🏀 Top 3 Takeaways with Coach Scott Lagas
This week we sat down with Scott Lagas, Head Coach of the Mercy University Women’s Basketball program. Coach Lagas has elevated Mercy to new heights in recent years, and in our conversation he dove deep into his Wolf Defense, how recognition drives culture, and why rim pressure is at the core of his Princeton-inspired offense. Here are our Top 3 Takeaways…
1. “Five players stopping one ball.”
Coach Lagas has built Mercy’s Wolf Defense around a no-middle, pack-style system where all five players defend together. By forcing action baseline and loading up with active hands, his teams disrupt confidence and rhythm. As he explained:
“We want to defend in a pack—the real concentration of five girls stopping one ball at all times.”
It’s not just about help rotations, but about building a disruptive and aggressive identity every possession.
2. “Recognition fuels culture.”
For Lagas, culture isn’t abstract—it’s built through daily recognition. But he’s quick to note the fine line:
“Don’t celebrate a fish for swimming… players want to be recognized when they go outside their comfort zone.”
From the accountability mirror (pairing players to give each other honest feedback), to the famous cowbell rung in practice when the offense produces a “paint-to-great” action, recognition is both fun and formative. Over time, it creates a culture where teammates celebrate each other as much as the staff does.
3. “Two feet in the paint, two hands, numbers showing—the ball has to go in.”
On offense, Lagas has installed a hybrid Princeton system with an emphasis on high splits and rim pressure. His philosophy is clear: cut hard first, collapse the defense, and then flow into skips, pops, or re-screens. The spacing of the high split creates long closeouts and isolation opportunities, but the top priority never changes:
“Rim pressure comes first… if she’s got two feet in the paint, two hands, and her numbers are showing, that ball has to go in.”
That clarity has helped Mercy’s two all-conference post players thrive inside a modern motion system.
🔥 Whether it’s defense, culture, or offense, Coach Lagas’ approach is a great reminder that simple, clear, and consistent principles can drive big results.
Transcript
Scott Lagas 00:00
At the end of the day players want to be recognized for what they do well.
You know if you’re constantly criticizing criticizing criticizing you know and every once in a while you recognize hey good job it kind of goes right out the window but if you’re recognizing what they’re doing well and the effort they’re making especially when they go out of their comfort zone if you recognize when they go out of their comfort zone they’re willing to do it more and then they take the criticism that much better.
Dan 00:33
Hi, I’m Dan Krakorian, and I’m Patrick Carney, and welcome to Slapping Glass, exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies, and coaches from around the world. Today, we’re excited to welcome Division II Mercy University Women’s Basketball Head Coach, Scott Logas. Coach Logas has elevated the Mercy program to fantastic heights in his tenure, and is here today to discuss no middle defensive principles, all five guarding the ball mentality, the connection between surfing and coaching, and we talk peer-to-peer recognition, and the benefits of high split action during the always fun start, sub, or sit.
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And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Scott Logas. Coach, awesome to get to know you over the last couple weeks as we prepare for this show. We’re excited to have you on today and explore everything that you do with your program.
Scott Lagas 02:17
Thank you guys. It’s a pleasure to be on. I’ve learned so much from listening to your podcast. So I do really appreciate what you guys do for our coaching community. So, you know, I’m really, really excited.
Dan 02:28
Thank you, Coach, we appreciate that. We wanted to start with your defense, which has been great over the years, and the mixture of pack line principles with no middle principles, and something that we were talking about is you forcing more baseline than forcing middle, being heavy in gaps, all that stuff that we wanted to dive into. And so really just to start kind of a broad look at your defensive principles and kind of marrying those no middle and packed principles together.
Scott Lagas 02:57
We’ve talked about it. I actually think it might have come from starting the program with, you know, with some players that might not have been as talented as the ones that we have now, and what would work as opposed to maybe what we scripted when we came in. And, you know, we found that if we gave up the middle of the floor, our conference in division two has a lot of great three-point shooters. Everybody’s one pass away when they’re in the middle of the floor. So, you know, you get burned for threes a lot. Trying to take away that penetration pitch that we’re trying to achieve offensively is kind of how we started going with it, you know, kind of evolved from there with lots of ball pressure, but wanting to be in our gaps so that girls don’t have driving alleys and can get down alleys and just bringing a lot of help. We’ve created this concept of calling our defense wolf defense because we want to defend in a pack the real concentration of five girls stopping one ball at all times. That’s our big philosophy. We try to let’s say down the ball on the side where we want to keep it on the side once it’s on the side. We don’t necessarily want to give up baseline, but we would rather give up baseline than the middle because we’re bringing a lot of low help and then cracking down, then Xing out on that weak side.
Dan 04:19
Teams are really good at five players defending in a pack, is the emphasis on the one-on-one part of the defense. And, you know, especially sometimes when you’re directly forcing like baseline or whatnot, the mixture of being able to force a direction, but also keep the ball in front and like the mentality of one-on-one knowing, you know, how to guard the ball yourself. And so I guess, where does that play into this with you? Guarding the ball one-on-one, keep it in front of you while you’re also forcing a direction.
Scott Lagas 04:50
I agree with you, I guess that that’s probably the biggest challenge, right? Where you’re convincing girls that you have all this help, but we really don’t want you to have to need it. So we do start off every day with a big amount of one on one drills where girls are constantly closing out, guarding the ball, trying to pressure the ball, but keep their player in front of them. That’s a really, really big emphasis.
