[BostonCard]

Nice analysis (by multiple people) about the three point defense.  It seems likely that we emphasized sagging off the shooters when they were out on the wing to make it harder to pound the ball inside.  And, for most of the game, it worked!  South Carolina was 5/17 from behind the 3-point arch.  In fact, prior to that shot, South Carolina was only 2/14 (14%) from three.  It is really hard to fault a defense that made a calculated gamble to sag and it paid off.

Of course, context matters, and a good strategy during the first 39 minutes and 43 seconds of the game was probably not the right strategy up by 4 points with under a minute to go.  At that point, you have to tell your players to defend the three tightly, and just make sure you don't foul.  If they beat you with an easy layup to bring it to within 2, that's ok.  It's hard to know where to put blame, but, I think, the fact that Prechtel, Jump, and Jones were all gave their shooters about the same amount of space suggests this was by design.  I'd love to know what the rationale was, or if it was just a brain fart.

Easy for us to sit here and dissect the film with plenty of time to do it; much harder for the players and coaches to all do so in real time while a million other things are happening.

BC

[BostonCard]

Nice analysis (by multiple people) about the three point defense.  It seems likely that we emphasized sagging off the shooters when they were out on the wing to make it harder to pound the ball inside.  And, for most of the game, it worked!  South Carolina was 5/17 from behind the 3-point arch.  In fact, prior to that shot, South Carolina was only 2/14 (14%) from three.  It is really hard to fault a defense that made a calculated gamble to sag and it paid off.

Of course, context matters, and a good strategy during the first 39 minutes and 43 seconds of the game was probably not the right strategy up by 4 points with under a minute to go.  At that point, you have to tell your players to defend the three tightly, and just make sure you don't foul.  If they beat you with an easy layup to bring it to within 2, that's ok.  It's hard to know where to put blame, but, I think, the fact that Prechtel, Jump, and Jones were all gave their shooters about the same amount of space suggests this was by design.  I'd love to know what the rationale was, or if it was just a brain fart.

Easy for us to sit here and dissect the film with plenty of time to do it; much harder for the players and coaches to all do so in real time while a million other things are happening.

BC