Duke Coaching

[krsmith16]

Since he doesn't attempt anything different, it's pretty clear that he doesn't view defense as a problem.

 

[krsmith16]

One would think that Gottfried's firing would preclude anyone else from competing with him for ACC (not) COY...yet somehow it doesn't feel that way.

 

[rome8180]

K is the GOAT at coaching down defense and squandering depth.

 

[krsmith16]

Good news is the team seems to be responding to his coaching methods. Tonight, there was an abundance of the grabbing of the ball. We grabbed the fuck out of it.

 

[rome8180]

I was at work. Did we have strong faces or verve?

 

[DurhamSon]

Like, maybe just call it a career. You're 70 years old; no one is winning at that age in any sport. And I wasn't saying that after 2014, which was a fatally flawed roster. All these players were hand picked. If you're targeting Derryck Thornton, and putting out these rotations on the court, and need top 2 classes each year just to put out a top 15 roster, it's over.


I'd trade every one of our 2017 commits just to bring in Collins next year

 

[Pantone287]

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the staff at this point. They've taken an absurdly talented roster and developed a team from it with the following characteristics:

- A main 5 that is somewhat undersized in the post and underwhelming athletically on the perimeter for a top-tier team.
- Not getting much impact from its depth of talent
- Not leveraging its collection of talented size whatsoever

As I sit here watching UNC utterly dominate a top 10 Louisville team while playing a 6'8/6'9 wing alongside two post players the entire game - despite having a less talented frontcourt - I'm a bit skeptical that there was simply no way to develop and scheme around this roster to get more out of this team.

I mean, regardless of what we talked ourselves into all summer, deep down, I think we all kind of knew K was going to find a way play Tatum at the 4 for 35+ MPG, lean heavily on his seniors, and keep his defensive scheme unchanged. He's recreated a slightly more-talented version of 2009 Duke, because that's what does. This means a good team, but one that leans heavily on Kennard playing at a ridiculous level to beat good teams and (IMO) isn't anywhere close to what a coach should be getting out of this roster. Similar roles and sizes all around to 2009's lineup:

Scheyer - Kennard
EWill/Nolan - Jones
Henderson - Allen
Singler - Tatum
Thomas - Amile

And hell, we all know what happened when we subbed in Zoubek for one of the perimeter spots and packed in the defense in a way that was friendlier to gigantic humans the following year.

Frustrating to watch potential not be maximized.

 

[DurhamSon]

ALso if literally half your team is getting injured before the season starts and then getting lingering injuries during the season which don't heal at all, fire whatever retard is in charge of your strength and conditioning, or equipment, or w/e.

 

[Pantone287]

I was at work. Did we have strong faces or verve?

You did miss an important development - we were told that the coaching shifted from yelling "GRAB THE BALL" at players to telling them, "You're better than these guys, you should be winning be a lot."

It seemed to be equally as effective.

 

[rome8180]

I think I said repeatedly that we were going to see Tatum at the 4 a lot before the season started. I was offered 2010 and 2011 as counterexamples.

To be fair, Tatum has benefited recently. And I actually don't think it's a bad lineup at all. It's just that it's played too exclusively.

 

[DurhamSon]

Point guard recruiting has been flat out abysmal since fall of 2013, that's bordering on four years. Not even landing players, just who has been targeted and who hasn't.

 

[rome8180]

Yeah, I hope we land Duval. But I don't expect him to be nearly as good as Young (who we refused to recruit despite his having been Capel's ball boy).

I would say I am looking forward to only having seven playable players next year, except I worry what happens when our usual injuries leave us with five. And then there's the possibility of a two-man guard "rotation."

 

[Pantone287]

To me, the way we're defending the PNR this season is one of the biggest coaching mistakes they've made with this roster, in tandem with how rotations have been handled throughout the season.

This is a good rundown from a couple of years ago of the predominant options for defending the PNR, as is this.

The main options are:

Switch - ideal if no mismatch, obviously.
Hedging to various extents (ranging from a token arm out to an aggressive trap) - higher risk, higher reward, relies on savvy, mobile bigs and solid help rotation.
Icing - forcing the ballhandler away from the screen and dropping the big into help. Generally used by packline teams.
Zone up - keeping the big closer to the rim and letting the on-ball defender fight over top.

