We sat down this week with the Head Coach of Seattle University MBB, Chris Victor! We had a blast diving into Coach Victor’s thoughts on all things defense, including shading left, changing ballscreen coverages, and not switching; and discuss off-ball screening actions and improving team passing during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit!?”
Transcript
Chris Victor 00:00
When you have certain ideas in your mind of building a tough, gritty, defensive team, and then getting through screens and not allowing yourself to be screened, refusing to be screened is what we say, and I think that builds some toughness within your defense. If we have to emergency switch on certain things, we’ll work on that, but I just think there’s something too.
Learning how to get through a screen, keeping your matchup, learning how to not get screened, and the physicality from that you get defensively, I think pays dividends for us. Yeah, it’s been a lot of conversations, like we should go zone more, we should switch more. My assistants love bringing them when we go back and forth, but I’m winning those conversations still, so we’ll see what happens next year.
Dan 00:43
I’m Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slappin’ Glass, exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies, and coaches from around the world. Today, we’re excited to welcome Seattle University head coach, \And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Chris Victor. Coach, really appreciate you coming on today. It was kind of fun. You have some Southern California roots, so we’re talking about that beforehand. Excited to have you on the show.
Chris Victor 02:24
Thanks for having me on. I’ve been a big fan of what you guys have been doing for a while and some of our coaching staff meetings that we have during the year in the offseason are actually started by an episode or a tweet or a play set that we saw.
So you guys have made a big impact on what we’re doing here and I’m sure a lot of coaches can say the same thing. So thanks for everything you guys have been doing.
Dan 02:42
Thanks coach. We’re excited to talk to you about a lot of stuff today. And one of the things we’re going to start with is on the defensive side of the ball, something you guys were terrific at last year. And I think the place we’d like to start is whether it’s a major part of your defense or minor part, but you do do a little bit of trying to weak or force left. And I wanted to start with the pain points or the philosophy behind doing that. And then we’ll kind of go from there.
Chris Victor 03:12
I think it’s started when we were looking to change up our ball screen coverages. You know, ball screens have been such a big part of basketball the last decade and become more and more important for us on the defensive side, you know, used to be in the preseason, you focus on your guarding the basketball and all your off the ball positioning and help and really, at least in our program, we’ve transitioned to spending a lot more time guarding ball screens and a little less time with off the ball help defense. And when we’re going through that, one of the things that we noticed, especially with our players is that it was just a lot harder for the ball handler to make play go into as we can, whether it was scoring the basketball, or, you know, creating for others on kick out passes or drops off to the roller. So we started looking into it, and it’s been effective for us.
So really in the middle third of the court, we do our best to weak a lot of the players and force them to their weekend, and just see if they can make plays consistently going to their weekend, it’s been successful for us and it’s something that we’ve continued to do. And, you know, we might get a little more aggressive with it depending on, you know, our defense set up to have not allowed anything in the middle. So we take away middle penetration as best we can. But if we have a guy that we think we want to continue to force weak and he’s on the outer third, we might even allow him on a ball screen coverage to go to his weekend, just to continue to force them to make plays on that side. So now we still tweak it. It’s tough when you’re having that weak conversation. And now you’re dealing with some lefties, and you’re dealing with righties, and you’re kind of going back and forth and you want to make it too complicated for your players and the ball screen coverages are in the half court defense. But that’s been something that we’ve looked at a while. There’s some teams that force weak, no matter where they’re on the floor, no matter what player they have forced left or weak. And it’s something that we’ve tinkered with and it’s been good for us last few years.
Dan 04:52
Coach, maybe just quick diving in on the outer thirds, then we’ll go back to the middle, maybe some technical stuff, but then what are the conversations with your staff or decisions you may or may not have made with the outer thirds versus the middle third when it comes to pick and roll coverages and all that?
Chris Victor 05:09
Again, we try and keep the ball in the outer third. We want to keep the ball out of the middle. So just by the way our defense is built, we started to ice ball screens on the outer third just to keep the ball out of the middle. And then, you know, that’ll be our outer third coverage.
And in the middle third, we’ll mix things up. You know, we might weak, we might blitz, we might hard hedge. And just to keep the defense off balance, we’ll change up how we guard that middle third coverage. But we found that the more we can keep the ball on the outside, our defense is more established. We have very specific guys that can guard the rim and allow them to be in the hole. It’s more predictable when the ball’s in the outer third where you should be. So the ice has allowed us to stay with that theme and keep the ball on the outer third. And the ball’s in the middle. It’s harder for us to guard and a lot more options for the offense we feel. So we try and keep guards off balance. You know, some teams may change defenses and they go from man to zone and change their zone coverages. And one of the things that we like to do is just change our ball screen coverages. And that kind of our way to keep the offense kind of off balance and be less predictable defensively. Changing.
Pat 06:10
your on-ball coverage is being predominantly, let’s say, icing, weakening in the middle. But then when you change to a coverage where you want to force into the screen and keeping it simple for your players, I guess the pain points of when you want to change coverages and helping your players change their footwork, force into the screen, ice the screen, weak the screen. What have you found there in teaching the different coverages and the footwork that go along with it?
Chris Victor 06:35
Yeah, great point. You don’t want to do too much because then you’re not good at anything. Right. So one of the things that we found is all our ball screen coverages are color coded and they’re all communicated by the man guarding the screener. So the man guarding the screener is going to dictate to the guard what coverage we’re in. And that communication piece is something that we work on very often. Just found that clearer in the earlier that we can communicate our ball screen coverage, the more successful that we’ve been executing that ball screen coverage when our communication is slow or late or not clear enough or loud enough is when our guards put in a tough position to change their footwork or to adjust to guarding the basketball for that specific coverage. So we spend a lot of time with predominantly our bigs who are going to be calling the ball screen coverages out, having that communication clear and having the guards really listen. You know, one of the things that we struggle with is when our guards are looking for the screens and peaking left and right, we get beat. So just having our guards follow the on-ball coverage details that we have in our program and really listen for the bigs to call the coverages. And when our communication is good and is at a high level, our execution of the ball screen coverage is usually pretty good. And to your point, we don’t try and change that often in games. Maybe after a media, we’ll do a couple possessions and then we’ll go back to our standard ball screen coverages. I think it’s important for us to keep mixing it up. You know, I know for our guards, we’ve had a lot of good point guards in our program and when they’re able to go against a defense that’s been predictable over the course of 40 minutes, you can kind of get used to the ball screen coverage and start to make plays. And we can make adjustments as coaches to help them attack that certain ball screen coverage. But it’s a little bit harder when things are changing and when you’re expecting a drop coverage and you get a blitz or you’re expecting a blitz and you get a switch. So, you know, we try and as much as we can mix those things up and with not getting too complicated while we’re doing it.
