Zone

I have no idea why BYU goes to the zone. We went from one of the best zone defenses last year to one of the worst. We start the game and leave Pangos wide open and the next thing we know we are down 14 points. Our best defense is pressure man with Winder in the game to pressure the ball. We can't keep up with teams when they are hitting 3's . We needed to let Sacre beat us, it was a bad game plan by Rose. Brock needs to go he is just terrible.

Noah's injury hurts us in the zone. He can not cover as much ground as he use to on the rotations. We miss Emery from last year.

Emery is a big missing component to our Zone defense but not using Winder and Harrison more also hurt our Zone defense as well



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Coach Rose and/or an assistant should call up Coach Boeheim about setting up a week to come and really learn the zone from one of the masters.



I think BYU could be a very good zone team - if they knew a few more of the intracasies.

It is ridiculously clear that BYU players still have no clue what they are doing in the "zone."



When you are 30 games into the season and you have starters that don't know positioning (and I am talking about almost EVERYBODY here...) then that stops being a players problem and is definitely a coaching problem.



Noah and Davies were in TERRIBLE position almost all night in the "press zone" that they had going. Or as I like to call it the "3 people run at the guy with the ball, leaving 2 wide open guys underneath" zone coverage. It was embarrassing to watch.

BlueIsBetter wrote:
It is ridiculously clear that BYU players still have no clue what they are doing in the "zone."



When you are 30 games into the season and you have starters that don't know positioning (and I am talking about almost EVERYBODY here...) then that stops being a players problem and is definitely a coaching problem.



Noah and Davies were in TERRIBLE position almost all night in the "press zone" that they had going. Or as I like to call it the "3 people run at the guy with the ball, leaving 2 wide open guys underneath" zone coverage. It was embarrassing to watch.

Who's in charge of the defense??

Windrr had his chance in the game the guy was terrible and out of control he's just not ready to play at this level. Much the same as Carlino, we just have no other option to play in front of Carlino but I sure wish we did.

Eh, Carlino did fine. Had a few turnovers. Not the 6+ that the stats guys gave him. It really isn't his fault that his teammates can't catch the ball, and that no one rotates to the ball when a player is trapped.



Carlino may be a year out from being a day in day out good player, but he is definitely worth investing the time in. He plays some of the best man to man defense on the court (which, I know isn't saying much), but yeah out of the guards, I think Harrison and Carlino are the only two that can guard people at the D1 level.



Winder is fast enough, but gets beat off the dribble more times than I can count per game. I think he isn't used to NCAA speed yet, and I don't think it is laziness. Just think that he sits back on his heels, and then they are gone and he is trailing behind them. He'll figure it out most likely.



I think they need to go man from here on out the rest of the season, and anyone that can't play man at this level (Zylstra, Cusick, hurt version of Noah and Rogers, even Winder if his guy is constantly blowing past him) needs to ride the pine and come in when matchups are favorable for them to be in.

A few turnovers? He had 14 in two games in the WCC tourney. He had nine versus USD and five vs the Zags. He had a very bad tournament.



Here are his stats from the two games in Las Vegas:

FG: 7 of 21 (.333)

3P: 4 of 10 (.400)

FT: 2 of 2 (1.000)

Reb: 0 off, 4 def

Fouls: 6

Ast: 11

Turnover: 14

Steal: 2

Points Available Pct: .370

True Shooting Pct: .457

Effective FG Pct: .429

He had 14 that were credited to him. That is different than being the one that actually punts the ball out of bounds.



He had one time that a dribble went off his foot out of bounds, and one bad pass against the zags (the one fading out of bounds and kicked it to the high post).



I would wager that those 9 turnovers against USD were more like 4 that were actually his fault.



Still not perfect, but it isn't like he was just walking around turning the ball over... Rose would have benched him for the entire game if he thought he was a liability. He has been quick to do so in the past.

Carlino was horrible in the WCC tournament. As usual, he rushed things when he needed to pull back. He forced shots when he needed to make the extra pass.



Don't get me wrong, the entire team played horrible Sat., except for Davies. Carlino just had more than his fair share.

Except for Davies... lol.



Davies got his lunch ate in man, and was continuously horribly out of position in zone. How many wide open layups/jumpshots did they get because he was somewhere around the 3 line trying to press the ball?



BYU looked tremendously unprepared, and didn't look like they even belonged on the court. They have no plan on offense, and no plan on defense.

BlueIsBetter wrote:
Except for Davies... lol.



Davies got his lunch ate in man, and was continuously horribly out of position in zone. How many wide open layups/jumpshots did they get because he was somewhere around the 3 line trying to press the ball?



BYU looked tremendously unprepared, and didn't look like they even belonged on the court. They have no plan on offense, and no plan on defense.

Davies scored 17 pts, shot 64% from the field, and had 2 blocks. He only grabbed two boards (probably due to him being out of position), but compared to the everyone else, he's the only one with a respectable performance on Sat. and was the only one consistently doing something against GU.



