| We had the pleasure of sitting down this week with the great, John Beilein! Coach Beilein has been a Head Coach at every level from the NBA to HS, and shares with us his thoughts on the history, teaching points, and evolution of the 2-Guard Offense, the value of pivoting, and we discuss opponent scouts and beating a 1-3-1 Zone during the always interesting “Start, Sub, or Sit?!” |
Transcript
John Beilein 00:00
We had a rule, the point guard had to get the ball over. If it was a normal outlet, you had to get the ball over half court in two dribbles. He had to be over in two dribbles. So push it out, push it out. That way, everybody’s got to run ahead of you. And if you got the rebound, it was three dribbles. Get over half court in three dribbles. Now that sends the tempo so that on a 30 second shot clock, you were over 27, now you can go to flow. I have a joke where I used to run a secondary break like Dean Smith ran. And you know what, we even scored on it one time.
Dan 02:00
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach John Beilein. Coach, thank you very much for making the time for us today. We’re really excited to dive into a bunch of stuff with you.
John Beilein 02:15
I think we got some great topics. Let’s go.
Dan 02:17
All right, sounds good. Well, coach, we’d be remiss if we at some point didn’t dive into talking a little bit about the two guard offense and really getting into kind of the history, philosophy, teaching points behind it. I know there’s a ton in there, we won’t cover it all, but it’s something I know is near and dear to you.
And so I think just to start, love to know the history of how that became one of your favorite things throughout your career. This is a crazy story because it’s true and it became something that was really special to us over the years because it was sort of an old way of playing and now is a new way of playing everywhere. And so here’s the story. I had always been like, it wasn’t really a flex offense, but it was a little bit of that for years and we won. We were good. And we had the one man, the two man, the three man, the four man, they were all like the typical one man, two man, three man was a wing, four man was a big stud, five man was a center set screens on the block. All of a sudden, I was at Lemoine college and we were playing really a good league and we did not have a dominant point guard who could handle pressure. So we were having trouble. We were win, lose, win, lose. We were messing with a 500 season. I remember we had so many plays out of our sets that I remember having to play eight. The point guard said to me, Walter Hill said, coach, I can’t dribble and call play eight. I can’t do it. I said, well, you got a point there. That’s hard to do. So I’m talking with my uncle, a guy named Tom Niland, who was a World War II hero, both in Normandy flying behind the lines in Normandy on one of those gliders. And then at the Battle of Bastogne, he was injured and amazing coach. And he said, why don’t you play like we used to play in the forties when George Mikey was playing with two guards, two forwards and a high post center. Right now, you’ve got two guys on the blocks. You got two wings. Your point guard has nowhere to go. If you come down the right side with your point guard and pass it to the other guard and enter it over there, they can’t get to denials. That’s when everybody was really pressure the ball, pressure the ball, deny passes. We couldn’t go back door because there’s no room. So I didn’t think much about it for a day or two. I came back from our game with pace where we got whacked like a hundred to 70. And I’m coming back in the van, driving the van back and back at two in the morning. And this was the beginning of ESPN. So I turn on Washington State and Andy Russo or Washington. I forget where he coached. Andy Russo is coaching there and damned if they aren’t running a two guard offense, they got two guards, the cutter goes through, guy screens away. That’s what my uncle’s talking about. The season was almost over. So I wrote to Andy that summer, a good old fashioned, write him a note. He sent me back. You guys, you’re too young to remember the blue mimeograph. That’s how you copy with a blue carbon paper. It had a really good smell to it, actually. And he sent me this wrinkled old blue sheet with two cuts off of it and said, hope this helps. And we took it. And all of a sudden, by the time I’m coaching my last game in Michigan, there’s a hundred actions. You can do out of this two guard. And that’s how it started. And the three point line came in the next year. And now what do we got? Two guys in the corners, two guys in the forwards, a high post center. We get a center who can shoot and pass named Lenny Roush. He is like, we all watch the Joker play right now. Lenny Roush in division two had 176 assists in his freshman year. Trey Burke, freshman in Michigan, didn’t have 176 assists. But we played through the center because again, we didn’t have a great point guard, but boy, we could all shoot and we spread the floor. And that’s how it all happened. And from that, we tried to recruit centers that could only shoot. We had a couple that couldn’t and they still were good. And we made up for it because we had great shooters around him. But that’s the genesis of the two guard offense.
Dan 06:36
Coach, great story, coaches helping other coaches out. Obviously, the history of that is awesome. And I guess getting into it a little bit tactically, and when you started to put it in and it started to work, what did you find was opening up with either your players’ skill sets or just in the offense, whether it’s more backdoor opportunities, passing opportunities, harder to guard, what was it that really you took to?
