I'm not having too much difficulty with the defending to be honest. As above, really, I never dive in.
You can second guess what your opponent will do the majority of the time.
I do like the rewards for the Squad Battles stuff, too. I've just looked up the format though and you actually don't get the reward for a week. There is literally 44 games over the week for you to play in order to get your points up to get decent prizes. Even if you're only playing World Class level, 10 wins means you'll finish in Elite 1 - which means 39.8k coins and 2 Mega Packs. Once I get to that level I'll not bother playing the rest of the squad battle stuff until it resets.