The high trap is one of the most counter intuitive plays, but it works. The ball handler has so few options when he's put in that spot near midcourt, and what options he does have are usually pretty terrible. For teams that run a lot of screens it practically turns their offense into a liability. The attacking nature of the defense is really incredible to watch. You've heard of "no easy buckets", these guys take it all the way up to "no easy passes". They're all over the place and each player can guard almost all 5 positions above average. It's a nightmare for even the most finely tuned offenses, and it's downright unfair against inexperienced teams. I would've killed to be in your place. I feel like Sampson's coaching is the best blueprint for winning amateur basketball perhaps ever.
Not really. They ran a lot of slip screens where the screener actually didn't commit but instead sagged off. This is a common strategy to mitigate the pressure from the blitzers. You bait the blitz and have a very easy outlet if it works. Usually our guys do a good job of reading it and knowing when to commit vs. not. Credit to Miami, they were a top notch offense and made the right reads and passes when it mattered. But the real problem was Miami shot something ridiculous like 55% in the first 30 minutes and we played very sloppy on offense, lots of turnovers. If your opponent is struggling to put the ball in the hoop you can survive that, but Miami was on fire. It doubly hurts when your opponent is hitting at a clip that high because it negates our other biggest advantage which is rebounding. That's the tournament for you, though. Any given day you can face a team that just can't miss and you're out.
Exactly right. When a team shoots like that, there isn't much you can do. Those are ridiculous shooting percentages. I say that frequently about UH's matchups against Baylor in the Final Four and Miami last year. If a team gets hot like that, look out.
My impression was that on top of hot shooting, Miami used some of the Coogs defensive tactics against them like aggressive trapping
In a way, yes. But it wasn't like they played terrible defense. The story of that game was a combination of Miami's hot shooting and Houston's turnovers (which Miami got plenty of fast break points off of). It is quite rare to beat a team that shoots 50%+ from the field. In fact the only time we've beat a team that shot over 50% in the last 5 years was Oklahoma a couple weeks ago and that was a total squeaker.
I'm not even going to try and work this afternoon packing it in going to sit in front of the TV. The game versus TCU earlier this year was the only game I missed in the Big 12 for UH.
As ferocious as our defense has looked, you can bet KS is gonna ream em a new one at the half about allowing those offense rebounds, as well as the turnovers.
UH hasn’t played great basketball at all…in fact, not good. Still up 12 because defense is just absurd
