Before I get into the Florida game, I have a mea culpa. I discovered this weekend that I had made an error in entering the formulas for some of the calculations that appeared in previous DSS's. The error affected the amount of credit players got for forcing missed shots and I've posted correct tables at each of the last 3 DSS's. (USC, UGA, Ole Miss).
I've done a fair bit of exposition about the categories in the above entries, so this time I want to focus on the zone defense the Cats used during the second half of the game Saturday. Glenn wrote a bit about it a bit in his review of the game, but I was interested in how the zone compared to the man-for-man the Cats typically play.
In particular, I think the lasting impression for most Cat fans about that zone were the two offensive rebound put-backs the Parsons made when in fact the zone nearly completely shut down the Gators.
First a bit of preliminaries: When I re-watched the 2nd half to do the scoresheet I made sure to mark when the team switched to zone and when they switched back to man-for-man. This allowed me to break down the second half and the game into possessions where the Cats played zone and when they played man.
One caveat - there were three defensive possessions during the zone stretch where the Cats were not actually in a zone defense. Two of these occurred after backcourt turnovers (including the ball-off-the-leg-Walker-3) and the other was when Walker pushed the ball and ended up turning it over against Vargas and Lamb in transition. I have left these lumped in with the "zone" possessions because I had no efficient way to account for similar plays that happened during the "man" possessions. With that in mind:
Zone: 17 possessions
Man (2nd half): 16 possessions
Man (game): 48 possessions
As you can see, UK spent half of the second period and 25% of the game in zone. Let's start with how Florida scored against those defenses, listed as points per hundred possessions:
As you can see, the zone was incredibly effective at preventing points. The man defense in the second half was absolutely shredded and over the course of the game it was pretty bad.
Now here's a look at some defense attributes also listed as rates or percentages.
TOV%: Turnover % or the number of turnovers divided by possessions
FG%: Field goal percentage
FT Rate: Free throws attempted divided by field goal attempts
Stop %: the number of times UK prevented a score divided by possessions
2nd Chance Points per Miss Rate: the number of 2nd chance points scored by Florida divided by the number of missed shots
(click on the picture to see a bigger version)
- TOV% is about the same for each defense
- A MASSIVE difference in FG% between zone and man. In particular look at the difference between defenses in the second half
- A MASSIVE difference in FT Rate as we would expect from a zone. Notice that in the 2nd half, Florida shot more free throws than they attempted field goals against UK's man defense
- A MASSIVE difference in Stop %. UK was nearly 80% while in the zone which is just an unreal number.
- The last column is interesting. As I said above, the lasting image for most fans is likely to be the two big offensive rebounds they gave up. In the second half, against the man Florida only missed 2 shots, but one of them was rebounded and put back in for two points. Against the zone, Florida missed 12 shots and UK rebounded 10 of the misses.
I think the zone is worth exploring further. I know Cal loves man and he is a really, really good defensive coach. But the results against Florida are simply too good to ignore. It won't always be this effective of course, but if the other team is making a run this might just be the change up to throw at them to end it.
On to the tables:
| Kentucky | Shot Defense | Ball Handling | Calculations | |||||||||||||
| Name | Min | Def Rb | Blks | F.Miss | Def FGM | FT Miss | Def FTM | Stls | F.TO | Defl | Stops | DScPoss | DPoss | Stop% | %TmDPoss | Def Rtg |
| Eloy Vargas | 14 | 3 | 5 | 0.5 | 0.83 | 4.5 | 0.5 | 5.03 | 0.9 | 0.22 | 88.71 | |||||
| Jarod Polson | 1 | 1 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 0.26 | 1 | 0.16 | 90.48 | ||||||||
| Doron Lamb | 28 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1.83 | 5.0 | 0.5 | 5.49 | 0.92 | 0.12 | 96.86 | |||
| Brandon Knight | 36 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 0.5 | 7 | 2.33 | 7.2 | 3.7 | 10.9 | 0.66 | 0.19 | 101.28 | |||
