Defense, Stan and our ability to win the title

[dan]

I was a rather infrequent poster at the old site - I thought I'd jump in as this community seems to be getting bogged down by a few posters with #hottakes on Miller. I thought we could broaden the discussion a bit to larger topics.

Defense!

The "eye test" indicates we're not quite the same as last year after losing Nick Johnson and AG. Seems reasonable as they were both elite defenders nationally who bought in from day one and lead us. If you haven't already, check out this awesome work from Luke Winn on the greatest defenses in the modern era of CBB:

http://www.si.com/college-basketball/20 ... ick-pitino

2. Arizona 2013-14

SOS-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency: 0.885 PPP
PPP under national offensive average: 0.158

Wildcats coach Sean Miller took the Pack‑Line defense from his father, John, a high school coach in Western Pennsylvania, who took it from Dick Bennett, who had devised it at Wisconsin-Green Bay in the early ’90s as a way for lesser athletes to neutralize penetrating, high-octane- offenses. The principles: Sprint back to stop transition, pack everyone but the on-ball defender inside the three-point line, position off-ball defenders to clog driving lanes, force one contested jumper, then grab the rebound. Miller used that formula with elite athletes -- led by 6-9 freshman forward Aaron Gordon and 6-3 ball-hawking guard Nick Johnson -- and forged the best Pack-Line team of all time.

Good validation of what a lot of us saw last year - probably the best team in the country with one fatal flaw: we couldn't get a bucket when we needed one in crunch time. Offensively we were "OK" but missing someone with elite offensive skill**.

Now, for this year - we're at .882 PPP, or .131 under the national average - still pretty damn tremendous!

Virginia this year reminds me a lot of us last year. Excellent defensively, disciplined offensively - but I don't think they're anywhere near the '14 Cats' athleticism. Justin Anderson is "the guy" and he's a better shooter than Nick was but a lot less dynamic offensively.

So...

1. Is Stan "the guy" this year? Is he the missing piece? We have lost a lot of our close games this year, where we won them last year. That flies in the face of everything above.

2. Miller (and most fans) go back to defense to blame for each of our losses (strangely against bad offensive teams). Is defensive consistency the main issue rather than overall efficiency? Miller talks "kills" or 4 stops in a row. Seems like we did this against good offensive teams (Stanford, Utah, Gonzaga) but didn't do it against ASU for example. Is this lack of focus this team's biggest flaw?


** - In a single elimination tournament with a slow pace of play (modern CBB), results are often indicative of variance in a single game rather than a coach's ability, program direction, etc. See every Miller thread ever.