An Achilles Heel Most Teams Have

...And How To Avoid Having This...

It is no secret to anyone that knows me that I LOVE scheming how to shut down opposing teams' offenses. The better the team the more enjoyable the challenge. It is a great feeling when your team frustrates opponents with a defensive plan that takes away the opponent's strengths.

Pearls Of Wisdom

Back in college when I was just cutting my teeth as a volunteer high school coach, I had a Philosophy of Basketball class that was taught by Bruce Pearl, who is now the Head Coach at Auburn. I learned a lot of great things from Coach Pearl in class. One of the most influential pieces of advice from Coach Pearl was this:
Build your team to beat the BEST teams on your schedule!

Seems like simple advice, right? But when you analyze what that means, it might change your coaching philosophy tremendously.

Think about it for a second. As you develop your coaching philosophy, are you building your team to beat the weak, the average, or the best teams you will face throughout the season? This leads me back to defensive philosophy.

Stay The Course

From a defensive philosophy standpoint, I've coached a lot of teams that simply were not very good at man to man defense at the beginning of the season. It would have been easy to press the panic button and throw out our man to man principles. Who knows, maybe it would have been a temporary solution and allowed us to win an extra game or two.

But by following the advice of Coach Pearl, I always felt that relying predominantly on man to man defense gave us the greatest chance of beating the best teams on our schedule and winning come tournament time.

If you stay the course and teach man to man defensive principles with a solid philosophy and great drills, I'm convinced this will pay off in the long run. And come tournament time no one wants to face a team that plays great man to man defense.... they are ALWAYS a tough out in the tournament!

Finding Their Achilles Heel

One thing I have learned over the years is that all teams do have an offensive weakness. As a coach you need to ask yourself two questions:

  1. What is their offensive weakness
  2. How do we exploit this weakness

When you are looking for a team's weakness some of the things you will begin to notice after awhile are:

  • About 50% of players can score consistently by attacking inside or shooting on the perimeter - one or the other, but NOT both ways.
  • Less than 25% of all players can score by attacking the basket AND knocking down shots on the perimeter.
  • Less than 5% of all players score consistently by attacking inside, shooting from the perimeter, and mid-range jump shots.

A Rare Bird... The 3-Dimensional Scorer

Coach Tim Schuring defines 3-dimensional scorers as players who can knock down perimeter shots, score at the rim with both hands, and score from the mid-range as well. Teams with 3-dimensional scorers have limited weaknesses.

There is some good news for defenses though. Rarely have I come across players or teams who could consistently score between about 6'-18'. Most teams don't have 3 -dimensional scorers, therefore they have a major weakness you can exploit!

It seems like players who could hit mid-range jump shots have become nearly extinct.

Does This Shot Chart Look Familiar???

Most of us have seen many shot charts by either our own team or our opponent's team that look very similar to this.... Little or absolutely no scoring that takes place in the mid-range.

Mother Necessity

As coaches, Mother Necessity rules the roost. We are constantly trying to create new plays or tweak what we already have. We want to give our players the best chance of winning and being successful. In our case, it meant taking advantage of teams who struggle to score mid-range.

The best teams on our schedule usually had greater size and athleticism than we had. Along with this, their strengths usually included scoring in the paint and shooting perimeter 3's.

So out of necessity came a man to man defense developed to specifically take these strengths away and give us a chance to beat better teams. We would force teams to put the ball on the floor from the perimeter and clog the lane so there were no scoring opportunities around the rim (more details on this specific defense in the future).

The best part of our "new" man to man defense was ALL of the basic man to man principles remained the same!

ROCK SOLID Foundation Allows Flexibility

The bottom line is this because we had a solid man to man defense in place, it was relatively easy to tweak our defense into something that took advantage of the number one weakness we seemed to find in good teams.... lack of a mid-range game.

A defense has to be flexible enough to make teams pay for their offensive weakness. With our players all being well versed in man to man principles we were able to attack a team's offensive weakness successfully without changing our overall defensive principles. Your defense will only be as good as the foundation it is built on!

Don't Fall Into This Coaching Trap

When it comes to practices and implementing shooting drills, make sure you are developing 3-dimensional scorers. It is easy to fall into the trap of using the same drills over and over without even realizing that you are not working on creating 3-dimensional scorers. Look over your practice plans and make sure you have drills that work on scoring from the perimeter, mid-range, and at the rim on a daily basis.

If you develop 3-dimensional scorers in your practices, teams will struggle to find a weakness they can take advantage of!

If you want help developing your man to man defense foundation, check out Jim Huber's Man To Man Defense.

If you want to make sure your team doesn't have a weakness that can easily be exploited, check out Becoming A 3-Dimensional Scorer With Tim Schuring



What do you think? Let us know by leaving your comments, suggestions, and questions...




Comments

Most Likes First   Oldest First   Newest First

Russell Ivy says:
2/18/2020 at 10:54:02 AM

Great info.
Lots to built on

Like
   

Russell Ivy says:
2/18/2020 at 10:54:00 AM

Great info.
Lots to built on

Like
   

Leave a Comment
Name
:
Email (not published)
:
One times one is equal to?  (Prevents Spam)
Answer
:
 Load New Question
Comments
:
Leave this Blank
: