We were joined on the podcast this week by the Head Coach of NCAA DII Augusta University, Dip Metress! Coach Metress has not had a losing season in over 20 years, along with going to two National Championship games, and in this conversation discusses his thoughts on their style of motion offense, the reads and screens he teaches daily, fundamental post work, and dives into halftime stats and recruiting to fit during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!
Transcript
Dip Metress 00:00
Whatever you do, just do it full speed. I really believe this.
A hesitant athlete is a non-athlete. So everything we do is, okay, how can I take this and make this a little bit simple? Now, some people say that, you know, may have coached against me. You guys are complicated. We’re not complicated, okay? For anybody who watches this play, they go, they just kind of go guard to guard and just kind of screen down. Well, yeah, that’s kind of what we do, but it goes back to a hesitant athlete is a non-athlete. All bets will be in defense.
Dan 01:55
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Dip Metress. Coach, what we wanted to start with today is motion offense, something that I know are known for running, our great teacher of, and we want to start with the pain points, the difficult parts of teaching motion because, as you know, it sounds great in theory, having guys move, and all sorts of cuts and actions, and when you get into the gym and start to teach it, it can be a challenge at times to get everybody on the same page. We wanted to start with what’s hard about it, the pain points, and then we’ll obviously build and grow from there. Great question.
Dip Metress 02:39
Okay, so our motion, I guess, morphs from Rick Majerus’ four out, the guy named Jim Boone, wherever Jim’s at now, Greensboro College, kind of stole everything from them. The very first thing you got to teach emotion for us, pass and basket cut. And that takes time, because guys want to stand.
So with our emotions, kind of a square the top four out one in. Anytime we make what we call guard forward pass, we are basket cutting. And then we’re field cutting and doing all the other stuff we got to do. But without a doubt, the first thing is to get guys to understand, when you pass the ball, it’s absolutely amazing how many guys want to pass the ball and go screen away. We just don’t do that, you know, the motion we run. Now we go guard to guard, we do different things. But first thing is just take, catch it, look at the basket, make a pass, basket cut. I’m in the southeast, or more of an athletic type league and conference. You know, we recruit obviously internationally, DC area kids. But the ability to play without the ball in your hands is the first thing. So to get guys to catch the ball and pass it and move, and not just move without a purpose, but the basket cut, because that gets, you know, guys on different sides of the floor. And you know, ball reversal is absolutely huge in any type of motion.
Pat 03:54
Predominantly, you want them basket cutting. Why basket cutting versus screening away? I guess the value you found in first getting them a great basket cutting.
Dip Metress 04:02
Great question. Couple different reasons. One, if you’re passing your screen away, especially nowadays, I’ve been a coach 28 years nowadays, everybody’s going to switch that like action. When you pass in basket cut, 95 percent of time is going to put you on the other side of the floor, which you got to get players moving on different sides of the floor, and it’s kind of unnatural.
I know that to make a pass in basket cut, and we do some different things. We cut maybe ball side corner, we’ll do something. But for the most part in our motion, just to pass in basket cut, you get the defense moving, and like I said, get guys to the sides of the floor. Like I said, I’ve been doing this a long time. I was a flex guy, I was Carolina break, old North Carolina. I’ve never run every offense possible. What I found out is, on our break, we just say attack, reverse, and get the ball closer. We want to attack if we can, we want to reverse the ball, and we get it closer.
Now, we’ve been blessed to have some really good coach players in the past. A lot of times, that’s putting the ball inside. So the reason we try to hit it in basket cut, as opposed to driving the ball early in possessions, no matter what you run, second side, third side, all events is always better.
We are not afraid to take early three-point shots. You know, what’s really interesting, my brother’s a great high school coach, and he says it all the time. You don’t even run on makes, and you still score points, okay? Because we do give some guys some freedom on a missed shot to push and play. We call it push and play, attack, reverse, closer.
I took what Rick Majerus had a seven-thing DVD on, and I watched Jim Boone do, and I look at Matt Pan and stuff, and we basically a very dumbed-down motion, okay? But ours is based on spacing. Our spacing’s a little different than everybody else. We play two guards and two forwards. We’re going to call them forwards, and our forwards are free-to-line extended. They’re not in the corners. We’ve had to adapt now because the game has changed. We’ve done that because that’s the best thing for the post player.
Ours is based on a back-to-the-back post player every time. So when you put those four people up high in the guards and the guard slots, it’s really hard to double, and we get a lot of good action out of hitting the ball in the post and cutting off, or what do we do each year with it?
Dan 06:12
Why have you gone simpler? What’s the rationale between some of that?
Dip Metress 06:16
I played for two guys in college, one named Eddie Payne who’s passed away, and Kevin Eastman who was assistant for the Boston Celtics. He was my college coach at Belmont Abbey. I went to Kevin’s clinics every year when he had him. I don’t remember what he called those things when he was with Brendan Serum. I really believe this.
A hesitant athlete is a non-athlete. So everything we do is, okay, how can I take this and make this a little bit simpler? Now, some people say that, you know, it may have coached against me. You guys are complicated. We’re not complicated, okay? For anybody who watches this play, they just kind of go guard to guard and just kind of screen down. Well, yeah, that’s kind of what we do, but we’re trying to do some other things. So I guess it goes back to the hesitant athletes are not offensively and defensively. We have to adjust our motion every year. Early on in my career, we would set some flare screens. What I found out was the guys setting the flare screens were the ones that needed to be receiving the flare screens. So each year we’ve kind of adapted to our personnel. We’ve had years where we’ve played two bigs and a four out one in motion, a non-shooting 4 man. You have to make some adjustments for that. We might also set a little ball screen with that. So like I said, it’s a basis of motion, but we’re going to tweak it, but tweak it to simplify it.
Pat 07:31
As we start to build out your emotional offense, I guess what would be kind of the next tenant once you get them? All right, we’re now we’re passing now we’re putting hard rim cutting.
