Vandy is playing without 6-11 senior Festus Ezeli, who’s sidelined by a knee injury, and their allegedly porous defense has been the topic of much discussion. Mark me down as puzzled by the allegations and discussion. Allowing NC State to score 79 points in a 76-possession game, as Kevin Stallings‘ team did in the Legends semifinals, is surely not the end of the defensive world. The Commodores’ one unalloyed defensive weakness, the high percentage of two-point makes recorded by opponents, is currently being offset by excellent defensive rebounding and a fair number of takeaways.
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John Gasaway also called Jeff Taylor's defense on Jared Cunningham "a tour de force."
6 months ago
KingJamesIV
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Jeff Taylor
Ask Jared Cunningham about Vanderbilt’s defense.
According to KenPom ...
we have the 51st ranked defense (adjusted). That’s 37 points higher than last year, without Festus Ezeli.
This gives me some hope, but if we want to be an elite Final Four contender this March, then we need to become at least a top 20 defense with Ezeli.
This
FGA was a stat that we did really well in last season, despite having a mediocre defense. The problem we had was that we were allowing teams to get a lot of shots off because we almost never turned them over, and did a mediocre job of grabbing their misses, allowing way too many second chance (and third, and fourth) shots. Part of this was because Festus went for blocks and often was out of position for defensive rebounds, part was Jeff having to defend point guards keeping him far from the basket, and part was the horrible defensive rebounding efforts of our two post reserves.
What we are seeing is how our defense operates without a premeire shot blocker. Last season it was pretty much a disaster, mainly after Andres and Steve hurt their ankles. This season Steve is probably at 100% now, and has really done a fine job on the defensive glass, which is helping eliminate something that killed us last season, second chance shots. Everybody else has stepped up by going for more turnovers, and this has also helped our defense tremendously.
So I have actually been a bit encouraged by the early defensive efforts, especially seeing how Steve and Jeff have really attacked the defensive glass and how we have done a much better job with defensive pressure, which has resulted in a lot more turnovers. If we can keep this up and add a premiere shot blocker, we might just have something.
by Jason Fukuda on Nov 23, 2011 8:18 AM EST up reply actions
Offense
I really don’t think there is any real reason to worry about our offense as well. John, Jeff and Brad are all having to take on a greater percentage of the possessions, which will all reduce one Festus returns, and they are also playing a lot less as we audition reserves. What we are seeing is that both Steve and Lance seem to fully understand their roles on offense, and have seen their respective efficiencies go up. There is also no reason to think that this won’t be a very good FT shooting team when it is all said and done, and as the number of attempts go up (as they will when Festus begins drawing an extra 5 fouls a game), you will see Brad, John and Jeff all shot 10% points higher (at least).
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