What defense next year.

[porkpa]

Just thinking. Will Duke revert to mano a mano or stick with the zone next year?
I'm guessing that Coach K will start with man to man and will stick with that unless it isn't working.

[Devils Librarian]

My guess is that K will want to play man-to-man. It's nice to know that if the freshman show a complete inability to run the defense he will adapt to what his players can do. I wonder if we would have made it to the Elite 8 if he would have stuck to man-to-man.

[Troublemaker]

The zone is part of the program now and really has been since 2015.

So, we'll play both m2m and zone, and whichever we're better at, will become the primary defense.

[kAzE]

We will be a much more perimeter oriented team next year, so I would expect us to go back to M2M as the base scheme, but probably still play a little bit of zone at times to mix it up.

RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, and Tre Jones are known for their defense. RJ and Cam should be capable of guarding up to 4 positions. Not sure about Zion, although he is most definitely a rim proctector.

Now whether or not that translates into quickly learning Coach K's M2M scheme, I have no idea. Both Barrett and Reddish project as 2-way stars at the NBA level, though, FWIW.

[jv001]

I was thinking about this very thing last night after the game. I wonder if Coach K had gone to the zone earlier in the year if the season would have been different. I can't help but think we would have been a #1 seed but we would probably had the same negatives; turnovers, inconsistent 3 point shooting and at times poor rebounding. Whatever defense Coach K decides to use, I hope we play D very well from November to April. GoDuke!

[CDu]

I would assume that man-to-man will be what we start out the season with as the primary defense. Given the makeup of the roster (with lots of 6'5"-6'8" wing types), I'd expect a lot of switching on ball screens. But if the man-to-man doesn't work, I'm sure we won't rule out the zone.

That being said, I'm not sure that the zone would be as effective next year without the length of this year's team. Being able to put 1 and sometimes 2 6'10" guys on the forward spots of the zone with another 6'10" guy at center, and with a couple of ballhawks like Allen and Duval up front, that was a tailor-made zone team. I think the team next year will be better served in man-to-man.

But, we'll see.

[Reddevil]

I really hope they play man simply because as effective as a zone CAN be, it is hard to watch it get picked apart. I know they were ranked 9th defensively, but against really good teams that can shoot and attack the weak spots it is really hard for me to defend from my recliner at home. I find it easier to provide help side pillow defense when they play man. Just sayin'.

[jv001]

I really hope they play man simply because as effective as a zone CAN be, it is hard to watch it get picked apart. I know they were ranked 9th defensively, but against really good teams that can shoot and attack the weak spots it is really hard for me to defend from my recliner at home. I find it easier to provide help side pillow defense when they play man. Just sayin'.

I hope we play both the man2man and the zone because I think it gives teams something to prepare for. As for the 9th rating in defense, we became a better team with that defense. However, we had extreme length and that helped to make the zone effective. Next years team will not have that length, so man2man might be better. What I don't want to see is a layup line because we get beaten off the dribble. Plus kick out threes. GoDuke!

[gocanes0506]

Zone as all about close outs, communication between back line and front line defenders, and hard working front line players.

Our Zone:
Not a lot of communication between the guys in big games. Hence why wingers we sneaking around and Grayson trying to scramble to throw a hand up and 3 guys collapsing on one defender.
The front line gaurds worked hard at trying to keep the back line guys from having to come up.
The close outs weren’t consistently great due to being out of position from scrambling or a guy making the wrong play.

Overall the guys didn’t talk well enough to be considered a team defense/ effective zone. We’ll see if we revert back or have guys that buy in to a team defense. Since kids are brought up in basketball that is a 1v1 game more than a 5v5 game, the new guys are more ready for a MvM Defense. Sadly enough an effective MvM requires more team defense than the kids are brought up in today. When Hardens are celebrated for amazing O but lost on D, that is what you’ll get.

[CDu]

Overall the guys didn’t talk well enough to be considered a team defense/ effective zone.

This is silly. Only one team in the country played better, more consistent defense than we did once we switched to zone. Our adjusted defense over that stretch - even after Kansas blew up in overtime - was in the low-80s. We were a GREAT defensive team down the stretch of the year.

Even in the Kansas game, we finished regulation with an adjusted efficiency of ~91 (72 points in 69 possessions against an offense with a 121 rating). We fell off a bit in overtime, but even still our adjusted rating against one of the top 5 offenses in the country was good for a ~96, which is a top-30 performance.

