On this week’s episode of Slappin’ Glass, we welcome Bob Richey, Head Coach of Furman Men’s Basketball, for a masterclass on sustainable program building, player development, and offensive innovation. Over the past eight seasons, Richey has transformed Furman into one of the most consistently successful programs in college basketball, averaging more than 20 wins per year while competing at the highest levels of the Southern Conference and beyond.
In our conversation, Coach Richey shares how his philosophy was shaped by studying leaders like Rick Byrd, Bob McKillop, Jay Wright, and Lenny Acuff, and how he’s blended those influences into Furman’s unique style of play. We unpack his approach to:
- Sustainable Winning: Why top-down alignment across administration, staff, and players is critical, and how identity-driven decision making simplifies recruiting, culture, and daily choices.
- Player Development: Building year-over-year growth by aligning skill work directly with system play, creating an environment where smart, skilled, and tough players thrive.
- Offensive Innovation: Exploring concepts like “playing without pause,” offensive “bridging” from attack to action, and balancing Princeton-influenced structure with pace, freedom, and decision making.
- Defensive Identity: Richey’s reflections on how Furman can evolve on the defensive side of the ball, including measuring what matters most, systemizing coverages, and balancing rim protection with three-point defense.
- Practice Design: How to maximize learning and decision-making through competitive small-sided games, varying stimuli, and teaching spacing, timing, and re-spacing at a high level.
- The Art of the Dribble Handoff: A deep dive during our Start, Sub, or Sit segment into angles, pace, and counters within DHO actions.
Coach Richey also shares his belief in lifelong learning, the role of reading and studying outside programs, and why continuous innovation is essential in today’s coaching landscape.
Transcript
Bob Richey 00:00
When we go from our penetration and our attack game into more of our concept game, I think the best teams offensively are seamless right there, what we call play without pause. It’s almost like the cars, you got an automatic shifter and you got the manual shifter. We don’t want a manual shift. We want to have a smooth automatic shift where you can’t really see it.
It just kind of happens and you’re going from basically, hey, we tried to get an advantage and we tried to get something quick and we tried to fly the ball down the court. But you know what? The defense got us. For whatever reason, they stood us up and they stopped the ball and then is there this back out? No, we don’t want to do that. Right? Is there this dribble around? Is this everybody looking around like what’s next? We want that distance and that time to be not only without pause, but man, we want it to be fast.
Dan 02:15
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach, Bob Richey. Coach, thanks so much for coming on the show. You’ve been one of the coaches we’ve been wanting to have on for a long time, and so we’re glad we’ve finally been able to make it happen.
Bob Richey 02:38
Well, happy to be here, Dan and Pat, both of you do an outstanding job with the podcast and I’m more of a reader than a podcast guy, just kind of how my mind works. But you guys are the one podcast that I listen to religiously. You ask great questions. You got great content. I’m a huge fan of the show. Thank you.
Dan 02:53
Thank you, coach. We want to start with this and something we’ve been talking off-air a little bit about and that’s sustainable winning and your program player development. So you’ve just had such a great track record and history of winning at a high rate for a long time. And then also your players getting better and better as they’re there longer with you. And that’s obviously something that is a large undertaking and there’s a lot to it. And so we wanted to start with those thoughts with you on sustainable winning and your player and program development.
Bob Richey 03:24
It’s the core of everything we do here at Furman. It goes back long when I was a child, even growing up in Columbia, South Carolina, I got obsessed with watching Lou Holtz turn around, the South Carolina football program, and then watching Steve Spurrier didn’t take over from there and take it to another level. Both Hall of Fame head coaches that took a historically hard job and figured out a way to make it a winner. I was an assistant for 11 years and nine of those 11 seasons were losing seasons. And both at Charleston Southern and at Furman, both of them were on trending up in terms of taking two really, really hard situations and getting them to a respectable level.
But you learn a lot in that losing. And you learn a lot in losing at hard jobs and then trying to figure out a way to win at hard jobs. And I think when you look at the history of Furman, people know now the Virginia win and go into the tournament. And I think we average close to 23 wins a year in our eight years here. But historically, this is like a 46% winner in 105 years of basketball. And for a long time there, everybody said, well, you’re not gonna be able to win there because it’s academic and you’re not gonna be able to win there because it’s traditional football school or whatever. You know, it’s just too hard to get into and admission standards and the facilities aren’t any good. And when I got here as an assistant then became head coach in 17, I started thinking and started studying people that were at places that were like that, you think of B-line and what he did at Michigan and all the stops before that, even at West Virginia. And you think of Bob McKillop who ran this league for a long time at Davidson. And then you think of Rick Burr, who was just unreal at what he did at Belmont. Lenny Acuff, who became almost like a basketball father to me when I was an assistant and even helped me as a head coach. And even a little bit of what J. Wright did at Villanova that not many people think, but Villanova, private, academic, big East, those were kind of like my five people that I would as an assistant, man, I just studied them and I just watched them and I tried to figure out what was congruent, what was consistent, what was the same. And it always came down to like they had convicted values, they were gonna be development-based and it was gonna be systemization. There was gonna be a certain way that this is how you have to do it here. And so what we really tried to do here was say, hey, look, we’re gonna figure out a way to win here because of the academics. So we’re gonna have a system that is based on cognition, we’re gonna be decision-based in our approach. We’re gonna find high potential individuals, HPIs. We wanna find people that actually want to be challenged academically because they want to look at this as a differentiating situation for their life and their career. So they’re like these guys that are like high achievers, driven people. And so it’s like, okay, well, let’s go find those guys. And then from a basketball standpoint, matching the institution, can we get smart, skilled, tough? And smart would align with Furman. Now we have to put a system in place that leverages that thinking and that cognition. Skilled, all right? Hey, we might not be as athletic and we might not be as big, but I’ll tell you this, put that three-point line down there and let’s fire this thing up and let’s pass this ball and let’s cut and let’s move. Let’s be the best passing and the best shooting team and the best finishing team. Like let’s really be great at the skillset to negate some of the athletic differences potentially. And then tough, right? Not just physically, but also mentally tough, finding guys that wanna be challenged, finding guys that wanna be pushed.
And so part of that is when you think of the engine that drives a lot of that, well, your development better be really good because you’re betting on people. And then at the end of the day, you’re gonna put them in a system that hopefully aligns with the institution. And then you’re gonna stay convicted on this, right? The filter of this is really gonna be when you set your identity, that’s really gonna make a lot of the decisions for you.
You’re gonna have a lot of built-in nos. So it’s gonna make your yeses more clear. And then now you just go invest in your people at the highest level. And then if you pick the correct ones, they’re gonna stay. And then over time, they’re gonna keep getting better. And then that over arches your development program.
Dan 07:29
The five or six coaches you mentioned that you really dug into as you were building your program and the people you mentioned, they all play, they’re stylistically a little bit different. What was it that you took from them that was useful from a stylistic standpoint, how you are actually going to play because all those guys have different offenses in different ways that they’ve won, but how did you settle in on how you wanted to play personally?
Bob Richey 07:54
Well, if you watch this, it’s literally a mix of all of those. We kind of piece it all together. You know, it’s been a lot of fun and we’ve added some of our own twist to it. I think going through them, I got obsessed with Rick Byrd pretty early.
