Contrary to popular belief, defense was pretty good again

I’m scanning Hoopsville and I see several times how we played poor defense against Butler. The same was said by some after American. It seems to me that people simply aren’t paying enough attention.

The efficiency in the Butler game was 92.2. That’s not amazing defense but it’s solid (consider that the average is about 100). We held them to 36% FG shooting and didn’t get totally hammered by threes (though they did shoot a solid 34.6%). This is two games in a row that the D has been good enough to win ANY game. Under 100 and a good offensive team should win, and hey– we did win both games.

I’m just baffled by how many times I’ve seen our D criticized this weekend. It just hasn’t been a problem. Our offense (and vs. American our rebounding) has been a bit subpar and that is why we’ve struggled. Defensively we’re doing pretty well.

Oh well. A win is a win is a win in the NCAA tourney and I’ll take this one no matter what people are complaining about.

BruceBall vs. Memphis Preview, Part II: Stopping the Dribble-Drive Motion O

I suppose it’s because slimeball coach John Calipari’s Memphis Tigers are having such a good year and playing some really good basketball, but is anyone else as tired of hearing about Memphis’s dribble-drive motion (DDM) offense as I am? It seems like that’s the hot item to chat about in the college basketball world this year, much as the Princeton offense was overexposed in years past. Sick of it yet?

Too bad. I’m going to talk about it some more. Specifically, I’m going to talk about what opponents have done to slow it down and what basketball god Bruce Pearl’s Vols can do to keep Memphis from scoring points in bunches.

The DDM is based on a really simple game: 1-on-1 basketball. The idea is that if you have superior athletes, particularly quick ones with the ability to finish at the rim, you can use their 1-on-1 skills to penetrate a defense repeatedly, creating easy opportunities near the bucket. At its core, the DDM is a triple option, to reference a common football term. Here is how it works:

• You utilize four perimeter/slashing players in the game at most times, leaving just one post player.
• The lone post player lines up away from the ball. If a guard has possession on the right-hand side of the key, the post player shifts to the left (weak) side in order to clear a path for dribble penetration, and vice versa. Most offenses do not line up this way.
• The perimeter player possessing the ball will attempt to beat his man off the dribble one-on-one. There are no screens and few cutters– initially there is just 1-on-1 at the perimeter.
• If he succeeds, he has the three options set up:

1. Take the ball to the hole if there is no help defense.
2. If the post defender leaves his man to help on the strong side, the penetrator can dish to the weak side, where his post player is uncovered.
3. If another perimeter defender sags to help on the penetrator, he can kick the ball out for an open look at a 3-point jumper.

• If penetration is stopped without an open look, the attack simply begins again from the perimeter.

You can see that the key to the whole thing is having perimeter players that are skilled enough to beat their defenders 1-on-1. Memphis has that. Chris Douglas-Roberts is an excellent scorer both inside and outside, and Derrick Rose is quick and strong, creating major problems for his defender. The Tigers have depth at both of these positions as well as post players that can finish if the ball comes their way via pass or rebound.

So what is a defense to do? Can you possibly win enough 1-on-1 matchups against talented guards and wings to stop Memphis without help defense? No, of course not. You have to help somehow without freeing the lane or the wing.

Here is where the situation is not pretty for Tennessee. Man-to-man defense is going to be very, very difficult to play successfully against Memphis running the DDM offense, for one simple reason: when your defensive assignment is a man, you have to leave that man to help. As we all know, Bruce is very high on man defense and runs it almost exclusively.