John Beilein 07:01
The other thing that happened during that, we were trying to play a kid named Scott Hicks as an off guard and he’s six five, you know, every, the prototypical great off guard in lots of division one, division two programs. But we changed him to a small forward, but played the foreman and that now really spaced the floor. We could go back door. We could drive the ball to the basket, having a center who could pass a little bit. Nobody had ever done that.
It was like, who is the weakest defender on the other team on the perimeter? It’s their center. And so why not enter through him? And we entered through him and run cuts off him a little bit like Princeton was playing, but Princeton center was more down a little bit. They’d have a little bit just up the block on the elbow. Our guy was right at the high post and that allowed our guards to have you like pressured us, man. We just go to the basket and we’re getting a corner three or we were getting to the basket or we’re getting the center to be wide open to throw it back. So that’s sort of what we discovered is we could do almost anything now. And if you pressured us, it became our offense. You created offense for us if you pressured us. And that was the biggest discovery.
Pat 08:23
When you would begin to install a new season outside of, like you said, all the actions you can do out of it, but what about the base foundation like, hey, we got to nail these three things or we’re going to start with these three, four things, and then we’ll start to build the offense out of that.
John Beilein 08:38
I would say passing against pressure, being able to hit the outside hand, having a timing between each player where get open when the ball sees you. You don’t need a lot of cutting. You don’t need these deep V cuts. You could just like put your foot in the ground and go with spacing and just the ball talks. So when the ball looks at you, get open. It’s talking to you. I’m open. And so the ball talks. So that was the first thing is just being able to hit a guy on target, not necessarily to shoot, but begin the offensive pattern. The two was being able to pivot that hours and hours, we would get most of our freshmen in. They could not pivot. They had no idea what they were doing with their feet. And we were hours and hours and hours on pivoting. And you know how you make this pass when you use your dribble. What a nothing dribble is, all these things to do with it. For most people, it was an absolute shock. And usually by the end of their sophomore year, they really got it. A few were so good, they got it right away. But if you work on it for, you know, we used to have six weeks of preseason practice. You could get pivoting done during those six weeks. And those are the two biggest things.
And then being boss with the ball when you had it, because still people would come up from pressures. We didn’t always have the most athletic teams, people trying pressure, just being boss with the ball so that your pivoting would create offense for you. My son was a great, great shooter, but couldn’t go by you too often. But boy, could he pivot and he could go by you with his pivots. And it’s amazing what it led to.
Pat 10:25
Coach, on that note, how did you guys teach pivots?
John Beilein 10:29
The ball’s in the air, you’re in the air, so you’re always catching it with two feet, two hands. So you were always making this little mini jump. When the ball saw you and it was on its way, you’d hit your outside hand and then jump land onto, and then immediately, if you were right-handed, your right foot was the hot foot. It would immediately begin the boss with the ball. It would immediately just rip through, be ready to pass, be ready to shoot, be ready to drive, and then you got the guy off you with that right foot. And so I would say 90% of our guys pivoted with their left foot down and right foot if they were right-handed. It was a constant. And then stepping and passing was another way of, they’re called ball transfers. How you bring the ball from one side to the other is a ball transfer. What would you sweep it, you arc it, you just pull it through, do you reverse pivot, do you donut pivot? All different ways. There are five ways of making a ball transfer. So it’s necessary. So many people never thought of it because I had to think of it because we couldn’t play any other way. I said, we couldn’t play it every way. I don’t think we’d have been as successful. We have a couple drills called perfect passing. That is, everybody’s got to step and throw at the outside hand and back cut, and they don’t know when people are gonna back cut. I’d be in the NBA and I’d try to teach the drills to foremen, we had to stop, we couldn’t do it. But my guys could do like that because there’s just a lot of thinking in it and reading each other what you need.
Dan 11:58
You also mentioned a second ago about a nothing dribble, could you go deeper on what that is?
John Beilein 12:02
That was in the days of the five-second call where maybe you were ripping the ball through but you were waiting for the guy to get open and you were worried about maybe a five-second call or just standing there and so you take a dribble but don’t go anywhere because if you went too far if the guy was curling off the screen you’d bring your man into him but with a something dribble whether you dribble three or four feet you’d bring the ball right to the man with the space can be off you just drop the ball dribble at once that would give you time to read how the man was being guarded off a wide pin down.
Pat 12:38
Just with the spacing, and you mentioned sometimes the dribble can mess up the spacing. I know everyone can visualize it, but what was important to you with the spacing and always trying to maintain space?
John Beilein 12:47
Getting to the corners would be the biggest thing. Two guys fill in those corners. I watch teams play, and if those corners aren’t filled, I’m saying, boy, you’re not using the floor. You’re playing on a high school floor. If you don’t use those corners, you still don’t want to catch the ball where your butt’s to the glass. You’re not in an aggressive position.
