Just watching the first two minutes of Duke/Baylor—for masochistic reasons—and it strikes me as a contrast, the defense. Duke has hands and forearms on the offensive player as they're guarding. And i'm trying to remember when, if ever, we did that. We seem to be a hands-off defensive team. We don't even seem to be close enough on a consistent basis to make contact with an offensive player.
Basic stuff. Feels like we're accustomed to how we do things as fans, because it's what we see the most, and then we complain about other teams doing it to us. But, we don't match the tone, tenor, and techniques of more successful teams.
We really need a Defense Guru/Czar to join the staff. But, i thought that's what we hired last offseason. Maybe we need another one. Or two.
Playing zone for so long makes 'us' tentative about touching offensive players, because in the zone it happens when you're reacting to something that already happened, and you're compensating—running at someone. 'Touching' then looks like a foul. Constant contact during a player's individual possession of the ball looks like good defense.
Or, maybe refs just hate us.