Dip Metress 07:40
So the very first thing we’re gonna teach is pass, basket cut. Any guard to guard pass, we call it screen down. I’m gonna use old terms, because I’m not a modern guy like you guys. So we just set a simple guard to guard and we screen down. Okay, we call it screen down, we screen down to the board. And out of that, the forward can do a multitude of things. They can curl it, they can, we call it straight cut, they can get half cut, they can split cut. That’s where it gets a little complicated.
One time we had a high school kid work out with us at the ball, and it’s allowed NCAA wise. And the guy was like, man, you got a lot of plays. Not really, we’re going guard to guard. And out of that, the player has to read what to do. What I have found out is this, whatever you do, just do it full speed, okay? So you want guys to read screens. Sometimes they read it so well they’re open, and that’s not good, okay? So like I said, when you come off it, we’re gonna be big on shot selection. If I come off a pin down, I’m not capable of shooting that, you’re not shooting that shot. We are not into that. I’m not a modern guy or everybody likes to fire away. No, we have a certain role. So with that, that’s the simplistically guard to guard. We are going to pin down and do four to five different things off that.
Pat 08:55
You mentioned with the pin down screen, and I think it’s the conversations we’ve had more and more recently, but the value of the pace and the tempo of the screen versus maybe being right and what read.
Dip Metress 09:09
Great question. It’s really odd. We put subs in our game. Sometimes we had to play guys in big minutes. Our motion looks better because the guy making the pass is sprinting to the screen. When you’re playing guys 35, 36 minutes a game, you may not get that, but the ability to go guard to guard and sprint to that screen, absolutely huge.
And obviously screening a body and reading switches and all that, but the ability to sprint to a screen. I had assistant coach for me, Jamie Quarles , who’s now in Arkansas State. He would yell all the time, sprint to it, sprint to it, sprint to it. And it’s very, very important because if the guy split cuts or curls it, if you spread your screen, you’re going to get over a shot. It’s something the same thing, very difficult to teach. Nobody screens at all anymore. Okay. Now we’re telling guys to sprint to a screen. You know, so it is definitely different, but yes, you’ve got to sprint to a screen. No question.
Pat 10:00
With this screening action, is there an order of operations?
Dip Metress 10:04
Yeah, so if you read a switch can occur Rick Majerus called a seven cut. Okay, because it looks like a seven You know nowadays Nobody knows what a seven looks like because they’re on their calculators on their phones We call it slip sometimes you got a slip action same thing.
Our ball could be moving Realistically, I could say okay. He’s supposed to come off the screen. Obviously the ability to wait on a screen is huge But if i’m going to set a screen and you know, a guy is switching it You can make what’s called a seven cut or slip cut for us It’s going to be interesting because we keep our post on one side of the floor. We don’t have to search it across That’s something else we do differently We’re very fortunate to coach Three or four really good post players. They only have one or two move post player. Yeah, everybody wants to have Yeah, this move man. Just get a jump hook first. All right, get a jump hook and then get a counter That’s all you really need to be a college basketball player So we’re keeping our post on one side of the floor. So we’re slipping and doing certain other things It’s going to be on an open side of the floor versus the post side
Pat 11:08
Staying on the post, you mentioned that he’s going to stay on one side. So again, just in general terms, now looking at the post, what are you teaching, maybe starting with when the ball’s away from them, when they’re on the weak side, and then when it comes strong side, I guess what you’re working with the post there.
Dip Metress 11:22
We had a new post part of this year. He wanted to hunt the ball out all the time. I go, just stay on your side of the floor. We’ll bring it back. You don’t worry.
Goes back the same thing that balls got hit guard for. We got a basket cut. All right. So they get the ball moving. But we tell our post guy with a ball hits the high guard spot on your side of the floor, you should be ducking it. And then the guard must read. You have a pin down action going to your right side. You have a post on the left line and the left forward over there. And if you read that guy’s being covered, it needs to go to the forward spot and it needs to go in from there or can come in from up top. Same thing, very hard to do. A guard throws the ball guard forward. They want to stand for a sec. You got to get yourself moving and let that post for post feed occur. I give our point guards a little bit of freedom that maybe I hold your cut a second because they can read the action a little better and they might be getting back on defense. So with our post guys, we tell them to stay on your side of the floor. When we want to put the ball in the post, we usually will start it away from our post and then get to his side. Now we’re really good, we can start his side away and get back to it. But nowadays people want to fire away way too quick. So that’s just an adaptation you have to do.
And we’re going to always put our post player on the block where he can go to the middle with his jump book. So therefore if he’s a right handed guy, he’d go to over his left hand shoulder. If he’s a left handed guy, go over his right hand shoulder. And we’ve had great post players both hands.
Pat 12:48
You mentioned that you like to just hold them on one side. I guess just going back to that preference of holding them on one side versus having them go both sides or follow, chase the ball.
Dip Metress 12:58
Nobody wants to throw the ball in the post game. Players can’t postfeed, all right? Because they’ve gone their whole life without ever throwing the ball inside. Yeah, I go watch AAU high school basketball. It is so hard to find good postfeeders.
So I always try to tell our guys, listen, if you keep moving, they ain’t going to throw it to you, okay? So when we keep them on one side, we know we’re locked. When that thing gets outside the floor, we’re going to definitely have our eyes in the post. To be honest with you, as much as it is for the post player, it’s for our passers. We were a bad passing team this year. I’m like, man, just throw the ball in the post. Fake eyes throw low. Fake low throw high. It’s not really that hard. But when, like I said, I used to run a Carolina break and you reverse, you could dump it down. We ran the self high and low and all that stuff. So, but I just think keeping them on one side, it makes it easier on the passer. And then the post guy has time to settle in there and really get to his move. One of the things I found out is this. Post guys don’t go over bull shoulders. When they go over the shoulder they’re not comfortable with, they are horrendous passers. Not bad. Without a doubt, horrendous passers. So when they’re turning over their weak shoulder, that’s when nothing good occurs. So if we keep them on one side of the court, they’re going to the middle of the floor every time.
