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Duke Coaching



Year 3 of Hurley. Blowout of St. John’s on a neutral court. Next game is at Kansas on Sunday. Unfortunately, they’re catching Kansas coming off a loss.

Began at #100 on Kenpom, now up to #45. The defense will need to improve over the next few seasons, and there’s no reason to think it won’t. Hurley had Buffalo in the top 100 on defense before he left and ASU has most of its better talent as freshmen or on the sidelines (Carlton Bragg transfer redshirt).

On offense, ASU is a dream given their mediocre talent level. #6 in the country overall. #1 in drawing fouls. #4 in eFG. #30 in avoiding midrange. Perimeter-driven. Must be a joy to watch. Sadly, the first impression most people will have of ASU is their upcoming blowout loss at Kansas.
 
More analysis of Duke's usual m2m defense (though not so much this season) by Zach Lowe:
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/21705006/zach-lowe-10-things-like-including-milwaukee-bucks-nba

"Milwaukee's scheme at its most frenzied amounts to chasing perfection: swarm everywhere, and snuff everything until the shot clock dies. When the scheme works, it looks impenetrable. Kidd is not the only coach who favors that approach over a more conservative, drop-back system that might yield midrange jumpers. Doc Rivers has discussed the need for a stop-everything scheme against great teams in the postseason.

But the league has changed so much during Kidd's tenure in Milwaukee. Teams launch so many more 3s. They take the first semi-open triple instead of forcing extra passes Milwaukee once swiped for turnovers. Opponents have learned how to pass over and around the traps for dunks; no team allows more shots at the rim than the Bucks, per Cleaning The Glass. Perfect can be the enemy of good.

It will be fascinating to watch how they evolve."
 
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Post game presser social media reaction is probably gonna be brutal if what @Topher is alluding to on twitter is true wrt to the court storming talk by K
 
Only real problem this team has is ball screen defense. Anything offensive, they'll figure out over the next 3 months. Rebounding/effort will be fine. But it's the same old shit with ball screens.

I still think zone is the no brainer solution for this team's length, athleticism, and immaturity, especially if Javin can spend some time at the 3, but we all know K is never going to abandon man as his core strategy, so...

We've backed off the hedge-to-halfcourt strategy this year and are doing more of a show/soft hedge, but we still end up switching every damn screen. I'm not sure if it's more a function of bigs not being assertive enough or by guards being pussies getting over screens, but that can't keep happening. It's a disaster.

As usual, with freshman bigs, I'd like to minimize their jobs here by having them drop back, but that won't work if our guards keep half assing it. They need to know it's their responsibility to get over the screen fast enough to prevent a pull up three, and not count on a switch to bail them out.
 
Right after Bagley got his 3rd non-foul on Bowman, we stopped switching for a few possessions and I don't think they scored. Then we went back to switching and when we got up 4, we kept on getting destroyed.
 
Yeah, I couldn't really tell if that was a coaching adjustment or if players were just executing better. When we were switching, it didn't like we were being intentional about it - it was more like Bagley just wasn't saying anything and resigned himself to guarding the ballhandler if he wasn't relieved from his hedge after a couple seconds.
 
I wish K would do the honorable thing and step down while Jay Wright is still young enough to be worth it. He and Roy Williams have been the most dominant coaches of the last four years or so.
 
Just watched the first quarter of last night's Celtics game to relieve my misery, and man, they make defending ball screens look so easy. Their guards actually get OVER screens, instead of just running straight into the screener every time, and Baynes just gets to sit back in the lane. It's not that goddamn hard.

Edit: Man, especially if you have a talent advantage, are a huge team, are inexperienced, and just need to get to the point where balk screens aren't singlehandedly losing you games, it gets more to the point where it's less a difference in strategy and more just doing things unequivocally wrong. So frustrating.
 
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Pantone287 said:
Just watched the first quarter of last night's Celtics game to relieve my misery, and man, they make defending ball screens look so easy. Their guards actually get OVER screens, instead of just running straight into the screener every time, and Baynes just gets to sit back in the lane. It's not that goddamn hard.
Click to expand...
Kyrie still got burned more and more as the game went on, though in the 1st he was fighting his ass off.

The thing about them is they can switch everything 2-5 if they have Horford out there. Our personnel doesn't really allow for that.
 
Honestly not switching is the only way to go, I'll let them shoot that 3 pointer in exchange for no layups and less foul trouble.
 
Didn't get to watch because I've been working. When I saw they lost, I assumed they played minimal zone. Is this a fair assessment?
 
No, the played quite a bit of zone in the 1st half and BC was shooting out of its mind 11-15 from 3 in the 1st half so the zone looked very bad.
 
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