Point Loma Head Coach Justin Downer joins us this week for a detailed conversation on building an offense around decisions rather than predetermined actions.
Downer takes us through the four phases that organize Point Loma’s offense, how they identify their three greatest leverage points, and why their primary ball handlers learn to read the defender, the coverage, and eventually the help behind it.
We also explore a demanding practice environment built around productive adversity, the difference between correcting and competing, and why Point Loma highlights roles instead of defining them.
Transcript
Dan Krikorian 02:17
Coach, thank you for coming on the show. Congratulations on all the success in your career. We’re excited to have you today.
Justin Downer 02:23
Thanks. Yeah, it’s an honor to be on. You guys have hosted a number of buddies of mine and I’ve learned a ton from others. And so this is such a unique platform to really nerd out about the stuff in college hoops at any level, really, that maybe goes unseen by the average podcast. So I’m thankful to be on and hope I can contribute a little bit today.
Dan Krikorian 02:43
Absolutely. Appreciate that, coach.
We’d like to start with the topic of decision trees on offense and basically how you think about building out the decisions that are made within your offense as a system, per player, roles, all those kinds of things. And so we’ll start kind of a higher level with decision trees on offense for you and then we’ll dive in.
Justin Downer 03:03
The foundation of creating a decision tree and what we’re on our guys the day that we walk into practice is what is the point in making a decision? Why are you even making a decision? And so for us, the whole point of making any decision on the floor is advantage creation. The purpose in what you’re trying to create and why you’re making a decision has to start with what advantage are you trying to create?
How are you trying to create that advantage? For us, I actually have studied the game of soccer a lot with that. I know that’s become probably a little bit more popular over the past few years, but I actually spent last summer going to training camp with our Point Loma men’s and women’s team. They do the training camp at a Chula Vista practice facility so I can watch both and pick their brains and watch film. And to be honest, 80% of it, I have no idea what they’re talking about, but there was a few things organizationally pattern-wise and making decisions because the ball is always kind of in a flow state on the soccer field that we were able to take away. And so when we’re making decisions, one of the things that we took from soccer is soccer plays in phases, right? And their field’s so big and they have 11 players, so they have like six phases or something like that. And so the basketball court’s not big enough, doesn’t have enough players. And so what we’ve been able to do is say, basically you’re making decisions in four phases. And so the first phase is the rebound and the outlet. And so what we would say is that decision tree is very simple. We want you to rebound the ball like a quarterback. And so we almost want you to land at a 180 turn. We want your eyes down the floor. And that decision’s very simple. We want you to pass the ball to the first available guy. And so the second phase for us would be what we call the middle 60, free throw line to free throw line. And we want to advance the ball as quickly as possible. If I can advance, I must. And so that might be up the floor with the pass, that might be with the dribble, and that might be crossing the floor wherever the space is you want to go to. The third phase, you enter advantage creation. You’re almost into like secondary offense now. And so for us, that identifier is where is our big? We play with basically everybody on the sidelines in transition and our big is the only guy that’s allowed to be in the middle of the floor. And then from there, we’re trying to establish whether our big is ahead of us, whether our big is beside us, or whether our big is behind us. And where he is is going to dictate what kind of advantage we’re going to try and create. And so for us, that’s really your decision tree in terms of phase one, phase two, phase three. And then phase four, that’s where your phasing begins. That’s where your triggers come in. And that’s where it can be a little more complicated because in soccer, you don’t have a shot clock. I mean, soccer will go to phase five and then go all the way back to phase one on the same possession. It’s not an option for us. So phase four, now you have to start layering your offensive advantages.
Justin Downer 06:06
And so if that changes year to year And what I’m learning about my team in the month of August is probably the same thing I’m gonna be learning up until our first game, and really until mid-December, is what are our three greatest leverage points on offense? And that changes every year.
That might be a player, that might be a roster dynamic, that might be a team skill set. It can be so many different things. And then, you know, I think it’s really important to understand whether you are live ball or dead ball in your decision trees. While we would love to play soccer all the time on the field in that phase, I think once you get to that dead ball factor, now your decision tree is much more set play, coach based, and now you’re trying to create that decision tree for your players, and that’s where you almost go to a football influence. And so what we try and do in our decision trees is if we’re live ball, we wanna play with the soccer phasing method. If we’re dead ball, me or our coaching staff is going to go with that football influence, and we’re gonna try and leverage our personnel versus our opponent personnel and coverage. The way we teach that, we can go so many ways on it, but I think the biggest thing is we believe in the power of three. We never wanna give our guys more than three decisions to be made at the same time. We also don’t really wanna give them one decision to make either. But the most important thing in your power of three is that the primary’s gotta be really good. If you’re gonna play out of a closeout, you better really be able to shoot the basketball, you better be able to really drive the ba- You have to have a really strong primary so that you can get to the other two branches of your decision, and I think there’s countless examples of where your decision tree of three can really start and influence your offense.
Dan Krikorian 07:53
I’d like to go back to phase two for you for a second before we kind of work our way probably to phases three and four for sure. With phase two at the middle 60, what have you found there as far as how you wanna advance the ball up the court, whether it’s the advance pass, whether it’s a guard that can really motor in the middle?
I mean, do you give them three options there of how to advance in the middle 60, or how does that work?
Justin Downer 08:17
Yeah, so year one, we were get to the deep corners as fast as possible, very traditional. Advance the ball with the pass. If the big’s ahead, you can rim run, and we tried to play very traditionally and almost, you know, even if you felt like you had an advantage, get to the corners and let the point guard really be able to see the floor and make that decision for you.
