Pack Line Defense

Not a style I am very familiar with and since it’s something Sanchez will likely install, I thought this would be helpful for others:

Pack lion. So we just like maul them like a gazelle or something?

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Night and day difference to this years defense. I can see multiple players leaving if they can find a comparable school with run ang gun offense.

Robb could do well in this style but I doubt he’d come. Mangum isn’t really a fit but I’m sure Sanchez would take him. Bigelow would be an asset and should be the main priority of the 3 for RS and staff.

Forget about ever beating Davidson. Cancel the series.

If Sanchez can recruit athletic wings then we can make their perimeter shots very challenging. But yes, if those white boys get hot, it could be ugly.

What we have been doing for the past 5 years isn’t working, so I am up for trying anything else.

Bennett has been national coach of the year (twice, I think). Mckillop has not.

clt prefers a manly box and 1. This new stuff is for millenials.

I was a big fan of the Alan major 1-3-1 :upside_down_face:

Davidson is doing something right they have been making the NCAA far more often than we have. This offense is a gimmick otherwise more teams would run it. I hope it works and we are successful. The pool of talent we can pull from isn’t as deep or broad as UVA which plays in the ACC.

A few things:

First, its a defensive scheme, not an offensive one.

Every defense was at least once called a “gimmick” if its not a straight man-to-man. This is just a variation of man-to-man. The article at the top of the page is a great explainer. It’s just essentially a sagging m2m.

If coaches never innovated, the game would never progress. Tony’s dad coined this defense, it worked for them at Wazzu. Tony implemented it at UVA, and they’ve won 30+ games 4 of the last 5 years. Sanchez was brought up in that system and it’s all he’s known. We should welcome a scholar of this scheme to show us what it can do for us, against a league that’s never seen it before.

UVA’s recruiting has by-and-large been mostly under the radar 2 and 3* guys, with the occasional big time stud. But those studs still fit into the type of framework that makes this defensive scheme successful. You need one attribute more than any other…PATIENCE. This is not a gambler’s defense…it’s a hold-your-ground and frustrate the hell out of them because they can’t penetrate defense. It slows the game down, sure. But so many teams are built for track meets and when you take that away from them, it kills their rhythm and makes them play your style.

If Sanchez implements this with success here, we can and will win a lot of games even if we don’t have our best shooting nights. This scheme keeps you in every game, unless the opposing team gets white hot from outside, which we saw UMBC.

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Forget about ever beating Davidson. Cancel the series.

And they said people over react on Ninernation.net

Yeah, that was a tad bit silly but not unexpected given all the pessimism surrounding the program over the last decade, etc. We can get back to our dominance over Davidson.

UVA beat Davidson 80-60 this year fwiw. I know we won’t have the talent that UVA has, but I just wanted to point out that Davidson didn’t exactly light up this defense.

This defense has been around for decades, since dick bennett was coaching d3 in wisconsin. Hardly new, nor a gimmick. In my years coaching, i hated the style but some swear by it esp. if your athletes are not similar to conference foes as was virginas case most of the time.

With the likely move to a 30 second clock this can only slow the game down so much. I think the Pack Line is more about causing the other team to take a bad shot during the time they have than to limit the number of possessions.

It is funny that most people here have been screaming for change, and when they get it they scream about things changing. :scream:

We’ve had :poop: defense for years now and when we bring in an elite defensive guy…

UVA works to minimize turnovers and take efficient shots. Sign me up.

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It doesn’t really slow the game down as much as it isn’t aggressive…that is my issue with it. I’m an aggressive coach and prefer that style.

I prefer wins. We haven’t had many of those lately, if his style gets them, I’m cool with that.

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I wonder how the potential rule changes of widening the lane and 3 point line could have on this defense. Seems like there will be more ground to cover for the sagging defenders.