hawkeyepierce wrote:With all due respect, I will once again try to explain this phenomenon called "face-guarding" and the difference in straight Man-to-Man defense.
First, straight Man-to-Man is a on ball pressure, (that is whoever has the ball faces constant pressure), help defense. Now, the other four defensive players act accordingly to where the ball is in relationship to their man. If the ball is to one side of the court, not at the mid-line (an invisible line through the middle of the court from basket to basket), there is ON BALL pressure by the defender who guarding the offensive player with the ball, defenders that are ONE PASS away are in deny defense, that is the defender is trying to deny the pass coming back to their man. A defender who might be more than one pass away should be at the MID-LINE IN HELP defense. Again, that depends on the defender relationship to the ball and the man in which they are guarding. Now, nobody does this better than Denton Guthrie's Alexander team. I know that, but lets not be confuse with the following defense.
Coach Guthrie also runs a sagging Man-to-Man defense against better players that they may face. In the late 80's it was called the Micheal Jordan tactic. It is as follows. Against a great player a SAGGING MAN-TO-MAN defense allows a teams BEST DEFENDER to COMPLETELY DENY the star player the ball and limit their offensive touches, THIS IS CALLED FACE-GUARDING. Face-guarding because the defender is looking at the player NO MATTER WHERE THE BALL IS, THEY ARE NOT IN HELP DEFENSE, THEIR JOB IS NOT TO ALLOW THE OTHER TEAM "STAR" TO GET THE BALL. The other four defenders play off their man, SAGGING, to keep them in front of them, because there may be no help defense if they were to get beat off the dribble. If their player pull up for a shot, the defender aggressively close out (contesting a shot with a hand up) and box out. This defense is akin to a Box-and-one. The point of this defense is not to let "Micheal Jordan" beat you.
However, a true Box-and-One is a ZONE defense with one defender (usually the best defender) FACE-GUARDING the other team's star player. The other four play a two-two zone, two players at the elbows of the key and two players on each block guarding areas on the floor, ZONE defense. This defense is usually employed by teams that might not be as athletic as their opponent and/or because they are bigger than their opponent.
These are the kind of defenses that Tori Dixon has faced all year. Whether it was a face-guarding Man-to-Man or a true Box-and-One, she has not been played straight up on. And as I have said before, we could argue whether not that these kind of defenses is called a "junk" defenses, some coaches call it "junk" and there are some who do not. However, do not miss the point that there different subtleties that might go unnoticed doing the course of a game.
Wow HP- does Bob "Knight" Grillo know that you stole his defensive philosophy book?
