The other thing to note is that our FG% defense tracks our allowed OR%. We give up a lot of points via second shots.
Teaching defense is very very simple. Man, ball, basket. You put your back to the basket. You watch your man out of one eye and the ball out of the other. The farther away from the ball and/or the basket your man is, the more you sag off of your man. You have to adjust your sag factor according to his shooting abilities. This creates natural help against dribble penetration. It also creates it from the person whose man is farthest from the ball which allows more time for rotation/recovery when there is a kick out. It creates more opportunities in passing lanes. If you watch film of Bobby Knight’s best Indiana teams, you will see this played almost to perfection.
You play a zone with these very same man-to-man principles, only you don’t follow the same man all over the court.
You also have to drill on foot work and taking the right angles to cut off drives, but that is relatively simple. Other than GFK and KH we put a fairly athletic group out on the floor so all of this can be done if it is demanded.