Noah had 12 pts, shot 44%, had 2 blocks, 1 rebound, and two turnovers credited to him. Can't fault him too much because of his injury, but he certainly wasn't our best player on Sat.



Carlino had 12 pts, shot 33%, grabbed 3 boards, 4 assists, 1 steal and 5 turnovers. Again, nothing to be proud of.



Abouo chipped in 12 pts, shot 33%, grabbed 10 boards (nice work Abouo), had 1 steal, and one turnover. Solid game, but the 3 - 9 shooting created transition baskets for GU.



After those four, no one else did anything particularly noteworthy.



Yes, our defense against GU was horrible. Our perimeter defense has been horrible all season. That's on the coaches.



What I don't get is why Davies wasn't given the ball more. Any player shooting above 60% needs to be fed the ball.



I think there was a game plan for the game, but as seems to be the case lately, egos or stupidity got in the way and we had players, particularly Carlino and Abouo, rushing shots and not following the game plan.

Maybe because Davies wasn't posting for a good portion of the game. I remember quite a few plays where BYU had no one in the post on the offensive side. Believe me, every time one of the two posted, they (the 1, 2 and 3 spots) were eager to get them the ball.



I just think it is more complex than you make it to be. Davies got shut down offensively and defensively, and as such wasn't that aggressive in the low post. I'm sure that foul trouble kept him in check a little, so there is that.



But Davies was not a source of Cougar dominance in the Zaga game, offensively or defensively. They got the ball to him as much as he was in position to get it, and even more than that. (He got the ball at the 3 line a few times, and tried to take Sacre off the dribble, getting a charge once). Davies has no idea how to handle a double team. He doesn't pass well out of it, and he can't anticipate it. It was almost a guaranteed turnover or bad shot when they came down with the double.



Did he have a respectable game? I suppose so. But only if you stretch the word "respectable" to it's limits. He got manhandled in man defense, and was horrifically lost and out of position in zone defense.



BYU was looking to the big men literally every play, and neither big man had much affect on the game.



BYU just got dominated, from the inside out. It's simple as that. It has nothing to do with egos, at all.

Of course sometimes Davies couldn't get posted up because the younger players on the team seem to think that they have to chuck up a bad shot every other time they touch the ball.

BlueIsBetter wrote:

BYU was looking to the big men literally every play, and neither big man had much affect on the game.



BYU just got dominated, from the inside out. It's simple as that. It has nothing to do with egos, at all.

BYU got dominated, no question.



As for looking to the big men "literally every play," you're wrong there. Carlino on more than one occasion rushed shots and tried to force shots over multiple defenders even with big men out on the floor. Either Noah, Davies, Austin or some combination of the two were in the game at all times. Plenty of trips down the court were made without a look to our bigs.



If not egos than stupidity/inexperience on the part of some players factored in.

hawkwing wrote:
Of course sometimes Davies couldn't get posted up because the younger players on the team seem to think that they have to chuck up a bad shot every other time they touch the ball.

Couldn't believe how many rushed shots went up before we had anybody set up down low.

Gunk wrote:

BYU was looking to the big men literally every play, and neither big man had much affect on the game.



BYU just got dominated, from the inside out. It's simple as that. It has nothing to do with egos, at all.

BYU got dominated, no question.



As for looking to the big men "literally every play," you're wrong there. Carlino on more than one occasion rushed shots and tried to force shots over multiple defenders even with big men out on the floor. Either Noah, Davies, Austin or some combination of the two were in the game at all times. Plenty of trips down the court were made without a look to our bigs.



If not egos than stupidity/inexperience on the part of some players factored in.

How many times was there a "rushed shot" when someone had established position in the low post?



That didn't happen. I am not saying that they were great shots each and every time, by everybody. But the low post was priority number 1 and everyone knew that, and everyone was looking for it.



And Austin isn't a serious threat in the post. I don't even think he tries to post up. Noah didn't really try to post up, and Davies only played 12 minutes in the first half, and also didn't post up sometimes... So yeah, there were many times when the post wasn't there, and wasn't even an option.



I remember one play that Carlino had the ball on the lower half, and there were 4 players on the other side with their back to him. He was setup and looking for the post, but no one was on that side posting (Davies and Noah were literally standing around on the other side of the court.) So he realized his guy was sagging off a little bit, and just popped it up.



If our big guys want the ball, they need to go and get it. Establish a position and command the ball. If no one is on that side then slide over into the post.



They just got dominated. Plain and simple. You can point fingers wherever you want, and you will actually be right. Everyone had a bad game.





Back to the zone defense..... ;)



(it sucks)

BlueIsBetter wrote:



Back to the zone defense..... ;)



(it sucks)

I think we switch to the zone to protect our bigs a bit and keep them out of foul trouble; keep the ball out on the perimeter.



Against teams with a 3-point specialist our zone got used and abused multiple times this season. It doesn't work, and rather than fix it we kept making the same mistake over and over again.



I did actually like our zone a bit at the beginning of the year when Winder, Abouo and Harrison were out on the wings. A lot of speed and length was out there.