3 Point Defense

[cardvolfan]

Most open 3 attempts come due to switching and/or help D with a good pass to the player left open due to the switch or help. On most of those a Vol dashes out but too late to be effective. A significant number of made 3's happen with a hand in the face. It's pretty much impossible to stop every 3 point attempt without risking a 3 shot foul. Tough to find the perfect balance between weak side help, covering the corner, pressing the arc, protecting the lane, and positioning for rebounds.
Contested 3's that are made are simply a part of the game. All they can do is all they can do. Too much focus on the arc leaves the lane less protected and negatively impacts rebounding. So far the tradeoffs have not been fatal.
Expecting totally consistent intensity is a bit much. There is only so much energy to be spent so the team has to pick its poison and timing. Every team has to work for more runs than the opponent and hope they don't run out of gas like Louisville vs Duke. Got to keep something in the tank for end game.

This is a great post. I think all your points are right. Just the fact that players are going to hit 3's randomly is sometimes just the luck of the draw.

 

[vol41212]

That’s all fine and good when we are playing overmatched teams.

What happens when a team is hitting 3’s and also has length/inside game ala Bama? Because that is coming up in several games and is what every team will have from the sweet 16 on.

We haven’t played a team like UK or LSU since Gonzaga (Bama would be the closest in terms of matchup) and they are both built like Bama, but much better across the board.

 

[zjcvols]

Way way way more concerned about rebounding

 

[bleedingTNorange]

I did the same calculation, and strictly from an "averages" perspective, we blast them.

Right, 85-55 if they shoot their average...can you imagine if they’d have been “cold” from outside?

 

[bleedingTNorange]

That’s all fine and good when we are playing overmatched teams.

What happens when a team is hitting 3’s and also has length/inside game ala Bama? Because that is coming up in several games and is what every team will have from the sweet 16 on.

We haven’t played a team like UK or LSU since Gonzaga (Bama would be the closest in terms of matchup) and they are both built like Bama, but much better across the board.

We will find out soon enough...we hung right there with Kansas who at the time was full strength and every bit a Top 5 team, we beat Gonzaga who wasn’t at full strength but had beaten Duke so obviously was also playing at a Top 5 level.

 

[Rushin Orange Collusion]

It’s the only team’s weakness.

Although I’m sure Barnes knows that UK has shooters who can light it up from the arc in a hurry.

I expect physical defense if the officials let them play.

Key word there is “if”. And, if Doug Shows works the game, all bets are off.

 

[JohnD13]

Barnes has said multiple times they are packing the paint and forcing opponents to beat us from outside. He also said our transition defense is what he's upset about.

I think he has it handled

 

[cardvolfan]

Right, 85-55 if they shoot their average...can you imagine if they’d have been “cold” from outside?

Maybe the law of averages will be good to us the last part of the season where 3's are concerned.

 

[golfballs]

The Nation's Deepest Playbooks (HV Weekly: 5/15/2020)

More three-point defense
In one of Ken Pomeroy’s original studies on three-point defense, he split each team’s conference season into two halves. In doing so, Ken was looking to investigate how much control the defense has over certain stats.

Next, Ken compared each team’s opponents’ three-point percentage between the first half and second half of the conference season. He found that opponent three-point percentage in the first 10 games of conference play was largely unpredictive of the next 10 games.

To replicate the study, we did the same for teams from the top six high-major conferences in 2019-20. In total, there were 20 teams which held their opponents to under 30% shooting from three during their first half of the conference season.

The table below shows whether or not those 20 defenses were able to maintain their strong three-point defensive numbers in the second half of the conference season.


All but one team saw their defensive three-point percentage take a turn for the worse in the second half of conference play. In fact, opponents shot 33% against them over that time —exactly the NCAA average this season.

The whole idea of three-point defense and two-point defense being separate things is somewhat misguided — we prefer to think of it as the on-ball/off-ball spectrum. But regardless, data consistently indicates that (despite some notable exceptions) defenses have relatively little control over opponent three-point percentage.