Slappin’ Glass sits down this the newly hired Head Coach of Washington St. MBB, David Riley! The trio dive into the areas of creating efficient offense, different types of advantages, the value of teaching through 3v3, and talk BLOB sets and winning with non-shooters during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Transcript
David Riley 00:00
I was reading talent code eight or nine years ago and one of the real interesting phenomenons was the Brazilians were always the best soccer country and all of a sudden there’s this little town in England that produced three or four world-class soccer players and they went back and looked at this place and like what the hell is going on in this little town well they just put a futsal club in there and all the kids were playing futsal and futsal is soccer with less players in a tighter space and the reality is they’re getting more reps they’re having to make quicker decisions they’re having to problem-solve a lot faster and so we’re like okay how can we kind of translate some of this the way we teach basketball so like how can we just speed up the development process
Dan 02:10
And now, please enjoy our conversation with coach David Riley. Coach, congratulations on the new position, the success, the new job. We’re excited to have you today.
David Riley 02:25
Excited to be on.
Dan 02:26
A bunch of ex D3 guys getting together, it’s always fun. You had a stellar career at Whitworth, which is out here on the West Coast. We didn’t personally play against each other, but our schools have throughout the years and you were a heck of a player. So coach, we wanted to start with this. Last year at Eastern Washington, before moving to Washington State, it was a terrific year offensively. You guys led or were in the top five in the country efficiency-wise in a lot of different play types, a lot of different things that we’ll kind of dive into.
And I think the thing that stuck out to Pat and I when we were offensively, the usage rate for pick and rolls was much lower than, say, the average Division One team for you guys. And the cutting, the posting up was a lot higher. Your isolation was very low. I think you were one of the lowest in the country at ISO plays. So just an interesting kind of offense to look into. To start, wanted to just ask you about the building blocks, the thoughts on offense in general, how you guys decided to play.
David Riley 03:26
We kind of got a unique deal where we’ve morphed this offense over the last 13 years at Eastern Washington and it’s really the same base of the stuff that we ran out of Whitworth. It’s really simple. It allows guys to play with a lot of freedom. Really the basis is that we’re going to play out of a five out and once we find an advantage then we’ll move that into a four out one in. Typically the advantage is the size advantage that we’ll find and sometimes you get that in transition. You can just flow right into a four out one in and kind of play off that size advantage or it might be a cut or a screen or something that gets us into that four out one in. Once we get that we know how to play off that and kind of find the advantages and then it’s kind of that yin and yang. Just because you have a mismatch that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to score out of that but it does allow some flux within the guys on the perimeter because the defenders are worried about the inside guy and you kind of just play off that and that’s the balance you got to teach people. So it’s really really simple. It’s a five out that flows into a four out one in and we’re just going to be able to play fast because of that simplicity.
Pat 04:29
If I could just follow up on the five out to four out one in and how that happens, is it some sort of screen that then someone ducks inside or how does that typically take place?
David Riley 04:38
I was actually just listening to one of your guys’s podcast, the old Bond coach, Lissalo.
Dan 04:45
Yeah, Lissalo, yeah.
David Riley 04:46
Who was at Paris. I was actually in Germany last year with my wife. We were traveling and we went to, it was the first night there, so she was a little jet-lagged. I went to the Bond vs. Ludwigsburg game and got to watch just a really, really high level basketball game and was really impressed with the coach. He really put it succinctly. I’m gonna use this with our team. We start next week. Number one, you want to find an advantage early in the offense. Number one, is it a numbers advantage? Are you gonna be able to play fast? Can you get a three on two? Can you get a four on three? Whatever that is. Then number two, can you get a size advantage or a mismatch advantage of some sort? And that’s easy for us to see. Then we just flow in and try to post up that guy. And then it’s, can we get into an action that we talked about? So the five out is super simple. There’s a million different things you can do out of a five out. It started off with us just out of the typical Zoom action. It was just like me and Chante eight, nine years ago, watching the Trailblazers play the Nuggets and they were just running Zoom. And we didn’t know what the hell it was. That was when it was new back then. And so we started teaching that three-man action, just repping the heck out of that, that wide pin down and we morphed it into a wide flare. And we just got really good at playing out of that three-man action, playing out of that Zoom action. If you read it right and you have shooters everywhere, you kind of got to switch that pin down if you read it right or you’ll get a curl or a backdoor or a fade three or something like that where you get an advantage. And so we try to run that stuff and get a bucket out of it or an advantage. And then that’s where it’s really easy to curl into the post or backdoor into the post or screen someone in if you flashed in or get an extra screen and really just play until you get a switch or an advantage and then try to go off that. I think the big idea is just to play as fast as you can where a quick decision is better than a right decision a lot of times.
Pat 06:35
You mentioned just if you can read the pin down, right? What are the reads you want them making again, on top of what you just said, making the right read versus just being quick too as well. Like how you kind of balance all that stuff with, yeah, we need to make the right read, but we also need to keep the pace.
David Riley 06:47
A lot of the summer workouts that we do, a lot of early fall stuff we do, is a ton of three on three. And so again, it’s really, really simple. Everyone runs Zoom action, but no one really reads it. A lot of people run staggers, but it’s just to kind of get a guy to the point. And so I was reading talent code eight or nine years ago. And one of the real interesting phenomenons was the Brazilians were always the best soccer country. And all of a sudden, there’s this little town in England that produced three or four world-class soccer players and they went back and looked at this place and like, what the hell is going on in this little town? Well, they just put a futsal club in there and all the kids were playing futsal. And futsal is just soccer with less players in a tighter space. And the reality is they’re getting more reps. They’re having to make quicker decisions. They’re having to problem solve a lot faster.
And so we’re like, okay, how can we kind of translate some of this to the way we teach basketball? Because we were a developmental program. Like Eastern Washington, you’re not getting the guys that are ready to play. It takes two or three years to develop in our system. So like, how can we just speed up the development process? But we kind of took that concept and played a ton of three on three. We put high constraints on them, whether it was like, you’re just gonna play on this half of the core of art or you’re just gonna play within the key or this quad of the area. And automatically in three on three, you’re getting 40% more reps because there’s less players. And then as coaches, we all get it. When you’re playing three on three, it’s next team on, boom. While those two teams are playing, that team’s off on the court. I got an assistant over there that’s making sure they’re huddling and talking about what went wrong, why they got scored on or why they didn’t score the last possession. So you get an immediate feedback. It doesn’t have to slow the practice down and they’re getting a bunch of these reps out of the pin down. It’s really simple. It’s not like we’re teaching them all these crazy reads. They lock and trail, you curl it or you curl screen to get the next guy open or they overplay your back door and you bring two with you. They shoot the gap, you pop back and fade and try to play off that. And really just getting these guys really good at playing through it. We film everything. That’s the beauty of being at a place like Washington State now where we have an army of coaches and immediately after practice, all these guys shots, all these guys reps offensively are gonna be able to be re-watched by the players when they come back in the office and they don’t have to watch the whole practice. They got to watch their five minutes offensive close. And so every day they’re getting feedback on how to read these screens. And I think that’s the big difference in what we do. Yeah, we want to make the right decision and it has to be quick. But early in the season, in the fall, maybe we make half those reads right. By the time we get to conference play or whatever, we’re making 75, 80% of those reads right. And the reality is if you get three reads in a row that are right, you’re gonna get a wide open shot. And so if you can pick yourself from a situation where you can get to the second action, you can get to a second read and you’re pretty good at making those, then that’s where the offense becomes a pretty fluid thing and it’s tough to guard.
