By Mike McGraw (Daily Herald)Coming off 4 straight lopsided losses on the road, the Bulls have two days of practice back at the Berto Center to try to straighten things out.
Making the task more difficult are injuries to Kirk Hinrich (sprained left thumb) and Jannero Pargo (sore right shoulder). It's too soon to say if either of the team's backup guards will be able to play Monday at Milwaukee, the last stop on the six-game, circus road trip.
"We need to get refocused defensively," coach Vinny Del Negro said after Saturday's practice. "I thought we missed some of our rotations, some of the things I thought we were doing better before the trip."
That was obvious just by the finals scores. The Bulls (6-8) gave up 100 points once in their first 10 games of the season, then allowed an average of 111.8 in the last four and lost every game by at least 15 points.
They were playing good opponents on the road - the Lakers, Denver, Portland and Utah - but should aspire to being much more competitive than they were.
Del Negro geared the defensive focus on stopping penetration, rebounding the ball better, then pushing the tempo and trying to attack in transition.
"We can't lose confidence in ourselves," Derrick Rose said. "We know that we're good. We know that we have a few people injured. But we know we need to go out there and play the game, no matter who we have.
"Defensively, at the end of the games, we seemed to lock in and defend people. On the trip, we didn't defend like we usually do. Today we got on track."
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