The Starting Five: Slipping the Switch (HV+)

How Kansas's switching defense matched up against UConn's motion-heavy offense.

Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.

In this past week of games, the premier matchup was between Kansas and UConn — with the Jayhawks winning at home by four points.

Over on Twitter, I highlighted one of the key tactical elements used by Kansas against UConn’s motion-heavy offense: Switching.

Kansas switched one-thru-four with everyone not named Hunter Dickinson. By doing so, they disrupted UConn’s offensive flow.

As is normally the case against switching defenses, UConn looked to slip screens by cutting to the basket. However, they only scored off of one slip. That came in the second half when Alex Karaban slipped in between Dajuan Harris and KJ Adams for an easy layup.

A clip of that Karaban slip is below.

Slipping is often discussed as the best remedy against switching defenses. However, I’m reminded of an episode of the Solving Basketball podcast with Will Wade where he argued otherwise.