How’s Belmont winning consistently at a place that doesn’t seem like it would be easy to win at? Seeing the three-point line, seeing how many threes they shot, seeing how they spaced the floor. This was 12, 14 years ago, you know, before all the analytics were kind of geared towards that. And, you know, a lot of the spacing, I’ve sent them to him when we score on a set, you know, that we took from Rick Byrd. I still have notebooks of just Belmont actions. We get a couple of them. I still send them to him because I think he’s one of the best. Coach Acuff, who ironically, now he’s in the league at Sanford, he’s been as good to me as anybody in the business and has taught me probably more than anybody in the business. What really fascinated me watching Lenny’s teams at Alabama Huntsville, I always loved the Princeton, the quote unquote Princeton, right? Are you Princeton or not? I always enjoyed the concepts of Princeton. This is like selecting ice cream, right? We all go into the ice cream shop and like you like strawberry. I like vanilla. You like chocolate. You like cookie dough. Like it’s all good. At the end of the day, we still all have like our preferential flavor and it doesn’t mean that it’s better. It’s just what we like. For me, I loved the splits and I love the high drift and I love some of the dribble hats, but I didn’t like the rigidness of like it has to be this and you can’t get off of it. And so when I started watching Lenny’s teams, I’m like, man, these guys are getting the ball out of the net or flying down the court and then all of a sudden they’re like falling into this. It’s their safety net of they always have something to go to, but they’re still attacking you and they’re still playing fast. So you can have randomization inside the quote unquote Princeton and you can play really, really fast inside of it. And so like the year we won it, the year we beat Virginia, we had the fastest tempo in the conference, but we also still played through some of these concepts. So I would say that was the biggest takeaway there was the idea that you could do Princeton things at high tempo and great pace.
Bob McKillop, I watched him for years when I became an assistant here, they were still in the league. Again, off ball actions, tempo, pace, shot making, skill. If you watch us play, we’ll play off that bus screen a little bit. I still think the way they played their break was probably one of my favorite breaks. And then Beeline, like a lot of the two guard, a lot of the concepts, we still run a lot of those. And just again, the spacing, the footwork. Jay Wright, I would say the two feet part of it, you know, I think he was the first to that and just being really, really, everybody says it now, but very few are like, you know, in my opinion, like really are absolute with it.
Bob Richey 10:29
And I think he was one of the first to do that of really playing off the two feet and playing off of pivots. And so, again, just meshing all that together, we still to this day, to me, those are out of the best ever do it, especially at places that are historically not easy to win at.
They wanted a high level. I still steal from them as much as I can.
Pat 10:48
You mentioned the importance of knowing the institution you’re at, matching the system with the institution, and I think that’s a really important piece. I know you were an assistant a long time at Furman, so I’m sure just over time you, of course, learned the institution, but when you became a head coach, who were the conversations you were seeking out to better understand Furman and the system, and then maybe even the players you needed to recruit that kind of aligned across the board?
Bob Richey 11:11
Fortunately, I had had six years here as an assistant before I got the head job, and some of those years, hard, hard years, seven wins, nine wins, 11 wins, and then towards the end, we had some good years. You were able to see the trajectory line start to turn up and start to turn in the right direction.
I think the biggest thing I would say, a phrase that I think a lot of people miss as they’re building program, when you study the best, you study the ones that have done it, there’s going to be this concept of what you call top-down alignment. And what top-down alignment means is you’ve got the board, you’ve got the president, you’ve got the AD, and you’ve got the coach all in a line of what we’re trying to accomplish. But the most interesting thing I would say is when you watch coaches take over a job, and it’s almost like they try to build a subculture of the institution itself. And so what happens from a quick, logical scenario, if you’re not bringing people that match to the institution and really the mission of the institution, then yeah, you might have a good four hours in your day of really building a basketball team. But the other 20 hours, the kids don’t even want to be there. They’re not excited about the place. And so when you study great organizations, you study military, you study business, you study sport. When you put on the shirt that says, hey, this is our place, there’s got to be a lot of pride in that. There’s got to be like, man, this is us. It’s not just our team, but it’s our place. Early in my years at Furman, I just didn’t think we had that. I thought we had a subculture that we were trying to slide through academically. We were trying to find some guys that could make it, but we weren’t really finding guys when they put on a shirt that said Furman, they were like, you know what, this is worth fighting for. This is the place. And so I always want to be in alignment with our institution, whatever they’re trying to create. And really for me, like I think it’s important when coaches take jobs, the way you do it, does it match to what the institution is trying to do? Because when you’re trying to get things done, we’re cutting the ribbon on a $40 million renovation to our arena today. When you’re trying to get stuff like that done from a big scale, you better have top down alignment and you better have everybody aligned from a values perspective and from a program perspective, because a lot of times, unfortunately, the good books and pride coming for the fall and like we’re guilty of that as coaches, like we think we can just go take over any program and put in our way and like it’s going to work. But where the magic really happens is when you get everybody on a campus and inside an organization to say, hey, this is what we’re trying to do and this is where we’re going. And it’s been critical that we match that here.
Pat 13:41
I’d like to then jump back to on the court when you were talking about concepts of Princeton that you liked and then bringing those into the fold of your offense and you talked about removing the rigidness of it, but particularly playing fast, what were kind of the key things that you feel allow your teams to play with pace in the Princeton concepts.
Bob Richey 14:00
We’re constantly having to innovate through that, because now everybody’s trying to do it in some form or fashion to a degree, and it was a lot more fun in 1718 when we were out here doing it, nobody was. But now everybody’s doing it either set base or trying to do some of the concepts through it. So we’re actually trying to get out in front of it. We’re trying to figure out ways to innovate and come up with some different things. I thought we did a good job of that last year.
I think what I’ll tell you from a simplistic standpoint on the court, we want to attack first and we want action second. A lot of times when people go that Princeton route, they think, man, we’re just getting into actions. Now everybody says concepts. So it’s like what concepts are you getting into and then when do you get into them? The first thing I would like to do personally is I want to get the ball on the net, I want to see if I can create the fastest advantage we can in the first six to seven seconds to the shot clock. I think the freedom of saying, hey, we can do both of these two things. We can play with incredible pace and we can go play fast in order for us now to become patient if we can’t get something that makes sense, that we can transition quickly in what we call bridging. When we go from our penetration and our attack game into more of our concept game, I think the best teams offensively are seamless right there. What we call play without pause. Can you play without pause? Can I watch you make that? It’s almost like the cars, you got an automatic shifter and you get the manual shifter. We don’t want a manual shift. We want to have a smooth automatic shift where you can’t really see it. It just kind of happens and you’re going from basically, hey, we tried to get an advantage and we tried to get something quick. We tried to fly the ball down the court, but you know what? The defense got us. For whatever reason, they stood us up and they stopped the ball. And then is there this back out? No, we don’t want to do that, right? Is there this dribble around? Is this everybody looking around like what’s next? We want that distance and that time to be not only without pause, but man, we want it to be fast. And so that part of it, I think, takes a long time. I think that’s one of the hardest things of my job as a coach. I call it bridging. Can we bridge from attack to action better than anybody that we play against? And we spend a lot of time on that.
Pat 16:12
When you’re working on this bridging, we’re going to work through the concepts. Here’s like the spots, the people, whatever, this, this, this, and then incorporating it to the pace, or is it we’re just going to get up and down and then just try to work through that to get them to concepts.
Bob Richey 16:28
It would be both and, you got to attack all of it. I think the order of which you teach it all is critical. When people come and work for us here, they always find it unique how we teach it. We teach it kind of backwards that most people think they get here and they’re like, man, we’re going to get to see all these unique concepts and all this stuff.
And then like, we start by putting our break in first. And then we start by putting all of our ball screen concepts in next. And the ball screen concepts are not anything unique. It’s four different type of ball screen concepts that most people run a version of. But I want them to be able to get a feel for those basic elements of the ball screen concepts, what we call RPOs, we stole it from football, but roll pop options. And being able to play off those RPOs and then understanding the four types of ball screens and then getting a really good feel on that. So like, that’s kind of half of our summer is can we run? Can we merge these ball screen concepts to where it’s speed over perfection? We’re not trying to play perfect. We’re trying to play fast. There’s a difference. You can’t do both, okay? We’re just trying to get to the next thing as fast as we can. We don’t really care what the thing is. Then once we get that in, now we start to get into more of our off the ball concepts and then some of the more intricate concepts of what we do. And we kind of do that last.
And so now what happens is hopefully you built up some automaticity from a cognitive standpoint that, hey, when the ball stops, we can figure this thing out to get to the next thing. And it doesn’t even matter what the next thing is, but this is the one where the way the floor is and where the ball’s at. This is the one that’s right in front of us. And so to get to that, it goes to what you said last. Jeremy Groves now at Charleston, one of my good friends. He worked for me for like six years. They got here and he could not believe how much we played. I mean, he just kind of was like, this is wild. Like, this is a lot of five on five. And I’m like, well, the way we play, all five guys are kind of involved in the decision. Everybody’s kind of got to see it. So for us, again, I’m not saying it’s the only way. I’m not saying it’s the best way. I’m just saying it’s our only way, right?