Pat 08:18
On that note with the communication piece how much freedom are you giving the bigs or he’s telling the bigs hey right now we’re in green or whatever coverage or are you getting hey we can be in green and blue and you communicate the coverage and if so I guess what is dictating the coverage is there something that triggers them oh this is a green this is the blue what
Chris Victor 08:38
We put tape on the floor all pre-season just to give them the idea of where the quadrants are for our ice coverage or the quadrants are for our hedge coverage or whatever it may be blitz and then yeah the coaches will call the coverages and we give them a little bit of freedom you know if they feel like there’s certain coverages that it’s too late to get to for example they didn’t communicate one coverage early enough we can’t get to an ice keep them out of the middle we’ll go to a coverage where we allow the guy to go to the middle but we’ll dictate coverages from the coaching staff and that’ll be communicated throughout the game just like anything else some of our guys have a little more freedom than others to make the calls and we’ve had some good defenders on the basketball but also some very smart big guys that are able to execute it pretty well and communicate it really well as well.
Dan 09:19
Going back to weakening or forcing left a little bit, and I guess any pain points on that with actually guarding the basketball. And I know for some coaches who, whether it’s no middle or weakening, when you’re really forcing a direction, the balance between forcing the direction, not getting beat off the bounce, when to maybe switch versus not switch, anything there with actually guarding the basketball when you’re going to be trying to weak a direction.
Chris Victor 09:48
It’s something that we try to work on often when we guard the ball. When we say no middle, we don’t mean that we allow a direct line drive to the baseline side or the sideline side. When we say weak, we’re not saying we’re allowing the player to drive to his left hand directly to the rim, but we are shading to that side. One word that we use a lot defensively is dictate. We don’t want to allow the offense to be comfortable and run their sets.
We don’t want them to dictate the possession to us defensively, just as we don’t want an individual player to dictate the one-on-one match ups to our defender. We want to do our best with our team defense and on the ball individual defense to dictate to the offense how the possession is going to go and what we’re going to allow them to do. And that’s part of weakening. It’s part of no middle is yes, you’re not, we’re going to dictate the ball handler to this side of the floor or to this direction, but you’re still responsible to keep them out. And you’re still responsible to hold the line on this drive and to keep them in the short corner area on the outer thirds of the court. Yeah, I’ll be able to do both. And when we have good individual defenders, they’re able to do both. Now, some of the guys have a little harder time of dictating one direction and keeping the guy in front or taking away middle and keeping the guy out of the paint to the baseline side. But we work on that a lot in practice. We talk about a lot, watch it a lot in film. When we’re able to do both on the basketball and we need less help off the ball, our defense is better for it.
Pat 11:09
You’ll see a lot of teams that run like handoffs into ball screens, or you know, they come off a screen, pitch it back to the guard, step up ball screen. With a team that’s weakening or icing, do you think about switching those a lot, you know, especially on the outer third switching to ice at all? Or how do you think about maybe handoff situations that lead to a ball screen?
Chris Victor 11:30
I’m pretty stubborn with not switching on defense and it’s something that our staff loves to bring up in a lot of meetings for that example, right? Like if we just switched this DHO, we’ll be able to blow it up and we’ve actually had trouble offensively against teams that do that.
But again, I like to have our guys a little more aggressive for us, depending on personnel base, but against a great ball handler, a creator or shooter, we’ll deny the dribble handoff. That’s kind of our first option of what we like to do is we call blow up the handoff. We just won’t even let that first handoff be successful. But the switching thing is something that I’ve gone back and forth with my whole career because teams that are able to switch one through five on the ball and off the ball, switch DHO’s have given us trouble. Occasionally we’ll kind of, you know, very specific match-ups or games or sets that we’re scouting will allow a switch, but for the most part, we’re trying to keep our match-ups for the whole possession. At DHO, you mentioned it would be either blow up the initial handoff, don’t allow them to make that exchange in the sideline, or if you can go under the DHO and get to the ice early enough to keep it on the side of the ball.
Dan 12:36
Well on the no switching. You said you’ve gone back and forth. In your mind, at least more recently, why has it been more beneficial or why have you stuck on trying to not switch?
Chris Victor 12:46
Now, when you have certain ideas in your mind of building a tough, gritty, defensive team, and then getting through screens and not allowing yourself to be screened, refusing to be screened is what we say, and I think that builds some toughness within your defense. If we have to emergency switch on certain things, we’ll work on that, but I just think there’s something to learning how to get through a screen, keeping your matchup, learning how to not get screened, and the physicality from that you get defensively, I think, pays dividends for us.
Now, I’ve gone back and forth because there’s so many teams that have heard us with their switching and made it difficult on us, and they do a great job, not to say those teams aren’t tough, they are, and they do a great job switching, but it’s just one of those things that I believe in for our defense, and all of us have to adjust and keep developing as coaches and introduce new things, but that’s something that I’ve stuck with, and yeah, it’s been a lot of conversations, like we should go zone more, we should switch more, and my assistants love bringing them up when we go back and forth, but I’m winning those conversations still, so we’ll see what happens next year.
Pat 13:45
With refusing to be screened, what’s some of the technique that you’re teaching your players?
Chris Victor 13:50
Yeah, so on the ball and off the ball, I think one of the things that we’ve seen over the years is a lot of the times when we see our guys getting screen, they’re standing too tall. So you think about a screener, the widest part of their screen is usually up here in their shoulders. So the guy is setting a big screen and we’re getting hit in the chest area in the shoulder area. It’s a sign to us that our guys are too tall, maybe to play a little lower. So we’ll attack a lot of hips during screens. What we think is the skinniest part of the screen is that a player’s hips. And we’ll try and attack hips a lot on the ball and off the ball. And then the physicality comes into that too. It’s being physical in the right spots. It’s being in the correct position as the screen’s being set. And we’ll work on, you know, whether it’s pin downs or staggers or ball screens of being able to get through those without getting screened. Funny this year, we had two really good shooters, two really good perimeter players in Cam Tyson and John Christopheles, who for them and our offense, we changed a lot of it to a lot of pin downs and staggers and things off the ball, screening off the ball, maybe we hadn’t done in the past. And one of the things that I found that helped us was guarding that every day. And by guarding those guys in practice every day, our players got a lot better at refusing to be screened off the ball. And we ended up being pretty good at getting through pin downs and getting through staggers, something that we didn’t put in the practice plan or we didn’t drill during the year, but because we played a lot in practice and they were guarding those a lot in practice, we were able to get better at that as well.
