Connect with us

Hoops

OSU Falls Victim to Charlotte’s Pack Line Defense

How OSU put played into Charlotte’s hand and set up season-opening upset.

Published

on

While many Oklahoma State fans were busy watching Bedlam this weekend, Mike Boynton and his Cowboy basketball squad were battling the Charlotte 49ers in their season opener. The Cowboys led for most of the game and even held a 24-point lead with 14 minutes left to play. However, OSU allowed the 49ers to battle their way back into the game and, after a controversial flagrant foul call on Lindy Waters, Charlotte’s Jon Davis made both of his free throws and then drained a3 to win the game for his team 66-64.

After scoring 13 points in the first six minutes of the second half, the Cowboys only managed to put up 14 points in the final 14 minutes on Saturday. In addition, there was a stretch of seven and a half minutes where the Pokes weren’t able to convert a field goal. So, what led to this scoring drought for the Cowboys in this season opening loss to Charlotte? Well, OSU fell victim to Charlotte head coach Ron Sanchez’s “pack line” defense.

Sanchez had coached under the man who is credited with developing this defense, Dick Bennett, at Washington State. In addition, he coached with Dick’s son Tony, the current head coach at Virginia, at Washington State and then under him at Virginia after Dick’s retirement. Altogether, he was part of a coaching staff which ran the pack line defense for over 15 years.

The pack line defense is a “sagging” man-to-man defense where the defender guarding the ball is providing intense pressure and the other defenders are staying within an imaginary arc inside the 3-point line. The differences between the pack line and normal man-to-man defense are shown below.

defense-differences

Teams running the pack line want to force the ball handler to drive into the sagging help defenders and then kick-out to shooters who will take their shot with a defender closing out on them. This defense tries to slow the game down and force the offense to hit enough 3-pointers to win the game, banking on the fact that they won’t be able to.

The ways to beat the pack line are push the tempo and score on the fast break, have great spacing to stretch the defense and attack the gaps, have continuous movement with screens and cutting actions taking place on both sides of the floor, and finally, you’ve got to make shots.

In the first half, the Pokes were on fire from distance, hitting 7 of 9 from downtown and they were able to score 12 points in transition. However, in the final 20 minutes, the Cowboys only had two fast-break points and they shot 23.3 percent from the field, including 21.4 percent from deep.

Charlotte forced Oklahoma State into taking contested 3-pointers. In the clip below, you see a lot of standing around from the Cowboy offense outside of Dizzy. Without movement, cutting and screening, there’s absolutely no space opened up for OSU to operate. The possession ends in a contested 3 late in the shot clock.


Oklahoma State again settles for another contested deep ball here.


In addition, the Cowboys took some tough shots early in the shot clock.


They were taking what the 49er defense was giving them, and not trying to create space and attack inside. This could be contributed some to the youth and inexperience on this team along with fatigue in the second half. Without Mike Cunningham and Michael Weathers, OSU was down two players who will likely see heavy rotation minutes.

I think this was a good learning experience for Boynton’s young team, and I expect for them to show improvement in tomorrow’s matchup against UTSA. The pack line is not a very common defense, and I’m sure a lot of these guys hadn’t played against it up until this point. It’s definitely not an excuse, as the Pokes were more talented than this Charlotte team, but should be a good learning experience for these guys moving forward.

Most Read

Copyright © 2011- 2023 White Maple Media