There is More than One Way to Skin a Cat

As coaches research the possibility of moving to an Extreme Fast Break system, they are usually confronted with a dilemma... what direction do I go, LMU or Grinnell? Well, what it really boils down to is research and personal preference.

Locating the available materials and resources will ultimately help guide your decision to go in the Grinnell or LMU direction. Certainly, after digesting the those materials you may feel one system is a better fit than the other. From my perspective, Grinnell's style made the most sense because we had a lot of access to Grinnell materials and sources, which made our transition easier.

That is not to say that Grinnell is a better system than LMU...I couldn't really say because I've never really gotten into the nuts and bolts of the LMU system. I know there are some similarities b/w Grinnell and LMU, but there are also some major differences as well.

One of the goals I want for this blog is to cater to any and all variations of Extreme Fast Break Basketball. Since my familiarity lies with the Grinnell system, I'm hoping we can get some contributors to add content from non-Grinnell system styles of Extreme Fast Break Basketball. If you are interested in being a contributor, please leave a message (that includes your email) in the comment section of this post. I really hope to get a nice cross-section of discussion on this blog.

Inmates Running the Asylum?

One of the most difficult aspects of coaching in an Extreme Fast Break system is having to relinquish control to your players. As coaches, our natural instinct is to over-analyze, micromanage and out think ourselves on almost every possession in practices and in games. In a Extreme Fast Break environment, a coach really needs to do the exact opposite.

Basically, Extreme Fast Break basketball is about one thing...pace. Creating pace is the most crucial component we are after and the less the players have to think, the more they can just focus on putting forth all their energy into playing every second as hard as they possibly can. As coaches, the more responsibility we give our players to remember specific plays or presses in certain situations, in my opinion, will impede the players ability to play at an all out pace.

Really, simplicity is one of the most interesting things about Extreme Fast Basketball. Having the players focus on just a few responsibilities on both offense and defense frees them up to just play at a break-neck speed. From my experience, if we tried to force our players to execute a bunch of different presses based on different situations during the game, we would have really struggled in staying aggressive. Even if you are lucky enough to coach the smartest kids in the world, I don't think it is worth sacrificing all out effort in order to press a certain way just because your opponent missed a shot, turned the ball over or made a basket.

Does this mean you should press the same way during the game or only run your fast break system one way to keep things simple? Heck no. Certainly, adding some tweaks here or emphasizing a certain rotation there is necessary. But as a rule of thumb, I really think you need to go with a less is more approach, ESPECIALLY if you are in the early stages of implementing the system.

Just keep your focus on creating an extreme pace of play and achieving your desired goals. The numbers will tell you if your achieving your desired pace. More times than not, the reason your team is not achieving your desired goals is because of effort...making the press or fast break system more complex will likely not make a difference. Getting your kids to play all out is the key a vast majority of the time. The simpler you keep it, the better off the kids will be.

Mini-Clinic at Rim of the World HS

Marina High School's Coach Roger Holmes and his staff made the trip up to Lake Arrowhead, CA last week to assist the Rim of the World Girls get more comfortable running the system. It turned out to be a very productive day as the Rim Girl's seemed to really grasp the concepts and drills that Coach Holmes shared with them.

Certainly, the transition was made easier by Coach Delmont, Head Varsity Coach of the Rim Girl's and his staff. Coach Delmont has tried to incorporate some of the system ideas during the Spring League, but have not been able to fully jump in due to lack of player numbers(many girls were involved in Spring sports). On this day however, Coach Delmont had a full squad of Girls and they really did a GREAT job in terms of picking up the nuances of the system.

The highlight of the day was a simulated game(for only 1 quarter) where the Rim Varsity competed against one of their lower-level teams. Even though there was a decided talent advantage for the Varsity, they finally got a chance to see how the system really works...stats were kept, the girls where subbed in shifts and they pressed like mad.

The final results of the scrimmage were outstanding, they met all of their goals(by a large margin in some cases). Even though there were only 30 people in the gym, it sounded like 1,000. The energy the girls displayed was tremendous. There is no doubt that if the Rim Girls can bottle that energy up and play like that on a game in game out basis, they will have a great season. The girls and coaches were sponges and as they get more comfortable with the little things, the sky is the limit.

As an aside, it is great to see fellow system coaches willing to share their knowledge and experiences to better those who are just starting out with this craziness. Certainly, in Marina's case, if it weren't for the time that Coach David Arseneault and Coach Gary Smith spent working with the coaching staff, it would have been difficult to achieve the success they did this past year.

So in that spirit, if any *system newbies* need any assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. We can't promise any one day clinics...that is based on location, time and other factors...but at the very least we will answer every question, provide any related video and/or doing anything else to help you make the adjustment to Extreme Fast Break Basketball.

Are we giving up too many layups in our press? How much is too much?

