Roy Williams' Offensive Philosophy

Roy Williams has long been known for his teams' transition offense, including their secondary break. They really get the ball out and go. Coincidentally, this year's team includes Tyler Zeller. I attended a clinic once where Zeller's high school coach, Washington (IN) High School coaching legend Gene Miller, presented on the same break that Williams has used. Zeller was, ironically, in high school at the time.

Here are some of the philosophies that Williams uses in his offense.

1) Run the basketball.
2) Practice playing fast for greater control.
3) Get the ball out of the net and in bounds as quickly as possible.
4) Get the ball to the point guard on the outlet pass.
5) The 2-man and 3-man take off to the other end as soon as the ball is secured.
6) The first post is the "rim runner," who tries to get early post position.
7) The second post is the "trailer," who trails the point guard with the ball.
8) The goal is for each player to make his first three steps faster than anyone else on the other team.
9) If there are two or fewer defenders, the offense should score in two passes or fewer.
10) If there are more than two defenders back, the offense gets into their secondary break.

If you would like to explore more of the secondary break, Williams has several videos out there on his various secondary break options.

Bo Ryan's Swing Offense

Bo Ryan is one of my favorite coaches in college basketball. He always gets the most out of his teams. I've studied his patented "Swing Offense" to a great degree. He likes to have versatile, skilled players that can execute the offense. The offense involved a lot of back screens, UCLA screens, and handoffs. The following are ten keys for using Wisconsin's Swing Offense.

1. The Swing Offense is based on a numbering system.

2. Get the ball in a high percentage area and into the bonus situation before opponents.

3. Keep three people on the ball side of the floor.

4. Interchange the two players away from the ball in order to take away defensive help. If the defense jams the middle, they use as many skip passes as needed.

5. After catching the ball, perimeter players always look inside first.

6. When interchanging, make basket cuts and never lose sight of the ball.

7. REVERSE THE BALL. - Make the defense work.

8. Take the path of least resistance when cutting off a screen.

9. After setting a screen, step to the ball.

10. Use tandem partners to go away from pressure.

NCAA Tourney Blog 2 - Jeff Janssen's 10 Strategies For Preparing the Underdog for Postseason

We see it every year in the NCAA Tournament. Multiple underdogs become the big stories early in the tournament. Jeff Janssen is one of the premier sports leadership experts in the country. I have even been fortunate to have contributed to his most recent book Developing Relentless Competitors. Jeff compiled a list of ten strategies for underdogs in any sport for postseason play.

1. "On any given day..." - The belief that "...any team can beat any other team."

2. Nothing to lose mentality - Have fun and play up the fact that the pressure is on the other team.

3. Highlight your successes - Show a film of your season's greatest successes.

4. "The game doesn't know" concept - The game doesn't know who is supposed to win.

5. Find bulletin board material - If your team is in a confident state, find someone who is disrepecting them for motivation.

6. Speak softly, but carry a big stick - Don't give the other team any bulletin board material.

7. Motivational movies - Show them Miracle or Hoosiers.

8. Abraham Lincoln overcoming failure - Remind them of all of the failures "Honest Abe" overcame to succeed as President of the United States (one of my personal favorites).

9. Start strong, manage the momentum, and keep it close - The longer you maintain momentum, the more pressure will fall on the opponent.

10. Motivational themes - Help your team be inspired, confident, focused, and/or loose.

NCAA Blog 1: Steve Alford's All-American Workout

The "Xcellence and O's" blog is back and is here to stay. And it's back with a vengeance. What better time to bring it back than the NCAA Tournament? This is the first post of several over the coming weeks where I will profile some basketball knowledge from coaches and/or other key figures involved in this year's NCAA Tournament. I may also add some notes from the Women's NCAA Tournament and some great things from Ohio High School Basketball. Enjoy!



