Iowa St., Mon., Nov. 24, 4:30p, TruTV / 1050 AM

Defense has been bad but it's really only been two things killing us on that end.

1) Hedging ball screens instead of switching is killing us. ISU is dicing us up in the short roll when its 4 on 3. Our hedging isn't aggressive enough to force turnovers nor would Lipsey turn it over in those anyway.

2) We don't know how to close out, especially Jackson. He got beat baseline by Heise and then twice by Momcilivic shot fakes and one dribble relocates.

I think we have to go back to switching and helping off the weakside when there's a mismatch
As my recent college grad children would say, FACTS.
 
Clearly our interior guys are superior today, our guard play spotty. Looking for Sellers to hit some jumpers to open things up again this half for inside guys. Just wish our guards could stay in front of guys on D. Darling with big minutes, got exhausted, but our only choice at the point. PG as said by many will plague us all year I fear.
 
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Ian & Darling both pretty bad defensively.

I view this a bit differently. If you are looking at production, Jackson, Darling and Sanon are all fairly unproductive defensively.

However, Darling knows what to do and he tries; he's just limited by his size and strength (his quickness is fine) and by playing against superior athletes.

Jackson has no idea what to do. I was honestly shocked Pitino sent Jackson back out after his first shift of misadventures. But he does provide some offense (as does Sanon).

Sanon sort of knows what to do, but he's still learning defense like a middle school kid learns a foreign language.

I believe that they will both improve because if they don't Rick will feed them to the alligators.
 
While acknowledging darling does get beat off the dribble, it would be nice if once beat the weak side help actually...helped. This aspect of the D is very much a work in progress and invariably leads to sju foul/open drive/kick out.
 
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