Dan 14:15
We’ll have to kind of zoom out for a second. And when talking about motion, sometimes after the initial action, pass, rim cut, ball starts moving, what do you do about the kind of messiness of guys not being in certain spots or re-spacing, reigniting the offense, you know, say five, six seconds after the initial action and how you work on that part of the offense.
Dip Metress 14:37
I think it’s Rick Majeris. When in doubt, spread out. Now, our emotion, like I said, is two guards, two forward. It can get a little messy.
However, if I had a dollar for every time I yelled, get to an X. We put painters tape out there, get to an X. And then we’re trained. We go to our first scrimmage or first exhibition game. Some of our freshmen are like, where are the Xs? No, they’re no longer here. So really, when in doubt, spread out and get to an X. Cause it does get a little bit, okay, am I supposed to actually kind of go away? Am I supposed to just spread out, just spread out. And then obviously be a basketball player and don’t run in front of a post feed if you’re trying to spread out. So there’s a lot of freedom to it. There’s no question about that. But like I said, the later the shot clock gets, really the more you should spread out. This year’s team, we just coached, didn’t really have many guys that were coming off pin down shooters. In the past, I had a lot of pin down shooters and we had guys making a bunch of threes in their career. So ours morphed into more of a driving four out one in.
I’ll give you two more little things about motion. This is really complicated, they scout me. If we yell down, the ball is going down on the block. I don’t care, okay? So if a guy shoots the ball and we’re in down, it’s not a post guy, don’t touch it. He’s coming out of the gate because we get lost in the vision of, uh-oh, we’re running motion. The other thing is, this year we did it a different way. In the years past, we have a really good team. We have a really, really complicated play called five. And it’s five passes for more we shoot. It ain’t real hard, but it’s got involved by passing a basket cut because you’ve got to get the defense moving. So we ran that this year, our five this year was a four out with no screens. We just cut the whole time and that was to open up driving angles. But five is always going to be part of my office.
Five passes before we shoot because there’s points in games where your players don’t understand a quick shot’s going to lead to a layup on the other end, okay, or you’re in the bonus or whatever it is. Don’t watch NBA basketball because it’s not happening. But in college basketball, there’s going to be times as a coach, you got to control a little bit. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s not shooting so quick this time. And that’s what you’ll find. That means five passes.
Dan 16:54
real complicated talking about shot selection or the types of shots that you want out of your motion because we’re getting into hey cuts and pass and move and all that and you mentioned earlier different teams have different skill sets and where you want to go i guess then now layering on top what you want to do to score in motion whether it’s driving kick back cuts post-ups like what is it that you ultimately want with all this stuff?
Dip Metress 17:16
it is different for each team. I’m a firm believer in defining shot selection. We’re not all taking the same shot. Okay. That’s not happening because your skill sets are different. So early on, you know, skill work and preseason, we’re evaluating that stuff. When we get to playing, now we might say we call this paint. The ball has to hit the paint on the bounce before shot occur because it will enable a penetrate pitch. Okay. So we are looking for anything the defense enables us to give. Teams at pressure might be more driving than anything else. A little bit of back cutting, a bit more driving. Teams at switch, we’re going to maybe look for more of a split cut and for the screener for a shot or move it and get to the post guy side of the floor. When teams switch, you sacrifice match ups sometimes and you got to evaluate, Hey, is that just, we’re good right now. This is the matchup. Let’s go ahead and use your skill set. So every team is different. I kind of we’re not attacking and transitioning and that ball hasn’t been reversed. You’re going to have to have proven that you made that shot. If you’re going to play the whistle blow is like, no, we’re not shooting that shot ever. All right. Maybe I’m an old coach, but I just think that’s part of it. The field goal percentage is still important in this stuff, man, like somewhere in this mix and get to the freedom.
Pat 19:41
I’d like to just go back to you mentioned this year, you know, you were a little bit more of a driving motion, you didn’t have great shooters coming off the pin downs. And you talked about your play five with five passes to maybe give your office some breathing room to attack. What else did maybe you learn with this team when he went to your driving motion in terms of how, of course, we talked about creating space, but maybe you created advantages for your ball handlers to actually drive and beat their man and get it.
Dip Metress 20:05
So this team was a little different this year. That’s probably why we didn’t make the end state tournament. We had a hard time Getting our identity to be honest with okay now same thing We go back to keeping the post on one side of the floor when that ball hits that forward spot That’s a driving opportunity for you to go one on one We didn’t have guys dial that way that were like confident enough to go one on one So what we try to do is like I said, we’re constantly looking at all right Where are we getting our shots from is our best player taking the most shots? Well who we envisioned this year to be our best player or leading scorer Was a guy at one point we didn’t think was going to start Okay, but he morphed into it because he worked he spent a lot of time on his game.
It’s a tough question because with motion When we’re really good We could come down the court and just run four out one in for like the whole first half and I never call a play If i’m calling some type of action It’s because i’m not comfortable what we’re doing with our emotions Now true motion coaches true motion coaches. I am not a true motion guy Even though i’m a motion offense guy the Bobby Knights the method those guys believe You don’t run any place.
Okay, you let the motion work and that’s old-fashioned. That’s a long long time ago I don’t do that as much But like I said, I firmly believe when that ball is going side to side and we’re getting ball reversals I’m fine with letting the game flow and just read whatever you have You know if you’re not a shooter don’t shoot if you’re a driver drive But that goes back to the same thing Players have got to move sides of the floor if they’re not moving sides of the floor that’s easy to guard.
Dan 21:41
My last question on this topic for you is, in my experience, coaching some motion concepts throughout my career, sometimes like the 5-1-0 or 4-1-0, it’s almost like players get confused because there’s no read to make. So like when you’re going to the install of this stuff, how much of it is 5-1-0 versus 5-1-5 or 4-1-4, or how do you teach it so that they understand the cuts and the reads, I guess?
Dip Metress 22:04
Great question. You can tell you ran motion at one point in your life. We’re going to go very first day, fast basket cut, fast basket cut. Then as soon as we go, what’s the rule? Well, he’s got, what’s the rule? Cut. Okay. So we’ll start with that.