So what do you do? Well, we can look at the games where Memphis has been slowed the most offensively for ideas. Here is a list of those games, what the opponent did, and the areas where Memphis struggled as a result:

• MTSU (away), 100.3 efficiency. The Blue Raiders switched defenses constantly, running a variety of zones and a small amount of man. As a result, Memphis turned the ball over and shot poorly.
• Houston (home), 96.7 efficiency. The Cougars also switched defenses frequently, running zones and man. Memphis shot very poorly.
• Tulsa (away), 94.9 efficiency. The Golden Hurricanes ran a couple of different zones as well as everyone’s favorite “junk” defense, the triangle and two (basically three interior defenders in a zone, with 2 dedicated man defenders). They managed to force Memphis into a bad shooting performance and also kept them off the line.
• UTEP (home), 92.8 efficiency. The Miners ran multiple zone looks, forcing Memphis into a low shooting percentage.
• Oklahoma (neutral), 86.8 efficiency. The Sooners ran mostly zone, forcing Memphis to shoot threes and turn the ball over in efforts to penetrate.
• Southern Cal (neutral), 76.8 efficiency. The Trojans ran a triangle and two on Douglas-Roberts and Rose nearly the entire game, with great success. The Tigers couldn’t get easy shots, couldn’t get to the line, and turned the ball over.

Notice any pattern? Zones and junk, zones and junk. None of the teams that played successful defense against the Tigers did it playing mostly man. They aren’t great from the perimeter (except CDR), so forcing them to stay outside as much as possible has been the optimal strategy. The best way to do that is with a zone, and clearly it works to some degree.

Bruce, Tony Jones, and game scout Jason Shay have some decisions to make. Do we use our bread and butter pressure man defense and hope we’re just better at it than anyone Memphis has played? Or do we stretch out of our comfort zone and sag into a zone defense, which seems to have been the winning (well, winninger) strategy for the Tigers’ previous opponents?

I suck at predictions so I’m not going to presume to know what we’ll do. I’d guess we’ll play mostly man, as we always do, but we may make an effort to throw the Tigers off with some junk or zone of our own a few times in the course of the game. If we do run mostly man, I’ll trust that Bruce has explored all options and decided that it is our best hope for a good defensive game. And maybe that’s correct– has Memphis played anyone that plays man defense in the manner and with the effectiveness that we do? Perhaps not. Perhaps we will succeed where others have failed.

Et tu, KenPom?

Most of you know by now that I have a minor man-crush on Ken Pomeroy, largely because he has helped create an infrastructure and culture of unbiased basketball statistics that has advanced the game’s statistics well beyond where they were only a few years ago. Unfortunately, Ken has wounded me deeply with his latest article at Basketball Prospectus.

Ken’s assertion is quite similar to earlier comments by fellow BP writer John Gasaway. To sum up: if it can’t get opponents to turn the ball over, the Vol defense is very average. You may or may not remember that I ripped Gasaway pretty hard over his statements. That was easy because John is an Illinois homer, and the Illini can kiss my ass and Bruce’s ass, as well as the collective ass of the BruceBall nation. It was also easy because John gave one simple, weak statistic that hardly justified his position.

What I have to do now is going to be hard, no matter whether I choose to defend my team or my man-crush. You’re breaking my heart, Ken. So what’s it going to be? Is Ken right or wrong? I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

First, I think it’s important to note that every team has a hard time when it is taken out of its comfort zone by the style of play. In Tennessee’s case it happens two ways: 1) the opponent takes care of the ball and Tennessee cannot run, and 2) the opponent drags the tempo down to create a slow, plodding, halfcourt game. Tennessee is not the only team with this sort of problem. Last I checked, everyone except Memphis has lost a game so far this year, and often when a good team loses it has something to do with exposed weaknesses.

It’s inevitable that every team will play games in which they are taken out of their element. What separates the top teams is their ability to deal with it. Pomeroy suggests we don’t deal with it well, citing our 5 performances in which teams had less than 20% TO rate. The Vols are 3-2 in these games, and 20-0 in the rest. Clearly he has found a pattern to point to.

A few comments here. First, it says something to me that there are only 5 such games that the Vols have had to play. This tells me that we are especially good at forcing teams into our comfort zone. Pomeroy doesn’t really give the Vols any credit for that.

