We have watched Jacobson playing nearly three years against P5 competition. His defense over that large sample is not surpassed by Lard, and that’s with Lard benefiting from the fact defensive ratings are bias towards blocks more than they are doing your job.
Why do you think his playing time has been so limited? You think he’s sitting on the bench because he’s a better defender? Those are some valid reasons as to why he hasn’t been better, but that doesn’t mean he has, in fact been better.
If your response to who has been a better defender references a hypothetical ceiling and future play, you’re not answering the question, which is understandable.
This season, Conference per 100 possessions to compare apples to apples:
Jacobson DRtg: 100.2
Lard DRtg: 100.6
Career, Per 100 possessions (all games, different leagues of course)
Jacobson DRtg: 101.3
Lard DRtg: 102
If there are better stats to use, let me know. Otherwise I'm not sure what backs up your assertion that Jacobson is so much better than Lard at defense.
Other interesting tidbit: Lard leads rotation players in Win shares/40, by a large margin:
Lard: 0.201
Wigginton 0.137
Jacobson 0.136
Etc. (last among rotation players THT with 0.80)
Quite simply, Lard needs to play as many minutes as his foul situation allows.
But RE offensive rebounds vs Baylor, the guys I'm assuming Lard and Jacobson were guarding all game (Gillespie and Thamba), had 5 ORebs. Baylor's guards had 13(!) ORebs. Lard and Jacobson each had only 2 DRebs, which is pathetic. But they can't box 2 guys out at once. It was primarily Baylor's guards that destroyed us on the boards. Babb and THT each had 6 Drebs. Shayok and Wigginton, who are both very good rebounders, had 3 Drebs between the two of them. I'd be really interested to see whose guy's were actually getting all those offensive rebounds. ****, Mason had 2 offensive rebounds; Babb and THT were our only guys who had more defensive rebounds than that.