He’s going to need a Mady-style defensive make over this off season. Albeit he is a freshman and expectations should not be that he’s gonna be a stout Big Ten post defender out of the gate, but he has quite a bit of fundamental issues. He rests on the offensive player and is easily and routinely put in the spin cycle. He needs balance, wider stance, lower center of gravity when his man is back to the basket. And he needs to control his body when contesting shots. It looks like he thinks he is going up straight, but he is clearly not. He fouls almost automatically when his man beats him, or when he slides over on help defense in someone driving the basket. He jumps into them, then kinda wants to take his arms straight up, yet doesn’t. So he achieves the bonus of committing the foul yet routinely allowing the continuation of the shot because he doesn’t foul effectively enough. Lots of work to do. Lots of work. Good news is that he is ahead of schedule on the other end of the court.