As we’ve evolved, we’ve kinda gotten to this place where, yeah, the best way to create the advantage in the middle 60 is with the pass. And so what we’ve done since year one is we’ve kinda let our wings find their ways into what we would call leak cuts, and it’s almost like the concept when you’re in youth basketball and, like, you’re almost cherry-picking. And so if you can get one of those cherry pick leak cut layups, you know, we can throw that ball over the top to our second smallest player, our second biggest player, whoever that is. We’re looking for the space and the advantage, and we’re trusting that as the ball does not find you, right, and you’re in the middle of that leak cut or you’re somewhere on the floor where you shouldn’t be, you can find spacing based on what that point guard decides or what that primary ball handler decides in that decision tree. So the pass is number one, but we don’t want to, we call it stale action. If I’m gonna dribble the ball up the court and the best way to do it is with the live dribble, we actually would prefer to cross the floor and invert the defense that way rather than just get the ball crossed half on the same side of the floor and initiate.
Patrick Carney 09:46
What have you found by if you’re gonna have to push it with the dribble crossing the court as more advantageous than just, yeah, let’s just get it up the side and initiate on the same side?
Justin Downer 09:57
Yeah, I just think that the defense is so able to load, especially to the, you know, low man, the hole, the mig, whatever the team’s calling it, and we wanna manipulate that as soon as possible. And so a lot of times what you’ll see is, especially against teams that don’t match up in transition, you get a half back, full back. You allow them to load to the middle of the floor early in the clock. If you can do that, you can kind of break our rhythm or cause lag time in our action.
If you are all of a sudden going from guarding the advance pass to now your responsibility is literally to be the low man or the mig in your defense, just by me dribbling the ball to the other side of the floor, the chances are you’re gonna be late to whatever action you are or you’re going to be late to the help, and it can be confusing to both. And so we want the defense looking over both their shoulders, and we feel like our primary handlers can recognize which defender’s out of position and what decision needs to be made based on just the ability to cross the floor.
Patrick Carney 11:02
Maybe this starts to bleed into the third phase in terms of locating the big, but if we stick on if your primary ball handler is gonna cross the floor, and maybe they’re crossing the floor to create, like, a three-man side. Are you worried about the spacing?
How are you solving the space, and then maybe how does that start to play into, well, locating, now I’ve crossed the court as a point guard, created a three-man side, and now I’m locating the big?
Justin Downer 11:25
If the big was beside you, you probably wouldn’t cross the floor because the way that our decision tree is built, you would probably just play with him and use him. And so the cross the floor concept is most likely that the big is behind you, and now we can play four on four without the big, which is really fun and creates a lot of early advantage, and now your big becomes a cutter. Or the big’s ahead, and you can play off of him as a duck-in guy. You can play off him creating an early post touch or even playing penetration cuts with him. And so in the tree, we wouldn’t talk about it that much because we would hope that that opportunity kinda presents itself.
But basically, if that big was ahead of you or behind you, we think that’s an extreme advantage to play across the floor. And then a lot of times the guy that’s in the other slot, what some people would call a trail or, you know, Alabama would call their Houston spot, you know, whatever you wanna call that He’s just gonna play opposite of you. So if I cross the floor, he’s just gonna trail to the other side. If he’s ahead of me and I cross the floor, he might just loop through the nail and get to the other side of the floor. And so to us, the spacing components that really matter is after those guys finish whatever cut they have on the wings or the throw ahead, that they’re getting to the corners to kind of hold space and create that space for those other three to play.
Dan Krikorian 12:41
Sticking on with phase three for a second, sometimes I’ve found early in the season when you’re teaching your team how to get through that, the phase two middle 60, push the ball up the court, get to deep corner spacing, run to spots, keep the middle open, all these things that we do early, sometimes the recognition of an advantage is slower because they’re so worried about getting to the correct spaces and places. How have you learned to balance, because you call it the phase three, the advantage creation phase, where’s the big, where’s the ball, that kind of stuff.
How do you balance in that phase three, getting to correct space versus recognizing an advantage, and then what type of advantages you’ll then say, “Let’s just play out of that and stop worrying about trying to do the next thing”?
Justin Downer 13:24
I think the first thing in the teaching is we won’t insert advantages until probably week three of practice or workouts. So for us, we get those eight-hour weeks early. Our offense looks really bad in the first two weeks because we’re just constantly playing spacing and finding spacing. And as soon as we feel like what we call flow, as soon as we feel like they have a great base of flow and they can find flow whenever they want without an advantage, we feel like that’s gonna be a really easy thing to find once we give them the advantage.
And so especially for the guys that don’t create offense very well off the bounce, they’re not very good the first two weeks of practice, typically. The guys that typically are, you know, good out of handoffs, good out of ball screens, good out of pin downs, right? The guys that cannot create their own advantage, they really struggle early. But as long as we can learn how to find spacing depending on where the big is or isn’t, then I think it becomes easier to insert those simple advantage creations. And I think for us, our actions that initiate advantages from there are really, really simple, and I don’t think anybody would watch us play and think that we’re playing a super complicated brand of basketball in terms of, wow, that action was really sophisticated, really complicated. I think where our offense is at its best is we’re making those quick decisions and that we understand how to counter virtually every coverage that you would present us in those advantages, and that guys will then sacrifice and give themselves up based on the coverage, whether that’s not using a screen, cutting off of something and cutting yourself out of the play to create an advantage for somebody else.
Patrick Carney 15:06
In the fourth phase, you talked about finding your three greatest leverage points that a team has. Outside of, of course, if you just have a big team or, of course, you have a stud and maybe the advantages that are a little bit more self-evident, just your process in finding your great leverage points within your team.
You know, maybe you found that are some of the ones that are like hidden gems or that always seem to maybe appear a little bit later, the ones that you gotta kinda dig into as a coach but can really yield some success, especially late in the season.
