This week on the podcast we were joined by UT Martin Head Coach Jeremy Shulman for a wide-ranging conversation on defensive tradeoffs, switching, building a system around what you believe, and attacking hedge coverage.
In our post interview wrap-up, we tried to pull out a few of the bigger coaching ideas from the conversation…
A few thoughts from our wrap-up with Jeremy Shulman…
- The biggest takeaway was not what UT Martin does defensively, but why they do it. Switching, containing, and putting two on the ball only work because they are tied to a clear belief system.
- Shulman’s best point may have been that rotations do not have to be something a defense avoids. If you train them every day, they can become the strength.
- The hedge conversation was a good reminder that every solution creates the next problem. Flip the screen, RAM the big, re-screen the hedge — all can work, but only if the offense understands what coverage they are trying to create next.
- In the modern roster-building era, trust might be the hardest thing to build quickly. Identity can be stated early. Cohesion can grow. But trust has to hold up when roles, money, agents, and pressure enter the room.
Transcript
Dan Krikorian 02:21
Coach, congrats on the success over the past couple years. Well, really your whole career if you go back to your JUCO days, but congrats on all the success. We are really excited to have you on the show today.
Jeremy Shulman 02:30
I appreciate it. I mean, we talked a little off air, but to actually have a chance to be on the podcast after listening to about a hundred million of the podcasts over the last few years, I’m very honored and very happy to be here.
Dan Krikorian 02:41
Thank you, Coach, appreciate that. Coach, we were talking about it a little bit off air as well, and we’re just gonna bring that conversation onto the show.
And that is keys to building your defense, and really looking at the defensive trade-offs that you would think about as a coach, pack line versus kind of more extended trap for how aggressive you are, two-point field goal percentage, three-point field goal percentage. I mean, all these little trade-offs that we think about and make, and you having historically a great defensive team, how you think about these trade-offs as you’re building it out.
Jeremy Shulman 03:13
I want to go into on that is as a coach, you’ve got to do what you believe in. And that is probably the, I don’t know, the most under-taught thing as coaches study. Every coach wants to study a great defense coach here or a great offensive coach here. You got to be really true to who you are. And that’s something I’ve had to continue to learn almost over and over, even in my own coaching career. But whatever you believe in is what you’ve got to do.
Like there’s no right wrong way to do it. I mean, Jim Baham, you know, one of bazillion games around two, three zone, Nolan Richardson press for 40 straight minutes. You’ve got pack line teams. You’ve got like up, you know, just get up into pressure teams. You’ve got teams that don’t want to put two on the ball teams that do. So first and foremost, I just think it’s so important to do what you really believe in. And so for us, obviously we’re extremely unique. Like to say, we’ve got the most unique defensive system in the country. I think we’re very weird. I mean, it’s some type of a mash between obviously a lot of man, but some kind of hybrid matchup zone principles in there as well. And I just some really weird ways to think about it. But I think why it works first and foremost, is it’s just something that I believe in completely. And then because of that, our players get to believe in it completely. And, you know, as far as the trade offs, you know, I’d love to get into some of the specifics, especially, you know, on kind of what you want to know. But I mean, again, with those trade offs, you can’t do everything, right? Like as a coach, even say my first year here at UT Martin, some of the struggles that I thought we had at times defensively was trying to take another step from junior college, right? I’ve been in junior college, we’d had a lot of success. I think we were one of the top eight in the country in defensive efficiency in junior college, 12 straight years or something. And so we go to division one, that is D1, right? Everyone’s better, better coaches, better players, we’ve got to like get better. And so I thought we almost tried to do too much my first year defensively and had some struggles at times rather than again, there is a trade off. You can’t do absolutely everything on the court defensively. And I thought we found a better balance on that, you know, this year.
Dan Krikorian 05:09
So, Coach, maybe going into one of the first, I guess, trade-offs you would think about as a coach, and that’s just pressure versus non-pressure or being more contained. And where that starts for you, up on the ball, a little bit off the ball, in gaps, in a lane, and maybe starting there would be interesting.
Jeremy Shulman 05:27
I think to start with for us, I mean, we’re not a pressure team. And for whatever reason, I’ve just never believed in that. And I’ve always been drawn to more of the Pacline style defenses, you know, that contain style defenses. I just think if you can take away the rim, I think you have already created such an advantage for yourself defensively. Because, you know, when teams get to the rim, you know, obviously, two point shots at the rim are the highest percentage two point shots, but you’re also getting drive and kick threes, you’re also getting the most scoreable offensive rebounds. And so to me, if you’re allowing, you know, rim touches consistently defensively, you’re in trouble.
So for me, I don’t really believe in pressuring and giving up potential drives of rent. And I know everyone’s different. There’s some phenomenal defenses out there that pressure, and also rely, you know, not just on guarding the ball, but have great shot blockers on the backside. I just want to protect the rim and just really, really contain. Now, we’re a huge scouting report team, we can get into that in a little bit. But that does, you know, change a little bit personnel base, right? There are going to be some players that will pressure. But just generally, our overall concept is I believe so much in just containing the ball. And there’s drawbacks to it, right? Like now, offensive teams can really make passes, they can swing the ball, you get more ball reversals, you get longer possessions defensively, like we’re a team that probably plays at a slower pace at times, but not by design. But teams don’t shoot quick against us. So I mean, there’s definitely some real drawbacks there. But generally, again, you got to do what you believe in. And that’s what I believe in.
Patrick Carney 07:01
You mentioned at the top, you incorporate some hybrid zone principles. And maybe this interesting point, as we’re talking about kind of this contain, you know, the level of pressure.
And correct me if I’m wrong, I’m assuming just incorporating some zone, hybrid zone concepts into your man-to-man defense that you guys use and not necessarily that you play a hybrid zone defense.
Jeremy Shulman 07:22
Correct. Obviously, anyone that’s washed us know we switch a ton.
And that kind of gets into some of the matchup and zone principles. And to me, we’re always at our best when if you’re watching us between our switching between how we guard the ball between sometimes some of the zone stuff we go to, I think we’re at our best when a maybe not a coach, but just a normal fan that stands is not sure if we’re running a matchup zone if we’re running the man. And that’s after me a whole lot even this past year, UT Martin, I mean, I’ve even had basketball people come up to me and say, Hey, I love your zone. I’m like, well, we didn’t run one possession zone all year. But you know, we do I think do some really weird stuff defensively. So there are a lot of zone principles in there.
Patrick Carney 08:03
And when you are starting to switch, I guess, what are some of these concepts that you think make your switching defense more unique and, you know, I found success with.
Jeremy Shulman 08:11
To me, the first thing is we want to switch everything is our mentality. And it sounds extremely simple, but I think there’s a real basis behind that.
