Why we do NOT have a decent defense, yet:

[CBB_Fan]

I think this team is going to be considered great when it is all said done for one reason:

The shockers won nine games without making an insane number of threes or shooting twenty more free throws than their opponents. Apparently, I have more reason to be optimistic since they have also overcome terrible defense.

That is probably the right way to optimistically view it. I am a natural pessimist, so I think differently.

I don't think we will ever be an offensive team like last year. It isn't in this team's identity. We need to play the toughest defense possible and win games with it, and the free throw problem is the biggest preventing that in my mind. If we get rid of this problem, we should have a top 10 or 15 defense (realistic, sense this defense has higher potential than last year's defense, which was a top 25 defense).

[vancedave56]

Boise State is a team that played uncharacteristically good against a Creighton team that played uncharacteristically bad. Different situation. I don't expect that every game from them, because that isn't normal for them.

Whereas, everything we did against Tennessee is basically our normal performance. I'm not worried that occasionally we will play worse and lose games, I'm worried that our "normal" is like this.

I don't have the time nor desire to compare the stats in the UT game vs the stats from the other games. I am just stating my opinion that they were not the norm...if our norm is bad, then the UT stats were extremely bad and thus not really the norm, but exaggerated. CE doesn't normally foul out and be held scoreless (not that anybody held him scoreless, he more or less did it himself).

We foul way too much, and have in most games, however I think this was even magnified in the UT game - which would also not really make it the norm, but even worse than the norm.

We are off to a good start victory-wise, and the play has been far from perfect. We all expected this. We haven't seen the improvement we would like to see in the correction of some errors, but I do believe it will come; that's what the coaches are paid for. It may have taken a loss such as this to help drive home the point (and it will end up not being a horrible loss at the end of the season).

We did miss Evan this game; yes, we missed EO a great deal, but Evan is the type of team player that makes everyone else better. MA and DM tend to try to "do it all by themselves" every so often.

We have a team full of basically "new" players, and they will get better; all things considered, we are off to a great start. It will be fun seeing how it all plays out; afterall, we were picked 4th in the Valley. :) I expect to finish 1 or 2.

[Downtown Shocker Brown]

We were Top 30 going into thr game in defensive efficiency. Pretty good for s bad defense.

[ShockTalk]

I guess Boise State would also tear up the Volunteers.

Give it a flipping rest.

Very possible. They popped LSU last night 89-70 giving them their first loss. Given what Boise St did to Creighton.....yea, they just might. :chuncky:

[small tyme baller]

This thread has become quite comical ... I love how some of ya'll on here act like CBB has insulted your autisic child with his comments on our defense. I feel he has perfectly valid comments & concerns about our defense. We have caught some breaks with a few teams shooting poorly from the line that might have altered the game if they did make a higher percentage. We foul too much, yes, partly because of an entirely new look to our team ... I feel like our fouls will diminish as the year progressives due to continual coaching by HCGM & Staff and more experience for our youngers players on how to play agressive, tight, defense at the D-1 level w/out fouling. Our Defense is not bad by any means and I expect us to be making life real hard on many Valley teams by the end of the season ... having them not wanting to play us again, by the time they leave the arena, because of the brand of D we play. We have started out great but I expect some highs and lows/ups and downs this season because a full season is a grind and its very difficult to finish with just a few losses. But I, and I'm sure CBB_Fan, are still rooting for the shox just as hard and that will not waver whether we lose 10 games or 2.

Also, Boise St is a pretty darn good team ... no slouch by any means. They did win pretty handily @ Creighton ... a place where we've done so well over the years (sarcasm)

Edit: I guess I would also want to say that it's just one loss ... its almost X-mas .... lets all just CHILLLLLL OUT lol

[Kung Wu]

23

39

36

Those are the FTA numbers for our 3 tough games. Our defense, to this point, may hold people to low FG% numbers, but we give that back (and more) from the line. We will not be decent defensively until we stop giving our opponents 30-40 FTAs per game. It doesn't matter how hard we defend if we bail our opponents out.

Right now, we lose to ANY decent team that can shoot free-throws and shoot 35% from the field. VCU couldn't. Tennessee did. Our offense is not good enough for our defense to give good opponents any extra chances to score. If we played Creighton today, we'd lose because they can shoot free-throws. If we play Illinois State today, we'd lose (MVC tournament last year?). UNI? I think we lose.

So please, don't say "our defense is good" until we start keeping our opponent off the line. It simply is not true. We didn't play good defense today, and we lost because of it.

I disagree with most of this assessment.

Most of the players getting the majority minutes are good defenders, but Hall, Williams, Armstead, Baker and Orupke are just awesome!

I think the reason we rock is our ability to keep opponents out of the paint. Orupke may be a big part of that but Hall and Early play a key roll too. Iowa is an example where our post defense rocked.

Our bigs being dominant are key because it lets our perimeter players take chances and grab some steals. VCU is an example where our guard play can disrupt opponents. Our guards are good man defenders, certainly.

[C0|dB|00ded]

Shut this ****ing thread down.


T


...:cool:

[CBB_Fan]

I disagree with most of this assessment.

Most of the players getting the majority minutes are good defenders, but Hall, Williams, Armstead, Baker and Orupke are just awesome!

I think the reason we rock is our ability to keep opponents out of the paint. Orupke may be a big part of that but Hall and Early play a key roll too. Iowa is an example where our post defense rocked.

Our bigs being dominant are key because it lets our perimeter players take chances and grab some steals. VCU is an example where our guard play can disrupt opponents. Our guards are good man defenders, certainly.

I absolutely agree that our individual players are top notch defenders. I just think we are doing a few things as a team that hurt our defensive effort. If we can get down to normal levels of fouling, we will see vast changes. That is the point of the thread. We have potential to be a truly great defensive team, but haven't got the little things right. It has hurt us already in the season, but we still have awhile to get better before we face our top conference opponents.

[ShockerFever]

Yep, it has hurt us to a 9-1 record so far with a Top 25 ranking.

[CBB_Fan]

Yep, it has hurt us to a 9-1 record so far with a Top 25 ranking.

And if it were fixed, we'd be 10-0 with a Top 20 ranking.

[wu_shizzle]

Dude, it's getting old.

[WstateU]

And if it were fixed, we'd be 10-0 with a Top 20 ranking.

If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle!

[ShockerFever]

And if it were fixed, we'd be 10-0 with a Top 20 ranking.

And if we play a perfect, flawless game very outing, we'd be 30-0 and winning the National Championship.

You busted some screws loose in your head Thursday night. I would recommend taking some time off from this place for a while, like say a week?

[CBB_Fan]

And if we play a perfect, flawless game very outing, we'd be 30-0 and winning the National Championship.

You busted some screws loose in your head Thursday night. I would recommend taking some time off from this place for a while, like say a week?

I don't expect a perfect season or a perfect game. I expect our offense to be significantly behind our defense, so we are relying on our defense to win games. That defense has a significant weakness, so I'd hope that we focus on fixing the problem. It simply makes no sense to hand-wave over problems because we have won some games. You essentially stated that the fouling problem doesn't matter, and I took objection to that.

[Trueshock]

With the Illinois State game at the MVC tournament the referees were calling a ridiculous amount of touch fouls on the Shockers. By doing so, the Shockers were unable to play defense for fear of fouling out. The Shockers slaughtered Illinois State in the regular season. It was pretty much the same with the Tennessee game. One thing though. I notice 3 Shocker players score and immediately foul right after that. They tend to get out of control when they score and it was pretty much predictable when they did.