Justin Downer 15:37
Yeah. The last two years has honestly been an interesting case study on it. Last year, we brought in 12 new guys, graduated seven players. I thought our roster was certainly talented. Based on the style of plays that our roster had played at previous schools, I really didn’t know what we were getting, right? I didn’t know if we had good isolation players, I didn’t know if we had good post players, I didn’t know if we had good decision-makers completely. The year before, the way our roster was built, our starting point guard tore his ACL for the second time in 18 months, and now we were kind of ball handlers by committee. And so the way that we played was different. And so what I’ve gotten very comfortable with is we will go into the season and go into November and December, and we really won’t know what our main three leverage points are until we see it a lot of times because a lot of teams don’t guard the way we guard. And so based on, I think, what happens a lot during the season is after about game four or five, I think that whatever the opponent is identifying as the scout on you is pretty common throughout the rest of the year. And so it doesn’t really matter what I think’s gonna work until I figure out how you guys are gonna guard us. I do think it’s interesting that about mid-December, you pretty much are seeing the same coverage, give or take one or two coverages, for the rest of the season based on what you’ve applied.
So a great example is we’re probably six games in two years ago when we went to St. Martin’s. I think we were both top 15 in the country, and St. Martin’s plays with great pace. They go back and forth from man to zone. We were still trying to figure out our ball handler responsibilities, and so we couldn’t tell if they were in man or zone. We couldn’t tell if they were switching or not switching. And so we kinda just started running a set where our primary handlers could get a handoff, we would re-screen the handoff, and then play from there, and we would figure out if it’s man or zone, and we thought it was gonna create us a great advantage. We went on to score like 94 points that night, and that’s the only thing we ran. And we realized, wow, we have really, really big guards that once we give them the handoff, trying to fight through that screen or disallow the reject is really hard to guard with these six four to six six, 210-pound guards, and we just created advantages all night. And we kinda built our offense to, in St. Martin’s, that would probably be like a phase three action for us, but we started finding ways to insert that action in phase four so that our guards could do that. And so that would probably be an extreme example of, man, we kinda stumbled upon that in a really big game on the road in the middle of the season. But trying to make sure that as a staff, we’re open-minded to those things presenting itself and being humble enough to say, “Hey, let’s throw out some of these phase four triggers that we thought were good to really sell out on this-“
Speaker 5 18:28
With that example, you brought up a really interesting case study, and I think me and Dan have both fielded this question throughout the summer and thought about it ourselves. But I guess when you have a lineup that has, like, clear ball handlers, clear point guards, versus a roster that you know there is no real clear primary ball handler.
And I know you just talked maybe this example here in Saint Martin’s, but what you’ve learned about when you are with a roster that doesn’t have, like, a clear point guard or your clear primary ball handler, how you think about offense, how you think about maybe these phases and getting your offense clicking without a one guy to rely on or two guys.
Justin Downer 19:05
We actually probably don’t see the game through a traditional point guard sense anyways. I think that’s also in the college landscape really hard to recruit nowadays. I mean, it’s really hard to, one, the retention’s difficult. Two, you might be bringing in a guy from a different system. And so we try and not recruit system point guards. And so I think a lot of it is in roster-building, is we want guys that we’ve identified in the recruiting process that are decision-makers and processors. And so a lot of coaches would go to a recruiting event and really count stats, and we do that, and we don’t put as much of an emphasis on that as maybe others do. I don’t really mind high-turnover games, low-production games if I can see that you’re processing the game in a way that would translate to us.
And so we’ve had a ton of success with the untraditional primary handler. And so last year, that was Jayden Matingou, who was literally probably the fastest guy in the country, and that looked a lot different than the year before when we took Luke Haupt, who, you know, when I told people he was gonna be our primary ball handler, they probably didn’t think that was a very wise idea. He’s six foot seven. He’s two hundred and fifteen pounds. He doesn’t have great wiggle on the bounce, but he makes great decisions all the time. And so packaging for those two guys was very, very different. And so I think it’s really important to understand who’s capable of making decisions, and can you turn them into that, right? What was really hard about Luke Haupt is you couldn’t guard him with your point guard. If you were gonna pick him up with your point guard, he was gonna have you in the paint so quickly. While he literally played point guard on the opponent’s scout, he was very rarely guarded by the other team’s point guard, which I thought gave us a ton of advantages in phase three because we’re able to get your second or third biggest player in space, in advantages early in the clock. And so for us, we wanna recruit guys that– I think my biggest fear in recruiting would be to recruit guys that were really good that couldn’t play together. And so they have a very, you know, two traditional point guards that are undersized. Like, we just would never recruit that way. Now going into this year, we get Jake Lifgren back. You know, he played last year, but, you know, he’s looking more like himself and that eighteen-point-per-game guy that he was three years ago. Well, now what’s his greatest strength? He’s not really big. He’s not really fast. But, you know, he can make it from the volleyball line in transition. So now we have to find ways to leverage his shooting and passing ability, where the last two guys that we’ve had, we haven’t had that.
Speaker 5 21:43
Looking at the phases overall and how you teach it, how you practice it, is it just sticking on one phase early in the season? Do you combine phases in a lot of the drill work that you do? I mean, how do you let your players know about all of the phases and then, two, how you start to work on them?
Justin Downer 22:01
After the first couple weeks, like, we don’t talk about the phases to our players. Honestly, I think the phases have best served our staff more than our players in terms of the teaching point. Our players probably couldn’t recite to you what the phases are. I think that would be a little more difficult.