If we take away confusion, because obviously a lot of counters against that are ghost screens are slipping the screen or trying to create confusion. If we just tell our guys, guys, y’all don’t have an option. We’re just going to switch everything. And we’re going to do it day after day of practice, we’re going to do it all the time. We become really good at switching. And so all these teams that run all this misdirection and all these teams that run all these slides and ghost screens, you know, in theory, at least won’t hurt us nearly as much as they would, you know, a team that maybe doesn’t switch all the time, but switches sometimes. And that’s a great counter. And that’s obviously something we do against switching teams. But because that’s our number one rule is we’re just going to switch everything, especially anything on the ball. And I think we can take away a lot of those, you know, ghosts and slips and angle ghosts.
Patrick Carney 09:05
A lot of the conversation we have around switching is obviously the ability of the defense, let’s say switch with force or you talk about push switching. And if you’re man to man, let’s say skews a little bit more conservative in gaps, how are you teaching or talking about switching with proper physicality and not just like chasing the actions because you’re too contracted at times in your gaps?
Jeremy Shulman 09:27
That’s a great question, and that is some difficulty, because we’d like to get up and jam on a switch, right, you know, which is your push switching. And so we’d like to get up and jam, but because we’re more passive in our defense, we don’t get that as often as we would, I don’t say as often as we’d like, but to me, if you can jam and take away the slip in the first place, I mean, that’s a great way to do it.
But to me, communication matters so much. Having the right type of players, we recruit really high IQ players, really high processors for a reason. It’s not just for offenses for defense as well. That’s the number one thing we look for in recruiting is how their mind works. You probably watch our team where we’re never gonna be the most athletic, we’re not gonna be the most dynamic, sometimes we’re not even the best, you know, shooting team, but I do want guys that can really understand the game really high basketball, IQ guys and guys that really just process athletic competition in general. And so I think that helps a lot with our switching. So even if sometimes the techniques not as perfectly as we need it to be, and not as physical as we need it to be, if our minds are there, and then if our communication is there, I think that’s what has helped us become a really good switching team.
Patrick Carney 10:33
I think the other thing we’ve really been interested when we look at switching after the switch, how do you talk about solving mismatches? If you’re going to give up a mismatch and maybe to a primary score, whether it’s on the perimeter or in the post, how do you think about solving those mismatches? Or are you really just switching and you’re looking more at just stopping the offense in their tracks and living with what comes versus, yeah, okay, well, we switch now let’s hit it or double team it or the post or vice versa, and then also rebounding against the switch.
Jeremy Shulman 11:02
all of that goes into our daily dialogue. And to me, it all starts with recruiting. I’ve had luck with all different types of point guards and guards over the years. And so my best point guards have been sub six foot, or even sub five 11. But as we’ve gotten more and more into the switching thing, it’s been harder for us to take small guards. So I think the recruiting aspect means a lot.
So if we’re getting bigger guards, and our point guard last year was six, five, our other kind of point guard, combo guard that started alongside him was six, seven, you know, those guys switching on to a big is a whole lot easier to match up than if I’ve got a five 11 guy or six foot guy, which kind of goes back into do what you do and do what you believe in, rather than doing someone else’s doing right. And so if someone listening to his podcast is like, Oh, my gosh, I love the UT Martin system defense, we want to do this. And they’ve got a bunch of 511 guards. And I don’t know if that’s there’s obviously solutions and able to scram guys out. But you know, I don’t know if it fits quite as well with that. So recruiting is where it starts. We do have solutions just in our system for, or at least we try to continually work on solutions for anything an offense is going to do against us in the best matches, whether it’s on the ball, you know, with movement in the post up. So we want to have different solutions on that. And because we don’t really change our defenses a lot, we just changed how we play our defense. So we have about 10 or 11 different ways to run our defense, even if it’s the same defense, even if it looks like to the, I guess the untrained eye looks like we’re, you know, run the exact same coverage and exact same style, but it’s really 10 or 11 different ways that we’re kind of nuanced. And well, we’re going to run kind of this way now this style, we’re going to, this is our counter here, this is our counter here, almost a little bit like how a lot of teams play in coach offense, they may run the same action, but have a ton of different reads, a ton of different counters to it. That’s kind of how we feel on our defense. And hopefully that makes it complicated enough. That is hard for the other team to ever figure out truly what we’re doing, or at least the nuances of it. But also why going back to recruiting, we’ve got to have the right guys that can mentally pick up on it. Because if you can’t pick up on it, I mean, I’m probably not the right coach to play for.
Dan Krikorian 13:08
Yeah. Is it possible to give an example of one way that it would look the same, but it’s different, like one of these 10 or 11 different ways?
Jeremy Shulman 13:15
Absolutely so let’s talk about the post up mismatch because that’s one thing that teams go to constantly. We’ve got multiple different ways that we’re gonna guard that and it’s just with different you know verbal calls and it might be personnel based it may just go into the entire game that way right maybe we change it out of the time out but anyone that watches knows that we like to double team the post. Double team the post from a specific player sometimes other times it’ll be from just position on the floor other times it’s going to be. We’re going to you know double team from the baseline only other teams were going to show the double but we’re actually just digging and recovering other times we’re just gonna go in and dead the post on there and so that’s really already five different ways just on the post mismatch but hopefully if you’re watching us you’re not really gonna be able to pick up on all that on film because if you watch ten games of us.
You know we may do one thing sixty seventy percent of the time but we’re gonna do four or five other things in those other thirty forty percent on the air and so you’d have to watch a whole lot of games of to see and then even then hopefully don’t know where a call is so we want to keep you off guard the real philosophy is if we can ever get on those day and age is very difficult for this but we never get returning players consistently and have guys that we can build up in the program year over year. We can continue to add more and more layers you know to that just like teams talk about adding offensive layers and to come and read system we want to continue to add our defensive layers and so this day and age and we just it’s kind of like you know junior college roster building again where you have so many new guys every year and so each team’s different on to how many layers we can go into that I was this past year we had a lot more layers and we did my first year UT Martin because. For one we had some returning players but also we just had an unbelievable IQ on our roster and so we’re able to add because. My mind kind of works very weird very crazy I’m probably excruciatingly attention to detail and micro which probably drives my staff crazy at times. But you know the way my mind works I mean there’s a million different things I’d like to do in the basketball game and obviously we may only be able to do about seven or eight of them but with more IQ on our roster and then more returning players year over year we can continue to add more layers on that.
Patrick Carney 15:26
in talking about trade-offs and as you try to layer your defense, maybe within the layers and you mentioned the different types of post-coverage it is, and being attention to detail. The trade-off and how detailed you go into these coverages and being perfect in them versus we want to do them just enough to confuse the offense. So it doesn’t need to be perfect.
We need to understand, of course, what we’re doing and be in sync versus we need every detail to be right. I guess like how much the time trade-off in trying to teach this and get it right as close to let’s say perfect versus well, it’s just to keep the offense off balance. you
Jeremy Shulman 16:01
Great question, holy cow. So mine is completely on the perfection side.
