duncan robinson

[Ed-Ace: Bumped for some great film analysis that backs up a statistical trend we've picked up on recently. Added a couple notes and the pretty photo.]

Has Luke Yaklich devised a defense that makes Duncan Robinson effective? [Campredon]

On the podcast this week, Brian and Ace talked about how Duncan has improved his on ball defense from 23rd percentile to “almost” average (no numbers given but I assume somewhere in the 40th percentile). [Ed-Ace: He's since dropped just below that mark to 37th, but he's in the 63rd precentile as a post defender, which you will see is quite relevant.]

One explanation mentioned is that he seems to be defending the post more frequently than last year relative to defending the perimeter.  [Ed-Ace; 17.9% of his defensive possessions are on post-ups in 2017-18 compared to 5.5% last season.]  This is obviously something Michigan would want since he’s much more capable of using his length to make shots tough in the post rather than trying to guard the perimeter. 

If we have a hard time getting Moe Wagner good inside opportunities when he has 6’3 guys on him, surely Duncan can hold his own on non-centers in the post, especially since very few guys are good at posting up in modern basketball.  Unless you’re Nick Ward or Isaac Haas or Caleb Wesson, being asked to post up is like a home run hitter being asked to bunt.  It’s just not going to go well at an acceptable rate.

The challenge is that when you have a weakness on defense, offenses can usually leverage that weakness.  An opponent that doesn’t want to post up, but wants to take a guy on the perimeter should surely be able to put that guy in a position to need to defend the perimeter, right?

I noticed in the Wisconsin game that we’re countering this with what I’m referring to as the “The Duncan Rules.”  In certain instances we are applying a switching scheme on the weak side that essentially amounts to running a two-man zone that keeps Duncan in the paint.  And as far as I can tell (don’t have time to watch too much film on this), I’ve only seen it applied when Duncan, specifically, is defending a guy on the block on the weak side, with another offensive player on the weakside wing, and it's usually when a ball screen is being run on the other side of the court. I’ve picture paged three such instances.

[Hit THE JUMP for picture pages and some more notes on the defense.]