UCF April 3 at 7:00 PM on FS1

[swilsonsp4]

UC gave up 88 points and 50 alone came in the second half against UCF. Just for the record, UC scored 80 points The way I look at college basketball, that is bad defense. UC may be defensively ranked fifth in the BIG XII, however, UC gave up 69 points a game in conference and had a conference record 7-13. Offense was an issue, but UC had a hard time stopping teams from scoring. In my mind, defense is an issue.

Yes, UC gave up 88 to UCF, which I addressed. They couldn't contain Darius Johnson. However, if defense was an issue over the course of the season, then the vast majority of the B12 had even bigger issues with it. UC's problem throughout the season was offensive production, which declined once they got into conference play.

[BearKatz]

Yes, UC gave up 88 to UCF, which I addressed. They couldn't contain Darius Johnson. However, if defense was an issue over the course of the season, then the vast majority of the B12 had even bigger issues with it. UC's problem throughout the season was offensive production, which declined once they got into conference play.

UC's problem throughout the season was offensive production, which declined once they got into conference play.

I couldn't agree more! It's easy to dsguise Offensive failure playing Morehead St, Nicholls and others early in the season. Once we hit Big 12 play, and this team needed to show some Mettle and Toughness which the players did very little of... IMO

[swilsonsp4]

To bolster the "D wasn't the issue" argument:

UC played 23 games versus B12 teams (regular season, B12 tourney, CBC). Of those, the Cats held their opponents under their season scoring averages 18 times. Two of the others were against UCF, who just try to outscore everybody, with defense being an afterthought (which the Cats didn't handle well this week). One was at ISU (81 to the Cyclones' 80.3 average). One was at OSU by +5, while the last was to TTU (81 to 80.9).

[leeraymond]

Yes, UC gave up 88 to UCF, which I addressed. They couldn't contain Darius Johnson. However, if defense was an issue over the course of the season, then the vast majority of the B12 had even bigger issues with it. UC's problem throughout the season was offensive production, which declined once they got into conference play.

In conference play UC scored 65 a game and gave up 69 a game. To me, the defense was worse than the offense. I was looking at the Final Four game between Houston and Duke. Duke, on the season, gave up 62 points a game and Houston gave up 58 points a game. Those are two good defensive teams. UC needs to get its scoring defense down to 63 or 64 points a game to really be competitive. Unfortunately, under Miller, the best conference scoring defense that UC had was in Miller's second year where UC gave up about 68 points a game in the AAC. Even that was too many.

Defensive play also declined once UC got to the BIG XII.

Think about this for a second. The last year that UC went to the Sweet 16, UC scored 68 points a game and gave up only 62 points a game. This year, if UC would have given up only 62 points a game in the conference, it would have made the NCAAs. I favor defense as a way to winning games. Offense will keep you games as long as you are scoring. However, what happens when there are bad scoring games? How does a team when it has a bad scoring night?

[sedz]

What happens when you run into a team who can score 75 on your top 10 defense? We've already been down that road. That's what happened to all of Cronin's teams from 2016-2019. Before that we had terrible offenses that struggled to even put up 60 points in the tournament. We got lucky facing another team that couldn't score in 2012 - Florida St was #72 on offense, even worse than us. FSU's top 10 defense lost that game. Then tOSU hung 81 on us.

You either need good offense AND defense or you have to be elite on one side of the ball. Duke and Houston are top 10 on both sides of the ball. There's not much point in arguing which is more important.

Our defense this year was good (top 20) but not elite. Our offense was not good (#89). Our team can get better by improving either one. I think it's best to be at least competent on both sides of the ball rather than putting all your eggs in one basket.