prevent defense

English

Noun

prevent defense (plural prevent defenses)

1. (team sports) Any defense intended to prevent rapid scoring by the offense, at the expense of allowing relatively easy, slower scoring.
   • 1960, “The 5-3 Prevent Defense”, in Athletic Journal, volume 41, page 32:

     In order to cope with this situation, we developed a simple prevent defense which was designed primarily to negate the long touchdown play. Originally, the 5-3 prevent defense was used in the latter moments of the second and fourth quarters ...

   • 2001, Robert Hirschfeld, Matt Christopher, Football Nightmare, football, most common (& earliest?) use [not this quote], page 118:

     There were still forty seconds remaining, so the Bucks went into a prevent defense, with eight men back to guard against long passes. The Mustang halfback was able to pick up some ground, but not enough to score

   • 2019 September 30, Carson Gourdie, The Daily Illini, hockey:

     Much of the third period was a stalemate, with the Illini successfully clearing out the puck and playing prevent defense. With 6:37 left in the third period, Barnhart was able to make back-to-back stops while on the ground, preventing the Redbirds from tying the game momentarily.

   • 2019 November 19, Michael Shattuck, “Hometeam: Grace Martin, defense power Millbury [girls' soccer team] past Lenox to gain state final”, in Worcester Telegram and Gazette, soccer:

     “Our defense shut them down,” Issa said. “I told them, ‘It was gonna take one or two goals.’ We had plenty of chances to score. I told them, ‘If we score one goal, we’re gonna go prevent defense and we’re going to shut them down, because people have done that to us before.’ ”

   • 2019 December 7, Geoff Grammer, “Lobos dominate inside, move to 2-0 in MWC with win at Wyoming”, in Albuquerque Journal, basketball:

     “I thought it was an unusual game because of the leads that we had,” said Weir, who noted his team’s 3-point defense allowed Wyoming to hit 10 from beyond the arc at a 35.7% clip. “… It was almost prevent defense, but we were just trying to kind of keep the game at bay, and I think we were trying to prevent quick scores and have them really use clock. …”

References

• “prevent defense”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• prevent defense on Wikipedia.Wikipedia