Our defense is night and day better than it was last year. As much as Pharrell Payne has given us some offense in the post, the improved defense is the biggest difference from last year.

We gave up so many quick, easy looks last year it was very frustrating. Many times each game I found myself muttering "too easy"...you can't beat really good teams consistently giving up easy buckets.

Our "give up the baseline" defense has evolved in a very good way I think. Last year, teams would drive baseline, skip to the backside and now we are in rotations, closing out from a mile away and our opponents had a relatively easy time driving these long closeouts or making "one more" extra pass to get a wide open 3.

We are not giving up these wide open 3s this year. I think it's because the baseline help guy is more aggressively helping with something closer to a trap...and maybe we've adjusted something on the backside, not sure. I think the more aggressive trap when they go baseline has really discouraged the baseline drive and skip.

This more aggressive treatment of the baseline drive is a good example of "it's not what you do, it's how you do it". Anybody can draw up a play or defensive scheme, but small tweaks in how it's being done can make a huge difference.

Massive credit goes to coach Johnson it sounds like as the defensive coordinator.

To prevent me from having to go rewatch a bunch of games, does anybody know more specifically what we have tweaked to improve the defense?...because it is a huge difference, fun to watch, and made us a real contender.

The biggest "tweak" is we only have to scheme around one subpar defender this year instead of two of them. Said this a lot last year but it was always weird to me how much heat Taylor catches for his defense when Boots was as bad or worse. Replacing Boots with Phelps was like replacing Josh Carter with Dexter Dennis.

Between that, Solo not only getting better but not fouling, and replacing Leveque's minutes with Pharrel Payne you've made a huge upgrade without changing the scheme all that much.

bobinator said:

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The biggest "tweak" is we only have to scheme around one subpar defender this year instead of two of them. Said this a lot last year but it was always weird to me how much heat Taylor catches for his defense when Boots was as bad or worse. Replacing Boots with Phelps was like replacing Josh Carter with Dexter Dennis.

Between that, Solo not only getting better but not fouling, and replacing Leveque's minutes with Pharrel Payne you've made a huge upgrade without changing the scheme all that much.

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I was just about to say… it's mostly personnel upgrades that make the system work much more efficiently. Just look at our defensive efficiency numbers when Phelps and Payne are on the floor. Huge upgrades there

bobinator said:

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The biggest "tweak" is we only have to scheme around one subpar defender this year instead of two of them. Said this a lot last year but it was always weird to me how much heat Taylor catches for his defense when Boots was as bad or worse. Replacing Boots with Phelps was like replacing Josh Carter with Dexter Dennis.

Between that, Solo not only getting better but not fouling, and replacing Leveque's minutes with Pharrel Payne you've made a huge upgrade without changing the scheme all that much.

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Yep

It just feels like we have a group of guys that can switch and not be in defensive mismatches with the switched offensive player

Also though, the scheme was never really designed to give up open threes like some folks on here like to say. It will allow for wing threes, but not just wide open uncontested shooting practice. Any time that happened, it's because of a breakdown.

Say the other team's guard beats player A on the wing, player B (usually out of the post) has to come help, which means player C has to slide down from somewhere (usually the back side) to cover the post and now you've got two players out of position and any half competent opponent is going to see that and skip the ball to the backside or just pass it around the perimeter until they find the unguarded guy. So it could be player D that ultimately is the closest to the ball and looks bad when he's 10 feet away from the shooter, but it's player A's fault he got blown by and then every subsequent player had to cover for it.

Buzz likes to compare his defense to a football zone defense, so for a comparison, if you blitz a linebacker, someone has to fill that space, and if your defensive principles are for a safety to fill that space, then that's what that safety has to do. But then the blitz doesn't get home and you've got a wide open guy deep in the secondary and the fans are whining about the safeties sucking when the safety did exactly what he was told to do.

When there's significantly fewer Player A breakdowns, then players D and E aren't out of position nearly as often.

And if you add athleticism and length then even the mistakes can be covered up a bit more

A lot of folks are comparing Aggies' defensive intensity this year to the Houston defense of 2021 - which helped them make the Final Four that year.

However, the Cougars also had a top 10 KenPom Offensive rating in 2021 - while our Ags are currently rated about 40 in terms of offensive efficiency this season.

If we can get our 3-point shooters (especially Wilcher, Hefner, Wade and even Phelps) to consistently shoot 40% or better, get fouled and to the bonus early so we can consistently get to the line at a high clip while upping our free throw made percentage to 75%, and keep attacking the basket and taking and making a high percentage of shots at the rim (like we did in the second half against t.u.) while continuing to own the offensive boards and limit turnovers, then I am hoping we can gradually improve those offensive efficiency numbers and break into top 25 offensively.

Having a top 10 defense and top 25 offense would at least match up with KenPom ratings for many prior Final Four teams.

If such an improvement were to occur, then I would think it would coincide with a winning record in conference and even could be indicative of an Aggie team vying for the regular season title - which, by definition, probably equates to a top 2-3 NCAAT seeding - which would also help with likelihood of a run into the second weekend of the tournament and possibly into the third!

BTHO Oklahoma!!

I would be absolutely shocked if we break into the top 25 on offense. We'd have to be the worst shooting top 25 offense team of all time.

Yeah top 25 offense aint happening. The offense is improved over last year however with Payne. The defense making a quantum leap is the big difference.

We just can't shoot.

Leveque lol lofl!!!!

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If we can get our 3-point shooters (especially Wilcher, Hefner, Wade and even Phelps) to consistently shoot 40% or better

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Yeah that's not happening unfortunately.

If shooting for the stars -

Going back to 2002, the last 23 National Champions had the following rankings:

• Top 25 in adj. efficiency margin (AKA KenPom ranking)
• Top 57 in adj. offensive efficiency (22 if you remove 2014 Uconn)
• Top 44 in adj. defensive efficiency
• Top 54 in Strength of Schedule Adj. Efficiency Margin

This defense is fun to watch. This team is fun to watch. Really college basketball seems to be in a higher spot in general. A much better on court product than the NBA.

bobinator said:

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The biggest "tweak" is we only have to scheme around one subpar defender this year instead of two of them. Said this a lot last year but it was always weird to me how much heat Taylor catches for his defense when Boots was as bad or worse. Replacing Boots with Phelps was like replacing Josh Carter with Dexter Dennis.

Between that, Solo not only getting better but not fouling, and replacing Leveque's minutes with Pharrel Payne you've made a huge upgrade without changing the scheme all that much.

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This x100.

Our POA defending has been strides better this year. If there were advanced blow-by stats for college basketball like there is for now the NBA, I'm sure they'll would reflect the leap from last year to this one. Phelps is a fantastic defender and he gets nowhere near enough credit for it on here. Also, as you said, time in the system and progression helps a lot as well.

I think Boots never really got associated with bad defense because of how good he was rebounding the ball for a 6'2 guard. I think people tended to believe that someone who rebounded the ball that well for his size couldn't be one of the main defensive issues. Interesting for sure looking back in retrospect.