Mean Green Defense

chrisfisher · March 9, 2010

Did you all notice that we played zone for much of last night's game. I was very, very impressed with our defense - probably best defensive effort all season? Lock down defense, 7 blocks, 3 steals, and we out-rebounded them. Denver didn't creep out of the 40 point range until toward the end of the game. We just seemed to be in the right spot all night. I can imagine that not chasing their players around the court all night will help with the energy for the Troy game. I am not saying we should completely change up our defense going into the championship game or possibly the NCAA tourney, but, quite frankly, I would not mind seeing more zone tonight.

Got5onIt · March 9, 2010

I didn't notice they ran zone that much. But I'm sure Denver's lack of athletecism enabled NT to stick with it. When NT started pressing in man, Denver was just overwhelmed.

Edited March 9, 2010 by Got5onIt

FirefightnRick · March 9, 2010

Denver moves the ball around as fluid as anyone I've seen, and they took advantage of it at the start of the game last night. 6 of Denver's first 10 points were easy layups, so as usual I was thinking, "here we go again". Then we seemed to have made the adjustments(not chasing them so far out on the perimeter maybe?)needed, plus George and Collin started getting blocks. It seemed once we settled down and got used to that tempo we turned the defense up on this team.

I'd like to see more of the press we saw towards the end of the ULM game that helped us get back into that game. Where has that been the past 8 years?

Rick

Edited March 9, 2010 by FirefightnRick

chrisfisher · March 10, 2010

Here is exactly what I was talking about from ESPN:

The Trojans made it to the title game with an effective zone defense, but they had a hard time solving North Texas' zone in the second half. White gave the Mean Green their biggest lead with a 3-pointer that made it 59-51, then pointed toward the fans in one corner on his way back on defense.

"We had to make some adjustments at halftime because they were really scoring at will," North Texas coach Johnny Jones said. "We dropped back in a 2-3 zone, took away their rhythm in a sense, and they became just a straight jump-shooting team."