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Stop the fricking Hedging!!!

Correct me if I am wrong, and I well might be, but isn't the problem that we hedge too hard or too far out on the floor. Shouldn't we hedge just enough to prevent the open shot rather than pushing out to 30 feet or more. I could be wrong and there may be valid reasons top do what we do, but it seems to be very ineffective.
 
I must hedge my bets on this team ever playing good defense, regardless of the system used.
 
DCDeac said:
There's some serious irony in this thread...

The hedge is a critical piece of almost every version of the pack line defense out there. Virginia, Xavier, Butler under Stephens - when you're teaching the pack line there are two drills you do pretty much every day, relentlessly. The first is the close out. The pack line establishes a perimeter that you are always below. How far you retreat depends on the ball position and where your man is. Never give up baseline. Always force middle. This means anticipating skip passes and closing out on them is the #1 requirement of great pack line defenses. The 2nd is the hedge. Extreme ball pressure is a golden rule of the pack line. Dropping under picks doesn't fit that - the defender of the screener pops out to continue pressure on the ball, forces a dribble or two away from the screen, and recovers. We're just not good at it yet. Michigan State is hedging every high Duke pick as we speak. The idea that it's some crazy, idiotic concept is absurd.

Manning is running a help-man style defense with some pack line principles. But we simply couldn't have a worse makeup of players for a true pack line. Effective closeouts require length and athleticism. Look at UVA - a true point guard and a ton of length and athleticism everywhere else, they give one player under 6'4" a lot of minutes. We have Childress, Wilbekin, Woods, and Crawford at 6'3" or under. Tack on unathletic Arians and Dinos and you really have almost no ideal pack line defenders on our entire squad until Chaundee arrives. This is not a team that can succeed playing off shooters and recovering.
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Good post. I have seen that we need to stop hedging and stop switching on this thread. How do you suggest we effectively guard a ball screen without doing one of these? Go underneath every screen? That would be a disaster. Our problem isn't in our hedge fundamentals as much as it is the guard fighting through the screen. We have to do a better job of 'getting skinny' and fighting over top of the screen without being pushed so high on the play. We could also employ what a lot of coaches call 'ice' (not sure why but that is always the term that I heard) in which when a side ball screen occurs the offensive player jumps out and prevents any over the top penetration (forces the dribbler to the sideline) and the big jumps baseline to quarantine the dribbler. Once the pick is neutralized the two defenders revert back to their m2m defense.

We do not do a good job on ball screens but most of it is with our off ball rotations and the guard, not the big man. There is a reason so many offense now utilize ball screens - they are difficult to defend. Stopping hedging or stopping switching is not the answer. Better defensive fundamentals on switches and hedges is the answer. Going underneath the screen is almost never the answer unless they are a CMM type shooter and even then he would often make the defense pay when they gave him 5 feet to shoot.


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Bubble Boy said:
The best play (for NW) last night was when they ran a high pick and roll 10 feet outside of the 3 point line with about 5 minutes to go. Dinos hedged a little bit and then as he retreated to get back to his man, he collided with Woods who was trying to get back to the ball handler. Of course this was a better pick than NW could have set, and it allowed the ball handler free penetration down the lane and an easy lay-up, since all three other Wake defenders just watched him go by instead of rotating to fill the lane,
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This made me laugh
 
Hedging works. We don't do it that well. I do think we are much, much better at it than last year outside of McClinton. Our bigs are picking up far fewer fouls when hedging, and we've given up very few open post passes when recovering. When we got beat it was usually the guard driving past our defender, which honestly is less about the hedge and more about our players struggling to stay in front of guys.

One thing that burned us with McIntosh was Manning putting Woods in full half court denial without altering our hedging. We got in huge trouble hedging screens 5 feet outside the 3 point line. It's the screening man's responsibility to call the screen, not hedge, and tell the defender to go under it - either Manning didn't communicate that or our guys were overwhelmed by the moment (I'd guess both are equally likely). Our first half hedges were actually pretty solid. It's easy to just say Northwestern shot poorly, but when a good hedge prevents a ball reversal and has a point guard retreating with 10 on the shot clock, we end up getting better shot challenges and fewer go in. I thought there was a lot of that in the first half, not so much in the 2nd.