That is when I say not giving up the middle and downing the ball, we’re not totally open, but we just concentrate on having our top foot higher than the girl we’re guarding so that we’re influencing away from the middle and more down towards the corner, but not necessarily giving up anything. You know, but that’s definitely the line you walk, right? You have a lot of help, but we try to convince them to pressure the ball because you have that help, but hopefully keep it in front of you so that we don’t have to start being in rotation, what we call getting into the blender, right? Offensively, we want to get teams into the blender and keep them spinning. But defensively, we do a lot to try to get ourselves out of the blender if we are in it.
Pat 05:59
You just mentioned when you’re icing a ball screen, you’ll talk about getting your foot higher than their foot. But when you look at closeouts or even like the one-on-one defense, how much is it or do you guys as a staff talk about teaching a technique, having a footwork, having some sort of non-negotiable technique you want to have versus just being more goal-orientated, allowing them to be more individualized, but just as long as they’re being able to keep in front and out of the middle.
Scott Lagas 06:26
We teach the technique. I think you’re right. I think we are more goal-oriented. We’ll try to get girls to do it the way that we want to do it, but we also value the time, obviously, at practice, and it’s not something that we’re totally stubborn with, but we definitely drill. We break our defense down one-on-one, two-on-two, three-on-three, and we do a lot of disadvantage drills, and we incorporate those fundamentals and that technique in there. However, there are some bad habits that are really, really hard to break, and if they’re getting the job done, then we can kind of look the other way on that as well.
Pat 07:05
Coach, watching the film, Dan and I noticed the hand activity of your players and the closeouts in the one-on-one, is that a technique you’ll stress or what are you telling your players about their hand activity and working with their hands, using their hands?
Scott Lagas 07:21
We want our girls to take away confidence and comfort on the ball. That’s a phrasing that we’ll use, we’ll say active hands a lot. But the why of why we do that is so that they’re taking confidence and comfort off the ball. And one of our non-negotiables of our wolf defenses is uncontested shots. So if you don’t have that hand activity and you’re not active in your gaps with your hands, then that’s also our way of sometimes when you hear gap defense, people think it’s a reactionary defense. But with that hand activity, you take it from what people say is a reactionary defense to being a little bit more of a disruptive, aggressive defense. I think it’s something that we stress, it’s something that we drill. And so that hybrid between it not being reactive and more being disruptive, it’s something we stress every day, that’s for sure.
Dan 08:14
Coach went looking at your stats analytics from last year, some of these statistical outliers as far as your defense being really elite at a few things. And one of them was guarding the ball handler in a pick and roll. You were one of the best teams last year in division two at guarding the ball handler in the pick and roll and that obviously doesn’t happen by accident. What are you thinking about as a staff when you get into a pick and roll with the handler versus the roller, the importance of what you’re guarding and how you’re guarding it.
Scott Lagas 08:50
In our defense, we always have a plan A and a plan B, and our plan A is our base. If the scouting reports all the same, we’re going to hard hedge and try to get over what we call the chest zone, which is the top of the key extended to either 45, where we want to keep our chest straight to the half-court line so we’re not opening. So anywhere in that zone, we’re hard hedging. Anywhere on the sides, we call the help zone, and that’s where we’re icing or downing or whatever.
However, we’ll have a plan B. If we’re playing a dynamic guard and we want to get the ball out of her hands, then we might hard hedge or be aggressive on all parts of the court. So if you have a dynamic guard and you’re icing her, she could present a problem to you with either snaking the ball screen or just getting by. And then our plan B, if there’s really good post players and we’re afraid that they’re going to get mismatches on rotations, maybe you will ice or drop coverage on some of those kids. So our ball screen defense is probably something we work on the most. We work on it every single day. You know, I feel like at our level, 90 percent of offenses end in some kind of a ball screen. You know, and I guess that’s pretty much at every level. I feel like we see it a lot. It’s something that we definitely break down every day. And we set a lot of ball screens in our offense. So girls end up having to guard that every day as well. So it’s definitely a big emphasis, that’s for sure.
Dan 10:25
Coach, one of the things that you mentioned earlier in the show was advantage, disadvantage drills. And so whether we’re talking about side pick and roll or anything that happens within your defense, what does it look like daily for you drilling this video, whatever it is to get your girls to have these rotations in these disadvantage situations?
Scott Lagas 10:46
We do it every day. Three on three, four on four, disadvantage. Even five on five, especially in transition defense, we do disadvantage drills as well. I think that it’s very important that we’re putting girls in situations that happen organically so that they can react.
It’s not prescribed where they don’t know what’s coming. We want to build great decision makers and it’s one of the things we say, make a decision and commit to it. There is no wrong answer. What it looks like every day is we’ll do different disadvantage drills. For example, two girls at the slot, two girls at the corner, four on four. One offensive player puts the ball on a defensive player’s back who’s facing the basket. As soon as she pulls it off, we’re alive. There’s all kinds of different things that can happen out of that. Then right from there, they’re playing in a four on four. Now on different days when we want to work on different things that might not have been good recently, if we want to say, hey, after at some point we want a ball screen or at some point we want a flare screen, or even there are days where we say, hey, there’s no ball screen so that we can work on different kinds of rotations. There is another drill that we do where we’ll play four on four and then we’ll put a coach in each corner. As soon as the coach touches the ball and it’s not prescribed when the coach touches the ball, that coach drives baseline and we’re automatically in rotation. As soon as the coach passes it back out, we’re live four on four again. A lot of what we’re doing is getting, like we talked about before, being in the blender, having the offense get us in the blender defensively and then us working and rotating to get out.
Dan 12:36
Coach, I love what you said about organic situations, decision makers on defense, and then I believe you said there’s no wrong answers on defense. So sometimes I feel like on defense, as coaches we can tend to be more strict rules base and right or wrong and things like that. And can you go deeper on the no wrong answer? How do you coach that? How do the girls understand that if they make a wrong decision on a coverage or help, not help, then how that keeps flowing within the defense so that your defense doesn’t break down over the course of the possession.
