Defensive Rebounding this upcoming season

[MarquetteDano]

Prior to the Italy trip and I had huge concerns about our defensive rebounding going into the season.  We lost our two best rebounders from last season and a very good rebounding guard.

After watching the team in Italy I am feeling a little better.  Still think it will be weakness, especially on the defensive rebounding side, but three things give me some hope:

1.  Some of the new players are better rebounders than I thought, namely both Ellensons's and Anim
2.  Sandy has definitely gotten stronger and is rebounding much better
3.  Our transition offense will really scare a lot of teams.  This will make opposing coaches not as willing to crash the offensive boards as much to ensure a good transition defense.

I know it was only exhibition games against subpar competition but I think our defensive rebounding will not be as bad... I am thinking average for the Big East.

That said, turnovers is a new concern with a freshmen point guard and other freshmen handling the ball a lot.

[brewcity77]

Boxing out is still a concern. We have guys that are athletic, long, and can get to the ball. However they still aren't very good at getting between their man and the ball in order to create rebounds for others. More than almost anything, defensive rebounding needs to be a team effort.

The good thing about this trip is we definitely have guys that can get the ball. Now we just need to make sure everyone else helps give them the opportunity to get it.

[MUfan12]

I was pleasantly surprised by the rebounding, given that these teams had big guys who drew Luke and Henry away from the basket.

[Cooby Snacks]

Something to maybe keep an eye on is the link between the defensive rotations and defensive rebounding. From my half-attentioned viewing of these games there was some tendency to be late or miss rotations, which put more distance between our guys and theirs. Seems like it would be tough to box out when you're 5-10 feet away from someone, and it puts you at the mercy of how badly the shot misses.

Really it's nothing that can't be cleaned up, and the team should get better with experience.

[mu03eng]

Defensively we are definitely still a gambling team forcing bad rotations and if the shot is missed the bad rotations have players out of position to box out and board.

If Wojo can get them to play fundamentally and without gambling the rotations will get better and by extension the rebounding will get better.

[brewcity77]

Something to maybe keep an eye on is the link between the defensive rotations and defensive rebounding. From my half-attentioned viewing of these games there was some tendency to be late or miss rotations, which put more distance between our guys and theirs. Seems like it would be tough to box out when you're 5-10 feet away from someone, and it puts you at the mercy of how badly the shot misses.

Really it's nothing that can't be cleaned up, and the team should get better with experience.

Agreed completely, and especially with the number of long threes we saw, this hurt our ability to rebound. Those long caroms, well...not much you can do. Just something that I hope they can clean up and improve on by the time January rolls around.

[Cooby Snacks]

Defensively we are definitely still a gambling team forcing bad rotations and if the shot is missed the bad rotations have players out of position to box out and board.

If Wojo can get them to play fundamentally and without gambling the rotations will get better and by extension the rebounding will get better.

Agreed. Traci in particular was really aggressive going for steals when picking up his guy 3/4 or full court. Some of that probably has to do with the level of competition and knowing what he could get away with, but getting burned in the backcourt against any decent opposition puts us in trouble for the rest of the possession.

Sometimes that type of gamble is needed if a team can't score in the half court or at least in transition on missed shots. Hopefully MU is better equipped in both of those areas than the last couple seasons and will be able to score reliably without having to force turnovers.

I'm overanalyzing. It's just my coping mechanism now that the euro trip is over and we're looking at a few empty months ahead.

[Jay Bee]

VS. Last season this should be the least of your concerns. MU's DReb was atrocious and can't help but improve. How MUCH will it improve is the question... and the answer is "considerably"