Pat 15:07
One other subject here and you talk about the refusal to get screen and then tying it back to, let’s say ice or even if you weak. I think at times offense attack would be to flip the screen and snake it. Yeah, and kind of on the refusing to be screened and how do you think about defending a snake. Let’s say when you’re icing a ball screen.
Chris Victor 15:26
You bring up a good point because a snake now for us allows the ball to get back to the middle. So when we ice, we’re more aggressive than most in ball screen coverages. Our bigs are always at the line of scrimmage, what we call it, the point of the screen. And with our ice as well, our bigs are pretty high. So if our guard’s going to get screened in that position, if they flip it and the guards come off, it’s our big responsibility to not allow that snake back to the middle. So our guards are most likely to go over the top of that ball screen. And it’s our big’s job to be at the line of scrimmage, not allow them to get back to the middle. And it puts a lot of pressure on our bigs and puts them in tough spots sometimes when you have a guard being able to attack. The other thing that helps out a lot too, I think when we do our ice coverages and there’s different ways to teach it. Some people teach the ice to jump back into the screen and to make contact with that screener. We teach to get right to the hip and connect to the ball handler and direct to the baseline side. So by having that physicality on the ball and connecting right away, hopefully the guard with the basketball has less space to operate. And it makes that snake a little bit harder and gives our big a little help on that screen that’s flipped too.
Dan 16:30
With all this, the off-ball, the on-ball, the angles, I’ll go back. You guys were a really good defensive team this year. Going, I guess, into a practice now, if someone were to come and watch you work on this stuff, what’s your preferred method to get these things through to your team? Thank you.
Chris Victor 16:45
We do a lot of breakdown drills on both sides of the ball. With our ball screen coverages defensively, we’ll start with just the ball handler and the screener. And we’ll do a lot of two on two actions and get really good at guarding the ball screen just with those two involved in the ball screen. Now, obviously, in ball screen coverage, you need all five to play their role to be able to be a good defensive team against ball screens. But we’ll break it down just with the screener and the ball handler first. And then from that, we’ll build out to where the other three in the help positions need to be depending on the ball screen coverage that we’re in. And that’s been something that’s been successful for us is really spending a lot of time. And I mentioned before, you know, the beginning of my coaching career, there weren’t that many ball screens being set 15, 20 years ago. And our focus was a lot more off the ball help defense. And even though we still cover those things, if you came to a practice, you would see us almost every day work on our ball screen defense, one of the coverage is if not two or three, we would work on guarding the ball one on one, we would work on both of those things as often as possible throughout the week. We see so many ball screens nowadays, I think defending a ball screen and being good at taking away options out of the ball screen offense is a big part of our defense. So if it’s a big part of our defense that we’re going to see in a lot of summer, we need to work on often. And we’ll also play three on three, four and four breakdown games to work on ball screen offense and ball screen defense, and just really try and isolate certain coverages on certain areas of the floor. So we know no matter what ball screen we’re seeing or what coverage we’re going against, we know how to attack and how to defend it.
Pat 19:18
When you are going to do like five on five ball screen coverage. How do you think about randomizing the drill.
Chris Victor 19:25
Oh yeah, the offense is putting the defense and, you know, outer third middle third different spacings. So the defense is forced to also recognize what action they’re in the coverage the help and all that. We’ll try and randomize as much as possible now after we feel like we’ve potted in the guys have learned the basic coverages The next step is like we talked about early the communication from the big calling the ball screen to the guards and be able to execute That so we’ll throw random situations at them that they will know going into the drill that we’re working on the ice coverage that we’re working On switching or working on blitzing, but try and randomize it as much as possible. So they’re making that read live They’re making that read in a game like situation where it’s not so that they know that’s coming and as often as we can do that We will and we play a lot in practice We’d like to compete a lot in the half court and full court in practice And I think that helps as well as the more that we play and the more that we can break down Whether it’s during practice or after practice the mistakes that we made in our coverages to kind of clean those things up has been helpful
Pat 20:26
In terms of the coaching your correction piece is it something that you like to run offense defense offense. Three possessions so you can have time to stop and teach or you let it run like how do you view the drill length the competitive links it allows you also moments to stop and correct.
Chris Victor 20:46
We’ll do the three possessions, start in the half court, play two in transition. We’ll also do a lot of half court breakdowns. We track kills in our program. We use the word kills, three consecutive stops. And we’ll do a drill that we like to call the kill drill, which is shot clocks at 30 will stay in the half court. And the defense can win the drill by getting three stops in a row or by the shot clock getting down to zero and you’ve guarded for 30 seconds. So we give those guys two opportunities on the defensive side to either get it at three consecutive stops or have the offense use the entire shot clock down to zero. And I think different drills like that with the focus on the defensive side of the basketball, really focusing on. You can get three stops in a row or if you guard for 30 straight seconds and you can get a win for the day and all of our wins throughout practice are tracked black team and white team. And you’ll have a winner at the end of the day for us too, but yeah, we’ll play three possessions. We’ll get up and down, you know, the half court’s great for, if you want to focus on certain things, it’s available to manipulate the rules or the drills, if you want to put an emphasis on taking care of the basketball, you know, you can value turnovers, steals, taking charges, but I think it’s big for us to let them play, let them play free and have the game flow up and down and not be as controlled in the half court. So we try and mix up the both and you have so much things that you want to get into a practice and you’re looking at your practice plan and you’re writing down your two, two and a half hours of practice. You don’t think you have time to play that often, but I try and remind myself, that’s where we let the guys make mistakes and that’s where we learn. And that’s where they’re going to learn to communicate with each other and really improve in that area.
