Reply To: So, what's going on?

[lehigh90Participant]

I don’t think it is a talent issue. We have the returning Player of the Year in the PL (TK), and the reigning Rookie of the Year in the PL (KR) and a third player who may be in the mix for First Team PL this year (AP). I think you could put our big 3 up against any 3 in the league, and ours may be the best. Are we thin as far as depth, certainly, but many winning basketball teams only go 8 deep, so I think that is a little overblown as well. We should be able to win with an 8 man rotation of KR, AP, TK, JC, JG, DC, KL and TJ.

Winning basketball starts on the defensive end of the floor. Good teams who defend are always competitive, always in games, and even on off nights offensively stay in games. This team is a horrible defensive team. We don’t do the basics. We don’t defend on the perimeter. Teams get blow byes on us, constantly. We don’t pick up shooters on the perimeter. We are slow to close out shooters, and rarely contest on the perimeter. We don’t box out and give up a ton of offensive rebounds. There is not one thing we do well. We don’t stay in front of anybody, don’t contest jumpers, don’t block/alter many shots, and just, quite frankly, play soft. Terrible at help defense as well. Guy gets beat on the perimeter, and walks right down the lane, nobody comes off their man to contest. We give away the paint, like it is a runway. We can’t lock anybody down in a half court set. Teams get anything they want against us.

We have played 7 games so far, and look at the points against, it is atrocious.

98, 79, 88, 80, 77, 84 in the last 6. An average of 84+ per game. I throw out the Syracuse game where we gave up 57, for a couple of reasons. Syracuse, with their zone, plays at a snail’s pace, and both teams shot it horribly that night. Lehigh didn’t really defend that night, either, just got lucky Syracuse was so bad.

So, to me it starts there. Stop somebody, for God’s sake, and maybe you win a game. It’s fun to run up and down the court and score, but you won’t win a thing with that mentality. I only see one guy, who is getting minutes, giving any effort on the defensive end and that is KL. He’s trying at least. Hold teams down in the 60’s and 70’s and this team will win. In the 80’s and 90’s, no shot. And, I don’t really care about the statistics, if you watch this team defend, then watch a good team defend, there is no comparison. Effort not there.