The first post in this series is notes from the very first instructional basketball tape I ever received. It is "Steve Alford's 50-Minute All-American Workout." Yes, Alford was my childhood idol, but this is a great instructional video that is still very consistent with today's game. Alford still uses variations of this workout for his own players at New Mexico. The great thing about this workout is that you do not need a workout partner, thus maximizing your workout time.

3 Keys to Becoming a Great Basketball Player
1) Dedication
2) Discipline
3) Intensity

Decide - "I want to dedicate ________ minutes per day to doing my workout."
You get out what you want to put in.

Workout Routine

- Stretch

- Jump Shot, without dribble (Rebound and spin ball to yourself) - 20/25 shots in 2 minutes

- Shoot 10 FTs (Chart your FTs)

- Jump Shot, with 1-2 dribbles (Cover 3-4 feet on dribble) - 2 minutes

- Shoot 10 FTs

- Backboard Shooting (Shoot mid-range jumpers using backboard, alternating sides) - 2 minutes

- Shoot 10 FTs

- 2-Ball Dribble

- Dribble the Line - Dribble over all lines of the basketball court, cross over when you switch to a new line (Dribble 2 laps right hand, 2 laps left hand)

- Shoot 10 FTs

- Creative Shooting (Have fun and shoot shots you like to shoot) - 2 minutes

- Shoot 10 FTs

- Movement Shooting (Set up a chair at each elbow. Make various moves off of each chair, alternating. Spin ball to yourself as you cut.) - 2 minutes

- Shoot 10 FTs

- Point Moves (Set up a chair with a broom attached. Attack defender with various moves off chair.) - 2 minutes

- Shoot 10 FTs

- Broom and Chair Drill (Get shots while on the move in front of the broom attached to a chair.) - 2 minutes

- Shoot 10 FTs

Daniel Pink's Three Laws of Mastery

I recently finished reading a good book by Daniel Pink called "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us." He mentions three elements that are responsible for motivating us - Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I found his "Three Laws of Mastery" particularly fascinating for anyone wanting to become great at anything.

1. Mastery is a Mindset:
Pink's "Type I" behavior has an incremental theory of intelligence, prizes learning goals over performance goals, and welcomes effort as a way to improve at something that matters.

2. Mastery is a Pain:
"Grit" - perseverance and passion for long-term goals
"Mastery - of sports, music, business - requires effort (difficult, painful, excruciating, all-consuming effort) over a long time (not a week or month, but a decade.)"
"Mastery involves working and working and showing little improvement, perhaps with a few moments of flow pulling you along, then making a little progress, and then working and working on that new, slightly higher plateau again."

3. Mastery is an Asymptote:
"This is the nature of mastery: Mastery is an asymptote. You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really, really close to it. But...you can never touch it."

John Henry Newman on Vocations

I was teaching a class this morning on the topic of vocations. I came across this quote from John Henry Newman about vocations:

“God has created me to do him some definite service: he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.”

Six Keys to Being Excellent

Tony Schwartz is the President and CEO of The Energy Project and author of "Be Excellent at Anything." He posted his "Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything."

These keys can serve as an extension of Anders Ericsson's work on "deliberate practice." Ericsson made the case that it takes 10,000 hours of work to achieve expertise.

1. Pursue what you love. - Passion

2. Do the hardest work first. - Delay gratification.

3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break.

4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses.

5. Take regular renewal breaks. - Relax after intense effort.

6. Ritualize practice. - Build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

You can find more from Tony Schwartz on his website http://tonyschwartz.com/

Leadership Thoughts from "A Season of Life"

"A Season of Life" is a book written by Pulitzer Prize winner, Jeffrey Marx. Marx profiles the 2001 football season for Gilman High School in Maryland. One of Gilman's assistant coaches is Joe Ehrmann, a former Baltimore Colt and now a minister. Marx shows how Ehrmann and the rest of the Gilman coaching staff use their roles to lead their players into becoming much more than football players but most importantly, men. Marx writes about many of the discussions he and Ehrmann had during the season. In one of these discussions, Ehrmann gives his take on leadership...

