Stopping the Leading Scorer

[Dave in Green]

It's hard to prepare a defense to stop a team's leading scorer when many different players take turns being the team's leading scorer.

As can be seen in the following list, 9 different Zips players have been the team's leading scorer, tied for leading scorer, or within 2 points of the leading scorer in the 20 games to date this season (number of games - player name):

6 - Cvetinovic

6 - Diggs

6 - Marshall

5 - Harney

3 - Treadwell

2 - Abreu

2 - Walsh

1 - Gilliam

1 - McClanahan

[Quickzips]

This has been a hallmark of KD's teams. If you look at the numbers from the last few years, we rarely have anyone on the team averaging over 10-12 points per game. Usually we have 6-7 players between 7-10 points per game. It has worked pretty well for us. The Zips rarely go into a game saying that if "X" player doesn't show up tonight we have no chance of winning.

On the flip side, KD also seems to understand the concept of letting another teams leading scorer have his, but shutting down the rest of the team. Case in point, Tuesday night against Ball State. Jarrod Jones is clearly the Cardinals best player. Zeke struggled with him a bit early, but KD never really started throwing double teams at Jones. Instead he sort of accepted that Jones was going to score, but didn't let his teamates get involved. The end result was a strong showing from Jones with no help from his supporting cast and a double digit Zips victory. I've seen this quite a bit from KD the past few years, and while it can be a bit frustrating watching the opponents best player score seemingly at will sometimes, we have won those types of games a good deal more than we have lost them.