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2018-2019 Ohio State Men's Basketball (Official Thread)

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ShowMeBuck said:
Now will someone please talk smack about Kaleb’s foul troubles? Thanks.
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other than nagging on refs, i see two main reasons for his consistent foul troubles:

1. conditioning. slow, athletically-challenged players with stamina problems tend to play defense with their hands. never good. you have aaron craft on one end of the spectrum (i.e., the best defender from the waist down that i've ever seen), and you have kaleb on the other. kaleb's foul problems won't change until his body changes. he's partly the way there, but he still has much work to do.

2. coaching. as i harped on many times in the purdue thread, i've seen enough of our bigs trying to defend ball screens that i no longer think it's a player issue but instead a problem caused either by design or by poor instruction. we'll never have a competent defense if our post players are this slow to retreat back. ledee will always be another foul magnet if there is no fundamental change. it stresses everyone else when kaleb, ledee, or young is sticking with the ballhandler. i mean, there was one time last night where kaleb was defending the ballhandler clear out to 30 feet. so freakin' stupid. naturally, this resulted in haarms being wide open for a made jumper. and if it wasn't going to be haarms, then i'm sure it would have been someone else standing wide open on the arc as our players run around with their heads cut off.

but to get back on point, kaleb's sticky defense of ball screens invites foul opportunities against players who are much better adept at penetrating, and it is also wears him out too quickly... which leads back to point #1.

in case you can't tell, i hate, hate, hate our ball screen defense. it should be a surprise to no one that our defense got so much better last night when we shifted to small-ball. and when the staff went small, painter backed off the ball screens. surprise, surprise. every opposing coach has game-planned us into defensive submission by exploiting by far our biggest defensive weakness.

it's too bad young doesn't have a mid-range jumper. with a healthy young who can shoot 12-footers, our best lineup against some teams might otherwise be young and 4 guards/wings. i know that sounds like sacrilege when we have kaleb, but the ball movement when kaleb and ledee were sitting last night was sooooooooooo much better. but young isn't healthy and he's a brickmason outside of 5 feet, so...
 
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OSU_Buckguy said:
other than nagging on refs, i see two main reasons for his consistent foul troubles:

1. conditioning. slow, athletically-challenged players with stamina problems tend to play defense with their hands. never good. you have aaron craft on one end of the spectrum (i.e., the best defender from the waist down that i've ever seen), and you have kaleb on the other. kaleb's foul problems won't change until his body changes. he's partly the way there, but he still has much work to do.

2. coaching. as i harped on many times in the purdue thread, i've seen enough of our bigs trying to defend ball screens that i no longer think it's a player issue but instead a problem caused either by design or by poor instruction. we'll never have a competent defense if our post players are this slow to retreat back. ledee will always be another foul magnet if there is no fundamental change. it stresses everyone else when kaleb, ledee, or young is sticking with the ballhandler. i mean, there was one time last night where kaleb was defending the ballhandler clear out to 30 feet. so freakin' stupid. naturally, this resulted in haarms being wide open for a made jumper. and if it wasn't going to be haarms, then i'm sure it would have been someone else standing wide open on the arc as our players run around with their heads cut off.

but to get back on point, kaleb's sticky defense of ball screens invites foul opportunities against players who are much better adept at penetrating, and it is also wears him out too quickly... which leads back to point #1.

in case you can't tell, i hate, hate, hate our ball screen defense. it should be a surprise to no one that our defense got so much better last night when we shifted to small-ball. and when the staff went small, painter backed off the ball screens. surprise, surprise. every opposing coach has game-planned us into defensive submission by exploiting by far our biggest defensive weakness.

it's too bad young doesn't have a mid-range jumper. with a healthy young who can shoot 12-footers, our best lineup against some teams might otherwise be young and 4 guards/wings. i know that sounds like sacrilege when we have kaleb, but the ball movement when kaleb and ledee were sitting last night was sooooooooooo much better. but young isn't healthy and he's a brickmason outside of 5 feet, so...
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Like pretty much any defensive system, gap man defense has its pros and cons.

All in all, I like that we use it and I like how Holtmann and Terry Johnson teach it... but there are some weaknesses, and those weaknesses are getting exacerbated by our lack of athleticism, especially in the frontcourt.