Dan 22:15
Yeah, you guys were also terrific guarding in the post and I would imagine a little bit of that being you know You’re not switching so hopefully you have the matchups you want but kind of combining the question on forcing left and great post defense Does forcing left translate to the post? Are you also trying to force left on a post catch? Then I guess any other thoughts to on just guarding the post. Well, like you have been
Chris Victor 22:38
We have not forced left in the post. It’s a great idea though. The post for us and the one-on-one defense, really scout-based, looking where the players have been successful and trying to take away the way that they’ve scored and the way they’ve been efficient and trying to force them to do something else. We also mix up our defensive coverages. We’ll trap the post. We’ll trap the post from different areas. We have a couple of coverages. We’re gonna trap the post from what we call the hole defender, on the defender under the basket, the lowest defender on the floor. We’ll trap out of the hole to the high side. We’ll trap from the entry pass right away. We will wait till the post player bounces at once and then we’ll trap. Again, kind of the same idea with our ball spring coverages is to keep the offense off balance and to keep the post player thinking and not letting them operate one-on-one. And we’ve also had really good post players the last few years. I mean, Kobe Williamson’s the all-time leading shot blocker in Seattle U history. He’s done a really good job guarding the post. And we’ve had a lot of guys that have done a good job guarding one-on-one in the post. But I think like anything else, again, we wanna dictate in the post as well. So we don’t wanna allow a great post player to have time and space and operate down there and get to the moves that he’s efficient with. We wanna try and force him to do what we want him to do. So whether that’s making a move that’s less efficient for him, whether it’s trapping him and getting the ball out of his hands or giving him different looks throughout the game where he’s not as confident and he’s a little tentative waiting to see what we’re gonna do instead of being aggressive to score.
Pat 23:59
With being a no middle team when it is a post catch are you also maybe not forced left but no middle then he can go baseline but he can’t go middle.
Chris Victor 24:08
Yeah, we want to take away the middle for sure. We tell our post guys to try and get to the middle score of the ball. And we want to take away the middle for a lot of post players and our help is designed and come from the baseline side. So the help on any of those is going to come from the baseline side, unless we’re trapping and then if we’re trapping, it’s going to come from the high side. But we try and take away middle in every situation that we can.
Pat 24:25
What’s the stance then that you’re working with your bigs in terms of maybe positioning too? I mean the same thing you don’t want to give up a straight line drive but like a direct spin to the hoop or is because the whole helps going to be there It doesn’t matter where are you working with positioning with your post defenders when you don’t want to give up the middle?
Chris Victor 24:42
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is where we’re allowing the post to catch the basketball. You know, you you don’t want to allow the offense to catch the ball in the air operational area on the block or if you know, we want to push it as far out as possible. And that’s the first thing is most important. And that’s the battle that we have with our post players is, you know, when you’re on offense working, you can you catch the ball to be in the paint? And if you’re on defense, can you force you got to catch the ball, you know, pass the hash. And that’s number one. And then number two is we don’t want to give up middle in the post, but that doesn’t make it okay for a spin baseline for a dunk or jab baseline for a direct drive to the basket. So it’s that balance of finding that we’re not giving up middle, but we’re forcing the post player to take a contested shot to the baseline side.
Dan 25:23
Coach, we want to move on now to a segment on the show that we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re going to give you three different options around a topic. Ask each one of those options. You’ll start, which one you would sub, which one you’d sit, and then we’ll discuss your answer from there. So, Coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first question for you. Yeah, let’s do it. Okay. This first Start, Sub, Sit has to do with something you actually briefly mentioned earlier was that you had two great players that were great in playing off the ball, off-ball screen action. We want to actually dive into some of the tenants or things that you think help with making off-ball screening action an efficient play type for you and your team. So, Start, Sub, or Sit, these three different options when it comes to off-ball screens. The first option is the location in which the screen takes place. The second option is the type of screen that you’re using to get your shooters open, staggers, single pins, flares, et cetera. And the third option is more or less just the pace of the screens or the action that you want that to be taking place. So, fast or slow or set it up versus don’t, all those things. So, Start, Sub, or Sit, those three options when it comes to off-ball screens.
Chris Victor 26:34
Yeah, I’m going to start pace now. That’s something that we try and focus on offense aside a lot and the pace at which we’re setting the screen, the pace at which we’re executing the offense, the pace at which we’re using the screen. That’s something that’s really, really important to us. So I’m going to start that one also the type of screen. This is the first year that we’ve really dug into, you know, like I’ve talked about before, fitting multiple options of off ball screens. So, you know, it’s multiple staggers on a possession, single pin downs with flares as well. And that’s something that we’ve dug into this year and, you know, found success in different ways and with different screens. So we’ll serve the type.
Dan 27:11
Okay, and then sit the location. So my first question is actually, you mentioned you had two players that were really good at it. You started to kind of mold your offense to that. What was it that you found they were good at? You know, in the screen, reading it, whatever it was that allows you to do it more.
Chris Victor 27:27
Ultimately, offensively, we were looking to create advantages. And whether it’s advantage with a ball screen or advantage in isolation, there’s so many different ways to create advantages offensively. And we found that with those two players, some of the best advantages that we can create were with those two coming off screens. It made the defense move. It distorted the defense and the help. It gave us a lot of movement offensively and created advantage in different ways, whether it was curling the ball to the paint. We can get paint touches off pin down with the offensive player curling the paint. We had a lot of slips this year that were available to our bigs. And it created some movement offensively for us that maybe we didn’t have in the past. So, you know, different types of screens to give different looks to the defense. But also those guys, there was a lot of gravity to both of those players when they were coming off screens. So running them on baseline staggers, running them off single pin downs. It was a great way for us to create advantages for maybe not them, but other players in the court as well.
Dan 28:23
Going into your start sober sit you mentioned the pace as the start how do you balance or how did you balance how quickly you want to go screen verse. Slowing down to read it make the correct curl pop player whatever it is and just that middle gray area of that stuff.