Another comment: 20% is an arbitrary choice. I could just as easily choose the national median turnover rate, 21.1%. This adds two more games to the mix: Ohio State and Arkansas, and in both of these games the Vols played exceptional defense (d-efficiency of 95.8 and 91.7, respectively). It also raises the Vols’ record in these games to a more respectable 5-2. I could also choose the Vols’ median TO% as the benchmark. How does a Vol opponent do if it manages to stay under the Vols’ median? The Vols’ median is 24.9%. 12 games lie below this, and the Vols are 10-2 in those games (can you see what a difference the arbitrary line makes?). It also adds three more games that the Vols held their opponents under 100 PP100.

Obviously the Vols do better when they turn people over. Obviously they struggle in exceptional cases where they don’t. That’s the idea behind the risky pressure man defense. This picture is hardly unique. What happens to Duke if they don’t shoot well? I’ll give you a hint: in five games this season Duke’s eFG% was less than 50%. Their record in these games? 3-2. What happens to UNC if Tyler Hansbrough doesn’t score a lot at the free throw line? In 6 games he’s hit 5 or fewer FTs. UNC is 4-2 in those games. Get the picture?

Ken’s best point in all this is that Tennessee’s opponents seemingly have more control over this weakness than they would against most weaknesses. They simply have to take care of the ball. I’m not sure how true this is, despite the stat he gives. Ask West Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Xavier, and UNC-Asheville about that. All average under Pomeroy’s benchmark 20% TO rate, and all failed to do this against the Vols. Only Alabama (23.9) and UNC-A (21.9) managed to stay under 24%. Why didn’t they just take care of the ball?

Now, I will give Ken that Tennessee plays a high risk, high reward type of defense that can sometimes get burned. Against Texas it certainly did. The Longhorns shot the lights out and are an exceptionally strong team. Against Kentucky it did as well, but the Wildcats hit an exceptional number of 2-point jumpshots in that game, and you can ask Ken how likely that is. It’s not coincidental that the Vols were also well below their standard offensive output in those games. That tends to contribute to losses as well.

Besides, Tennessee has performed quite well in general when taken out of its comfort zone. The Vols are 10-2 when the TO rate is below their median, item #1 on the what-bothers-the-Vols list. They have the same record in low-pace games. That’s astonishingly better than the Vols were a year ago– 10-7 in slow games as well as low-turnover games. It takes good coaching to see that kind of improvement.

I would like to see the Vols continue to get better in eFG% defense, which is the flip-side of the coin that Ken seems so concerned about. Tennessee is very average in this area (131st) but this is well ahead of where it was in Bruce’s first 2 years (302nd and 243rd), and the Vols won a lot of games those years, including a near-miss that would have propelled them to the Elite 8.

Bruce plays a defense predicated on forcing turnovers, so of course it’s not going to be firing on all cylinders when the opponent doesn’t cooperate. My contention is that there’s nothing unusual about this; every team has a weakness that, when exploited, can get the team beat. I’m not sure I buy that Tennessee’s is as easy to exploit as Pomeroy contends. I don’t know that the stats agree with his assertion as he believes they do.

I have a lot of respect for KenPom– that won’t change. But Ken, say something nice about my Vols, k? And if you don’t, I’m going to bring it right back at you . . . k? Hugs and kisses, big guy.

Big Ten Wonk continues to be wrong about Tennessee’s defense

John Gasaway, former Big Ten Wonk and current contributing author at Basketball Prospectus, doesn’t have much respect for Tennessee’s defense. Today marks the second time he’s made the simple error in judgment that I have encouraged Tennessee fans not to make: discounting forced turnovers.

The first time was in his SEC preview, in which he argued this about Tennessee: “if they don’t get that turnover they’re utterly and completely helpless.” He even had a pretty table to support his point, which showed that the Vols allowed a large number of points “per turnoverless possession.” You know as well as I do that this is seriously poor analysis of a team that intends to force turnovers to end possessions (and does it quite well).

Despite an email I sent with intentions of correcting him, he continues to make the same mistake. In today’s back-and-forth with Ken Pomeroy, Gasaway says

It’s tough to be lukewarm about a team you’ve picked to win the SEC East, but, yeah, that’s a good description of my feeling about Tennessee. There’s no shame in losing to Texas, goodness knows, but the Volunteers’ quality opponents can be expected to score points in abundance when they don’t turn the ball over.