Scott Lagas 13:08
That comes with a lot of film work. I think that we’re at our worst when all of us, as coaches, as players, when we hesitate and if it’s your rotation and you should get out on a shooter, the second you start thinking about it, that’s when you go and you don’t go, then the other girl doesn’t go, and then there’s an open three.
Obviously, when we do watch film, there will end up being some wrong answers at that point. But at the moment, we try to convince them that there’s no wrong answers at that point, so that they’re committing to a decision and they’re going, and then once you commit to that decision, everyone around you can react to the decision that you’ve made. But when you’re half and half and you’re hesitating, then that’s when the real problems start, and then nobody can react off of that decision. It’s funny, I actually, besides being obsessed with basketball, I’ve surfed all my life, and that philosophy comes from that when you’re paddling out into a big surf. The second you hesitate, everything goes wrong. It’s what we preach defensively as well.
Dan 14:18
What is it about surfing, the main tenants, the things that go with becoming good at that that you find interesting that you take into coaching?
Scott Lagas 14:27
That hesitation piece is definitely a big thing. It’s interesting. The feeling that you get, it’s the same search. When you surf and you catch a really great wave, you spend the rest of the day, month, year searching for that same wave and that same feeling.
I feel that when I’m coaching when a team is clicking on all cylinders and they’re playing the way you imagine that it could look, when after that, every single game, every single practice, you’re searching for that same feeling, that same look. You guys are both coaches. There’s an unexplainable feeling when you look out onto the floor and your team is clicking on all cylinders. Same as when you catch a great wave, you’re always searching for that wave. That’s what drives you as a coach, is constantly searching for that feeling of when your team is clicking on all cylinders.
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Pat 15:57
in talking about marrying this kind of gap identity, this pack line with no middle, I think an interesting situation always arises in, I think you alluded to it a little bit in the foreign for drills you do, but when you have a slot drive down towards the baseline and there’s a strong side corner, how you talk about that gap defender there or that corner defender in terms of stunting, peel switching, staying home and relying on the rim help, what are you talking about again with marrying this no wrong decisions, talking with that corner defender when there is an alley penetration.
Scott Lagas 16:34
if you commit off of a strong side three-point shooter, yeah, we’ll call that our decision. But the one thing that we preach is we preach to play our defense inside out.
I think at any level, maybe not at the very top NBA and professional levels, asking a player to play outside in their man, come and help inside and then get back out on a shooter is nearly physically impossible for 90 percent of athletes. So we really, really concentrate on if you are inside and you have to close out, at least either A, you’re making the drive wider, or B, you’re distracting the girl, you’re making her unwilling to drive that gap because you’re there already. In a perfect world, if she does get by that spot defender, we do not want to help off of that strong side shooter. We want to bring the weak side help and then crack down and then X out on that weak side. If I’ve ever done it the other way, even if I say, okay, scouting report, you can leave that girl, you know that that girl always ends up making a three that she wasn’t supposed to make. So it’s become a hard role for us that we’re going to stay home on that strong side shooter. We’re going to show hard and be inside and then close back outside.
Pat 17:53
Coach, looking again at alley drive or any sort of, when it does go baseline. So if there is a drive down the alley from the slot going baseline and the defender say there’s a player at the top of the key, so that defender, are you at all telling them, you know, if the drive, obviously it’s not a complete blow by, but to be aggressive on that ball handler’s blind side coming from behind or rather just kind of being prepared to rotate on any, the skip out pass or play in the backside rotations.
Scott Lagas 18:26
We’re kind of in the middle there where we’re being pulled by the drive and we have to back to the baseline and definitely opened up to it. I think that we’re more concerned with the ball than the X out on that weak side just yet, but it’s kind of a half and half. We don’t want them to be too aggressive where they can’t get back to that weak side.
The ball is the most important thing. I say to the girls all the time, I’ve never seen anything in all my years coaching. I’ve never seen anything but the ball go through the basket. So we have to make sure that we’re concentrating on those five players, stopping the ball first. And then at that point, our defense goes from being very aggressive to reactive once they pass the ball. Now we’re reacting to where the ball’s going.
Dan 19:15
Coach, we wanna transition now to a segment on the show we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re gonna give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one of them, sub one of them, and sit one of them, and then we’ll have a discussion from there. So, Coach, if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first one.
Scott Lagas 19:29
I listened to Jeff Van Gundy on Sunday. I’m all nervous, but let’s go.
Dan 19:35
All right. Well, this first one has to do with recognition within your program. And I know it’s something that you and I talked about a little bit. It’s a big tenant of what you do culturally is recognition, how you recognize actions or things that you want culturally or action-wise within your program. And so we’re going to give you three different types of recognitions and ask you what’s one of those, the start would be the toughest to implement as a coach. And so I’ll give you the three and then we’ll discuss. So the first one tough to implement when it comes to recognition is the coach to team recognition. So implementing what you’re going to recognize, how you recognize things from you as a coach to the team, that’s option one. The second option is team to team or peer to peer recognition, how to implement within your program, how the girls recognize each other, good things, bad things, all that. And the third option is coach to coach recognition. So you recognizing the things that your staff does and modeling those things. And so how do you implement how you recognize coach to coach? So tough to implement recognition within your program, coach to team, team to team, or coach to coach.
Scott Lagas 20:52
I think that player to player, I would have to start one of the reasons I feel like, especially everyone, even though you’re out there and you’re recruiting and you’re trying to bring in similar kind of players, they’re all coming from different backgrounds. They’re all coming from different people and different coaches and different philosophies of what’s really important, where you’re trying to have them value the same values that you do. There’s a lot of barriers between recognizing that and another player. It takes a little while.
