THE CATS DEFENSE

[South jones]

Or lack there of. three things imo,
either pope can't teach defense, or doesn't, the third thing, the players don't want to put out the necessary effort.
either way, we're in a pickle. Also, any time the opposing team comes with a hard sggressive defense the CATS struggle.
JMO

[Pete Hogwallop]

Agree. We were pretty bad on defense last year. For awhile this year, we did look fairly improved in that area, but it has slipped some lately. Pomeroy has us 39th in defense right now which is higher than we were pretty much all year last year. But it's not stellar by any means.

[WeWant9]

I really thought this was going be strong defensive team during the summer. I do expect a staff shakeup over the summer, and hopefully an addition of a defensive minded assistant- I don't think we want Mark Fox running the defense.

[***St.Patterson-54***]

To me this is one of the bigger disappointments with this team. Offense can struggle, and Lord knows we don't have great shooters outside of a couple guys, but defense is EFFORT based and as such should be consistent. I feel like this is the single biggest issue between first and second hail performance- DEFENSIVE EFFORT.

I agree that Pope (and staff) must be lousy at teaching staying in between your man and the basket (move your feet!). Boxing out is only seen when we're working on a comeback- otherwise we have guys standing just drifting to the ball when a shot goes up. But most infuriating is our lack of defensive intensity on the perimeter. Closing out or maintaining contact with known 3 point threats is a very real deficiency for this team.

Hell, I'd be happy just to Teach BG to stay in front of his man rather than playing OLE defense at this point.

Cmon coaches! Be better.

[South jones]

I remember coaches Rupp,Hall Pitino and
Tubby had no problem getting in a players face and putting his fanny on the bench for not playing defense.somewhere we lost that emphasis on defense with Cal and Pope.

I think our current coaches put some importance on D but not enough. I also.think that some of our players are just plain lazy and don't possess that factor called DEFENSIVE PRIDE.