So you got to be able to get open. In that, we called it a tunnel. It would be the space basically between the old college line and the NBA line to catch the ball in that tunnel. And if that tunnel, if he was denying out the tunnel, then it was obviously a backdoor opportunity for you. And you had to find a way. I went and would watch Michigan practices, West Virginia football practices, and watch how a receiver would get off the bump and run. When people being physical, the hand fights that would go on, the footwork that would go on, stick your foot in the ground and go. So how to get backdoor and the threat of backdoor allowed you to get open.
Even if you didn’t throw the pass, the threat of backdoor would allow you to catch in the tunnel. But if you never went backdoor, all of a sudden you’re catching the ball out of bounds or way up outside the tunnel, tough to run your offense. You guys are technical here, man. You’re into it. And I’m not some guru on this. I’m not saying it worked. I’m just saying this is the way we did it.
Dan 14:09
Yeah, well it definitely worked. I love to ask about flowing into the offense from transition and what you found over the years teaching kind of a broken break.
Someone gets a rebound outside of the arc. You’re trying to play quick in transition, but then also get to the spacing and the cuts and all that and what you found with that.
John Beilein 14:26
Over the years, I have a joke where I used to run a secondary break like Dean Smith ran, and you know what, we even scored on it one time would be the joke. I mean, it was like our guys didn’t run to score, they ran to get into a secondary break. And it was, we stopped. Any secondary break was, we’re going primary, or we’re flowing right into offense immediately with, it could be as simple as a ball screen, just what we call the zebra ball screen. As I go across my chest, it was called Zorro, I go across my chest, or they go across their chest. And it was an immediate ball screen with not very hard, two corners filled, the other wing nice and wide, we call it the shake area in the NBA. And it’s all different areas, or just into that, or one pass that everybody would watch the point guard, what he did, and whatever he did was the play we were running, you just watched him, you know, he could go through the strong side, go to the weak side, throw the ball to the center, you can do a bunch of stuff. But that was the beginning of the play, everybody knew what we were running once they watched, once again, the ball talk, wherever the ball went, it told you what the play was. And then you’d have to watch what the player did, because there were two or three options off of that. So we thought anytime we ran, anytime a secondary strategy, we’d lose the three on twos, the two on ones, the just guys running. It’s the funniest thing, if I went and recruited somebody and said, we don’t run, we jog up the court, they would say, I’m not going to Michigan. And then you get players that won’t run, they just jog up there thinking that’s a fast break. And you got to sprint and we had a rule with our point guard, our point guard had to get the ball over if it was a normal outlet, you had to get the ball over half court in two dribbles, he had to be over in two dribbles. So push it out, push it out. That way, everybody’s got to run ahead of you. And if you got the rebound, it was three dribbles, get over half court and three dribble, push it out, push it out. Now, that sends the tempo so that on a 30 second shot clock, you were over in 27. Now you can go to flow. And in the first half, that’s really important when the ball’s going away from you, and at least in college and the pros, you don’t always know what basket you’re going to. But in the first half, getting in the flow so they don’t have to look back at you for a play. So we’d be in flow a lot of the first half, second half, I could watch the action and quickly call a play.
Dan 16:51
On that note, you mentioned earlier, you know, by the time you’re down in Michigan, you probably had a hundred different little wrinkles and things that you could do out of the two guard offense. And like the evolution of the wrinkles with those teams, I know it’s player dependent and all those things, but how you would think about adding little tweaks and variations within the normal flow of the offense.
John Beilein 17:09
As you know, if you don’t change and embrace change, you won’t win. You either do it or you lose. So what happened was it was basically what the defense was doing to us. You know, nobody played drop coverage for a long time. I mean, there was no drop coverage from the center. It was either a switch, a white hedge we call it. It would just be an on the line hedge. We did a lot of that or a full, they’d come up and show or they double team, a full hedge. So you had that, but all of a sudden now you got people in a drop. So now you have to adjust.
We had people top locking our wide pin down later on. So we stopped running a lot of it or had a series of plays that we just ran against it to make sure it was, but some people wouldn’t top lock. You wouldn’t know you go into a game, whether somebody was top locking or not. Some people would, you know, we’d have to be ready for switching everything. But it was interesting. If we played Wednesday, Sunday’s off, I’d have an offensive meeting Monday with whoever helped me the most with the offense. We didn’t even talk about the next opponent on Monday. If they were in a drop coverage, we drilled like, heck, when you set the screen, when you get off the screen without setting it and just, you know, scoring the two on one with the bigs, you know, if they were locking the rails outside, we were able to do on that Monday, a lot of stuff.