We have great young ladies. We do a lot of work in recruiting on character, so it doesn’t take as long as you would think, but it takes a really, really big person to be really excited and to recognize someone who’s doing something really well, who is playing your minute, shall we say. I think that would start that I would stop coach to team for a lot of the same reasons. You could preach on what you value as a coach, but until they see it repeated every single day, it takes a while for it to get in there. Staff member to staff member, I think that we really, really value all of the same things. That’s never really been too much of an issue for us. Just based on experience, I would set that one.
Dan 22:12
I think before we zoom in on any of these, you’ve said to me, you know, offer that recognition, you know, it’s just such an important part of your program. Why have you landed on it being such a big thing?
Scott Lagas 22:23
I read a lot. I’m a big reader. I read a lot of self-help books and I’ve learned so much over the last couple of years of the value of recognition, not only just scientifically as well. You know, I think that everyone in every walk of life loves to be recognized for what they do well. I mean, there’s definitely a fine line between recognition and celebrating a standard that’s expected. You have to walk that fine line every single day. I saw a great meme. Actually, one of my assistant coaches sent it to me the other day that said, you know, don’t celebrate us for playing hard. Would you celebrate a fish for swimming? I definitely think that that’s a fine line, but at the end of the day, players want to be recognized for what they do well.
You know, if you’re constantly criticizing, criticizing, criticizing, you know, and every once in a while you recognize, hey, good job, it kind of goes right out the window. But if you’re recognizing what they’re doing well and the effort they’re making, especially when they go out of their comfort zone, if you recognize when they go out of their comfort zone, they’re willing to do it more and then they take the criticism that much better. And then us recognizing what we value turns into players recognizing what we value in themselves and in their teammates. And it just creates an unbelievable culture of everyone celebrating each other, which has built a culture of everyone wanting to be at practice every single day. And I think it really comes a lot from, you know, this recognition piece that we’ve brought in as a staff.
Dan 24:04
My follow-up now with your start-sub sit is going to be in your sub, which is coach to the team and the balance that you find is useful in recognizing things publicly in front of the team, in front of others, versus individually, pulling a player’s side. We all know sometimes just like a quick word or two to our players individually can spark them, versus what you’re going to, you know, at the end of a practice or game recognize more publicly. And what’s the authentic balance you’ve found there in those two types of things?
Scott Lagas 24:37
I do like to recognize publicly, the great word that you use there was authentic. I do think that when you are authentic, they appreciate the recognition more, but I got a great piece of advice when I was a young coach. I don’t remember who told me, but they said, not everyone has to be treated the same, but everyone has to be treated fairly. There might be some players who appreciate a little bit more of a private recognition, and obviously, you could create it if you’re recognizing somebody who maybe is your best player all the time. Can that be a point of contention on a team? Maybe sometimes I would like to think not, but I definitely think it’s a balance. That comes along to me with knowing your team and knowing your players and building those authentic relationships so you know, this is appropriate here, this is appropriate with her, this might not be appropriate with her. I think that any recognition post practice, post game, like you said, always goes back to our values, our pillars, and what we believe in. If someone is going above and beyond in those areas, those are things that are recognized after practice and after games. I will say though, after games, we’ve gotten into this thing where we talk very, very little. Maybe a one-minute debrief after a game, just to take the emotion out of it, and then we address everything the next day. That’s something that we’ve implemented maybe three years ago, I believe.
Pat 26:06
Coach, my follow-up has to do with looking at peer-to-peer recognition and getting your players to recognize the habits, the standards that you want to model in your program, but also having them recognize when their teammates aren’t modeling the standards, the behaviors that are expected or that are part of the culture.
Scott Lagas 26:27
You just touched on our biggest challenge. When I first got here, it didn’t happen right away. It took a couple of years for us to build what we’ve built here because we wanted to build sustainable success. And to us, that meant having a group of players who went through the four years. You graduate three seniors, the juniors move up, the sophomores move up, the freshmen move up, and so on and so forth.
And I think that peer-to-peer recognition, after the first year, the girls understand that second year a little bit more of what we really value and what we really want, the third year even more, and then by the third year, it’s habit. Part of that recognition is the young girls just seeing it every day and going on the other part that you said, the accountability piece, it’s difficult. It’s definitely one of the more challenging pieces peer-to-peer because you want to be liked and you want to be friends with your teammates, but however, there’s that piece of accountability worrying about how somebody else is going to take what you talk about. So I think that that’s definitely a challenging piece, but we preach a lot about communication and we do something that we call an accountability mirror. We actually didn’t do it this past season because we thought we had girls who were free to hold each other accountable and it was okay. But in the past, we’ve done accountability mirrors where if Patrick, you were my accountability mirror for that week, I could say anything to you and you could say anything to me and there’s no feelings involved whatsoever. So I definitely do think that that’s a challenge, the peer-to-peer recognition on the accountability piece. But again, going back to the culture of recognition, when a teammate of yours is recognizing everything that you are doing well, when you’re doing what we value, it’s easier to take the accountability piece. And I think that that’s why we feel so strongly with the recognition.
Pat 28:34
Coach, I’d love to follow up about the accountability mirror. Is it a weekly thing that you’ll change the mirrors are who your mirror is. You allow space before, after practice for like a dialogue to happen with the two players, or is it something that you just kind of empower them to do throughout the week, I guess, how does it work?