But then we’ll start with a simple, just pin down action. And we’ll, you know, we’ll tell a diva’s don’t switch. And then we’ll say, Hey, was he on your hip? Let’s curl this. Was he cheating up? Let’s half cut this. So we’re going to teach it hard. Now, this is the big thing about motion. I would say nowadays, you got to put it all together. Yeah, absolutely got to put it all together. Now we’ll get midway through the year. And I might say, Hey, we’re only working on three on three on the post side of the floor, or we’re going to do three on three on the week side of the floor, just to get our guys a little more comfortable. We’re not seeing this. So, but we’re always, always going to go back to five on five.
I’m a big five on five coach. Okay. I like drills and my sister’s always joking. All right, let’s go. Here we go. We’re going to do five on five. Okay. Now in the five on five, we’re going to control a little bit, but we’re definitely going to play five on five. The year we play the national championship game, we’re playing five on by the day before, like not long, but we’re playing.
Okay. Cause I think that as a basketball coach, my brother taught me this years ago, you have to do basketball things. We always talk about it. You go into all these closed out drills, they’re all closing out to the chair. And then when they go live, you don’t see anything carry over. So I believe you got to do basketball things. So we’re going to go three on Oh, we’re going to go three on Oh, but we’re going to try to make this game like it possible. So a lot of times we might go guard forward or we’ll go guard guard pass. We’re going to pin down. We’re going to split and curl, react, pop back. And that’ll be three on health and we’ll just get reps, reps, reps, and then we’ll play all together.
Pat 23:42
From the player development standpoint, focusing on the perimeter players, the guards, or forwards, what’s important that you teach them when they come into your program? You’re gonna be motion heavy.
Dip Metress 23:51
Wonderful question that you can get a shot without the ball in your hand. Everybody wants to do skill work with the ball of hands We do a lot of shooting drills where guys are on the move It will even do shooting drills shoot off a flare and we may not flare all year Shoot off of a stagger. We may not stagger all year shoot off of this action Great shooters fight for their feet. I’ve never seen a great shooter who has crappy feet I can’t tell you how many times we’ll stop a guy.
I’ll go Where are your 10 toes to rim? You’re the 10 toes pointed to the side goal Why are you shooting the ball like that? So we’re big big big on shooting off moves If you come to an individual workout certain times a year if it’s an hour workout I would say 40 minutes of it is shooting off the move Shooting off of maybe a penetration like you’re kicking it and getting your feet set You know whether you’re gonna be an inside pivot guy right left left right.
That’s kind of up to you I always say whatever you’re gonna do you just do really well So if you know, I mean like the balls come to you. Do you believe in going left right? You believe in going right left? Inside foot i’ve always believed like whatever you’re good at just be good at that
Dan 25:01
Coach, we want to transition to a segment we call start, sub, or sit. We’re going to give you three options around a topic. Ask you to start one, sub one, and sit one.
This first start, sub, or sit has to do with recruiting. And these are three different fits or things that you look for in recruiting for your program. And your start would be the thing that’s most important to you. So start, sub, or sit in recruiting. Option one is positional fit. So however you want to play at the guard or forward spot. The second option is system fit. So looking for guys that fit your system or the third option is cultural fit. So someone that maybe don’t fit size system, but culturally you want certain types of guys. So start, sub, sit, those three options.
Dip Metress 25:48
positional fit important number one two system fit and three culture fit now i don’t want a bunch of idiots like my brother says i’ve coached plenty of good teams with average culture i’ve never coached a good team with bad players so positional fit for us means this one we always wanted point card always we got to have a point going on the floor i believe in that and then us we always want a back-to-the-basket post after that then we can kind of figure it out we can play with two point cards we can play with three point cards we always want to point at a back-to-the-basket post i’m not a big word on culture i’m coach 28 years teams that win have good culture sorry it was anti what everybody says i’ve been fortunate like i said to play in two national championships and the culture on both teams i never even talked about culture either year be honest with you
Dan 26:40
I’d actually just like to start with what you just mentioned at the end, your sit, which is on the years and you haven’t had many, you’ve never had a losing season. But on the seasons where it’s a little closer to 500, what is that like then, as opposed to the team of national champions?
Dip Metress 26:56
This year was tough. I’m a big reader Mike Thomas book two dogs one bone In other words, let’s have two point guards fight for one spot. We’ve had too many times we had One guy fighting for one spot. What’s hard to take those guys out of the game because Ultimately, as my wife would say we’re hired to win games.
You can hear about hey, we’re gonna play up tempo We’re gonna do that. Okay, you’re hired to win games You know my old college coach said if I could play a certain way and win one more game I’m gonna play that way. All right, so one year eight nine years ago. We held the ball We only team in the country holdable came out of court was four corners spread for last eight games a year Cuz we enough enough guys and I try to win we’re hired to win games So yeah on the teams weren’t as good. I would say sometimes it’s talent level. Sometimes it’s the ability for teams to mesh I’m not sure if that’s culture, but guys being a little bit on their own, you know Hey, I want this agenda.
I would say every team. I haven’t had good teams. I’ve had quality depth
Dan 27:53
But follow up with your start and positional fit then. You mentioned the post play and the point guard play and everyone else kind of see where they fit in.
What are certain traits or qualities that you’re looking for in recruiting now we’re talking about in both of those spots, either one?
Dip Metress 28:09
A point guard controls the gym. I’m a point guard, I’m 58 years old. I can walk out there and control a pickup game at 58 years old, because I’m a point guard. Magic Johnson controlled the gym no matter what gym he went into. So a point guard needs to have great basketball intellect and control the gym. I would say control the whole practice. So one, no doubt, control the gym.