And I think it’s partly because from my former boss, and I’ve been a head coach most of my career, I just finished my 29th year of coaching, going into year 30, all but three of those years, I was a head coach. And it’s a very weird and different path compared to a lot of coaches. But when I was an assistant coach, I learned from Mark White. And Mark White, when I was assistant coach at East Mississippi and Tiny Scuba of Mississippi, he was huge on being great at what you do. Don’t do too many things, be great at what you do. And so that’s when I talk about the layers on how much we do. And then also by the way, we’re extremely simple offensively for the same reasons, probably should be more complex offensively, especially look at some of our offensive numbers. Defensively, we can be very complex, but only to where I think we can at least chase perfection. Obviously we can never be perfect, but we wanna be absolutely great at what we do, which is also why we have different ball screen coverages too. We just ended up, I never felt comfortable this past year with that team doing anything outside of switching on a ball screen coverage. Next year coming in, we may run depending on what we pick up and what we do extremely well. We may run four different ball screen coverages, but we end up switching only the entirety. I think it was like almost every single possession was either a switch or supposed to be a switch, right? And maybe we didn’t one or two times accidentally, but it’s because that’s where I felt comfortable where we met our standard, to your point on the question, of what we could be great. There are some coaches out there that are phenomenal, that run a million different things defensively to keep the offense off guard. That’s a great way to do it also. It’s just not my way. Our way is whatever we do, we have to be great at it, or else I don’t have confidence doing it in a game. And so I scrap and we end up not doing it.
Dan Krikorian 17:47
Coach, one of the interesting things I think when diving into your defense and historically as well, when you’re talking about maybe not being a pressure team, not being up on the ball, but you also have historically been a team that generates a lot of steals. And it seems like in my mind, or at least in Coach’s mind, you think pressure defense, trap up on the ball, that’s generating steal opportunities.
You’re more contained in gaps, take away the rim, but also generating a lot of steals. Could you go a little bit into the places you think about generating steals with a team that’s going to be more contained?
Jeremy Shulman 18:21
I appreciate that. That’s, to me, some of the growth that we’ve had, because my teams haven’t always done this.
If you go back some of the Eastern Florida years, we’ve always been good defensively, but I’m going to go on a tangent for a second, but this is what I love about basketball. It’s unsolvable. It continues to evolve. I try to continue to evolve. I just want to continue to learn and each year, hopefully, pick up on a couple of new things we can add. I mean, that’s what’s just beautiful about this game. It’s incredible. So specifically with your question about generating turnovers, we started adding some stuff about whatever, maybe 40 years ago. And I thought our defense was phenomenal, but it was a little bit too bland for me. We weren’t causing turnovers. We’re stopping people from scoring, or at least from making their shot, but they were getting a lot of shots up. They would never turn the ball over. And so about four years ago, just wanted to kind of think outside the box and just do things a little different. And so we made a real decision to decide, hey, we want to put two on the ball a lot. And to me, that’s one of the biggest philosophical differences in what we do compared to a lot of teams. A lot of great teams out there. I know like Hawaii got a lot of popularity this past year, but I never helped it. And being unbelievable at just staying true to who they were and never helping, we would be like the opposite of Hawaii. We love putting two on the ball. And, you know, it’s funny when I first got the job here and we got a brand new staff, I would have this discussion with my staff at times as we’re installing. It’s like, well, that makes no sense. Coach, all that makes no sense. Why would you put two on the ball? Like we need to stay out of rotations. I said, well, I don’t know, hear me out, but like what if we work on our rotations so much every single day that that actually becomes a strain. So when you on offense are thinking, hey, let’s put two on the ball and get us into rotations that that is actually exactly, you know, the weakness for most teams. What if we work on it so much every single day and we work on our closeouts every single day and we work on all of our X out rotations and moving on fly the ball. And we’re so good at rotations that actually is a strength. So what you were perceiving as our weakness is just going right into what we do every single day. And that was kind of the thought process even four years ago when we started adjusting this and said, let’s just be different. And part of it is I just like being different. I’m a different dude and I had weird long hair last year. I wear bright shoes. Like I just want to be different in what we do. And so it drives me crazy. Like when the movie Titanic came out, I hated the movie Titanic. I never actually saw it by the way, but like I hate the movie because everyone loved the movie. I was raving about it. I was like, oh, that movie’s horrendous.
Jeremy Shulman 20:47
Like, did you ever see it? No, it didn’t matter. It was terrible. So, you know, I just like doing things different. You know, I’ve been kind of weird and different my whole life. And so, you know, I just decided, hey, let’s just put two on the ball constantly and find solutions in that and just be different than whatever else is doing. Because to me, if you’re not going to be different in this game, you better have better players. If I’m going to be the same as everyone else, I better have better players.
And so I can’t always, you know, you just don’t know recruiting, you know, year to year if you’re going to have that. And so we do put two on the ball quite a bit. Again, some of this on call, some of it spots on the floor. Some of it is, but it’s all by design. And some of it’s game by game. You know, there’s going to be certain games we’ll put two on the ball even more than others. And we try to do it in kind of weird ways. It’s hard to always pick up on film. But again, we’ve got probably six either calls or spots on the floor that we like to put two on the ball and just try to be great in our rotations and just be weird and funky. And again, that does change year by year. The year before, I’m going to be honest, I didn’t think my first year at UT Martin, I didn’t think we were very good defensively. And, you know, it was my first year. And you don’t know what you don’t know, you know, coming into coaching division one for the first time. I had never been a division one assistant even. And I love our team. I love our players. They were amazing, but we probably weren’t quite as, you know, good as we needed to be. And especially on the defensive end.
So we actually, we did a lot more run and jump that year than I’d ever done in my life and caused a lot of turnovers and kept us in games, won a lot of games for us, almost pulled off a couple of huge upsets that year. But we did a ton of run and jump, but that specific, you know, put two on the ball. We didn’t do nearly as much of this past year. It’s just personnel base. We didn’t need to. I mean, we look at the stats when we finished third in the country and scoring defense right between Houston and Duke and still finished 21st in the country in steals per game. But we didn’t do it with presses. We didn’t do it with full court run and jump.
Dan Krikorian 22:32
I find it really interesting philosophical point that you made and kind of going back to switching and then I think a lot of coaches like when you talk to you think about switching as a way to not put two on the ball to keep yourself out of rotation and with you switching all the time and then wanting to put two on the ball. Can you like talk a little bit more about those two things, how they pair together because I think that’s really an interesting combo there.
