Is The Full Court Press A Good Option For The Gators?

A full court pressing style of defense hasn’t been a part of Florida basketball recently but that’s something that looks to be changing in the 2020-21 season.

“Playing fast is really in my DNA. It’s what I want to do. It’s what our guys want to do. I know it’s what our fans want to see as well…I feel like, for the first time in a while, we’ll have a high level of speed, quickness, and athleticism from our whole roster, and I think we’ll be very deep. We look forward to playing fast, pressing, and just playing to our strengths.”

That was head coach Mike White at his most recent press conference, and after mentioning a pressing style of defense early in the conversation he was sure to circle back and elaborate.

“I’m convicted to press more. We’re going to do that, especially early on and evaluate from there. But from the first workout we’re going to start, as a team at least, we’re going to go in with the mindset that this is going to be a pressing team…”

When White was hired at Florida he was known for pressing a lot at his previous job at Louisiana Tech. In early press conferences he affirmed that he would be taking the pressing style to Gainesville, but early on in his tenure the strategy was largely abandoned.

The story of a coach pressing heavily in a mid-major conference before getting a high major job and trying the same style before quickly abandoning it is not a new one. Shaka Smart was known for his “havoc” defense at VCU and after getting a promotion to the Texas job it was just a matter of weeks into the season before he realized the style wasn’t going to work for the Longhorns. His former assistant who took over his job, Will Wade, kept the tradition of pressing heavily alive at VCU to then mostly abandon it when he went to LSU. Brad Brownell was grinding teams into the dust with his pressure defense at Stephen F. Austin, something you wouldn’t know whatsoever based on the absolute pivot he made at Illinois when he realized pressing wasn’t going to be viable for him in the Big Ten. Andy Enfield (the “Dunk City” Florida Gulf Coast teams before going to USC) had a similar realization.

I could keep going, but I think you get the point–pressing is not easy to do and all kinds of coaches have had extreme difficulty translating their pressing defense from the mid-major to high major ranks and Coach White’s situation isn’t all that different from a lot of his peers.

However, different from his peers is the fact that he looks poised to go back to pressing. All the coaches mentioned in that past paragraph stopped pressing and never looked back (with the exception of Will Wade who started to press a bit at the end of last season out of absolute desperation, LSU was 179th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency and one of the worst high major teams on that end) but White is ready to give it another shot.

That begs the question…is that a good idea?

Clearly pressing at the high major level hasn’t worked for a handful of coaches who were literally known for being some of the best pressing coaches in the country. When you look at the best college basketball teams of recent history there aren’t many known for a pressing style and if you tuned into the Elite Eight and Final Fours over the last few years you didn’t see teams picking up 94 feet.

For that reason it’s probably fair to have a bit of skepticism regarding whether making the press a key part of Florida’s defense is a viable option.

To find out if we should really expect the Gators to press a lot, and to see if that would be a sound decision, I decided to look at the pressing defensive numbers of every high major basketball team last season. If high major teams that pressed a bunch got shellacked on those possessions versus their regular half court defense, that would give some indication of the viability of that strategy. If they excelled on those possessions, there could be some hope for the Gators in their journey for pressing bliss.

For starters, it should be pointed out that in college basketball teams pressed on an average of 8% of possessions. That tells us that pressing is not a super common strategy in the modern game, something that could already give some pause when it comes to thinking about the feasibility of the strategy. If it was working for a lot of teams, you’d likely see that average be higher than 8%, the equivalent of a team pressing for around 90 seconds of game clock in a 40-minute contest. But let’s go on.

Let’s look at how many high major teams choose to use the press as a key part of their defensive scheme. While that 8% of possession number is rather low, it is the national average so we’ll use it as a benchmark. If teams play more than 8% of possessions pressing than they press more than the average team so we’ll call it a key part of their defense.

A total of 23 high major teams (out of 75) pressed over 8% of possessions. So, already you’re seeing that pressing isn’t particularly popular in the big leagues and 52 coaches have looked at their rosters and the style of high major basketball and deemed that the press isn’t the way to go. Another knock against the idea of Florida pressing? Potentially.

How did those 23 teams do when it came to pressing? Well, they did quite well. Those teams averaged 0.76 points per possession defensively, as opposed 0.83 PPP in the half court. So, for those teams it was definitely the right call but you can’t exactly use that number as a defense of why another team, like the Gators, should try to press more. There is some inherent bias with these numbers because if teams struggled to press, they’d simply stop pressing. The teams that were good at pressing would continue to do so, making the overall high major pressing numbers look better.

Another option would be to look at the pressing vs non pressing defensive numbers of all high major teams as that could give some indication of the overall viability, since now we’re adding in the numbers of the teams that tried pressing at times but it didn’t work out for them.

When you look at those numbers you see the high major average for pressing defense is 0.8 PPP and the high major average for non-pressing half court defense is 0.81.

Nearly identical.

Nearly identical, but the sample size of half court non-pressing possessions is much, much higher than the pressing possessions, and if the average number of pressing possessions was higher these numbers could look different.

To further the conversation about whether pressing is a good idea given the nearly identical points allowed outcome you’ve got to get into some tiny statistical details.

For example, high major teams force turnovers nearly 5% when pressing and a lot of those turnovers mean fast breaks with a numbers advantage on the offensive end.

However, teams commit about 4% more fouls when pressing, something that can get an opponent into the bonus and maybe send one of your best players to the bench with foul trouble.

Talking x-factors or intangibles you could fairly point out that pressing can tire out and frustrate an opposing team, something that could have a positive impact later in the game even if you’re then playing a half court defense and not pressing. That’s worth something, though it’s impossible to prove statistically.

It’s also an old coach’s adage that pressing gets all five guys moving their feet and active defensively which engages them in the game more than a half court defense where a particular player may just be posted up in a corner taking away a shooter.

As Coach White alluded to in his press conference there are a lot of fans who are dying to see the team press. Seeing the athletes the coaching staff has brought in, you can understand why. It’s fair to point out that when evaluating high major teams that pressed only a couple of them had speed, length, and athleticism that are close to what the Gators will have this year so Florida should have more of a pressing advantage than the average squad.

If you’re on the side of thinking pressing is the best option for the team, that’s a totally fair opinion to have. However, looking at recent college basketball history, there have not been a lot of teams successful with pressing and that should give you some level of hesitancy with this style of defense. The Gators are equipped to play a press as well as any high major team in the country can, but we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out on the court to see if it’s really the best option.

Eric Fawcett
Eric is a basketball coach and writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His work has been found at NBA international properties, ESPN, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Lindy's and others. He loves zone defenses, the extra pass, and a 30 second shot clock. Growing up in Canada, an American channel showing SEC basketball games was his first exposure to Gator hoops, and he has been hooked ever since. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericfawcett_.