Since Ben McCollum was named the new head coach at Iowa, I have been carefully watching Drake basketball games to learn more about his team’s style of play and how they achieved so much success.
This article is based on my observations from the Texas Tech and Missouri games in the NCAA Tournament as well as MVC Tournament games against Bradley and Belmont. Later articles will be about his offense but the focus here will be on Drake's defense, which was quite good (39th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency).
They were particularly impressive against Missouri when they held the #7 offense in the country to 0.88 points per possession (PPP). Missouri put up 1.4 PPP against Alabama, 1.1 and 1.2 PPP in two games against Florida, 0.97 PPP against Auburn (not bad against that defense) but only 0.88 PPP against Drake.