But each team was going to be different. And maybe they were zoned. Maybe they were zoned team. You didn’t see that. We tried to have a plan for everything anybody could show us that you get into game and also in surprise, they’re playing it completely different than you thought. And then you have to adjust at that first TV timeout.
Pat 19:56
At the beginning, you mentioned you always tried to recruit shooting at the centers. And of course, a couple times you didn’t, then you said it was important to have shooting on the perimeter. But when you didn’t have a shooting center, what did you think about then with the two guard front, what maybe change or became some sticking points, as opposed to when you had a shooting center?
John Beilein 20:14
So we had both Mitch McGarry who would probably claim he could shoot that wasn’t what he did in his only one and a half years with us because he got hurt his sophomore year. Jordan Morgan, that’s a final four team and lead 18. But what they could do is pass and they could set great screens and they could really catch the ball in traffic and score. If you threw the ball to those guys, some players, not Mitch, but more Jordan with his back to the basket, you weren’t scoring.
But if he had any leverage, he was scoring. So we tried to slip him out of screens. We really worked hard at screening so that he could create an advantage and then getting out of those screens. And then just finishing at the rim, we had these series of things we call Boba’s, where you catch the ball in traffic, body on, ball away, Boba, body on, body’s on, ball’s away, and you’re finishing with a move and a counter move. There wasn’t a whole lot of moves. It was move and counter move. You got very few post guys that you throw it into and say, go to work, big fella. Very few. But if you get a guy on the run, he can catch with some traffic and then sort of read the map where he is and just finish, or if he sees double teams, spray it out to an open guy. But it all works. We would try to have three or four shooters on the floor all the time. I see this in the NBA. I see it, man. You only got one shooter out there at two shooters. It’s hard to win without three or four shooters. I think it’s just difficult because people can give so much help. So we try to have three shooters at a minimum on the floor and usually three scorers too, if we could, if there wasn’t a shooter, make sure that we had another scorer out there.
Pat 21:56
You said that you really work with their screening, with the big, what you’re trying to teach with screening.
John Beilein 22:01
Okay. Let’s say he’s at the elbow. He’s got to set a wide pin down. There’s a three step rush to get into that. Where as soon as the ball sees you, man, you’re off as one, two, and then hop in the air, set a good screen while your guy reads the defense. And it’s a simple thing, but which way you turn, everything’s important. Get there quickly and set the screen and then be able to read what’s happened and make any catch out of it. If they throw a two, if they’re switching all the things, if you’re slipping it, but it was just a one, two jump in the air and make sure that you didn’t set the bad screen. I get upset with them, but they said bad screens were upset.
It’s the official call to bad screen that I know wasn’t a bad screen. But what I learned more over time is don’t set the damn screen. If your point guards created some leverage or any guards created leverage, don’t set the screen. He doesn’t need it. You need to get to the rim as quickly as you can. So it becomes a two on one. If you’re standing back there trying to set a screen, it becomes a one on one and maybe a late switch, the quicker you can get out of the screen, the better. Not all the time, but just enough to mess with the D.
Pat 23:09
When you’re setting that wide pin down so they want to hop, how are you then helping the big opening up or reading the next play? If say that shooter, the guy came off curled or he filled and knowing whether he should be rolling or popping back to the ball. You know, how did you help the big then read the next action after the screen?
John Beilein 23:28
So he’s looking at his inside eye of how his man’s playing. Where his man is, his man going to come up and had you a little business man dropped off. Where is he? And at the same time, he’s looking right at the guy he’s screening. Is he going to go underneath this screen? Right, because that could mean a re-screen right away. Is he locking and chasing? Is he top locking? Because if he top locks, my guy might be taking a shot to the basket and then go get him again with another screen. So he’s just looking at it and trying to figure out, while I set this legal screen, I don’t necessarily have to get meat every time. If that guy’s going underneath the screen, my guy knows to stop and the guy out tops, making a nothing dribble, reading him, then one more dribble and getting it to the guy in the corner. There’s a lot of stuff going on, guys.
Yeah, we work forever on it in practice of reading that. And then people started top locking it and they ruined all the fun. They really ruined all the fun of a wide pin down. And now it’s done like 80% of the time. People are just taking away all the fun of trying to read that screen.
Dan 24:33
Well, this has been awesome so far. We want to pivot, have another segment on the show we call Start, Sub, or Sit. And so for those maybe listening for the first time, we’re going to give you three options around a topic. Ask you which option you’d start, which one gets sub, which one you’d sit.
So coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first one. I’m ready. Okay. This first one has to do with attacking a one-three-one zone. And I know you in the past, your teams are great at running the one-three-one zone on the defensive side. So I’m going to ask you about teams that would attack it. What gave you the most fits? These are three different types of screens on the one-three-one. The first option is a high ball screen. So setting a ball screen on that top guy and the one-three-one guy coming downhill with the dribble. Option two is setting screens on that baseline runner on the bottom part of the one-three-one. Option three are flare screens, mostly on like a skip pass across the zone. So setting the backside flare.