This is what we do here. We need all five guys involved. So we have to play a lot. In the summers, we play a ton. In the fall, we play a ton. In practice, we play a ton because you’ve got to get these guys enough situations where they can learn to iron this out themselves. And then also the other thing is I don’t coach with a whistle and that always throws people off. They’re like, where’s your whistle? I don’t want a whistle because if I have a whistle, I’m going to try to control everything. And when I get in the game, they don’t give me a whistle. I need to learn how to coach without a whistle because if I’m stopping every single thing, every time I stop something, I’m taking away an opportunity for them to learn how to fix it.
Bob Richey 19:07
I think there’s a fine balance of knowing when to stop that something’s so bad or something’s so off that, hey, we’ve got to inject this. Or, you know what, we need to let this one ride because they need to learn how to fix this. And now we’ll use film in that scenario to show that possession, to show the things that maybe in a normal practice, some people would have stopped that we let play on.
Dan 19:30
It is such an art to knowing when to stop, how much. Seems like a lot of that comes down also to great drill design or how you structure the five on five. Any thoughts on your identity and how you practice, how that fits in, like how you actually will do five on five so that it can flow naturally and you’re not stopping as much as there’s something there.
Bob Richey 19:52
Y’all give me two things on that. The first, I like in shorter practices to have a nice five on five buildup. And so I’ll probably do a half court segment where I’m just trying to max reps. We’re just trying to see how many possessions can we get in a short amount of time in the half court.
Then I’ll have intermediate of where I have a little bit more control, whether it be an ODO or there’d be an ODOD we’ll have a little bit of up and down, but then we’ll have a stopping point. And then I want to finish with free flow. We might do some two minute games. We might do some three minute games, four minute games, even up to a six minute game. I would say it’s the most we do, but usually in preseason practice, summer stuff, and even into the early parts of the year, we’ll have three different segments of five on five. The trick two is we probably have 20 different ways to play five on five. I’m big in changing the stimulus. So I’ve been never feeling like the same thing. I get tired of drills, but players get tired of drills even faster. So it’s like, can we figure out which five on five components then better to different things that we’re trying to work on? There’s going to be some five on five elements that we do that are going to be better for the attack phase of what we do. There’s going to be some five on five components that are better for the action parts of what we do. And there’s going to be some five on five components that we might really try to get inside the bridging component of this and trying to blend some of these concepts together. And then also going outside of the conceptual piece of it, it also goes into what are your objectives that day? If I’m trying to reduce turnovers, then there might be something that we do that really puts some light on that and makes it a shorter game. We’ve played games to five before, which I love like five points. You can hit a three and get a stop and hit a layup in this ballgame or this thing can drag out. But what happens is if you turn the ball over in that game of five, you’re losing more than likely. Like your chances of losing go way up. So you build this idea that, hey, in these short games, and we might play five of them. Hey, we’re going to play five games to five. We might play best of five. So if you win three, and what you’re trying to do is we got to take great shots and we got to take care of the ball, but you put it in a competitive situation. And at the same time, you’re working on all this offensive stuff as you get some of those objectives done.
Dan 22:31
You mentioned the four types of ball screen actions. What are the four ball screen actions you generally are teaching early on?
Bob Richey 22:39
It’s the same stuff that everybody does. You got a balanced floor, both corners filled on those two situations. You have a ball screen to the inside of the floor and a ball screen to the outside floor. So we have language on that. And then you have an empty corner where you have three on the weak side and you got to isolate a ball screen with the corner open, going towards the inside and you got a ball screen going towards the outside. And so for us, we want to cover all four of those scenarios to know balanced floor screen to the inside, balanced floor screen to the outside, unbalanced floor screen to the inside, unbalanced floor screen to the outside. And we want to be very detailed in what that looks like, what the spacing looks like off of that, what the cutting looks off of that, and what the action looks like off of that.
Dan 23:19
As your program has developed over the last eight years, the cutting and the spacing around those four actions, has that stayed fairly consistent for you? Is there a lot of change or growth in those areas around those four actions?
Bob Richey 23:32
We’ve had to change. I referenced Steve Spurrier earlier, and I got to spend some time with Coach Spurrier probably two years ago, and I’ll never get one of the things he told me when we met. He said just classic Coach Spurrier, but he said, you can either be different or better, and it’s a lot easier to be different. It’s like there’s only so many people that can be the best, but we can all fight to be different. Obviously, if you can be different and better, then you’re going to be really, really hard to beat.
As the game evolves, it was a lot more fun back in the early parts of our tenure. When we were popping some ball screens to cut behind, and not many people were, and so we would just get that pop at the top and we had cut behind it, and we’d throw that thing from the top of the key to the net, and we’d lay it up, well, now a lot of people are doing that, and so what happens is, when a lot of people are doing the same thing, it makes the scout a lot easier because now you’re like, well, they do this, we do this, cover it like this, we see it every day. I think for us, again, going back to the academic component, ad firming, having to be unique, we want to be a curveball and a fastball league. We want to be unique, and so if things start to look like it’s all trending in that direction, I have a tendency to try to identify some uniqueness, and we actually did it in the middle of the year last year. We were playing 3-9 shooters at one time, and I just felt like everybody’s doing handoffs and ball screens, and we just started flaring people and pinning people and doing all kind of crazy stuff, as opposed to doing what everybody else is doing and it kind of got us out of a rut, and we won our last six or seven games, and then had a chance to win the championship there in the tournament, but I think finding ways to be different is critical.
I think right now, all these ball screens, a lot of people are running empties, and then everybody’s trying to figure out what to do on the weak side of the empty, and so it’s like we got to find a way to be different there. We can’t just cut the middle guy and lift behind or pin the guy in the corner. We want to find some way to have something that’s unique, and so that’s usually where we spend a lot of our off-season.
Pat 25:28
Building off of what you just said there, I mean, not necessarily on empty side ball screens, but how teams are trying to be different and defend. And when you look at it through this conversation of winning sustainability on the defensive side of the ball, and again, like the alignment with the universe of the guys you’re getting, what are kind of the core tenants of what you think brings success to Furman and winning on the defensive end of the ball.
Bob Richey 25:48
Well, you know, what’s funny about that is everybody kind of pegs this is an offensive ball club, which is fair. But my first six years in particular, we were top three in defense all of those years. We’ve dropped a fourth the last two, which that’s a big mission for us in this offseason is to get back in the top three. But that’s always been the charge of us is we want to be a complete ball club. We don’t want to just be an offensive team.
We don’t want to just be a defensive team. We want to be complete. I think it goes back to the same things. You’ve got to figure out smart, skill, tough, and you’ve got to figure out, like, we’ve got to build a system on the defensive end that also matches our identity. And I think, you know, probably where I’ve realized I need to grow as a coach, especially everybody is very clear to say how the industry is changing and we have more responsibilities and, you know, refs here at NIO and all this stuff that’s going on in the portal. I do think as a leader, as your program grows, you have to figure out where you can give real responsibility to your staff and you can be able to let go of a few things and really understanding that there’s actually going to be strength in that. And so this will be the first time I ended up hiring Joe Pierre from Liberty. I told him I hired him. I said, Hey, you have it. And I said, we’re very systemized and we’re very identity specific on the offensive end of the floor, but I don’t think we are defensively. And I think when you turn our tape on from last year, we gave up 92 points in the biggest game of the year. When you watched our teams early in my tenure, you know, we looked a lot like a so con version of what they were trying to do at Virginia, right? We were hedging ball screens and we were keeping the floor tight and we were getting back in transition and we were trying to do a good job on the glass and because I just felt like this isn’t going to be a place that yields run up and down the court, get super extended, you know, get out and passing lanes. I felt like identity wise, it was going to be smarter to keep the floor strong, keep teams out of transition, be very sound in our coverage. But have an identity of what we’re doing in our coverages and then make sure that we’re good on the glass. And just like everything’s in circles, I find myself wanting to go back to that, you know, everybody’s dropping now and everybody’s doing this. And it’s just like we kind of adopted that as well. And then all of a sudden our defensive numbers are going down. And, you know, I think it was Archie Miller that told me this this offseason is death by downhill. It all makes sense by the NBA because these guys have some putters, you know, they cover up space really well. But at our level, when you get into a bunch of drops, like you’re just basically inviting the ball into the paint and then you don’t have all these elite shot blockers and you don’t have all these huge bodies out there.
