Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

The Guelph Gryphons took on one division opponent in the Laurier Golden Hawks in the first round of the OUA playoffs, now they take on another. The quarterfinal round is upon us and Guelph takes on the team who finished above them in the division, the Windsor Lancers. A lot of familiarity between the two teams which is why i’m going to do something a little different and give you what each team has to do defensively to get the edge over the other. I’ve talked about offence a lot in terms of keys, let’s look at the other side of the ball.

The Lancers do a great job of taking opponents out of what they want to do, and forcing them to win alternatively. They have great guard ball pressure and they’ve been one of the league’s best rebounding teams for years. For Guelph, they’ll want to use screens to force switches and attack mismatches, so for Windsor, their defensive success will lie in how they’re able to switch off screens and keep pressure on the ball handler.

Defending Guelph’s screen game with guards like Alexis Wright or Renee Armstrong initiating can be difficult with the ability for Alexis to step out for a three and Renee to attack the hoop if she finds an advantage. Windsor has the guard play to force the ball handler to stay outside and not give up that quick attack off a screen, and they’ll need that. Keeping Guelph going side to side, allows the Windsor forwards to play more straight up defensively, and takes advantage of all the strong multiple layers the Lancers have.

For Guelph, it’s slowing down the Windsor guards. If you look at the last time these two teams played, Windsor really wanted to play off the catch with the speed they have outside. Guelph has the length advantage but with the off-ball movement that Windsor uses, they get an action off a flair screen or a pin down and that opens up not just a catch and shoot three but a drive if they can catch Guelph struggling to keep up with the movement.

Communication defensively to keep track of movement off the ball and help defence from corner defenders. The length Guelph has can be utilized best if they’re able to stay in their structure, and switching where needed and helping to slow down drives comes down to communicating and managing the movement that creates the success for the Windsor offence.

Windsor took both the regular season games between these two teams, and the third and most important game is in Windsor. A spot in the semifinals on the line.