| DeAndre Liggins | 27 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 | 2.2 | 0.5 | 2.69 | 0.81 | 0.06 | 103.59 | |||
| Terrence Jones | 38 | 6 | 2 | 3.5 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1.5 | 5.4 | 3.4 | 8.75 | 0.62 | 0.14 | 104.3 | ||
| Jon Hood | 3 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 107.69 | |||||||||
| TEAM | 40 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 3.4 | 5.0 | 8.44 | 0.41 | 0.13 | 110.54 | ||||||
| Josh Harrellson | 19 | 3 | 1 | 1.5 | 3.5 | 4 | 2 | 1.33 | 3.4 | 5.3 | 8.68 | 0.39 | 0.28 | 114.95 | ||
| Darius Miller | 34 | 1 | 4 | 11 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0.67 | 1 | 3.6 | 12.4 | 15.91 | 0.22 | 0.29 | 125.57 | |
| Tracked Totals | 200 | 30 | 23 | 4 | 18 | 9 | 1 | 35.0 | 31.1 | 66 | 0.53 | 0.2 | 106.71 | |||
| BoxScore | 200 | 26 | 5 | 30 | 23 | 4 | 18 | 6 | 9 | 33 | 32 | 65 | 0.51 | 0.2 | 107.69 | |
| Florida | Shot Defense | Ball Handling | Calculations | |||||||||||||
| Name | Min | Def Rb | Blks | F.Miss | Def FGM | FT Miss | Def FTM | Stls | F.TO | Defl | Stops | DScPoss | DPoss | Stop% | %TmDPoss | Def Rtg |
| Casey Prather | 3 | 1 | 0.63 | 0.0 | 0.63 | 1 | 0.13 | 91.09 | ||||||||
| Patric Young | 21 | 2 | 1 | 10 | 3.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6.84 | 4.0 | 10.79 | 0.63 | 0.32 | 96.94 | ||
| Will Yeguete | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.5 | 1.05 | 0.57 | 0.65 | 97.76 | |||||
| TEAM | 40 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 6.28 | 3.0 | 9.28 | 0.68 | 0.14 | 99.8 | |||||
| Alex Tyus | 20 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4.12 | 2.5 | 6.57 | 0.63 | 0.2 | 99.99 | |||
| Vernon Macklin | 27 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3.96 | 2.0 | 5.96 | 0.66 | 0.14 | 100.41 | |||||
| Chandler Parsons | 37 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 2.5 | 2 | 4.05 | 3.4 | 7.45 | 0.54 | 0.12 | 104.05 | ||||
| Scottie Wilbekin | 16 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1.5 | 2.13 | 3.0 | 5.13 | 0.42 | 0.2 | 109.28 | |||||
| Kenny Boynton | 33 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.64 | 3.9 | 5.54 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 109.77 | ||
| Erving Walker | 31 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3.88 | 5.8 | 9.68 | 0.4 | 0.19 | 109.77 | ||
| Erik Murphy | 11 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1.07 | 2.0 | 3.07 | 0.35 | 0.17 | 111.21 | ||||||
| Tracked Totals | 200 | 28 | 25 | 2 | 11 | 11 | 3 | 35.2 | 30.0 | 65 | 0.54 | 0.2 | 103.86 | |||
| BoxScore | 200 | 25 | 5 | 29 | 25 | 2 | 11 | 6 | 11 | 34 | 31 | 65 | 0.52 | 0.2 | 104.62 | |
- Vargas had another really good defensive game. He was very active in the zone and took rebounds away from Florida players on a couple of occasions. He also had a play when UK turned the ball over in the backcourt after a Florida miss where he quickly got on Macklin and forced a difficult shot that Macklin missed.
- Just a brutal game for Darius. Most of the damage was done by Tyus and Parsons and there is very little to soften that assessment. I will say that while in the zone Miller played the back line but frequently jumped out to the perimeter to guard the ball until Lamb was able to recover. These plays occured while Florida was swinging the ball around trying to get the defense moving and Miller prevented Florida from getting any open looks on his side of the court. It doesn't show up here, but it was good defense.
- Jones did not get as many misses as he has the previous three games. I don't remember any particular reason for this, but I didn't get the sense that he had to defend on the perimeter as much as usual which might have something to do with it.
- Patrick Young played very good defense for the Gators that is likely to be overlooked by anyone who only looks at the box score. He only had 1 block and no steals, but his 10 forced misses were certainly big - I think most of those came guarding Jones.
- One thing Florida did defensively was stay on the perimeter. I don't remember them collapsing much when UK would drive to the basket, particularly when it was Jones. I think this was a big reason why UK only had 12 3pt attempts despite shooting the ball really well from deep (7/12 for the game) - there were very few opportunities to drive and kick out.
- Only 1 deflection for UK seems too low to be correct, it was a kicked ball by Miller during the second half.