Winger wrote: Fri Mar 14, 2025 10:07 am
TucsonClip wrote: Fri Mar 14, 2025 8:31 am
By default because they chose not to recruit anyone else, which still blows my mind. He's the worst defender I've seen in an Arizona uniform since Ryan Anderson, and one of the worst I can ever remember.
Probably not possible at this point but ADO imo needs a ton of S&C work and effort put in to increase his lateral quickness. If I was coaching him I'd make him practice playing defense in a straight jacket (i.e. without his hands and arms).
Wanted to ask what you saw last night?
I haven't rewatched but a couple things seemed evident to me:
1. After getting absolutely destroyed by Dickenson offensively in the post a week ago (what did he have 1 made interior buckets on 15 shots?) Arizona almost completely took that away from him/KU last night. I wasn't paying attention close enough to notice how? That is a major change from game 1. Dude was mostly shooting 12-15 footers and 3s last night.
2. KU shot 31 3FGA and 33 2FGA last night compared to 21 and 46 game one. I didnt notice any zone but did we change our switching scheme last night? I definitely saw Arizona player going under screens so it wasnt like we switched to a full on Houston blitz scheme but did we take some other stuff away forcing KU to shoot from the extended perimeter?
3. Did you want to punch Mayo in the mouth every time the camera caught him saying "this is my town"? I think I saw that 17 times between the 2 games and toward the end I wanted Arizona to win mostly to shut that dude up. Cant even imagine how much tish he was talking the past 2 games.
Big thing for me last night is we kept Awaka and Veesaar out of foul trouble and we forced KU to play against us, as opposed to changing our personnel to fit them. Feel like this was an issue all season. I get that the B12 is too tough/physical etc for ADO and also at times for TT and Veesaar but we need to do more forcing of our will/play style on our opponents imo.
1. I think we did a good job bodying him, but what I noticed was that our guards were pinching in one pass away off the ball, into the ball handler, on all those PNRs with him. That helped keep the ball out of the lane and allowed us to crowd him a bit more and not allow him to get good position sealing off his man on a guard's drive into the lane.
Overall the defensive intensity was quite high from everyone, the ball pressure was there, help was there without over helping, and specifically, the switches were air tight early on (until everyone got in foul trouble in the 1H).
Finally, Kansas didn't get much short roll action from Adams, which they also killed us on last week, thanks to our switching being on point most of the game.
2. They didn't want Harris getting to the lane and breaking us down. Going under was the move, and he killed us from 3. Overall, the switching I mentioned above kept them from the paint.
3. I did and I loved it when ADO yelled at him you fucking suck. That was priceless.
Overall, keeping Henri our of foul trouble early helped unlock our offense against their defense. That's Henri's key value, IMO and why I didn't want him starting on Dickinson. Also, that was probably TTs best game of his Arizona career. Good timing as he's starting to wake up and realize he cant simply mash people in the post, always coming back to his left shoulder for that right handed baby hook.