I personally hate switching as a rule. Switching leads to things like McIntosh getting a wide open 3 pointer down the stretch when he was on fire. Inexcusable. I get the idea - label some defenders interchangeable and mitigate off-ball screens, a little communication and you'd think no problem. But the reality in help defense is a lot of times guys won't identify who had who during quick passes and cuts, and people get lost. On top of that, it allows your opponent to dictate matchups. I think it was Duke last year where they simply ran screens until they got the matchup they wanted, like Grayson vs Wilbekin, then ran a clear out. If all our your guys can defend, fine. I assume that's Manning's ideal (and is very Kansas-like), but with Wilbekin, McClinton, Dinos, or Brandon on the floor it simply doesn't work. Call for a switch if you get stuck, but don't default to it. JMHO.
 
The reality is that each defensive possession should be seen as a 30 second scramble in which you limit the scrambling to as late in the process as possible. If the offense is doing its job there is almost always going to be a moment where the defense is going to have to recover from a weak position. The key is how well you recover from the bad spots the offense puts you in. Getting rid of hedging because you aren't doing it well is like getting rid of shooting because you aren't doing it well. It is a ridiculous concept. We don't need to stop hedging, we need to do it better, and we are better this year at it than last IMO. We still have a massive amount of room for improvement. I don't know if DC has coached in the past, but he has a really good handle on what needs to be done. It isn't one thing. It is communication, it is knowing when you have pushed the defender out far enough to slide underneath, it is the big man communicating, it is the guard seeing the screen coming and forcing the ball handler to a weaker position, it is the offside big giving proper help, and the off side guard pinching to a reasonable point where he is influencing the ball handler without leaving his man wide open. In short it is defensive fundamentals. We have a team that is not going to be a stellar defensive team, but we can be good, and DM needs to get this team to a point where they aren't making egregious mistakes. There is no doubt that we aren't where we need to be, but we need to be educated as fans as to what is reasonable to expect. Getting rid of hedging or switching is not the answer. You never get rid of a potential strategy. You teach them all and use whichever one is most useful for that game.
 
Wrangor said:
Good post. I have seen that we need to stop hedging and stop switching on this thread. How do you suggest we effectively guard a ball screen without doing one of these?
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There are other techniques, like trapping or the Spurs "mush" technique or sinking and hugging, but I just think hedging is the easiest one to teach and we don't have the personnel to do it well.
 
The biggest issue to me is that "help the helper" portion. I think we have hedged successfully a decent amount this season, but we always seem to be late rotating over to help cover the defender of the first helper. That leads to open 3's and blow-bys, which we have seen a lot of.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
The biggest issue to me is that "help the helper" portion. I think we have hedged successfully a decent amount this season, but we always seem to be late rotating over to help cover the defender of the first helper. That leads to open 3's and blow-bys, which we have seen a lot of.
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It's way simpler than all these words spent on it. The higher the ball screen, the further the guy has to get back into position, and when that guy is Dinos or Arians or Moore or anybody not named John Collins really, they're gonna struggle to get back into the post. We've done a fine job defending the PnR and ball screens when they're right at the top of the key (except for some back door cuts). We've done a bad job when the screen is closer to midcourt. I think it'd be best to cut down on hedges 40 feet from the basket and just sink off screens in those situations or go for the home run and trap.
 
TownieDeac said:
There are other techniques, like trapping or the Spurs "mush" technique or sinking and hugging, but I just think hedging is the easiest one to teach and we don't have the personnel to do it well.
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Oh I agree, which was kind of my point about teaching all the techniques so that you can implement the best one for the opponent. Hedging, to be honest, is probably the technique with the least amount of help side needed, which is why it is implemented so often. In most other cases (unless you are truly going to go under and give up an open 20 foot jump shot each time) you are going to require multiple levels of switching. Hedge and recover allows everyone to stay on their man and simply show and recover (when done correctly).
 
