true all but 1 are in the Top 50 in adj Offense (louisville) #74.

You know what that tell me?

You want to make it past the first weekend..you better be good on both ends. Which everybody should know.

#Breaking News.

Put another way, people don't harp on the defense because it's more important....it's because the offense has been more than up to snuff to battle with these elite schools for over a decade, and the defense has been what's lagged behind.

So for Pitt, yes, defense is more important at this point because the defense is what's held them back.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Originally posted by SoufOaklin4Life:
So..I'm looking at the adj defensive ratings:

Kentucky, ZOna, Louisville, Okalhoma, Utah, Wichita State all in the Top 13 (6/16)

All but 3 programs (NCSU, Xavier, and UCLA) are in the Top 50 of adj defense..and UCLA is the worst at #68.

It's true all but 1 are in the Top 50 in adj Offense (louisville) #74.

You know what that tell me?

You want to make it past the first weekend..you better be good on both ends. Which everybody should know.

#Breaking News.

I thought about this Souf, and yeah you are right on some of this and I probably framed my argument wrongly. Kentucky, Louisville, WVU, Zona, Wichita, specifically all play pretty aggressive if not outright pressing defense. They not just create a lot of turnovers, but create turnovers in areas and with personnel in position to quickly convert them into layups and odd man breaks, which leads to easy baskets. Contrast this with the style of defense UVa plays (which is very similar to what we have done), which is lock on man to man for 30-35 seconds forcing the opposition to fight through, use clock and take a bad shot, which limits possessions. The problem here, is it also tends to put pressure on your offense because you are relying on always being able to execute (to which UVa and Pitt have had really good success as teams aren't so into defense in the regular season) and nail your shots.

When your defense converts some turnovers into easy layups it also not just does what defense is supposed to do (stop and limit the other team) but it allows your team to relax, get some rhythm and confidence on the offensive end. It feeds it.

That being said, I am convinced the "35 Second of Hell" style is passé and unless you are named Tom Izzo, you will always have a ceiling on your program. Again, we won our biggest games by being able to create and make offense.

If you look at PPG, 5 teams left in the Sweet 16 are in the Top 20 If look at Defensive PPG 5 teams are also left in the Sweet 16 out of the top 20.

 

[wbrpanther]

You need both but all these teams that are advancing are playing great defense when it counts.

 

[SoufOaklin4Life]

Owt..here's why it's Harped on:

Pitt adj Offensive Efficiency is ranked #33...which is better 4 Sweet 16 teams.

Pitt's adj Defensive Efficiency is ranked 205...which as noted, Notre Dame is the worst still alive (and they barely survived both opening games) with #103 ranked defense...same with NCSU #85.

If we had even an average defense.. like a NCSU or ND..we'd not only be dancing, we still may be alive.


And welcome to the club I've been barking about for probably 3-4 years now about needing a change in defensive strategy, away from contesting shots to creating turnovers.




This post was edited on 3/23 4:50 PM by SoufOaklin4Life

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Originally posted by wbrpanther:
You need both but all these teams that are advancing are playing great defense when it counts.

But we know this. This happens every year. When Pitt was advancing but falling short in the NCAA tourney, the realization of teams playing better defense did not do us in, it was the fact that these teams could equal what Pitt does defensively, but had another gear offensively. Where Pitt's defense and stick to it ness plays well over the regular season where you catch a lot of teams sometimes, well disinterested and unprepared and impatient to deal with it. But come the tourney, when it is win or go home, then.....well defense is a given and it is those teams who have guys who not just can make shots, but can take them (if you get what I mean) in key moments who survive and advance.


That is my point. We need to improve our defense next year. For sure. But down the stretch, our offense cost us as much as our defense did.

 

[Pittbaseball11]

I just can't look at the Villanova and Butler box scores, probably 2 of the more painful losses that have people say "woulda coulda shoulda" and see that Pitt gave up 78 points on 68 possession and 71 points on 60 possessions and blame the offense for not stepping up in March.

When your offense is putting up 110+ points per 100 possessions, it's more than doing its part.

 

[DT_PITT]

According to Stat Sheet ...

... Pitt gave up 78 points on 66 possessions against Villanova.

Worse than that was that we gave up 46 second half points on 34 possessions (that was my quick count).