Pat 09:32
My last question on this, looking at the Zoom action, and the other thing we notice when looking at your stats is just how efficient you were in D.H.O.s within the Zoom action. If the read dictated that the guys coming to the ball with the center, what was important then for that action to be an effective action, and not just I think at times you see it just, he gets it and he just takes them to half court and then we’re coming for a re-screen.
David Riley 09:53
Again, that was me and Pedro, my assistant, were watching the Warriors Kings last year. We were a decent handoff team in the past. Sabonis was killing with those handoffs in that series, and we were looking at our team the following year, and we weren’t going to have much firepower from the point of our position. So it’s going to be a little bit harder for us to get into the ball screens. But we had big guys that could handle the ball, they could get to the elbows, and so that spring, we just ripped the hell out of the two-band handoff game. We had a GA guard, the guy coming off the handoff, and it was just making that reading. If he’s locking and trailing, you should be able to come off tight and get downhill. If it’s too close, then the big holds it, and we try to throw that over the top pass. If they shoot the gab, you hand it off and play off the re-screen, and just getting good versus GA, then getting good playing two-on-two out of that, and then by the time summer hit, our returners were pretty damn good at it. Again, we do that a little bit in the Zoom. I think if you actually watch our handoff actions, we probably get a fifth of them in the first action, in that Zoom action you’re talking about. But that’s the reason we’re efficient. We set a lot of ball screens. We run a lot of ball screens, especially early drags, but it’s not necessarily the scores, it’s to create an advantage. We get caught late clock, or we don’t score on the Zoom action, we don’t score on our first stagger, and our big thing is, how can we get to a second action? I think any good defensive team is going to be able to guard a first action. So everyone in the world runs ball screen motion, and people teach like, okay, we’re not going to score off the first ball screen, and we’re going to get two turns, and we’re going to be aggressive off the third ball screen, or whatever that is. Well, for us, we’re going to set up early ball screen, but our offense doesn’t necessarily go into a second ball screen. It goes into a second pin down, or it goes into a second flare screen, or second stagger, or second post-up. A lot of the time, because we are shooting bigs, it’ll go into a second handoff, because our bigs will pop, get it, and they’ll get to some sort of handoff action, and that’s the stuff that’s hard to guard. So a lot of our scoring handoffs are like second or third actions, when the defense is already spread out, and we had good players, and I thought we did a decent job teaching it, but really, our efficiency came from just the idea that our handoffs were random, and they were kind of late clock, and that’s what we try to celebrate. As coaches, we’re not celebrating, I’m not looking at my assistant like, hey, great play call, or great draw. We’re looking at our assistant like, man, what a creative decision by Ethan, or what a great second action that Cedric came up with, and more trying to allow our guys to be creative within a second action than us dictating that.
Dan 12:31
I can maybe follow up on that because he said some interesting stuff there about that second third action and going back to you mentioned the ball screen and using it more as a way to set up an advantage and after so many offenses you see kind of after maybe the first action it becomes a high ball screen or something in that second part of the clock and for you guys you just keep flowing all the way through the possession maybe thoughts or teaching points on when that first zoom action is finished or stagger how you then get to those next things because going back after that first ball screen you are getting a lot of post-ups not too many isos you’re getting a lot of cuts like you’re just getting really good stuff later in the clock and what the thoughts or teaching points are there?
David Riley 13:14
Part of it’s the way I came up in basketball. Jim Hayford, I still remember every point guard that came in. We’d run a first action. And I’m sure this is a lot of places. The point guard would get the ball back and take four dribbles and let the big come. And it’s like everyone in the world knows what’s going to happen. Like, there’s going to be a ball spring or an isolation. And I just remember stopping practice. That’s not allowed. Move the ball, get off the ball, and get to it.
And for us, it was a stagger or whatever the next action was. Part of it was that. But then the big thing was, and he probably doesn’t even know that I still use this. But eight or nine years ago, I was just starting to recruit. I had no idea what I was doing. I had met Tommy Lloyd, me and one of our assistants. Bobby Suarez called him up and wanted to pick his brain. So we went down to Jack and Dan’s and got a beer with him. And we were talking about their ball screen actions. And similar question that you just asked. And he’s like, it doesn’t matter what it is. Just get to a second action.
For them, it’s second ball screen. So it was like Kyle Wiltjer, he gets to the ball at the top of the key after some action happens or they look for that point post. And then it’s his decision. Do I want to go to my point guard over here where I know I can get to a pocket pass? Do I want to go to my wing here where I know I can get to a pick and pop and play off that action? And so then it’s just in 5 on 0, it’s getting your bigs or getting whoever’s dictating those second actions to be quick and creative, whatever that is. We do a lot of 5 on 0 with GAs or coaches kind of fake guarding and them having to make a quick read on what that second action might be. Again, it’s allowing our guys to read what their advantage is. These last three years, we’ve had really good bigs or really good wings to compose stuff. Well, six, seven years ago, we had Bogdan Bliznik and his best second action and our team’s best second action was whenever Bogdan touches the ball the second time, Mason Peatlin, you better sprint up there and get to a ball screen and find Bogdan for a ball screen and we’re going to get a good action. And that year, we were like top 20% in the country in ball screen usage. And so it just kind of depends on your personnel. That’s the beauty of our offense, it can change. When we had Tyler Harvey, we were setting way more pin downs. Last couple of years when we had big wings that can post up, we were posting up a lot more. It’ll morph with whatever personnel that you got.
Pat 15:22
On that thread with bigger wings that you mentioned and good centers at the top you said it goes from five out to four out one in so when you get the advantage and you’re going to go four out one in play through the post what then becomes important to again that being an efficient action being effective in the four out one in through the post.
