NC State's Defense has Cratered

Every time NC State played good defense this season, I convinced myself that if it could capture whatever created that urgency, State could be an elite team. Maybe this was true. Maybe it was not. It appears that we'll never know.

Over the last six games, NC State has allowed its opponents to shoot 65% from inside the arc. That's almost a passing grade in a high school class. From three, that number is 38%, which is way too high, and that includes Miami's 3/17 effort and the UNC team whose jumpers largely missed the arena entirely. The Pack is now 225th nationally in defensive effective field goal percentage. Below are the last 6 games per Bart Torvik. The left side is defensive efficiency. The right side is effective field goal percentage.

I found the defensive efforts against Louisville and Virginia to be particularly frustrating. There are some trait selection decisions on the roster that will need a magnifying glass this offseason, but nothing innate about this group headlined those defensive performances to me. Louisville's decisive run, which came in the first half, was aided by the following sequence, which began after State had cut the lead to 25-20

• 28-20: State allows a wide open three in transition as it's beat down the floor by Isaac McKneely and then doesn't match up correctly

• 32-20: State does not stop the ball in transition and allows a free practice layup

• 38-22: State miscommunicates a switch and leaves Mikel Brown standing wide open for three (below)

Able switches the ball screen and sinks with Isaac McKneely. Copeland tries to recover to McKneely's slip. There is now nobody guarding the ball and Mikel Brown makes a three. You can see Able get frustrated after the play.

That's three buckets from a 13-2 run where State fumbled badly on defense. On a similar note, all of these things happened in the first handful of minutes of the second half in Charlottesville

• Copeland gets stuck on a ball screen while Lubin appears to play drop coverage, allowing a walk-up jumpshot. 

• Copeland gets caught under a ball screen that leads to an open pull-up three from Dallin Hall. I do not know what State was trying to execute here.

• State jogs down the floor after a make, allowing a walk-up unguarded three in transition (below).

• State allows a layup at the rim (and commits a foul) in transition after a make. 

• State then gave up a wide open three to hot-shooting Sam Lewis because it went under a flare screen.

I think this is the worst defensive play of the season for State. Holloman is just kind of meandering up the floor and literally nobody finds the basketball.

State has given up freebies this year in two main ways. It does not set its defense well in late transition, and it leaves guys open because it miscommunicates switches. These types of breakdowns are the most preventable parts of this defensive slide, and they really stand out to me on the tape. This paragraph is not a comprehensive analysis. There is certainly a lot more stuff you can break down with this group, but the inability to be connected on that side of the floor is the most annoying part of this team.

I thought the Notre Dame game, and the following blowout against Duke, demonstrated a little bit more of the innate shortcomings. Jalen Haralson was a huge problem for the Pack. In fact, the best defense State had for him was the guy just blowing open layups. He missed multiple of them and still shot 8/15.

As Wade mentioned, Notre Dame was able to pick at specific matchups. Lubin, McNeil, and Williams are all guys it was able to create penetration off the bounce against. The Pack also had huge issues with Notre Dame's low seals on drives, AKA Gortat screens. That and some high-level shot making from the Irish on the perimeter was kind of the story of that game.

Duke created even more obvious matchup problems. State's best chance in that game was to turn Duke into a three-point shooting team, which Duke is not bad at being, but it was around 100th nationally in three-point percentage and it was borderline unstoppable in the paint. Thus, the 2-3 zone, which actually did succeed in making Duke a jump shooting team for about eight minutes.

Nine of Duke's first fourteen shots came from three, which is exactly what you wanted. Cameron Boozer had one attempt during that time. The Blue Devils made four of the nine triples, which is not the ratio you want, but you have to place your bet somewhere. Eventually, Duke settled in and starting getting the ball to the nail or the short corner, and from there it really started to pick the thing apart.

The point of discussing the zone is to say that it's not for a lack of interest from the staff that this defense has become a sieve. If you're complaining about adjustments, you're missing the boat. State has played four different ball screen coverages, it has played a couple zone variants, and it has now thrown an entire bowl of spaghetti at the wall. There isn't a defensive scheme that's built to handle poor execution from your team.

There's been a lot of conversation around roster construction, particularly relating to selecting for size and athleticism and State's decision to place a premium elsewhere. It's a shortcoming this team has faced, but I think it's a bit overvalued, while the more immediately addressable bugs are a bit undervalued. Darrion Williams and Paul McNeil will not be elite perimeter defenders, but being undersized isn't enough to give up 118 points in a game. You have to also play like garbage to do that.

State has played some good defense at times, which again serves the idea that this group isn't doomed to suck because of how it's built. It put Seth Trimble in a box while consistently keeping UNC's guards out of the paint. Trimble was 1/9 in that game and then averaged 21 points over the next three games. You can make excuses about missing players, but that happened. UNC's guards needed Google Earth to find the paint that night. State has been inconsistent and had focus and intensity issues all year, though, and it shouldn't be surprising that it got tore up the very next game.

It's frustrating that it's come apart like this down the stretch. State should be safely in the tournament, but when it's sitting at 9-2 in the ACC with three Q1 wins, making the tournament is no longer the baseline. State put itself in great position to earn a double bye and secure its highest NCAA Tournament seed since 2004. It seemed like it finally turned the corner it had been standing on for the first half of the year, but then this.

There is always the chance that the "new season" of the postseason brings new results. We've seen it happen before. But I most certainly am done betting on this team to start delivering a consistent, organized defensive effort.