it's the defense that really concerns me

[mug644]

I was at the game today, and while our shooting woes continue, I'm most worried about our defense, especially our interior defense. And, as an extension of poor interior defense, our miserable blocking out. When we tried to play zone today, our back guys, especially Ousmane in the center, looked lost. They were chasing men from one side of the baseline to another, not holding their zone. There was a lot of pointing, but it didn't look like good communicating, but like they were sincerely wondering who should be doing what. In man-to-man, our big men were easily dominated by UConn, just like Louisville (and Harangody, for that matter).

The shooting will come around, we've seen some great shooting nights, and that will open up the inside for our slashers to get in the lane, but unless the defense, and its related blocking out, improves, our poor showings might continue.

[CTWarrior]

I was there, too.  It was men against boys.  UConn is so much bigger and stronger than we are, and they match our quickness.  What worries me is that I don't think we played that badly.  We were dominated by a so-so team, because they were able to match our biggest strength (quickness) and exploit our biggest weakness (undersized interior).

I watch UConn a lot.  They are shot blocking crazy.  The way other teams have successfully attacked them is to drive the lane and get the big shot blockers to go for the block and then kick out for the 3 or to another open interior player.  We don't have good quick release three point shooters nor interior people to pass the ball to.   We kept trying over and over agains to have our 6 foot guards try to score over the 7-3 Thabeet.  Recipe for disaster.  Even when we cleared the defense we short-armed the shots for fear of a shot blocker.

Our defenders were just overpowered on the boards.  Rebounding is not all effort.  When effort is close to the same, the bigger, stronger, quicker guys will get the boards.  There were many times that we had position but they just jumped higher to get the ball.