I feel like they would probably feel like they’re playing more in a straitjacket, and their decisions wouldn’t probably be as aggressive or natural. And so I think the way that we drill it is we’ll identify as a staff before practice where we’re struggling. We’re really struggling to rebound the ball and get it out quickly. We’re really struggling to get the ball through the middle 60. Your phase four advantages are really affected by your phase three advantages. If you can’t create that initial advantage, it’s gonna be really hard to then find the phase four advantage in the last fourteen seconds of the clock. And so we’ve built very specific drills that enforce those habits. Our guys would never know if they’re in a phase four, phase three, phase two drill. We’re just going to put an extra emphasis on that in practice today, and then we’ll probably be a little more graceful in the decision-making in some of the other phases that day if that’s what we’re trying to focus on. If we’re really focused on phase three advantages, we might not really be focused on phase three shot selection that day because we’re so focused on trying to create that advantage.
Speaker 5 23:20
How do you determine the efficiency of your offense or how well you’re moving through the phases from a staff standpoint, from practice or game to game? Are there internal markers? Are there things that you really look at to know the health of your offense?
Justin Downer 23:32
Yeah, I mean, we’re statting every single thing that we do. But for us, we play so much in practice. If you’re gonna play this way, you would probably think that it’s a lot more structured than it is based on how I’ve communicated it in this conversation. The reality is, is we just need you guys to play a ton, a ton, a ton.
And so we stat everything, and we track wins in everything we’re doing. So I think the accountability marker is, like, if we’re in phase three and we’re doing a cut-throat drill in phase three, the goal is to win that, and the goal is to create advantages in that. For us, that’s really put at a premium, and then we’ll watch film. I think one thing that I probably do more of than probably anybody that I’ve met is with what we would consider our primary ball handlers. We don’t use the term point guard in our program. We would consider them primary ball handlers. In a normal locker room, there might be three or four point guards. For us, there’s probably five to six primary handlers. And so I watch film with those guys two times a week, no matter what, no excuses. No matter what my recruiting schedule is, no matter what their class schedule is, we are going to watch that film together as a unit, not individually, and we’re gonna learn from each other early in the week.
And so I think what that does is it creates conversation, and it allows me to learn what decisions they are and aren’t capable of making, and that’s more important to me than any markers that we would create in practice. One thing that we are, I guess, statting or evaluating in practice is we believe that there are three levels of the ball screen or three levels of advantage creation. Level one being the primary defender, level two being the secondary defender, and level three being help, stunts, anything off the basketball. We have a whole rubric and breakdown, and so when we watch film, mainly with our primaries, but we’ll also do it in a bigs film session too, is where did you miss your read? Was it a level one read? Was it a level two read or a level three read? And so when you’re evaluating that, if you can’t beat your primary defender in a level one read, well, then you don’t get to use that. That’s just very simple. Using the ball screen as an example, if you can’t simply get the primary defender in a disadvantaged situation, we can’t set one for you. And so from there, can you read level two coverage? Can you read the drop? Can you read the show? Can you read the switch? That’s where it begins, and then the great players, those coverages aren’t an issue for them. It just becomes a level three read. Can you read the help? That’s probably the most unique thing of what we’re evaluating in our program, more than the analytic make, miss, points per possession, any of that stuff in practice.
Patrick Carney 26:19
If we stick on the ball screen, going from that level two to level three read, what in your experience has been the biggest growth for your players in kind of getting to that third level and being able to read help coverage behind the ball?
Justin Downer 26:34
When you’re first teaching it, and you can get past level one and you’re in level two, the first thing that our guards have to understand is we believe there’s only five ways to guard the ball screen, and there’s really only five ways to guard anything. So we’re not going into it based on, “Hey, this is how this team guards it. This is how that team guards it. This is how this personnel.” We believe that you can guard it one of five ways.
You can guard it passively, how high your drop is or isn’t. That’s fine. You can guard it aggressively, how aggressive or how many dribbles that your show or hedge is. That’s debatable. You can switch it. You can double it. You can trap it, blitz it, whatever you wanna call it, or you can disallow it in an ice situation or a weak situation, maybe in the middle of the floor. So understanding that going into the fall, there’s only five ways that in our 30 games anybody’s gonna be able to guard our ball screen. Their personnel’s certainly gonna dictate it. How aggressive they are or aren’t, that’ll be game to game. And so at first, when you’re evaluating the level two, you better know how we’re attacking all of those things in just the two-man action. And so after we’ve mastered level two or at least began to understand it, at first, the primary handler is trying to actively read level three. So I’m coming off. I’m actually trying to physically see who’s tagging the ball screen. Where the great decision-makers, the great ball screen players can get is they can start to assume level three. We’ve faced this coverage before. This is where level three has typically been, and I can make that decision. We’ve watched the film and said, “Hey, I know we’ve seen that, you know, typically this is our level three read against this coverage, but they certainly have a blind spot for this level three read.” Whether that’s the throw behind, whether that’s being able to trick the tag guy with your eyes on the roll, we wanna judge level three’s integrity. Is the integrity of level three, are they more concerned about our ability to shoot behind the roll, or are they more concerned about the roll? And that changes maybe game to game. But to simply answer it is being able to assume or know, it’s one thing to be able to know level two. Can I then assume level three coverages, tags, rotations on that? And that’s where our best ball handlers have been able to get.
Dan Krikorian 28:55
Earlier, you talked about phases and you talked about soccer and football, the back and forth between dead ball, live ball. If we kind of apply that to now the pick and roll reads and we’re trying to read the third level of the help and all that, how much do you see your job as the head coach or a play caller to sort of help your players out with a potentially really good defensive team that they’re really good on their backside help.
We’re going to, whether we’re cutting or screening or some sort of backside movement to really help out the ball handler so they’re not having to figure out, I guess, as much. Of course, they’re gonna have to in live play, but where do you see your role as inserting certain movements or cutting actions to help with that read?