Scott Lagas 28:54
It’s been a weekly thing where there wasn’t really a set time. There was maybe just a reminder at the beginning and at the end of every single practice, you know, make sure that you’re talking with your accountability mirror, make sure that if you see that they’re doing something that doesn’t fit our values that you let them know. Again, it goes back to creating everything organically that we like to do in our program. Going off of that, you know, creating things organically, at the beginning of every practice, we have a 30-minute pre-practice session where the girls can shoot, they can either do something that we prescribe, say, hey, we’re not shooting the ball very well, make sure you get 200 jump shots up or whatever it is. That’s our time that we walk around as a staff and make sure that we’re having many, two-minute, one-minute conversations with every single one of our players, just about every single day. When we do that, that creates that accountability piece as well, where you’re having that little conversation with the young lady and then all of a sudden, it’s like, hey, and by the way, you did this, maybe you need to do this better. But creating it organically, just reminding our players, hey, make sure you’re meeting with your accountability mirrors, make sure that you’re concentrating on having those conversations.
Dan 30:17
Coach, before we move on to Pat’s start sub sit, I do want to ask you about the cowbell. Okay. And the, and how you use it to recognize actions, shots, things that you all value from an offensive standpoint.
Scott Lagas 30:34
So funny enough, it’s actually something I heard at either a clinic or on a podcast or something. And then we’ve kind of morphed it into our own thing. So we have a cowbell. It’s your traditional cowbell with a handle. And that’s our offensive recognition piece. So if we get any kind of a transition basket, if we score with the defense on their heels, whether it’s a kick ahead three, a layup, an early rim run, a paint to great three, which is where we get into the lane playoff to kick to our teammate for a penetration pass or a penetration pass, pass three, and a layup off of a cut or just off of a good drive or a two-footed post. If any of those things happen on practice, whether we’re three on three, four on four, five on five, either a manager, assistant coach, whatever will pick up the cowbell and they’ll ring the cowbell. And the great thing about it is, is that if there’s players on the sideline, even if they don’t have access to the cowbell, you’ll see their hand go up and they’ll shake their hands like they’re shaking a cowbell. And it’s just that, again, that recognition of this is what we want. This is what we’re looking for offensively. Girls get excited about it. And then at that point, they want it more and more and more. It’s actually kind of funny when you have a recruit and their parents come watch practice and you haven’t warned them. And then there’s a penetration pass, pass three, and all of a sudden the cowbell starts ringing. They’re looking around like, what’s that? But the girls get really, really excited about it and that enjoyable piece to our practices as well. We don’t ring it during games though.
Pat 33:28
Our last start sub sit for you. We’ll get back to the court looking at the offensive end and preparing with you talking to you a little bit. You mentioned that you play a hybrid Princeton offense. So we’d like to isolate the high splits, which I’m sure at some point throughout your offense you’re gonna get into. And our question regarding the high splits is start subset, what routinely makes the high splits tough to defend? Is it option one, just the rim pressure it puts off the rim cuts, the slips? Is it option two, maybe the close outs it can create off of skip passes around the sip or pop backs and getting close out for penetration? Or option three, is it dynamic middle third ball screens? Just a player running into it with an advantage, getting a play, rescreening, playing them out of the middle third ball screen off of a high split.
Scott Lagas 34:18
That’s just an awesome question because those are all three things we look for offensively. I would start the rim pressure, especially with us. We still play with two dynamic post players who are very good around the rim. And I think that the fear of them getting position or getting an easy layup as they split off that cut makes it hard to guard. That would be my start.
My sub would be definitely the long closeout as the defender is dropping to help protect on that fear of the slip to the basket, then having to turn around and close out on a very capable either three point shooter or somebody who attacks the rim really hard. That makes it very difficult. And then I would sit the re-screen even though we use that a lot. By that time, I think that the defense has recovered a little bit. So it’s not quite as dynamic as the scoring option as the first two.
Pat 35:20
Great, coach, I’d like to start with your start talking about the rim pressure, how you teach, whether it’s called like the order of operations when two players are going into the split action, what you’re preaching what you’re teaching how you’re working on it. So there is some sort of effective rim cut, and then another player popping back going to the ball, but to make it effective how you talk with your ladies about getting an effective rim cut.
Scott Lagas 35:44
What we talk about most is that we do more often than not want to split. I think that they understand that they want to put pressure on the rim first, so that makes their intent to cut stronger, harder, faster. We preach over and over and over about getting to the free throw line and the percentages, right? Like where if we get a great split and we get a three, that’s fantastic, but great three-point shooters in our conference shoot 40-something percent, where if we get real pressure on the rim with a hard cut, you’re shooting 60 to 70 percent on wide open layups, hopefully more, and 70 percent from the free throw line.
So preaching those percentages, the girls, they want to make hard cuts off of split, teaching the other girls to really go with an intention of them not splitting. When you’re going to set the off-the-ball screen, you’re going with an intention like she’s going to curl or you’re trying to get her open. And if you’re doing that, the defense is going to react and that’s going to make everything work better, where if you’re just kind of knowing she’s going to try to split and you’re kind of just jogging over there, that takes away any other option, the curl or the pop back to the top.
Dan 37:06
You mentioned having dynamic post players that can cut and post and obviously great advantage to having two dynamic posts in there. What’s the balance between continuing to flow from side to side, looking for split cuts and kick outs to close outs like we mentioned, but then when you do have someone cut and maybe can post for a second where, you know, the offense might pause for a second to let that action take place, how do you teach the balance of continuing to flow versus wait and seek out opportunities?
Scott Lagas 37:34
Two feet in the paint. Two hands and their numbers. That’s a non-negotiable for us. If a girl’s got two feet in the paint, she’s showing you two hands and you can see her front numbers, that ball has to go in. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. If by two Mississippi, that ball’s not in, then it’s next action. That’s how we teach it. You know, for us, we have our four Angelina Barrera and our five Brace Lesko, we’re two all-conference players this year. Our girls are programmed, those are the girls that need to get the ball if they’re deep in the post. So when they know what they’re looking for, it’s an easier decision for them to make. But then right away, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, we have to flow into the next action. And I think it also comes from our players having confidence in everything that we do. So, all right, if we’re not gonna get that, it’s okay. Because our next action, we’re gonna get something that we want as well.