Bob Richey 28:18
And it just makes the court so much more accessible. So I’ve hired Joe and I told Joe when he got here, I said, look, you got two months to do whatever you want. And we have a staff retreat. We just did it last week.
We get off campus for basically for two nights, three days and we go to the lake and we just go through the whole program. And I said, like, just take it all summer. I want to learn. I want to see it. It’s been really exciting. You went through like a 15 page presentation last week to our staff and where we’re going there. And I wish I had a beautiful answer. I think sometimes you have to have a little humility in this and say, you know what, we haven’t been as strong from an identity standpoint there as we need to be.
I think we’ve been good. I mean, like I said, we did top three in our league six of our eight years defensively. But I would love to be even like, hey, I want to be better there and more so than even like how good are we? Is it clear that this is when you say firm and defense, this is what this is? Our players know it, our staff knows it. Everybody around it knows it. And I think from my view, what I would like is I want to be systemized on both ends of the ball. I want to be clear and identity on both ends of the ball. And then I also want there to be a complimentary component to those two things. This never ending journey. Right. But we’re fighting to get some clarity there.
Pat 29:28
in your effort to think about being systemized on the defensive end, we looked at your stats and obviously, you know, we’ve talked about your offense, but you’re a high volume three point shooting team, you know, I guess kind of like the players are recruiting how you want to play an offense, you know, and then now looking at your defensive, trying to systemize your defense, are you valuing or thinking about like, well, if we want to shoot a lot of threes, we want to take away a lot of threes, or, you know, we want to shoot a lot of threes, but it’s still protecting the rim. And, you know, we’re just going to try our best, compete on the three point line, I guess, how does kind of how you play on the defensive end influence how maybe you’re thinking about systemizing your defense.
Bob Richey 30:05
Great question. We actually spent a lot of time talking about this last week at the retreat. I think it’s important. We have all these analytics and we have all these sites and all this stuff, but I also think you can measure too much as teams and you can dilute the impact of those measurements because you’re trying to measure everything. And I think one of the big themes of our retreat last week was we want to figure out how to measure what matters most.
Let’s figure out what matters most and let’s measure that at a maniacal level. And we came up with like three areas that we really want to focus on. And what was funny is I kind of dive into one of them in particular because it was pretty fun listening to discussions, but me coordinating offense and then Joe coordinate the defense. We’re sitting there talking. Hey, coach, what do you see from a shot distribution standpoint? Where do you want the percentages of shot taken to come from? And so I quickly gave the numbers, right? For the first time here, the defensive coach says, here are the numbers that we’re trying to get on those areas. And he knew them, you know, spit them off. This is at the rim. This is a percentage shot, non-rem twos. And this is a percentage shot from the three point line. Well, it’s like, Hey, look, there’s a beautiful tension there that we should be able to magnify to our team every single day. And if we measure this well, we’re going to be able to walk off the court and we’re going to be able to know, Hey, like the offense had the edge today or the defense had the edge today. But now offensively, we’re fighting for these numbers from a distribution standpoint. Defensively, we’re fighting from these numbers from a distribution standpoint. And then once we get out of a game, you’ve got a pretty quick analysis of did you do it well or not? And I think we’re going to really focus a lot in on that, the four weeks of preseason that we have here and really try to educate our team. It’s a lousy goal to just say, Hey, let’s go have a better defense. But that’s what we do. A lot of times as coaches, as we say, well, we need to get better defensively and we need to force more of these and we need to get less of these. What are the actual numbers? What are you actually targeting? And then now can you give your team clarity by owning the numbers? Can’t own the numbers if you don’t know the numbers. So we got to know the numbers. And then now all of a sudden, Hey, this is what we’re trying to go do. And I think that’s what I’m really excited about. Even in some of the individual numbers, we have a big, huge rim protector to this level, but some of his rim numbers at the rim weren’t as good as we thought. You just assume we’ve got a six 11 guy with a seven, five wing span, man, he’s a great rim protector. But then you look at it and the percentage of we won’t want from shots taken of the rim in the ball screens that he’s been involved in. That number is a little bit too high. Well, we don’t know that unless we know exactly what those numbers that we’re looking for. So we’re trying to measure what matters most a little bit more on that end.
Bob Richey 32:37
And then really, like, you know, you think about the shot distributions, can you give your team clarity? Don’t just say, Hey, free throws, 10 toes, threes, and we want rim twos. How many, you know, what percentage, what are the zones that you’re looking for? Can you measure the efficiencies in those three areas?
And then on the defensive side of the floor, we don’t want him to get layups. Well, how do you know if you hit that goal or not? What are the percentages trying to get there? And so we’re trying to clean that up a little bit.
Dan 33:03
going back to your overall program thoughts. And earlier on in the conversation, you mentioned how when you have a clear identity, it’s easier to say no. I think that’s really insightful.
But I know it’s probably harder earlier on when you’re building the program to say no to maybe a talented player that is on the fringe of what you’re thinking about, it could help your team. And any more thoughts on the value of really knowing your identity so you can say no to those things and what you are or are not willing to take chances on potentially.
Bob Richey 33:32
One of my convicted thoughts is that decision making will overwhelm you without identity, because there’s so many decisions to make in this. And decisions have only gotten more and more complex with all the different elements. People always talk about stress of this job and how hard it is. I think where it gets really cloudy is when you lack identity and you lack conviction.
And so everything could potentially be a yes and everything could potentially be a no. Just like when you coach a basketball game, we need some easy ones. We need some layups out here, or we need a couple free throws, right? A guy’s not making shot, get him to the free throw line. Well, I think it’s the same thing in decision making. We need to have an organization that has an understanding that these are yeses and these are noes. And so now all of a sudden, maybe we eliminate some decisions even getting to my desk, or as a staff, we operate in full conviction that, hey, you know what? This is a yes and this is a no. And so now it just basically eliminates a lot of the fluff. And think about this too. Think about how many discussions you have with your staff of those gray areas. Those are the long conversations. Those are the time eaters. You’re like digging in stuff that you really don’t have clear identity in and you don’t really have full conviction in. Those turn from the 10 minute conversations to the hour long conversations. Well, time’s a finite resource for all of us. So if we can be efficient with our discussions and with our decisions and with our time, then that’s going to give us more ability to be into the spaces that matter most. It’s almost something that kind of snowballs. You’re saving time, you’re operating more efficiently, and then you’re also more convicted in what you’re supposed to be doing. And so it becomes a little bit of a supercharger.
Dan 35:12
Coach, really well said on all that stuff. We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call Start, Sub, or Sit. This is all the reason I said that.
Bob Richey 35:19
I guess this thing, man, this felt like his game day out here. I can’t wait.
Dan 35:25
For those potentially listening for the first time, we’re going to give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one, sub one, sit one, and then we will discuss from there. So coach, sounds like we’re set to jump right in.
So this first one, we titled this, the art of the DHO. This is specifically looking at how to have great dribble handoff action and specifically looking at three things with your big or the person who’s the handler of the DHO. So when teaching and trying to get what you value most in this great DHO, start, sub, sit these three options with your big. First of all is the spot or the area of the floor that they’re giving that DHO. So really working on the spot on the floor. The second option is the angle in which they go into that DHO and the third option is the pace in which they go into any sort of DHO action. So spot, angle, pace in order to make a highly valuable DHO.
