The Lost Art in College Basketball: Breaking Down the Press Defense
One thing that continues to shock me in the college basketball world is the lack of press defense. You have your staples – ones we’ll take a look at and breakdown here – in West Virginia, Louisville, Texas and Florida when Billy Donovan was around. But overall teams shy away from pressing.
There’s no real reason as to why there’s not a constant press. Teams that have a ton of athleticism, especially if they are playing small ball or have a guy that plays center similar to a Willie Cauley-Stein, you should be in a press defense on every deadball.
In college basketball there are usually guys that are still shaky handling the ball. When you get rid of guys like Monte Morris, Lonzo Ball and Jawun Evans there’s a massive drop off to guys who are comfortable breaking the press. The full court defense isn’t necessarily designed to force a turnover each play, but rather speed up the offense to where they are comfortable. Hell, take a look at where the teams we’ll take a look at finished in KenPom’s AdjD last season. Louisville was 2nd in the country, WVU was 6th and Texas was 40th. All three teams who run a pressing defense finished in the top-11 percent in the country for defensive performance.
Let’s start with the team that most people think of when it comes to the full court defense. Shit, they’re called Press Virginia for a reason and it’s something that Bobby Huggins prides himself on. We’ll look at a play where the turnover happens after the press, which goes back to what I said about speeding the offense up and getting them uncomfortable.
The set up of this press is pretty common. It’s man-to-man across the board, with a guy on the ball. The guy on the ball is one of the longer players on the team, making the entry pass just a little bit tougher. Jevon Carter – who is guarding the ball handler – does what he’s supposed to by forcing him to the sideline before the ball is inbounded. He ends up getting burnt, letting his guy come back across the lane for the ball. Once the ball is entered, the inbounder, takes off down the middle of the lane. That allows Nathan Adrian to come back to trap the ball handler and start the process of getting Baylor uncomfortable. While Adrian traps Daxter Miles runs up and plays a safety of sort, trying to read the pass. His goal is to intercept the first pass or allow the lob to the backside with enough time for him to recover. Baylor now has to run its offense through one of its bigs trying to dribble from the top of the key. Turnover.
This is what West Virginia relies on. They aren’t a great offensive team and need turnovers to get easy buckets. They are one of the more aggressive pressing teams, with the offense never knowing exactly where the trap is going to come or when. This is one of the more basic traps, but what makes it tough is the ability for the guard like Miles to rotate correctly. He’s daring you to make what looks like an easy pass for him to jump the lane and then have a 3v2 the other way.
While WVU is sort of the staple of the press defense – running it 36.5% of the time during the regular season in 2015-16, Louisville and Rick Pitino may have made it famous. The Cards ran the press defense over 27% of the time last year and graded out as ‘very good’ giving up just .731 points per possession per Synergy.
Take a look at Louisville’s press against Virginia here. We saw WVU run with a man on the ball and true man-to-man principals before the trap. Louisville on the other hand runs a sort of matchup zone, with no one the ball. What’s a little interesting here is Virginia’s decision to have London Perrantes inbounding the ball. He’s their point guard and by far best option handling the ball.
Louisville starts their press with the man who is guarding LP cutting off the first cut to the ball. That forces that cut to go opposite of the inbounds, while he then turns into a safety and eventually putting pressure on the inbounder. Behind him the two Louisville bigs each take a side and scramble to pick up someone. Once the ball is inbounded to a big and immediately passed back to Perrantes, Louisville doesn’t trap. Instead the other four guys backtrack into their halfcourt defense while David Levitch pressures Perrantes bringing up the ball. The Cardinals drop into a 1-3-1 matchup, where again there’s no trap, but a ton of pressure. The only time there is a double is when Shayok takes the ball to the baseline and you can trap him in the corner there. This is where the turnover happens.
A team I do expect to see a jump in press defense this year? Texas. It’s the second year under Shaka Smart and he has all the tools in place to run a successful Havoc defense. The main key here for him is having Jarrett Allen instead of Cam Ridley as Allen is a million times more athletic. The Longhorns only ran press defense for 17% of the season last year and graded out as excellent. What’s even more impressive is their press defense held teams to 35% shooting and a 22.6% turnover percentage. That’s an incredibly high number of turnovers to force, which is why it makes sense to expect more of this defense from Texas.
Here, with Ridley out of the game, we see more of what to expect from Texas.
Like West Virginia, they put one of their bigs on the ball. However, everyone behind him is more like Louisville where they are a couple steps away from their man, ready to switch if there’s a cross. Texas does what they want by forcing the ball to go across the lane to a secondary ball handler. Immediately Texas traps, as the guy who is 1 pass away tries to front his man. The guy on the backside cheats up like we saw Daxter Miles to where he’s in the lane, ready to trap on the short pass back to the inbounder. Once Baylor takes a couple dribbles, the trap stays and the helpside defense switches. The guy who was 1 pass away is now stepping up to be a free safety, the guy who was 2 passes away rotates to take away the easy pass back to the inbounder to switch sides. What happens is rather predictable. Baylor attempts to switch sides by throwing across the court – what every defense wants you to do. The free safety reads the play, gets the steal and Texas has an open three. This is Havoc at its finest and something Shaka will want to run more of this year.