"It's gotta be based on some kind of moral, ethical foundation. You can't just go with the flow in life. There's a broad road and a narrow road, and you have to learn how to courageously stand up on some kind of foundation, some kind of principle, make decisions, be a leader, and go that way. It takes great courage to lead in the right direction...and especially at the age of the boys on our football team. In the midst of all of the peer pressure, the whole social setting, it takes tremendous courage to stick to the right values because they're often gonna find themselves at odds with the rest of their peer group."

Tony Hinkle's Offensive System and Other Thoughts

Coach Paul D. Tony Hinkle served Butler University as head basketball, football, and baseball coach, and athletic director, over the course of six different decades. Most of his coaching success came as head basketball coach at Butler, where he coached from the 1926-27 season and ended the 1969-70 season (Coach Hinkle coached at Great Lakes Naval Training Center from 1942-45 where he was stationed during World War II.)

Among Coach Hinkle’s greatest accomplishments include the 1929 National Collegiate Championship, having his name put on Butler’s historic Fieldhouse, and being inducted into the Nasimith Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Hinkle was extremely innovative, as well. One of his great contributions to the game was his idea of using the orange basketball.

The following thoughts on Coach Hinkle came from Howard Caldwell’s 1991 book “Tony Hinkle: Coach for All Seasons.”

“THE HINKLE SYSTEM” – Coach Hinkle’s Offensive System
- Constant movement between pairs of players on the floor
- Coach Hinkle worked out an array of 14 two-man exercises designed to block out defensive players; today they’re known as picks and screens
- Concentrated on getting good percentage shots, since most teams were bigger than Butler
- The offensive drill on the first day of practice with Hinkle was identical to the offensive drill on the final day of practice.
- Hinkle wanted habits so deeply ingrained in his players that they would respond to changing situations without thinking.

COACH HINKLE ON RECRUITING…
No matter how competitive the search for player prospects became, Butler’s coach never wanted a kid who had been talked into a commitment. He wanted the prospect to get a factual rundown of what Butler was all about…He was proud of the university’s academic reputation, a reputation that carried over into a strict interpretation of the rules as they pertained to athletes.

COACH HINKLE ON BEING SUCCESSFUL…
His basic approach was to remind everybody that success depended on the team as a unit, not on the individual. What better way to remind them of that concept than to use the word “kid”, a number, a hometown, or an abbreviated form of the name.

Brad Stevens Thoughts and Defensive DNA - Final 4 Part 4 of 5

8 COMPONENTS THAT MAKE A GREAT TEAMMATE…
1. Selflessness
2. Honesty – “Truth is a prerequisite of trust.”
3. Accountability – “We have accountable people. When you don’t, you can’t improve.”
4. Respect
5. Passion – “Kids have to love the game.”
6. Enthusiasm – “Attitude is everything.”
7. No doubts
8. Servanthood – “If you want to lead, serve first.”

ON WHAT IS NEEDED TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN BASKETBALL…
“The game honors toughness.”

ON EXCELLENCE…
"Success is having something. Excellence is being something."

ON BEING WHO YOU ARE…
"We're Butler and we're going to be Butler. We're going to be as good as we can be, but we're not going to be something else."

BRAD STEVENS’ DEFENSIVE PRINCIPLES…
These were notes from the University of Florida Coaches’ Clinic last August. Thanks to Mark Daigneault for providing these:

Coach Stevens developed these 6 Defensive "DNA" Principles because he was coaching six freshmen who needed to learn how to play their defensive system.
1. Commitment - In 11 years, he never had a player in the program that worked his tail off on the defensive end that wasn’t a great teammate and student.
2. Positioning – Starts with transition.
3. Prioritization – The goal is to stop the other team from scoring.
4. Awareness – Awareness can allow a marginal athlete to become a very good defender – more so than a great athlete with marginal awareness.
5. Execution/Technique – Technique is easy to work on in individuals (workouts).
6. Completion – The importance of finishing plays (blocking out)