The Sandwich Method (HV+)
Fairleigh Dickinson did exactly what I recommended Purdue opponents should NOT do. And it worked...
I have a confession to make.
Back on January 31st — in this very newsletter — I wrote about five different ways opponents had defended Zach Edey.
After reviewing the film, I didn’t necessarily have the answer for the best way to guard the dominant center. However, I did have one recommendation for how NOT to guard Edey.
“My strongest opinion is that fronting Edey is a bad idea. He’s just too big and Purdue is just too good at running action to exploit the front.”
It’s an opinion that basically the whole Big Ten shared with me. For the most part, Big Ten teams chose not to front Edey during conference play.
Flash-forward now to Friday.
Fairleigh Dickinson shocked the world by… fronting the post. Edey himself summed up FDU’s defensive coverage in his post-game presser.
“They limited my touches in the post. A lot of times they would have one dude guarding me from behind and one dude basically sitting in my lap. They were full fronting the entire game, so it made it very hard to get catches.”
In other words, FDU and Tobin Anderson went with the “Sandwich Method”. They had two players sandwiching Edey — one in the front and one in the back — at (more or less) all times.
Let’s take a closer look at the gameplan.