[Cracked Sidewalks] Is the Aggressive Defense Worth it?

[Marquette84]

Not only exposed to dribble penetration, but also to a lot of room for bigs to manuver inside.

Essentially a good containment defense has 3 advanatges-----forces the opposition into mainly a perimeter shooting game (75-80% of the time the team with the most points in the paint wins)------fewer fouls------better position for defensive rebs. I don't see any disadvanatges as the opposition has to shoot within 35 seconds-----if there were no shot clock a containmnet defense wouldn't be as effective.

I would have played a containment defense last year-----instead of using our quickness to gamble defensively for steals, I would use our quickness to take away to take away dribble penetration by dropping into gaps off the ball. Without checking, I would say that a team gets 5 steals a game or so by default regardless of what type of defense is played-----so why continually expose your defense in an attempt to get a couple more steals per game? In the latter part of a game if you're behind----that's a different story.

Murff, can you factor in the fact that an agressive defense also results in fewer FG attempts by the other team?

The classic strategy here is "Hack a Shaq".  Its smart to always foul Shaq before he gets off, because its far more likely that he'll score from the floor than from the the line.

At the other extreme is Steve Novak--you wouldn't want to foul Novak ever because he's more likely to make the FTs than from the floor.

Teams as a whole are at neither extreme, but on average, at some point a more agressive defense makes sense.  Under what condistions would this make sense. 

It's my belief that for MU's team last year, playing more agressively was a good tradeoff--when you look at the stats, clearly MU was effective at limiting the number of opposition field goal attempts. 

I don't think There is any debate that MU's style of defense resulted in three things;
--more foul shots by the oppostiion
--fewer field goal attempts by the opposition
--more turnovers by the opposition

We can calculate the impact of the shift in defense compared to a containment team like Notre Dame
--7 more FT attempts by the other team, at .80 shooting, resulting in +6 points
--10 fewer FG attempts by the other team, at .50 shooting reuslitng in -10 points
--3 more turnovers (results in fewer FG attempts above).

Rebounding was a wash.

So by my calculation, the benefit of our agreessive defense actually prevented 4 points a game (on average) by the other team.

I am convinced that even in close losses, the margin would have been greater if we had not played such an agressive defense--my anaysis of Duke appears above.

[Murffieus]

Number of FGAs per game depends a lot on rebounds (limiting the opposition to one shot and the same team getting multiple shots off offensive rebs distorts the FGA conclusion based on defense)-----also very difficult to quantify on # of FGA e.g., is the type of shot that is taken. I would argue that a good containment defense forces lower percentage shots by keeping shots out of the paint-----so a shortfall of FGA is not dependable as an indicator of the quality of a defense (the team with fewer FGA may be taking higher percentage shots). Also hard to quantify is the effect of the quality of any particular defense whether aggressive or containment. e.g. a good aggressive defense is going to be superior to a poorly constructed containment defense.

[Pardner]

84--
I said previously that I agreed with your opportunity cost analysis.  MU was 5th nationally in points per possession (1.1) and MU's opponenets had one of the lowest pts/possession (0.9).  But, your greatest strength is your greatest weakness--and in this case, finishing 8th nationally in fouls given hurt us in close games. 

Take the Duke game you referenced.  Both teams made the same amount of FG's (26), MU made one more trey (7 vs. 6), but Duke had the edge in FT's (27 vs. 20) and FTM (19-14) to decide the game.  Result:  Duke 77 - MU 73.  Would MU have lost by a larger margin if we didn't play so aggressively?  Most likely.  Would we have won if we hit more shots and didn't foul as much?  Absolutely.

Did MU play the right style based on their personnel?  Yes, on average, TC's system obviously worked very well based upon our personnel.  But, the knock on him is he couldn't win the big games consistently enough--mainly because MU was undersized in those games--meaning we had to be more aggressive.  To show this, I went back in those four games and compiled a "Height Weighted Minute" statistic reflecting minutes played times the height of the players in that game.  In those four games, MU was undersized to what amounts to over 1-2 inches per position in each game...and the FT rate was ~30% higher than our average as a result--which is not a surprise.  Size mattered!

With Butler, Fulce, Trevor, Otule--we just got bigger and longer in match-up games.  We aren't just bringing in Mo and dCube to spell our already undersized guards or forced to put Lazar on a Lopez Twin and hope for the best.  We have more athletic options now to disrupt an offense--not just to gamble for a steal or to pressure for a TO.  The end of the season is decided by advantaged match-ups--and we needed to get bigger.