Either through your actions, through your play, through your attitude, that would be one. With the post guy, for us, you gotta be able to play with your back to the basket and you can’t be afraid of contact. Like, we’re gonna throw it down to you. I always tell them, score or get to the free throw line. We don’t need to see the jewel and bead, fall a ways and all that stuff, okay? Score or get to the free throw line. Two hardest positions to play in our program are the point and the post. I’m the only three guys, what do y’all gotta do to come off screens, okay? Go basket cut. But the point guard’s gotta direct and the post guy’s gotta get to the rim and do whatever he’s supposed to do. So, without a doubt, point guards, control the gym, basketball, and cue, post guys, physicality, ability to play through contact. And ability to want to shoot a jump look, God forbid.
Pat 29:18
With a point guard controlling the actions within motion, the ball is going to leave the point guards hand and it’s going to go after a lot of guys who maybe aren’t the best decision makers. How are you working with your team or your point guard?
So he still is making a lot of decisions and not entering the offense and never really seeing it again.
Dip Metress 29:36
Two ways, one, I tell everybody, if I call four and the point card calls two, you better run two. He runs the court. I make it very clear. If I call the wrong player, unless we run a set or something, that’s on me.
Listen to your point card. I tell our point card, if you don’t like the shots the guy’s taking, tell him, don’t take that shot or point to me and say, take him out of the game. I give my point cards a lot of freedom. Now, what you’re saying, when the ball gets out of hands, that is a problem with motion. When it gets out of their hands, they’re afraid they’re not going to get it back. But I tell them all the time, if you’re a point guard and you pass and hit it and go forward and cut through it, it’ll get back in your hand quicker because you’ll get the other side of the court. If you go guard to guard, you got to go screen. It’s based on what that dude coming off the screen is going to do. So our point guards, I want my starting point guard to close the game. I always say that you can tell a good point guard whether he closes games.
I’m a big Braves fan. And if you have two closures in the bullpen, you’re not going to win. So point guards, I give them the utmost free reign. I jacked a guy up by a jersey one day and practiced when I was playing point. Like don’t take that shot, we’re trying to win. And they have to understand down means big fella hasn’t touched the ball. When I have good point guard play, it’s going inside. They know. Or this is a great shooter. I’m going to get him a shot. Well, boy, those are hard to find now. Point guards are playing that way nowadays. So like I said, I give them free reign.
Pat 31:02
with recruiting, controlling the gym. Is that something that’s innate in the player? Or is it something that you can teach and develop when you get them?
Dip Metress 31:11
I think it’s innate. However, I’ve seen guys where I walked in the gym. I’ll go back early in my career. He’s 5’9″, 150 pounds, and he controlled the whole gym. He never said a word with his actions, with his ability to blast the ball, ability to make big shots. Now, I think with those guys, they’re innate, but they’re not true vocal leaders.
You have to really get on them about being a vocal leader. So what does that mean? You’re the guy calling things. You’re the guy huddling the team. You’re the guy telling people to run, and that’s hard. Kids nowadays don’t want to be vocal, but they have to have somewhat innate abilities. Some have it better than others. I would argue back in the 80s, when I played, I knew I was going to control the gym. I didn’t realize that. I just thought that was natural. My junior year, I sat on the bench because Tommy Amerker was the point guard at WT Woodson. Well, the guy went to Duke and won 90-something games. So he was a point guard. I was a point guard. So I just assumed that’s the way everybody was until I became head coach. And I realized, wow. So when I go into gyms, I can literally say, if the shot goes up, and I’ve got some guys who have played some high talented guys, if they throw the ball to you, that means you’re a point guard. Because they know they’re going to get it back. They’re going to get an easy basket. So all this positional is basketball, all these catch them on the ball at the court and all that stuff. Hey, man, get it to your point guard. He’ll get you a shot. So I don’t know if that’s a weird answer, but it’s an eight, but yet you got to hone it all the time.
Dan 32:39
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Pat 33:50
All right, coach. Our next Start Subsits for you has to do with halftime stats. We’re going to give you three player-driven stats. And which one’s more important for you at halftime?
So Start Subsits, halftime stats. Option one, is it the player’s plus minus? Option two, is it the player minutes? Or option three, is it the player, let’s say shot chart, shot spectrum, their field goal attempts?
Dip Metress 34:22
You didn’t say my number one, which is a cis and rebound margin, but okay. All right. Yo, whoa, boy. Okay.
I would say in that order, individual stats, I’ll say it’s one aspect. I can look at a stat sheet and say, why has this player only taken two shots? And he’s our leading scorer. So I am putting my eyes on that. Plus minus probably not at all of the basketball, because that just came about the last two years. I’m like, what does this column mean all the time? And in the game, I might see it, but I don’t pay attention to plus minus minutes played. Show me a team with great starters. I’ll show you a team with no depth. Show me a team with depth. I’ll show you a team with not good starters. I’m going to play guys. You know, I’m pretty conscious of getting guys. I’ve had all Americans here. I always get them a blow in the game. In other words, they’re going to come out at least once and be honest with these more than mental break than a physical break. You sometimes you just got to sit over there and just chill out a second. But I also have coach games where guys are played 40 minutes because of the tempo. And, you know, I’ll go back to, Oh, I said, we’re hired to win games, man. That dude’s got to play 40 for us to win. We’re going to play 40. So I would think individual, but when I look at the stat sheet, first thing I’m looking at is field goal percentage, rebound totals and turnovers. And then it might look at all that stuff. Or more importantly, look at the score. Maybe we win it, you know, so that’s kind of important too. So that’s a tough one for me.
Pat 35:42
If I can follow up with what your eye goes to at halftime and you mentioned opponent field goal percentage. What’s that telling you about the game about your defense.
What is the range you’re looking for. you
Dip Metress 35:52
So this is morphed a little bit for the years because of the proliferation of three-point shots. I always feel if a team is shooting below 40% from the field, we’re in good shape. I’ve always said this, there will be times we’ve won 30 games at the end of the game. I might look down and say, we shot below 40% and won. Let’s go have a margarita, all right, because you’re not going to win many games shooting bad percentage.