Justin Downer 29:34
Yeah, and we’ve been different every single year at it, both from a foundational standpoint and a scouting standpoint. Again, it goes back to we think the power of three is really important. So we’re three level reads. We’re three decisions in a row, right? Like, we’re constantly trying to apply that. So if that’s what we’re applying, I believe that the best advantage creations are three-man actions. Now, if your players are good enough to create advantages in two-man actions, then you’re in a great spot as an offensive program. But most programs are at their best in three-man actions.
We believe, too, that we probably are only playing out of five concepts at all times. We might play out of an empty ball screen. We might play out of a side ball screen. To us, those are two different actions. We might play out of a post touch. We might play out of a middle third ball screen. We might play out of a double gap. Let’s say those are our five main things that we’re trying to create. So for our players, their job is to understand how to play out of those five concepts. My job is to create them the advantage and the scale. If we’re playing against an aggressive ball screen coverage, the simple example is we’re gonna ram into every single middle ball screen that we have. We’re gonna screen the five-man open, and that’s gonna make the five late, and that’s gonna help the primary handler be able to make that decision. Maybe, you know, the nail gap is really hurting us on the side of the floor. Okay, now we’re gonna start talking about, you know, are we gonna add an exit screen to this action? Are we going to flare the backside? Are we just gonna simply Clyde cut the baseline based on this action? Can I package it in a way to basically hide? I think a lot of times we’ve done that with what’s become a little bit more popular. It’s like a simple stack action where we’re gonna put two guys at the nail, and we’re gonna curl one of the guys out to the wing, and then, you know, maybe we can manipulate a little bit more from there. And so that to me is my whole responsibility as a play caller, is to make it so that the guys that are making the decisions in those five concepts every night can do it with an advantage already, and then their responsibility is to make a great decision with the advantage that we’ve created.
Dan Krikorian 31:49
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Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts. We do wanna transition now to a segment on the show we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re gonna give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one of them, sub one of them, and sit one of them, and then we’ll dive in and discuss your answer from there. So Coach, if you’re all set, we’ll get into this first one.
Justin Downer 33:15
Um, I’m excited.
Dan Krikorian 33:17
All right. This first one has to do with developing and implementing high-level growth systems within your program. I know it’s something that you take a lot of pride in, and we’re gonna give you three different factors or things you would think about running at a high level if you want to have a high-level growth system within your program.
So option one is how you create productive adversity. Option two is how you reward efficiency. Maybe not players that are all playing 30 minutes, but players that are playing eight to 10 and how they can grow and learn within that and how you reward their efficiency. And then the third option is your feedback loops. So mistakes, errors, whatever it is, how you then use that information to go back into growth. So creating and developing high-level growth systems, productive adversity, rewarding efficiency, feedback loops.
Justin Downer 34:12
The one that’s easy to start is creating adversity. I look at myself as the opponent until we play an opponent. So my job for the first two and a half months is to create as much adversity as possible. We do that in a lot of different ways, changing the schedule on our guys, creating a new drill, doing something fast-paced. I’m a big fan of, in September, like just kicking guys off the floor if it’s not great execution, right? Just getting them off and, like, a lot of our guys will go to the assistants and be like, “What did I do?” And you don’t have time. You just get back on the floor the next rep because the chances are someone else is getting kicked off the floor too. And so we wanna create as much failure as possible as early as possible by having a super high bar and keeping guys on their toes. So to me, there is no growth without adversity and failure, and so we have to create it constantly.
There’s a lot of different ways that we do that in our practices and in our fall. The second one becomes difficult. I wish I could 2A and 2B them, but I think that I would put in the subcategory probably the feedback loops. And so we wanna give as much feedback as possible, live feedback, post feedback. We’re encouraging our guys to constantly, if you are confused, grab a coach, grab film. You know, uh, I’m encouraging my staff constantly to take our guys to breakfast, lunch, coffee, to continue to give feedback. We want all feedback to be transparent and honest as much as possible. I think the more that you have adversity and then are getting the feedback from it, that’s gonna create more positives than maybe rewarding the efficient behavior.
Because I do like that one as well. I believe in a six-to-one approach as a coach. I wanna give my guys six put-ups before I give them one constructive criticism. And some guys that- that’s harder to find six put-ups for, and so I gotta be creative. You know, “Hey, nice shoes, like your hair,” you know, “Saw you,” you know, “Your attitude look…” You know, whatever it is, “You got a great smile, man.” But we wanna operate at a six to one anyway, and so it’s probably already something that we’re doing, but to me, that would be the sit.
Dan Krikorian 36:24
Coach, great stuff, and I know, yeah, the sub and the sit are probably coming in together on that first media timeout off the bench. The sub, though, the feedback loops, I really like what you said about your staff, all of you constantly giving the feedback, going to coffee, sitting down, film, being constructive.
Dan Krikorian 36:41
What have you learned as a head coach about how you have those conversations with your staff so that when they’re giving it, it’s all on the same page of what you want said? And then when does it need to elevate to you, I guess? Like, what types of things do you want them to be giving feedback versus if it gets to this level, send them to me and I’ll give that feedback? Have you talked about that balance?
Justin Downer 37:04
Yeah. So for us, I think one thing that I was really fortunate as an assistant coach to work for people is everybody that I worked for as an assistant made it known that whatever my responsibility was, I was the head coach of that. And so I try and give the same power to our assistants. Whatever your responsibility, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, rebounding coordinator, guards, bigs, wings, the list goes on, I think we’re really detailed in how we build staff, you know, responsibility. Those guys are the head coach of that.
