tOSU's defense

[tower912]

What did you all think of the combination of defenses that the Buckeye's used?   I cannot recall anyone ever using man pressure until the offensive team has a clean possession in the frontcourt and then falling back into a spread-out 2-3 zone.   I thought Wojo's zone offense scheme was quite effective (just too many missed shots)    But slowing up a team bringing up the ball and not allowing them to get into their offense until 10-15 seconds have gone off of the shotclock, thereby limiting the amount of time for ball reversals is an interesting theory.   What say you?

[LAMUfan]

Do you think it is more of a gamble then pressing and going to man?  Seems like there could be some confusion with guys left open if the press is broken when you are trying to set up the zone.  The press worked well to slow MU down, but they did well against the zone once on offense.

[RJax55]

Really liked the concept. Less time for the offense to work to get the ball to the middle.

Will be interesting to see if OSU stays with the zone. Frankly, MU really attacked it well. MU got a lot of good looks from the arc and Taylor had a great game. OSU is going to face much better shooting teams than MU this year, and stronger bigs than Steve Taylor. I thought they did a poor job keeping the ball out of the middle.

Watch 'Cuse in their zone, the wings make it extremely difficult to hit that flasher at the free throw line or elbow. It was fairly easy for MU.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Against Marquette's "shoot it if you're open" philosophy this year I don't think burning the first 10-15 seconds of the shot clock matters much.  It might against a more deliberate team, i.e., Buzz's philosophy of requiring a paint touch first, but I don't recall Marquette being pushed up against a shot clock violation.  Part of that may simply be because their zone had some gaping holes in it and it was relatively easy to find a good shot.

Steve Taylor is probably begging every opponent to run zone against MU.  Are there any advanced statistics out there that show his offensive rating against a zone vs. man-to-man?

[tower912]

Against Marquette's "shoot it if you're open" philosophy this year I don't think burning the first 10-15 seconds of the shot clock matters much.  It might against a more deliberate team, i.e., Buzz's philosophy of requiring a paint touch first, but I don't recall Marquette being pushed up against a shot clock violation.  Part of that may simply be because their zone had some gaping holes in it and it was relatively easy to find a good shot.

Steve Taylor is probably begging every opponent to run zone against MU.  Are there any advanced statistics out there that show his offensive rating against a zone vs. man-to-man?

IIRC, both of Derrick's 3 pt attempts were up against the shot clock. 

[bilsu]

I am pretty shure the press Ohio St. used was a zone press, which seemed to cunfuse us.