My read is that our defensive system success (setting aside personnel) is like 80% Tony, 20% specific tactics of the Pack Line (maybe 90/10). Or maybe to use the @haney Systems/Personnel/Approach framework, thereās a lot that we talk about as āsystemā that is actually āapproach.ā Anyone can set up to take away the baseline, put help defenders in the gap one pass away, hedge ball screens, and double the post, but only some coaches can get the level of execution and sheer effort that TBās teams defend with. Thatās special and to me is specific to how TB teaches/motivates/recruits.
Like, if TB woke up tomorrow and decided āIād like to be a no-middle team now,ā he could probably do that really well too, because his particular qualities as a defensive teacher (Approach) would be unchanged.
Tony is a great teacher and great at conveying and getting buy in on the fundamentals of his defense. He could probably (with some time) do that for other systems, too.
I really like this way of classifying offensive roles (compared to traditional PG through C positions):
The TL;DR is that there are 3 big groups of roles: ballhandlers, wings (defined as mostly off-ball perimeter players), and bigs (off-ball post players). But then within each group there are particular roles that are different in that they do.
NBA focused but my mentality has been shifting here with UVA as well (RIP wing army) and it sounds from @HoozGotNext that staff are wanting to get back to this as well: 3 playmaking guards, a scoring 4, and a rim protecting/screen setting 5.
I like this. To oversimplify things, sometimes playoff basketball in the NBA comes down to ācan we attack your least switchable defender even if heās hiding on your most limited offensive player?āWith the Mavs as an example, teams are gonna put their best perimeter defenders on Luka and Kyrie so they can switch any two man action between those two guys, and force them to use Derrick Jones Jr as a screener if they want to go mismatch hunting. Good opposing defenses are gonna try to avoid switching in that situation if they can but then that means your 5th option has to be able to make something out of a momentary 4-on-3 situation.
Does this reflect the direction in which the staff wants to go, or is it an indication of which recruiting targets they feel they can successfully sign? Are they recruiting to a specific scheme(s), or are they pursuing the best prospects they feel they can get to commit to Virginia (who tick are the relevant boxes), and then tweaking the schemes to fit the personnel? Chicken or egg?
I love how things get dialed up tactics-wise in the NBA playoffsā¦role players get dared to shoot a 3 every single possession in order to keep help loaded to the stars:
Hoop Vision mentioned Stottās offense in his video covering us and the mover/blocker. 7:25 is the timestamp if you wanna jump right to that part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNIXs2DJxF4
Would recommend watching the video in its entirety if anyone hasnāt, itās very well done as per usual from Sperber and even though it was made during our national title season is still very much relevant to the struggles weāve seen offensively the past few years (maybe even more relevant than ever).
Interesting at the end how he mentions the 3 point volume trending up. Iām pretty sure the 2019 team is still the high water mark for attempts in a season under Bennett.
In terms of attempts per game it was the 2020-2021 Hauser/Huff/Murphy season at 22.6. But every other season here under Bennett outside of that one and 2018-2019 itās been under 20.
Youāve got me eyeballing some of our offensive stats. One thing thatās interesting is thereās no positive correlation between our assist rate and our offensive efficiency, and tbh, there may be a negative correlation. In the last 3 years specifically, our offense hasnāt been good, and our assist rate has been top 20 every year, and top 10 twice.
Interesting inverse situation on D. We used to allow a relatively low assist rate, but recently itās around the average. But we got more steals and especially blocks the last two years.
Basically the last two years, our D was a Beekman Dunn defense. Will be interesting to see where things go from here.
Relevant because this was KGās coach most recently:
The first 4 minutes are just full of clever ways to disguise ball screening action. No static high ball screens that the defense can load up against, the ball moves from side to side and thereās real motion before the screen happens. @Cuts_from_The_Corner was talking about this kind of thing in another thread. And then the stagger screen actions that happen from 6 minutes onward are great too.
This is cool but I just spent ten minutes figuring out why someone would be named Txus and now Iām a Wikipedia expert in language isolates. Iām gonna quit now before I become a Wikipedia expert on the Basque separatist movement.
I agree with you. Tony is the pack line Maestro. One of the reasons why I think we need a clean break with the low possession system. Any version of it we run without Tony is going to be lesser. Further, difference making recruits just do not want to play in our system in the age of the portal. Why work harder on defense for fewer looks on offense when you can just tell your agent to find you a better situation pronto.