John Beilein 25:32
I think when people would backscreen our weak side wing so they couldn’t cover the lob, that became difficult. But none of those screening actions bothered it a great deal overall. We would work at that, and those would be get there type of defensive coverage. I don’t care if you go over, you get under, just get there. Remember, you don’t have to get back in front of the guy in the 131. You just got to usher him down the alley. So screening wasn’t that important. Screening is done to create leverage. Well, the 131 creates leverage all by itself. It guards you on the side and pushes you to the basket. The screening didn’t bother it too much. Formations would bother it more than that.
Dan 26:12
Coach, that was going to be my follow-up, is what types of formations would bother the 1-3-1.
John Beilein 26:18
Well, once again, if you have Dior Fisher as your shot blocker in the middle or Mitch McGarry, you know, we didn’t play much one, three, one during his time there, if you have a shot blocker and not a whole lot can bother the post area. But if people would go like with a two high posts, double high posts would be difficult. There was a couple of times guys did it and I just got out of it. We’re not going to guard it.
So there was times the one, three, one, I played it hardly at all the last five years because the Genesis, the one, three, one was everybody played it before the three point line. Not everybody. It was common. Once the three point line came in, nobody played it. Nobody didn’t see it. Oh, you can’t play it because you can give up threes. And then that went for 10 years. So that’s why we went to it because there was very few schemes for it. And so we started playing it and it took a while. But then when I got to Michigan, Billy Carmody was running it at Northwestern. And I found in the Midwest, there was better passing than the East coast is more of a dribble type of dynamic with teams and people would dribble into a one, three, one and get in trouble. Guys in the Midwest were passing the hell out of it. They’d pass it 15 times before they took a shot and your guys would be worn out. But the answer to the question, a one, four high bothered it the best I could recall.
Pat 27:38
You mentioned none of the screening actions truly gave it too much problems, but just with the high ball screen, who was picking up the screen? How did you talk about defending like the high ball screen?
John Beilein 27:49
The center was already there. It was a drop. It’s all it was was a drop. But when he came in to that drop, there was a guy scooping from the right. Let’s say he attacked the left side, because we would influence it one way. If he was in the middle of the floor, we’d say get it out of the middle. Now, once you got out, we didn’t fluid sit down that alley. So you got a guy scooping with his right hand and going back to the corner, you got the center. And then you got the guy guarding the ball, trying to get under or over the screen and scooping with his left hand, another guy scooping with his right hand. And the center is just guiding them down the line. And the guard is down at the bottom reading it. He was going into four people were attacking him, though really didn’t bother people didn’t run it much either, actually, but it really didn’t bother passing bothered us with passing team.
Dan 28:39
You also would run a 2-3 at times I think at Michigan instead of the 1-3-1, why the change?
John Beilein 28:45
Now very little. I’ll just tell you the one time that’s interesting. We were at two, three zone one percent of the time there, but we’re getting ready to play Tennessee first round of the NCAA tournament. I think it’s eight, nine game. And we watched their game with Florida right before that. Florida played zone. Billy Donovan was coaching Florida and they just went stagnant. They couldn’t score. So we haven’t played zone all year. So now we get into the game and we were doubling a lot underneath in the post and they were throwing it in too. And I’m forgetting his name here. Play for the 76ers. The 76ers forward from Tennessee to buys Harris, rise Harris. And we couldn’t double him. He scored so fast. We couldn’t even double him. So the game’s tied at halftime, like 32 32 at the end of practice the day before we walked through a two, three zone and played it for 10 total minutes. So second half, we said, let’s play some two, three zone in this game. My assistants did not me. And I said, you guys are crazy. He says, coach, give it a try. They go down. They don’t score. We score. We’re up to, they go down. They don’t score. We go down. We score. We’re up maybe five. They go down. We won by 28 points. We won by four touchdowns. We get practice it literally for 10 minutes, but it gets in people’s heads and they weren’t good against it. And Bruce Pro and I laughed about it afterwards. Cause when I told him we practice it 10 minutes, I don’t think it made him very happy, but it’s happened to me too. It’s happened to us too, where somebody throws something at you that you thought you were good at and your guys lose their confidence.
Pat 31:01
Coach, our last Start Sub Sit for you has to do with scouting reports, and at the end of the day, what did you find was the most valuable to have or be prepared for when facing an opponent? So Start Subsits, is it the personnel scout knowing the players? Option two, is it their high usage plays, their sets, actions? Or is it option three, their defensive tendencies?
