Does Vermont press?
- Thread starter RegionWarrior101
- Start date
Who cares if they press, it hasn't been that big of an issue this year. There has been times this year when we even punished teams for pressing by attacking it.
Vermont is a pretty balanced scoring team - they don't have one guy to focus on, but they are led by a freshman guard who averages 12 points a game. Basically, they do most things decently - not necessarily great, not necessarily bad.
They are sort of unique in the sense that they have a lot of good height on their guards/forwards (no short guys), but they also have no real size inside. They have several 6'6"-6'8" guys, but nobody bigger. Their five starters are: 6'8", 215; 6'6" 230; 6'2" 180; 6'6" 180; 6'3" 190.
Looking in their conference statistics, which can be a bit misleading given the competition...
-They shoot 70% as a team in FT.
-They shoot the ball as a team at 50%, which is good. And hold teams to 42% shooting.
-They shoot 37% from 3 which is pretty good, but do not shoot a ton. They average about 6-7 made per game.
-They lead their conference in blocks, which is not surprising given their good height across the board at guard/forward positions
-They don't turn the ball over a lot (average 11/game), but don't force a ton either.
-They are a pretty average rebounding team.
Looking at their conference championship game against Albany...
-They shot poorly - 33% from the field, 37% from 3 though. They attempted 16 3s, made 6 - so not a high number and all five starters had at least 2 attempts
-They only had 6 turnovers
-Albany shot 39%, but only 13% from 3
Looking at their game against Butler....
-Only one of their starters attempted a 3 (he attempted 6), who is a guard. A couple of their fill-in guards attempted 3s as well.
-They had several guys with a good number of shot attempts, so not one guy to focus on
-They did not shoot well - 42% from the field, 25% from 3 (attempted 12 total).
-Because of a lot of missed shots/3s, they did have a decent number of offensive rebounds.
-Butler shot 57% from the field, 50% from 3.
Looking at their game against South Carolina...
-This game had an 11 point margin at halftime
-They shot 35% from the field, 25% from 3 (20 attempts, so more than Butler). They were 1-9 from 3 in the second half, which helped SC pull away
-This game had 2 of their starters attempt 6 or 7 3s and four of their starters attempted 1
-Again, with a good amount of missed shots, they did have a decent number of offensive boards
-SC shot 47% from the field, but only 30% from 3 (I also know nothing about South Carolina...)
Looking at their game against Providence...
-This was a 6 point margin at halftime
-They shot 42% from the field, 25% from 3 (20 attempts). They were 2-10 from 3 in the second half, which helped Providence pull away
-All of their starters attempted a 3, with most coming from 2 of their players (one guard and one 6'8" skinny forward)
-They had 17 turnovers, which was significantly higher than their other games above, but this was also played earliest in the season.
-Providence shot 49% from the field, 39% from 3 - and did not really outrebound them by much.
I think the things for Purdue are your basics....
-Take care of the basketball. If we are careless with the ball and have a high number of turnovers, this obviously gives Vermont extra chances. This also includes our interior play, where I would not be surprsied to see them double/collapse on Swanigan/Haas. They do not have size, but going back to the Little Rock game last year - this limited attempts inside because our 3 point shooting was not there. To be fair, Little Rock was pretty much known for their pressure defense. On the other end, they don't shoot themselves in the foot - forcing some turnovers would be helpful.
-Dictate the game and dominate inside. As mentioned above, Little Rock was able to prevent us going inside much. Swanigan and Haas need to dictate the game and play strong, but not too strong. They will have much smaller guys guarding them - which means it can be tricky going too hard on the offensive end. Swanigan/Haas need to shoot 50%+ and Swanigan can't decide he's a guard in this game. Vermont isn't a great offensive or just rebounding team, but we need to dominate on the boards. Little Rock had 15 offensive rebounds on us and we only had 10 (despite shooting 30% from 3 - and half of our FG attempts were 3s) - it'd be great to keep Vermont limited on this.
-Shoot decently from 3. We don't need to shoot 50% from 3 (although I'll take it), but we can't afford a game like the Little Rock game and shoot 30%. If we're cold from 3, it will allow Vermont to collapse inside and they have size on their guards/forwards to where they can try to make us beat them from 3.
-None of their guys are slow, big guys, but they also aren't super athletic. However, defensively we have to be on our toes - they don't shoot a lot of 3s and we have to force them into bad shots. Swanigan/Haas are going to be on the "slower" end of all the players playing and again, they have to keep out of foul trouble, but also play good defense. I would not be surprised to see them try to attack, even going up against much bigger size, to draw fouls.
Overall, Vermont is probably not going to shoot themselves in the foot. So we have to make sure we don't do it to ourselves. The Boilers will need a sound night even if Vermont plays their average game.
Check out what G&B wrote to on the homepage: https://purdue.rivals.com/news/first-look-vermont-catamounts
Yeah, they have an impressive win streak, but look at the teams during that win streak. Harvard has the best record of anyone they played, almost everyone else was near .500 or losing records. Stony Brook finished second in the conference and a 18-13 overall record.
Against the better competition, they were all around 20 point losses. So Purdue has to play really bad to lose this game as Vermont hasn't even been competitive this year when playing a team at this level.
Against the better competition, they were all around 20 point losses. So Purdue has to play really bad to lose this game as Vermont hasn't even been competitive this year when playing a team at this level.
Similar threads