Chris Victor 28:39
Yeah, the timing’s huge, you know, one of the mistakes that you make on the ball and off the ball in the screening is leaving too early and not allowing the screen to set up. So finding that balance of playing fast, but not being in a hurry and the opportunity to play with pace, but to have the correct timing with the screener and the player using the screen to keep the defense off balance. Anything too slow is too easy to guard. If we’re walking into screens, if we’re walking guys down and coming off screens, it’s too easy to defend. The pace allows for us to have an advantage off the screen. So whoever’s setting the screen is going to always going to be sprinting into screens, whether it’s ball screens or off ball screens. And then it’s a job with the player receiving the screen to wait till they’re set and established to use that screen effectively without a foul. But yeah, the pace for us is huge. So we want to take a lot of time and we spend more time this year than any other year that a coach talking about setting up screens and setting screens and that pace, how we can do them quickly with great pace, but still be effective and not illegal screens and have our players able to use a screen in a successful way.
Pat 29:39
You mentioned the offense is now so ball screen heavy, and so I think a lot of offenses are working course in their ball screen offense and then how to re space off the tax kick out when you shift your offense to off ball screens and let’s say others in advantage created their chasing the guys going to curl into the middle. You know, however, you set up the screening action, how did you work on re spacing off of that or having the four other guys play off of the advantage of the off ball screen and what you found there the struggles you found with in terms of the other four players around the off ball screen.
Chris Victor 30:13
Yeah, we can go back to what we asked for how we kind of teach our ball screen coverage on defense as well. We start with the two. We start with creating advantage with the screener and then the receiver of the screen. Then we kind of from that area, once we were successful and we thought we did a good job of creating advantages from there, now we’re going to build in the other three on the court. You know, where is the pass going to be delivered from? What angles do we want up on certain screens? And then the other two players on the court too, what spacing would we like off the basketball? So it’s I think it’s that same build where we want to start with those two and get really good at using staggers or using pin downs to create advantages without any help defense on the floor or having to read where the other two or three players are and then build those options in once we can create an advantage. OK, now we can talk about and now here’s our spacing behind that advantage. Here are options behind that advantage. Here’s one we’re going to cut. Here’s one we’re going to space and kind of build it up through that style. Like any read on offense, you got to spend time understanding the different looks and the spacing behind it and the movement behind it. You know, the spacing piece was something that we try to get better at throughout the year. It was always, you know, on our postgame reports and our postgame film analysis. That was something that we had to continue to improve on. And we kind of learned throughout the year what that looked like, because it was new for a lot of our guys this year. Coming from a ball screen heavy offense and then transitioning to off the ball screening was something that took us a while to get used to. And I think we saw improvement throughout the year. It was good to see kind of our guys get more comfortable to play that way and get used to playing in those certain scenarios.
Pat 31:35
And if I can throw a specific situation at you, when you face opponents that were going to stunt off the passer, so your shooters coming off and the defender who’s guarding the passer is going to really sink in or jump to the nail. Again, kind of the same question. How did you think about creating space or holding or cutting the passer in that situation?
Chris Victor 31:56
We spent a lot of time trying to expand the distance between the passer and the player coming off the screen to make that sound a little more difficult, right? If our spacing wasn’t great from the passer to the player coming off the screen, that stunts a lot easier to make. So we tried to create as much space as possible so that curl is available, right? Or the catch and shoot is available without the stunt. We didn’t do much, to be honest, with the passer after he made initial entry passes off the screen. We didn’t flare him that often. A couple wrinkles here and there, but for us it was spacing with the ball handler making the pass and the player coming off the screen.
Pat 32:31
With that spacing, maybe tying it back to the type of screen or screening locations, I guess what kind of screens did you find that helped create a big enough gap or the big space for them to curl into without being impeded by the pastor’s defender?
Chris Victor 32:44
We’re in a lot of baseline staggers this year, and it could be one or two in a possession and that created a space with the pass from the point, single pin downs in the corner. We’re also, we’re able to create good space for us. Those are the main two. Now we like to run different actions and to kind of disguise what we’re trying to get to. So we had, you know, two or three or four things that we would do that would lead to a single pin down on the corner, or we would have two or three different actions that would lead to a baseline stagger or two baseline staggers simultaneously. But that’s something that we would try and kind of build into our offense. We knew that we wanted to get to this action with these players and this spacing. Okay. What are some ways that we can disguise it with different actions that lead into it? You know, sometimes we were in transition and it was effective for us to go in transition, right to a pin down or right to a stagger and transition before the defense is set. Other times it was in the half border, you know, ATOs, it was, okay, we’re going to run this action that leads going to lead into our pin downs or it’s going to lead into our stagger. So trying to disguise it as much as we could before we got into the action, kept the defense off guard a little bit as the season progresses and you start to get scouted and defenses are ready for it. You got trying to add new wrinkles as we could.
Pat 35:04
All right, coach, thank you for your answer. They are moving along. Our next one has to do with ways to improve passing or how you would think about improving the passing level of your team or a specific player. Start, sub or sit. Option one is improving the spacing, just your overall spacing, hitting on that, creating bigger windows. Option two would be working on the reads of the passer, reading the help, kind of knowing when to pass it. Or option three is just improving their overall skill, the technique of passing. Oh, they’re good ones.
Chris Victor 35:44
All three are important. I would start with improving the overall skill. If I can’t recruit good passers, then I’m going to have to improve the skill when we have them here. So I’m going to start to improve the skill, the passing skill, and we do a lot of that in our practices. We call it throwing strikes when we’re making passes, and we want to hit people right in the pockets and throw strikes as often as we can. When those last two are tough, I’m going to have to sub spacing. But I think without great spacing, none of the reads that you make are going to be there is going to be important. So without great spacing, I don’t think any of the offense is going to be successful. Which really hurts me to say I’m working on the correct read in certain situations, because we spend a lot of time doing that. But I’ll go with those three.
Pat 36:20
I’d like to follow up with your start, just improving the overall skill level of your passer and how are you thinking about it in terms of, is it just repetition? Is it film work or how are you thinking about doing it in a way where the player is getting retention where, you know, you’re not doing just here, the partner, let’s make some passes, you know, how do you think about improving the overall technical skill of passing?
Chris Victor 36:45
I think a big part of it is emphasizing it throughout your practice. So you may not do a specific passing drill, but working on post-defense or you’re working on post-offense, making a post-entry pass is a big part of that. Right. And you can focus on post-passing when you’re working on your post-defense or post-offense, coaching, throwing strikes that we talked about. Whether you’re playing a live play or you’re working on shooting drills, like throwing strikes consistently and emphasizing that to your players, it’s huge. Anytime that you have an opportunity to emphasize passing and the skill of passing and the more the guys hear it, the more they’re going to be aware of it. And that’s something that we try and do and we’ll mix in some passing drills and we’ll mix in some things, different situations where they’re getting pressured or making post-entry passes or passing out of a double team. But I think the emphasis from the coaching staff is the most important part of that.