John Beilein 31:27
I think it would be their actions. The middle one would be the most important. Here’s what’s most important, guys, that you develop a scout team with probably three walk-ons and two or three players that are freshmen, that are not seeing significant time. And you have a scout team that is terrific at running other people’s plays at speed. It would be a thing on a Tuesday before a game with Michigan State. We’d watch Michigan State action on the video with everybody. Then we’d send the scout team out to the floor. And while we watched more of the day before his practice, we watched our practice on film 30 to 40 minutes every day. Our practice, not somebody else. Then we watch another 20 minutes of film after the scout team went out. Our scout team, if you told them run Princeton, they could run it. They weren’t as good as Princeton, but they could run it as fast. That’s how we got ready for opponents. And the next day when we watched film before the game at three o’clock, it would not be of the other team. It would be us guarding the scout team from the day before us running our offense against the scout team, drop coverage, show coverage the day before it was not watching the other team. So my suggestion to people, get a great scout team in any way that you can, because it’s going to just make your team so much better.
And it keeps the scouting. Then those guys get the hoop. They used to make me so mad when I had a great plan. One, three, one, we had Nick Patella at West Virginia. That dude would make 30 foot jumpers over and over against the one, three, one. I would get so mad at our one, three, one defense. We were playing Western Carolina one time and we were up 30 and a half. And I come out and Steve Sherino goes one, three, one against us. We started off awful. I put our scout team in to play against the one, three, one, because they were so good and they chopped it up. I think I put them in for just a little bit just to get us going. I hear teams don’t have scout teams. I’m saying, how do you win? It’s like so good. If you have a transfer who’s got to sit out the year like he used to, Duncan Robinson killed our first team every day. And he got so much confidence going into his next year. Charles Matthews, the same thing. Mike Gansey, the same thing. You are Fisher, a man. We’ve lost something great in the guy sitting out a year to get better. It was one of the greatest things that could happen to each young man. They get their degree, they get an extra mentoring. We’ve lost it and it’s not good for college basketball.
Pat 34:10
Within your staff, and again, scouting, what did you want them to prepare or the information you wanted them to gather for you? What was kind of their directive when preparing a scout for you?
John Beilein 34:20
For my coaches.
Pat 34:21
Yeah,
John Beilein 34:21
I wanted a good personnel sheet of who could shoot, you know, it’s funny because when I was first starting coaching, there was no videotape. You couldn’t get video on other people. You couldn’t even get stats on another team. You couldn’t get them.
You go into a game at Lemoine and you don’t have the other team stat. So I could look at a stat sheet and get a pretty good idea who did what on a team, because once I started to get stats, that was the weight of scout people. And then once we started exchanging videotape, then I got what do they run and what are the tendencies that they’re running. We didn’t overemphasize what the opponent, we were prepared every single time what they were going to do. Don’t get me wrong. But it was more about us playing against them than them playing against us. What they do was how we were going to defend it, how we were going to attack it, not how they play. I don’t know if that’s clear, but it was really what we ended up doing. Watching that coach preparing the scout team to play exactly like Michigan State played would be all we needed. And then we would just go off that.
Dan 35:29
NBA now, more analytics, more stats, did that change for you at all?
John Beilein 35:32
Oh yeah, because now that became, you play great defense and Hardin just hit the step back three on you with one second to go and just looks at you. You did everything perfect and their players are really good and you had to choose more when you were going to switch, when it was just not going to be a good guard and they’re isolating you and everybody can shoot, everybody can pass, that was difficult.
Dan 35:57
Well, coach, you’re off the start. Sub or sit hot. See, thanks for playing that game with us. We really appreciate that because we got one final question to end the show. Before we do really appreciate you coming on. Thanks for all your thoughts and your time. This was really awesome. So thank you very much.
John Beilein 36:10
Guys, this was a great your questions and being your deep into it. I haven’t talked basketball like this to anybody in a bit. And I loved it. So thanks for having me on.
Dan 36:20
Thank you so much, Coach. We appreciate it. Coach, our last question that we asked all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
John Beilein 36:29
It was my investment. When I went to West Virginia from Richmond, we always had the three decks of video and we would have the video and I would tell them what numbers we should cut so I could show the video the next day because I was always watching video. We blew out two bus batteries because I had a TV strapped with Velcro to the seat next to me so I could watch the game on the way back but we had to plug it in through a battery through the bus and two batteries blew. They were like these boat batteries. The guy said, the battery, you just wore out our battery but then I get to West Virginia. We had a great assistant AD named Mike Parsons. He says, what do you need for video? I said, just give me the stack. I’ve been using it all my life ever since we did video. He says, no, you can do this all on computer now. I said, no, I don’t even know. I do email. I don’t want a computer. He said, no, you got to do this. Once that computer came in, now I could really watch practices. One of the biggest thing was being positive to show videos of guys doing things the right way. If Duncan Robinson had a game or Tim Hardaway or my son Patrick or somebody had a tough game, the next day he might have been one for seven. I would show him that one shot seven times and not show him any misses. If we were looking at our offense, the ball was in the air. I never showed the miss ever. They never saw themselves miss. I didn’t want them to see that. So that biggest investment was in me going full into studying video and teaching my team through video.