Bob Richey 36:16
I’m gonna sit spot. Man, I wish all player decisions were that easy. I think that’s the easiest one. And the reason I say that’s the easiest one is, I think to have offenses is just like a good portfolio. Like we want diversification. And so we never wanna be doing the same thing in the same spots all the time. We wanna have multiple areas on the floor where we can get to similar type of things. And so for us, we wanna be able to DHO all over the floor. And whether that be low corner, whether that be on the wing, whether that be at the top of the key, whether we’re dribbling up out of the short corner, we wanna operate those at all places on the floor and really at any time in the possession. I would start, this is actually a tough one. This is gonna be a start versus six man of the year type deal, because I think these last two are both critical. I still think the most important part in terms of starting would be the angle. I’d rather be slower at the right angle than faster at the wrong angle. And so that’s why I’m gonna go with the angle of it.
I think the easiest thing that you’ve gotta understand from a DHO standpoint is we’ve gotta dribble at the defense, not the offense. And I think there’s way too many when you watch film, you see way too many people dribble at the offensive player and it makes it feel good because it’s like, well, that’s who I’m gonna go give the ball to. But I think really trying to get into that defensive player’s line and really trying to get down the floor a little bit of that DHO, I don’t think DHO’s are as effective if they’re on the arc. We want that DHO to take place a little bit below the arc and really understanding a great big, you’re trying to get down the floor a little bit. Now, that’s where that pace comes into play. If you take a bad first dribble, you’re gonna have a hard time getting under that arc. That defender can now, he can chest you, he can get physical with you, he can try to keep you on top of the floor. We wanna put that defender in a bond. And then now from there, it’s the offense’s read in terms of if we wanna hand cut that or if we wanna back cut that. But if we don’t go at the defender and make that defender put his cards on the table, it’s gonna be very hard for us to see this. I think with the pace of the handoff though, slow handoffs are a lot easier to guard than a fast one. Just like anything else, I’m trying to get a little separation. I’m trying to see, can we separate from X5 or X4, whoever’s in the handoff scenario? And can I put this thing in a situation where the tempo of this can be an advantage? And so that would be the sub.
Dan 38:37
Coach, love all this stuff here. My first question is going to be kind of a mixture of your start, your sub.
A lot of times when you do get that better angle on the dribble handoff, it can turn more into like a pitch than an actual handoff. The teaching points and the thoughts there with your bigs, because it takes a little bit of time for, hey, am I pitching it? Am I handing it off? Do you want to throw it ahead? And that can make obviously the DHL even more dynamic. What are the teaching points and thoughts on graying that for the defense? So it’s a pitch, it’s a handoff, and your bigs having that in their toolkit to be able to do that.
Bob Richey 39:10
Well, I think some of that comes down to the end of the day. You’ve got to be able to read what the defenders are doing. That’s a critical component of all this. And you’re just trying to get ahead of the defense in one way or another. So in a perfect world, if you could pitch that ahead and get out of it really, really quickly, I think all of us would say, yeah, we want that. There’s going to be defense involved in that. There’s going to be things that the defense is trying to do to create some stoppage in that. I think the best thing I would tell you is, you know, when you come to practice here, we don’t do a lot of static drills. I always want game replicating movements in every piece of our practice. And so I’m not a fan. And again, I’m not saying that these are wrong. I know a lot of guys have won a lot of games doing a lot of this stuff, but we’re not going to do just your basic.
We don’t do three man weaves here. We don’t do five man weaves. We don’t do, you know, star drills and things like that. We’re going to come out of the gate and we’re going to do two on zero dribble outs right out of practice, right from stretching. And then once we go to that, then we’re going to put them in two on twos. We’re going to start to work on that decision. My wife likes organic food. I like like good water, like clean water, but like some of this is like organic. There’s an element of this where as basketball coaches, we’re always trying to make this science and like, well, if the defender does this, then we need to do that.
We need to teach all that. And then all of a sudden you got these mechanical robots. I want to put them in enough decision making reps over the course of time that this is an art. There’s a dance to this. Hey, you know what, man, I see him ahead. I’m going to flip this thing ahead and I’m going to disappear out of this. Or you know what? They’re really trying to go under this. I’m going to dribble to the spot and I’m going to hold this. And I’m going to get to that defender’s back pocket. He’s going to go under this and I’m actually going to stick this and I’m going to set it right out here for my guard. And he’s going to shoot this three right behind it. I want both of those scenarios to be on the table.
I don’t want a guy that just says, I’m just trying to pitch it and get out of as quick as I can. That’s the best thing to do. We ended up winning that tournament game in the NCAA because of what we call Bama threes, which are pitchback threes versus a team that’s going under the handoff. I think we had four in the second half there, but you got to get those to a spot and almost set like a butt screen and hold it a little bit. And so it’s a little bit of putting your players in positions where they’re making decisions so much that now they’re not thinking about it. It just becomes second nature on what they want to do there.
Dan 41:20
One interesting, I guess, dribble handoff situation you see a lot with bigs is when the handoff gets blown up or they hard deny who they’re trying to give that handoff to. Going, I guess, one step beyond the angle and the pitch and the spot, but then something’s going to get blown up and your offense continuing to flow. One, but two, whether your big picks the ball up or whether you want them to keep the dribble and find another one, I guess the secondary action after that handoff gets blown up potentially.
Bob Richey 41:49
I think you have to teach that and I think you got to give a lot of clarity in that our players know We differentiate between a handoff with a player behind it or if you’re the last guy If there’s a wing handoff and there’s a corner guy sitting behind you Then there’s different things we could do off of that We got to be aware off of that as opposed to we’re going at a handoff and there’s nobody behind you You’re the last guy left We got to get this right and if we don’t get this right and we’ve got to know what we need to do in That situation, you know from a philosophical standpoint for me If people are gonna try to deny your handoffs and they’re gonna try to blow them up You better be a good cutting team You better be able to get behind that before it gets to the point of the handoff But also it’s just a pure spacing situation to me I think the worst thing you can do is the guys that just want the ball So they get blown up and then they stop with their foot and they come back and get it again like they’re ball beggars We’ve all seen film I think there’s got to be a little bit of an element of if he’s gonna take me out of the handoff all good cuts What do they do? They give you an option to score or they give you an option to help So if you’re coming out of the corner if you’re coming off this handoff and then you don’t get the ball Then you have to start to live with as a player like my job now is to go create help Well that guy that’s chasing you or that’s trying to blow you up You just don’t see enough of just guys kind of wrapping that to the rim and making that a scoring cut of like hey He’s blowing me up But man if I can get off of this tight and just turn this in almost, you know Like if I can just candy cake this to the rim Then maybe I can be open late or I can pull in that backside corner To where now we can skip that and we can see if we can get a close out of there on the other side Or what I like to do too in that situation Try to ask your guy to blow that handoff up and quickly switch into another action That’s hard to do if you do get blown up Then you’ve got to realize at the point of the action you are now a screener And so now get to the next body and go nail that guy.
Well, they’re gonna switch it That’s a hard thing to do to blow up a handoff and then now I got to switch on to the next one Now you might have some slip options in there. Now you might have some play behind options in there So I think it’s like hey, don’t let them just destroy your will By saying oh they took your hand off away turn yourself into a cutter turn yourself into a screener And then how quick can you do that? I think that’s going to be the key to all that
Pat 44:07
Coach my follow-up is on the first dribble and you mentioned kind of creating organic situations If you’re trying to work with a big maybe struggling with that first dribble getting the depth on the first dribble to put the handoff And like you said a scoring position What do you think about is it working on technique with him or just trying to find different? Two-on-two situations that kind of put the onus on that first dribble with the big
Bob Richey 44:31
Well, I think it even goes back before that we actually have one of our post players working on this with a lot right now. If you’re defending, I’ll put it back on you guys a little bit. You guys are good coaches.
Like if you’re defending a guy that’s in a dribble handoff, what are you telling your x5?
Dan 44:45
We are trying to deny the handoff a little bit from the inside. Yeah.
Bob Richey 44:48
It’s also one of those situations where you’re usually probably telling that post defender the handoff defender like press up on him The first thing of a good handoff player is to really work on his rip game from up there and to make sure the base core At any point in time. He could put that ball down and be a scoring threat I think there’s too many players and too many systems right now that are teaching handoffs But the first option is not a real option.