The emphasis is mine, not his. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a team who plays average defense when the opponent doesn’t turn the ball over so long as the opponent is turning it over in nearly 1/3 of its possessions, as Tennessee’s opponents to date have done.

I’ll emphasize, again, that Tennessee hasn’t just been lucky to play benevolent, giving teams who’d just prefer to have less opportunities at scoring. They are forcing these turnovers (more than half are steals). In Tennessee’s two games of note, it forced West Virginia into turning the ball over at a rate 43% higher than WVU averages. Texas turned it over to Tennessee at a rate 23% above their average, even in winning the game handily.

This is just what Tennessee does. It gains an advantage by forcing opponents to turn the ball over. Sometimes that doesn’t get the job done– see Texas. Usually it does (see nearly every other game), and Tennessee’s efficiency (30th, adjusted) has been very respectable, and is an improvement over last year (which, in turn, was an improvement over the previous year). Sometimes it is frustrating to see an easy basket given up, but the numbers speak for themselves and don’t support Gasaway’s assertion than Tennessee’s defense is bad.

I don’t know that we can attribute his poor analysis to Illini bias but that’s a fact that hasn’t escaped me. [ Hey Illinois-- Deon Thomas called-- he never got that Chevy Blazer he was promised. Maybe it was lost in the shuffle when the Illini were desperately trying to find their institutional control. ] Bruce Pearl may be an evil figure for Illini fans, but John– he’s a phenomenal coach and your quest to nitpick his team’s performances isn’t going so well. You may be right in the end and Tennessee may not be Final Four material (and any reader could see that I am not on the FF bandwagon at this point), but your analysis leaves much to be desired.

In defense of our defense . . . again

Since last night’s close call against UTC I’ve read and heard many people complaining about our defense. How it doesn’t function well in the halfcourt, how teams are getting easy shots, how fans know considerably more about coaching basketball than a man who wins nearly 80% of his games and turned Tennessee from a bottom feeder to a top tier team overnight.

Okay, they’re not saying that last part out loud. But I think their criticism sometimes implies it and I find it ridiculous, of course.

I think what it boils down to is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to play defense, and what effective defense is. Let’s boil it down to the basics. Good defense has been played when the opposing team doesn’t score and you gain possession. This can happen one of two ways.

1. The offense misses a shot and you rebound
2. The offense doesn’t attempt a shot due to turnover

The way to try to gain the advantage in situation 1 is you try to limit the offense’s options as much as possible and make them take low-percentage shots. Then you work for good position to get the rebound so that the offense doesn’t gain an additional opportunity.

In situation 2, you try to gain the advantage by forcing turnovers. This can be a steal or can be “unforced” (but really forced) because you disrupt the offense enough that there is a high likelihood of a travel, carry, a foot out of bounds, or a lousy pass. There are true unforced turnovers, but most turnovers come from defensive pressure.

There is a crucial difference between the two. In 1, not only must you force a tough shot, but you must rebound. Creating difficult shots is doable but you must also rebound well or you’ve accomplished very little. In 2, you have ended the possession with one action. No need to position for rebounds. Additionally, you’ve also created a means for transition offense. For this reason, the “steal” statistic is far more valuable than the “block” statistic, though blocks are still nice to get. Steals always end possessions.

Bruce Pearl’s defense focuses very highly on forcing turnovers, limiting the opposing offense to fewer attempts, thereby creating a numbers advantage for your offense. People have a bad tendency to lump turnovers into the “mistakes” category, like they are a freebie or something. Well, sometimes they are. Usually they are not. UTC turned the ball over to Tennessee 34 times. That does not happen in a vacuum. That is good defense. In fact, that defense won the game for Tennessee, who could not put the ball in the basket.

Sometimes the opponent will shoot a higher percentage because of Pearl’s pressure defense philosophy. By going for steals and putting pressure on the ball and in the passing lanes, you will occasionally give up a cheap basket when you get beat. It’s inevitable, especially with a fullcourt press, which Tennessee runs often and effectively. But you can still play pressure defense, force turnovers, and make the opponent shoot a difficult shot. That’s Pearl’s goal, in fact, and the reason why the hiring of Steve Forbes is so important, and why the Vols are hoping to improve on their eFG% defense– a stated goal by Pearl in the offseason.

