[Cracked Sidewalks] Defense Showing Signs of Improvement

[CrackedSidewalksSays]

Defense Showing Signs of Improvement

Written by: noreply@blogger.com (Rob Lowe)

Here's your interesting news for the day.  The math says that Marquette is the third best team in the conference.  Yes, that same Marquette that currently stands at 18-11 (9-7) and in seventh place in the league, staring at a 10-seed in the NCAA tournament.

As a reminder, this is based on efficiency margin, which is the  difference between a team's offense and defense.  Great teams have  offenses much higher than their defenses.  0.500 teams have offenses and  defenses about the same.  Losing teams have negative efficiency margins  (defenses higher than their offenses).  In truth, the math has been kinder this season than MU's opponents.   Even two weeks ago, Marquette was the #4 team according to stats, largely on the strength of MU's top tier offense.   If your offense is the #14 offense in the country, it's easier to have a good efficiency margin.  However, as we have discussed incessantly, it's always been the defense that was dragging down Marquette.  In fact, two weeks ago, MU's defense was the same as Providence's, and just barely better than Rutgers and USF.  That's not the kind of company MU wants to keep.

However, the last two weeks have shown substantial improvement in the Marquette's defensive performance.  As a result (and thanks to Villanova's current three-game slide), MU now stands at #3 in efficiency margin --- the team has held three straight opponents under 0.98 ppp (Seton Hall, UConn, and Providence).    MU held Providence to 0.81 ppp, which was the Warriors' the 5th best defensive performance of the year.  Looking at conference-only statistics, three of the best defensive performances of the year have been the last three games.

Seton Hall - MU's overall defense was about the same in each half.  In the first half, MU allowed SHU to score 0.97 ppp.  The Pirates shot an eFG% of 55%, but Marquette dominated the boards and only allowing an offensive rebounding percentage of 13%.  In the second half, MU allowed 0.99 ppp by tightening up the defensive eFG% (47% for SHU).  More on this in a minute.

UConn - This was a game of two halves.  In the first half, when UConn was flummoxed by the MU zone, the opponent only scored 0.77 ppp.  That's Prairie View A&M type defense.  UConn only shot an eFG% of 34% and had a turnover rate of 23%.  In the second half, UConn scored 1.15 ppp. Yuck.  However, this was mostly based on them dominating the defensive boards (they grabbed 61% of all missed shots).   And yet... UConn still only shot 48% on eFG% in the second half, and 39.6% for the game.

Providence - Marquette allowed 0.71 ppp in the first half and 0.88 ppp in the second half.  In neither half did PC shoot better than 40% on eFG% (34% and 37%). This was a great performance.

That's five straight halves of high-quality eFG% defense.  As we've been saying, defensive eFG% is by far the most important aspect of defense.  It's no surprise that some of MU's best defensive improvement is following this area.

As a result, MU's defensive profile has leaped from the mid-80's ranking to #57.  As Tim noted, we wonder if part of this improvement is due to the increased on-court performance of Chris Otule.  We'll continue to watch.  Regardless, if the defense continues to improve, Marquette may finally have a defense just good enough to have the on-court performance catch up to the math.

http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2011/02/defense-showing-signs-of-improvement.html

[CTWarrior]

As Yogi Berra once said, "You can observe a lot just by watching."

A couple of things I've noticed Are:

1.  We are switching defenses a little, which helps throw the opposition off.
2.  We've had the luxury in our last two games of having a single guy on the opposition who is overwhelmingly the focal point of the offense, so having one guy following him everyone and another one/two players watching him like an LB might watch Michael Vick is a relatively simple and effective defense.
3.  Otule is 'gasp' a very effective deterrent on the interior, and is blocking a few shots but more importantly altering a bunch more.  I gasp because I think McIlvaine (maybe Merritt on occasion) was the last C/PF type we've had who had that kind of defensive presence on the interior.
4.  Otule is doing a great job hedging (I believe that's the technical term) the opposition PG when he tries to get around our PG and keeping him out of the lane.  I've hated this maneuver in the past because it seemed to leave a big uncovered in the lane who too often got an easy entry pass, but now that we're running it properly I can see how effective it is.
5.  We just aren't missing as many assignments and leaving guys wide open like we were up until very recently.

[dwaderoy2004]

I was looking at KenPom this morning and peeked back at the 2003 final four team.  They had the Number 1 Offensive efficiency, but the 101st best defensive efficiency.  Which is really shocking to me.  Just goes to show that a good offense can overcome a poor defense...to a point.  Of the four Final Four teams, MU and Texas had the worst defense, at 44 and 101, while Kansas (1) and Cuse (19) had the best, and went to the championship game.  Their offensive numbers were Kansas (6th) and Cuse (11).  So basically, if you don't have a great offense, you have no chance.  But if you want to win it all, you need a good defense, too.  So don't put money on Wisconsin or Notre Dame (not that anyone here would anyway out of principle, but they fit the elite offense/average defense mold).