But when you have a good team, you do win those games. With the defensive field goal percentage, it’s just like, are we stopping? Now, however, this three-point revolution that’s going on, boy, you can’t get beat 18 to three on three-point maids. You know, I’m a percentage guy a little bit. I’d rather take good shots, but there are plenty of nights when I go to prepare. The first thing I do is I go, this team takes 48% of the shots for threes. This team takes 26% of the shots for threes. So we’ve got to be cognizant of how we’re defending that.
So a little percentage just to see, well, are we stopping them? Turnovers, are we taking care of the ball and rebounding? One of the things I always look at is I think it’s we’re trying to get 40% of the team’s misses, which we don’t get often. But if we miss 16 shots, we want to get five or six offense rebounds. Conversely, if the other team misses 20 shots, we want to keep them below 30% of their misses. So I’ll glance at it real quick and go, okay, we’re below 30% of the misses. We’re okay.
Because there are nights where teams shoot 28%. So it’s not how many offensive rebounds they got. It’s how many percent they missed. Okay. If I shoot 50%, I probably not going to get that many offensive rebounds. But if you’re shooting 25%, you have more opportunity to get them. That’s the old fashioned. That’s the way I look at the stat sheet.
Pat 37:34
I’d like to follow up on three-point attempts with the prevalence of it in our game and maybe this is a little subjective based on your team opponent. When you look at three-point attempts, how much are you thinking if you’re getting outshot from the three-point line is, hey, we need to try to generate more threes ourselves versus we need to limit their threes because it could, like you said, just the numbers are going to work against us if we keep giving up attempts and not at least not matching, but we need to also make it all work.
Dip Metress 38:05
I do watch the NBA this time of year and those big discrepancy games are usually three point line to be honest with you. So for us, we’re going to shoot, we’re looking for percentage mates on three point shots. I’m a volume guy. If you’re open and you’re a shooter, fire away, I don’t care if it’s two seconds into the shot clock or 20 seconds, if you’re a lead shooter.
So we’ll be more concerned as, and this is some, I don’t know if you guys ever talked about it. If a team shoots naturally 28 three point shots nowadays, I mean, one of the college teams shoot 23 point shots. When we’re prepared for somebody, I’ll go, well, where are they getting? Well they’re taking 28 threes. Are they getting them in transition? Are they getting them off inbounds please? Are they getting them off the kick outs, freeze on missed shot? Are they getting them off screen action? Are they getting them off penetrating pitches? You can look at a number of 28 threes and you’ll say, well, they’re getting 12 of these in transition. Then we better take a good shot. All right. We better make that shot. Otherwise we’re going to be playing in transition. So I think you have to look at how the other team gets. I’ll watch some teams and I’ll go, we can’t guard this. If they’re going to take these shots, we’re, I’m going to say we’re lead shooting, we’re just going to contest them. They’re too far out. They’re quick, but that’s their style of play. I don’t have any problem with that. But some of these things are really unguardable now. I mean, they’re just, I argue they’re bad shots. Some of them in my mind, but not in the analytics mind, I don’t think.
Dan 39:26
So one of the other start-subsit options Pat and I were potentially going to give to you was about margins at halftime that you’re interested in, and if I could just give those to you and ask you, because you kind of mentioned it, but if we instead ask you to start-subsit, turnover margin, rebound margin, or free-throw attempt margin, what would be your start-subsit on those margins, like you mentioned?
Dip Metress 39:51
the top of my list, okay? I mean, all right, so literally, if you had to say one of the three things, we have traditionally been a free throw heavy team, partly because we put it inside. So I am big on free throw attempts, I am big on rebounding margin, and I’m big on, those are the three stats. If you win those, you’re winning, I think, unless a team goes 17 for 32 from three-point line, and you’re losing that one. So all three,
Dan 40:18
I think the thing that’s always interesting to me at halftime is how much you can realistically change in the course of a seven, eight minute halftime, quick speech, talk about a stat, whatever, get out there and make an adjustment. And like when you’re looking at those three margins, let’s just say it’s the rebound or it’s the turnovers. What do you then try to fix or is it just an effort thing? I mean, of course it’s game to game, but what do you think about when fixing it?
Dip Metress 40:43
We may not be able to fix it in half time, okay? Because I would argue you should have fixed it before, you know, you’re playing. There are nights, let’s say we turn them over 19 times, I’ll tell my assistant up at midnight tomorrow morning, I want to know exactly how each turnover occurred. And I also want to know, was it the third pass in the possession? Was it the first pass in the possession? Was it a turnover in transition? Was it a post feed? Okay, so I always want to look at it and I’ll often say, all right, are we trying to force the needle too much? Is it turnover? So I’m really kind of not, yeah, we had 18 turnovers, but how did they occur?
Okay, yeah, we gave up 16 offense rebounds, but was it because penetration occurred and we came across the drug blocking shot and we didn’t pin down and block out? You guys are really knowledgeable with the game. Someone said, oh, you got out rebounded. Well, you had no kid and they beat us off the dribble all night. What’s that got to do with rebounding? Pretty much everything because now we’re a post double team, you know, we’re usually, you know, kind of a ball line team, but like when you’re getting cracked off a dribble and you’re choosing to help because some people don’t help certain ways, you’re going to give up some rebounding things. There are certain coaches I know, if you lose a rebounding margin, you’re practicing in the morning or something like that, all that crazy stuff you do, it’s just got to be emphasized every day. We are always like, what is that pass? We don’t make that pass here. Like stop throwing the ball with one hand for no reason. Now I’ve evolved. So I said, if you throw the ball one hand and it works, great. If you throw the ball one hand, it comes out, turnover, you’re coming out. Any question? Well, I don’t care because I’m really, nowadays, kids do it, you know, a lot more skilled. Two hands of the ball, two feet on the floor, eliminate all turnovers, okay? But nowadays, the way the game’s played, people are swinging these things one handed. Hey, you’re going to come out if it goes to the other team.
Dan 42:26
for sure. Coach, you’re off the start, sub, or sit, hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us and going through all that. That was a lot of fun. We appreciate your answers there.
