3 Point Defense

[NebraskaJack]

I was looking at the team statistics on the Summit site and I was surprised to see that we are leading the conference in 3pt FG defense. After easily being the the worst in the conference last season, being on top this year is quite a turnaround. I was wondering what everyone felt was the #1 main factor in our success. Here are the 4 options.........

a) Brayden Carlson - He is known as our defensive stopper and appears to have taken over the majority of Clint Sargeant's minutes from last season.
b) Development of Tony and Jordan on defense - It appears we don't sag as much on defense to help our interior players as we did last year.
c) Playing with the lead - We are ahead more often this season, so teams are forced to take shots to catch up rather than out of comfort.
d) All the above - Yeah, this answer is way to easy, you can do better than that......pick a different one.

[jack power]

Re: 3 Point Defense

I was looking at the team statistics on the Summit site and I was surprised to see that we are leading the conference in 3pt FG defense. After easily being the the worst in the conference last season, being on top this year is quite a turnaround. I was wondering what everyone felt was the #1 main factor in our success. Here are the 4 options.........

a) Brayden Carlson - He is known as our defensive stopper and appears to have taken over the majority of Clint Sargeant's minutes from last season.
b) Development of Tony and Jordan on defense - It appears we don't sag as much on defense to help our interior players as we did last year.
c) Playing with the lead - We are ahead more often this season, so teams are forced to take shots to catch up rather than out of comfort.
d) All the above - Yeah, this answer is way to easy, you can do better than that......pick a different one.

I think the biggest reason is Tony and Jordan are bigger,smarter, older, and most importantly on the floor at the same time unlike last year. Like you said,our guards don't have to sag off to help,which is huge. Also, when those 2 are playing,Griff isn't trying to defend someone 5 inches taller and 50 lbs heavier like last year.

[RabbitObsessed]

Re: 3 Point Defense

I think the biggest reason is Tony and Jordan are bigger,smarter, older, and most importantly on the floor at the same time unlike last year. Like you said,our guards don't have to sag off to help,which is huge. Also, when those 2 are playing,Griff isn't trying to defend someone 5 inches taller and 50 lbs heavier like last year.

I'll take this answer as well, combined with playing them together. It seems like we are playing them both together more this year than last year.

[joeboo22]

Re: 3 Point Defense

The biggest impact is the offense and the leads. The more you are up the more likely the opposing teams are to throw up contested threes.

The defense has improved as well, no doubt, but I think it has to do with the margin of victories and the fast starts that the team has had.

[discoDancinJackrabbit]

Re: 3 Point Defense

im forced to say that the 3 are interdependent upon each other.. but i will say that the tony and jordan got much stronger and bigger in the off season. that has helped us immensely and somebody already said that griff playin the 3 and with a stronger dykstra and fiegen improves our defense so damn much.. i have yet to realize carlsons supposed awesome defense, havent really looked for it yet to be honest

[filbert]

Re: 3 Point Defense

Good defense is often hard to see, and is generally commented on by most fans as causing "ugly" games.

You don't see a good defense that (without fouling) keeps an offense from getting their players to the spots they need to get to to run their plays, for instance. All you see unless you're watching really, really closely is "bad offense."

[rabidrabbit]

Re: 3 Point Defense

I will note that most everyone on the team did a great job in the weight room, and REALLY don't get pushed around anymore.

ESPN commentators were constantly pointing out that SDSU has 4 players shooting % > 40% for 3's. A good 3's shooter will know who the good 3's shooters are for the other team and shut them down. Buffalo only had one, so he was hounded by SDSU. The rest of the Buffalo shooters were bricking their 3's, hence SDSU was allowing those "challenge" shots all game. And they stopped Bull's inside game.

Smart, well-coached, team that except for 2 games, UxD away, have played quite well. SDSU will see post-season action this season. Dancing would be best.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: 3 Point Defense

I think everyone is just a year better, stronger, smarter.

Nate is defending better this year, Carlson is a year older and stronger, Griff is Griff, White isn't exactly a slouch, Prince is very strong for a freshman, Jordan and Tony are bigger and stronger.