Jeremy Shulman 22:56
say it probably makes no sense when you read up and study the game even we just say they’re probably makes absolutely no sense because again switching is normally to not put two on the ball and we just don’t want to put two on the ball in the same areas that other people do you know if you put two on the ball in a ball spring coverage like to me that’s where it comes down like that’s where the difference is if you put two on the ball in a ball spring coverage I mean I think that’s what teams work on offensively every single day I think that’s what teams are worried about defensively every single day and so that’s like the one spot I don’t want to put two on the ball now we have those coverages I mean I’ve coached a lot of years my career you know really you know blitzing ball screens I’ve run drop coverage before I’ve run ice coverage before I mean you know when you’re hey it says coaches long or as old as I am you’ve kind of done a little bit of everything at one point but to me that’s just where when I really settled into my beliefs defensively it was I don’t want to put two on the ball on a ball screen and then but we do want to in other ways that maybe teams don’t get to practice against every day or they definitely don’t see from other teams all the time I think that uniqueness I mean Joey Gallo who obviously runs incredible zone at Mary Mac is one of the best coaches in the country I think that’s part of the beauty of what he does he just does something different you don’t see every day and he believes in it so much and he has his own little tweaks and differences that he runs in his zone and other people run zone and he runs it all the time like I think that’s the beauty and what he does you know he wanted to be different and he believes completely in what he does and he makes his own adjustments and then all of a sudden they’ve got this phenomenal defense so even it’s a very different style than we have I mean there’s a lot of motivating factor there as well
Dan Krikorian 24:29
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Patrick Carney 25:35
I’d like to ask about being good in the scramble. And when you look at closeouts in the scramble or when you’re closing out in rotations, I know it’s a combination of things, but what do you think kind of set your defense apart and how you taught like the closeout technique, or maybe is it the scouting preparation and knowing like who we need to close out, who we don’t, and what should be maybe, or like a lane closeout, take away the extra pass.
I know it’s probably a combination, but I guess what do you think set your defense apart when you’re talking about how you want to close out in a scramble situation?
Jeremy Shulman 26:07
So all that is super important, but I think without any doubt the number one most important thing is the mental processing and basketball IQ of the player. And I found better ways to teach drills and to teach the concepts. I mean, I watch film with our guys every single day. I’m like a film nerd. I keep about five hours per day just for individual film sessions with our guys during the season. Not group sessions, not just with my assistant coaches. I mean, I want them to watch film one-on-one with me, you know, throughout the day. And they get to call me, you know, I don’t want to force someone to watch film because I might be extremely boring at times on here. But that basketball IQ and these guys do it. I mean, every single day, five hours straight, my office is nonstop with guys coming in for film session because they want to keep just learning the game, learning the game. And that’s, I think, what makes our guys just incredible and a joy to coach.
But that basketball IQ, I can do the same drills for two different players on our roster. I can teach the same techniques and watch the same film with them. But player A just gets it down perfect, right? And just knows exactly what he’s doing and almost just anticipates the play and just incredible. And player B, no matter how much I work with them, is either on the wrong read or can’t process the scouting report quick enough on who he’s closing out to or whatever it is. I mean, it feels like this is my first year ever coaching. That’s the beauty, again, of basketball. It’s like I’m learning nonstop and I’m learning, you know, the game nonstop, I’m learning myself nonstop. And so that’s why for me and our weird, crazy system, mental processing, basketball IQ is number one by far, because, you know, if you get the right guys in the building on that, then also in the teaching makes sense. Like my weird way of teaching, all of a sudden they’re picking up on it and they’re like, Oh my gosh, this is so easy. And so I love this tangent story. I’d asked two players my first year here at UT Martin and two of our guys, one was a first year player with me, one had come with me from Eastern. And they were just phenomenal in our system. And we had some other guys that were really struggling. I brought those two guys to the side and said, guys, give me something. What am I doing right in teaching this? And what am I doing wrong? When I’m teaching, especially the one player who just played for me a couple months only, I mean, he hadn’t even been at summer school for us. When I teach it, why does this make sense to you guys? Why do you figure it out? Why are you so good in our defense? And they both had the same answer. They said, coach, it just makes sense. Everything you’re teaching just makes sense. And I think it was at that moment that I realized it’s still not necessarily what I’m teaching. It’s how different people receive it. And it starts with also buying, right? Like you’ve got to really believe like you can’t come in and think, Oh man, coach, this is some crazy coach right here. What is he doing?
Jeremy Shulman 28:37
Like, what are these weird concepts that you got to come and be like, Oh, man, I’m ready to play in this defense right here. This is really freaking cool.
And then you got to have the right mental processors that it just resonates. And so that’s just been a really big part of how we recruit.
Dan Krikorian 28:50
I knew Pat was going to have to ask a close-out question at some point in this show. Coach, this has been awesome so far. We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re going to give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one, sub one, and sit one, and then we’ll discuss from there. So Coach, if you’re set, we’ll dive into this first one.
So as you’ve kind of alluded to, but you had a long, terrific past at the JUCO level before making the jump to Division I, and Pat and I were discussing before the show that there’s likely a lot of things that are helpful from your time at JUCO that now in the modern Division I era, you’ve been able to bring over when it comes to rosters kind of being reshuffled each year. And so this question has to do with from JUCO to Division I, the toughest thing to build quickly that you found. So Start, Sub, or Sit, toughest thing to build quickly. First one is trust, quickly building trust with players, personnel, staff, all that. The second is the cohesion part of it, getting guys to play together within a system like we’ve been talking about. The third option is just building an identity quickly. So Start, Sub, Sit, the toughest thing to build quickly, learnings from JUCO to D1, trust, cohesion, or identity. And obviously Start will be the toughest thing.
Jeremy Shulman 30:11
toughest of those. The toughest one. Without a doubt trust. Without a doubt trust. And it’s not even close for me.
And the reason is, and I’ll explain this in a second, but the reason is money and agents. And that’s why. I mean, 100%. And we are dealing with some amazing agents now, by the way. But to me, the biggest thing that I’ve learned that goes in with that trust part, which goes into why that’s no doubt the starter on there, is that, you know, back in the day, if you recruited, like you would have to recruit the player’s parents. And like, if a parent was out of their minds, or they were always in the kid’s ear, or they were the ones yelling during the games, or getting the kid to look in the stands, you may not take that kid, right? Like that was a real red flag. Well, the agents are the new parents. And so for us, it’s becoming so important to work with agencies and work with agents that we think believe in us and believe in our vision and believe in a kind of a long term holistic view for our players to develop, get better and make the most long term money, rather than just what they can make that first year or second year. And so that trust part is hard because if you have even one or two of the wrong agents around getting guys to really buy in and really trust what we’re teaching trust that we have their best interest and hard trust that we’re going to do everything we can to win games trust that we’re doing the right thing. If they have an agent saying, Oh, well, if you’re just scoring a few more points a game, you can get more money or coaches playing this guy just because he likes this guy more like he’s not as good as you that trust part is, to me, extremely hard to build and harder than even was at any junior college year I had, because money is the kerosene on the fire right now with that. And so I don’t think it’s even remotely close on others. The easiest one, so I guess that’d be the bench would be identity. I think identity is the easiest for me at this level because you have to believe in it. Like we talked about with our defense and it starts with the recruiting process. You know, we tell every recruit coming in, I mean, this is who we are. Like if you don’t want to play for some weird, crazy coach that recruits a Euroleague type team and doesn’t pressure the ball and we run this crazy, weird, nuanced defense, then don’t come here in the first place. Right. And so we have so much belief in our identity, I mean, belief is always on our t-shirts. We have family on our t-shirts. Just everything we do is we’re going to be family, this identity, we’re going to believe we’re just going to run this style of defense and we’re going to play very international. And so that part’s very easy. The cohesion part, that would be in the middle because I think that goes in with the trust. If you have enough identity, I think you’re going to have a certain level of cohesion right off the bat.
