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I had Maryland at 1.41 PPP in the second half. Obviously, Wisconsin struggled defensively in a lot of areas. I took a look at every defensive possession to identify areas where the Badgers most struggled.
Maryland, unsurprisingly, seemed to try to put UW into as many ball screen actions as possible. UW was uncharacteristically unsound in a lot of help situations and Maryland exploited that.
Maryland used their own version of the Chin action to allow the screener to arrive alone and catch Reuvers out of position. Here, NR did a good job on the show/recover, but then does a poor job on the show off the throw/chase screen. Wahl was late and weak with the nail help.
However, Nate was badly out of position on this drop and lets the ballhandler downhill for an easy layup. This is unusually bad for a sound PnR defender like Reuvers.
On this one, Nate does a good job on the drop, but is a little wild on the closeout and allows the blow by. Anderson's stunt wasn't enough. Wahl gets over but it was too little too late.
Here was Aleem just getting beat in a straight line drive off a closeout as he gets caught flat-footed
Here, Micah does a great job forcing his man under the hoop and cutting off his initial angle at the layup. However, very poor awareness once his man gets over to the left block to not seal the inside.
I believe in this situation, Nate's responsibility is to quickly cut off and then recover, and allow the actual help to flow from the low man on the weak side (Ford here). Nate gets caught a step too deep here. Ford late on the help results in UW giving up a big dunk.
Brad gets beat middle here. It's a little muddy with Nate and Reuvers man exchanging, but someone should have stunted at the nail and I think Davis needed to help sooner and harder.
There were a handful of other plays that were similar to the above set. Ultimately, Maryland had a good gameplan to attack UW off the bounce and the Badgers were just a step slow and a little sloppy all night.
Any defense will collapse if you allow penetration like this. When your help is slow, that's just a nail in the coffin.
