Memphis is impressive

I spent the better part of this season assuming that Memphis’s DDM offense would struggle against the better defensive teams in the country. I considered their effort against UT proof of this, as the Vols’ switching and sagging man defense slowed them down considerably. I figured at that point that the Tigers were toast as early as the second round of the NCAA Tourney.

That’s not exactly how it has happened. Last night, the Tigers impressed me again, for the 4th time in a row in this tournament. They handled a very good UCLA defense, scoring virtually at will at times. Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, the main weapons in Calipari’s offense, totally lit the Bruins up for 53 points. UCLA had been allowing a paltry 83.9 points per 100 possessions and Memphis scored at a rate of 112.2, just the 3rd time this season that the UCLA defense played at an efficiency worse than 110.

In the postseason, Rose and Douglas-Roberts have been virtually unstoppable. This Memphis team is more confident and smarter than the team I saw earlier this year. Give John Calipari credit for one thing– he managed to get his team to play its best ball in March and April.

If Memphis does the unthinkable and caps this tourney run with a win over Kansas, they will finish an impressive 39-1 and congratulations will certainly be in order. I just hope that it sticks in their craw– if only a little– to see that 1 hanging off the end of their record, knowing a certain team wearing Big Orange is responsible for the little blemish to an otherwise perfect season.

John Calipari is the truthiest

Full of truthiness and such. The man is just plain truthy. Or something like that. I’m not Stephen Colbert.

I will link you to this Gary Parrish piece and give no further comment. You tell me what you get out of this, and whether it confirms what you already know about Calipari. You know what I think.

Thanks to Hoopsville for the heads-up.

http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/10753571/1

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.

BruceBall vs. Memphis Preview, Part I: Coach Image Arithmetic

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Translation coming in Part 2 of the preview. As if you need it.

It’s GAMEDAY!!! A ramble . . .

After a long layoff, it’s finally time to get going with SEC play. Last night, Florida’s young talent came back to defeat an inept Crimson Tide team in Tuscaloosa. If you have seen Alabama play lately, you know what I mean. Defensively they seem clueless. What is Gottfried doing?

At any rate, SEC play is now underway and BruceBall will get into the act tonight vs. Ole Miss (see extensive preview below). Also on the SEC slate is Vandy at home vs. South Carolina and Mississippi State at LSU.

I just heard a nice Bruce interview on a Memphis radio station (thanks for the heads-up, Hoopsville). Is he a great salesman, or what? It’s nice to have a coach that’s so media savvy in addition to being a fine coach. He’s a great representative for this university. He also pretty much flat-out refuses to give in to John Calipari on playing the Memphis series in Nashville. Keep it up, Bruce. Cal’s afraid of the Memphis talent seeing your team play.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Scotty Hopson, a highly rated wing with a big upside. He has, for all practical purposes, decommitted from Mississippi State and seems to be a Tennessee lean. He would be the most highly rated signee fo the Pearl era if he chose UT, and would certainly help the Vols, who will have to replace the 3 senior wings (Lofton, Smith, Howell) that they lose after this year. He’s not a perimeter shooter, though, so again it makes me wonder if the 3-point shot will be de-emphasized in Pearl’s system. If so, the timing is good, with the 3-point line moving back next year. The 3-point shot will be less of a weapon for everyone, and Pearl’s personnel may no longer rely on it.

Here’s a nice TV schedule for college basketball for the remainder of the year. Again, thanks to Hoopsville for the heads-up and thanks to Matt for his work on the schedule.

Enough rambling. Everybody tune in tonight (Raycom or SunSports) to see the Vols vs. the Rebels and pull for a Big Orange victory.

BruceBall vs. Temple Preview

This Friday, the season finally begins. It’s hard to say when was the last time the UT fanbase was this excited about a basketball team. We owe a great deal of that to Bruce Pearl, and some to a decline in the football program (but that’s a topic we will avoid here).

This season begins with the Temple Owls (Friday, November 9, 7:30pm, FSN). Temple basketball has a proud tradition, with many NCAA tournament appearances and Atlantic 10 titles under legendary coaches Harry Litwack and John Chaney. Chaney, incidentally, is also famous for trying to injure an opposing player and for threatening to kick John Calipari’s ass. One out of two ain’t bad.

But Chaney has been gone for more than a year now, and the NCAA appearances are even further in the rearview (their last appearance was in 2001). New head coach Fran Dunphy led Temple to a 12-18 record last year.

Temple returns three starters from that team: Dionte Christmas (6′5″ JR), Mark Tyndale (6′5″ SR), and Semaj Inge (6′4″ JR)– all guards. The starting frontcourt will likely be Lavoy Allen (6′9″ FR) and Sergio Olmos (7′0″ JR). The first thing to notice is that they have at least a 2″ height advantage at every position. Our likely starting 5 measures 6′2″ across all the guard spots and 6′7″ and 6′9″ in the frontcourt.

However, Temple was a horrid rebounding team last year, ranking 299th in offensive rebounding and 260th in defensive rebounding. They also didn’t block many shots (207th), so it’s hard to say what the height advantage is going to mean, at least at the guard spots. In the paint, Tennessee’s experience and athleticism will hopefully counter the size mismatches.

What Temple did do last year is get up and down the court in a hurry and shoot the 3 well. Sound familiar? Clearly these are areas in which Tennessee excels, so it will be an interesting matchup. The last time Tennessee played a team that played close to its tempo and liked to fire up 3’s, it was in the opening round of the 2007 NCAA tournament. The final was Tennessee 121, Long Beach State 86.

I don’t think we’ll see that kind of scoring, but we may see that kind of margin. I think Tyler Smith will be a major problem for Allen and that Tennessee’s pressure defense will force Temple out of their game significantly. The Vols’ depth and athleticism will rule this day. My pick– Tennessee 88, Temple 64