I don’t see the defensive issues as “slow-footed” at all...I see terrible fundamentals and a complete lack of awareness. We stand straight up..no defensive posture at all. We don’t use our hands to disrupt sight lines of the guy with the ball or to get in the passing lanes. We play up in guys who can drive and hang back off of shooters. We scramble when out of position and hall ass out to the ball out of control, letting the guy easily drive by. Defenders constantly run into each other. We show no knowledge of how to properly play pick and rolls or on-ball screens. Our frontline ALWAYS gives up baseline...never funneling back to the middle where the help is. On switches, we CONSTANTLY end up with two guys on the ball which inevitably leaves a man completely free.
In other words, it looks like we devote maybe 10 mins of practice time to defense...which backs up what a former starter under Fran has claimed...
Good post. One thing I noticed is the extraordinary amount of time that passes between when an offensive player starts his drive and when our defender starts to react to that move. That has nothing to do with foot speed, and the quickest guy in the world couldn't recover from that delayed reaction that every one of our players (except Baer) have. Reaction time is a gift that most D1 players have and we have a team full of guys who don't have that gift. Either that or it's just pure laziness.