Dan 38:31
Over the years, as great as Princeton is, it can be tougher for younger post players to really feel comfortable in navigating the passes, the pitches, the angles, the catches, the pivots from that middle of the floor. And anything that you found over the years of aiding that process and getting it to where your posts feel comfortable to make the passes and all that comes out of it, because obviously it looks great when it works, but it can be challenging early in a player’s career who hasn’t maybe been in those positions to feel comfortable operating out of that.
Scott Lagas 39:03
I think that we’ve made the adjustment through trial and error where we first started implementing this offense. Some of the cuts would be coach passing at practice when we were implementing, let’s say, 3-0 actions and wanting to do these shooting drills, which we call maverick shooting because it’s our maverick offense. We’ve gotten into our post players being the passers on every single drill that we do on all split cuts and on all backdoor cuts and on all of those cuts that involve them so that they get more comfortable doing it. I think it was an analyzation of we’re doing it so great at practice and then we’re turning the ball in the games or we’re missing when girls are wide open off of those slips, maybe because we’re not getting enough reps at it. And then I think that breakdown drills, I think they’re having post players be comfortable at that high post. We do it a lot in preseason in our preseason work in our individuals to help them being able to pivot off both feet, just drilling it over and over and over. And then the other thing is that we break down our offense 3-0, probably 3-4 times a week. So they are getting those reps at it. And if we’re breaking it up 3-0, they’re getting more reps because we’re doing it on both sides. I think that that gets them to that comfort level.
Just jumping off of that, it’s a hybrid because a lot of what we do, if we don’t get the initial action, we have added in some ball screen action with it where it doesn’t necessarily like a traditional Princeton have to keep going back and forth until you find that backdoor cut. A lot of times if you don’t get that backdoor cut, it’ll be a pitch and screen to either a roll or a pop. And then our post players get a chance to where they’re more comfortable, where they’ll pitch, they’ll screen and roll. We’ll either hit a lift and get it into the post or if it’s an empty side, rotate it and then get it high low that way.
Pat 41:06
Recently, we’ve had some conversations around the effectiveness of the high splits to stress a defense, maybe a little bit more than the low splits, which can be defended consistently better. A general question on what you’ve noticed between playing more high splits versus low slits, or if there’s been differences in the ability of either or to be more or less effective.
Scott Lagas 41:28
The high splits, especially when they’re around the three-point arc, that space that really works in the effectiveness of it because of the space that you have for the girls splitting to cut. And then, as you discussed before, that challenge and closeout. I think, especially in the modern game where you have so many more kids who are better with the ball around the perimeter, I think that all of those one-on-one opportunities that they practice every single day, you get with those high splits. I think more the space than anything else makes those high splits so much more effective.
Dan 42:10
Well, Coach, you’re off to start Start, Sub and Sit Hot Seat. That was a lot of fun. Thanks for going through all that stuff with us.
Scott Lagas 42:15
Thank you. I love that I’m sweating a little bit, but I’m good
Dan 42:21
Coach, we got a final question to close the show, but before we do, thank you, again, for all your thoughts and your time today. Congrats on the success of your program. We really enjoyed our conversation today.
Scott Lagas 42:30
Thank you, guys. I really appreciate what you guys do. If you saw a shot chart of everything I took from this Laughing Glass podcast, it would be pretty colorful in your guys’ area, so I appreciate you.
Dan 42:41
Thank you. Appreciate that. Coach, our final question that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Scott Lagas 42:50
I knew this question was coming and I’ve kind of thought a lot about it and then I really didn’t have to think much about it at all. Our program pillar is family school basketball in that order always and finding the right partner. My wife is amazing and our program and my coaching career has had the success it’s had because of picking the right partner. It’s not easy when your wife is doing homework, driving kids to activities after a long day at work and you call up after seven hours in the office and say, hey, I’m driving to Connecticut to see a kid that’s probably not going to commit to us. But picking the right partner has been the thing that’s made my career what it is.
I think that the other thing going to the family part of it as well is going back to coach youth basketball. My daughter’s in the eighth grade and I spend the spring and the summer coaching her team and my son in instructional and we get so much into the technical, tactical of who’s tagging screen and rolls, what are you doing on switches and stuff like that. Coaching that youth reminds you that the game is supposed to be fun and the basic fundamentals win and not having the basic fundamentals lose. And I think that those two things have been the biggest investment in my coaching career.
Dan 44:17
All right, Pat, it’s fun to, we always talk about this, basketball is universal, coaching is universal. And some of the similarities between what Coach Lagas was talking about today mixed with what we had with Coach Van Gundy a couple of weeks ago with the fundamentals of defense and these core principles and things that translate and win and lose at every level and fun to always get a different insight from a different level, a different place. Let’s dive in to our top three takeaways and for number one, I will throw it to you.
Pat 44:50
My first takeaway, I’ll pull from our first conversation. Coach Logges was really nice to kind of share a lot of his program philosophy from their offense, defense, and of course, culturally what they strive for. And doing the research, talking with him when he mentioned the no middle with a lot of packed line tendencies really stood out to us. It was fun to get into that.
