Wild and crazy concept that no coach in America has ever thought of... how bout we actually try m2m defense. Bring up LeMoyne all you want, but that just proves how poorly coached those kids were in m2m. If they didn't know how to guard and switch on picks etc, then that falls on the coaches for not correcting those issues in practice, instead of saying "we're just not a good m2m team". If our team can't be aggressive and play m2m, then that's on the coaches. How come other avg teams can play in-your-shorts, tough m2m, but our kids can't, or won't be given the chance. For example, Wisconsin has very avg kids this year... yet their m2m made us so uncomfortable on offense and made it difficult for us to find a decent shot the entire game.
Now calm down, if our zone was being effective with these kids, then fine, I'm all for it and stick with it... but it's not working. A good coach knows when to mix it up... and by mix it up, I don't mean realize in the final minutes of a game that you're losing to finally double the ball after it gets over mid-court, put more pressure or some change of pace to try and throw off the other team, when the end result is already inevitable. Do it earlier in the game.
Our zone is completely ineffective with these players. We don't have Warricks/Grants/MCW type lanky players that can cover space in a zone and to be disruptive. We allow awful... AWFUL teams like St Johns to go off on us from outside because we get shifted out of position too often, which allows more open looks (that any level of athlete could make)... and we're hoping they miss. Secondly, even when teams are missing shots, they simply gobble up the offensive rebounds, because we stare at the ball on the way to the hoop, instead of boxing out. Whether we have the beef inside or not... if you see a shot go up, you turn, box your man out, to where theyve gotta foul you over the back for a rebound. I can't recall the last time I saw an SU player box out, outside a FT shot going up. Maybe if we tried m2m once... just once, we could see how well these kids can guard, not to mention have the ability to box out for rebounding. I mean we are falling behind in every game, it's not like we can do any worse by changing things up defensively.
Now our offensive struggles are a completely different problem. I gotta blame Jimmy there too. There's been no development of any of our bigs. TR/DC/Chino haven't shown anything since the day they came here. TR still has no inside game. He bulls over people for charges and looks robotic in his movements. And DC is just a mess out there - injury or no injury. Chino... I dunno why he was even offered a scholly. Throw in TC who is not a true starting D1 talent that hasn't improved since day 1. The kid hustles, but we're asking him to be something that he isn't. Not to mention, there's no resemblance of an offense being run. It's mainly streetball. Set all these picks which prove meaningless since we rarely have anyone who can take advantage of a pick to drive to the hoop (to score, or dish for an open shot), or take the open jumper off the pick themselves.
