Orangezoo
In the wind
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
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I think Lampkin is going to be a big upgrade defensively compared to late last season.
Possession after possession, Brown and Taylor would be overpowered and opposing players would get easy shots because our guys were overmatched. Lampkin is not going to get pushed around (even"slim" Lamp had serious girth). Importantly, Bell and Freeman are lengthy, athletic types that will thrive on weakside shotblocking as opposing players are forced to fade away from Lampkin.
I think the interior defense is going to be greatly improved, as opponents won't be shooting layups every possession off routine post play.
Brown was great in a few ways, but upgrading to Lampkin's size, and having McLeod back is going to be a huge improvement over Brown's insufficient size. Having Freeman instead of Taylor inside will compound the improvement.
Bell will be Bell, but he looks a little bigger, so hopefully his rebounding will tick up a bit, and he'll be able to bother his guy a little more.
Experience and new ideas coaching wise hopefully get our team defense to be better too. We need individual defensive skills of course but communication and movement matters so much and it was a mess last year. So the combination of those factors plus a shot blocker off the bench at the 5 should help improve team defense even if we don’t have an alpha defender on the team and have some average to below average defenders too.