First let me say that I am not down on Frank or the team. Could you address these questions?
1. Do you see a correllation between getting abused off the dribble (which creates points in the paint, kickouts for open 3s, FTR for the other team, and foul trouble for us) and us getting beat ?
2. Why would changing approaches constantly throughout the game to keep a Royce White off balance be a bad thing?
3. Frank says he doesn't like teams to feel comfortable, so when teams find something as basic as a one on one missmatch, why would we let them get comfortable exploiting it endlessly?
I love Frank and would be happy with him if he never changed, but I don't think you can point to very many championship coaches that when faced with a situation where they were overmatched partially or totally took the attitude of eff it, this is what we do, it's never worked before, but today we are going to play even harder and execute even better.
1. Yes. When we don't get teams sped up and create turnovers or tough shots, we get beat more often than not. Last night's first half compared to the second half would be a good example, though we never really turned ISU over much in either half. The first half we made it tough enough that ISU had less than 1.0 points per possession, you are going to win most games doing that. But in the 2nd they had nearly 1.4, you aren't going to wins those. A lot of that was do to the difference in perimeter defense from half to half.
2. It wouldn't, but this is something Frank will have to learn or adjust in his philosophy. He really doesn't run different styles of man, right now his only change up is going zone once in a while. Even a guy like Self has shown he'll change up more than most, like going triangle and 2 agaisnt us in the past couple of years. But that's probably something that took him time to get to, and of course he has really good players. But yeah, Frank is probably going to have to add another change up to his pressure man philosophy and I don't think he's gotten there yet.
3. Yeah. I think he was afraid of his usual change up (zone) because of ISU's shooters. And like I said, besides minor tweaks of where we force the ball or let people catch the ball there isn't much we can do in our man defense. I suppose Frank having us pick up White at half court was a tweak too for the bigs. But I would've certainly done something different, especially in the last possession. If you are playing for OT (which Frank obviously was without the foul) you have to change. Once White when to half court to hold the ball, I probably would've gone zone so you could double him and not let him drive for example. Or stay man, and send a double team from whoever was guarding ISU's worse offense threat on the floor. Frank took a shot staying with his gameplan for the game and as it did often in the 2nd half it didn't work.