David Riley 15:40
We do post up a lot, but we never want to post up like sizes. And if we do, it’s out of a scout, almost like I said earlier, like we want to get a numbers advantage, then we want to find a post up advantage. And so typically we have bigger wings because that’s the way we’ve recruited. And if we can get an advantage for them where they can get two feet in the paint, what’s worth the angles, what’s flashed the high pose, what’s kind of play off that triangle and try to get a deep post catch. If we catch it off the block ever, it’s very rarely to score. It’s mostly to run some, we have a backside action that we run, but three or four years ago, it was your typical St. Mary’s passer screens. And we got good action off of that too. It’s just, if you’re posting up like sizes, it’s to play off the perimeter and pass out of it. You post them a mismatch. Well, you should be good enough to get a foot in the paint and get a deep catch so you don’t have to go make a move. And really, it’s just that simple. That’s why we’re efficient because we’re not trying to post up and take eight dribbles against a like size guy and shoot a contested shot. It’s more, if there’s a good opportunity to post up, we’re going to go try to look at that.
Pat 16:42
When you get a touch that’s just off the block or out of the paint, you mentioned you have some backside action. What’s the backside action you guys like to run?
David Riley 16:49
We just spaced the two guys on the strong side. So the passer in a stand in the NBA line, a little bit higher, and be ready to get a grenade. If there’s no other options, they’ll be ready to get a grenade. Or that’s the easiest pass to me. If that guy’s helping, you can easily make that pass and kick it out. So the two strong side guys are just doing that. The backside guys are going to go set a flare on the backside and play off that. And if there’s a missed match, that means one of those guys on the backside is probably going to be on the tape or really worried about helping. And so that’s where it’s really easy to go pin that guy in. If he wants to fight over the top, well, shoot, now it’s one-on-one in the post. There’s really no help. Or you can read that, slip it, play off that. And we get a lot of cuts that happen off that backside cut. And again, it was just like us watching Australia with Patty Mills 10 years ago. And we had a play. We called it an Aussie cut for three years. And then eventually, we just made that our concept that we do every single time. And that’s how this whole thing morphed into it. We had three really, really good players eight or nine years ago. And we just ran a wide pin down. And it was the simplest, most basic thing in the world. But we had three players on the floor, so it worked. And then when we saw Denver running Zoom, we’re like, oh, shoot, well, that’s just the wide pin down we’ve run. But we can run that with a little more flow and a little more action. Now, the Aussie cut, we had that as a play. But we can just flow into that every time we get a post cut touch. And so it’s kind of morphed from where Hayford was very like chess playing. Like, that guy’s going to score on that guy. That guy’s going to score instead of pin down, with Chante. And what we’ve done since then has been same concepts, but just a little bit more flow and pace into it and letting our guys read through it.
Dan 19:39
I got to ask you about your baseline out of bounds thoughts offensively, because you know, you’re watching, again, this is an area where you guys were super efficient, one of the better teams in the country last year, offensively baseline out of bounds. And at times it was just very simple, being able to just throw it to a guy at the near block and let him just get to that post up. Of course, other times I’m sure its scout dependent, you guys would do some backside action and run different stuff. But again, just an area where you guys seem to really take advantage and get extra baskets was baseline out of bounds. And so love to hear your thoughts there too.
David Riley 20:12
I’m glad you noticed how simple it is. That’s a compliment, by the way. Hey, this was an eye-opening deal for our coaching staff, honestly. It was a huge point of discussion for us last year. We were number one in the country in baseline efficiency two years ago, and it was early in the season. We had one play and it was literally just find a mouse, put them on the block, put the other two best shooters on the weak side and then have a safety valve that’s at the elbow that can kind of back off and get a catch. And we literally just ran that. We had one counter where they overloaded. We could throw a lob on the backside and it was like one counter out of it. And I got Pedro, my assistant, who’s from Spain. And, you know, those Spanish coaches, they’ve very tactical. They’ve got this and you did this. And he’s like, when are we going to put our second base on out of bounds? And he was getting antsy. I was like, let’s just do this until teams figure it out. And we got to the end of the year. No one figured it out. We were number one in the country in efficiency. And it kind of goes hand in hand with what our philosophy is, was try to find a mismatch. And that creates a mismatch right off the bat. It’s just having to be able to put someone down there on the block. You kind of get a paint touch out of it because you’re already below the baseline. And it just allows our guys to play out of the post and play out of the good advantages. We’re not doing anything special. We’re just getting into an action that we’ve wrapped the hell out of. And we’re in an advantageous position and it’s just let the guys play and don’t overcoach it. And we’ve done it for two years now and it works. WCC, there’s not going to be as clear mismatches and we might have to manipulate a little bit more, but that’s all it is.
Pat 21:46
you know, watching the film teams, we’re doing different things to defend that post up, but in the simplest terms, if they just have a guy on the ball, the inbounder throws it into the post up. What is he doing next to create the space or be a threat? What are you having him do?
David Riley 22:00
Again, just kind of reading it going off the backside and we’ll have him be the one that sprints off and come off that flare off the backside or we’ll have him come up a hand off if we know that they’re overplaying it. And I guess the other action is if they just move the guy who’s guarding the ball to where we want to throw the post up, then it’s like, well, there’s a backside action with the other two guys that are kind of ones on the block opposite block, ones at the opposite elbow. And if you go to the back screen there, you should be able to score. There’s no one guarding the ball. And if you’re a halfway decent passer, it’s like your all time quarterback with no defense there. All you got to do is set a good back screen. If they don’t switch, you should be able to lay up because you’re wide open coming off. If they switch, you should be able to pin your man turn and get a layup out of it. Again, it’s really, really simple. If they’re not going to guard the passer, you should be able to get that. If they are going to guard the passer, you should be able to get the ball to the post up and play off that.
Dan 22:46
Just as we’ve talked through this first part of the show is you’re a young guy and you seem to have like an ability to kind of chunk down to what’s simple and important and maybe not get caught up as a young coach and trying to do a million things like you hear all the time trying to do too much. Where does that come from? Do you have people you talk to about playing simple or is it just something you’ve always thought about? I mean, how do you get to where you don’t have a million out of bounds plays? You got one and it works and you keep with it.
David Riley 23:13
I think that’s just been kind of something that we found has worked, and I think part of that is that I’ve been lucky enough to not have moved around the time I was able to start my career at Eastern the first time I’ve moved in 13 years, an hour away to Pullman, and we just kind of found out what works. I’ll go to these clinics and I’ll have no idea what some of the terminology is, or some coach will come to our practice and be like, our terminology is random because we call it Zoom, we call it dead because Shante was playing Red Dead Redemption a lot when we were figuring it out, and our old pin down was called Red, and Shante wanted to call it dead, and so we’ve just called it dead since then. And so we have these random names that don’t make sense to people. And so I just think, okay, that works, let’s keep that, that didn’t work, let’s scrap that and kind of morph it into whatever it is. And there’s that piece of it.