And right away, he hit on something that resonated with me and kind of the same challenges I have faced with teams in the past when you’re a little bit smaller, the struggle of if you, you know, in this case, if you want to be packed line, which is more so towards giving up middle, but the struggle with when you’re a smaller team, maybe a little bit more undersized is being able to overcome even middle penetration when you want it is still very challenging with the prevalence of the three and just being able to sit in gaps, give up the full side of the floor and recover back out. And the experience is just Yeah, like he said, they’re giving up way too many penetration pitch threes, you know, it just seemed like your rotations were less predictable, or you couldn’t control your rotations. At times, it feels like if you were to just shift, what he did is focused towards, let’s bring in the baseline defender that out of bounds line, add that under the rim and kind of control that maybe if they are going to kick it out, it’s going to go to this corner, and we can perfect the X out there where again, going back to the middle, there’s maybe multiple options for that, you know, adept ball handlers, penetrators that really test teams that are undersized, even when you’re giving up drives that are within the scheme of your defense
Dan 46:25
Yeah, absolutely. And I think obviously it was an intriguing conversation to us with, as you mentioned, forcing baseline, no middle. You and I both have a lot of years of experience of coaching that and all the pluses and minuses of it for sure, and the pitfalls of when you’re going to do that. And we talked about the mentality of the five, we talked about the pack basically for them. And then when you then have to balance one-on-one principles and if you’re going to force or down it on the outer thirds and making sure that players aren’t just forcing a direction and then not really guarding the ball is always a challenge. I think when you’re forcing the direction versus if you’re head up on the ball and saying, you can’t get beat, those are the fun little intricacies of any defense.
Pat 47:09
I agree. I think we have this, again, going back to what we said at the top, just the common challenges that we all face with directional defense. And I think it’s a question we probably always follow up with is, well, how do you teach it? How do you not just give up a straight line drive that’s in the direction you want? And versus, yeah, the balance of you still have to play one on one, but you got to force high side and the technical follow up. So technique driven versus goal process. And just like, Hey, whatever you can do, you know, you can’t get beat middle, but you can’t give up straight line drives or vice versa. You know, I really liked mentioned on the ball when we got into the hand conversation, just stressing that we want to take away their confidence and comfort. I wrote that down. I really liked that, you know, kind of conveying it to the team. Like, again, the goal that you want, how they should, because everyone knows what is be comfortable, what is be confident. And so striving to take that away, like everything, what you want to give up, what you want to create on offense, you want to take away on defense.
Dan 48:02
Yeah. We were talking a little bit about this before we hopped on the show with Coach and just this conversation we’ve been having over the summer about prioritizing two-point versus three-point field goal percentage defenses and what the best teams do. We had Radford head coach Zach Chu on earlier this summer and he talked about analytically when you really look at it, it’s historically the best two-point field goal percentage defenses win. It’d be great to be good at both, but historically it’s guarding the paint, guarding the rim, not fouling.
And I think that when you see the prevalence of the gap integrity and so many teams now are just heavy in gaps and not trying to allow penetrating drives and things like that, I think you kind of around this conversation get the sense of why they were so good defensively and Coach shared with us before they weren’t overly looking at the analytics of two-point versus three-point, but they probably trend more towards protecting the paint, walling up, don’t foul, which being a pack line, heavy in gaps, stunts, all that tends to be, I will say a miss of mine here early was just didn’t turn to it in the conversation, but we kind of talked off air about their not fouling as a team. And I think he gave us a stat that they were one of the best teams over the last few seasons anywhere in division two at not fouling and shooting so many more free throws in their opponents. And that was a big tenant of their defensive walling up, don’t foul at the rim, make them score over length. And when you piece that together with the rotations we talked about and forcing baseline and rotating over, it’s like, yeah, if you’re rotating, sending a bunch to the ball and then not fouling, you’re going to force teams to throw a skip pass and kick it out and play good to great, you’re going to probably have a pretty good two-point field goal percentage defense.
Pat 49:45
The other thing I want to mention too, in this first bucket that I enjoyed was when we got into the ball screen defense and their coverage, he talked about having chest zones and help zones and kind of differentiating between these two zones helped his players know. The coverage they want to apply with the chest zone, meaning they want a hard hedge, I believe he talked anywhere from the middle third to the free throw line extended or to the 45, I believe. And so chest zone, meaning that they want the big to come out with their chest on the ball and then the help zone that they’d ice on the side. And just like, again, the terminology, the phrasing, you know, just finding different ways to help your team get on the same page when applying a coverage that always seems to help too defensively.
Dan 50:27
Yeah. I did like the little side tangent about his love of surfing and the connection of coaching and what he’s learned. And I liked his thought about surfing and you find that perfect wave or that perfect ride and it kind of sticks with you for a long time and you’re in search of it again as it was a metaphor for coaching and trying to find flow with your team. I thought that was a nice little nugget. I think we all searched for that high in a sense as a coach, like that perfect game or that great practice or when everything’s just kind of flowing and in sync. I thought that was a good little side tangent too. Yeah.
Pat 51:00
Keeping it moving, I’ll throw it to you now for the second takeaway of our conversation.
Dan 51:05
So I’m going to go to my start sub sit and I think you and I felt like this was one of the best parts of the conversation today, which was recognition within your program and how you do that. And coach was great beforehand sharing some of his tenants of his culture. And one of the things that we thought was interesting was recognition and how they recognize from hitting the cowbell, which he answers some of our questions on the cowbell, hitting the cowbell and practice on things that you want to do offensively to then the peer to peer stuff. And I thought that was just a really good, whatever it was, 10, 15 minutes insight into the program and what he feels is important and why it’s important.
I think he gave some good backstory too on why people perform better and why cultures perform better when you’re recognizing the things that need to be recognized. I also think he gave a great point too about you got to be careful if you’re over recognizing things that aren’t hitting the standard. You don’t need to recognize hard work because that’s just a standard of it. There’s a good nuance in there about all of it. So he started the team to team stuff, the peer to peer, which I think you and I are always interested in, men, women, pros, college, high school. How do you get them to recognize and be accountable to each other for the things that you deem important for your culture? And I think he spoke well on that.