Jeremy Shulman 32:50
I think if you just truly believe in what you’re doing, have enough conviction as a coach in what we’re doing, you’re going to have some cohesion already. And then that’s where you got to build the trust is to have the next step of the cohesion. So I think all three really tie in, but I just think the trust without any doubt is the start on that when that’s the hardest.
Dan Krikorian 33:06
Just talking about right now roster rebuilding year to year, right now, division one level, but you obviously were doing this in your career at the JUCO level where that’s kind of the process of the JC level. Has it gotten easier for you?
Can you kind of tell when things are going to be easier than harder when you get a new group in and where you need to go to start to build that trust? Has that been something over the years you’ve kind of gotten an ear and an eye for?
Jeremy Shulman 33:30
I will say this, at least, this is all I know. So this is just like the norm for me. I started my own AAU program when I was still in high school and did that for 10 years. And our 1700 year every year, we move them up to a Division 1 and we have new guys every year. And so got used to that for 10 years.
And then a total of 17 years at the junior college level where the longest you can have someone is for two years. Our best year we ever had in junior college in Eastern Florida, won 31 games, once a national championship game. If there’s no more in the state of Florida, all this stuff back in, actually, it’s about to be the 10 year anniversary of that. In 16, 17, I mean, we had 14 new players. We only returned three guys. And we still taught our stuff quick enough. We had enough buy-in, enough trust to your question on that. So this is kind of all I know. I will say the disappointing thing is my dream my whole life was to be a Division 1 head coach. I never wanted to coach an NBA. I didn’t want to play in the NBA. Like I just wanted to coach. I was running leagues in second grade recess. You know, then I get into AAU and then I get into junior college and say, oh my gosh, what would it be like with the way we teach and want to develop, like taking young guys and all of this? What if I have guys for 40 years? The Division 1 is the dream. This would be amazing guys. And then, of course, by the time I finally get my opportunity, which I’m so grateful for, obviously, by the way, I love it here at UT Martin, I finally get to John and say, ah, no, you still get him for like one or two years. So have fun with that.
So it’s just all I know. You know, I mean, at some point, you know, if I coach somewhere for four years, it would be pretty cool. Or five pretty soon, maybe. That’s right.
Patrick Carney 35:02
I’d like to follow up on the cohesion piece, team cohesion, and maybe drilling down more specifically on critical communication. We talked a lot about defense and switching the role that communication plays. Your experience, again, with constant roster turnover, how you view ways to build quick cohesion and teams that communicate on a critical level when the game’s tough and when teams need to be able to react instantaneously.
Jeremy Shulman 35:29
I think that’s hard. And it’s something I’ve got to get a lot better at. There’s no doubt about that.
I’d love to sit up here and say, I’ve got all the answers and I don’t. It starts obviously with all the cohesion. You’ve got to have one common goal, one common vision where everybody is moving towards the same thing. And so that’s at the very surface level. And obviously, I say all the basic obvious things. I’ve got to develop relationships with the guys and be close knit. But to really, as you said, at the critical level, how to build that cohesion when things get tough. That’s honestly my big off season project, one of my two big off season projects. And especially with trust being harder with agents in the air. Our freshmen from Lithuania, apparently I wouldn’t find that about till after a year was received a high major offer for $300,000 back in January. So how do we combat that and still keep that cohesion, keep that trust, keep all these things going during critical times? Well, I think if you look at our season, I don’t think we did a good enough job on it. And that’s a direct reflection of me. And so that’s my big project, because I love our guys. I don’t care what other coaches are out there. I’ve got a ton of flaws, but I love our guys more than any coach in the country loves their guys. I will stand on a mountain for that. If these players knew how much I truly cared and loved out and talked about them all the time, talked to the staff about them, obviously tell our guys that too. But there’s still a disconnect when it comes to those critical times. Like when things get really, really tough, how do you have that cohesion? How do you have that trust? How does nothing else matter, except for that one vision, that one goal, that one team, that we’re moving forward? I don’t have the answers. I can tell you one thing, I’ll be spending the next three, four months diving into every little micro detail I can, every little adjustment I can make to try to build even more cohesion and more trust.
Patrick Carney 37:16
Moving along our second start subset for you, we’re going to look at the offensive side of the ball and give you three ways to attack a hedge ball screen with the angle being which is the most nuanced to teach. You just say, hey, we’re going to do this in the timeout. It may not exactly translate because there’s more behind it, even though the strategy is sound.
So the three tactics to attack a hedge ball screen. One would be flipping the screen. Two would be rescreening the hedge. And then the third option would be setting a RAM screen prior to running into the screen.
Jeremy Shulman 37:56
those are three good ones. And the funny thing is, the way my mind works, my answer is actually none of them.
Fair enough. All of those are phenomenal. I think they’re so closely knit on those three. I think a start-sub-sit on those three is going to be really, really difficult. I’m going to go in and whatever the bottom one is, sit, bench, whatever, it’s going to be re-screen. I think if you’re hedging, I think getting into that re-screen, we like our re-screens against more passive coverage, honestly. I think the team’s really good at hedging. It gets really, really physical. Sometimes it gets hard even getting to that re-screen. Like they think about going against some of the hard hedging that University of Houston can do and how physical and a bunch of strong linebackers attacking you out of that. I think a re-screen would be the most difficult of those three against that. Obviously, I kind of go on the pollers to start with. I love flipping a screen against that. That I think if you can do a really good job, get your defender on the wrong side, flip it out the last second, and do it with the right timing, the right nuance, the right detail, the right misdirection. I mean, that’s a really hard thing to guard if you’re hedging. Really, really hard. Yeah. I mean, there’s no doubt. To me, that’s the start. That’s number one. Then right in between is the RAM. I think the RAM is fantastic. We’re kind of weird and different in this, but in some ways, we like all coverages. One thing about re-screen is if you RAM screen and get that hedge out late, it may turn into drop. Now you got to decide, do you want to go against drop on that possession? Does your point guard do better against drop? If the answer is yes and absolutely, you could actually say RAM might be the number one thing on that list because it is the biggest ability to change what the coverage is. If you have a really high processing guard or if you want to make sure they’re in a drop coverage or you want to get them disconnected because obviously you’ll arrive alone more likely than that. Then the other thing on the negative side on the RAM would be if teams switch that RAM, again, it’s another version of maybe changing that coverage. You might RAM screen, they may switch the RAM screen up and then want to switch the ball screen. Now, you’re potentially putting three different reads for your point guard if they switch the coverage where if you just go into it knowing, hey, I know they’re going to hard hedge it, let’s just flip the screen on that one because we know what they’re in and so it simplifies and that kind of goes into the processing. How elite is your point guard or how simple do you have to make the game for them?
Patrick Carney 40:22
love the explanation on the RAM screen.
