Loyola's Hybrid Defense (HV Weekly: 2/19/21)
The scheme, philosophy, and players behind the nation's current top ranked defense.
Welcome back to the Hoop Vision Weekly.
We are now less than one month until Selection Sunday!
It’s also — shameless plug alert — the perfect time of year to become a Hoop Vision PLUS member. An HV+ subscription is $10/month or $100/year. Your support enables us to continue covering college basketball in a unique way.
HV+ subscribers receive The Starting Five newsletter every Monday. This week’s edition of the newsletter covered:
Data on games immediately following a long COVID pause
The "football" press break formation everyone's using
Villanova's lack of rim protection
Creighton's 2-man game
Loyola's defensive scheme
Now, let’s get to our latest deep dive video…
New Loyola Chicago video
The number one spot in Ken Pomeroy’s defensive efficiency rankings has been a revolving door for most of the season.
Just in February alone, four teams have claimed the top spot: Alabama, Houston, Loyola Chicago, Tennessee.
So while we’ll likely see more movement sooner rather than later, Loyola’s recent streak of success is still impressive. They’ve held 13 opponents in a row to under one point per possession.
The Ramblers are led on the defensive end by senior Lucas Williamson — he usually guards the other team’s best player and is an outstanding on-ball defender. But Loyola’s success is a team effort.
The 13-minute voiceover video below walks you through Porter Moser’s defensive scheme and philosophy.
Video topics include:
Loyola’s defensive terminology — switch up, reach for the lights, never leave corner shooter — from their “culture wall”
Different ball screen coverages: Hard hedge, flat hedge, drop, and under
Cameron Krutwig, Lucas Williamson, and Aher Uguak
How Wisconsin and Richmond gave Loyola’s defense trouble
Another rant about the eye test
I’ve been binge watching Loyola Chicago film for the last seven days. I watched, clipped, and took notes on nine full Loyola game films.
So fresh off of that experience, I feel obligated to tell you — once again — how impractical the “eye test” is…
A key argument for the eye test lovers out there is something along the lines of: “you know a good team when you see one”. Often times, the argument is framed around coaching, execution, and/or connectivity — that’s what the good teams have.
Right off the bat, the big problem with that line of thinking is how arbitrary those things can be. When people say a team is “well-coached”, they usually really mean “the team plays a style of play that I find personally appealing.” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
But let’s get past the arbitrariness of it all.
Loyola — in my opinion — is in fact a very well-coached team. But if we assume that’s true, where does that even really leave us?
Loyola narrative #1
The Ramblers are one of the highest IQ teams in the country. They aren’t as talented as some of the top teams in the country, but their execution and connectivity make up for it. In March, those are the characteristics that lead to deep tournament runs. March is about player IQ, execution, and coaching.
Loyola narrative #2….
The Ramblers are one of the highest IQ teams in the country, but they aren’t as talented as some of the top teams in the country. Their system and execution allows them to beat up on weaker conference opponents. In March, their system will fall apart when the talent level steps up a notch. March is about players — not systems that lead to lopsided Missouri Valley blowouts.
Again, I’ve done almost nothing else for the past week but watch Loyola Chicago film, and I still don’t really have strong opinions either way on how good they are. I genuinely think you can make a case for both narratives.
Now I’m supposed to watch 300+ more teams!?
All Defenses are Hybrids
In our newsletter on Carleton’s defense, I wrote about how all defenses are hybrids.
I like to neatly categorize offensive and defensive schemes as much as possible — it makes for easier communication in videos and newsletters — but it’s often not that simple.
Loyola Chicago is certainly an example of a “hybrid” defense. Porter Moser’s scheme — drawing heavy influence from Rick Majerus — has similarities and differences to all of the major schemes we’ve covered in the past.
So to explore this further, here’s a ranking (from the most similar to the most different) of how Loyola’s defense compares to others…
1] Help-only-when-necessary
As noted in the video, a big point of emphasis for the Loyola defense is no help off corner shooters. Because of that, there are strong similarities to the Michigan (and Luke Yaklich) style of help-only-when-necessary defense.
However, that can change depending on opponent. Against a three-point shooting team like Evansville, Loyola gives as little help as possible. Against Wisconsin, on the other hand, Loyola gave pretty aggressive help in the post.
Which leads me to the next style of defense…
2] Carleton (personnel-based defense)
Loyola doesn’t (usually) force to a weak hand like Carleton’s personnel-based defense. But even despite that, I receive strong Carleton vibes when watching Loyola.
Loyola goes under a lot of ball screens — daring the ball handler to shoot off the dribble. They force more off the dribble jumpers than any defense in the country.
That’s the exact same statistic that Carleton dominates nearly every season. Like Loyola, Carleton also goes under a lot ball screens.
Both teams adjust their principles based on the specific opponent.
3] Pack line
Relatively speaking, the Loyola defense doesn’t load up to the ball for gap help like the pack line. And they definitely don’t purposefully send the ball into the middle.
But the biggest similarity between Loyola and the pack line is the “stunt”. Or as Moser’s culture wall calls it: Help with the hip.
4] No-middle
“No Middle” is explicitly listed on the bottom right of Loyola’s culture wall. So why is it last on the list?
There are quite a few defenses that technically teach no-middle, but not with the same intent as a Texas Tech or Baylor. Loyola falls into that category.
When watching the Ramblers’ on-ball foot angles, you wouldn’t even really know they have a no-middle philosophy. It’s more of a “we’d rather you not get beat middle” than “don’t let the ball go middle no matter what”.
On top of that, the Ramblers don’t send aggressive help with the low man on baseline drives like the extreme no-middle defenses.
Links from around the internet
The WCC announced they teamed up with Ken Pomeroy to rank and seed their teams for the conference tournament. Ken talked about that process on Rob Dauster and Jeff Goodman’s podcast
Rick Majerus philosophy is always interesting
Good advice from Zach Lowe on breaking into sports media (that I think could apply to coaching as well)