And the other piece is just kind of the people we’ve been around, I think, is an overcoach game. That’s a very, very clear thing that you see over and over again. And that same time I grabbed beers with Tommy and was talking about the second action stuff, his other thing was, we were so obsessed, our staff was like, how are they so good at cutting? I had never really seen anyone like, when someone’s driving that slot, and if someone’s in the strong side corner, my whole basketball brain was like, no, you just stay in the corner. If they help you kick, if they don’t help, you’re creating a lane for that guy. Well, Ayahi at Gonzaga and these guys, they would cut that. Even Corey Kispert was cutting that back door. That was counterintuitive to me. It didn’t make any sense, but they would get that action. It would create an open lane, it would cause havoc. And I was like, Tommy, what do you guys teach on that? Like, how do you make that read of why they’re back dooring when the ball’s coming at them? Like, doesn’t that clog it up? It’s like, what do you mean? Like, if you see the back of the head, you cut. That’s all it is. If you see the back of your man’s head, you cut no matter what, because they’ll turn around and it’ll create a lane. College basketball is, spacing is so bad, you really think it’s going to be an issue if two guys cut. That’s what you’re worried about. Of all the other stuff going on, guys not going to the corner or bigs not posting them, you’re really worried about two guys cutting. And he’s like, guards suck at finishing anyways. Get your bigs in there. Like, yeah, there’s no Kyrie Irving that’s in college basketball that’s going to go finish something over two big guys. Now you got guys in better offensive re-running position. You got guys that are going to be able to exit the paint. If you just play off two, someone’s going to be open. Don’t ever think it like you see the back of head, you cut. That’s all we taught this year. This year, our only teaching point was, you see the back of head, you cut. And now our spacing helps that because we’re five out and we have a lot of opportunity to cut. Again, we were number one or something in the country and cutting efficiency this year. That’s our only teaching point. You see the back of head, you cut.
Dan 25:53
Coach, tons of great stuff there. Thank you for going through all that. We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’ll give you three options around a topic. Ask you to start one, sub one, and sit one, and then we will discuss from there. So, Coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first one.
David Riley 26:09
Let’s do it.
Dan 26:09
Okay. We’re going to kind of stick with offensive efficiency here, the theme of the show so far, and a really interesting part of your team this year was you had a point guard that was kind of a non-shooter. Didn’t shoot a lot of three-point attempts, but had a tremendous assist to turnover ratios, like a 4.5, yeah, like 145 assists, 45 turnover, something like that, and this first start, sub, sit has to do with helping your team still be efficient with a non-shooting point guard on the floor or helping that player still make your offense efficient. So, these are three different considerations for turning the non-shooter into an efficient offensive player. So, start, sub, or sit. Option one is teaching him really how to cut, understanding cutting actions to score. Option two is teaching him how to be a great screener for others. Or option three is really teaching how to be a great D.H.O. or connector of actions within the offense. So, start, sub, sit, cutter, screener, D.H.O. handoff guy.
David Riley 27:11
I’m going to start the DHO, I’ll sub the screener and sit the cutter.
Dan 27:17
Okay.
David Riley 27:18
You’re talking about Ellis Magnuson in our point guard. He’s listed above six feet, but he’s definitely not six feet and one of my favorite players ever, the dude was the ultimate leader, did everything on the floor besides score. Halfway through conference this season, Travis secure, put his five man on him, satisfied man in the chart circle. It was like, oh my gosh, we went through a lull for five minutes that game. We figured out how to win the game. I think we ended up seven of them and just figured out how to win the game because we’re up a little bit, how to cushion. But it rattled us.
We were like, oh man, this is a totally different deal. We had all these cuts, everything would work. Now there’s a six, 10 guy just walling everything up at the rim. We had to get creative in the last 10, 12 games. It’s copycat league, everyone started doing it. Every single team did it for the next 10 games. But four or five games into it, we figured out how to, he was such a smart player. He was always looking for the second action. And so he became the best dribble handoff player in the country.
And we would set drags with him. It was a free outlet. So we’d get it to him and he was so smart. He could just catch it. He was like, Kevon, Looney out there with Steph Curry, just getting the D H O’s. Everyone hates the mid range. Well, we beat Northern Colorado with about 15 mid range shots because Ellis would get it at the top of the key, get it right to the handoff. And Cedric or Jake Kyman would come off and get a wide open. All they had to do is one little setup and they get a wide open 10 foot jumper coming off that handoff. We ended up averaging 82 points a game and they weren’t guarding our point guard. And it just became a different style of offense within our framework.
And he couldn’t cut. He would cut to the rim and jump stop and look around. And cutting was not the answer. They started doing it to our other guy, Sebastian Hartman. He was a freshman, Lowell or whatever. And now he could cut and go dunk on you or go finish. And so that was a tool that he could use. But I just think the best one was getting to the DHO or getting to a screen on the backside and allowing someone to come up a screen without any help. I think those were the two things that we did the best.
Pat 29:17
Going back to its four out one in, how are you thinking maybe about with certain actions trying to space him when he wasn’t directly involved in, let’s say, a DHO?
David Riley 29:25
Great point. Again, our point guard, he was the one initiating a lot of the offense. So he was throwing the ball in the post a lot. And our post spacing doesn’t work where the guy throws the ball in the post is typically spacing and waiting for that three or a grenade. Well, that doesn’t work if they’re not guarding him.
So we just have him cut, flip around on the backside and set the flare and just move everyone backside and just, he was the all-time screener. He would screen, they would just get over the top and he would flash and he wasn’t really a threat to score, but then he could get it in the middle of paint and then go get a handoff from the charge circle. He would get it and be looking around at three point line and find someone to go get a handoff in the charge circle. And it just created an easy second action. It’s not traditional, but it’s just an easy way to get a paint touch and a second action out of that. It felt funky for a couple of weeks until we got used to it.
Dan 30:12
There’s like the tactical part of it, which thanks for going through it because it was apparent we’re going through your film or like Nobody’s guarding him the last like all these games of the year But the tactical part which you talked about a little bit But then like the mental part of it for him as a player and then for you as a staff knowing going into all these Games that your point cards not being guarded and I know you talked about the maturity for him But to just not I don’t know how to still play when you know that they’re playing you that way Which can be tough for players.