We got one final question for you to close the show before we do. Again, thank you so much for your time and all your thoughts today. It was really fun for us. So thank you for coming on.
Dip Metress 42:42
No, I appreciate what you guys do man. It’s great man. I’m on morning walk. I sometimes listen to podcasts out. All right. Thank you, buddy
Dan 42:50
Coach, our last question to close the show is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Dip Metress 42:57
Two things. One, I’m a big reader. I like to read. I’ve got more sports books. I’ve never heard of a successful, long tenure coach that didn’t read. The second thing is this. The best thing I do as a coach, and I can say this, I can probably say over 90 practices. I have watched over 90 different colleges practice. So when I go recruiting, it’s often like, well, I’ll go to so-and-so, because I could go have a chance to watch Clemson practice that day. I don’t understand why us as college coaches and our high school coaches, why you don’t go watch other people practice. So I’ve been in the Agusta of 20 years. They’re probably on their fourth head coach at Georgia, their fourth head coach at Georgia Tech, maybe their fifth at Georgia Southern. I think I’ve seen everyone in practice. I just invite myself down there. It is without a doubt the best learning tool I do every year. Now, Brad Berno’s a friend of mine. Brad’s kind of an old-fashioned coach. You go watch his practices. It’s completely different than going to watch somebody else practice because their philosophy. I tell you, every one of my assistants, they’re like, why do you do this? You’ve been doing it for 20, man. If I pick up one thing at a practice, it’s great. So literally, I think I’ve seen over a hundred different college coaches practice. When I go recruiting, I’d rather go watch practice because I might pick up some. I’m just big on that.
Dan 44:23
All right, Pat, let’s hop right into this really fun conversation with Coach Metress, someone that hasn’t had a losing season in 20 years. There’s a lot to be learned from. And I definitely did today. I got a ton of notes and a ton of interesting points to dive into. So great having them on.
Pat 44:39
Yeah, I was looking forward to this conversation, and it is tough to coach motion. I think it’s very simple on his face. Yeah, pass screen away, pass cut, but how do you make it so it’s not robotic? How do you read cuts and get guys to read cuts better? Really fun conversation, kind of getting his thoughts on this, I think, shift from, you know, I think the motion is less and less of being run more these days and appreciated just hearing his thoughts and his success he’s had with it and what he’s learned from teaching it for the last 20 or plus years.
Dan 45:10
Yeah, I think where we wanted to go with it is the difficulties and the harder parts of trying to get this to work. And he wouldn’t consider himself, I guess, a true motion coach, but teaching some simpler elements of it. And he had a really great quote as to why he wanted a more simplistic approach. And he mentioned that a hesitant athlete is a non-athlete. I really like that. He also got into a little bit of not worrying about always correctly reading every single screen, how you’re supposed to read it, but just the quickness of it and just flowing from thing to thing.
Pat 45:42
Yeah, adding to what you said just about the hesitant athlete is a non athlete or the value of the pace. And this is something we’ve discussed with Coach Pascual on our recent film room series looking at his offense. And personally, myself, that I’ve been thinking about more and more is just the value of the pace over the read or the value of the pace over actually setting hitting a screen and just that pace creates confusion. And I think, especially when you’re gonna run motion, and like he said, it’s gonna be heavy on cutting offball action, you know, he said, you got to be sprinting at everything you do and the focus on the pace and creating confusion creating opportunities for this offense to breathe and create advantages for itself. I did like when he talked about simplicity. And one of the big takeaways you mentioned with the post with the pace, but also with how he chose to space the offense, I mean, four out one motion, but bringing guys off the corner, I think that’s another interesting philosophical opinion on whether you fill corners, you know, some people like to fill the corners, flatten the defense versus lifting off the corners, creating rep opportunities, backdoors, as he said, for their posts to play as well, making simpler post feeds and being able to space better around the post. So like sharing his slots to on just how he chose his spacing and the merits of it.
Dan 46:59
One of the more intriguing parts of it too, for me, and something you and I were talking about briefly before we hopped on was when you talked about his play five, which was five passes before you shoot and feeling like the defense is vulnerable and wanting to really get that ball moving. And I think you and I were talking briefly about sometimes just having longer sets or having things that you’re going to make the defense work for 10 to 15 seconds, maybe later in the game or you have a lead or whatever it is. And I thought that was like an interesting tidbit he put in there about just different ways to, I guess, kind of control certain parts of the game when you feel like your team needs you as a coach to step in and make sure the ball moves, the defense has to guard a bunch of stuff before you’re going to attack. I just thought that was an interesting part too.
Pat 47:49
Yeah, it made a lot of sense that this still does have merit. I mean, of course, it’s not every time like, hey, for, you know, 40 minutes, every possession has to be, you know, we count five passes and then we can start looking at the rim. But, you know, that’s, I think our job as coaches too, is to understand the moments of the game and what your team needs. And he admitted, and you know, like, there’s times where he lets the offense flow because he feels it’s in a good rhythm. They’re executing the game plan, but there’s also times where, you know, maybe he doesn’t trust it. And that’s it.
Dan 48:20
Yeah. And I mentioned to you briefly before we popped on about it’s like a run game in football where being able to run the ball down the stretch of a game for football teams is advantageous more than passes because the clock runs and you actually have to tackle someone on a running plate. You have to be in the trenches and it can wear a team down. We think about advantages all the time of like get into the paint, beat your man, extra pass, open three. But sometimes the advantages you’re up or the advantage is that the defense you’re playing is tired and there’s different ways to have an advantage on offense. And it’s not always just paint touch extra three like it is maybe in say the flow of most of the games. Sometimes the advantage is time score. And so I think having stuff in your bag or this play five where you can just pull it out and potentially milk the clock and then get what you want later in a possession. And now the other teams had to guard an extra 25 seconds offensively. That’s hard for them going back the other way when they’re now more tired.