I would like to follow up with the flip your start and just the details that you prioritize or try to teach with your bigs and your guards to one I guess get the footwork at the angle and to get your guard reading or understanding that the flip is coming and how to play off of it.
Jeremy Shulman 40:41
think the first thing is pace. So as you come out to me, if you can win your first step as a screener, you know, when your first step is a screener, I’m going to give you a bunch of things because to me, the game is very nuanced in detail, but the first thing, and you win your first step, that initial speed, now you can coast the rest, but if you can sprint your first step, now the defenders, there’s always going to be a lack, right?
The perception of the man that you guarding moves. And so now the defenders already playing a little bit of catchup just on the first step. So now as you coast and start going a little slower as you get towards the screen, now that’s your change of pace. Okay. So now you’ve gone fast to start. Now you’ve gone slow as you get closer to it. And hopefully again, the defender is also a step behind on these change of paces. So he may still be going fast as you’re starting to go slow because he’s what he’s trying to catch up because he wants to edge it. And so now you got to make a real quick move to now get to flip to the opposite side. And so it’s kind of a fast, slow, fast mentality going into that spring is what we teach on that one. And it takes time. And again, that’s obviously I’ve got to get a lot better at learning to teach this. The footwork, you know, it’s funny, every time I think there’s a specific footwork on that, and I watch someone else who does it well, that does a little different, I’m not sure if I have the perfect footwork for you on there. And I’m a footwork guy, like every detail on that footwork matters so much, every inch on that footwork matters. And so when I don’t feel I have a perfect answer for you, I don’t want to teach it or tell it to anyone out there because I’ve seen quick feet together and just the top, like if you’re going from left to right, you know, just a quick top foot, you know, with feet together and then quickly moving here, I’ve seen almost a hop in the air, both feet landing at the same time into the move. I’ve seen, you know, not really even putting that top left foot out there and just using only a change of pace. And now you’re flipping your hips quicker to get to the flip screen on there. So I’ve seen great screeners to all three of those. And so since I don’t have a really consistent one footwork to teach on there, I think they’re all three fascinating on there.
Dan Krikorian 42:38
coach a zoom out offensive philosophical question just on the pick and roll itself and how you think about using it to create an advantage. If you don’t have a point guard that’s a jet, get by you, put pressure on the rim or distribute out of the pick and roll, say more a methodical type point guard, how you would think about using the pick and roll to either elicit a coverage or elicit a switch or throw the ball out of the pick and roll, like basically using the pick and roll to set up the next part of your offense, using it as a bridge somewhere else versus using the pick and roll for just say, hey, we got a guard that’s going to get downhill and put pressure on the rim all the time.
And the reason I asked that is over the course of your career, you go run a middle ball screen. I don’t know if you’ve always had a point guard that you just say, hey, put him in the ball screen. He’s going to get downhill and problem solve for the most part versus teams that maybe you need to move the ball out of the pick and roll or find a short roll or a pop or something else overall, just your philosophical view on, because you’ve got a lot of European guys on your roster that are used to playing, like throw it out of the pick and roll and get to the second side, third side and how that fits into your overall philosophy.
Jeremy Shulman 43:43
Another amazing question. I do think it depends on your personnel. We generally like using our pick and roll, and that is a big basis of what we do on offense. It’s something we’ve done for a long time.
We generally like it to find a way to put two on the ball or get a tag over committed on the roll or whatever it is. And we generally use it to get the ball out of his hands. And I think if you look at our point guards, especially the last few years, we’ve had guys, they’re not really dynamic scores the last couple of years, but they’re really good passers in, high IQ guys. And we just think it’s a great way to start. The other thing I like about using that to get the ball out of the hands on pick and roll is the ball moves more. And that’s something that’s huge in our offensive belief is we constantly say power of the pass. Like that’s our number one thing on offense is power of the pass, power of the pass. And so if you have a guard that’s always coming off a high ball screen and going in trying to take a tough midi or get into a frequent at the rim, like not saying there’s anything wrong with that, just not necessarily our style. Now you’ve got guys standing in the corner, not touching the ball, not really moving a lot. And it becomes very heliocentric. If you use the pick and roll to hopefully, you know, whatever the coverage is, maybe it’s put two on the ball, maybe it’s just mini play the tag, whatever it is. And now you’re moving that ball around and everyone gets to touch it. There’s so much power in touching that magic orange basketball, right? And so we use it as such a passing position on there. But obviously there’s reads and, you know, depending on who the point guard and you can go score off it more, we’re absolutely going to let that happen as well. It’s a great way to put either two on the ball or put two, at least someone on the tag and create open closeouts, open shots or get the ball moving.
Dan Krikorian 45:22
Absolutely. When you’re looking for something else to study or different ideas, you know, you mentioned that you like being unique or weird or like finding these things that aren’t on the beaten path.
What sticks out to you worth your time to study? Is it a stat that you see? Is it a style? Is it an outcome somewhere? I guess like what are you drawn to when you’re like, I’m going to do this offseason project on these things. In general, what attracts you to study?
Jeremy Shulman 45:46
I don’t know how to say it’s better, but what seems to resonate with you as a person, what resonates with me, because there’s so much information out there. I spend probably too much time on Twitter just constantly seeking new information. And I’m watching games at all different levels, but every once in a while, something just seems to resonate. Why does that resonate rather than something else?
I don’t know, but that’s when I started going into these deep dives. And that’s what really led to the whole European style basketball in the first place. My wife is from Latvia in Northeastern Europe. And a year after we were dating, I go out to Latvia to visit her family for the first time. And out there, there’s no ESPN. It was during the playoff time. I’m not a big NBA guy, but you know, during the playoffs, I’ll watch it. I couldn’t watch the playoffs time change. And so I didn’t really know much about EuroLeague. And I start watching EuroLeague and it’s just this fascinating, just beautiful game, like unbelievable players, unbelievable coaches. But why did that resonate rather than something else?
I don’t know. Like I think it kind of goes back to how we started the show. You got to be true to who you are. There’s a million different things like the dribble drive offense is a phenomenal offense, right? It doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t make sense then for me to go chase that.
Or if there’s like the Dan Hurley offense is absolutely incredible. I think it’s beautiful, beautiful basketball, all those set plays, all the misdirection, all the complication is incredible. It doesn’t resonate with me. So I love watching. I love breaking it down. I mean, I’ve studied for multiple years in a row, but I don’t want to apply it here. So to me, it’s continue to put yourself in situations to learn whether it’s again, this incredible podcast, you know, whether it’s finding stuff on Twitter, whether it’s again, I mean, this day and age is different when I’m seven years old. And there’s obviously no such thing as internet. And you’re just trying to watch and listen to, you know, Dick Vitale just to learn anything you can. Now the information is everywhere. So to me, it’s just immerse yourself, whether it’s books or media or, you know, sometimes YouTube or just watching games and just whatever, like trust your gut on it, whatever you’re like, man, this is really interesting. Do a deep dive there. Don’t do it some because you think you’re supposed to learn something else. Like do it because something resonated with you and it’s like, man, this is awesome. For sure.