Pat 52:25
Yeah, with these conversations, I always enjoy of course hearing the coaches insight the philosophy of the why behind it But then the methodology they choose to kind of help model these behaviors help their players apply these behaviors standards they want and I really liked when he started talking about the accountability mirror and partnering up players and Finding ways organically to encourage them to talk and talk about their modeling or not modeling the standards behaviors recognizing You know it kind of flowed within this conversation really nicely. I like that.
That was something we haven’t heard I don’t believe I think the challenge with peer-to-peer is like how do you actually get them to do that? And how of course it starts with us modeling the behavior But these different methodologies to encourage and we’ve had great conversations in the past But I really like the accountability mirror and how they applied that as well
Dan 53:14
I think that’s something my wife holds up to me every morning. Hey, buddy, take a look here.
Pat 53:19
You don’t need to remind her to talk to your accountability.
Dan 53:23
No, she’s got it bright and early for me to take a look into on that. There was some similarities to one of our favorite episodes this summer with Brook Cups, Centerville high school head coach talked a lot about accountability partners and things like that, that they do. And that was a great episode. I got some of that similarity here with just good thoughts on how you can keep each other accountable, peer to peer, coach to coach, coach to team and things that I think we hit on, which is authentic to you.
Pat 53:51
Yeah, maybe it was a slight miss but to follow up on why he thought last year’s team I mean he mentioned why you know, I thought he had a good mature group That was he had leaders that were gonna hold players accountable But why he chose not to utilize it versus two years ago when they did use it I guess what that team looked like and what he thought they needed some sense is probably a self-explanatory But I wish I’d followed up a little bit more on that to the difference between the team
Dan 54:15
Hey, let’s keep it moving, I’ll throw it to you for our last takeaway.
Pat 54:19
Yeah, my last takeaway will be around the high split conversation we had. And my last follow I had with coach, we’ve been ourselves talking a lot this about looking at it recently in our newsletter to the high splits versus low splits, I liked how he framed the question about the advantage of the high splits, but being able to pull out a more philosophical look at just why it does trend out that the high splits is more effective in stressing the defense versus the low splits there.
Again, he raised a good point that the spacing presented getting it off the baseline, again, kind of removing that quote, unquote defender, the freedom it allows us to plan from there. And then I like to, he mentioned as well, it provides some quick one-on-one opportunities I wasn’t thinking about, you know, obviously we frame, you know, I think it’s the rim pressure, the closeouts, the mid pick and rolls are the big ones, but I did like that, that it presents maybe like off those pop backs, some nice opportunities to isolate some players with good spacing. Yeah, just a conversation. I think we’ve been thinking a lot about, and it was interesting for me to dive into with coach.
Dan 55:17
This is like player dependent, but the other kind of sneaky, good part of the high splits that we didn’t ask him about, but I think is worth mentioning too. Because he mentioned that a couple of really good all conference fours and fives. And when you’re playing through those players in the high split action, the other thing we didn’t ask them about is, you know, those splits can remove a lot of help under the rim. And so he talked about one-on-one opportunities for like the closeouts and the pop back, but also can present some one-on-one opportunities for your actual handler of the ball. So after the split cut, if they’re able to rip it and take someone off the dribble, a lot of times you don’t have a defender to sit in there in the paint because they’re having to guard the high split action and a cutter and a pop back. And so if you have a player that can operate at that mid post area, it does present some clear out ISO opportunities.
So I think you and I, as you mentioned, there’s been a lot of conversation this summer, I guess, on just low versus high splits. And of course, the low splits are still highly successful and teams do it. Terrific, but goes also to the theme of some of the guests this summer of keeping the ball in the middle third and attacking through the middle third and not allowing like a good no middle team, like Coach Lagas’ team to pin you to a side and load up. So high splits allows you to kind of keep it in the middle third and create advantages that way.
And so yeah, just another fun conversation around the continual evolution of offense and flow. And you know, he mentioned playing a lot of pick and roll stuff out of it as well was good for them. And they don’t just like run Princeton over and over again, but they just use it as a way to create one of these quick advantages to stem from. Yeah. Pat, I gave a miss a little bit. We gave a slight miss. Is there anything else? Not from Coach Logges, but for your point of view, we could have went deeper on or different direction.
Pat 56:59
Yes, one other thing going back to the recognition conversation, you know, I talked about recruiting character helps a lot. Just with the recognition piece, a question we all up with quite often to when it looks at recruiting. What is the value in recruiting character? I guess what stands out to him? What’s his process? Whether it’s questions or what he’s looking for in the player’s background that would give him the opinion that this is a high character player. So just recruiting character, I guess I wish I had followed up on. Yeah.
Dan 57:29
Yeah. Definitely would’ve been interesting. I’m sure a lot of thought into that as well. His note, I think you ran out of paper during the episode and we’re taking notes on our tax notification.
Pat 57:39
Yeah. As I move into apartment this week. And yeah, an hour before, as we’re about to get into prep, realized that I do not have any paper, so was scrambling through some old So luckily I didn’t ask him about any tax extension questions off of my notes here.
Dan 57:55
Yeah, for us, we send split cut reads to the IRS instead of our tax payments.
Pat 58:00
Yeah, yeah, they’re gonna be real confused on that one. Yeah
Dan 58:03
Alright, well, once again, we thank Coach Lagas for coming on and giving such a great interview today. We wish him the best of luck this season. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.
Pat 58:19
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit slappingglass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slapping Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.