[Bumped.  Con-T covered the offense.  TheCrestedHelm's got the defense. -KJ]

Dan Hanner at Yet Another Basketball Blog has a companion post to the one KJ linked to a few days ago on coaching offensive tendencies. This one looks at defensive tendencies - whether coaches rely on turnovers, defensive rebounding, forcing tough shots (limiting opponents' effective FG percentage) etc. for limiting their opponents' offense. We're solidly in the "use defensive rebounding to limit the opponent's second chance points" category. Surprisingly Izzo ranks 25th of the 72 coaches ranked on defensive effectiveness. He ranks 7th on offense. Despite the handwringing about turnovers we've been more consistent, and consistently good, on offense than defense over the past 7 years. Bo Ryan, Tubby Smith, and Tom Crean use the same defensive philosophy we do - limit good looks and go for defensive rebounds. Thad Matta relies on turnovers and effective FG defense. Painter, Bill Carmody, and John Beilein also rely primarily on forcing turnovers, although Carmody teams are generally atrocious rebounders which is their downfall defensively. Bruce Webber teams don't stand out as excellent in any one category but do pretty well in everything save FT rate. Ed Dechellis teams just don't play very good D in any area. Lickliter teams force turnovers and play reasonably good effective FG defense, but don't rebound all that well (possibly due to lack of height). 

This year our Big 10 defensive stats look pretty darn good. We looked mediocre in the pre-conference season. I'm not sure what to make of our improvement, but it doesn't seem to be a fluke as we are nearly halfway through the conference season. It doesn't seem to be a function of the Big 10 having a down year offensively - Purdue and Minnesota have had a reverse trend from us - they looked really good on D early in the year but have looked decidedly average since conference play began. If the Big Ten were offensively challenged they should not have experienced the dropoff on D.

Our improvements in conference play are certainly not based on only one factor. We rank first in the conference (including stats from conference games only) in opponent eFG percentage, defensive rebounding percentage, and opponent free throw rate. We're good at preventing opponents good looks, holding them to one and done, and not fouling. The only thing we don't do is force turnovers, but I'm OK with that given our excellence everywhere else. I hope our D come tournament time more closely resembles the performance we've exhibited in the Big 10 so far than the pre-conference season.