Iowa's defensive problems

[HaydenHawk56]

This is on the other board, but OP and others make great points in this thread.

The Problem is not Defense per se

A few people here understand it. Iowa’s problem really has nothing to do with scheme and very little to do with execution. The problem is more fundamental than that and it was glaring last night— athleticism/speed. We made Illinois look like an NBA team in transition last night. It was...

iowa.forums.rivals.com

 

[PCHawk]

Team speed is definitely the biggest weakness on our top 10 team. Thank God this team isn't our track team or we would be screwed. The good news is there are a lot of ways to win in basketball and our strengths allow us to compete with teams like Illinois who are way faster than us.

 

[kicker22]

While I agree that we are not the most athletic team and our athleticism causes us to struggle in transition, I think most of it is poor defense. While athleticism cannot be improved upon we can do a better job of playing team defense in the half court setting. I think if we had more athleticism it would help cover up the flaws, but I think a lot of it is they're late filling passing lanes, slow to rotate or over pursue, and frequently are out of position leading to uncontested layups and open 3s.

I could be wrong, but IMO the issue is the defensive technique and spacing. The athleticism (or lack of as stated in the thread) only contributes to making it that much more obvious.

 

[PCHawk]

For some reason we always seem to double the ball leaving the rest of the court 4 on 3.