Dan 38:16
All right, Pat, what a pleasure to have Coach Beeline on, really nice guy on and off air, obviously, so it was fun catching up with him before and after a little bit, kicking it right to you. What was one of your top takeaways in general?
Pat 38:29
The terminology he used when we got in the two guard front is how he talked about teaching the offense, building the offense. But I liked when we got into the pivots and talking about the ball transfer. And I just mentioned like being boss with the ball, the ball has eyes. And of course, what was important, which I liked, he talked about to the five ball transfers. So that was what stood out to me a couple other terminology in there. But I know maybe you might as well have that some of your takeaway. So I’ll leave it there with a little meat left on and see where you pick it up.
Dan 39:00
Yeah, thanks. 100%. I mean, I had that, the boss with the ball, the ball talks, you know, the nothing dribble, boba, body on ball away when talking about finishing. I agree with you as someone like him. I love the terminology and ways that you can help your team learn things at a quicker pace. And so those were just a couple that stood out to me right away.
Overall, with that two guard front conversation, I think the thing that we were trying to be cognizant of is that it could, you know, we joked about the hundred different variations and sets, but on a podcast going really, really technical, tactical on it might be a tough listen. And so we wanted to stick a little bit more on the philosophy, you know, why he did it, some of the considerations when putting it in and things like that. And I thought that I love the story at the top of just, you know, like so many things, what is the innovation is the necessity is the mother of innovation. There’s a good quote, everybody should look it up. Yeah, well, something about necessity being the mother of invention, I think. But basically got to a situation where they weren’t scoring, there wasn’t space on the floor, it didn’t fit the personnel. And then a great story about just writing coach Russo, the generosity of another coach sending him some ideas that then became his two guard offense and the space and how they went about it. And so really loved that part of it too, for me was a big takeaway of just the origin story of how it became what it is today.
Pat 40:27
And on that kind of evolution origin, and, you know, he said, you asked the follow-up how he continued to tinker with and, you know, he said, of course, is kind of what your opponent is doing and how they prepare to attack that. And he mentioned too in the start-subsit, just how the top block has taken away a lot of the wide pin-down stuff and that he just went away from it because their offense was getting stuck too much if they were going to top-lock wide pin-downs, I thought was also very interesting.
Dan 40:51
Yeah, I’ll give you a quick early miss for me would have just been exploring what happened next. Then, you know, with the top lock, he joked that the top lock was ruining all the fun or whatever he said. And then what’s the next iteration of okay, when teams are really top locking, I would imagine in the NBA to finding a lot of this and what was the next flow of action.
Pat 41:11
Yeah, you know, I’m sure he did like he found ways to punish it. But overall, I got the sense he kind of just moved away from it on what you’re talking about, like why the decision just to move away from it versus trying to like really punish it and find different attacks out of it would have been an interesting follow up conversation for sure. And I just think over
Dan 41:28
That two guard front conversation. There’s a lot of coaching nuggets. I love the last quick thing for me was that pressure created offense for them. I thought that was a good way to look at it and to teach the offense as far as not being afraid of pressure. And you mentioned at the time, everybody was up in the lane denial. And so using that against the defense for their offense and not to be afraid of it, but to understand that’s creating something for us, I thought was a good teaching point as well. I agree.
Pat 41:53
Dan, I’ll throw it back to you, I guess, what else or maybe your secondary point take away from our conversation.
Dan 41:59
I’ll go to the start sub sit, I’ll go to the 1-3-1 and I always like when we give a coach three options, they throw them all out and say, none of these bothered us. Great job prepping. Yeah. No, I’m not going to answer that. But it’s a good answer in its own right basically saying, listen, if we did our job right playing the 1-3-1, how we wanted to play it, screens weren’t bothering us as much. And part of that question I think for me at least was they were so good, especially like the West Virginia with that 1-3-1 and then I know we’ve seen so many teams now starting to play more zone across the world, different types of zone, unique setups and just how to attack. It’s always an interesting conversation. I think we’ve seen more and more teams using a ball screen or using certain types of screens against a zone to create a little advantage and then play through it. And so it’s just interesting to hear which one he did start the flares skip just on that backside. If someone came in and flirted the backside, it would be hard for them to get to. But you could tell he put a lot of onus on like that bottom guy, the 1-3-1 or the top guy. Just, you can’t get screened. You’ve got to see it coming. You’ve got to fight through it, get around it and ultimately I like is we did get to what did hurt it, which was the alignments and you and I, before we got on, we did talk about whether we should give him alignments for screens and we went with the screens and end up with the alignments anyway. So it worked out for us.
