Where has our full court trap gone??

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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I feel like we haven't seen us fully use our full court trap since the Wisconsin game. We've used some token full court pressure, but most of it's man-to-man pressure, and not the turnover-causing mayhem we used against UW and a few other teams so effectively earlier in the season. We have depth, some solid athleticism and decent length by guys like DJ, Carter, Sampson, etc. that is key to deflecting passes and causing turnovers, but this trap has all but disappeared.

I understand that we're not going to see Nolan Richardson's "40 Minutes of Hell" but it would be fun to see "5 Minutes of Havoc" from time to time as it appeared effective earlier in the season. I'm sure Tubby has his reasons, but to me, when you stick to half court sets (both offensively and defensively) you can quickly mitigate your depth and athleticism which are strengths of ours depending on the matchup.

Just a thought I'd toss out there.

Go Gophers!!
 

Bleed, how dare you question Tubby? What a terrible fan you are. Duh, I think I'll trust Tubby more than some poster on a mesasge board.

There, now that that is out of the way, I agree with you 100%. I would love to see this more. On top of that, it may lead to more easy baskets and transition points, which IMO, is waht we should be trying to do offensively. This is an atrocious half-court offensive team. They need other ways to score.
 

I agree, was just thinking the same thing.

If I recall Tubby did the same thing last year. We pressed almost all of our non-conference games and then got to the Big Ten and stopped. The consensus on the board was we just didnt have the depth and athletes to press in the Big Ten.

I dont think those are issues this year and would like to see us pick up teams full court more often. I believe it gets Nolen and Johnson in the game, and Nolen especially plays better when he gets a few steals and easy buckets.
 

Yeah, I see no reasons why we can't press teams like Indiana, Northwestern, Iowa, etc. I can see why it may not work against Mich. State, but we certainly could use it hear and there for our advantage.

I would love for one of the reporters to ask Tubby about this to see what the reasoning is behind it.
 

We've essentially tossed our identity along with our best weapon out the window, with no rhyme or reason as to why. I don't get it.
 


BleedGopher said:
Where has our full court trap gone??
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Totally agree. I posted this same thing after the Indiana game. The Hoosiers play an almost all-freshman backcourt, yet we didn't press them at all at their place.

Now, they lose Dumes, which means more minutes for a relatively unathletic walkon guard tomorrow. If we don't press the hell out of them tomorrow night, I will really wonder what in the world is going on. The full court trap, coupled with the Barn effect, should be able to rattle their young guards in a huge way.

The press was nearly single-handedly responsible for the comeback at Wisconsin. So, we haven't seen it since. Baffling indeed.

Tubby just didn't forget about it, right? So, there must be some explanation. I just don't know what it could possibly be.
 

Maybe he is saving it for the NCAAs??? :)

I have three wishes from Tubby:
1. Change up the starting lineup- it doesn't work
2. Press at various times in each game
3. Play Bostick for 20 minutes some game and see what he does with a longer rope. If it doesn't work okay, but give it a try.
 

What worked throughout the non-conf schedule doesn't always work against Big Ten athletes and coaching staffs. They watch game film, compare notes, and make smart adjustments.
 

Trapping against a team that can easily break it leads to very easy slam dunks and a big lead for the other team. Until our "bigs" can guard the backdoor, I don't expect to see much full-court trapping. The guards and the forwards in the Big Ten are good at breaking traps. Traps are more effective when used sparingly: know "when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em". The non-conference teams were fodder for learning how to trap.
 



CollegeBBallFan said:
Trapping against a team that can easily break it leads to very easy slam dunks and a big lead for the other team. Until our "bigs" can guard the backdoor, I don't expect to see much full-court trapping. The guards and the forwards in the Big Ten are good at breaking traps. Traps are more effective when used sparingly: know "when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em". The non-conference teams were fodder for learning how to trap.
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You mean like against Wisconsin when Carter, Sampson, and Damian all had important block shots on the back end of the traps? That's one thing we do have, are enforcers on the back end. Shot blocking is a team strength. And, how do we know we'd give up easy buckets if we never try it? We haven't used it once since the Wisconsin game. And, that includes some games we've struggled to score in. One way to break out of an offensive drought is to create some easy buckets from defense.

I'm not promoting that we should use it all the time. But, ONCE just to try it might be okay.
 

Perhaps a Gopherhole staffer could interview the coach and ask that question.
 

Balance

I've noticed our defense lag since they started working on the offense. I agree that we need to get the ball inside, but it's like our defense forgot what to do. The constant pressure on defense is what wore the other teams down and caused turnovers. It may also help keep up the intensity on offense. There were so many times against OSU that our offense was stagnant, led by Nolan. We can't do the full court trap on the faster teams, but we need to use it once in a while. I also miss the several swithces from man to man to zone throughout the game.

Let's hope to see some changes against IU.
 

I've been wondering the same thing. I don't know why we haven't used it when we were within a few points towards the end of the game, at least give us a chance to turn the tide. Tubby probably has his reasons for not pressing, but like a lot of you are saying, we have the depth to do it, and it wouldn't hurt to do a few times a game.
 



TruthTeller said:
Perhaps a Gopherhole staffer could interview the coach and ask that question.
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I took your advice, hopefully you were listening to the Tubby Show on CCO just now. I asked about this specifically, Tubby's response (recap, not verbatim):

- Very good point. We do seem to play well when we extend the the defense. Northwestern seemed to beat the press pretty well and when our big guys are in there we tend to give up some easy baskets the opposite way so it is more difficult to extend the defense with them in there. But we need to do more of that as we play better when we extend the D from time to time.

Hopefully it is podcast and you can hear it verbatim, but that was the basic recap of the answer to the question posed in my initial post.

Go Gophers!!
 

Not to beat a dead horse, or a horrible beat reporter, but the question's Myron asks on the weekly conference call are horrid. It shouldn't take someone, whether they are affiliated with a website or not, to ask questions about such a drastic strategy change. Nice work in picking up the slack.
 

Bleed, I've had the exact same observation and the same sense of bewilderment expressed so well here by others.

You don't have to use it to death, but occasionally "showing" our trap has got to at least give the other team pause. It worked beautifully on the road against a veteran team like WI; there's no reason not to use it against virtually every other roster in the Big Ten. It's like we gave away our identity, for free. I do not get it at all.
 

I think that Indiana in particular is vulnerable to the press tonight. IU is hardly more athletic than us, and is very young/ inexperienced at this level and could be rattled early at a hostile Barn if subjected to the pressure of the press
2T-3DA-LOGOSPIN_Minnesota.gif
 

Indiana seems to me like a team that you want to press early and disrupt their game flow. Press them early and force them to play our game. Hopefully the press makes a comeback today, I think we could use it.
 

The Gophers have difficulty generating points as we have no effective and steady "go to guy(s)." Various press and trap schemes can be effective in creating turnovers and easy buckets even though you may give up a few easy ones in return.

The depth and type of players needed to press is there.
 

BleedGopher said:
I took your advice, hopefully you were listening to the Tubby Show on CCO just now. I asked about this specifically, Tubby's response (recap, not verbatim):

- Very good point. We do seem to play well when we extend the the defense. Northwestern seemed to beat the press pretty well and when our big guys are in there we tend to give up some easy baskets the opposite way so it is more difficult to extend the defense with them in there. But we need to do more of that as we play better when we extend the D from time to time.

Hopefully it is podcast and you can hear it verbatim, but that was the basic recap of the answer to the question posed in my initial post.

Go Gophers!!
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Why thanks so much, gh staff. Lets see if the coach "does more of that" in the near future.
 

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