Saul and the team have said a lot this week about the problems Ohio has had with D this year. Much of it is a lack of aggressiveness on D, and it shows when it comes to creating turnovers. In the first 17 games this season, Ohio's opponents have made 177 turnovers, a 10.4 per game avg. To put this in perspective, the average was 17.4 in '11-'12 (the Sweet 16 year) and in '12-'13 (the NIT year). In '13-'14, it was 12.5. Last season it was 10.3, just slightly below this season.

Hand-in-hand is a dropoff in steals. In '11-'12 we avged 9.4 per game; in '12-'13 it was 8.9; in '13-'14 it was 6.4; last season it was 5.1 and this year it's only 4.8 -- about half what it was five years ago. In '11-'12 we had five players with 30 or more steals. This season we will likely have no more than two (Setty and Simmons).

Don't know if it's Saul Ball, personnel, players getting used to their roles, fear of fouling, or what. But we had our greatest success when the guys were playing tight D.

We didn't start 4 guys like 6'7" or more who were slow afoot back then.

That and bigs hedging up top which made it very difficult to penetrate down the middle. Opposing guards had a very tough time getting comfortable. Very rarely did a shooter catch a pass where he wanted to catch it. Christian changed it but we still pressured the ball and played tough D. We just don't seem to do anything right now to make it tough on offenses.

Good points. Ric Johnson had a lot to do with those good defensive numbers too.

Personnel is why I keep circling back to my wonderings about the idea of playing a 2-3 zone. Maybe it wouldn't work, but I'd be curious to see it with this bunch.