Pat 37:32
And let’s say when you notice a player who’s having difficulty throwing strikes, what you kind of notice seems to be the problem with said player and throwing strikes.
Chris Victor 37:44
There’s a little bit of technique involved, you know, the angle that you’re throwing the pass, the angle that you’re stepping through the defender, creating an opportunity to throw a strike, you need to have the right angle. And also some guys never really grew up emphasizing passing. It was never a part of what they did a player. Sometimes you have great scores. Sometimes you have guys that played off the ball. That passing was never emphasized to them. The post player making a cross court pass or, you know, a wing making a pass up the court in transition. You find some guys that have never spent a lot of time on it. So I think talking about angles on certain passes is huge and talking about different situations, what the pass looks like. And then also again, just giving the guys some reps and allowing them to work on those skills. But I think every player is different. I think, you know, it’s some guys need a lot of work. Some guys do need extra time before, after practice, working on passing. Some guys just need a little reminder. That’s important. They need to put a little more of their mental focus into their passes. And it’s something that we struggled with last year, to be honest with you guys. We weren’t the best passing team. And it’s something that we had to talk a lot about with our guys to improve.
Pat 38:41
throughout the year. On that note, with a team that struggled to pass and, you know, when you’re running off-ball screen actions, were the conversations made with your staff or in terms of, well, let’s make sure the passer has a live dribble or, you know, well, let’s not try to pass out of the dribble. I guess what were you guys thinking about in terms of helping your passer when you’re going to run off-ball screens?
Chris Victor 39:03
The first thing is making sure the ball is in the right person’s hands. So not asking someone on your team to do something that isn’t their strength, whether it’s inbounding the ball against the press, entering the ball into a pin down or a stagger to a shooter. I think having the ball on the right person’s hand to make that pass is important. And then we get back to what we talked about earlier, just having the ability to space, and then not only spacing off the basketball, but to create space when you have the ball in your hands to create angles for passing as well, as something that we work on with our point guards. Where to be on the floor for certain actions, where to make the pass from, how to set up that pass. Just as you would set up a ball screen or make a one-on-one move in isolation, setting up a pass for a play that’s coming is as important. So having the ball in the right guy’s hands, having them understand where to be on the court and how to set up the certain passes is things that we’ll talk about and work on.
Dan 39:49
You kind of answered it or talked about a little bit right there, but it was going to be about the difference between guys on your team that just need to move the ball and they’re not really like playmaking passers versus guys that are going to be passing out of pick and rolls or passing out of drive and kick situations. And I guess what to do more with the guys that you just need to move it because, you know, they’re not finding potentially the right play all the time, but you still need them on the floor. And I guess the difference is in you just mentioned having the ball in the right guy’s hands, but then how you talk to guys that don’t quite have that skill yet and you just need them to kind of move the ball.
Chris Victor 40:21
things, one of our assistant coaches, Grant leap, who was a head coach at shell sick for a love time, he loves to say, you know, offense is an equal opportunity. Some guys are allowed to do certain things and some guys aren’t. And knowing your limitations as a player, knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses is the first thing. No, don’t try and do too much. And what we tell those guys that just need to move the ball is for them, hitting a single on offense is successful, you know, catching the pass, executing a pass and the more singles that we can hit in a possession with those guys allows our offense to flow and to continue to run that everyone’s going to be a home run hitter on your offensive team. Same thing in a baseball lineup. Certain guys are going to get on base and hit singles and keep the offense moving and keep the base pass full and certain guys are going to clean that up and hit the home run to finish the inning or finish the possession. So I think role definition is huge. And guys understanding not only their role on offense, but really their capabilities and anytime we try and do too much is when we get in trouble. So a great offense, you need guys that can move the basketball. It’s not always going to be just come down and make the pass that leads directly to a basket, but having the ball movers that understand their role or a big part of it. Coach
Dan 41:24
You’re off the start, sub, or sit, hot seat. Thanks for going through all those things with us. That was a lot of fun. I’m a lot smarter on start, sub, and sit when I’m listening in my car. There’s a lot tougher when you got to decide to go through three of them live. So I appreciate you guys putting me on a spot like that. That was great.
Dan 41:43
That was great and the answers were awesome. Yeah, I used it so thanks for going through all that. We got a final question for you to close the show before we do. Again, thanks for coming on, sharing all this with us today and congrats on the success of the program. Thank you. I love being on you guys. Really appreciate it. Coach, our last question is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Chris Victor 42:05
I would go back to where I started coaching. My first year, I was an assistant coach for a junior college team in California. I went from there to an assistant coach at an NAI school in California where I played Concordia. And in those two roles, being at those levels as an assistant coach, you got to do a lot. You don’t have a specific area that you’re in charge of. You’re covering the entirety of the program, from on the court to off the court. And you’re allowed to coach, you’re allowed to be on the floor and find your coaching voice. And that investment, to me, is huge.
And if you’re a young coach, there’s different paths you can take in your young career. But I think a huge investment that everyone should make is to find the opportunity to be on the floor and coach. And that may be in the program you’re currently coaching, it may be in the summer with a different summer program, it may be at a camp, but really finding a way to find your coaching voice and to find your authentic self and the coach that you’re going to be. And I don’t think you can do that until you get the opportunity to coach yourself. So that investment, for me, was huge. Being able to coach at those levels and have a lot of responsibility as a young assistant coach and to be forced to learn who I wanted to be as a coach early. You grow up in the coaching profession, you have a bunch of people that you look up to as coaches, just as I did. You want to try and be like some of those guys, but you got to find out who you are as a coach and what your authentic coaching style is going to be if you’re going to be successful. So investing in that opportunity to coach and to make mistakes and to learn who you want to be and become as a coach, I think is huge.