They take personal ownership and responsibility of that area of our program. And so if a guy comes off the floor and they are confused about something, seeking feedback in something, one of my assistants that is not responsible for that would never then go take that kid to breakfast and start explaining to him why he’s not making a read well when that coach does not coach that read as the head coach. Now, they certainly have their input, but that person’s gotta go meet with the coach that’s responsible for that. And so that’s probably the first component. The second component is I think our staff is slow to talk in absolutes until we talk and meet. If our staff was ever unsure of what they were coaching or teaching, they wouldn’t just present it to the player. And I think what our players and coaches do a great job of is, “Hey, let’s not present a wrong answer right now. Let me go get with coach, or maybe you need to go meet with coach, and you need to pick his brain on that because I’m not sure what the answer is to that.” And then I will provide the answer, or we will provide the answer to them. And I think that’s really important in that. I’m also fortunate my staff is the best man at my wedding, Jeff McIntosh, who we’ve known for fifteen years. We essentially created the program together in terms of what we’re doing, and then two former players in Tobin Karlberg and Mason Shiflett. So the alignment is through the roof. Two guys have lived it playing for me, and then the other guy I couldn’t be closer to. So I think that helps a lot as well.
Patrick Carney 39:10
I love what you said about creating as much failure as possible as early as possible, and when you look early, after you’ve maybe– especially in, like, the implementation part, what are you and your staff thinking about if there is a learning part or you teach, you introduce whatever this phase is, how quickly are you then to introduce the adversity to create chaos, disruption? Or is it early on, let’s give them the feel, give them some success with it so they can grasp, and then start to hit them with adversity, whatever you wanna call it, you know?
Justin Downer 39:44
I don’t care about the success early, to be honest. To me, you should get one reminder after we’ve taught it, and so I’ll stop and remind one time, or that player should be reminded one time. And from there, if you came to our first week of practice and we were in, let’s call it phase three, we’re really working on early secondary advantages. If we were going two trips, a down and back, I would say that eighty percent of those trips don’t get completed, and so we’re just kicking you off the court. And so I think a lot of times I’ve been a part of, you know, programs or practices where there’s a lot of stopping, teach, stop, teach, trying to get them to get it right. As a player, I feel like if you get kicked off the floor for making the wrong decision and you don’t get an explanation, you’re gonna go try and figure it out because you’re so competitive, you’re sick of getting kicked off the floor. And then let’s say the big continues to make the wrong decision. The primary handler has made the decision for the big, and the big continues to not acknowledge that decision that the primary handler makes. The whole team is kicked off the floor. Then everybody on that five is then going after the guy that doesn’t understand it and comprehend it to try and coach them and teach them. And to me, that’s where we get a lot of powerful moments in our practice and our development, is then the whole group is then running towards that guy’s growth and that guy’s understanding because they don’t want to get kicked off the floor again.
Now, later in the year, we gotta let guys play through mistakes because that’s gonna happen in the game. But to me, like, we’re not gonna play through five on O poor decisions or the wrong decisions and let you guys figure that out in that realm. And so a lot of it looks like the bar is so high, the standard is so high in what we’re asking you to do. We’re not asking for a perfect result, but we are asking you for a perfect process. And so if you get kicked off the floor, your process is wrong. Get off the floor. Get ready to get back on. If we got fifteen guys in practice and we’re going three trips to five on O, the chances are you’re gonna be back on pretty quickly. So it’s pretty funny sometimes to watch our guys be literally so confused on why they got kicked off the floor, and by the time that they have a chance to ask, they’re actually already back on and have to figure it out. We see a lot of growth in those situations.
Patrick Carney 42:02
Coach, you brought up a great point, and I’d like to just follow up on it. Is this strategy, this creating adversity, prominently used in, like, the execution phase five on O versus when you start to get more competitive? Because like you mentioned, the other important habit is being able to play through mistakes in games.
I guess, well, then kind of the sliding scale of if it is a more competitive live segment, it’s I’m not gonna stop and kick them off. We’ll correct when they’re offered a natural pause in the drill.
Justin Downer 42:31
Yeah. So our teaching model on that is teach, drill, compete. Teach, drill, compete. And so our practices will always flow through teach, drill, compete, meaning we would never teach a closeout to start practice, go into offensive execution, drill the closeout an hour later, and then compete against it. So everything in our program is we’re gonna teach it, we’re gonna drill it, we’re gonna compete it.
So when they’re in the teach and drill phase, there will be a lot of what I just described. Kicking guys off the floor, stopping, correcting, do it again. A lot of that. Once we compete, probably the most upset I’ll get with our staff is if we’re competing and we’re in a cutthroat segment, we’re in a five-on-five segment, we’re in an ODO segment, and they’re stopping that. That’s where we wanna get the film. We can’t go on the film, in my opinion, and show you where you’re screwing up in a teach drill segment. Doesn’t make any sense. But we can in the compete. I want our guys to almost drown so we get more and more and more film, because we get so many hours on the floor, we can have as many hours as we want in the film. For us, that’s how we would pair it, is, like, if we’re in teach and drill, we’re doing a lot of what I described earlier. In the compete segment, there’s none of what I– there’s no kicking off, there’s no– I’m not actually providing any answers in those segments. If they come to me and say, “Hey, what read should I make?” I say, “I don’t know. Go ask him. Go ask your teammate. I bet your teammate knows what read you should’ve made.” And so then we’ll watch the film, and that’s where, you know, me watching film twice a week with the primaries is so important and so valuable.
Dan Krikorian 44:03
One of the trickier, subtler conversations with players is the players that are in this, like, reward efficiency range where they’re playing eight to 12 minutes, they wanna be 20 to 25, but there’s not minutes for them. What have you learned about keeping the carrot in front of those players, discussing how efficient they are in those smaller minutes, and why it’s important to the team? Just any learnings from that part of coaching, which I think can, you know, for all of us, be tougher when you have those players that are your eighth, ninth man that wanna play more.
Justin Downer 44:34
It’s probably the hardest dynamic of roster management, in my opinion. And for us, since I’ve been here, six through nine on our roster have typically been guys that could probably start at other schools or probably are sacrificing something to be a part of our program. I have a very soft spot in my heart for those guys.