David Riley 30:43
It’s so true And I think that was, we played Montana, they did it. And within the next three or four games, we had dropped two. And one of them was a bad loss to it. I can’t remember who it was against this year, but it rattled us and we looked at the stats like we still scored above 80 in both these games. We’re still scoring like over 1.1 points per possession, both those games, but our brain was hurting because of the offense and it hurt our defense, which is crazy enough to say.
It just takes a level of maturity and just understanding where you bring value to the team. Like Ellis, most players, if someone’s not guarding him, they’re rattled. They’re going to overthink it. They’re not going to guard as hard. Ellis, he was fine with it. He doesn’t like to shoot anyways. He’s a unique dude and he could embrace that. He’s fighting fires in Idaho right now, living in a trailer because he wants to save up some money and go traveling next year. He’s the most unique guy in the world. He could handle that kind of pressure, whatever you want to call it. But I just think as coaches, we celebrated the fact that he could get his second actions. We showed all these other guys like, man, this is awesome for you actually now because you’re going to get able to come off these handoffs wide open and get to a second action. So Cedric and Jake Kyman and our bigs, we’re all excited about the idea of being able to play off this new action and you just got to spin it.
Dan 31:57
Yeah, for certain players, great, I’ve got one guy who’s never going to shoot, so it’s more shots for everybody else. My last question on this was more like late game considerations or things like where you knew you needed, maybe where in the flow of the game, you guys figured out how to play, but did it ever cause issues, say, when you needed a basket or ATOs or things like that where you wanted to have a more traditional defensive setup so you could manipulate or get to things you wanted?
David Riley 32:25
That was the worry for sure. Late game, can we do it? And again, we just kind of found different actions that work throughout the game. And it was different every game, like Northern Colorado was getting to a mid-range off it. I think it was Weber State where he was incredible. The backside screens that he was setting, we were getting all these flares because he was setting the backside. And so just depending on the game, we’d find one thing that worked with him. And by the end of the game, you could kind of trust it.
We needed him on the floor at the end of the game. He’s our smartest player. He’s our defensive quarterback. He’d get us into action offensively. He was that valuable where it wasn’t smart for us to take him off the floor late game.
Pat 34:11
All right, coach, our last start sub sit for you, we’re going to go to the other end of the court now look at the defensive end. So we call this tough to maintain during a season. You know, as you get into the season, games are coming, scouts, you know, practice time becomes limited, managing loads. What becomes the toughest to maintain on the defensive end? Your individual defense, one on one defense, your close outs, or your cycle of helps, your help rotations.
David Riley 34:39
Good question. That was our issue this year. We actually spent some time talking about this because late game our defensive foundation or fundamentals took a hit. I don’t think we were nearly as good at guarding the ball. Our closeouts and our ball pressure was significantly worse. And that put us in a lot more situations where we had to rotate and our rotations looked worse. So I’ll sit the rotations part because I think our rotations weren’t good. But I think that was because of our closeout situation. I’ll start the closeouts because I think that was our biggest issue was we got a little bit lazy on the closeouts at one point. And then we started ramping up the ball pressure too much and overclosing. And I think as coaches, we didn’t teach it clear enough to what we wanted late in the season. So our closeouts created a lot of drill penetration, which led to our rotations kind of being not crisp and giving up a lot of threes. We give up a ton of threes the last five or six games of the year because our closeouts are in our ball pressure really, I think.
Pat 35:37
Sticking on the clarity, what did you learn from last season? What are you taking to this season with close out clarity?
David Riley 35:43
What I took from this season is offensively, we can have a lot of gray on offense. There’s like three or four right answers. Typically, as long as the other guys are on the same page as what you’re doing, you can get away with, oh, well, I was going to do this because of that. I think now defensively, for me, I want to get it more black and white, less gray. At one point, we had like five different ways we’re closing out to people because we felt like a score that was more of a shooter needed to be close out different than a score that was less of a shoot. And it’s like, OK, you’re either Curry, like a sniper in between or you don’t guard them with short posts. Just simplifying these things allows them to think less. When I was really into the analytics as an ops guy, I met with the Warriors, people down there, and their big thing was we don’t want our players to see very much this at all. Yes, it’s a great tool for the coaches. It was right when Mark Jackson had left. So they were, you know, Steve Kerr was more analytically inclined. And so they were excited about it. But the big thing was like, we don’t want paralysis by analysis, especially defensively. You can’t be analyzing every little thing. It’s got to be black and white, whether it’s the close outs. We were big on forcing we can to the scout. Well, this year we might not do that. We might just make it a little more black and white. And I just think that’s going to be a big key for us is to is to simplify things defensively.
Pat 36:59
And we look at all three of these things, your individual defense closeout help framing it through, it’s the middle of conference play. How do you think about maybe from a practice planning, for example, like touching on all three of these things? Is it, you know, we’re going to do individual drills or is it trying to get one drill that can cover them all, you know, with the time constraint and again, the loads, how are you thinking about these three aspects of your defense?
David Riley 37:22
The way we structure our practices has been pretty healthy, I think, as far as being able to touch on these little details. I think it’s a Davidson thing. We had an assistant, Nick Booker, who played at Davidson and spent some time there. And he brought the idea, so we do sims every day before practice. We warm up and then we have two minutes at each basket with a coach, two defensive sims and one offensive sim. And maybe in the defensive sim, it’s something as simple as block out and the ball is going out of bounds. We’re going to save it and make sure someone’s coming to the ball or our closeout stuck last game. Let’s get two minutes of close outs. And there’s only four guys there. There’s one coach or one GA and we’re just most of the time it’s not full speed, but we’re able to touch on three to six things, depending on what you want in your sim defensively. And then, you know, one or two things offensively every single day. And so I think that’s how we’re able to kind of touch those things without taking a ton of practice time and running all these breakdown drills, because we play a lot of practice. That’s my thing is you’re going to learn better through playing. I like it more, keeps things a little fresher. So we kind of touch on them with little sims as much as we can. I think that’s when we get our close outs in. I’m trying to talk to a lot of coaches and figure out how we can do a better job of that, because we didn’t keep our fundamentals as well as I thought we should last year.
Pat 38:37
Going back to keeping it simple and you mentioned you forced weak last year and maybe you won’t this year, what other considerations you mentioned? Maybe just like the three level, the shooter, maybe, you know, not go all the way, don’t worry about them, but is there anything you’re thinking about directionally or even like footwork wise, or is it more just defining like who the player you’re going out on and just like, get it done?
David Riley 38:58
There’s that, and then just like the technique piece is something that we actually talked about. I was down at a practice in Spain a few weeks ago, and I was watching their warm-up, and they had some very specific slides that they were doing, and really worked on the technique. And these are grown men, like a Love Gold team, and every day in the warm-up, they’re getting some close-out and technique of like when to slide, and if it’s a sideways slide or it’s a backwards slide, and I was like, man, we don’t do that in our warm-up, and in college basketball, you’re warming up starting in June, all the way till March, so you’re getting so many days of this warm-up.
