Duke Basketball 2021-2022

[Devilsforlife]

Yep, that team was undefeated at home. K‘s last team to run the table at Cameron, shockingly.

 

[Grit]

I'd have to look, but this may be a worse defensive stretch than 2014 ever had. I figured I'd move the defense talk out of the Pomeroy thread.

November 1st to December 1st - 36th rated defense
December 1st to January 1st - 110th rated defense
January 1st to February 1st - 14th rated defense
February 1st to March 1st - 63rd rated defense
March 1st to now - 206th rated defense

Our defense hasn't been great all year, to be honest. Even that January number is only lifted up by a historically bad offensive performance from Notre Dame. In retrospect, I'm not sure how much our defense had to do with than one game either. If you remove it, our defense falls to 41st for that month.

In fairness, they dominated notre dame during that game

 

[rome8180]

I thought a lot of it was Notre Dame missing shots. I wanted to believe though.

Anyway, one game doesn't prove you've played good defense for the month. I think it's fair to remove it as an outlier, regardless of what caused it (whether unusually good effort, unusually good coaching, great matchup, or good luck).

 

[DurhamSon]

Would not mind at all if K's last win ever, and the one to get to 1200, was over Pizzo. And of course a chance to not be "upset" to go out for good

 

[childress22]

Going back through the VT game, and there's definitely a couple of plays in the second half where VT runs a shooter off a double-curl screen set by their two bigs.

In this case, the big dude clearly sets an uncalled illegal screen on Wendell, but that aside -- how should we defend these? It's a tough ask for our guards to get around two bigs.

Is the only answer just "Mark needs to give Cattoor less space?"

 

[DrKlahn]

There were definitely times in that tape where I came away thinking “damn, these guys are good” and the only solution to stop it might have been to mix in some zone in hopes of throwing them out of their rhythm. I am very interested to see what Chris Beard can do with them in the first round. Maybe it’s just a matter of playing with psychotic intensity.

 

[Grit]

I think Duke has the right defensive coverage for that play. Wendell is in a great position to cover his man around the screens while Banchero covers the backdoor. Part of why it went badly is Wendell gets disoriented in off ball coverage sometimes - when Cattoor makes his cut, Wendell turns inside towards where the screener is positioned to block him rather than just chasing Cattoor around the screen. Even with that and the obvious moving screen, Tech gets an ever so slightly contested off the dribble three from a foot behind the line, and frankly I don't understand Mark sagging off so much when the guy is 40% on the year and red hot in the game.

Another option is for Wendell to stay on Cattoor. Double him to get it out of his hands while playing the passing lane back to Mutts with Mark still staying back and trying to shade towards Mutts. If Cattoor drives, Mark and Wendell should be in a good position to double him and make any passes very difficult, especially since the only driving angle is away from the open man. If Cattoor tries swinging it to Mutts right away, Mark's length and playing off Cattoor/shading towards Mutts leads the play to what Duke should want - let Mutts create offense for himself. He's 16-47 from three on the year, so he's not really going to hurt Duke out there, and he's turnover prone, so him having to drive and create offense for himself is ideal.

 

[Pantone287]

I would say the answer begins with not blindly faceguarding him in the corner of the court. Moore would ideally make better use of angles and see the screener coming, and jump between the screen and the ball rather than going over a screen that's like a foot from the sideline and below the foul line extended. There's basically no threat of a corner fade with where that screen is.

If you avoid getting picked off by that one, then it's just a DHO, which isn't anything fancy. You should ideally be able to fight over it effectively enough to run him off of a 3PT shot, even if we just have Mark in drop coverage.

I'd still argue that K's defensive philosophy plays a big part in these issues, though. I agree that VT was playing super fast and surgically, but erring on the side of trying to be in your man's back pocket 24/7 regardless of where he is on the court vs. using space and angles to your advantage makes defending stuff like this more difficult and more likely to catostrophically fail, all else equal.

 

[Pantone287]

Sometimes I feel like we're the abused woman who's had it so bad for so long that we forget that there are fundamentally different ways to exist.

 

[childress22]

VT basically ran a version of the same double-screen set for their third and fourth baskets of the game, too. Wendell tries to not go around the screens, but not in the best ways. Beyond that -- circumnavigating two screens is pretty hard.

Second:


Fourth:

 

[ChibCU]

This was one of the worst 7 days I can remember in recent Duke history. There's good reason to assume we are losing in the first weekend. But I do want to note the lack of correlation between ACCT results and tourney results post-2010. For example:

ACCT championships:
2011, looked great in ACCT: Barely beat Michigan on last possession in R2, blown out in round 3
2017, incredible run in the ACCT: Second round debacle against South Carolina
2019, wins ACCT: Looks like ass in NCAAT. Probably should've lost to UCF in round 2.

Best tournaments since 2010:
2013: Lost first game to Maryland in ACCT. Cruise to the E8 with wins against good Creighton and MSU teams before running into the best team in L'Ville
2015: Good first game in ACCT, horrible effort against ND. Won NCAAT
2018: ACC- Disgusting loss to UNC in Brooklyn in semifinals. Cruised through first weekend, beat Syracuse for third time that year in E8 in closer game. Probably should've been in F4, even more so than 2019.