The first option would be hey, if this guy’s gonna press up We got to go by this guy and beat him and Jaylen slawson was a lead at that kid That was here two years ago, you know, they got drafted by the Kings if you pressured his handoff He was getting off your hip and he was gonna go lay the ball up or he was gonna find offense behind that And I think the guy that gets into the dribble handoff and he’s getting pressured and all of a sudden he getting pushed up the floor You know, it gets a little choppy right there I think you got to put some things on film there whether it’s an ISO rip a fake keeper Something in there where the team that you’re going against can see like hey It’s a real option for this guy to go downhill and score this ball And then from there if we can make that a threat Well, that’s gonna pull the defense off a little bit to a point where you can loosen some of that up One of my favorite things to do is to go three on three live topic He wing corner put the ball in the post players hands Let that wing guy do whatever he wants to do let the guy in the corner do whatever he wants to do and let the big Read it you talk about getting all your different options I mean if you want that first guy to cut if you want to come handoff if you want to keep the handoff and Play behind it you get so many reps there where now all the sudden if they are pressuring him He gets comfortable with that He gets comfortable with the timing comfortable with the pitches You got to put these guys in more situations where they’re feeling the decision before They’re having to make the decision in the 5-1-5 setting
Dan 46:34
Pat 47:44
Coach, our next start subset kind of building actually a little bit off of what you just said in these small-sided games we’d like to ask about when you are going to do an offensive breakdown and i’ll start by framing it if you’re going to do three on oh four on oh maybe kind of isolating your offense not live on air what are the things that you are prioritizing or like the order of operations that you’re going to emphasize when you’re doing these kind of small breakdowns on air is it option one the technique at which whatever the trigger is or like we talked about the handoff is it the timing between the players the interaction or is it the spacing
Bob Richey 48:26
I would start the spacing for sure. I think all this is a wash if your spacing’s not correct and your technique can be great and your timing can be perfect. But if they got multiple defenders in that area and they can outnumber you, have fun. The most important thing is that we’re working on our spacing.
I think the biggest thing, I’m trying to be in line with your question but also give you some good content in terms of how we do it here. We’re not gonna do a lot of numbers on O. And if we are doing numbers on O, like if we’re doing three on O, we’re gonna have three shots off of that. We’re gonna have three movements off of that. Because here’s the thing, sitting on this spacing concept, everybody talks about spacing. The hardest thing to do in basketball is to re-space. We can all initial space. Can you re-space and can you keep spacing? Can you maintain your spacing throughout the possessions? Everybody, for the most part, is gonna have really, really good initial spacing off the initial set or the initial action. The beauty is, can you maintain that through all your re-spacing? So as we do three on O’s, we’re gonna start from our regular spacing and then we’re really gonna emphasize how we re-space out of different movements. And then we’re gonna make sure we have typically one finish with two threes in any single action. And so if any of the spacing gets bad, some of that is kind of interwoven with timing because timing is critical to spacing. Are you coming out of the corner too quick or are you holding the corner too long? Where we’d be impatient in these certain things that are very timing related, which impacts spacing. And so the first part, I would say your space and your re-space is the most important thing that you’ve gotta make sure you get right.
The sub would be the timing of it. The timing is gonna be critical. And like I said, I do think there is a little bit of relation to the spacing and the timing. And I think both of those have to be taught at a high, high level. Where it is on the floor, what part of the floor you want this to take place, when the decision has to be made, some things you want to happen early, some things you want to happen late, you gotta be able to define that, you gotta be able to show your players that. And then getting that thing to where it looks like music. When I’m putting pieces together, it’s like a symphony. If one of these instruments gets off a tune or somebody, one of them not doing what they’re supposed to do, it’s gonna make this thing look really ugly. But if we can all be on the same page, then now all of a sudden we have a chance for this to look really pretty and this to look like it’s in concert, I guess would be the better way to say it.
I think technique is very important. I don’t wanna minimize technique at all. But at the same time, I don’t think we’re doing SpaceX what they’re trying to figure out today. The technique of it is very important. But again, I’m always looking to figure out, like we talked about earlier, differentiations. I think there’s a lot of good coaches in the country. And I don’t think there’s many coaches that don’t know good technique.
You’re gonna shoot par to get that right. I think your differentiations, if you’re trying to shoot birdies, is you’ve gotta have different timing than people and you gotta have better spacing than people.
Pat 51:15
You mentioned when you go half court, you like to think about like max reps. And he talked about the three on three when we were in the D H O. And it’s all about getting reps. What are you coaching to when the focus is on just getting these guys a lot of reps in a certain action in the half court.
Bob Richey 51:31
That would be clarified in team meeting before practice. We’re never going to go do a drill without a purpose. That why is everything? So we want to be able to put together a practice plan regardless.
We don’t get super tricked up and like all these notes on the practice plan. It’s like, hey, here’s our plan today. The film is saying that we need to get better at this. So we’re going to go get better at this today. So when we do this three on three, we feel like the dribble handoff is not getting down the floor enough. We also feel like that our setups with the guards are not good enough. So now like we’re going to watch some couple of clips, four or five clips. Hey, this has to be better here. This has to be better here. We’re going to try to really focus on this in practice today. Let’s go do it. And so now when they get to that drill, they know that, Hey, these are the things that we’re trying to emphasize today. And so when we’re trying to decide what we’re stopping and what we’re kind of letting play on, we’re going to stop and coach the things that we really feel like, Hey, these are the improvement points that have to get some carry over and then hear a couple of other things like we’re not going to try to coach all of it because I do think you can get bogged down there, you got to convince your team. This is where we’re deficient right now. This is where we need to be better. And now we’re going to help you go get better at this. And then you need to be able to feel that. And when you start trying to chase 10 rabbits, man, at the end of the day, you’re probably not going to catch any of them.
Dan 52:46
You know, early season right now, if you go to a lot of practices around the world, there’s X’s or spaces on the floor for teaching offense. When it comes to a spot on the floor for spacing versus an area on the floor, and I’ll try to explain this where, do you want players to be concerned about being on a certain spot? Or do you want them to be more concerned about spaces and areas and in relation to other players so they’re not, I guess, the difference between a spot versus space when you’re teaching offense?
Bob Richey 53:13
Yeah, I’m a little OCD, and so I’m going to be spot versus space. I just think the basketball court is not huge. I really believe this at my core.
The difference between a three getting off in the air and the three being contested could be the difference of six inches, could definitely be the difference of a foot. And so if a foot is that critical in the finish of the product, then wouldn’t a foot be that critical in what we’re doing to set up that desired outcome or that product? If I’m one foot higher than I need to be, and it makes that defender ability to get to me one foot faster, then now that just went from me being able to get that shot off to where they just closed me out. And so we’re very, very, very spot specific here. We call it core geography. And man, there’s nothing that really frustrates me more than when people are loose with that because it’s just the course just not that big. And we want to make people defend every single grain of that wood. And we want it to be east, west, north, south, from the corners to the middle, third to the outside edges to the rim. We want to put pressure on defenses where they got to defend every grain of it. But at the end of the day, like if we start putting ourselves on the wrong spot, then now all of a sudden it’s a game of space, the war space. And so if I’m one foot closer than what I need to be, I just made the defense’s job just one foot easier. And I want to be really, really defined in those specific spots. you
Pat 54:38
Looking back at your set technique and find it together with you know you talked about you want to be a system based on cognition decision making bridging gaps playing with pace where and then like we look like the player development and building better decision makers. Does techniques sit in the decision making process.
Bob Richey 54:59
And that’s a great question and I probably should do a good job kind of following up as I hear you say that the last thing I want to come off of is like, technique doesn’t matter. We’re huge in differentiating details. Okay. What I’m saying on that is I think that the reason I said, Hey, that’s last is it’s just kind of a given you can take for granted the water system in your house, go cut off your water and try to function in your house. That’s not going to be a whole lot of fun, right? But like everybody for the most part is going to have running water and toilets and showers and all that stuff.