There’s a lot of nuances in there. And I decided it was an interesting point. I guess that was also like a miss for me. I could have spent more time just talking about that part of coaching. Let’s move to start sub sit and recruiting. I’ll take the first one, which we know he’s a heck of a recruiter has been throughout his career. And so he just wanted to kind of ask position, system, culture. I love that he just gave a nice curve ball about just sitting the culture and not talking about it. I mean, we’ve talked about it a bunch on the show, different teams, how you think about it. And it was interesting to just hear a different perspective on it. And he gave the great quote, his brother or somebody he gave the quote on, there’s been tons of good teams with average cultures, no good teams with bad players. I want to point out real quick that I thought was interesting was the positional fit within that point guards and how they control the gym and what he’s looking for. And I thought that was really good conversation, a little bit about leadership and a little bit about the types of guys that he wants to run his program. And so that was the other takeaway from the recruiting part was what he looks for out of the posts. He said it was hard to find and he looks for out of the point guards and kind of what expects from both of them.
Pat 50:31
But with positional fit, I wrote down the one quote where he said that you can get in trouble when you have one guy fighting for one spot because you have to play him. I really liked that. I mean, I think we’ve all been there as coaches. I think that, you know, recruiting, of course, the position and having depth, I think we’re always after, of course, I mean, is good, but yeah, I like that quote. One guy fighting for one spot probably leads to some trouble.
Dan 50:55
Yeah, value of competition and having obviously good players as it goes back to. So let’s move to the other start subset, which was interesting in its own right with the halftime stats and what he valued at halftime.
I think as I kick it to you, you and I were just talking about always interesting what you look at at halftime. You get a short amount of time, things you think you are in your control, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but what you decide to talk to your team about what you look at. And so we were kind of focusing on three different kind of player type stats, the minutes, the plus minus, the shot charts. We know different coaches look at different things. And so I’ll kick it to you on your first thoughts there.
Pat 51:30
I enjoyed the conversation on field goal percentages and turnovers. Within the field goal conversation, I like when we got on the three-point attempts. I think that’s really interesting and something I think about, I mean, again, it’s all dependent on your team, the strength of your teams, but with the prevalence of three-point shot in the game, what the three-point attempt discrepancy could or could not be telling you about the game or where the game could go if, you know, one way or the other, are we shooting too many threes? Are we not shooting enough threes? There’s a conversation we had a little bit with Coach Stan Mangundi. I mean, it was an interesting conversation. I would recommend going back and listening to it. But the conversation we got on three-point attempts is just something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately when I look at box scores and I enjoyed hearing his thoughts because it can have such an impact. Like you said, you can maybe at times when all those margins, you know, the rebounds, the turnovers, the field goal, but if they shoot 17 of 32 threes, you might lose the game.
Dan 52:25
Yeah, for sure. Also, on top of that, I guess what’s interesting though is that most of the, you look at the best defensive teams across all the leagues, it’s mostly the two-point field goal defense that carries the day. And I think when we had our Titans episode with Colton Houston, he mentioned that the commonality of the best elite defenses are the two-point field goal percentage and not necessarily the three-point. But then if a team’s shooting certain percentage against you, or I think the more interesting thing is, can you actually affect three-point field goal percentage? I know people have looked at that analytically. How do you have good three-point field goal defense? Obviously, a close yard, not open threes versus not open threes, but trying to find out what’s underneath an elite defense, do the best defenses care how many threes are given up as long as they’re not giving up twos or getting to the free throw line, which is an interesting debate, I guess.
Pat 53:19
Yeah, I agree. Coach Beatrice raised a good point with looking at how they’re shooting their three pointers and, you know, maybe what is within your realm of limiting taking away and you know, and sometimes teams just shoot some threes that you just can’t take away and you just got to try to contest.
Dan 53:36
Yeah, absolutely. And obviously the quality of the threes and all that kind of stuff, it’s just everyone’s a little bit different. So definitely an interesting start subset as well, Pat, as we kind of close here, any misses or things we could have gone deeper on.
Pat 53:50
Definitely one miss for me was how we combat switching with the motion. You know, we were talking a little bit before on how maybe switching can kind of stand the motion up, destroy some pinned down screens and how they look to attack switching, you mentioned, of course, the slip cuts, but also then if teams are going to switch and you get mismatches and withholding the one guy, the post player on one side, like how they look to maybe attack mismatches with their forwards at times when teams are really to switch one for. I wish I had followed up with that and asked them more about how they look to attack switch.
Dan 54:22
Yeah. Because with your five below, you’re not going to have probably any switches, like a two five switch or one five switch switch. So you’re not going to have that, but you’re going to have maybe a four man or something like that on your one from time to time.
Pat 54:36
How they get the ball back to the mismatch, because obviously with the ball moving and the reversals, you know what their automatics are, if they’re diving the post or trying to swing back with some seals, but then, yeah, of course, the relationship with the five. So again, like I said, a miss something I think would have been really interesting to follow up with Coach Metris.
Dan 54:54
maybe there is no, you know, sometimes with motion, the value of it is just actual motion, the cutting, the moving, and you’re not trying to slow it up and attack a mismatch. You’re just trying to play off of all that stuff.
So yeah, it would have been interesting. I’ll just also follow up quickly with just the install, I think is interesting. And I definitely over the course of my career, putting in motion or trying to run motion concepts like players on, I’d say maybe 5 on 0 or on air, it’s like you need sometimes bodies to have them feel the read or feel the space. Otherwise, I think putting it in like he mentioned, just to get the rote. Okay, listen, we’re gonna rim cut, we’re gonna rim cut, we’re gonna rim cut. Then after that, then it’s let’s get to 5 on 5 quite a bit, like he mentioned, so they can really understand how to read it, where the gaps are, where the spacing is. So I would maybe just could have gone a little deeper on the install of some of these things too.
Pat 55:46
with anything. I think that’s always interesting. Let’s get into the nuts and bolts.
Dan 55:51
All right. Well, it was really fun today.
Obviously coach Metress students, a fun personality, fun to talk to you before and afterwards, so we appreciate his thoughts and him coming on. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.
Pat 56:08
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit SlappinGlass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slappin’ Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.