I think the first part is I actually don’t control who those guys are, and I think I do a decent job in our program of– I think our starters every year, no one’s really shocked at who they are. I try and make sure that I’m rewarding, like, whoever the best players are gonna play. The chances that you think that you should be in the starting lineup, maybe you do, but your teammates don’t. I think there’s a real reality there. But I think the biggest thing that I’m probably different than a lot of people on, and I don’t think I’m right or wrong on it, I just think this is how we do it, we don’t believe in role definition or role defining. We believe in role highlighting. And so we’ll do an exercise every year where we pick your three best qualities as a basketball player. What do you do better than anybody on our team at? And we want you to only focus on doing those three things really well. We think that our bench can be all conference players in their minutes, and I think we’ve certainly had that. When Jaden Matengu was a sophomore, I think he was an all conference level player in 15 minutes a game. And so he didn’t get all conference productivity or all conference awards, but I thought he was an all conference level player coming off of the bench because he was just focused on that. The efficiency piece is really difficult because you don’t get to live through some of the mistakes, but we also don’t sub based on our bench’s mistakes either. Their minutes aren’t really going to change. It kinda settles in. And so I think the best example where it’s paid off is my first year as the head coach, Jake Lifgren was having this incredible year. He’s probably on pace to be the Pac-West Player of the Year, maybe Region Player of the Year. He’s averaging almost 20 a game as a sophomore, and he tears his ACL 18 games in. Luke Hopp’s supposed to come back from his ACL middle of the year. He gets a high ankle sprain in his rehab, shuts it down for the year. And now I think a lot about if we had made Jaden Matengu a game manager, like, “Hey, here’s your role. You’re a freshman point guard. Come in. Guard.” Once we gave him the basketball, we know we said that this was your role, but now this is your new role. In my opinion, he always had the same role. The minutes just changed. And so my job was to package it differently for Jaden because he wasn’t Jake or Luke or whoever it was. I think I’m really focused with those guys and, like, what is your outlier skill on this team, and focus on being an all conference player at that skill. And then part of it is, like, you have to recruit guys that wanna be a part of something bigger than themselves and that are humble enough, and I think we’ve also done a good job of that.
Patrick Carney 47:38
All right, Coach. For this start, sub, sit, I’d like to go to the defensive side of the ball and kind of flip your phases on you in terms of for the start, sub, sit, I’m only gonna give you three of your phases, but which one you would deem to be the most beneficial to be aggressive, try to be disruptive for your defense.
Would it be phase one on the rebound, the outlet, offensive rebounding philosophy, pick up points? I’ll skip phase two. I’ll go to phase three, the early advantage creation, ways to be disruptive there, try to really press up, take them out of their first offensive action. Or the third option would be the fourth phase, how teams layer their offense and begin to get to triggers. So of those three phases, which ones do you feel is important for your defense to be aggressive, disruptive in, or most advantageous?
Justin Downer 48:32
Phase one is definitely the most important to maybe not disrupt, but probably dictate. It’s really important that on a rebound, on a turnover, whatever it is, on a made basket, that that pass is not leading to any sort of momentum, right? So whether that outlet pass is literally having to physically go back to the basketball, and so you’re going the opposite way of your basket. Whether our big is trying to contest the outlet pass. Whatever that is, we’re really big on contest pass rate. And making sure that whoever their primary ball handler is, is getting the ball not in, “Hey, my butt’s to the sideline, I’ve got this lead off and I’m getting ready to go.” Part of that is we send five to the glass. We’re in traditional tag-up responsibilities. We feel like that takes it away. To me, if you do really well on phase one, phase two, and phase three, even as an offensive play caller, if we’re getting jammed in phase one and we’re not able to get that ball out, there’s no phase two or three anyway.
We’re already to phase four. It might as well be a dead ball. We might as well call the set. Phase one definitely start, which probably makes phase four definitely the sub being able to dictate the basketball finish possessions and not get put in rotation in your base coverages and dictated the basketball in phase four. We’ve been really good at disallowing phases two and three, both in, if you look at, you know, just some basic analytics, both in time of possession in transition by our opponents, but also the efficiency in which they play in. You know, we’re typically getting teams to play in the last 15, 16 seconds of the shot clock. And so that probably makes phase four really important for us. But phase four is not important if you’re allowing phase two and three, so definitely start phase one, sub phase four, and then phase two and three you can kinda sit.
Patrick Carney 50:28
Phase one with dictating, and you mentioned you tag up. What have you learned with just tagging up, getting your team to do it? What’s vital for your program to be a successful tag-up team?
Justin Downer 50:39
It’s really important that you tag up between the high side of your man or you never wanna be beneath your defender. That’s really important, especially the guys on the baseline that think that they can go find a way to the, you know, the other side of the floor, create an advantage. Like, that is really important.
The thing we love about it is it creates offensive rebounding opportunities that maybe guys that aren’t typically great offensive rebounders, it creates one-on-one match-ups for average offensive rebounders and it makes bad offensive rebounders just a little bit better at it because they’re just constantly going. But for us, the extreme advantage is, is there’s 10 guys running through the middle of the floor at the same time. That ball cannot be advanced because we’ve pushed everybody in. Everybody’s kinda running at the same speed and so there’s really no advantage to be created because if you’re the handler, that’s, it’s stressful to get the ball across half-court and push it with 10 guys in the middle of the floor. And so for us, the other thing that we don’t do is it would be really hard for an opponent to scout and pick on a match-up because you don’t know who our guys are going to guard. We don’t have a match-up board. We don’t present match-ups to our guys. Every once in a while, there’s an outlier player and we’re like, “Hey, as much as possible, this needs to be our match-up on this player.” But we recruit through that lens. We recruit defensive versatility at a premium, guys that are long, switchable, smart, tough. And so based on your tag-up responsibilities, there could really be any combination of players on any player. And then with our switchability in the half court, the chances are those match-ups are gonna switch themselves back out. And so those three things are probably my three most important things, is creating offensive rebounding responsibilities while being responsible, being able to cluster up the middle of the floor, and then also being kinda positionless with our match-ups as well.
