The question isn’t whether to start our third string center to avoid Cliff getting in foul trouble, but whether to employ the “no doubling” strategy we employed last year against Edey and Trevion Williams.
The rationale for this strategy is to “allow” Purdue to score 2s while guarding the perimeter and not allowing them to “go off” from 3-Pt range. It worked pretty well last year in the game at the RAC, as Edey/Williams scored 34 of Purdue’s 68 points but the Boilermakers only shot 7-26 from 3-Pt range.
But Purdue is only shooting about 30 percent from deep this year, and Edey is absolutely dominating their offense. So perhaps we mix up the strategy a bit.
The first thing is utilizing a full court press from time to time, and even when not full court pressing, utilizing a 3/4 court press just to burn 10-12 seconds and delay their half court sets.
The second thing is to guard their ballhandlers up tight to make it more difficult to make entry passes to the post. Combined with this, I’d like to see Cliff FRONT Edey. With our tight perimeter on-ball defense and Cliff fronting Edey, it will be difficult for Purdue to make lob passes to him.
But if Edey gets the ball on the block with Cliff behind him, to double or not to double?
Last year at the RAC, we almost exclusively did NOT double. I think this year, at Mackey (where you’d think Purdue could get more comfortable shooting from deep), we should continue this strategy, but with how much Edey dominates, I think we need to mix it up.
Our guards are very good at sagging and digging down without fouling, but our rotations will need to be quick and aggressive so that we don’t give too many open threes.
So, what say you?