UC Irvine's defense is approaching a golden mean
Russell Turner is the best in the (Big) West
As of the time of writing, you can go to KenPom dot com and view the list of the best defenses in America. This is a pretty easy thing to do, which involves clicking one (1) button. There are a clear top four ahead of everyone else: Tennessee, Duke, Houston, UCLA. No surprise, as these are four of the best defensive programs in the nation.
All fine and dandy. Without looking, could you guess who is fifth? I don’t think you could. You would probably guess Iowa State (7th). Perhaps Auburn (12th), VCU (8th), Kansas (9th), or even San Diego State (24th) or Saint Mary’s (27th). Maybe you’re wise to the game and you know Texas A&M (6th) has had a really good start to the season. But! None of these teams are fifth overall in adjusted defensive efficiency.
The fifth-best defense, as of today, belongs to the UC Irvine Anteaters. This is a huge deal. For one, the best defense in Big West history is Utah State’s in 2000-01; they finished 29th, which is 24 spots off UCI’s pace. For another, they’d be the first team from a one-bid league to have a top-10 defense since 2016, when both San Diego State and Valparaiso did it. At least as of six-plus weeks in, this is a once-in-a-decade defense at this level of basketball.
This is despite a quirk in their Synergy profile that you never see in the best defenses: an invite to take open threes if you’d like to take them.
I have been using Synergy in my work for the last eight years, which both feels much longer and shorter. I have never once seen this profile on any good defense. High percentage of dribble-jumpers, sure, but this generally comes with a reasonable Guarded/Unguarded rate. No team in America has a worse Guarded/Unguarded rate, on paper, than UCI. The teams nearest them are teams like Coastal Carolina and Bethune-Cookman, who are respectively 237th and 176th in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency.
But, hey, I promise there’s a point to the madness here. There are reasons why certain possessions result in what should be, in theory, absurdly good shots like this.
The overall point might be this: UC Irvine may be the best defensive program going in terms of paying attention to the scouting report. Highly athletic they aren’t; extremely prepared and smart they absolutely are.
With a defense as good as this one, where do you even start? There’s shockingly few flaws to spot even from a stats standpoint. They’re elite at defensive rebounding, ranking 8th in DREB%. They don’t foul, rating out 10th in FT Rate. (This would easily be their highest rate in this stat under HC Russell Turner.) Every year since 2011-12, they’ve ranked in the top 40 nationally in 2PT% allowed, so their current rank of 15th is nothing new. Neither is the fact they don’t allow many three-point attempts (23rd in 3PA rate).
Watch an average UC Irvine game and you can see some of the basic aspects that similar analytically-wise programs deploy. I’ve talked about the Ball Screen Aggression Index on here a lot, which is a concept that Jordan Sperber originally came up with:
As it stands, your leader on the opposite end of the spectrum - the droppiest drop coverage that can be - is one UC Irvine. They outpace teams like Creighton, Tennessee, Alabama, and Auburn, all of whom heavily lean towards drop coverage. UC Irvine’s is remarkably good at forcing ball handlers into no-man’s land, which I’d describe as anywhere from about six feet (not a layup, but not a jumper) to 20 feet (a jumper that isn’t a three). Of the 105 ball-handler attempts they’ve forced via P&Rs 44, or 42%, have come in this range.
The actual hit rate Irvine gives up looks ugly - 41% FG%, 45.2% eFG%, and in the 14th-percentile in points per possession. Then again, Irvine doesn’t force many turnovers to begin with; this is a keep-it-in-front-of-you defense. That’s why the points-per-shot ranking is much rosier, about at the national average. If it’s just a quality drop coverage, that’s one thing, but that’s the tip of the Irvine iceberg. I’m more interested in all those open threes.
BEHIND THE WALL ($): More news on anteaters