I am stunned that played any organized ball. You are completely wrong. Completely different defensive systems were implemented before last season. To explain in a simple way for you, remember the ole BC 1-3-1 where he utilized the PG at the low three? Well, absent an NBA all star PG playing among college kids, that D would never work long run. It’s a gimmicky D good for a brief runs.
The primary D last year allowed man with absolute switch and a double on the first pass into a certain radius of the basketball with rotation into the lanes. Works best when other O stands around or floats to predictable places. Les effective when the others cut and the trapped player has decent vision and pass skills.
But it’s fun chatting w you ppd - your bravado coupled with silly insults make me giggle.
TLDR - a coach made last year’s D effective and different. Now which coach do you credit?
Flat out no. It was an extremely similar concept to previous years under Collins. He’s a man first coach preference wise but didn’t always have the players to run it (in his opinion at NU). He’s out of the Knight tree (by 2 degrees) who was famously not a fan of zone.
The two biggest differences were a good defensive post presence in MN and an elite defender in Audige being healthy. Having an anchor down low, who could hold his position unlike Nance, and could provide excellent help D unlike Young, drastically opened things up for the guards to be more aggressive in passing lanes and on ball defense within NU’s system.
Then add your second best player, who’s a borderline NBA player and arguably best perimeter in the nation, being completely bought into defense and you have a strong culture setter. Audige wasn’t a stopper in NU’s system do to the amount of switching, but ball handlers better keep a tight grip on the ball and double check passing lanes when he is on the court. Audige was long for his size and incredibly quick. He read the defensive end of the court very well. He covered up a lot lapses from his teammates with his quickness and prevented some with his communication on D.
Those were easily the two biggest changes. When Pardon was the 5 and you had Lindsey, Law, and Lumpkin switching the 2-4, you saw a similar D conceptually. There’s some small differences due to strengths of players. Ex. Height of Beran and Nicholson on post doubles vs core strength and quick hops of Pardon allowing him to anchor with Lumpkin defensive iq allowing him to double just the right times but not always.
What Lowry added is a defense first coach who is strong at teaching fundamentals. This helps build the culture and buy in and can help really raise the floor of each player defensively due to strong fundamentals. You hear it from the players singing his praises. He teaches positioning and placement extremely well. Scheme hasn’t changed that much. Just because it’s working doesn’t mean the scheme changed. It can just flat out be executing better and having the players to run it effectively.
As far point two goes…. This D is set up to make it extremely difficult to score inside. Makes sense and the closer you are to the basket the easier it should be to score. If you switch well and are timely with it then the only open looks you should be getting consistently off this defense are 3’s off of difficult cross court passes. The D was not run well against Illinois.
The loss against Illinois was frankly a breakdown of the whole team and Illinois being red hot. Blame to everyone imo. You aren’t going to stop a team that got that hot that early but when you get punched in the mouth like that you gotta hit back to have a chance. NU did not hit back and got hammered. They needed to hit back hard and just hold on until Illinois cooled off instead of letting the game snowball out of control. I don’t think any amount of tactics or rotation gimmicks would have changed this game. Players didn’t show up and that’s on them. It’s on the coaches for not getting the players ready to play hard against a top ten opponent. Blame all around.
