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Can someone please clarify who said the zone is the problem? We all seem to be in agreement that the zone isn't being played properly, but no one has said using the zone is the issue...
I totally agree the zone is not the problem, poor team defense in general is the problem. We simply can't guard anyone.
I would love for that to happen to, but it takes a full year to completely recover from a torn ACL. Even when you come back from it after 6-9 months it's very hard to be back to your previous form in less than a full year. I know that everyone is going to think of Adrian Peterson, but that guy is a once in a generation type of player who has a body that just naturally comes back from things quicker (kinda like Terrell Owens). It's not a knock on Tone because he might be the hardest worker on the team. I definitely hope he comes back, but don't expect it because even if you expect him to be full strength by the middle of the year you might be disappointed.
Before his injury, Exum would work out at 3 a.m. just getting ready for Bama. I'm sure many of you saw his two tweets yesterday where he said "I'm going to come back stronger than ever." Also, it's been said that the recovery will take 6-9 months. Well ever since the national championship, Antone has been absolutely hype about playing Bama. You know that if there is the possibility he can be back in July, or possibly sooner, Tone's gonna make it happen. Missing out on spring practices will definitely hurt, but I'm sure he will be ready to play when August comes. Yes, this injury is a setback, but I can guarantee you this: ANTONE EXUM WILL PLAY AGAINST ALABAMA ON AUGUST 31ST AND HE WILL BE 100%. Mark my words.
Sorry, but this is just a perfect moment for a Mean Girls reference.
Got dunked on a few years ago by Marcus Davis. It was awesome.
A couple of things have stood out to me yesterday when we were in the zone and as a defensive team as a whole.
1. Great post
2. When we were in the zone yesterday we did a terrible job denying the pass to the free throw line, guards were not active in ball denial and our bigs are simply not athletic enough (raines) or strong enough (jvz) to help deny the pass either or make the pass from the free throw line out to the wings difficult. This pass getting to the free throw line continually made our guards collapse leading to an easy 3 pt jumper from the wing (I don't think McDaniels shot a 3 from anywhere other than the wings) Eddie/Wood are not quick enough to close out from the baseline to contest the shot from the wing. We were able to contest some shots but most were fly bys yesterday after the shooter had already released the ball so it didn't bother the shooters much.
3. Yesterday we lost almost every 50/50 ball and long rebound, while you can't win every ball or grab every rebound you have to do a better job than we did yesterday limiting offensive possessions for the opponent. We gave them so many second chances and a lot of times off of these long rebounuds/loose balls whatever clemson player ended up with the ball found a wide open teammate for an easy 3
4. As mentioned above we are not a zone team we are not long enough or athletic enough to play zone every possession down the floor but with a depleted roster JJ had to play the odds like he did yesterday and hope they stayed true but as we all know gambling is not fair.
Is not the problem. I have played in zone defense, man to man, and full court defense before, and I can tell you it's not the problem. It is the players having piss poor footwork, not keeping their head on a constant swivel, and they do a very poor job in anticipating where the ball may go.
They are constantly reacting instead of being active, and that's part of a very thin bench (a very familiar refrain from under Seth Greenberg's tenure), and as I have said on Twitter numerous of times, the conditioning will become more and more of a factor as the season goes on.
I have seen too many times Tech giving up open layups because somebody on the low blocks fail to notice the backdoor play was developing, and that is part of experience. The other part is I have seen Tech players failing to fight through screen, getting lost by losing track of the player they are guarding, and leaving somebody wide open on the wing.
That is a systematic failure from top down. I like what JJ is doing with the current squad, but come on, somebody else not named Erick Green need to start scoring.
Robert Brown is in a shooting slump. Okay, why does he keep insisting on settling for jumpers instead of attacking the rim? I always tell myself whenever I have a struggle to "return to the basics" and it work often. It's more mental and some techniques than physical.
Rankin is a bit of a mystery. He seem to disappear for stretch of time and then somehow finds his stroke. Woods appear to be solid, but definitely need to develop into a threat. Will Johnston was hot from downtown, but absolutely terrible on defense. I have seen him lose track of his guard too many time to count.
Each defense strategy - 2-3 zone, 1-3-1, 3-2, triangle-2 defenses have their strength and weakness. That's why any coaches worth their salt are paid to break down the match ups and exploit it.
All the dudes are like:
And all the girls are like:
And all the larger girls are like
And all the nerds are like
Thanks, but that was a mostly sarcastic statement. I'm not going to murder five people.
Oh God no I would never play that as a base set, but out of timeouts or end of half as you suggest is a great notion. Small doses.
Certainly can't get much worse on defense right now, so I would probably give it a try in practice to see what happens. I think Wood, at least in a few weeks, would be a good fit for the baseline but I also think JVZ would get abused off the dribble if he was on one of the wings (I'd probably put Brown in and play him on the wing, as long as this is a defensive conversation). With that being said, I'm a big fan of a 1-3-1 coming out of timeouts and at end of half/game situations to throw a wrench into whatever the other coach drew up. The 1-3-1 is very tough to score on for one or two possesions, but as a base defense, teams normally will figure out how to attack the gaps and find open shots pretty quickly, which may be why no one (at least that I know of) plays exclusively 1-3-1.
