Here’s what the Memphis Tigers did on defense to disrupt Wichita State basketball
Attacking a top-notch defense is nothing new for this Wichita State men’s basketball team.
According to KenPom, the Shockers have played the third-hardest schedule of defenses in the country this season with their last nine Division I games coming against top-60 defenses.
But none of those elite defenses have discombobulated WSU’s offense quite like Penny Hardaway’s run-and-jump style did for Memphis in its 72-52 thrashing of the Shockers on Thursday at FedExForum.
WSU never looked comfortable on offense, as it muddled its way to a season-worst 29% shooting performance from the field, which included misfires on 21 of 23 three-pointers. The Shockers also had seven of their shots blocked, a season high, and 11 more of their shots fail to hit the rim, another season high.
“We haven’t seen a defense like that,” WSU’s Ricky Council IV said. “Coach (Isaac Brown) told us that from the beginning. They’re really aggressive. They’re long and they trap a lot. They trap aggressively. That kind of put us out of sort in the beginning.”
Memphis certainly looks the part of an elite defense with length and athleticism at every position on the floor. But what makes the Tigers unique is how much they gamble for steals and the reason they are able to pull it off — they’re ranked No. 6 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency — is because of how smart their help defense is.
The way Hardaway preaches defense, all five players for Memphis are reading the ball and waiting to pounce. The job of the on-ball defender is to apply tight pressure and as soon as a ball handler begins a drive, a help defender is sure to peel off their man to go chase a steal.
But what makes Memphis’ defense special is what it does behind those two defenders. As soon as the drive happens, it sets off a chain reaction of events. The strong-side defender leaves his man to double the ball, a weak-side defender sprints across court to rotate onto the vacated defender, and the rest of Memphis’ defense shifts to take one pass away.
Basically, Memphis gambles that through the chaos, opponents will be unable to solve its defense and make the split-second read to find the open shooter on the back side.
In fact, Memphis completely disregarded players it deemed a non-shooter (and on Thursday, everyone wearing black was one of those) once that player cut away from the ball. Instead of following them to the perimeter, the Memphis defender would park themselves in the paint and clog up potential driving lanes for WSU.
It won’t show up in the box score, but the rotations made by Memphis prevented a handful of would-be layups for WSU by taking away the pass. Not to mention turning a lot of would-be drives to the basket into low-percentage, pull-up jump shots. It’s not a coincidence that WSU attempted a season-high 14 mid-range jumpers against Memphis.
Memphis has a lot of defenders who can pull this off, but no one is better than Alex Lomax, the 6-foot guard who once upon a time signed his letter of intent to play for the Shockers. He made a case on Thursday for being the best pound-for-pound defender in the American Athletic Conference. Not only is Lomax a dogged on-ball defender with perhaps the quickest hands in the conference, but he has an uncanny ability to know where the ball is going — perhaps even before the ball handler knows. This makes Lomax a superb off-ball defender as well, as there were multiple times on Thursday where Lomax blew up WSU’s play without ever guarding the primary threat.
Instead of waiting for WSU to initiate a move toward the basket to trigger the double team, Memphis more often would bring the action to the Shockers. There were a handful of times when Memphis’ seemingly impromptu double teams caught WSU woefully unprepared.
WSU actually did well not to turn the ball over against Memphis’ defense. The Shockers committed just 10 turnovers — well below Memphis’ average of 17-plus — and posted the lowest turnover rate (14.3%) of the season against Memphis’ defense.
But just because WSU managed to avoid turnovers didn’t mean it succeeded against the Tigers’ pressure. When the Shockers managed to pass out of the double team, they failed to punish Memphis enough times for it not to be a worthwhile gamble for the Tigers. Former WSU coach Gregg Marshall called these situations “opportunity” basketball because his team would be playing with an advantage — 4-on-3 or 3-on-2 usually.
Decisive decisions are rewarded in such situations, while hesitation — even for a split-second — squanders the opportunity. On Thursday, WSU squandered too many of its chances to cash in playing opportunity basketball.
And for any defense to have success against WSU, it must find a way to slow down Tyson Etienne, the sophomore sharpshooter who was averaging better than 17 points entering Thursday’s game. Memphis not only contained him, it essentially removed Etienne from WSU’s offense. Etienne finished with a season-low three points on 1-of-12 shooting.
Memphis found success with putting a bigger defender on Etienne (6-2) in Lester Quinones (6-5). His length seemed to bother Etienne the most and it helped him chasing Etienne around screens and contesting shots, even though some of Etienne’s misses on Thursday have been makes in most games this season.
Even though Etienne is at his deadliest catching and shooting from the perimeter, he’s expanded his game this season and has had great success attacking over-eager defenders off the dribble. Perhaps Memphis’ best strategy against him was to cut off those driving lanes for Etienne as much as possible. Any time WSU ran a ball screen for Etienne, Memphis’ help defender peeled off WSU’s other guard (either Alterique Gilbert or Craig Porter) and stood right where Etienne would want to drive. Memphis rarely paid the price for over-helping and even when it did, the Tigers will gladly trade getting the ball out of Etienne’s hands for Gilbert (25.6% three-point shooter) or Porter (only two made threes) shooting from the outside.
WSU did not help itself with poor spacing from the guards who were one pass away from the ball. Etienne wasn’t the only player who faced clogged up driving lanes. Whenever a WSU player attempted a drive, more times than not they had to pick up their dribble outside of the lane because WSU didn’t have the floor space properly and a Memphis help defender didn’t have to move to scrape down. Memphis was successfully able to speed up WSU and that led to some of the wildest shots of the season (11 shots were either air balls or failed to hit rim).
In posting their worst output of the season (0.74 points per possession), the Shockers made just 41.9% (13 of 31) of their shots around the basket against Memphis and had a season-high seven of their shots blocked — compared to WSU’s 54% conversion rate around the basket in its four AAC wins. Not to mention just a ghastly jump-shooting performance from WSU, which made just 7 of 38 (18.4%) of its jump shots against Memphis.
“When we tried to run our sets, they would trap us and they wouldn’t allow us to run any offense,” Brown said. “That made it a breakdown game, and we weren’t able to make good plays. We didn’t make any plays at the rim. We didn’t do a good job of attacking and taking good shots.”
In reviewing the shot quality, only a handful of those jumpers could be deemed in-rhythm and good shots. Rather, the large majority of them were contested heaves that were the disappointing result of WSU’s failure to move the ball with purpose or execute off-ball actions to free up shooters.
Too many times WSU’s possessions would end prematurely due to an over-eager shooter pulling the trigger on a somewhat-guard shot instead of working for a better look. Sometimes WSU’s offense was so disjointed that it failed to even run through a set after breaking Memphis’ token half-court pressure. Too many times the Shockers would stand out front, either dribbling or passing aimlessly, and be forced to beat the shot clock with another hopeless heave.
Even though WSU isn’t likely to face another defense like Memphis’ the rest of the season, there’s a lot for the Shockers to learn in the six days before they return to action next Wednesday with another road trip — this one to Cincinnati.
“We just didn’t have energy,” Brown said. “I don’t know what it was, but we’ve got to play harder and we’ve got to play smarter. Give Memphis all of the credit. They were just the better team than us tonight in all phases of the game.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 7:17 AM.
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