One of the most common concerns of coaches interested in or starting off with extreme fast break basketball is giving opponents too many easy layups. In the Run and Gun Yahoo Group Doug Porter, Head Women's Coach at Olivet Nazarene University, discussed the issue of giving up too many layups in the press. Here's some of what Doug had to say:

Two points:
1) The stat you need to focus on, first of all, is forced turnovers. If you aren't meeting that goal regularly, then you are probably not being aggressive enough in your press. Remember you are playing an extreme system here, and must create some TO's to counter the high FG% of your opponent. BUT also remember that your own offensive production will be higher as a result of this aggressive defense, which creates more open court shots and ORB's for you (and, surprisingly, a lower offensive TO% when you get good at it). You're comment was exactly on target: you must "give to get!" But you must learn to give INTELLIGENTLY.

Maybe you or your players are too afraid of going all out? In any case, the dirty little secret is I don't like giving up layups either, but the WRONG way to address that problem in the system is to pull back and play a safer press.

2) The right way to address the "problem" of layups (at least this has been the path we've taken) is to work on the following aspects of your press:

a) Play different presses (all aggressive!) to limit the breakaway 3/2 and 2/1 opportunities by your opponent. Examples: Faceguard the throw-in and stay on the ball (i.e. use a SUPER-aggressive press); OR Faceguard the throw-in and move "Off" the inbounder to help on denial and get a quicker trap; OR Faceguard and move "Back" behind the front line with your on ball defender to put an extra body in position to contain breakaways and/or help the safety; OR Totally allow the throwin vs 3-up or 4-up to prevent the quick backdoor pass behind your defenders; OR Delay the trap until 3/4 court or � court (what Coach Smith at Redlands calls "Stay"). Which one to use? Whichever one that works at the time vs. that particular opponent's press attack.

b) Drill on "chasing" opponents after they get by the front line of your press. You'll be surprised at how much players can help you out if they just bust their tails to get back to "back-tap" the dribbler and/or help out your out-numbered safety.

c) Drill on 2/1 and 3/2 situations (especially 2/1) until those safeties can react and read better. The instinct for when to come up for a steal or fall back to protect the rim is not easy to develop, but it's critical. So is the skill of knowing when to try and draw the charge vs. going for the block vs. getting out of the way! Our safeties were terrible early in the year at this (thus, our 6-10 record pre-Christmas) but by our conference tourney finals they were excellent, drawing 5 charges.

Thanks to Coach Porter for his insight on this issue...certainly, if you would like to continue or add to this discussion, post a comment.

Those planning to implement the Run in Gun for next season...

we would certainly love to hear from you. As you can see, we have included links the various teams that we know are playing extreme fast break basketball. If you are going to the extreme fastbreak style of play, please leave a comment in the post with your school name, location and web address. We will add your team to our ever growing links page. This will be a great way for our community to track each teams progress throughout the year.

Also, if you are interested in having the ability to author posts on this blog, please leave a comment or shoot me an email and I can set it up.

Good luck in all of your spring and summer activities!!!

Marina's Shift Spreadsheet for the '06-'07 season...

One of the most useful tools we as a coaching staff utilized during the season was our year to date shift spreadsheet. Over the course of our 27 game season, we amassed nearly 900 shifts. Every one of those shifts were logged by minutes played and given a plus/minus based on the scoreboard.

The net benefit of this worksheet was it allowed us the ability to look at shift times per group and compare those to the plus/minus numbers. One of our challenges as a coaching staff was to gauge shift length as it relates to optimum productivity. Converting what Grinnell and Redlands did in terms of shift times was a tough thing to determine. Because we were playing 20% less than the college guys/gals do(on a smaller court no less) we thought it may behoove us to keep shifts in the 1:15-1:20 range.

What we discovered was, the shifts that were closer to a minute in length ended up being our most productive shifts. Certainly, there were some longer shifts that resulted in good plus/minus numbers but on the whole, it was patently clear...the shorter the shift the better off we were.

Without the benefit of tracking the shifts, we as a staff may not have been able to make the necessary adjustments to our shift lengths. If we decided not the track our shifts, we may never have fully understood the relationship between shift length and our optimum productivity. Really, the adjustment only amounted to 10-15 seconds, but it made a HUGE difference.

As you are trying to implement the system and working on your shifts, give some serious thought to developing a method to track your teams shifts in order to maximize your teams productivity. I've attached our '06-'07 Shift Spreadsheet for your review.

06-07 Marina Shift Plus Minus Chart

It might look a little like chinese at first...but it is pretty simple. I tried to include as much info in the spreadsheet as a I could. The headers are pretty straight forward...OB indicates "on the ball", UP indicates "right and left flanks"(note there are 2 UP's...the first UP on the spreadsheet is ALWAYS the PG), INT indicates "interceptor" and DEEP indicates "deep man on the press". The number underneath the position headers is the players #.

Click the comments link at the end of this post if you would like post any questions or discuss this issue further.

Welcome to the Run and Gun Basketball Blog...

It is our hope that this blog will help those with an affinity for Run & Gun Basketball to stay on top of the latest that our community has to offer. This Blog can be used both as a discussion and a informational forum.

We hope to promote any relevant Run & Gun Events that are upcoming. We also plan on keeping a tabs on all the teams that are currently implementing a form of Run & Gun Basketball.

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Thanks for your support and don't forget...when in doubt, shoot it!!!