Welcome to The Brunt End where we go to examine the workings of Coach Jamal Brunt and the defensive performance of the Nittany Lions.
We had previously asked the question: has the BIG10 ever seen a team attempt to play like VCU?
The answer was, for the most part, no. Because, the collective wisdom among BIG10 coaches seems to suggest that it wouldn’t work.
Brad Underwood tried to implement that style of defense in his first couple of seasons with Illinois, but quickly abandoned the philosophy after his defenses finished outside of the top-100 in overall rating his first two seasons on the job.
So, how has Jamal Brunt fared in implementing the VCU-style defense that Rhoades is know for?
Well, so far, not great.
There are glimpses, albeit few and far between, of what Brunt wants his defense to look like. These often occur in the early parts of games, while the team has fresh legs.
Let’s look at an example here against Texas A&M.
We start with Jameel Brown (#5) who is working his way over a series of two screens set by Texas A&M. Jameel correctly fights over the first one set by Leo O’Boyle’s man, and then correctly communicates a switch on the second screen set by Puff Johnson’s (#4) man. We will get back to Puff later.
Now it is D’Marco Dunn’s (#2) turn. Running over a similar set of screens set by the same two players, Dunn successfully navigates the trouble, aided by a proper show and recover by Jameel Brown.
I promised we would make it back to Puff, who, after twirling O’Boyle’s man directly out of bounds (don’t worry, it’s fine), executes a textbook defensive sequence. Good closeout. High hand to contest a potential shot. A strong chest of the drive without fouling, and a good shot contest on a fade-a-way ten footer.
Video with annotation of the sequence is provided here below:
Great. This is what our defense is supposed to look like.
However, if you have watched any Penn State basketball recently, you know that this defensive outcome is the exception rather than the norm. There are a number reasons for this, but we wanted to highlight two common culprits below.
The first being, simple over-extension of our man-to-man half-court defense. It is clear that the team is coached to guard their man tightly in order to provide additional ball pressure, disrupt passing lanes, and ultimately speed up, or turn the opponent over. However, Penn State can often get caught guarding too tightly, which leaves the team vulnerable to dribble penetration from opposing guards.
In this example, notice how Kanye Clary is left on an island as a result of all four other blue jerseys guarding within a foot of their man. Clary’s man notices this, drives & spins in the middle of the lane with no help defense, Clary falls over, two points A&M.
A second area where the Lions have been falling short is their high ball screen defense. It’s become a popular trend for recent opponents to seek out Wahab, or O’Boyle and involve them in some sort of ball screen action near the top of the key.
Both Wahab and O’Boyle struggle to cut off ball handlers as the defending guard fights over the screen.
This deficiency takes both Wahab/O’Boyle and the trailing guard out of the play, while leaving the backside help defender (in the video below it’s Kern) in no-man’s land having to defend either a lob dunk, or a corner three.
In the below example Kern chooses to hedge toward the potential lob dunk, and Bucknell knocks down the corner three to bring the game within one late in the 2nd half.
Can Brunt, Rhoades, and the Nittany Lions regroup, and turn around their defensive struggles in the weeks to come? BIG10 play awaits to provide an unforgiving test.