From what I've seen, we double the post about as much as we did last year. The difference is our guards are good/smart enough now to make rotations 2-3 passes after the kick-out. They all find themselves in better positions both on the inside and outside, which is pretty important.

[Kemo]

Re: 3 Point Defense

I was looking at the team statistics on the Summit site and I was surprised to see that we are leading the conference in 3pt FG defense. After easily being the the worst in the conference last season, being on top this year is quite a turnaround. I was wondering what everyone felt was the #1 main factor in our success. Here are the 4 options.........

a) Brayden Carlson - He is known as our defensive stopper and appears to have taken over the majority of Clint Sargeant's minutes from last season.
b) Development of Tony and Jordan on defense - It appears we don't sag as much on defense to help our interior players as we did last year.
c) Playing with the lead - We are ahead more often this season, so teams are forced to take shots to catch up rather than out of comfort.
d) All the above - Yeah, this answer is way to easy, you can do better than that......pick a different one.

Great list, but I'll add a couple more:

e) Defensive Communication - This has been a huge reason the Jacks have improved so much on the defensive end of the court, even though there is still room for improvement on this end, especially in the second half. Our rotations and close-outs have been more timely this year, meaning less open 3s and more contested ones.

f) Maturity - This just in: 90% of freshman play pretty bad off-the-ball defense, and we had to play too many of them last year. Even if the freshman has the physical tools to stay with their man, they don't understand what opposing offenses do to try and get their players open. Experience brings knowledge, knowledge helps players anticipate, and anticipation helps a defender stick with his man.

[BTownJack]

Re: 3 Point Defense

I would add the fact that we have a deeper bench allowing fresher legs being on the floor as a factor in our much improved defense.

[RabbitObsessed]

Re: 3 Point Defense

Was bored at work and was reading the Oakland message board. One poster, blackandgold (hoopsdude18 on here and creator the SummitMadness blog), posted this about 3 point defense. I'll just copy and paste what he said:

Advanced metrics guru Ken Pomeroy has been campaigning lately against the notion that defense has anything to do with opponents' three-point shooting accuracy. His arguments are compelling and backed by plenty of data points. His basic theory is that teams have little to no ability to impact opponents' 3PFG%. Instead, teams do control how frequently opponents take threes (3PA%), which would have the strategic impact of not allowing good shooters to take many threes. Here's a link to his latest post in a series of them for those interested:

http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/web...investigation/

This has interested me a lot this year given OU's failings on the perimeter this season. Oakland has consistently "allowed" teams to make a high percentage of threes, but if Pomeroy is to be believed, then using the word "allow" is not fair to Oakland. I'm awaiting more evidence from Pomeroy to really wrap my head around this, but of course as an Oakland fan I do not like his early results. It frustrates me to think that Oakland has just been on the receiving end of quality shooting night-in and night-out at random. I feel that this is something worth looking into (maybe in the offseason), but it is worth noting right now that over the last two seasons the Summit League has had the highest average 3PFG% in-conference of any conference in the nation.

I remember Kampe saying on a radio show in recent weeks that other schools in the league have gone toward recruiting more shooters and such to get their offenses going (in a similar mold as Oakland), and the numbers back that up. Is it the case that the Summit League simply contains so many great shooters that it has contributed to a league where teams simply make an outrageous percentage of their threes?

Food for thought I suppose.

Interesting stuff, especially considering what happened to SDSU last year compared to this year. Seems like we were on the receiving end of some fluke-y games (the ORU game at home comes immediately to mind).

[Chains]

Re: 3 Point Defense

Everything said on these posts about defense is true. Were are bigger, stronger, deeper etc. But, bottom line is that Jacks Coaching staff preach's defense. If you don't play defense for Coach Nagy you won't play.

We really have 7 quality players all of whom play really good defense.

GBGBGJ

I would add the fact that we have a deeper bench allowing fresher legs being on the floor as a factor in our much improved defense.