We’ve thought about this with ball handling. We do passing drills in our warm-up every single day. We do ball handling that’s a little bit unique every single day. Why aren’t we incorporating some defense into that? We talk about with our team, we’re going to have a defensive identity, all these things, but when you watch our warm-up, it’s a bunch of offensive stuff. Why aren’t we incorporating some defensive technique into that? I actually am going to meet with our strength coach today and incorporate that piece into our warm-up of like let’s get some technique with our defensive slides and really try to take a step in that.
Dan 40:05
I was recording this, you’re just taking over Washington State, you’re about to have first practices and I guess any thoughts on building an identity that you learned from your time at Eastern Washington that you’re hoping to transfer over and I guess maybe sticking more on the defensive side, how you are thinking about building that defensive identity?
David Riley 40:23
trying to instill the toughness and competitiveness that it takes to win championships. I think that’s the number one thing that I’m focused on initially is just making sure we have that mindset. And it helps to have our guys at Play of the Eastern for me come over and work with that stuff. But it’s really, really the basics this first few months is can we have the toughness we need and competitiveness and that comes through competing and valuing that and then just the unselfishness piece. Being able to think for others is the biggest thing that we try to push with our guys is you’re not just out there thinking for yourself, you’re trying to read your teammates, you’re trying to see what they’re doing and react off that. And I think that we’re pretty good at teaching that offensively and it’s easier to see and stat offensively. And so that’s something that we’re trying to incorporate defensively is how can we stat it? We got all these new support staff roles and all this stuff and I’m watching the, I think it’s called Bamalytics. It’s like some YouTube thing and it’s looking at what Nate Oats is doing. He’s got like an army of people on computers every practice and they got their blue collar points every day. He can mid practice and be like, well, red teams kicking your butt because they’ve dove on the floor eight more times. They’ve got six more alters at the rim, this many more passes and it’s the immediate feedback that we have offensively because we’re talking about paint touches and these different things offensively that we chart. Well, if we want to have a defensive identity and really bring that in, let’s chart more and encourage more and talk more defensively. And so I think that’s something that we’re trying to put in here. I told our GA, I want it already in three days, but we’re not going to use this. I don’t want any players seeing any stats for the first three weeks. It’s all teaching time where they can’t be in the back of their head worried about like, oh man, if I had messed up, my stats are going to be bad or they’re going to jut. This is complete, make them as many mistakes as you want with learn for the first three weeks. And then hopefully by that time we have the analytics package ready to go.
Pat 42:15
Kind of a detour here you mentioned you had some unique ball handling drills that you touch on and warm up
David Riley 42:21
Yeah, everyone does the same warm up, the dynamic stretching where they do all the different motions that you need to do to get your body ready. Again, I’m not an exercise science guy. I trust the strength coaches with all that stuff, but I was like, how can we have a ball? And this is not me, this is Roberto Bergerson, who was coaching with me my first year. It’s like, how can we have a ball on our hands? How can we have some basketball dribbling while they’re doing their leg kicks? Can we have them do a couple ball handling drills in between or those typical middle school drills where it’s two dribbles and pass and they’re throwing the ball back and forth and they’re having to build. My thing was like, yeah, let’s do that. But let’s also incorporate some chemistry with it. So they have to play with a teammate and have to talk. So every time they do a physical warmup, they’re doing some sort of ball handling warmup as well.
We try to throw in there. I think it’s good for our skill development or just to keep it interesting. We’re also dead last in turnovers the last two years in the conference. We turn the ball over a lot too. So I don’t know if our ball handling is necessarily working. The bigger reason is that we pass the ball out, we throw the ball over the plate in our offense. I think you might’ve been first in assists, so. Definitely first in assists. Yeah. It’s a lost start. I went to part of a lawyer’s practice a really long time ago. It was early on. They start off their early practices in the training camp. They do so many passing drills. It’s crazy how many passing drills they do at the NBA level. And I had never seen it. I had been coaching college for five or six years and I was like, we don’t do any passing drills.
And then you go to like Serbia and you’re watching a youth practice. Instead of playing one-on-one with just two guys, they have another guy at the top of the key that’s off. They’re dealing with his left hand and every pass that he has to make has to be a left hand hook pass to the guy at the top of the key for them to play one-on-one. And so I started doing that. If we’re going to play two-on-two and there’s a guy, one team’s off, they’re talking about what they did wrong and the other team’s off and there’s waiting in line. Let’s have one of those guys make the pass that’s entered into two-on-two and it has to be a skip pass to the left hand. And just trying to incorporate little details where they have to make passes, they’re a little unique. And so they just get used to thinking like that. I think that’s probably the way we try to incorporate the most.
Dan 44:27
Coach, great stuff. You’re off the start, sub, or sit, hot seat. Thanks for going through and playing that game with us. Made it. You made it.
David Riley 44:33
Yeah.
Dan 44:34
Hey, we got a final question for you. But before we do, congratulations again on the new job and all the success. And thanks for coming on the show today. This was a lot of fun.
David Riley 44:41
Appreciate you guys having me on. It was cool to get the DM. I listen to you guys all the time, and I listen to ton of the podcasts, and just appreciate what you guys do for the game.
Dan 44:50
Thanks, Coach. Appreciate that. Thank you. Our last question that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
David Riley 44:59
For me, it’s been traveling. That was my thing early on, was just trying to expand my knowledge of the game. I wanted to go play overseas. I thought I was good enough to go do that. I had an offer in the 4th Division of Germany for a few hundred dollars a month. I think it was May or June, and I’m better than that. I can get a better offer than that. Nothing really came after that. So I didn’t get to do the traveling as a player. But my wife was a fiance at the time. She’s the one that really allowed me to do this. We were on a big-time budget. We were staying at hostels in these crappy places, but we go travel the world. And it was always some sort of basketball incorportated. Hey let’s go see what Germany is all about, but let’s go try to pop in and watch a practice at Vechta. Or what’s the EuroLeague Final Four is in Bilbao. Let’s go try to catch a game and meet some people while we’re out there and get dinner. And she’s been great where she can just hang out and meet people. But for me, I was just talking about it last year. My first time traveling with my wife, I went up to a stadium in Spain and just kind of knocked on the ticket office because I had no idea who to talk to or how to get involved. And now I’m going to dinners with coaches that have been coaching in the ACB and EuroLeague. And I’ve met all these people and I’ve watched all these practices. And I just think putting yourself out there traveling, trying to expose yourself to as many different things. It doesn’t have to be Europe either. I learned so much from high school basketball practices. And I think the biggest thing I did was travel and not worry about sitting on the beach, but just trying to meet people and learn because basketball is taught so differently all over the world, all over the country.
