Sanford is in trouble without Davis, he's there 2nd offensive threat. Here's what I see the fatal errors coaches make defensively with Sanford. We all know Mikey is a beast, but he is a beast scoring 50% of their points. Without Davis, if u limit his game to 20-25% of their points your chances of beating them is high. Here's how I would do it defensively if I had reasonable talent. I would need 2 kids to dedicate themselves to defending him the entire game, one subbing in for the other to keep a fresh defender on him. We going to a match up zone on everyone else and single coverage on him with no help side D. That defender needs only concern himself with Dixon. 2nd, force kyle to shoot jump shoots, he is a talented, powerful off the dribble gaurd but he doesn't shoot the jumper much. What I see happening is Dixon catches the ball to easy on the wing, reverses its with a set screen play and his defender backs off. He hangs on that wing and after a set up dribble penetration where help side collapses they kick it to him for wide open 3. Every time this works & he drops 30. So if u know Kyle's first option is not to shoot a jumper, play him for the drive and the defender on Dixon should stay home denying him the ball. He shouldn't touch the ball and if he manages to catch it double him and force him to give it up, then recover back to 1 man face guarding. On defense If he gets a steal in the open court and defense cannot recover in time, take a clean open court foul, no easy layups. He is a talented kid with high iq so this effort has to be continuous all 32 minutes but the objective should be to make someone else other than Mikey & Kyle make plays. Game after game, wide open 3's yet people go for the same setup and leave him open.
