Kentucky hopes to keep the good times going tonight when it plays at LSU. (Jeff Houchin/Nolan Media)
LSU has one of the better defenses in the Southeastern Conference when it comes to allowing points, a stat that should be tested tonight when the Tigers host Kentucky — the highest scoring team in the league. However, Kentucky assistant coach Chin Coleman certainly did not sound overly impressed with LSU’s defense Monday that he says relies on trying to confuse opponents.
“They play a bunch of different defenses,” he said. “They play for steals (and) a lot of tips and deflections,
“It kind of stunned a lot of teams, and stumps you a little bit in terms of your flow. But we’re not afraid of that. That’s not going to stop us from playing at our pace and doing what we do.”
Kentucky wants to play fast and that won’t change tonight.
“We’re going to attack. As soon as we get off the bus, we’re in attack mode,” Coleman said.
Coleman didn’t give the standard coaching line about how good the LSU defense was. Instead, he said it was “questionable” whether the “junk” defenses LSU uses to confuse opponents were a sign of weakness or strength.
“We’ll see. A lot of teams, they like to junk it up. It’s questionable how good they really are defensively,” Coleman said.
Just guessing that might provide a little motivation for the LSU defense tonight … but Coleman didn’t seem to care.
“That’s why they play so much junk stuff,” Coleman said. “They don’t really guard effectively.
“But it’s been working for them. We’ll see how it affects us. We’re not going to allow it to affect us.”
3 Responses
LSU has the stingiest defense in the SEC, and UK’s is 5th best. LSU has allowed its opponents to score at an adjusted rate of 0.76 points per possession while UK has an adjusted defensive efficiency of 0.88 ppp, which is a sound defensive efficiency.
While LSU has an advantage on the defensive side of things, UK has the advantage on offense with an adjusted offensive efficiency of 1.16 ppp, which is second-best in the SEC while LSU’s offense has been 1.07 ppp, which is only 7th best in the SEC so far this season.
With the game at their place, this one figures to be close but a slight edge to LSU based primarily on the venue.
However, there is another factor that is relevant. As we all know, UK’s game performance has been surging over the last 4 games, and UK is clearly improving its game rapidly. However, LSU started this season like a world-beater, but their game performances have been consistently falling. These trends, if these trends continue tonight, signaling a huge UK road win.
I think LSU understands their slippage vs UK’s surge, and they will do everything they can to bolster their home-court advantage, including honoring Dale Brown and probably that dang Tiger falling to the floor from the sky.
Buckle up, and let’s hope the Cats can continue their very strong gameplay and get out of Baton Rouge with a huge SEC road win.
I believe Coleman’s statements are right on point. When I coached high school I used to use a lot of junk defenses for two reasons. One, because I coached a small school other teams I played usually had better players than I did and two, if your opponent sees a man-to-man defense 90% of the time and/or is somewhat inexperienced it can take the opponents offense awhile to decide what defense is being played & how they should attack it. But if the offensive team is talented & mostly veterans – like Wheeler, Grady, Brooks, Mintz and Tshiewbe are it is easier for those type experienced players to figure out how to attack it in the 35 seconds they have before the shot clock expires.
If Wheeler looks for his shot first, it could be a long night. If he will be active defensively and penetrate looking to pass, we will be ok.