We were a GREAT defensive team once we switched to zone. Our two worst games of the season in zone were still very solid defensive efforts, and for the most part we were consistently the best defense in the country in zone.

[Ian]

This is silly. Only one team in the country played better, more consistent defense than we did once we switched to zone. Our adjusted defense over that stretch - even after Kansas blew up in overtime - was in the low-80s. We were a GREAT defensive team down the stretch of the year.

Even in the Kansas game, we finished regulation with an adjusted efficiency of ~91 (72 points in 69 possessions against an offense with a 121 rating). We fell off a bit in overtime, but even still our adjusted rating against one of the top 5 offenses in the country was good for a ~96, which is a top-30 performance.

We were a GREAT defensive team once we switched to zone. Our two worst games of the season in zone were still very solid defensive efforts, and for the most part we were consistently the best defense in the country in zone.

I'm okay with staying with the zone. The Zone was fine, the problem was offense, Bagley never figured out all year how to handle a double team, when teams double teamed him we struggled on offense unless we either have extraordinary shooting or offensive rebounding.

[gocanes0506]

This is silly. Only one team in the country played better, more consistent defense than we did once we switched to zone. Our adjusted defense over that stretch - even after Kansas blew up in overtime - was in the low-80s. We were a GREAT defensive team down the stretch of the year.

Even in the Kansas game, we finished regulation with an adjusted efficiency of ~91 (72 points in 69 possessions against an offense with a 121 rating). We fell off a bit in overtime, but even still our adjusted rating against one of the top 5 offenses in the country was good for a ~96, which is a top-30 performance.

We were a GREAT defensive team once we switched to zone. Our two worst games of the season in zone were still very solid defensive efforts, and for the most part we were consistently the best defense in the country in zone.

We switched to the zone right when the schedule got easy. Any adjusted D stats helped once we got a string of Louisville, Cuse, Vt, Clemson. The D was carved up once they played teams with legitimate talent and mid range jumpers. UNX and Kansas killed the zone. ND did a decent job of carving it up but they got really tired at the end of the game. Heck, VT did a good job of carving it up in crunch time to win the game. In the end if you watched the team execute the zone, it was far from a team I would fear playing O against. They were unorganized and lacked communication. That really cost players like WCJr playing time. He took a lot of fouls being the last line of defense from failures of the other players.

[scottdude8]

We will be a much more perimeter oriented team next year, so I would expect us to go back to M2M as the base scheme, but probably still play a little bit of zone at times to mix it up.

RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, and Tre Jones are known for their defense. RJ and Cam should be capable of guarding up to 4 positions. Not sure about Zion, although he is most definitely a rim proctector.

Now whether or not that translates into quickly learning Coach K's M2M scheme, I have no idea. Both Barrett and Reddish project as 2-way stars at the NBA level, though, FWIW.

I had been wondering about this for a while, since I haven't followed recruiting as closely this season as I normally do. Is this a key part of their scouting report? That would make me sleep much better for the next 6 months, haha.

[kAzE]

I had been wondering about this for a while, since I haven't followed recruiting as closely this season as I normally do. Is this a key part of their scouting report? That would make me sleep much better for the next 6 months, haha.

For RJ and Cam, absolutely. They are considered elite players on both ends. They both have NBA size & length, and they bring it in terms of effort. Tre clearly doesn't have the size or length of those 2, but in comparisons to Tyus, Tre is always noted as a better defender. Zion is a question mark. He clearly has the athleticism and body control to be a decent defender, but I worry that he might have some Bagley in him, and perhaps not bring the same intensity on defense as he does when going for one of his highlight dunks. We will see.

In any case, we are really going to miss Wendell's rim protection. He was a HUGE part of why our defense was so good towards the end of this year. Bolden showed some flashes of being Wendell-like, but he's not nearly as agile or as strong as Wendell.

I do think Cam and RJ are very promising as perimeter defenders, though.

[scottdude8]

For RJ and Cam, absolutely. They are considered elite players on both ends. They both have NBA size & length, and they bring it in terms of effort. Tre clearly doesn't have the size or length of those 2, but in terms of comparisons to Tyus, Tre is always noted as a better defender. Zion is a question mark. He clearly has the athleticism and body control to be a decent defender, but I worry that he might have some Bagley in him, and perhaps not bring the same intensity on defense as he does when going for one of his highlight dunks. We will see.

