One year ago, in March, Dave Leitao was fired from his post as the coach of the Virginia men's basketball team for a number of reasons. A big one, though, was that during the two previous years, he couldn't get his team to play defense.
Eleven months later, with largely the same group of players, the Cavaliers roughed up defending champion North Carolina in Chapel Hill Sunday evening and held the high-motor Tar Heels to a season-low 60 points in the process.
There are a number of reasons why Virginia has already won as many conference games and three more games total through January than it did all of last season. (The Cavs currently sit at 13-6 with a 4-2 record in the ACC; all of last year they were 10-18, having gone 4-12 in the ACC.) But arguably the biggest reason is the improvement on the defensive end, where the philosophy has totally shifted from Leitao's conventional man-to-man defense to new coach Tony Bennett's pack-line defense.
You have probably heard the term "pack-line" associated with Bennett. His dad, Dick Bennett - who Tony Bennett played for at Wisconsin-Green Bay and later assisted both at Wisconsin and at Washington State - is the system's inventor. In this column, I decided to break down what the system is and why it worked against the Heels.
The pack-line is based in a man-to-man look but is very different from the type of defense you probably learned at summer camp. The basis of the pack-line is evident from the name itself: There is an imaginary arc, drawn 16 to 17 feet away from the basket - or just inside the three-point line - which serves as a boundary for players off the ball. The player guarding the ball applies pressure. Every other player, however, must remain inside this line, otherwise known as the pack-line. On the Cavaliers' practice court, this line is in fact taped on the floor. This principle contrasts with a high-pressure defense like Duke, where defenders are taught to deny players who are one pass away from the ball on the perimeter.
Then, there is another subtle difference between the pack-line and conventional man-to-man: The player on the ball never wants to give up baseline penetration. Conventional wisdom says, force baseline, such that help can trap the dribbler as he reaches the out-of-bounds line there. The pack-line, however, wants to force middle - where the "pack" waits.
Based on these principles, the main point of this defense is obvious: Deny lanes to the basket. Any time an offensive player drives middle, there should be a sea of jerseys waiting to help. If that player kicks to a shooter, then the defense still should have a player able to close out in time - again, making sure to protect the baseline in case the shooter tries to up-fake and drive. The Cavaliers did an outstanding job of preventing dribble penetration against the Tar Heels, allowing just 16 points in the paint. Virginia also did an excellent job closing out on shooters, particularly during the second half; the Heels missed seven of their first nine three-pointers after halftime, largely because the Cavaliers contested many of them.
But there are more nuances, and this is where the defense gets intriguing. The pack-line also puts emphasis on not letting a post player get points. This starts with the post defenders fighting like crazy to deny good position, something at which forward Jerome Meyinsse has excelled this season. Once the post player gets the ball, however, Bennett's system often doubles the post with two big men - one is already guarding the ball, while the other comes across the lane to apply the trap.
When I first saw this principle of Bennett's system, I was skeptical. I have never liked doubling the post with two big men. For one, it relies on the weak-side guard to make an immediate rotation down to the block to prevent a quick pass to the vacated offensive big man. And even if the weak-side guard gets there in time, it creates a matchup problem - both in keeping his man from getting the ball and in keeping him off the glass. It's not exactly an easy job for sophomore guard Sammy Zeglinski to box out Wake Forest forward Al-Farouq Aminu, for example.
But the fact is that this trap, for the most part, has worked. One of the biggest keys to the trap is that it comes hard - and with two big men making the trap, it is ensured to be long, such that it is difficult for the post player to make a clear pass out of it. For those who may be wondering why Will Sherrill receives so much playing time, this is one of the reasons - Sherrill is the best on the team at timing the trap and using the most out of his length to deny passing lanes.
This aspect of the pack-line worked wonders against North Carolina. The key to the effectiveness of the trap is to mix it in with other looks; sometimes, Virginia will merely "choke" the post, whereby the same-side guard can double-down instead of the weak-side forward. North Carolina forwards Ed Davis and Deon Thompson never looked in-sync against the Cavaliers offensively, as Bennett mixed up double teams on the block with "choking" and simply leaving them one-on-one. During the second half, Thompson and Davis combined to take just three shots and missed all of them.\nAnother area in which the Cavs excelled against the Heels is in transition defense - which is a must for the pack-line. It is imperative to force the opposing offense into a half-court set for the pack-line, even more so than for a traditional defense. The Tar Heels are well-known for both their primary and secondary breaks, but scored just four points in transition - the Cavaliers often had two to three players back as the Heels came down with a defensive rebound. In losses to Wake Forest and Virginia Tech, the Cavaliers struggled getting back - Ishmael Smith torched Virginia before it could set its defense, while several of the Hokies' most critical buckets came in transition - particularly on three-point field goals from Dorenzo Hudson.
Finally, the defending of screens is somewhat unique and this is the area with which Virginia has struggled the most. For starters, players in the pack-line, for the most part, never switch screens. Players must be strong, therefore, in fighting through screens and the player guarding the screener must initially help while the screened man recovers.
Where the Cavs have struggled often is on ball screens. In other systems - including Leitao's - the player guarding the screener is taught to hedge hard on the ball, dogging him for several steps before retreating to find his man. In the pack-line, however, the hedge is softer - the screened player hedges the ball initially, trying to get in the path of where the ball-handler wants to go, but then immediately retreats as his teammate recovers more quickly. The Cavaliers looked better on ball-screens against North Carolina - though, admittedly, the Tar Heels do not have a dynamite screen-and-roll threat like Virginia does in Sylven Landesberg. In other games, Virginia has been caught hedging too hard - like during the Leitao days - resulting in the opposing ball-handler finding the rolling screener open in the lane.
There are, of course, more subtle principles to the pack-line - how to close out, where to stand off the ball based on where the ball is, etc. - but these are the basics.
They are the basics of a system that Virginia has still yet to master. But they also are the basics that have catalyzed the Cavaliers' ascension to the top tier of the ACC and to a road win against the defending national champions.
Since Bennett arrived, he has insisted that this Virginia team is a work in progress.
I'd call that progress, wouldn't you?
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