2022: Soul-crushing defeat in Coach K's final home game to a mediocre UNC squad and first-year coach. ACCT includes a near loss against a 16-16 Syracuse without their best player and a roster of six randoms. Another near loss to Miami who has squeaked into the NCAAT. A loss in the ACCT championship to a team likely needing the automatic bid to advance to the NCAAT.

2022 NCAAT: Fail to cover spread against the 15 seed. A convincing loss to Izzo's MSU in the second round that denies Coach (ar)K(ic) win number 1,200.

 

[Grit]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it's uncommon to face guard a hot shooter, and I would argue it's actually simpler than reading the defense and angles. Just stick on him and follow him wherever he goes. As you trail him around a screen, you know you have Mark and Paolo sagging to help on anything inside; just don't give up a look from three.

The problem is Moore doesn't stick with Cattoor. As Cattoor cuts around the screen, Moore turns his back on Cattoor - not only losing sight of his man, but also taking himself completely out of position to get around the screen. There was no reason at all to turn inside. Tech doesn't run curls into the paint, and even if they did there was no spacing on this play for it.

I think Moore is just bad off ball on defense. He turns his back on his man too much without actually having some sort of a read on how to blow the play up, and he doesn't fight through screens.

 

[rome8180]

Sometimes I feel like we're the abused woman who's had it so bad for so long that we forget that there are fundamentally different ways to exist.

This is it. This talk of "it's just impossible to guard VT and what are we supposed to do with this genius action" remains unconvincing to me. They scored 59 against Clemson, 57 against UNC, 63 against Boston College, 63 against NC State, etc.

That may seem simplistic, and I'm not going to pretend to have the basketball mind to say what they should do. I find numbers easier to process than complex actions on the court. My eyes sort of gloss over at all the terminology. But looking big picture saying "how do you stop this?" seems like the battered wife saying her husband has no control over his temper.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

It’s possible that if the Pistons were smart enough to run that play with Cade Cunningham every possession, they would have the best offense and best team in the NBA. It does seem completely unstoppable.

 

[rome8180]

Anyway, Virginia Tech is just a symptom of the problem. I watched the condensed games of all three ACC games in a row last night, and the overwhelming impression was a team getting absolutely lit up on open threes. That was three different opponents and they weren't running exactly the same thing. It's poor navigation of screens, poor switching, poor closeouts, and so on.

 

[rome8180]

The other impression is Mark on an island with a guard over and over. Whatever's going on that allows that switch to happen so often needs to be addressed.

 

[childress22]

I think Duke has the right defensive coverage for that play. Wendell is in a great position to cover his man around the screens while Banchero covers the backdoor.

After watching more of VT running that play, I think the fix is basically to switch sooner, and have the defender who's guarding the DHO man (always Aluma) step out. As soon as Aluma/Mutts get into position for the right-side double curl screen, Our big should be ready to step out past the second screener and hedge Catoor toward the sideline, not allowing him to complete the curl. Short of that, you just have to guard him closer.

They ran this play a LOT in the first game, too, but we usually had Paolo out there, and our defense was generally not hiding a few feet inside the arc like we did in the ACCT.

This is the best version of us guarding it:

2nd Half, Paolo at the 5: Winner Winner Chicken Dinner: Paolo anticipates, gets to Catoor's spot early, and forces a turnover.


Here are some others:

2nd Half, Paolo at the 5: Defended kinda okay, but Catoor hits it over Paolo anyway


2nd Half, Paolo at the 5: Almost perfect defense -- Paolo gets there in time and gets a hand up, and the play is broken


First half: Moore on Catoor, Theo at the 5: Moore makes it through both screens! But it's really because of sloppy VT execution with Mutts coming from a weird angle and Alleyne rather than Catoor as the curl man.


2nd Half, Paolo at the 5: Paolo is a bit slow, Keels tries to go through the Mutts screen, Keels called for a foul.

 

[rhfarmer]

@childress22 not to nitpick, but funneling to the baseline is more "current" than funneling to the middle in NBA, high major hoops. UVa doesn't do this, so there's examples of teams that play different M2M principles but your larger point still stands.

I think for K coached teams, it's just really hard to get freshmen to be mentally available to do his defense, period. Matt Jones and Tyler Thornton could do it, but it still appears that Baker and Moore can get lost.

I know most coaches think specialty defenses are gimmicks, but when some scrub from VPI starts going off, I think we should have a box and 1 or different zone looks available to disrupt the other team.
We've even looked good using 3/4 court zone presses this season and in the past, and it's weird to me that K will bust it out for a game or two and then bail on it.
Whatever, though. A couple more games and we can have some hope that we aren't in some twisted groundhog day style of universe.
It's almost over.

 

[childress22]

@childress22 not to nitpick, but funneling to the baseline is more "current" than funneling to the middle in NBA, high major hoops. UVa doesn't do this, so there's examples of teams that play different M2M principles but your larger point still stands.

Thanks -- I just deleted that post before I saw yours since it seemed tangential and my next post was so long, but I didn't know that. It just looked ridiculous on that play to see Mark angling his body to have the defender drive baseline... and then to have the guy get a layup.

 

[physicsfactor]

Forcing baseline was what we always did growing up. Coaches always preached the “sideline is the extra defender” mantra. But you’re not supposed to get beat that badly, and if you’ve run your Shell Drill a million times, the appropriate help should be there.