Dan 43:36
All right, Pat. Hey, that was a lot of fun. Coach Victor talking before and after, like us, has some Southern California roots, know a lot of similar people. He played down here and I was a really good player at a university really close to where you and I played. So it was fun catching up with him about that. And then obviously has done a heck of a job in his career, going from assistant to head coach at different levels. And let’s dive in. So let’s get to our top three takeaways here, which there were many. We’re going to have trouble here, narrowing it down. But number one, I’ll, I’ll kick it off was within the force left conversation, which was really good. There was a little side tangent that to me was very interesting that kind of layered on top of the forcing left conversation. And that was his thoughts on switching up ball screen coverages, keeping the opponent off balance, giving his players leeway with the color system and just making it difficult on an offense to not, you know, receive the same thing every time. And it sounds good on a podcast. That’s hard to do, especially with 18 to 22 year old guys. I know that, you know, where you’re at at the pro level and other coaches we’ve had on that have grown men that have played the game for longer. Some of those things are still difficult, but especially at younger levels to first of all, have the ability to do it, to work on it, and then have the intelligence as a team to build those things in is easier said than done. And I thought he gave some really great insight into how they did it, why they do it and how it can layer into the force left and all that. So that was my first takeaway there.
Pat 45:14
I mean, he mentioned within this conversation about the quadrants and maybe the quadrants dictating what coverage they’ll be in. But if I step back, I think when I kind of followed up with this question, cause that’s very like ideal high level execution. You know, we had coach Gonzalo Rodriguez on from Oradoro, he talked about their ball screen coverage and mentioned how the big would communicate based on the scout. They’d given like two different coverages, but also based on the spacing and having the big recognize what the spacing is, where the loaded side is or the two man side, and of course, I think that’s probably the pinnacle. That’s very, very high level. So it was fun to hear his thoughts on how he’s working with his bigs, communicate how the quadrants play a role. Of course, I’m sure scout and you know, them dictating or scripting what coverage they’re in now or what they want to be in. And then to the last point with, well, yeah, recognizing, you know, if you’re trying to hedge and you’re going to be late, don’t hedge, turn it into a drop. Or if the guy can’t ice, you see him chasing, you know, we’re going to let him go middle turn into that coverage. So kind of like the emergency calls as well. Like you mentioned the conversation he had and just his thoughts on how he’s working with his bigs communicate and keeping the defense random and the offense off balance.
Dan 46:25
Adding to that, within the force left, we got into the middle third versus outer third coverages and forcing it or downing it. The overall theme of not letting the ball middle was in there. I think what’s really interesting about the ball screen covers, but also just the overall thoughts on when you’re weakening, we talked about this with Coach Eric Henderson, South Dakota State men’s basketball head coach, a couple of years ago, they’ll do some weakening. And we kind of got into the conversation about what do you do with the different thirds of the floor on the ball screen coverage. And if you’re a straight week team, then one side of the floor, the left side, left third, you’re going to probably be icing or downing the right third, you’re likely going to be forcing into the screen. Or those are the things we were talking about. What do you do on that one side where if you’re straight, weakening, I think that was interesting conversation with Coach Henderson. So I would suggest going back and hearing him talk instead of me about it. But I think that interesting with Coach Victor adding like how they guard those outer thirds and kind of tying in the whole philosophy together, I think was good to hear too.
Pat 47:32
It’s a really interesting conversation when you’re going to be just an ice outer third team and then you want to play different coverage, whether you want to hedge or just switch and what you think about with the footwork, which is what I always think about because if you’re, you know, we’re going to ice there or no middle team, but now you want to switch. Well, now the big or the screen defender, he’s coming on the other side. And if you can’t recognize you don’t communicate, if you don’t flip your footwork, you’re going to switch force the guy base, you know, the wrong side, or you’re not going to be able to get your footwork in time to force them into the screen. Now, I think that’s really interesting. The conversations, the thoughts that go into it. And I mean, like he mentioned, the communication being the biggest aspect of that, but those are what I’m always thinking about when you hear like no middle and ice team there that wants to maybe play an alternative coverage and just how you go about working on then, okay, now you got to force into the screen. Now we don’t want to ice the screen. And I think too, like a quick tangent or that we had within this conversation, as well, at times it can make a lot of sense when you’re an ice team. You’ll see teams we mentioned like the handoffs, they’ll run a handoff into a ball screen. And it’s like, well, okay, switch it and we ice and we just kind of keep pushing them away. But I liked his thoughts on, you know, we got into like the no switches preference not to be in switching. And then he says, so they’re gonna avoid switching, then the emphasis becomes on what you got to really blow up that handoff is otherwise your task with trying to knife through the handoff so you can get the ice position.
Dan 49:04
100% move on to our second take away. I’ll kick it to you on this one.
Pat 49:10
Yeah second takeaway was the off-ball screening conversation we had within the start-sub-sit. It was one of those perfect serendipitous moments when he mentioned in our first bucket that he moved his offense away from the ball screen and towards his two shooters. So it was perfect that we had that question loaded up. But for me, what stood out and I think what also we were interested in with this question was the type of screens that he would use when we were talking about creating gaps and taking away the stun off the passer. And he got into the baseline screens, the corner pin down, single pin downs in the corner. Yeah, he found those screens to be the most beneficial or help create kind of the most amount of space for their shooters coming off that wouldn’t be impeded by help defense and the ways he’d go about kind of disguising it to get to that action again to just keep the defense off balance. So like that part of the conversation just about what screening actions he found that of course worked for his team. So it’s specific to his team, but in general when playing off-ball like what created the most amount of space to not only get an advantage, but hold an advantage and play off of it.
Dan 50:22
I think that when you get into the nitty gritty, it’s so cool to hear a coach work through some of their internal thoughts on how they discover certain players are good in an action and then how you continue to help them create more of an advantage. Like he mentioned, they were really good. And then you asked to follow up about how do you re-space around it. And it’s so nuanced per team. It’s not, you know, you just, oh, cool, this team runs staggers, I’m gonna run staggers. It’s like the process to that is so interesting. I thought, you know, within all this, it was really cool to hear them work towards baseline staggers and single pins and then like why that was helpful with the spacing and a little bit of the disguising. I just enjoyed that. And I think that’s where it’s fun. I think for you and I to kind of sit here and lob questions at them because you’re kind of hearing the internal workings on making something fit for your specific group, like taking up a general action, staggers, pins, whatever, and making sure that that fits to create an advantage for your group and each team is so different. And I thought that was really cool, just overall.
