Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Saturday, January 22, 2005 V is for VillanovaI write something about orienteering nearly every day. Today I'm writing about basketball. If you want to think about orienteering, check out Kim Faggerud's route on a night O' in Finland.Now, on to basketball. I watched Kansas lose for the first time this season. Villanova smoked them. I've been watching the Kansas defense closely the last few games. I've been keeping a defensive scoresheet (roughly based on an idea described in Basketball on Paper). For each shot the opposing team takes I record the outcome (missed or made) and assign the shot to a Kansas defender. If the player was double-teamed I assign half of the shot to each of the two defenders. If the player was guarded by more than two Kansas players or if the player was not guarded by any players, I assign the shot to the team as a whole. Keeping a defensive scoresheet forces me to watch the game a bit differently. I see things I might not have seen otherwise. I learn things about the game that I might not have learned. Here are a few observations about today's game based on what I saw (and compared to what I've seen over the last few games): CJ Giles didn't play today. That probably hurt. Teams tend to take a lot of shots against Giles, but they miss a lot of those shots. Moody's defense (as measured using the approach I've been using) is steady and good. Simien was scored against more than I've seen before. Villanova took, and made, several 3-pointers with Simien guarding the shooter. I haven't seen teams try many 3-pointers against Simien before. Miles was scored against more than I've seen before. By my scoresheet, Miles gave up 12 points. Giddens seems to catch a lot of flak from fans for bad defense. In the games I've watched he doesn't give up many shots or points. Maybe that's because he isn't defending against good offensive players? I wonder if Giddens gets a bad rap because of how he looks when he's playing defense? Villanova scored 22 points that I charged to the Kansas team. Villanova only missed three 2-point shots and one 3-point shot that I charged against the team. I've never seen a team shoot so well in that situation. I could go on and on. But I won't. I think I'll go watch the Kansas women's basketball game on TV. posted by Michael | 6:43 PM 
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