It's hard to overstate how much we miss Tate and especially KBD in helping to account for some of these systemic weakness. Both great rebounders from anywhere around the rim and KBD saved our defense a number of times with his quickness and length on recoveries. With gap defense you need good ball pressure, good gap help, and good post help. We're not getting good ball pressure apart from Luther. Our gap help is okay. There have been times where Andre and Kyle have provided decent post help (like the UCLA game where Andre somehow had 5 blocks) but now Kyle is out and there is a huge drop-off in post help from what we were getting from Tate and KBD.

Should Holtmann and Johnson be tweaking our defense to account for Kaleb's slowness and a lack of guys like Tate and KBD on the roster? Yeah, but without wholesale schematic changes--which Holtmann sounds like he doesn't want to do just yet--then it might be difficult to find the middle ground between what makes our defense work and something that will help it work better with the given personnel. I totally agree that we need to abandon what we're doing with Kaleb on the ball-screens but I don't know what the ideal tweak is since a major part of gap defense is contesting every shot and closing out on shooters. This is why you don't see Holtmann recruiting too many traditional centers and this is why he was never going to start Potter and Kaleb together. He needs mobility at all positions. We were able to make playing with Kaleb work defensively last season with the post help we were getting from Tate and especially KBD. Andrew Chrabaszc put up the offensive numbers for Holtmann at Butler but people don't realize how incredibly important guys like Tyler Wideman and Kelan Martin were to making things work on the defensive end (well, and Kelan put up big offense, too, he was like their KBD).

The good news is that Liddell and Gaffney will be bringing some athleticism and length back to our frontcourt and with time should be great in providing post help. Liddell is a beast on the defensive end with his toughness, motor, and shot-blocking and Gaffney has an elite athleticism/length combo.
 
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Also should be noted that--while there will be a learning curve delay--adding an athlete at PG like Carton with a 6'6 wingspan plus seasoning for guys like Luther and Duane (who have better length/quickness that CJ and Keyshawn) should also improve our ball pressure and gap help in time.

The disappointing/unexpected thing right now this season in terms of our defense is the regression of Jallow. With his length and agility and quick-twitch on the perimeter he seemed like a player who would be an elite asset for gap help. But so far this season he has not been as mentally locked-in on that end of the floor as he flashed at times as a freshman. Maybe now with Young out and Jallow putting up a solid offensive performance against Purdue, he might get enough minutes to get comfortable and zoned in out there.

I'm not sure we put it all together next season defensively since some of this projection is reliance on guys who will be freshmen, but I do think we almost certainly will be at least somewhat better (we keep our best defenders--though CJ's experience might be missed--and add more athleticism and length), and by the time 2020-2021 rolls around I think we will be an excellent defensive team.
 
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If the Buckeyes can get to 10-10 in the B1G, that will probably put them on the right side of the bubble. A lot of winnable home games left. IU on the road isnt looking all that tough. Holt has to lean on the small ball revolution to get this team to play its best.
 
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DZ83CK said:
If the Buckeyes can get to 10-10 in the B1G, that will probably put them on the right side of the bubble.
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i have no doubt whatsoever that 10-10 would get us in after going 10-1 in the non-conference. a .500 record means going 7-5 from here on out. even if those wins come against the "worst" teams, it would still result in a résumé that every metric will find attractive. we'd probably have at least 6 quadrant 1 wins without any quadrant 3 or 4 losses. we'd probably get an 8/9 first round game. snubbing osu would be rather historic.

2017-18 florida state is our benchmark. they played in the strongest conference (9 bids). after going 11-1 against an unimpressive non-conference schedule, they were 20-11 heading into their conference tournament... just like osu would be with a 10-10 conference record. they had 6 quadrant wins... about what osu would have after 10-10. and fsu lost in the first round of their conference tournament to bubble team syracuse. with 6 at-large teams ranked lower per the s-curve, the seminoles received a 9-seed. many regarded fsu as a bubble team, but the committee decided that they deserved to be in with a comfortable margin.

another factor is the pac 12 stinking to high heaven yet again this year. that's great for teams in the low-middle of the nation's deepest conference.
 
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