In any case, we are really going to miss Wendell's rim protection. He was a HUGE part of why our defense was so good towards the end of this year.

I do think Cam and RJ are very promising as perimeter defenders, though.

Awesome. Do you think one of them will be capable of guarding a smaller, quicker 2 man? That is my biggest concern, that despite their length and athleticism their larger size might make them a liability against a team playing a bunch of quick guards. That said, if this is indeed the case color me slightly more optimistic about next year now.

[kAzE]

Awesome. Do you think one of them will be capable of guarding a smaller, quicker 2 man? That is my biggest concern, that despite their length and athleticism their larger size might make them a liability against a team playing a bunch of quick guards. That said, if this is indeed the case color me slightly more optimistic about next year now.

That's kind of impossible to predict, but both RJ and Cam are pretty quick for their size. If I had to speculate, I'd say that the quickest college guards could probably blow by them a few times in a game, but RJ and Cam are so long & athletic, that it's very possible they could get right back into the play and still block the shot or something. But obviously, that would be a huge, huge advantage on the other end, trying to match up with their size. RJ typically punishes smaller defenders in the paint.

[UrinalCake]

The zone was a necessity this season because we played two bigs and neither of them could guard on the perimeter. In the M2M, opposing teams could very easily pull one of them out onto the perimeter. They could also use the high ball screen to generate switches and then we have a big guarding the point guard. This happened over and over and over again for the first half of the season. Playing the zone allowed us to keep our bigs close to the basket where they belong.

Next year we will have multiple interchangable wings on defense. I would be shocked if K played zone. I think we'll do a ton of switching off of ball screens especially among the 1-3 positions. Maybe if Zion and Bolden are both in the game together then we play some type of zone for the reasons described above. But I also think that giving up all those corner threes out of the zone was secretly driving K insane.

[Kfanarmy]

We switched to the zone right when the schedule got easy. Any adjusted D stats helped once we got a string of Louisville, Cuse, Vt, Clemson. The D was carved up once they played teams with legitimate talent and mid range jumpers. UNX and Kansas killed the zone. ND did a decent job of carving it up but they got really tired at the end of the game. Heck, VT did a good job of carving it up in crunch time to win the game. In the end if you watched the team execute the zone, it was far from a team I would fear playing O against. They were unorganized and lacked communication. That really cost players like WCJr playing time. He took a lot of fouls being the last line of defense from failures of the other players.

Your argument is that the ACC schedule was softer than the preseason with a couple of ACC games mixed in? That seems pretty off base to me.

[CDu]

That's kind of impossible to predict, but both RJ and Cam are pretty quick for their size. If I had to speculate, I'd say that the quickest college guards could probably blow by them a few times in a game, but RJ and Cam are so long & athletic, that it's very possible they could get right back into the play and still block the shot or something.

Yeah, if I had to guess, I'd say Barrett is the most likely "stopper" of the group. He's the most aggressive, most intense, most "killer instinct" guy coming in. Reddish is a bit more passive, with intensity coming and going, but he's the most skilled of the group. With Williamson, my concern is body type. He played mostly zone in high school, and I'm not sure he's all that quick. And like you said, I'm not sure if his intensity shows on defense. He is an absolute mauler in the open court though, and with a head of steam he's an absolute diesel. I just wonder how effective he'd be in a quick stop-start/direction-change sense, which is what really drives half-court defensive skills.

Jones is a really smart player, but he's the least athletic and least physically imposing guy of the bunch. I don't expect him to be a great individual defender.

[FerryFor50]

This is silly. Only one team in the country played better, more consistent defense than we did once we switched to zone. Our adjusted defense over that stretch - even after Kansas blew up in overtime - was in the low-80s. We were a GREAT defensive team down the stretch of the year.

Even in the Kansas game, we finished regulation with an adjusted efficiency of ~91 (72 points in 69 possessions against an offense with a 121 rating). We fell off a bit in overtime, but even still our adjusted rating against one of the top 5 offenses in the country was good for a ~96, which is a top-30 performance.

We were a GREAT defensive team once we switched to zone. Our two worst games of the season in zone were still very solid defensive efforts, and for the most part we were consistently the best defense in the country in zone.

Yup.

And they communicated way better in zone than in man.