And you’re just like, if you go turn the water on us there, the technique is critical to what we’re doing. It’s the water system within the house. But what I’m saying is, it’s like everybody’s going to have a technique. So what’s really going to make that even better is going to be the timing and going to be the spacing of it. I’ll tell you this, and this is another personal conviction of mine. People always ask is how do you guys develop so well? You know, you have all these big jumps. And if you look at our players, I mean, even like a PJ Smith is nine points a game, two years ago, he jumps to 18 points a game last year. We have historic big jumps from year one to year two here, where you can see guys that don’t play a lot. Jalen Slauson average. I think he scored a total of 19 points a game as a freshman. He had 31 fouls. His second year, he was starting for us on a 25 win team. And then, you know, the rest is history. He got drafted by the Kings was last year here. I think that your system needs to be your skill and your skill needs to be your system. If you can figure out a way to do that, you’re going to basically increase the rate of your development at a really fast rate. And I think where there’s a lot of wasted time when people are trying to build systems is when their system is separate from their skill.
And so what I mean by that, like you go out there and we’re working on our skill. So we’re going to put these cones out here and we’re going to come off of this screen right here. Okay. And we’re going to work on that because that’s what we saw on a video or that’s what we saw on Twitter and we’re going to work on that. Okay. And then you’re looking at it and you’re like, when do we ever do this in our system? Never. Okay. So now your skill is isolated, but now take this and say, Hey, look, we’re going to work on this dribble app and you’re going to come off and you’re going to have a hand cut back cut option right here. We’re going to back cut this and then you’re going to do this finish at the rim. Well, now we’ve just worked on our system, but then we’re also finishing and every single thing we did in our skill workout is aligned with something that we’re going to do come November, December, January, February, March for us. I don’t ever want to see anything on that court that we’re working on. That’s not built in our system. Now, our system adapts over the years, but we never wholesale change it. If you look and you popped on our film from 1718 to our film now, you’re going to see the same core values.
Bob Richey 57:32
And I think there’s a big residual in that that our players get year to year because now they’re so used to like, this is what we are. This is what we do. There’s not these wholesale changes that they’re having to learn this whole new system, which now negates all the previous years of system work. And also keeps you from being able to synchronize your skill and your system. Like at the end of the day, can you combine those two things and can you make that one to where you build this idea that this is just who we are and we’re going to get better to that. And then simultaneously we’re working on both.
Dan 58:05
Coach, really well said you’re off the start-subber-sit hot seat. That was a ton of fun. We got a final question to close the show. Before we do, really appreciate you coming on, being so thorough, sharing. This was a really fun conversation today, so thanks for your time. Absolutely.
Bob Richey 58:20
It’s been a blast.
Dan 58:23
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?
Bob Richey 58:29
I’ll give you two things, but really on the same track, I think that as coaches, we have to be committed to being lifelong learners. And I think that even as you become a head coach and as you have success in your way, that you’re constantly looking to innovate and you’re constantly looking to learn. I think the biggest investment I’ve made is reading and also seeking people and seeking out different ways of doing things and getting to know those people and really pursuing those relationships. Just in the past month, I’ve been to football practice at two programs or preseason top 10. And I’ve spent the whole day at both of them. I’ve been to a basketball program for two days of a Hall of Fame head coach that’s won a lot of games in the region and got to spend a ton of time with him. And that’s all been in the last month. And it’s challenged me in a lot of ways to get better.
It’s one of those things where you’re constantly figuring out ways to just stimulate thought and never allowing yourself to think that you’ve got to figure it out or that you’ve finally cracked the code. The code’s always changing. It takes time though. You’re going to miss some things. And I think reading has always been a huge deal for me. It slows my brain down at night and kind of gets me going in the morning, but I try to read at least 10 to 20 pages of something every day.
It’s a way where I can just keep my mind sharp. I can think and I can challenge myself. And if I can do that 365, then now at the end of the day, you’re going to knock out 20 books a year. It’s a mental workout. And we tell our teams, Hey, game basketball, mental to physical, four to one was coaches. It’s like, what are we doing to improve our mental? What are we doing to be better thinkers? What are we doing to be better learners? There’s so many things as leaders, like we’ve got to continue to get better at. And I think that your ability to grow is going to have a direct correlation to your ability to lead.
And I think the best investments that I can look back, all those people I just talked to you about, the five coaches that I mentioned, I’ve had face to face conversations with all five of them. And I’ve had in-depth conversations and like visits with four of the five, I pursued them. And whether it’s business, whether it’s sport, whether it’s whatever you can do to go out there and see if you as the leader, don’t go tell your players, Hey, 1% better every day, you go get 1% better every day, wake up and like define like, what’s this going to look like? And how am I going to challenge myself and how am I going to retool my skills? And I think that, you know, when I look back on my career, that’s been the part, the lifelines for the things where I’ve gotten out of some ruts and been able to innovate. It’s through those relationships and through the pursuit of knowledge and different things that have worked in the past.
Dan 01:01:08
All right, Pat, that was a monster of an episode in all the best ways. Been a long time. We’ve been looking forward to having Coach Richey on. He delivered a fantastic conversation today.
Pat 01:01:19
Yeah, one real general overarching takeaway with me was just conviction and the clarity, and not only knowing himself, but his program really shined through to me. And from the D.H.O. conversation, the offensive, the taking over hard jobs, I think, so clear in knowing what he wanted, what he’s built over the years, and just how they’re going to go about, and really like he talked about how to build a system, marry a system, and development, and convicted values. So hopefully, yeah, I didn’t step on any of your toes there, but I’ll throw it to you for the first takeaway.
Dan 01:01:53
No, there’s so much in here. So it was almost a theme of the entire podcast. Talked about the end there and start subset a little bit, but differentiating details. We can kind of apply that to the first bucket, which is part of where my first takeaway is. And the overarching theme of looking so deeply at how do you differentiate and be really great at being a little different rather than just trying to be also great at something somebody else is already great at.
And you could tell the history of their program and what he’s done that how deeply they thought about being great at things that are a little bit different or a little bit harder or a little bit unique and the value in that. We had Brian Hodson on from USF about a month ago. He talked about leverage, player leverage, program leverage. I think that great cultures and great leaders, they think really deeply about where can I differentiate and have leverage. And like he mentioned it as a business, as a player, as a coach, I found that running through the whole podcast. That was just one. I’m sort of stealing two takeaways from the beginning, but I just thought like blanket over the whole thing was that stood out a lot. Getting to the first bucket, so much in there about sustained winning and the program development. When we got to some of the offensive side, I really liked the attack first, action second, play without pause, stuff that we’re just continuing to hear from these elite offensive minds about what they are constantly thinking about and then how that ties into the alignment of the kind of kids they get, the kind of school they’re at. He also had a great segment on top down alignment. Everything is easier when you know who you are, when you know how you want to play, when you’re able to say no. I think I kind of asked him at the end about that, like it’s such an important part of staying focused. And so I think that shown through as well in the first bucket.
Pat 01:03:44
But I’m with you there. The top down alignment also stood out to me. Sometimes I’ve been thinking about lately and had a couple other conversations elsewhere. But when I followed up on it, I think there can be a disconnected time or even as coaches, you know, we get excited like, all right, this is what I want to run. These are kind of the players I need to get. And we miss the importance of understanding where you’re working at the institution, the club or even the location, you know, the city and how that does play a role in building long term success.
And he mentioned it to the fallacy of building a subculture and just thinking, well, you can kind of isolate yourself and we’ll have this culture, even if it doesn’t quite gel with the institution you’re at. But then he said you have just players who yeah, they may enjoy the basketball, but if every other part of the day, they’re just miserable at the school or don’t like the city, you know, because they’re just not the right guys that mix with it. And I really enjoyed his thoughts on that, especially, you know, tying it together when you’re trying to take over tough spots that are maybe historically losing situations and just the role that that can play and really kind of just for studying before you think about tactics, X and O is like just the institution and kind of what students you can get in a course, but what is the makeup of those students you can get in and how can that tie into the system that you’re going to think about playing? And I thought that’s a really important point he made there. See how hodgepodge one other point to when he talked about the bridging, I really like the order of operations he thought about and how you build the flow, the ability to bridge between concepts. And I think that is like also a delicate dance, if you want to play with pace, and then how do you go from a primary to a secondary, but the practice methodology, so to speak, and how you get to the point where they can bridge, you know, kind of like whole part whole or what he tell like the order of, you know, talking ball screens, off ball concepts, and then kind of hoping that the bridging then starts to come last as guys get breed familiarity with all the different concepts they can access, let’s say.
