Defense and rebounding is off the charts

[General20]

Yeah I am surprised there isn't more discussion of this in general.

UVA is 114th in the country in steal rate. They are #2 in defensive efficiency and no doubt they are awesome, but if you have 2 roughly equivalent defenses, I'll take the one that forces more steals most every day of the week.
To pay devils advocate against myself, I wonder if teams that force more steals are more or less volatile defensively than teams that don't force as many; what happens when the turnovers aren't there.

This goes back to the 4 levels of defense I always use to evaluate individual players, you can use it just as easily for entire teams. Its a little over simplified, but it makes things easy to understand.

The top level is, perfect position defense AND a lot of steals - Think MCW
The second level is, perfect position defense, but forces few turnovers - Triche is on this level.
The third level is, bad position defense, but forces a lot of turnovers - GMac is a good example here.
The final level is, bad position defense, and does not force turnovers - Paul Harris

If you apply this thinking to teams as a whole, Virginia would be on level two. Last year's Louisville team (and last year's Syracuse team) would be a good example of level 1, and maybe if everything falls right this year's Syracuse team can work its way up to a level 1 as well.

 

[moqui]

Y what happens when the turnovers aren't there.

that's been the key to beating Syracuse - take care of the ball and make it a half court game. But this year's team looks a lot more comfortable in the half court offense, Miami game notwithstanding.

 

[moqui]

This goes back to the 4 levels of defense I always use to evaluate individual players, you can use it just as easily for entire teams. Its a little over simplified, but it makes things easy to understand.

The top level is, perfect position defense AND a lot of steals - Think MCW
The second level is, perfect position defense, but forces few turnovers - Triche is on this level.
The third level is, bad position defense, but forces a lot of turnovers - GMac is a good example here.
The final level is, bad position defense, and does not force turnovers - Paul Harris

If you apply this thinking to teams as a whole, Virginia would be on level two. Last year's Louisville team (and last year's Syracuse team) would be a good example of level 1, and maybe if everything falls right this year's Syracuse team can work its way up to a level 1 as well.

isn't it curious that we had this discussion on the day that T&T used their defense to get the offense running downhill?