Tulsa World: OU Basketball Notebook (10-25-18)

[WichitaSooner]

That's just coach speak.

Both Calixte and Reynolds had way more impressive offensive numbers than they did defensive, or defensive reputation.

I know steals aren't the ONLY indicator of good defense, but last year James, not somebody that I'd consider a good defender, averaged more steals per game than either Calixte or Reynolds.

I'd challenge you to find one example of a current member of OU's staff falsely singling out a player for defensive praise. There have been times the staff and players have talked about committing to defense as a team, but I can't remember any examples of the coaches claiming that, for instance, TY or James was a great individual defender.

 

[AdaSooner]

I don't know if anyone is saying these guys are all failures yet. We just need a talent upgrade here. We just lost a PG that's doing well in the NBA so far that won't be easy to replace. And we weren't that good at the end of last season with him.

Nick, the “failure” portion of this discussion centered mainly around defense. I think this team may struggle on offense. But there is no reason they can’t be good on defense if they want it bad enough. Defense is more about a determined effort to get stops than anything else.

 

[OULad]

How about we watch some games before we make assumptions. Defense is more about effort and communication than anything else.

 

[WTSooner]

I'd challenge you to find one example of a current member of OU's staff falsely singling out a player for defensive praise. There have been times the staff and players have talked about committing to defense as a team, but I can't remember any examples of the coaches claiming that, for instance, TY or James was a great individual defender.

I don't care what anybody from the OU staff says about them as defenders. I have my own two eyes for that, so I don't have to try and sort through the coach speak. Do you think Lon always lays it all out there? You think he would single guys our as poor defenders individually? Of course not. Sometimes saying you think a kid is a good defender or could be a good defender is simply trying to convince the kid that he is. Or simply filling dead air time on a coach's show.

As for the new kids, there are plenty of takes on them as players from outside the OU camp. I'll trust them over what OU coaches are saying.

JMO. You can disagree.

 

[WTSooner]

Nick, the “failure” portion of this discussion centered mainly around defense. I think this team may struggle on offense. But there is no reason they can’t be good on defense if they want it bad enough. Defense is more about a determined effort to get stops than anything else.

I'm as big a proponent of "good defense is based on good effort" as anybody, but I just refuse to believe that last year's poor team defense was entirely based on poor effort. There is probably a long list of reasons why last year was so bad in that regards, and while SOME of them may be fixed this year, I'm not sure enough of them will be. We still have guys on this team that are going to be poor defenders at what we are asking them to do.

I expect the overall team D to be a little better than last year, but I also expect a pretty big fall off from the offense. Obviously those that vote on the pre-season polls agree with me. I think the ceiling for this team is getting lucky and being a bubble team that is probably one of the last handful of teams in. That's the ceiling. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[WichitaSooner]

I don't care what anybody from the OU staff says about them as defenders. I have my own two eyes for that, so I don't have to try and sort through the coach speak. Do you think Lon always lays it all out there? You think he would single guys our as poor defenders individually? Of course not. Sometimes saying you think a kid is a good defender or could be a good defender is simply trying to convince the kid that he is. Or simply filling dead air time on a coach's show.

As for the new kids, there are plenty of takes on them as players from outside the OU camp. I'll trust them over what OU coaches are saying.

JMO. You can disagree.

The only reason I emphasize what the staff says is because you referred to coach speak in your previous post. My point is that while I don't expect Lon to publicly call a kid a bad defender, I also don't recall him ever affirmatively calling a player a good defender when that is obviously not true. But I agree with you being free to form your own opinion. Obviously none of us will really know till we see them play against high major competition.