That's what I needed. Thanks Coach Sar.

Curious what your thoughts are on this team running a 1-2-2. Looks like they were running 80.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VagRGSYvoz4

Rob -

Actually, it looks like they are running what we called "70" - controlling the tempo and looking for a trap just over half court. I saw them trap a couple times at half court. Our philosophy was to let them get over half court and then trap the ball.

What really ticks me off is people who make comments ( like at least one of them below the video ) that don't have a clue as to what the coach wants them to do. Those kids WEREN'T lazy, they were doing what their coach wanted them to do, CONTROL the TEMPO..... keep the ball in front of them and then look for the half court trap.

When we ran that, you'd be surprised with some of the turnovers we got by just floating around like they were doing (keeping the ball in front of them) Control the tempo, keep people from doing what they want to do, make them play the way YOU want them to play.

When you have studs you can try to play your way, up tempo etc. When you are the underdog (so to speak) you make them play the way you want them to play, to your advantage. Using this press, IF you want to uptempo the game, you trap the first plass and continue to look for traps in the back court. Ok, I had my morning vent - I should switch to DeCaf haha

I hope what you got helps you. Good luck

You're correct, it was a 70, just got my numbers mixed up. Figured they were trying to slow the temp down. The one thing I saw in the video (and this happens to us) was the offense putting two guys behind the front two in the 1-2-2. It's more when we run the half court 76. In other words, once the ball handler is forced to a side, he waits for the #2 or #3 (depending on side) to come up and throws a lob pass over his head. It seems like you'd have to take this away by good ball pressure from #1 or teams will do this all day.

While the front two work in tandem... so do the back two -----

If they are bring the ball up the sideline..... the one back player has to take away the deep sideline pass... the other player is the safety for any deep passes... and everyone needs to move on what we called "AIR: time. When the ball is in the air - its time to move. If they reverse the ball the two back players switch roles....
Player A has side line.. player B had the deep middle... if they reverse it... Player B sprints to the middle and as he is getting there Player A takes away the sideline,

Is this what you wrere referring to?

Exactly. I watched the video again and it appears the 4 and 5 didn't cover sidelines when the ball was near half court on a couple of occasions. That allowed the easy lob pass.

One last question. If the ball handler has been forced to one side and let's say #1 and #3 go to set the trap in one of the corners at half court. Is #2's responsibility to cover the a pass crossing over half court in the middle or deny the reversal pass? It seems that the rule for my players should be to deny passes into the middle and allow reversal passes behind half court.

We had two calls.... actually, one was the way we normally covered it........ 1/3 trap ( and we wanted the ball to be just over half court ) and 2 took away the middle. With this coveragge you will allow the reversal pass.

Then we had a RED call.... this is when 1/3 are trapping and 2 would look to steal the reversal pass.... A taking away sideline... and B denying the pass into the middle. With this coverage we were allowing the deep pass under the basket... we only did this when we were losing and wanted to get the ball back. It can work anytime as a surprise becuase typically 2 would cover the middle.... The element of surprise can wrork.

At times my players would make that trap out of our m2m defense because we instilled in them that the ball just over half court on the sideline is the greatest place to play someone. We had two extra guys playing defense, the best defenders in the world, they NEVER made a mistake. The sideline and the half court line. (thats always good for a laugh too)

I hope this helps.

By the way, my 4/5s knew better than to allow that sideline pass.. they knew that they were going to hear from me of even worse, get the worst seat in the house.... the one right next to me! They said I had sharp elbows... Usually that seat was open during games. haha

Thanks for the clarification. Makes perfect sense. I hear you on that empty seat, all coaches must have those sharp elbows! Ha!