Interior Defense / Fouling
Ok, there are several things that need to improve, but there is ONE THING that needs to be fiXed IMMEDIATELY.
The interior defense is horrible, mostly in my view due to the constant fouling by our centers.
We have 2 pretty nice options at the 5 (in theory). Abou is a Senior with good experience and Ciani is a big body and as a freshman is showing some solid promise. There have been MANY years where we were "1 deep" at Center, and had to run an undersized guy out there. this should NOT be a problem this year, but it has been. Largely due to the fact that we cant keep these guys on the court.
2 guys should be able to cover 40 minutes a game easily. But we're getting 36 minutes out of them, meaning 10% of the time we're running a smaller guy out there.
Whats worse, is that in our 3 losses we are averaging just under 29 minutes a game combined from these 2. And why is that? FOULS.
In those 3 losses, these 2 guys committed 19 fouls. Thats .2209 FOULS PER MINUTE.
I've got stats on 67 XU players over the last 30 years. The most frequent fouler was Reynolds, at .1622 per minute. So in those losses our guys are fouling 36% more frequently than our most frequent fouler in 30 years. And Reynolds stands out. Robinson is next at .1390. Caudle then at .1365. Cole at .1357, and Gaston at .1263 rounding out the "top" 5. By the time you get to number 10 (Duncan), the foul rate drops to .1169 which means Abou and Ciani are fouling 89% more than our 10th most frequent fouler in the last 30 years.
And by the way, its mostly Abou. His foul rate is .2133 for the SEASON. In the losses, he's at .3548 fouls per minute! In the Wins, he's still in Jalen territory at .1563. In his career, Abou is at .1350 which would still put him in our "Top" 5, so this isnt something new for him.
This fouling needs to stop now. We need Ousman on the court.....and NOT worrying about foul trouble....for 25 minutes a game. We need Ciani out there for 15 minutes. Dez, Lazar, and Gytis can split time at the 3/4 positions. Dez can play a little 2 so we can get Swain a bit of PT as well. Green can backup McKnight.
Plenty of depth on this team to keep guys game ready but also fresh when the Big East grind occurs. Last year, we saw a worn down Boum late in the year and then we had no chance with a short bench (no Free) against Texas. (frankly shocked we got that far...).
Our biggest problem so far has been these foul issues. Clean that up, and suddenly the rebounding issues get solved becasue your big guys are in there. opponents' trips to the line get cut down as well. Fewer guys being asked to play out of position.
this is a fixable problem, but we need it fixed NOW.