You go watch a basketball practice in Florida to help a lot different than a practice in California or Maine, you can learn so many different things. That’s our whole program. Yes, it’s all been from one coaching tree, but man, it’s just a bunch of random stuff from people that don’t even know we stole from there.
Dan 46:57
All right, Pat, let’s hop into this was fun for a lot of reasons. I mean, I know Coach Riley a little bit from his time as a player out here on the West Coast, a really good Division Three player we talked about. We missed playing against each other by a couple of years, but he was a heck of a player and then obviously has done a terrific job as a coach going from assistant and taking over Eastern Washington, now going to Washington State. And obviously a smart, talented head on his shoulders, young coach. So it was a ton of fun today.
Pat 47:26
Yeah, super excited to see what he’s going to do in Washington state. I mean, just getting to know his offense and of course talking with him today. Really like how he thinks about the game, how he sees the game.
Dan 47:36
I think the theme is any A.D.’s listening out there is to hire former Division III players and coaches. I mean, that’s the whole thing about maybe the show, maybe our goal. The reason we started. Yeah, exactly. Let’s dive into our top three takeaways here, and there were a lot, but I’ll kick it off with number one. And for me, it’s starting with the discussion on teaching advantages, and I really liked how he linked back to one of our favorite and most popular episodes is with Tuomas Lisalo and discussing what he talked about on that show and what we talked about today is, is there, can you create a numbers advantage? Can you create a personnel or mismatch advantage? Or then do we need to get to action? And I think just like that simplified checkdown of teaching players how to do it. And then he went on to discuss once they’ve played through one of those things or recognized one of those things, what do they want to do next? And when you listen to a coach who last year, like we went through, had just a crazy efficient offense in a lot of places, and like not with what he mentioned, you know, guys that you need to develop, it’s not necessarily like one and done type guys, I just think it’s really interesting. And it’s probably very applicable to like most coaches out there where you have a program, you have players you’re trying to bring up, you have them for a couple of years, hopefully. And I just thought it was really good getting into the nuts and bolts of recognizing advantages early and then how to kind of play to that within whatever it is you’re going to do.
Pat 49:08
Definitely. The checklist that we talked about with Coach Asolo, when he mentioned today that the numbers, the mismatch, the action, like, I appreciate the clarity it provides, starting there and then building from it. And then you can pick your actions, but it’s very simple in that we’re going to get either numbers advantage or we’re going to get a mismatch and how we get that can change, can vary, but it’s always going to be a clear order of operation.
Dan 49:32
And I think the other connection to Lisalo in this podcast was, in Lisalo’s podcast he talked about functional units, putting players in units of two or three or four and playing through certain actions together in these like kind of smaller sided games. And then Coach Riley today was discussing his preference and his level of three on three, especially maybe on one side of the floor for a lot of reasons. One he said, you know, you get 40% more reps just taking those two guys off, so you’re just seeing things more often and that a lot of the things within their offense ends up being some sort of two man or three man game and we talked about Zoom and all that.
Pat 50:11
Yeah, within the three on three, I like the point he raised that he constrained the floor and how that helped decision making or with the reads, I mean, with the smaller floor, there’s going to be smaller windows to get open. And so the reads have to improve so you can take advantage of any opening. I like that point because lately we’ve been having a lot of discussions on valuing pace over the right read. I think the pace maybe is like the first thing you want to get. Let’s get the pace up, get going and moving at the right speed. But then of course you want to, we can start adding right reads with the pace. It’s only going to make us that much better. And I think what he was saying or what he had found in my opinion was kind of putting these three on three in constraint space, help them play at the pace and develop the reads.
Dan 50:53
As he said, he had the quote, I think three correct reads in a row, you get a wide open shot I think is what I wrote down or something to that effect. Sometimes all it takes is one correct read and you get a wide open shot, but if you stack them on top of each other, you’re probably getting a wide open look. The last piece I’ll just say on this is, this isn’t a miss by coach Riley or us really. It’s just, we’re not doing a three hour podcast, but I’ll just give you a quick earlier one. I probably could have spent more time on after timeouts as ATOs, his baseline out of bounds we touched a little bit on, which is super interesting. But then they were like the best or one of the top two or three teams in late clock situations under four. And then when you look at their play types, they were one of the lowest teams in isolation plays. So we even joke with him beforehand. He was looking back and he’s like, I don’t really know, you know, there wasn’t something they didn’t have some secret play under four that they got to, or he even said, we’re not great isolation players. But what we were kind of discussing and I guess theorizing is they just keep running their stuff all the way through the clock and they don’t like just pull it out, run a high ball screen where people load up and then they take a jumper, rely on a guy, they’ll just keep flowing. And a lot of times it ended up getting to like a late post catch or something or late cut, you know, rather than some other things that we see. And I think that was interesting that I probably could have spent more time on and maybe will just personally with film what they did late clock because it was really good stuff.
Pat 52:18
And I think that was also why their D H O’s were so high as well. Not only late clock, he talked about it’s not the first D H O, but it’s like maybe the second third they’re getting into a pick and pop and going into a D H O where there’s just the big, usually chasing off the pop. So there’s just a bigger advantage that they’ve built. It’s something we recently hit on too with coach Pasquale and our film room series about his offense and the importance he placed on owning the middle of the possession and being able to connect and string actions and not die out, bring it up top and then set a screen where now you’re going late clock against more of a set defense. And I’m totally with you. I think their ability to string together actions, connect to action and keep flowing. You’re just going to hopefully continue to build bigger advantages. So then if it’s going late clock, you’re going to have a higher, let’s say a better chance of converting at that point.
Dan 53:07
For those who’ve listened to us for a little while now, know my love affair with triple handoffs and yours with closeouts. So we got both of those today and so exciting times around here.
Pat 53:19
Yeah. Yeah.
Pat 53:19
Well, that’s a perfect segue because my second takeaway was the start sub suit conversation.
