Florida basketball had a practice open to the media this past week, as well as an opportunity to open up coach Todd Golden to questioning. One particular answer was noticeably interesting, after Golden was asked about what statistical improvements need to be made on defense in order to make a jump. Here is what he had to say:
“Yeah, I think the main things, you know, that we’re going to be thinking about a lot is, like, kind of like a big-picture wise, two-point field-goal percentage, like, we’ve got to be a better rim protecting team. Part of that is protecting the rim better, but also making sure that they don’t get as many rim shots, so that’s one area that we really need to get better at. I think our ball-screen defense needs to be a lot better. And then lastly, we got to be better at defending without fouling. I think those three areas, if we can make, like, a marked improvement in those, like, we’ll do what we need to do. We guarded the three pretty well last year, our transition defense is pretty good, but I think those other three areas will really determine how big of a jump we really do make.”
If someone is going to ask an analytic question and Golden gives an analytical answer, we are more than happy here at Gator Country to break it down further and show some more numbers behind the situation. In the next week, we’re going to break down a different part of this quote, and see what the Gators can do in order to improve their defense from one that finished 94th in KenPom’s adjusted defensive metric a year ago.
If you missed it, in the first two articles of the series we wrote about Golden’s comments regarding rim protection and his comments about defending without fouling.
In this instalment we’ll talk about the third element Golden talked about–ball screen defense.
The pick and roll has taken over basketball at just about every level of the sport, and its usage in college basketball continues to climb every single year to the point where last season 27% of all shots taken came out of pick and roll. For that reason–having a solid pick and roll defense is more important than ever. Preparing for opponents in the preseason can be difficult because you don’t know what different actions they’re going to run away from the ball or on baseline out of bounds, but one certainty is that they are going to use the pick and roll a lot and that’s why it’s the focus of many teams at this point of the calendar.
Golden’s comments about Florida’s pick and roll defense are quite interesting when you go back and look at the numbers. When Golden commented about Florida’s rim protection, it immediately made sense as the numbers were clearly not very good in that area. When he commented on Florida’s fouling, it also made a lot of sense because Florida’s fouling numbers were glaring.
However, things aren’t quite as clear when it comes to Florida’s pick and roll defense.
For starters–the raw efficiency numbers. According to Synergy, Florida was in the 74th percentile nationally in pick and roll defense last season. That number is actually really good, and it also sticks out because, well–Florida wasn’t very good in many defensive categories, so their pick and roll defense jumps out as the element of defense the team might have even done the best.
While the Gators were seemingly finding their way in a number of defensive areas even going into the final weeks of the season their pick and roll defense was actually well-established with the team comfortable in executing the scheme, adding to its strength amidst an overall defense structure that was nowhere near as solid. A big reason why is Florida’s philosophy on sticking generally to one pick and roll coverage–referred to as “drop.”
Drop pick and roll coverage is a pick and roll defense that was popularized in the NBA in the early 2010’s due to analytics entering the game and coaches adjusting to new information. Generally, the drop is executed by having the screener’s defender “drop” below the level of the ball in order to take away any straight line drives from the ball handler. The ball handler’s defender will then chase the ball handler overtop of the screen, not allowing him to take a pull-up jumper. He will then work to fight his way back in front of the ball, while the screener’s defender takes away the straight line drive while also backpedalling to the point that the roll man doesn’t get behind him for an easy lob.
The real key to this defense is the fact that the three defenders not in the action can stay at home and not sink into the paint to help–and this is why coaches like Golden love to play it. Golden is someone who wants to limit three-point attempts and this coverage does that in two ways–by not allowing the ball handler to sit behind the screen and shoot, and by not allowing kick out catch and shoot threes due to help defenders sinking into the paint. Florida was extremely successful at taking away threes ranking 36th in the country in this area, and the drop pick and roll coverage was a big reason why.
This coverage forces ball handlers to make plays in the mid-range, and oftentimes Florida would play this coverage daring opposing ball handlers to take as many shots as they wanted in this area. In many of Florida’s best games–opponents got many of their points as pick and roll ball handlers which may have looked like a success for their pick and roll attack, but was really Florida’s strategy all along. For example, the Gators allowed 22 points from pick and roll ball handlers against Texas A&M, a number that might look terrible–but the Gators won that game because they didn’t allow catch and shoot threes to be generated from the pick and roll, and they were content to give up points in the midrange.
You can also tell Florida’s pick and roll defense was solid by the way that Auburn (in the SEC Championship game) and Colorado (in the NCAA Tournament game) went away from pick and roll entirely against the Gators. As mentioned earlier, most teams take 27% of their shots out of pick and roll, and Colorado and Auburn are no different. However, both ended up using just 15% and 18% of their shots in the pick and roll against Florida, instead choosing to go to post ups, transition, and ball reversals to attack the Gators. Of course–both Colorado and Auburn had great success scoring, so their strategy worked. This points to Florida being relatively solid in pick and roll defense but not so strong in other defensive elements of the game, which makes Golden’s comments about improving the pick and roll defense interesting.
You could take this a number of ways. Even though the Gators were good in pick and roll defense–they weren’t great. With the pick and roll being so important and such a massive part of the game, this is an area where you can’t just settle for being good, and the staff could be striving for much better. This is a coaching staff that wants their team to be not just good but great defensively and if you’re going to be great defensively in 2024 you need to be a top pick and roll defense. Improving Florida’s pick and roll defense could also mean adding some different coverages. Most teams that are great at guarding the pick and roll have more than one way of guarding it, and the Gators would likely have some more success if they were able to add a second coverage–particularly one that was much more aggressive. Drop is a conservative coverage that isn’t particularly disruptive, and when you look at the best pick and roll defenses in college basketball most of them are schemes that are extremely aggressive, blowing up the action entirely instead of living with certain shots.
Of course, this is also a very different Florida team than last year–and Golden’s comments about improving pick and roll defense could have more to do with how things are going in practice than a comment about moving from last year to this year. Zyon Pullin was a very good pick and roll defender, and he has graduated–putting Walter Clayton in a lot more of these actions defensively. There is also the addition of Rueben Chinyelu, who was not a good pick and roll defender at Washington due to his limited east-west dexterity. With his physical gifts there is a lot of potential in this area–but as a freshman this was an area where he struggled, as many freshman bigs would.
The answer is likely some combination of wanting to go from good to great year to year in pick and roll defense and seeing some things in practice with the new personnel that suggests the team needs to get a lot better in this area. Considering the other comments Golden made had glaring numbers to back it up, his pick and roll defense comments are the most interesting and something to keep an eye on as we start to hear about scrimmages and ultimately get into the 2024-25 season. With the pick and roll at the center of college basketball, you can never talk about guarding it enough.