Weird? I guess that's the way one can look at it if the primary interest is to echo-chamber a "rah rah." Others try to be more objective, though, and look for concrete elements that contribute to a win or a loss.
That doesn't mean I haven't given the defense credit (you apparently have never read anything I have written here before), but it appears the fact that I have done so has been overlooked for the sake of keeping the zone mythology intact in the face of precise contexts.
I've given specific examples of how these teams didn't have the personnel to exploit the zone's issues as they've been demonstrated, or that said personnel was not available for stretches of games but, once available, exposed the flaws in our zone. In doing so, I have argued that rankings actually don't really tell the whole story--match-ups matter. North Carolina is an example of a team that currently presents a bad match-up. They are not the only team.
I have not said "Get rid of the zone--it doesn't work." I would argue that's why Coach Boeheim plays zone; he knows that most teams can't regularly field the personnel in terms of athletic playmakers needed to defeat the zone.
Point out a single athlete on Virginia that is more athletic than our top-three players. Having more of the better athletes seems to matter, at least to some extent, in a game where only five players per team are on the court at a time. DSJ for NC ST. is an athlete, and he hurt our zone. Fortunately, their defense was worse than ours, and our kids took advantage to get a nice road win. Our defense made enough stops to win the game, but I wouldn't say it was our "defense" against the Wolfpack that won the game. Coach Boeheim didn't exactly give it a ringing endorsement in the post-game presser, either. Virginia does not currently possess anyone close to DSJ's athleticism. Not by coincidence, the zone operated more effectively.
The disagreement seems to keep coming back to Bacon, who is a good, not great, athlete. Great athletes tend to affect games in more ways than one. He had four rebounds against us (slightly above, but just about, his season average--two of which were offensive rebounds), and zeroes in all other columns (though he did turn it over twice, so give the defense credit for those).
His season numbers don't support the claim that he is a great defender or playmaker. To praise our own player, White is essentially Bacon; he averages slightly more ppg, has a better effective fg%, averages almost one rebound more a game, and does about the same in the other stats. Do you consider White a "great athlete?" If Bacon is such a great athlete, he's not really using it to affect games unless we are going to consider White an equally great athlete. Many on this board consider White a good player (including me--I have written about how I enjoy watching him play elsewhere), but they don't consider him athletically "great." Bacon scores--that's it. So have lots of good-but-not-great athletes at this level.
Isaac returned to the court and scored 11 points in three minutes to start the second half. He also recorded four rebounds in the first three and a half minutes. He drew fouls and had an offensive rebound put-back. He also hit a three-pointer in that stretch. He wound up with 19 and 12 (three offensive), despite being forced to miss the last eight consecutive minutes of the first half. Could Isaac have helped their offense in that time? Will we ever know? Nope, but I would guess if he was on the floor, he'd make some difference.
College basketball is about match-ups, game location, and more than one end of the floor. At this point, I'm willing to agree to disagree. Have a good rest of your weekend.