Dan 01:05:45
For sure. Side note, I know a lot of coaches that we’ve talked to and know are coming back from their retreats and going to the lake and the mountains and fun spots. I hope someday it would be great to go to some of those, like maybe some staff can invite us to just go and we can just be the idea guys for them and just throw them all these ideas. And how great would a podcast be to go to a retreat with some of these staffs and just do a podcast live while we’re kicking around ideas? Because I would love to see that 15 page defensive report from his assistant coach and what that conversation was like. I mean, that’s the good stuff.
Pat 01:06:20
Yeah. Or the, what did he talk about? The 15 minute conversations on gray areas that just turn into hour long conversations. Yeah.
Dan 01:06:26
So any coaches listening to this point in the podcast next year, if you want Pat and I to come to your retreat, I’d love to go a lakeside and just talk hoops.
Pat 01:06:35
Slappin and Glass is available for vacations, but let us know.
Dan 01:06:41
A new business model.
Pat 01:06:44
We do vacations. Or a fun hang.
Dan 01:06:47
Yeah, and we are, I’ll just put that out there. I think it would be fun.
Pat, but there was so much good stuff in that first bucket. I think it also kind of bled into a little bit in the start subsets too. So I will kick it to you for point number two.
Pat 01:07:00
Yeah, point number two, I’ll steal your thunder, the DHO conversation from talking about the first dribble dribbling at the defense, not the offense, all like those little tidbits of getting your DHL better, which was the conversation of the round. I liked one thought he shared about they want to avoid doing the same thing in the same spot, kind of going back to, I think, a lot of the conversations are randomization. And, you know, I think at times, oh, you know, get to the spot, you know, get to the elbow, but really opening up is just getting great depth on maybe that first dribble, putting it in a scoring area over what spot we need to get it because then you can be more dynamic, especially when you look at like bridging the offense. It’s going to be tough to get to if you need like have two or three to find spots, but it’s not so much about spot about depth of the handoff of that first dribble and then attacking the defender. I thought was a really great point there.
And then kind of the conversation we got, but I think overarching was just how you think about creating organic situations to discover, again, the ability to develop the first dribble, or is it a pitch ahead? Is it a pitch and slip? Is it the D.H.O., an actual dribble at handoff, handback, back cut, hand cut? I think something that we had another really good conversation on with Coach Lenny Acuff on that philosophy there too. So I thought just his thought on kind of differentiating and tying it back to what he’s differentiating the hand up spot and how he just thinks about the value of creating organic situations to teach all the different variations possibilities that can arise from running these D.H.O.s.
Dan 01:08:31
Yeah, when you start running offense, the thing about the dribble handoff is that, and he got to this, it’s so different based off each player. And I liked his metaphor talking a little bit about he wants the creativity of it to create a pitch back versus create a downhill or create a backdoor. And he had some good points on one of the subtle things about the dribble handoff that’s great is if you have a big that actually will attack you downhill if you over commit, that’s a really good point. And it’s so true, like if they have no respect for your dribble handoff guy, it makes it harder. I mean, it still can be very effective if they’re playing off of them. But like you mentioned, if they want to try to play up and attack you that way to be able to punish, I thought was really good. I also really liked the conversation, I think I asked him about the after actions where the handoff gets blown up. And you got to hear some good offensive talk on where are you in the space? Are you the last guy on the side of the floor? Is there another guy on that side of the floor? And then his preference not have them like come back for the ball and be a beggar, but to flow to cut, I think he called like a candy cane cut or like a zero cut. I thought that was really good because that happens all the time. Dribble handoff, it gets blown up or it wasn’t great, didn’t work. And then what does your big do? What happens next? That’s where I think he talked about really wanting to be in the first part of our conversation with the first bucket with not having things have a pause in the bridge, like you mentioned, that’s a bridge area on offense all the time of the handoff doesn’t work, it gets blown up, then what happens? And I thought there were some good thoughts by him on becoming a cutter, creating help, creating other actions after that.
Pat 01:10:11
Yeah, on that blow up conversation, I think a point of film study for me is he talked about also encouraging like to turn into a screener. Yes. So if you’re it’s blown up rather than begging, or you don’t kind of wrap it to the rim, the difficulty of them putting that defender in another action, usually via a screen, I got that circle down as something I want to go try to look at in film. I like that idea a lot. So side note for myself. Anyways, Dan, keeping it flowing here. I’ll throw it back to you for the final takeaway.
Dan 01:10:41
I definitely going to talk about our last start subset. Before we do, I want to give a little shout out to his best investment. Answer was great, which is seeking knowledge. And I thought it was great point on if we expect our players to get 1% better every day, we also need to. And I think that he had some good thoughts on reading and visiting coaches. Just want to throw that in.
I really liked his last answer to our last start subset though, with the offensive breakdown drills. And you and I kind of went back and forth before the show about should we make it on air versus with players. And, you know, we went with the on air one, just to kind of poke and see how much that he might do. And we were thinking before, if you are doing some 2-1-0, 3-1-0, 4-1-0 breakdowns, how you really make that dynamic, even though you’re not doing a long time, what does that look like? And I think again, he talked really well about his start, which was the spacing and that basically, if you don’t have good spacing and the technique and the timing, it matters less because you’re not spaced really well. I also liked at the very end. He talked about the system versus skill marriage and that your system should create the skill development. I think that was a really great point kind of at the end, just overall thoughts on all this stuff that they work on and whether you break it down 3-1-3, 4-1-4, on air or whatever, it needs to look like what’s going to happen within your system. I thought it was great. Yeah, I agree.
Pat 01:11:58
I really enjoyed that technique where it sits within decision making and mirroring all that stuff together to your system identity. But when we was talking about spacing in the 3-0, you know, he said the initial spacing is probably the given, the easy, but the value of the re-spacing and getting everyone like three shots that we were working off of the 3-0 example. Thought it was a great point.
So yeah, it’s not just one simple action. And they find a finish and everyone stands around, but continuing to get the play after the play mentality, that re-space and really emphasizing that the ability of that drill to teach re-spacing or this on air segment to teach re-spacing on top of getting everyone a shot was a point well taken by me.
Dan 01:12:40
For sure Pat, there’s a ton today. Is there anything that you wish we could have gone deeper on or that you missed fault question-wise, not by Coach Richie, of course?
Pat 01:12:50
We talked a lot about offense, but I think hidden in there too, at the end of the first bucket was a really interesting conversation on defense and kind of how you stylistically play on offense and the system you have and kind of marrying or mirroring it. I think also was the discussion at some point too about your defensive system and thinking about that. But he had some really interesting thoughts there, especially when it came to the clarity and shot distribution. So not only like what shots you want to take or want to give up, but the percentages that maybe you want to be shooting at or want to be conceit, like it’s too high defensively, even if they are the right shots or the amount of attempts, whatever it may be, but even continuing to be more clear and concise and not only like, yeah, no layups, but what is a layup? How frequent of a layups? And I thought that was a really good point.
We got to it probably a little too later in that time and we probably still could be talking about it. So if we had more time, would have loved to kind of follow it up on that and kind of marrying the systems, your offense, your defensive system, and where it overlaps or the contrast of maybe how you want to play to how you want to defend.
Dan 01:13:53
Gave a quote from Archie Miller death by downhill and he talked about that I like that quote too about just thinking about their defensive stuff and You can be alerting to drop coverage because you see it on the NBA and you hear all the analytics about drop coverage being such A no big-time thing But if you don’t have the shot blocking or the length are you just getting slaughtered by guys going downhill? So that was an interesting little part of that too. Well, once again, we really appreciate coach Richie for coming on and then inviting Us to his retreat next year We appreciate everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time
Pat 01:14:32
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit SlappinGlass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slappin’ Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.