Thursday, March 22, 2012

Minnesota State Tournament Tidbits From Day 1

On a basketball binge during the four greatest days of the year - our Minnesota State Tournament. Our state has some great coaches and teams and I always find some good tidbits! I'm not going to share them all, and not going to share anything from teams that moved on, but here are a few interesting things I noticed on day one:
St. Peter High School End Game Press Set Up
When St. Peter was down late against Plainview-Elgin-Millville they used this start to their press which I thought was a smart look, I've seen it before but wanted to document it here. They needed a quick steal late and were face guarding everyone. Instead of pressuring the inbounder, or taking the inbounder off the ball and helping to double, they put the inbounder's man behind the three across pressbreak that P-E-M used.
The reason I liked this look was that it allowed the other three guys to completely face guard their opponents without worrying about getting beat deep. A lot of times in this situation a good offensive team that is being face guarded will run a player deep and throw the long ball for an easy lay-up.  When you play it like this and put the inbounder's player deep it takes away the deep ball option. The one downfall is that you can't use the inbounder's defender to trap, but in this situation, you need an immediate steal late, it's a great look.



St. Croix Lutheran End Game Management
In St. Croix's game against Braham they were down by 2 and Braham was shooting 2. Braham made the first one and St. Croix Lutheran called time out after the first free throw. I thought this was great because it set them up to go right into what they wanted to do offensively so they could grab the ball and go make or miss. A lot of coaches wait until the second free throw, but at that point that gives the other guy a chance to calm his guys down and get them mentally ready. I think getting the ball and going favors the offense because it can be a scramble situation. If you start from a dead ball situation the defense has time to get down and get set. So from now on I will be calling time out after the first free throw instead of the second or first.

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