I agree. It’s a mistake that redshirts aren’t learning our difficult defense. It really would help with our perception if people came in ready to contribute after having a full year at UVA.
I’d like to hear more about this, AND had been saying it would be nice if Isaiah did come back and coach our defense. He seemed on top of it day one, knew how to block, rebound AND take charges.
Shedrick has really looked good in the time he has played. Good footwork slides pretty good. He will eventually be a big force
I can’t help but believe that redshirts work on the pack line at least part of the time. It wouldn’t make sense for them not to.
That’s a great point and a bit contradictory to common belief. But the only way to learn the packline is to play the packline. Ans the scout team doesn’t get to do that.
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[quote=“Hoosthechamp, post:226, topic:3282, full:true”]
I can’t help but believe that redshirts work on the pack line at least part of the time. It wouldn’t make sense for them not to.
[/quote] I find it hard to believe that redshirts are just running opposing teams defensive and offensive schemes 
of practice time…while the most recent changes to help out with ball screen defense definitely raise some hindsight types of comments though…
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I’ve been told otherwise. Sure they ‘learn’ it but they ain’t running it much in in-season scrimmages when they’re going 5 on 5.
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I don’t think the scheme is all that hard to learn exactly. It’s more the continuous effort TB demands isn’t natural for most players, that has be learned.
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Hauser is also just an atrocious defender, regardless of what system he’s in.
The packline is tough to learn, don’t get me wrong, especially for the 4’s and 5’s. But the learning curve isn’t as steep if you are athletic and a fundamental sound defender.
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I can’t remember if it was the J Willy show or the normal podcast. But Mark asked Isaiah if it was harder to learn the packline as a big or guard and Zay said it was harder for the guards and talked about it a little bit from there. Worth listening to if you have the time.
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Diakite made some mistakes his fFR year, but he was already very good on the hedge and retreat by the end of his first season. He blew up UNC’s entire offense all by himself in the second game against them in JPJ. If you are athletic with long arms and phenomenal fast twitch muscles you can be very effective as a first year big defender in Tony’s defense.
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I could argue that the best Pack Line guard defender ever was Devon Hall. And as a big Akil
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You are probably right Zach. I just don’t understand why a player or players who are going to play a lot next year wouldn’t get any practice on the packline
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Yeah. It really is strange for them not to be doing it during their full year of redshirting.
Right, but is Sam Hauser our “worst defender ever?” It seems like some of our earlier teams didn’t have a Sam Hauser, but I can’t recall whether we considered anybody else as bad?
He may be our worst defender to get major minutes as a senior. But it’s not really a fair comparison because it’s his first year playing here. I am certain he would be a better defender if he had been here his whole career. Not so certain his offensive skills would be as advanced though. My hope is he becomes a reasonably competent defender by March, meaning staying in front of his guy, decent close out on a shot attempt, and good communication on screens. Also continue to get defensive rebounds. He’s never going to lock down a good perimeter shooter or be a shot blocker. Just needs to stay in good position.
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Guys it makes sense our redshirts don’t practice the packline. At least during the season. Maybe they practice it over the summer when their isn’t an opponent to prepare for. But the NCAA restricts practice time and every minute is valuable. Using it on a guy who won’t help you this year is not an efficient use of time. Tony’s primary job is to win as many games as he can in the current season. Planning for the future is a nice bonus but you don’t sacrifice the upcoming game to prep for future seasons. It’s consistent with Tony not recruiting that much during the season.
Plus we don’t tell guys we are redshirting them so they can get the packline down. We tell them it’s so they can work on their games and their bodies. I’m sure practicing against it every day does help redshirts learn the D at least a little bit.
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[quote=“unknown, post:233, topic:3282, full:true”]
Diakite made some mistakes his fFR year, but he was already very good on the hedge and retreat by the end of his first season. He blew up UNC’s entire offense all by himself in the second game against them in JPJ. If you are athletic with long arms and phenomenal fast twitch muscles you can be very effective as a first year big defender in Tony’s defense.
[/quote] me thinks your memory is very selective… I recall MD while having the physical skills to hedge and retreat effectively he seemed to get a lot of cheap whistles as he learned how long he needed to hedge. You mention the UNC game where he hedged and covered the entire half court to block Bradley(?) for unc as though he had mastered the pack line…I say that game showed a glimpse of what MD could be… when he became consistent was the NCAA tournament specifically that Oregon game… from that point on he was continuous in the pack line… it takes time for our bigs to develop that continuous play…
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I agree that MD became a member of our pantheon of great hedgers during his 3rd year on the court, with continuousness and a big reduction in fouls among other improvements. But I don’t think my memory of his first year defense being more than decent is faulty. My point was only that he adequately mastered what he needed to do on the hedge and retreat by the end of his first year and his physical skills usually made up for any mistakes, albeit with a tendency to foul too often. I also agree that for most of our bigs, it does take longer than a year to be effective defensively for long periods of time. So generally I agree with almost everyone here that it seems to take a long time for bigs to master Tony’s defense and that’s probably a turn off for a lot of bigs we are recruiting and worried about immediate time on the court.
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I agree with @JumboHoo that UNC was the Mamadi introducing himself to the world as a defensive threat. One thing we have to remember when talking about the bigs who have mastered the packline and the hard edge, we are mentioning some phenomenal athletes. Mamadi is the greatest example of this, his pure athleticism combined with his knowledge of the packline made him something special. Guys like Atkins and Gil didn’t have as much pure athleticism but they were in similar molds. It also helps that none of them were true ‘bigs’ The true bigs definitely seem to require those extra reps because they can’t lean on the athleticism.
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