The Starting Five: Trapping the Post (HV+)
How Arizona guarded Zach Edey. Plus, one of UConn's favorite set plays.
Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.
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Now onto today’s newsletter…
On Friday and Saturday, we had two top 10 matchups between UConn-Gonzaga and Purdue-Arizona. In today’s newsletter, we look at:
Arizona’s post defense against Zach Edey
A set play that has been highly effective for UConn to start the season
Arizona’s Post Defense vs Edey
Going into the Purdue-Arizona game, I expected to see some double teams off of the passer’s man by Arizona. Tommy Lloyd has been using that post coverage going back to his days as an assistant at Gonzaga.
I first tweeted about the coverage in 2019 — coincidentally during a game where Gonzaga played Arizona.
Sure enough, the Wildcats went to the coverage on Edey’s first post touch of the game. In the clip below, #3 Pelle Larsson is guarding the passer and leaves #2 Fletcher Loyer to go double team the post.