"We aren't trying to score every drive" (even if we're losing)
Agreed. I'm wondering how much thought JJ's given to installing a 1-3-1 to disrupt teams that get hot hitting jumpers. I don't think it would be effective for a couple of reasons, the main one being we would run our baseline guy ragged and don't have the depth to sub in and out enough. But we could run it with certain lineups for short periods. I would put Marshall Wood (when his foot is 100%) running the baseline, park our slowest post player in the middle of the paint (whether its CJ or Cadarian) and prop his arms up in the air, put Eddie and JVZ on the wings to close out, and EG/Rankin up top. That would give you a bigger lineup than JJ typically trots out there, but it would put Wood at his natural position, move Eddie to a position where he can handle the ball a little more to create, and make you more athletic in the post. Just a thought.
As you said, the huge problem with Tech's 2-3 zone is the lack of any length and athleticism. First of all, when you have EG and Rankin (or even Brown) out top, you have two undersized to average sized guards. When you look at Syracuse, they have Carter-Williams, a 6-6 freak of a PG, and Triche. Then, inside, Tech has Eddie, who has never given consistent effort on defense, Barksdale, who is wayyyyyy too slow to be playing in one of the outside spots underneath, and then Raines/JVZ, neither of which are much of shot blocking threat. Syracuse on the other hand, has Fair, Christmas, Sutherland, Coleman, and Grant, all extremely long and athletic players RECRUITED to play in that kind of defense.
Basically, JJ knows that we can't guard teams man-to-man, so he has to throw in some 2-3 zone and other junk defenses that continue to expose our athletic deficiencies and result in huge point totals, especially from behind the arc, for opponents.
That first day of spring was amazing, it's like they came out of hibernation or something!
Great Post Joe. I think the increased 3PT FG% is a product of two issues: fatigue and effort. I will tackle them one at a time.
Fatigue: This team is clearly gassed. We're all aware of the fact that we're playing with so few scholarship athletes that JJ has been forced to increase our elite players' minutes more than he'd like. To make matters worse, guys that should be solid contributors (I'm looking at you Robert) are really struggling and JJ has been forced to constantly tweak each guy's minutes outside of the gameplan. Then we had two weeks of guys dropping dead from the flu. Then you look at a game like yesterday, where every one of our post players is put in foul trouble with 12+ minutes to go and you have a perfect storm of crappiness. Guys are getting over-worked and we lack the depth to pick up the slack. We knew this could happen as the season wore on and one of the ways it shows is in the stats above. Beyer and Johnston & Co. have been great and put in solid minutes, but lesser talent only gets you so far.
Effort: I think if you asked JJ candidly if he wanted to play so much 2-3 zone, he'd flat out tell you hell no. It puts guys out of position on the defensive boards, which makes quick transition difficult. Plus, he really doesn't have the guys to make it work. When you look at a team like Syracuse - who specializes in the 2-3 - they have guards and bigs that are quick and have great length (Jay Bilas just got a hardon), which makes the 2-3 very difficult to break down. We straight-up lack the personnel to make it work effectively. We're not long enough to disrupt the skip pass and we're not quick enough to close down the backside swing pass, both of which are giving the opposing teams WAY too many open looks. It's not just a matter of them hitting more 3's against us, these teams are getting wayyyyyy too many wide open looks from 3-point range. When you're playing high major teams, they should knock these shots down minimum 35% of the time.
I noted in my comments within mikey4vt's game recap the following: The 2-3 Zone was by-and-large effective. As a defense, you want the other team to launch threes against you because of how low-percentage the shots were, and as JJ did postgame, Clemson deserves credit for making those shots. My issue with the D was that they aren't extending enough and playing with their hands up. All 5 guys should have their hands up and out the entire time to disrupt the vision, passing lanes, and shots of the defenders. Hands down is typically a sign of fatigue or laziness, and if I'm JJ, I'm telling my players to keep their hands up or I'm pulling them out because they're telling me they are tired. The best stretch we had was at about the 4-minute mark in the 2nd Half where we repeatedly trapped the first pass over mid-court and used our feet and hands to smother the ball. We need more of that harassment throughout the other 38 minutes.
We've got to play zone to keep guys fresh on the offensive end, but by improving fundamentals we can be even moderately more effective defensively. These are simple things like keeping hands up, and finding a guy and boxing him out the second the ball goes in the air. Rant over.
:(
what's done is done
who starts against the tide? manning? baby fuller? move kyshoen?
the first warm weekend of the spring in blacksburg can be quite the shock to the senses to a young man.
I am not a huge fan of the orange jersey, and god forbid they ever bring back the #ALLORANGEEVERYTHING unis that we've seen a handful of times, but why not have the orange jerseys once a year (and only once a year)? Two arguments for it:
1.) Orange is just as much of our school colors as maroon is. The maroon jerseys look better than the orange ones, but I honestly like how are school has a unique color palette. The occasional orange-jerseys-on-maroon-pants is something we can have that no other school can match. Other schools can do all-maroon, or all-orange, but none do both together.
2.) I have always thought it was very dumb having an "Orange Effect" game where the entire stadium shows up with orange shirts, but the team is wearing maroon and white. This has always bothered me whenever it has happened. So either give up your "Orange Effect" games or wear an orange jersey once per year.
Rivals began doing their comparisons of the top ten prospects to their mirror image NFL stars. Kendall was compared to Morris Claiborne. With Exum out until who knows when, I hope Kendall shows off some of these "Claiborne-esque" skills come August.
Doesn't count if I can't hear it from anywhere in the stadium.
It would be like Mike London and Bill Lazor leaving UVA and going to East Carolina in a hypothetical universe where we open against them in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff game in Atlanta, and having them lose to us.
Except Loeffler is a ton more competent than London.
Don't worry guys, I have this picture to cheer everyone up.