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Originally posted by Pittbaseball11:
I just can't look at the Villanova and Butler box scores, probably 2 of the more painful losses that have people say "woulda coulda shoulda" and see that Pitt gave up 78 points on 68 possession and 71 points on 60 possessions and blame the offense for not stepping up in March.

When your offense is putting up 110+ points per 100 possessions, it's more than doing its part.

And you bring up the one example. I am tired of Pitt fans thinking that what we do is the only way. You know what, sometimes the other team is going to hit shots. They are on scholarship too. Sometimes you have to hit one more than the opposition. We haven't in NCAA or almost any tourney play in a looong, looong time.

Please, dispute that. I am dying for you to do it.

 

[Pittbaseball11]

Originally posted by recruitsreadtheseboards:

Originally posted by Pittbaseball11:
I just can't look at the Villanova and Butler box scores, probably 2 of the more painful losses that have people say "woulda coulda shoulda" and see that Pitt gave up 78 points on 68 possession and 71 points on 60 possessions and blame the offense for not stepping up in March.

When your offense is putting up 110+ points per 100 possessions, it's more than doing its part.

And you bring up the one example. I am tired of Pitt fans thinking that what we do is the only way. You know what, sometimes the other team is going to hit shots. They are on scholarship too. Sometimes you have to hit one more than the opposition. We haven't in NCAA or almost any tourney play in a looong, looong time.

Please, dispute that. I am dying for you to do it.

I mean, Pitt shot 56.5% from the floor against Butler, including 54.5% from 3. Gil Brown had a career game, and did it in an incredibly efficient manner.

Sure, sometimes you have to hit one more than the opponent, but there's only so much an offense can do. It's not like they're giving the defense a tall task when they're putting the ball in the hoop at a level that merely asks the defense to not perform as one of the worst in the country.

Pitt hasn't been able to get a stop when they need it in over 10 years. The issue in Pitt's best years has been extremely one sided.

I don't understand why people feel the need to bring up wins and losses when talking about Pitt's offense, there's no evidence to stand on. I get that more offense is more fun and I don't begrudge people who would prefer entertainment to W/L, but hiding behind wins and losses when arguing that they need more offense just isn't going to go anywhere.

 

[Pitt79]

Originally posted by recruitsreadtheseboards:

Originally posted by Pittbaseball11:
I just can't look at the Villanova and Butler box scores, probably 2 of the more painful losses that have people say "woulda coulda shoulda" and see that Pitt gave up 78 points on 68 possession and 71 points on 60 possessions and blame the offense for not stepping up in March.

When your offense is putting up 110+ points per 100 possessions, it's more than doing its part.

And you bring up the one example. I am tired of Pitt fans thinking that what we do is the only way. You know what, sometimes the other team is going to hit shots. They are on scholarship too. Sometimes you have to hit one more than the opposition. We haven't in NCAA or almost any tourney play in a looong, looong time.

Please, dispute that. I am dying for you to do it.

ABSOLUTELY! It's more than just numbers, or even adj.kenpom.square.root.numbers@numbers.com... sometimes it's just put the ball in the hole more than the other guy at the moment you need to, instead of clang, clang, clang!

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Originally posted by Pittbaseball11:

Originally posted by recruitsreadtheseboards:

Originally posted by Pittbaseball11:
I just can't look at the Villanova and Butler box scores, probably 2 of the more painful losses that have people say "woulda coulda shoulda" and see that Pitt gave up 78 points on 68 possession and 71 points on 60 possessions and blame the offense for not stepping up in March.

When your offense is putting up 110+ points per 100 possessions, it's more than doing its part.

And you bring up the one example. I am tired of Pitt fans thinking that what we do is the only way. You know what, sometimes the other team is going to hit shots. They are on scholarship too. Sometimes you have to hit one more than the opposition. We haven't in NCAA or almost any tourney play in a looong, looong time.

Please, dispute that. I am dying for you to do it.

I mean, Pitt shot 56.5% from the floor against Butler, including 54.5% from 3. Gil Brown had a career game, and did it in an incredibly efficient manner.

Sure, sometimes you have to hit one more than the opponent, but there's only so much an offense can do. It's not like they're giving the defense a tall task when they're putting the ball in the hoop at a level that merely asks the defense to not perform as one of the worst in the country.

Pitt hasn't been able to get a stop when they need it in over 10 years. The issue in Pitt's best years has been extremely one sided.

