My concern going into the season was the question whether our lanky guards (Williams and Jok) and our slower, smaller guards (Bohannon and Ellingsen)would be able to guard the 6-1 to 6-3 quicker guards Iowa will face this year. We got an answer, not the one we wanted, to that question tonight. In addition, our 6-7 and 6-8 threes are not able to keep up with smaller and quicker small forwards and our interior defense is not exactly stout or intimidating. It seems to me that utilizing an aggressive zone defense would alleviate these shortcomings. I can see this team averaging in the 80's but losing because the players, as a group, are simply not good one-on-one defenders.
Zone defense
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I think we will see a lot of zone out of necessity this year, I also don't think this will solve our defensive problems. If you can penetrate in a zone, you can still kick and get open looks and Iowa has tended to give up a lot of corner threes when in a zone the last year plus and I think this will continue. We also will probably struggle to rebound out of a zone, but I don't think it's a bad idea to play a lot of it.
Zone defense works only when everyone is on board and doing their job. Seton Hall is a tough team to zone because they have 3 good guards who can shoot it.
Last night you saw Seton Hall got the ball in the middle of the zone several times and got open lay-ups or open 3pt shots. Iowa has to work on their zone defense and get it improved.
IA's man to man has to improve and they have to play "team defense" more. Last night it seemed like everyone was guarding their own man and no one was helping. Need to help when a guard a penetrates and rotate down. I am sure Fran will point that out to them today.
Last night you saw Seton Hall got the ball in the middle of the zone several times and got open lay-ups or open 3pt shots. Iowa has to work on their zone defense and get it improved.
IA's man to man has to improve and they have to play "team defense" more. Last night it seemed like everyone was guarding their own man and no one was helping. Need to help when a guard a penetrates and rotate down. I am sure Fran will point that out to them today.
We have a lot of freshmen, and one thing that almost all freshmen have in common is they play poor team defense,.... they will learn.
Many of the breakdowns weren't the freshman. Peter Jok is still standing straight up on defense as a senior. Does way too much reaching and not enough being in a stance and being in a solid defensive position.
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Really interesting game that helped by exposing our shortcomings. Yeah, our defense sucked, but did anyone else think that Seton Hall is a very, very good team? This was a perfect early game to start to correct things. Looks like we have three solid players in Jok, Cook and Baer. The next eight or nine kids need to clean up parts of their game.
BirdistheWord
HR Heisman
my god, having ANYONE try and protect the rim would have helped. i have not seen Kreiner play but could he possibly provide a bit of this?
The thing is between Pemsl, Wagner, Dom, Kreiner they have a lot of fouls to give with guys who are not by themselves essential cogs in the team (not including Cook as he is too valuable on the offensive end to go all ultra agressive).
How much of the perceived slowness is anticipation and fundamentals on defense, and how much is in physically being slower?