Sometimes Tennessee’s defense looks wild, out of control, or out of position. Sometimes they will get beat for an easy bucket. And to a viewer or a pundit, it may seem like the Vols are playing lousy defense. Some have gone as far as to say that if you “take away the turnovers, Tennessee’s defense is awful.” Okay, fine. Take away the interceptions and pass breakups and a lot of defenses in football don’t look so good. Take away the force outs and a lot of baseball defenses don’t look so good.

Turnovers are as fundamental to defense in basketball as pass defense is in football and force outs are in baseball,  and they are integral to Tennessee’s defense. The Vols force far more than their share (2nd nationally) and it wins games for them. I look for Tennessee to continue to try to improve in situation 1, forcing tougher shots and (most importantly) rebounding better. Just remember that the defense is predicated on mayhem and mischief– stealing passes and forcing turnovers– and that will continue as a primary force in Tennessee basketball. Don’t forget that this is good defense too.

Joe Lunardi is not good with numbers

Is this news to anyone? Apparently in an ESPN insider article he seeded Tennessee 11th overall (which is fair), but had this to say about the Vol defense:

11. TENNESSEE. The SEC is just so-so this year, which means the Vols could post the kind of record that earns an even better seed than this. Then I look at their defensive quotient from last season and shudder. According to my metrics, Tennessee was 223rd in the country at that end of the floor.

Now, I laughed at a couple of things here. First, that the SEC is so-so. Last I recall, the SEC was considered so-so for the last two years. All that the SEC produced was 5 Sweet Sixteen teams and two national titles.

But forget that. What’s really making me laugh is his “metric” that ranked Tennessee 223rd last year in defense. First, let me explain something. When a talking head uses the words “metric” and “quotient” and doesn’t actually tell you what he’s referring to, he’s probably full of crap and doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

I’d like to know what “metric” he uses and why he thinks it’s good. Points per game, perhaps. Opponent’s FG %, perhaps. Maybe some combination of these traditional stats. But to serious basketball analysts, there is one bottom line stat that assesses how well a team plays defense: adjusted defensive efficiency. Let me sum up.

Teams play at differing tempos, resulting in a vast difference in the number of possessions (scoring opportunities) for both them and for their opponents. A team that plays at a fast tempo, like Tennessee, is likely to score more and give up more points, no matter how well they actually play on each end. For example, VMI led the nation in scoring last year (PPG), and was last in the nation in scoring defense. That doesn’t REALLY tell you how good they were on either end. Only that they played very, very fast, giving both themselves and their opponents more chances to score. To really compare how good teams are at either end, you need to look at points per possession, not points per game. Defensive efficiency is just points per possession allowed times 100.

The adjusted part comes in because teams play schedules of varying difficulty. If you play all of your games against RPI 300+ teams, you should be much more efficient on offense and defense than a team that played all their games against RPI <100 teams. So to get a fair, comparable measure, a team’s efficiency is adjusted by how good their competition was. In the case of defensive efficiency, it’s adjusted by how good your opponents were on offense. This way, we get a single stat that measures how effective each team was on defense, adjusted to an average schedule.

How was Tennessee’s defense then? According to Ken Pomeroy’s calculations, the Vols’ adjusted defensive efficiency was 54th in the nation. That’s not world-beating, but it’s damn sure a lot better than 223rd, and with a very efficient offense (8th) it was good enough to get us to within a Greg Oden of the Elite 8.

Lunardi tries hard, but he is a talking head. He doesn’t know better. In fact, few of the talking heads know much about basketball statistics, and we shouldn’t expect them to. They’re not numbers dorks like some of us are. So Joe, you keep on writing about the NCAA tournament and the teams you think we’ll be there, and we’ll keep on reading, hoping to hear nuggets about our favorite teams . . . but leave the “metrics” and “quotients” to people who know what they mean.