I mean look, an interviewer asked a D1 coach going into his sixth season at a school what his teams defensive identity was going to be, and he botched the answer lol. I don’t know how that can inspire confidence to anyone on these boards. The interviewer threw him an absolute softball question and you’d think he asked Dave to do long division by hand in his underwear at Mason Madness. He starts spouting off about recruiting faster and longer, how UVA is better than us at a pack line, how we pressed, how we are adjusting the system to the personnel, but he never really answered the question lol.
Do you think if you asked McKillop or Grant or Schmidt or Rhodes what their teams defensive identity was they would have a problem answering it? That’s the difference between good coaches and bad in this league. Good coaches have a clear vision for the type of identity they want their team to have, then they go after guys who can fit that identity. Bad coaches think that long and athletic will cover up their lack of a coaching vision. We seem to lack any kind of identity and are trying to make that an identity and are confused why it doesn’t work in an extremely well coached league.
Based on the things he said in his answer, defensively was the plan last year to press then fall back into a pack line defense? Has anyone thought about how completely stupid that is? Those are two complete opposite defenses. The results we saw are completely indicative that was the plan. We had token pressure that rarely resulted in turnovers, and it was a layup line on the other end aside from when our bigs could bail us out. I can live with a full court press that gives up some easy layups if we are gambling on steals and generating turnovers. I can deal with a slow paced pack line that doesn’t generate a ton of turnovers if we are playing low scoring games and working for ugly Ws. I can’t deal with the worst of both of those worlds.
The fact that Dave can’t clearly articulate going into year 6 what his teams defensive identity is should be worrying for a lot of people.