Hedging can work well, just like UVa does it, but it requires quick players and guys who know their roles. They have to be able to get back instantly after their hedge duties are over to their own man, otherwise they are giving up easy baskets or drawing easy fouls on themselves. Been on the floor for years and these type fouls just call themselves as the bumps are just plain. And in this new environment of calling these this type of contact [illegal picks, hedge bumps, bumping off the cutters off their lines] tons more fouls are supposed to be called in this 3 year NCAA program to get the game back & away from the physicality it had become in the "advantage/disadvantage" days.
 
TownieDeac said:
It's way simpler than all these words spent on it. The higher the ball screen, the further the guy has to get back into position, and when that guy is Dinos or Arians or Moore or anybody not named John Collins really, they're gonna struggle to get back into the post. We've done a fine job defending the PnR and ball screens when they're right at the top of the key (except for some back door cuts). We've done a bad job when the screen is closer to midcourt. I think it'd be best to cut down on hedges 40 feet from the basket and just sink off screens in those situations or go for the home run and trap.
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I think this is where I fall. Hedge if the screen is within a reasonable shooting range. Go under the screen if it is 30' from the basket.

Wrangor, is this reasonable?
 
Wrangor said:
Good post. I have seen that we need to stop hedging and stop switching on this thread. How do you suggest we effectively guard a ball screen without doing one of these? Go underneath every screen? That would be a disaster. Our problem isn't in our hedge fundamentals as much as it is the guard fighting through the screen. We have to do a better job of 'getting skinny' and fighting over top of the screen without being pushed so high on the play. We could also employ what a lot of coaches call 'ice' (not sure why but that is always the term that I heard) in which when a side ball screen occurs the offensive player jumps out and prevents any over the top penetration (forces the dribbler to the sideline) and the big jumps baseline to quarantine the dribbler. Once the pick is neutralized the two defenders revert back to their m2m defense.

We do not do a good job on ball screens but most of it is with our off ball rotations and the guard, not the big man. There is a reason so many offense now utilize ball screens - they are difficult to defend. Stopping hedging or stopping switching is not the answer. Better defensive fundamentals on switches and hedges is the answer. Going underneath the screen is almost never the answer unless they are a CMM type shooter and even then he would often make the defense pay when they gave him 5 feet to shoot.


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You missed the point about hedging entirely. It's about HOW and WHERE you hedge and was stated as such.
 
right, wrangor clearly missed the "fricking" distinction
 
TownieDeac said:
right, wrangor clearly missed the "fricking" distinction
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Once again you show that you'd rather be snarky and ignorantly arrogant than be accurate. Here's what Wrangor said:

"I have seen that we need to stop hedging and stop switching on this thread. How do you suggest we effectively guard a ball screen without doing one of these? Go underneath every screen? "

Here's what I said:

"What the fuck is anyone going to do to us 25-35' from the basket? really, how can they harm us? Let them take 20 threes from that distance a game.

Even if the guy moves in from 25' to 22" and takes the J, our guard can box out their big out on the court."

Kinda specific isn't?

Then BEFORE Wrangor posted, I was more specific:

"I believe Bo Ryan was the first person to do this regularly. But there was a huge difference. He used inside the three point line (and to the 3 point line against great shooters) which didn't create the wide open spaces that doing it 25-35' from the basket does.

His methodology forced the next dribble to basically be in the lane or FT line, where there was other help. There is no help that far from the basket and causes ridiculous rotations.

The current usage makes no sense."

But keep on being snarky. It fits you almost as well as your flannels.
 
i'll try to be less ignorantly arrogant
 
RJKarl said:
Stop the fricking Hedging!!!
It's one of the most useless plays ever invented.

What the fuck is anyone going to do to us 25-35' from the basket? really, how can they harm us? Let them take 20 threes from that distance a game.

Even if the guy moves in from 25' to 22" and takes the J, our guard can box out their big out on the court.

Hedging creates a myriad of problems and people out of position. I don't care if every team in the country uses it. This is a crazy concept.
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Here is the original post for those too lazy to go back on page one to check his selective re-post.
 
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