The main thing you give up with the last two is the midrange jumper, which is not the worst thing in the world. However, those two also:
- Keep huge humans closer to the rim rather than making them sprint all over the place and guard PGs beyond the 3PT line
- Rely less on error-free exeuction of said hedging by, say, 18 year-old giants, and seamless rotations by the rest of the team
- Seem to be generally favored by NBA teams and analytics folks, from what I can gather

There are obviously caveats - if you have Draymond Green rather than Deandre Jordan, then it probably makes more sense to take advantage of his versatility and hedge or switch - and if the guy setting the pick happens to be a knockdown 3PT shooter, it can be dangerous. But as a general rule, those two strategies seem to be your best bet if you have huge guys down low.

I wish I could find a breakdown of stop % or PPP allowed on PNRs by defensive approach, but I'm not sure that exists publicly. The few anecdotes I found from a quick googling all seemed to support the above conclusion, though:

- Raptors go from terrible defensive team, overall and against PNR, to top 5 defensive team.
- Cavaliers Stop % significantly higher when zoning up vs. hedging (small sample size)
- Clippers switch from hard hedging to zoning up to play to Deandre Jordan's strengths, everyone seems happy

As it relates to 2017 Duke - and Giles and Bolden specifically - zoning up (and icing on the wings, I suppose) seems to be the obvious choice. We don't see a lot of college bigs that are lights out shooters, and both have (eye test) seemed very effective around the rim, but passable-to-disastrous when defending PNRs.

On a more basic level, it also seems like a mistake to have talented freshman big guys devoting such a huge level of energy and mental focus to constantly sprinting back and forth and hedging 25 foot from the rim (for spurious benefit), rather than letting them focus on what they can actually do to positively affect games, which is being large around the rim. I've wondered if this is why our bigs always seem to struggle as frosh - our scheme does not make it easy on them. A switching/hard-hedging PNR defense makes sense for a savvy, veteran college team with quick, versatile bigs; it does not make sense for a team full of massive teenagers.

Unfortunately, K didn't really even make this adjustment in 2010, so I'm not very hopeful he will now. It's so frustrating to see talent not put in the best position to succeed.

 

[physicsfactor]

Zone up or sink or drop or whatever you want to call it will never happen with K. It allows way too many open 3s if the screener sets a good screen. Percentage wise it might make sense, but K won't do it after the ball handler gets a few wide open looks. Thankfully, Tyus torched this strategy in the 2015 championship game.

 

[Pantone287]

While I agree with your first sentence, I'd say that if you're giving up a bunch of threes by dropping/zoning up, your guards are doing it wrong. You should be able to run guys off the 3PT line pretty consistently unless you're just mailing it in trying to get over the screen.

I'd argue that Tyus's game-sealing three fell into the category of bad on-ball defense. This is terrible starting position for fighting over a screen by Koenig (and still resulted in a tough shot):

 

[rome8180]

And that pretty much happened three times in a row. There's a reason Wisconsin's defense was #38 overall (and lower than that before Kenpom messed with the numbers this year).

 

[physicsfactor]

Tyus did it three or four times in that game. I remember Gottlieb posting a compilation and calling out Bo Ryan for not adjusting. Anyway, I'm not sure how much sinking would help Duke this year. It's probably worth a try (although too late now), but if you sink, the guard defender has to guard the ball more aggressively like you said. I don't think that's a reasonable expectation for guys like Allen or Kennard any more than it is to expect the young bigs to hedge and recover. Of course all of that should only be a problem if the offensive guard is a good threat to shoot pulling up. There are lots of times I wish Duke would sink our big man AND have the defending guard go under the screen. Too often Duke lets mediocre to poor perimeter shooters beat them off the dribble. I may have just talked myself into agreeing with you, Pants.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

There isn't much evidence of bad defenders at Duke becoming better defenders in the NBA, so as much as I enjoy hating Duke coaching on the court, I think a lot of this is on Duke coaching in connection with player evaluation and recruiting. Maybe make sure there are 2-3 juniors/seniors on every roster who are great at perimeter defense or rim protection, which would make K's defense feasible.

When your closest approximation of this sort of player on the perimeter is Matt Jones, you will not have a great defense. I think DeLaurier can be one of those stoppers as a junior/senior. Jackson if he stays. Probably should get 2-3 more in the next 2 classes, but Duke will probably just load up on offensive dynamos who don't play defense.

 

[physicsfactor]

I feel like K and Pitino have the exact opposite recruiting philosophies.

 

[rome8180]

And if Pitino was our coach we'd constantly be bitching about having raw athletes who are offensive morons.