Pat 51:24
Definitely for me, of all the situations or screen types, you know, that we were throwing around, baseline staggers wasn’t kind of on my radar. So to your point, this is what’s so fun about having these coaches on and getting to hear their thought process and just spark ideas for me or something. Yeah. Okay. I’m kind of curious now to look at more baseline staggers as well there.
Dan 51:44
Yeah, 100%. I think I’ll just give a quick miss from my end. I’m not by coach, but I wish I would have asked, or I wish we had maybe more time to discuss the disguising of things. And I know we talked about the baseline saggers and the single pins, but I think I mentioned to you before the show, if they’re, you know, thoughts on pre screen movement, you know, like how you maybe have them set a rip screen or have them in some kind of action, handout, whatever it is, before. Or setting the staggers or the single pins. And I wish I would have asked it or we have a little more time because that would have been interesting to kind of hear more about those things. Yeah.
Pat 52:22
Well, actually two quick points. I just want to bring up. I liked church your show. Yeah My face is on it. Yeah. Yeah, and it goes back to the first bucket He said when they moved to more off-ball screens how that helped make them I wrote it down here a better team that refused to be screened, you know fighting Yes screens, so I like kind of the secondary and ciliary benefit of it If that’s the have my the source in front of me at the moment, but that sounds correct Yeah, I liked that point that he raised and then lastly just something I’ve been thinking about we’ve been thinking about is emphasizing pace Over reads in the screen and I don’t think anyone’s ever going to live in like the extreme Well, don’t make any reads just run really fast versus as slow as possible Right, but again, I mean that was his start just the pace of the screening action And so something I’ve been thinking about more and more just How really the pace probably wins out more often than not and creating the confusion even if you’re not as detail Oriented or correct all the time and all the other aspects of off-ball screening. I think it might be ancillary benefits We’re ancillary ancillary is conciliary. It’s
Dan 53:38
It’s a word, but yeah
Pat 53:40
Yeah, it is a word. So that’s the most important. Thank you. Well, it is a word. You’re speaking words. That’s good.
Dan 53:54
I’ll just agree with you. I like the toughness of not switching, getting better at guarding off-ball actions was, I think, a good and slurry benefit of that conversation.
Pat 54:05
I agree. Dan, I’ll throw it to you to bring it home and kind of our last takeaway or third takeaway from the conversation today.
Dan 54:13
You know, with the other start subset, where we were talking about improving passing, you and I were discussing this personally before the show, just our teams and players we’ve worked with the summer and just try to help players. Like when you say you want a team to be better at passing, how do you do it? Where are the starting points? And you know, this was a question about skill versus reads versus spacing. I thought the whole thing was really good. I think within it though, what I pulled out was the vocabulary about like hitting singles. And when we talked about your playmakers versus sort of your just move it and he, you know, talked about that hitting singles and I think that’s so true when you get to the season and you figure out your team and yes, you want to improve all these things as a season goes along, but I think you get to a point where there’s some players that you have that just in a real game that matters and their score and wins and losses, you don’t need them to be making as many plays. You just need them to be maybe moving it or finding how to still utilize those players, I think is an interesting riddle for a coach to solve. You know, you think about the kind of same thing like with a non shooting guard or whatever it is, like where these non perfect players and still making them effective within your offense. And I think that was an interesting vocab word. He had a lot of other sport vocab stuff that I like throughout line of scrimmage, hitting singles, things like that. But that was another big point I liked. Yeah.
Pat 55:36
I really liked his baseball terminology there. And he mentioned, yeah, that, you know, and we’ve heard it before, you know, offense isn’t necessarily an equal opportunity for everyone.
And yeah, when we talked about playing off ball screens, you know, he said, Oh, another big important factor was making sure you have the right guys passing. Yes. In the action. So it goes back to your point, role clarification, role definition for the single guys, a just kind of the reversal pass, maybe is the best here. But then when you’re going to play to certain actions, you know, making sure you have the right guys in those actions to deliver the pass. And I liked what he talked about too. I mean, talking with working with them on, of course, setting up the pass the same way you’d set up a ball screen. And I think just clarifying also the play, like where the shooter’s coming off. So what angle you need to get to what spot on the floor you need to get to, to help your passers kind of understand the action that’s unfolding in front of them, so they can deliver that pass on time on target.
Dan 56:31
Kudos to you for thinking of the start sub sit, because I know you’re thinking a lot about it. And I think you started the skill, which is important too. And I think that got into a little bit like how you actually develop the skill. And we’ve talked a lot this summer about the CLA and those kinds of things to help your players both develop the skill and the reads at the same time. So yeah, just an interesting thought. We all want great passing teams and it’s just usually not the cards you’re dealt and how you still manage to have an offense that flows and connects with all different levels of passers is interesting.
Pat 57:05
I think maybe that was also one of my misses. I mean, we talked about a little bit with the off ball screens, but maybe following up with that team that isn’t great passing then besides off ball screens, like what actions or how are you thinking about your offense and the actions you can and can’t run when your team just isn’t so great at passing. I mean, it’s unavoidable. You’re going to need to pass the ball, but I would assume judging by his answer, but it’s just get the ball to the guys who can pass. Hopefully there’s some of your better guys that can make the plays. And the other guys are more finishing it and just stressing them and keep simple. But yeah, what actions, you know, maybe it’s D H O’s to tickle your fancy there. But yeah, but go on. I would have liked to have followed up there a little bit more.
Dan 57:49
with you there. But we both gave a couple of misses. Was there anything else that you wish we had more time or went a little deeper on If we had more time?
Pat 57:57
You know, we’re kind of within that first bucket, deciding where we wanted to take it. But I also know they, you know, looking at their stats, they’re, you know, a good offensive rebounding team, but also a very good transition defensing team. If we had more time, I definitely would have liked to have hit on that and just get his philosophy, offensive rebounding, how that leads into transition defense and yada, yada, yada, so forth from there. Yeah.
Dan 58:23
Yeah, definitely would have been interesting. I know we were looking at that deciding on some start, sub, sit potential questions on the offensive rebounding because they were really good at the efficiency like on put backs offensive rebounding. So definitely good stuff. Well, Pat, there’s nothing else. We’ll start wrapping this thing up. Sounds good. Well, once again, appreciate Coach Victor for coming on. Thank you everybody for listening to this wrap up here. Have a great week coaching and we’ll see you next time.