New Utah State men’s basketball head coach Ben Jacobson will usher the Aggies into the Pac-12 era with the hope that Utah State can maintain success.
As the headline of this article firmly notes, this is part two of this series on Jacobson’s scheme. Part one was about the offense and this one will break down the defense.
Aggie fans became used to (albeit sometimes weary of) Eric Haut’s matchup zone defense. It was a defense that essentially switched everything and had a core principle of “five guys guarding the ball.” Put simply, Northern Iowa does not run a defense like that. It’s a much more traditional man scheme and even has limited switching in defending ball screen and handoff actions.
Here’s a rather typical Utah State defensive possession this past season. There were three (maybe four) switches on this play.
Now, here’s a Northern Iowa defensive possession for comparison. Watch for places where USU’s defense might have switched and how UNI approaches those points in the possession.
There were at least two, probably three points where this year’s Aggies would have switched. The first two passes around the perimeter were the kinds of situations where USU’s guards — Drake Allen, MJ Collins, Elijah Perryman, Kolby King and Mason Falslev — would basically automatically switch almost every time. Northern Iowa does not switch nearly as easily. There were certainly times switches happened, but they were far less common.
Obviously, you can’t just leave defenders stranded when they get screened and hope they catch up, which is where UNI’s great help defense comes in. Let’s go back to that example defensive possession for the Panthers, cutting toward the end. Valparaiso reset the possession with a high pick-and-roll, and when UNI forward Tristan Smith hedged the ball-handler, the pass went to the screener who was suddenly open at the elbow.
This is where the Panthers’ help defenders went into high gear. And it’s a tough scenario that requires a well-trained defense. Ben Schwieger, the UNI defender who was inching in from the corner to the paint, jumps into action. But he had to abandon the corner to do so. That left Justus McNair, a 35% 3-point shooter, open in said corner and a pass was sent his way.
Instead of Schweiger scrambling back to his man, Leon Bond, the player wearing No. 35 and was defending the wing on the same side as Schweiger, takes over and closes out. And when McNair passes the ball along to Owen Dease, a 41% 3-point shooter, on the wing Schweiger returns the favor to Bond by closing out.
This is a textbook “X out” defense and it was executed perfectly since it chased two pretty solid 3-point shooters off the line and forced Valparaiso to go from potentially an open three to a contested floater at the free throw line.
Northern Iowa’s defense flies around the court with this kind of help defense, every single man on the court able to step in when necessary and help a teammate out before returning to their man for a closeout or to shut the door on a pass into the paint.
A potentially underrated part of Jacobson’s scheme that impacts defense, and which will appear in somewhat stark contrast with the Calhoun/Haut defense, is offensive rebounds. No, that’s not a typo. Offensive rebounds, not defensive. On its face, rebounds on the offensive side of the court may not seem to impact defense, but they certainly do.
When a team commits resources and effort into grabbing offensive rebounds, there’s a trade-off where that team can be open to their opponent having an easier time at getting into transition offense and scoring against a defense that isn’t set. Utah State accepted this trade-off and were rewarded by having a really solid rates of offensive rebounds (97th in OReb%) and were ninth nationally in efficiency on put-backs after cleaning the glass. But the downside to that was the Aggies ranking below average in the amount of transition offense they gave up (below average in this case meaning more opportunities for the opponent) and well below average in their ability to stop it (266th in defensive efficiency against transition offense).
Northern Iowa took the exact opposite approach to offensive rebounds under Jacobson. In his 20 years at the helm, the Panthers have only ranked inside the top 300 in OReb% five times (and for two of those instances the rank was in the 290s). As such, UNI scored the 20th-fewest points on offensive rebounds last year at just 110 (for reference, Templin and Garry Clark combined for 137 just between the two of them). But that handed them the advantage in transition defense. UNI gave up the third-fewest points in transition in the whole country.
There’s a debate to be had in which of these paths is better. Going for offensive rebounds can be a high-reward opportunity because getting one very often leads to an efficient shot attempt or drawing a foul. If you don’t get, though, you risk handing your opponent a transition opportunity. And transition offense is inherently more efficient than half court offense (the most effective half court offense in the nation this year averaged 1.098 points per possession and that average would rank 151st among transition offensive efficiency).
Not going for offensive boards means fewer bites at the apple, but a defense that forces every team to slow down and get into a half court set.
As an important side note, Northern Iowa may not grab many rebounds on offense, but on defense it’s a very, very different story. Since 2006, the Panthers have ranked outside the top 30 in defensive rebounding percentage exactly twice. They’ve finished inside the top six nationally in that category six times.
Earlier we briefly went over how shots after offensive rebounds are often good looks, usually consisting of a shot at the rim or kick-out to an open three, so eliminating these is an incredibly underrated part of defense. To do something statistically irresponsible, we could estimate that if Utah State had UNI’s defensive rebounding rate, it would have gone from averaging 70.7 points per game to somewhere around 68, which would have moved the Aggies from 87th in points allowed per game up to around 40th.
Two things that get talked a lot about with defenses is the ability to force turnovers and block shots. Remarkably, given the caliber of defense UNI often has (seven times in the top 60 in Jacobson’s tenure), his defenses rarely rank well in turnovers forced, steals or blocks. The Aggies’ matchup zone defense ranked 18th in turnover percentage and that was one way it was able to slow down opposing offenses. Other teams have high-level rim protectors, or multiple, that keep teams from getting easy looks at the rim.
The lack of turnovers created by Northern Iowa is largely offset by allowing their opponents to have virtually no transition offense and a limited number of offensive rebounds. Fewer blocks is harder to hide. If you can’t block shots, and benefit from the rim deterrence that high-caliber shot-blockers create, how do you keep teams from getting layups?
It’s by giving up more 3-pointers, in most cases.
Unless you have an elite shot-blocker, defending the paint has to become a team game. Well, it usually always is, but in this case we’re talking about how rim protection goes from one shot blocker on help defense to the entire unit often having to collapse to the paint to deter shots at the rim and potential dump-off passes. And when defenses collapse into the paint, that creates open 3-pointers. Hedging on ball screens the way UNI does can also allow for easy pick-and-pop looks when facing a team that has a shooting center.
This may feel familiar to Aggie fans as Utah State faced the same dilemma in the last few years. To use this year as a specific example, though, the Aggies ranked a rather impressive 45th in 2-point percentage allowed. But the cost was ranking 235th in 3-point attempt ratio. And keeping it in that range was honestly an accomplishment. The Aggies had to, and did, put a heck of a lot of effort into recovering to the 3-point line.
Last year, UNI managed to overcome giving up more 3-pointers by contesting well enough to almost lead the country in defensive 3-point percentage. The Panthers’ opponents shot just 28.7%, which ranked third-best nationally. This isn’t a longstanding trend, though. Northern Iowa ranked between 252nd and 289th in 3-point defense between 2022 and 2025 and have only ranked top 100 three times under Jacobson. But how well UNI defends the 3-point line has typically been the deciding factor for whether or not his defenses are elite. Jacobson’s three best defenses — the 2025-26, 2024-25 and 2009-10 seasons — were teams that ranked third, 66th and 122nd in defensive 3-point percentage. And those are the first, third and fourth-best seasons UNI had in that category under Jacobson.