Pat 43:21
Yeah, I’ll give you, my miss here is just digging deeper. We did talk about the alignments that he mentioned, the double high posts and the one four high. So just getting into a deeper conversation about what flummoxed the one three one, when they did go to those alignments, but ultimately I think too is, you know, he mentioned just that passing really hurt it. We’re willing to make it pass, but also from the fact that, because I think a one three one is, especially for the low guy, it is a demanding zone with a lot of movement. So he said, if their teams are willing to really pass against it, they’re just going to tire the defense out by having to constantly be shifting and moving.
Dan 43:57
He also mentioned less teams playing it once the three-point line came into play because it could be punished a little bit easier or, you know, if you gave up that skip instead of it being a long two, it’s now worth three. And so, yeah, that was interesting as well. Last nugget on my end of this whole thing was your star subset and just the value of a scout group as I jump to the other star subset now. And so true, the value of a good scout group for your younger players, I’ll speak for me at the college level, being able to have your younger guys or your lower minute guys get a lot of reps against your top group day in and day out as your scout, I know has been invaluable for us as far as like a player development standpoint of they actually get to really go against the top group. And you also get the chance to really evaluate your scout guys, the younger ones who can pick up other teams’ offenses and plays and, you know, what their IQ like. And so I like that he really made an emphasis on that’s important for him as well.
Pat 44:55
Yeah, he mentioned that those guys want to hoop. So giving those guys chances to not just sit on the sideline and know that I’m not really practicing and I’m not going to get into game, but given the opportunity to hoop, he mentioned how he preferred the transfer when he had to sit out a year. But I can see even now, maybe a freshman, a little minute, it also builds them confidence. He gave the case of Duncan Robinson, who was sitting out that year, but knowing that they’re competing against the first group, getting reps against the first group, so when their time comes, I mean, maybe like Dylan said, the first group can’t score against the 1-3-1. They’re going to put in these guys, you know, the scout team, or yeah, next year, you know, it was like, yeah, I was busting the first team’s ass all last. I’m like, I’m ready.
Dan 45:38
It’s a thing our scout group anytime they go against our top group and they win. I mean it they let them know, you know
Pat 45:44
Yeah yeah
Dan 45:44
It’s known. Yeah
Pat 45:47
My last point on this, on the scout team was, and I thought very interesting, my big takeaway is that he would use the video of the scout team when they would prepare, like he said, you know, the day before a game, they weren’t necessarily watching their opponent, but they were watching their scout team play as the opponent.
Dan 46:05
Yeah, quick wrap up on that. I think sometimes when you show film of the other team, sometimes your players either think they’re not as good as they actually are, or they don’t take it as, I don’t know, like, you know, especially for 18 to 22 year old guys, they get focused on, oh, that guy can’t play or whatever, and they lose sight of what you’re trying to do. I think it was that we had on that talked about that. Orange Coast College women’s basketball head coach, Sammy Doucette, about a year ago, who they’ve won two state titles in a row now, let’s talk to you about this. If you show film of the other team, sometimes your players lose the lesson in it, because they’re so focused on what the other team looks like, or whatever it is that, you know, coach beeline’s point, if you’re just watching your own scout, hopefully they pick up a little bit more what you want. Yeah.
Pat 46:50
Yeah, and maybe the point gets driven home better if your scouts giving you guys trouble on certain actions, certain points, then you got to imagine a team who’s been running it the whole season might be a little bit sharper than our scout team was and they were giving you fit.
Dan 47:03
Yeah, no doubt. So the last thing for me as we wrap up, my other miss is not coach Beeline’s fault, but I wish we had more time to talk about him. Just never being an assistant coach his whole career until the NBA like does some assistant stuff, some consulting stuff now, but I think just would have been interesting, just head coach to head coach to head coach job all the way through and any thoughts, you know, on that. And then I know he was also a high school teacher and just from people we know that know him. He’s just known as an incredible teacher. He used to do like clinics and stuff back in the day. And, you know, just I guess some of those connections I would have loved have had time to explore a little bit with him, but just, you know, didn’t have the time today, but maybe we’ll have him back. Hopefully. I agree with you.
Pat 47:46
with our prep, finding out the teaching background. And we’ve also heard he’s a hell of a player development coach too. So again, if we had more time, a longer session, I think kind of melding those two together and how you teach, how you help players learn and from a player development standpoint.
Dan 48:03
Well, once again, we appreciate coach Beilein for coming on. Thank you everybody for listening. Pat, if there’s nothing else from your end, I’m good. All right. See everybody next time.