I don't understand why people feel the need to bring up wins and losses when talking about Pitt's offense, there's no evidence to stand on. I get that more offense is more fun and I don't begrudge people who would prefer entertainment to W/L, but hiding behind wins and losses when arguing that they need more offense just isn't going to go anywhere.

Again, sometimes you got to make plays. That's it. If Gil hits the front end of the 1 and 1, likely the Butler meltdown doesn't happen. The key difference is, Butler threw up 27 three pointers and hit 12. We shot 11 and hit 6. So they had 6 more FG's at the 50% premium.

If Jermaine Dixon doesn't turn the ball over against Nova and they go on an 8-0 run....but the problem against Nova wasn't so much defense or offense, Villanova hit 22 out of 23 free throws, that is 96%. If they just shot an excellent 80%, they only hit 18 free throws and the Scotty Reynolds drive is moot.

But you also cherry picked. When we lost to 6 seeded Xavier as a 3 seed, we shot 39% from the field, 33% from 3land and 61% from the line. Is that on the defense that we didn't hold Xavier to 35%?

Against Michigan State we shot 32.7% from the floor.

Against UCLA we shot 36%.

Against Bradley we shot 41%.

Most tourney games we have really struggled with our offense moreso than defense.

 

[UPitt129]

Recruits,

You realize you are using a very limited sample size to support your argument?

 

[levance2]

I'm not sure if it is what Baseball was referring to or not, but the idea that you are looking at the stats or shooting percentage from one single game and making a judgement on a season or the program is silly.

This year, Kansas had the 2nd best offensive efficiency. They lost their second game by 2, and their efficiencies were o109.8/d113.0. Does that mean their offense is garbage? Shouldn't they have just hit one more shot than UNI and won with offense? How about Villanova? They had the 5th best offense and lost o106.5/d111.2. Both of those losses are better offensive showings than UK has had in their two wins (105.9, 102.4).

The point people are trying to make is that no team is going to be shooting 60% all the time. For Pitt to have been any good this year, they'd need to be even better than that. It is way easier for the defense to improve from terrible to mediocre than for the offense to improve from good to all-time-great.

If you want to complain about this year's offense, go right ahead. As I've said before, this is one of the worst offensive teams under Dixon. It wasn't good enough by our own standards, but it WAS good enough to make the NCAAs. The defense is just lightyears away from that same point.

 

[Pitt79]

Originally posted by recruitsreadtheseboards:

Again, sometimes you got to make plays. That's it. If Gil hits the front end of the 1 and 1, likely the Butler meltdown doesn't happen. The key difference is, Butler threw up 27 three pointers and hit 12. We shot 11 and hit 6. So they had 6 more FG's at the 50% premium.

If Jermaine Dixon doesn't turn the ball over against Nova and they go on an 8-0 run....but the problem against Nova wasn't so much defense or offense, Villanova hit 22 out of 23 free throws, that is 96%. If they just shot an excellent 80%, they only hit 18 free throws and the Scotty Reynolds drive is moot.

But you also cherry picked. When we lost to 6 seeded Xavier as a 3 seed, we shot 39% from the field, 33% from 3land and 61% from the line. Is that on the defense that we didn't hold Xavier to 35%?

Against Michigan State we shot 32.7% from the floor.

Against UCLA we shot 36%.

Against Bradley we shot 41%.

Most tourney games we have really struggled with our offense moreso than defense.

You're right! Don't listen to them! Your sample size is big enough! Right here you are talking about at least 5 games with atrocious shooting within like 10 years of NCAAs, just like in the most recent debacle, some of these games, you hit an average, typical % from the floor, from 3, from FTs etc, the games could have been won, yes YOU ARE RIGHT, it's as simple as that.

 

[KennyTheKangaroo]

Originally posted by recruitsreadtheseboards:


Will the defense has to get better next year? Sure. But all of these guys when recruited here, their skills, at least the guys coming in with these high rep skills, like a JJ Moore, Keith Benjamin, even Gil Brown, their skills are "muted" and in some cases seemingly confidences destroyed, so they lose that innate ability and aggressiveness. I know "cause they can't play defense". Great, as the great Rade Butcher once said "what about our offense".

Sorry but I don't buy for one second that any of these guys were handcuffed by dixon. Unless it was jamie dixon that explicitly told JJ Moore to stand around the 3 point line in the corner waiting for the ball to come to him.