Dan Krikorian 47:53
Coach you’re off the start sub or sit hot see thanks for playing that game with us
Jeremy Shulman 47:57
Appreciate you guys. Absolutely. Thank you.
Dan Krikorian 48:00
We got a final question to close the show before we do really fun conversation. Glad we’re able to finally make this happen. So thanks again for coming on today.
Jeremy Shulman 48:07
and how this has just been absolutely amazing. I’m ready to go back on again.
Dan Krikorian 48:11
Let’s do it. For sure. Well, 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?
Jeremy Shulman 48:21
there’s so many things you could say on this one. But to me, the best investment is just the time that I put into falling in love with this game at an early age.
And for whatever reason, being drawn to the X’s and O’s side, the basketball side, the culture side, rather than just trying to be a player when I was young, but the best investment was just fall in love with it. And honestly, probably the best and very specific investment then would probably be when I was very, very young. I was actually living in California for a couple of years. And my mom put a basketball goal up in our playroom in California. And it wasn’t even like one of the plastic ones. It was a goal. It was still small, but it had like a metal rim on it and had a Skittles machine up in our playroom. And that investment of the basketball on the Skittles machine, I can’t tell you how many gazillion hours I spent up there falling in love with March Madness, watching every March Madness game when I was a young kid, trying to replicate every shot on this little goal while I’m just piling my mouth full of Skittles. And so a combination of the Skittles machine and a basketball goal in the playroom was absolutely the best investment because it helped me fall in love with the amazing, beautiful game that we have here. And that’s why I’m here.
Dan Krikorian 49:35
All right, Pat, hey, let’s dive into this recap. We knew from getting a chance to know coach Shulman off air a little bit and talking over the last, uh, feels like six, seven months that this was going to be a really good conversation and it did not disappoint at all.
Really enjoyed.
Patrick Carney 49:49
the conversation today. Yeah, I think it was our first Skittles shout out reference to so potential sponsorship opportunities there for us as well.
Dan Krikorian 49:58
I’m down. You’ve given me cavities since 1987. Yeah. But…
Patrick Carney 50:05
Outside of Skittles, there’s a lot more interesting things we discussed today. I’ll throw it to you for the first takeaway.
Dan Krikorian 50:11
Obviously, the first bucket, there’s a lot in here. We’ll go back and forth on both of our takeaways and getting into Coach Shulman’s film, philosophy, talking to him a little bit. I knew this was going to be an area that we could have just kept going and going on. I think what’s most interesting to me about the first bucket, my first takeaway is I think his process to getting to what they do is something that everybody listening to this can take in their own way. And I think he said it multiple times about not just copying a system because it worked for someone else, but really over the course of his career, thinking deeply about who am I? What do I believe in? Why? And then how do I get to it? How do I teach it? What are the tweaks in it? And then the fun part of now starting to layer things on top and recruiting to it. And so I thought that hearing him talk about why he did what he did was as equally beneficial for me as a head coach, always thinking about your identity as exactly what they do.
Because like he mentioned, don’t just copy our system. They like to switch everything and they’ve got bigger guards. But I found that to be really interesting. And then the second part of my answer and the more tactical part, I really liked the conversation around switching, but then also putting two on the ball. And I think I asked him on air a lot of a switch to not put two on the ball or to not be in rotation. But he talked about switching and also being really good in rotations and being good in rotations that they want to be in. And I thought that was really cool. And obviously different ways you can do that, but he talked about not wanting to just double the ball screen because that’s something that all of us as coaches work on throughout the week of, hey, double, throw it out, play four on three on the backside, but finding other ways to do that. And we went a little bit into doubling the post and other ways that they could obviously put two on the ball that are unique. But I found that to be a really cool part of the conversation tactically.
Patrick Carney 52:02
the through line throughout the conversation. The under-taught thing as a coach is like doing what you believe in. And I know we’ve had conversations about this before, but I think it really shone through as we dig deeper on these topics and went into detail.
Because to what you mentioned, the switching, putting two on the ball, or even trying to sit in gaps and then also be physical up at the point of screen to switch, the push switch, like a lot of it sounds contradictory or counterintuitive or like, how do you do it? And what he demonstrated and talked about is, just because it sounds counterintuitive or sounds weird doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but because he believes in it, then kind of again, I believe in it, how do we work backwards? And if I want to put two on the ball, then we’re going to get great in the scramble, get great in our closeouts, because I think we can really get some benefit from putting two on the ball in certain situations. And I really enjoy just what you said, just the underlying philosophy and then how he kind of built out what the strategy would be based on like, well, this is what I believe in. And I thought that was the biggest benefit or takeaway from that part, not only like what he did, but the why behind it. And I think as we dug deeper and even talked to him afterwards, that’s really the secret sauce is the why and the how, not necessarily the what, because there’s so much out there, we highlight it, we try to study it, but it’s picking what you believe in. And I thought he did a great job too, when you ask just what he studies or catches his eye, it’s hard to maybe know it’s this, this, this, like this category, it’s just an innate thing, like what resonates with him, you know, and I think that’s what kind of shown through and how he built out his defense, you know, it made sense to him. And then he went about building it. And I thought that was really admirable.
Dan Krikorian 53:44
Yeah, jumping to that point you just made about when I asked him, you know, what catches his eye. I personally love asking that question to coaches and people that you could tell like really study the game a lot and what draws something to them. And when you’re so sure and understand who you are as a person, as a coach, and in your identity defensively and how you play, I think when you’re so like rock solid in that, then it’s almost easier to find unique things to add to that because you just know what to filter out. So the stuff that comes your way is like, oh, it’s interesting, I like that, but it’s not for us.
But then when something hits that’s like, oh, that actually might work and almost hits you in a different way or it’s more clear when you’re kind of studying stuff. And so yeah, the benefit of, you know, I know we talked to Bob Ritchie on the podcast about identity being so important for so many things in your program and just another example there. So Pat, let’s move on to the second takeaway and I’ll throw that to you.
Patrick Carney 54:37
Yeah, the second takeaway, I’ll go to the offensive side of the ball in our start subset about attacking a hedge when we looked at the flip re-screen or RAM. Two conversations, I love the conversation on like the footwork, the philosophy outside of just the flip. I’ll start, though, I mean, maybe it’s a miss on my end, should have dug deeper into it or like sticking with the theme of tradeoffs.
But when he talked about the RAM screen, I thought he brought up some great points in the RAM screen. Like all these, the flip re-screen is an effective way to attack the hedge. But the RAM screen can also then maybe it puts out one fire, but can create other fires when he talked about. Well, are you good in a drop because you may be creating a drop scenario to defeat the hedge, but then is your guard dynamic enough against the drop coverage or they switch the RAM screen and they’re going to switch the ball screen and now you’ve solved the hedge, but you put yourself in a switch scenario. Are you good at solving the switch? So I just thought it was like two really great points and kind of sticking with the theme of these tradeoffs. You know, as you and me are trying to work through, how would we attack the hedge? Just two things that we weren’t even thinking about. Maybe it also then is creating like, yeah, I want to flip. But is it creating something that your guard can read or I want to RAM? But now it’s creating different coverages that actually we’re better at attacking a hedge than we are attacking a drop.
