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[QUOTE="Niastri, post: 5217112, member: 722"]
I agree, I wish we were much more aggressive on defense, especially when we have this kind of depth.

Aggressively overplaying screens, slapping constantly at the ball, physical play on the screener and the ball handler... Anything to make the opposing team uncomfortable.

We have seen it for decades, officials won't call every foul if you are slapping the ball constantly. It's so annoying to play against, as all of us can attest.

It causes turnovers, fatigue and hesitation.  It also can cause foul trouble on your team, but we have too many guys who can play to need to worry about that.  Our 12 guys are all viable players this year, unlike last year where we started with 4-5 guys who weren't going to play to start the year.

At the very least, I wish we would see some version of the Virginia defense, which is super simple, in principles.  Sag back slightly when your guy doesn't have the ball to prevent penetration and make assisting in help defense quicker. Play very aggressively when your guy does have the ball to stop three point attempts and force penetration into the help defense.

Combine that with the extreme hedging and slapping defense and you force a lot of passes that can turn into turnovers and force a lot of bad shots.

EDIT: If it were that easy, everybody would do it. I get that.

Just watching vanilla defense at this level feels like a fail on the coaching staffs part.  I was really hoping the new assistant would come with at least some change in our defensive philosophy.  At this point, we're definitely going to have to outscore good teams to get victories. We aren't stopping many.
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