And of course, not only closeouts, but, you know, we said one-on-one and the help, and I think it’s really real conversations that we all face with so much to do in the middle of the season and identifying problems and what to work on and managing your players. How do you find time in practice or we’ll get into his sims. How do you just always touch on your pillars, your absolutes, like what’s important to you week to week practice to practice? I think is always an interesting conversation and kind of identifying the chicken or the egg type thing. You mentioned like our rotations are bad, or are they bad because we’re just getting crushed on closeouts, giving up straight line drives. And then really no rotations are going to be perfect because you’re just going to be chasing the whole play. And then from there, we got into the closeouts and I appreciated his takeaways on defensively. You know, he really came away with last year. He’s got to reduce the gray, get a little bit more black and white, and that they’re probably overly too complicated and the types of closeouts and maybe go into three layers. And then we got from there, you mentioned his watching coach and teaching technique. And I guess what I’m always seeking with the close is how much do you teach the detail of it versus how much simplicity do you talk about it? And also know within that, yeah, is it just kind of like a get it done thing and just kind of clearly maybe it’s no middle, get it done, short closeout, long closeout, get it done, just accomplish that. And I think there’s pros and cons to both sides, but that’s kind of always what I’m seeking with my rabbit holes,
Pat 54:50
closeout.
Absolutely And anytime a coach begins a story with, I traveled down to Spain to watch a practice. Whatever it is they were doing down there is probably pretty good. Obviously, our affinity for Spain and their affinity for not answering our start-sub-sick questions.
Pat 55:07
It was only fitting to start with the start sub sit question and then that was brought up.
Dan 55:12
Yeah, exactly. What I pulled out from this start sub sit and this kind of getting rid of the gray and the closeouts was just like an interesting decision that I think coaches face mid-year where you start to get more tactical and scout stuff built into what you’re doing. So like, you know, early season, you’re just so much base. And I think I asked him about identity and who we are as a defense and how you want to teach it. You know, early season, you’re like building blocks and all these things. And then when you bring in the scout and all of a sudden this person’s a shooter, this person’s a non-shooter, this person’s left most of the time. Sometimes I think, and I’m speaking for my own self, you can get so caught up into those little things that does the scout chink away at your base because you get so scout focused that then all of a sudden it’s like, well, are we going back to just what we’ve done well and our identity? And I think that’s maybe what he was circling back on a little bit of simplifying some things and really always going back to who we are from an identity standpoint. And yes, of course, you’re going to have shooter, non-shooter, all these things, but simplifying it because it is hard, you know, January, February, like you have all the data now, you have all the film, you have all this stuff at your disposal does the way you start putting in specific scout reports. And we talked about this with TJ Saint, great player defense versus like stopping a set defense all the time. And that mid-year decision we have to make of what’s important and what’s not as important I think is super interesting. And he talked about it well today.
Pat 56:41
Yeah. Within that time management. And we only keep these guys in the gym so long. Also it’s, do we do specific drills? Again, referencing back to these sims, like we just hit on it two minutes, three minutes, we rotate, do some group work, or is it, do we do shell where it’s like, okay, we can maybe scheme some big things, but then we go live on like a skip out pass. And so now we’re scheming some stuff, we’re working on maybe our overall coverage, but then we play live on a kick out pass. So now we’re working close out one-on-one defense, you know? And yeah, is it individual one-on-one small group or can we find ways to kind of kill two birds with one stone for sure? Dan, keeping it rolling here, we’ll get to our third takeaway here, we’ll kick it back to you to bring us home.
Dan 57:20
Well, I’ll go back to, I mean, you got to talk about closeouts and then I got to have a D.H.O. conversation and the conversation about still maintain flow and efficiency in your offense when one of your players, but specifically in this case, your point guard is a non-shooter and not even like a non-shooter, but like you watch their film, teams just stop guarding him like he mentioned and just have someone sitting in the paint. And so I thought it was a really interesting conversation and my takeaway was just all the considerations that we have to bring to the table when we’re working with our individual teams, our teams are not perfect.
We don’t have five shooters that can all pass dribble shoot. I mean, if we do them, I win a lot of games and you’re good for you, but you have all these situations where it’s just not perfect. It’s a little funky and you want to run, I don’t know, your five out zoom and all of a sudden you’re running it and they’re just not guarding a guy and it messes with you. And I thought he spoke really well about the type of player it took and then just how they thought about fixing it. And he was even honest about it messed him up for a game and they I think had to kind of take him out just so they could finish, hopefully win the game and then think about what they’re going to do going forward because as you mentioned, teams saw the film and said, okay, we’re just going to copy this. And so they had like an interesting problem to fix throughout the rest of the year. So I just love the insights on how he talked about how to work with that player from the mental side, their team talking about it and then ultimately bring it to the floor so that he could still play and like he talked about he had to play like he was one of their best, smartest, toughest players that he had to be on the floor.
Pat 58:55
This part of the conversation reminded me of our podcast with Coach Major and we were talking about, you know, he wanted to play with more pace, so he got rid of designating who runs the corners or who runs the spots that just first come first serve, but it ultimately led to some tricky spacings with, I mean, in his case, a non-shooting four in the corner and kind of leading to like this dead spot of like, okay, what do we do if he’s not really going to catch and shoot or he’s not an ISO player, like how do we keep connecting the offense and the same way here, you know, I think it’s most important with those guys, not necessarily like how do we get them buckets or how do they score, but just how do they keep the offense effective through connecting it, just find ways, is it, you know, throw a heads chasing the ball screens as they get to DHOs, is it putting them in dunker spots, but finding a way to keep just the offense flowing from one action to the other.
Dan 59:45
One of the things I like is this film from last year is great to watch because in order for the offense to continue to flow effectively with a major ball handler on the floor, that ball handler can’t have moments of indecision where they don’t know what to do next. And I think when you watch his point guard, every time he catches it, he’s immediately flowing to a durable handoff. Or when he’s on the backside, he’s always looking to flare on the backside. His action is so quick that he’s not just standing in space much of the time, not knowing what to do. He connects things really quickly.
And I think it’s a good study on someone in that position, first of all, buying into their role until I say, yeah, I’m just not going to shoot. I’m really not, but I can still help my team. And so I think the speed of the decisions of what he’s going to do, whether it’s a handoff, whether it’s a screen away, whether it’s a backside flare, he was really good. He talked about pushing in transition and teams are going under the ball screens, but it didn’t matter. He got off of it quickly and flowed into something.So Pat, as we move on, I kind of mentioned one of my misses from us. Anything else from your end?
Pat 01:00:49
I would have liked to hit a little bit longer on the three-on-three. He mentioned he liked to do three-on-three and kind of constrain him just in the key. Maybe he was just kind of giving examples, but I would have liked to have followed up there. And we talked about the pin downs and isolating maybe the side of the court. But if you’re going to isolate just like the key, middle third, and knowing that he plays a lot through the posts, just how they went about kind of working with that drill, that constraint and what they accomplished there.
Dan 01:01:16
Yeah, would have definitely been interesting and once again, really appreciate Coach Riley for coming on, sharing all his thoughts. Congratulations to him on the success and the new job. We wish him well. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.