Dan Krikorian 55:55
Yeah. Well, just kind of to add to your point, philosophically, I think this is where going back to coach Shulman’s point on not just copying what you see online or read, but like really understanding your team and all that, I think it kind of shows up here too.
So to your point, you can run something like a flip screen against the hedged or you pick one of these three things and it’s like, okay, that’s cool. But I think the next layer of coaching is like, well, what of these actions is happening and what is best for our team to solve to try to create advantage and score. So it’s like, well, yeah, the flip screen looks great, but if it creates something that you don’t have the guard play or the movement for, then it doesn’t really help you. That was kind of a cool part to hear. You have the ability and a pick and roll and the things that you run to create the advantage that your team can best solve, I think is a way to put it. So if they’re hedging, like to your point, maybe the best thing is just play out of the hedge four on three, like throw with the ball ahead and your team’s good at attacking a closeout. Solved, not that simple, but you don’t need to do other stuff. I wish.
Patrick Carney 57:01
You’ve got it all figured out, huh? Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 57:05
But maybe like an added point. So we’re seeing a lot in the international game of teams screening the whole floor really high up on the floor.
And to me, like the more you watch teams do that, the kind of total basketball, like the really high 77s or the high flat screens, and it forces like an earlier switch or forces like a coverage that then I think they’re more comfortable playing out of and it’s like a way for the offense to not wait till they get to a ball screen with 15 seconds left and then they got to solve it then like they can solve it earlier, I think is interesting. So the main point is he did a good job talking about again, why would we do these things and even if it does work, is it the best thing for the guard play or the pick and pop guy that we have?
Patrick Carney 57:47
One last thing on the re-screen. He talked about it too, and I think it’s a conversation we had with Coach Tabellini about, of course the re-screen can be effective, but Tabellini who did the hedge and plug all the time talked about, well, usually with the re-screen, it’s something maybe they need to be at an ATO or like they need to specifically set up.
So maybe you get beat on it once, but it takes a lot of effort. Like, hey, today we’re just going to re-screen every ball screen, you know, because they hedge, you know? And then what Coach Schulman talked about too, if it’s someone like Houston, where they’re just going to put so much aggression on the ball, it’s also not easy for your guard. Hey, just give us a sec, let our big comeback around, you handle the aggression, and then we get this pretty downhill re-screen, you know? So all of these are good, all of these are also difficult, and that’s what makes the game so fun and why we continue to have these start-subsit conversations.
Dan Krikorian 58:34
Sometimes against the hedge we would turn it over. So maybe our guy we would just have set the screen We just haven’t keep slipping all the way to the back court to get back on defense and we’ll just play Yeah, you don’t see that a lot.
Yeah, but just hey keep running buddy. Just get out go back guard the rim We’re good five on four. We’ll have the full
Patrick Carney 58:51
Or you train working at the disadvantage all the time. You want to be excellent in that.
Dan Krikorian 58:56
Yeah, that’ll be here first. Have you seen it slipping against the hedge, but slip back on defense and just
Patrick Carney 59:02
best transition defense in the country you know yep yeah all right damn before it flies off the rails any longer I’ll throw it back to you for the third takeaway
Dan Krikorian 59:13
Yeah. So let’s go to the other star subset, which was Juco to D1. His skill set obviously as a coach has been well served for him now that at the Division I level coming from the JC world, where like I said, Mac’s getting guys for two years and building the roster and cohesion and all that. So what he talked about just the hard part in the reality is building that trust right now and ways that you’re still trying to do that in a transactional world at his level right now. And obviously he’s not the only one that’s thinking about that, but it’s just so important to I know for head coaches are thinking about how do we, you know, we’re having these guys for maybe eight months, nine months.
And how do we build that trust in an authentic way that you’re there for them, you love them, you want to help them, but also know that there’s this transactional side. And I think that’s just the reality of the business right now. And interesting to hear him talk about it, because I know like, I mean, he mentioned he puts aside like five hours for film every day, I guess that’s a lot of time he’s putting into guys. And so it’s obviously something that’s super important for him.
Patrick Carney 01:00:12
Yeah, no matter the era, obviously pouring into your players like is tried and true. It’s probably like the real edge right now to be had in the game with just so much roster turnover and guys coming in and out every eight to 12 months.
And you know, this is why it’s been so interesting conversations we had in the past. I mean, we’ve been really on a storytelling streak. But how do you build teams, team cohesion, and small windows, short amount of period of time, strategies, tactics, techniques, like I said, is I think really kind of the gold to be had or to be mined at right now in the game. Because yeah, I think again, like all the information centers around what you could be doing, what strategies are but what really comes down to is of course, how do you teach but then how do you get the belief the buy in and a unit to communicate execute in these critical moments in a crunch time, you know, in a do or die.
Dan Krikorian 01:01:06
I think in general, you see kind of the rise, but a lot of coaches interested in studying team dynamics, leadership dynamics of people that like special forces, or like we’ve had people on that work with people that work under pressure, doctors, EMTs, or you’re kind of coming together for these real brief bits of time, and you got to get people on the same page and trust. Obviously we’re not in life or death situations like some of those we’ve had on the podcast, but you are trying to bring in people really quickly for a specific task, specific goal, and how do you do it?
Or how do you do it to the best of your ability? And like I said, not everybody’s lucky to have guys for three, four years now. I think it’s a growing, I don’t know, skill set that I know coaches are aware of because yeah, in the past, if you knew you’re gonna have guys for two to three, even four years, you have more time for these things to come into play naturally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, Pat, I gave one miss really just being that I wish we had the film today. Is there anything else though you thought maybe we could have gone deeper on or wish we would have went deeper on?
Patrick Carney 01:02:10
One miss was going back to the attacking the hedge Maybe how he would have thought about attacking a switch only because they were doing it so much and all the time in practice Get his thoughts on yeah, okay Well now offensively like what really gave maybe his switch defense trouble or how of course he likes to attack it I think always an interesting conversation and especially from coaches that are doing it defensively all the time I think they have a unique perspective or a perspective on just yeah, what gave them trouble
Dan Krikorian 01:02:39
Yeah, I would add to your point. One of the things I was going to ask, or we’ve asked before, but when you have a unique defensive system, how do you practice your offense? So the Jim Beyheim, hey, how do you play against man to man in a game if all you do is zone? Or even, you know, you brought up Joey Gallo today, like, how do you guys practice your man to man? Obviously, you can still play other coverages in your practice, but when you’re really unique in a certain area of the game, how you practice against people that are going to be more normal, for lack of a better word.
Interesting to dive into some of that stuff, but terrific conversation today. We really appreciate Coach Shulman for coming on and thank you for listening. We’ll see you next time.