Help defense is great, but the most important aspect of any defensive possession is simple staying between your man and the ball. You have to give the prop space to the offensive player in order to keep that man in front. Any time you have to provide help you are putting the rest of the group in a vulnerable position.
I'm on the Aaron White bandwagon as much as anyone else, but his defense against Purdue was putrid. The reason DJ Byrd got off was he went right at White. First, taking advantage of White's lackluster closeouts and second driving around him. At one point when both he and Josh were in the game it was obvious the only stops we would get defensively would be simply if Purdue missed an easy shot (which they seldom did).
Two other clear examples that pop into my head are when May closed out off of the inbounds pass and let his guy blow by him for a 3 point play, and when Basabe got iso'd at elbow with a freshmen and let him take him to the hoop for a play that should have been an And 1. You simply do not see Purdue making those mistakes.
Perhaps the most glaring example of not understanding space, man, rim concepts was the Iowa State game. You have this Royce White who can handle, has insane athleticism, and likes to go left. Many, many times that game McCabe would crowd him with NO chance to keep him in front. The results were two uncontested thunderous dunks (where the blow by was so egregious that nobody could really react) or immediate help defense where everybody is rotating around and scrambling.
We'll continue to get better in this area, and obviously more athleticism will help. There are already good signs: Marble is disruptive off the ball; Basabe has grown leaps and bounds on his ball screen hedge and recover concepts; Gatens has grown into a workhorse defender; McCabe is always will to sacrifice his body.
And Brommer is always willing to foul.