Patrick Carney 52:30
Looking at then phase four and finishing possessions and valuing defensive versatility and switchability, what are you emphasizing? When you have a good switching line-up, what is the key to switching well where it gets the bad rap of being a lazy defense?
Justin Downer 52:47
It certainly does, as a player, it does promote a lazy mindset because I think a lot of times you can switch three times in a row and it’s totally disruptive, and if you switch the fourth time poorly, you’re in trouble. For us, the two most important things in our switching is our physicality and our communication.
So you gotta be early to communicate the switch is coming, but you also have to be very physical. So we would actually say, especially off the basketball, that we want our switches to be car crashes. It’s just a four-car pileup. I don’t know who fouled who. I don’t know who’s responsible for this. But you guys ran a split action and all of a sudden two players are on the floor. It’s a car crash over there. You have to be aggressive in it and you have to communicate in it. Now, is it lazy? Is it not? I do think it conserves energy. I do think it stalls out offense. I do think that it doesn’t allow the offense to really spin the basketball. So it doesn’t take away, in my opinion, how hard you have to play. Like, you still have to play with the same amount of effort, but I do think it saves work capacity, which I do think is important in terms of extending guys’ minutes, being able to guard a certain player a certain way. I do think that that is a positive impact of switching as well.
Patrick Carney 54:03
With off-ball switching or even when it comes to trying to steer screens to take pace out of these screens and to create these car collisions, and maybe the question’s better suited if you’re off-ball or normally you’re gonna be in, let’s say like your shell, your help positions, and if there is an off-ball screen that you need to switch and how you teach your guys to go from a gap position to getting physicality on the screen.
Justin Downer 54:26
The way that we guard, everything’s going left all the time. And so if you were a no baseline team, that would be a lot harder. Even if you were a no middle team, that would probably be even harder because you’re constantly going from the other side of the floors. But I don’t think it’s a secret, everything we send is left. And so you’re kinda getting the same few screens all the time anyways on one side of the floor. And so we also probably have the least amount of off-ball help presented to our opponents than maybe most teams have. We’re staying out of rotation as much as possible, and we’re probably encouraging isolation basketball by the offense probably more than others. And so as a result of that- We don’t believe match-ups win, we believe advantages and rotations win.
And so as long as we’re staying that out of rotation and, you know, sometimes we don’t survive the isolation night. Like Adrian McIntyre at Westmont got us big time a couple years ago at their place, and we couldn’t survive it, and probably could have made a couple more adjustments. But overall, understanding that, and then also, like, being able to switch, like the peel switch on and off the ball is really important for us as well. If we weren’t able to get to this car crash switch, we would also be able to survive it with the ability to kind of peel switch zone off or do some of those things.
Dan Krikorian 55:50
You mentioned earlier about your defense being good at forcing later, slower possessions. Is that on purpose, or is that just a consequence of how you play? Like, is it a goal, or is it just what ends up happening?
Justin Downer 56:03
I don’t know if it’s that we want them to play later as much as we don’t want them to play early. So we want them to play against set. And so naturally, with the way the shot clock is, we just don’t really wanna allow advantages in the first seven seconds of the shot clock. And so we would like the ball to get crossed half court under 23 seconds. If make or miss, we could dictate that. It’s not gonna be perfect, but we would like that ball to take about six to seven seconds to get across half court, whether that’s dead ball, whether that’s with our tag-up system, that would be ideal.
So from there, I think it’s kind of something that happens naturally because then most teams need to go find some sort of advantage creation. That’s usually gonna take another couple seconds, and then by the time you have it, like, you’re just gonna play within the last few seconds. And so I think switching also makes that really hard because it’s really hard for you to pick the match-up and/or defensive concept that’s going to put us in rotation naturally, and I think that’s why a lot of teams begin to hunt isolation opportunities early in the clock when they can find a guy that they feel like can get two feet in the paint against our personnel. And so I think it’s more of a result of disallowing early clock possessions.
Dan Krikorian 57:20
Coach, you’re off the start sub sit hot seat. Thanks for going down all those winding paths with us. I mean, even Pat threw an audible on me there too, so I love that.
Justin Downer 57:28
Yeah, that, that was great. I loved that. And honestly, I learned more about myself and what I don’t like to play against either, so.
Dan Krikorian 57:35
Well, thanks for going through that, Coach. And we got a final question to close the show.
Before we do, really appreciate you coming on. This was an awesome conversation, so thanks for doing this today.
Justin Downer 57:43
Yeah, absolutely.
Dan Krikorian 57:44
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?
Justin Downer 57:51
My career has taken me on a path that I actually never set out on. But what I always was focused on as a young coach, and I had great mentors that kind of helped me understand this, is that I always invested in serving others. Every opportunity I had, my only goal was to serve others. So whether that was being the director of West Coast Elite, that service looked a lot different for, like, an AU program than it did when I was at Riverside Poly as a day-to-day coach. I spent a lot of my own money serving others, taking kids on unofficial visits, paying my own way, and every time I did something like that, it seemed like an opportunity arose from it. Maybe it was a relationship that then served me well in recruiting or getting hired later. But I think a lot of times where I was able to build a reputation in the Southern California basketball community was I was just constantly showing up and serving, and it wasn’t about me. I just wanted to make it better. I wanted to make the players better, I wanted to make the event better, I wanted to make those better around me. And so I think a lot of times when we serve, we expect to be compensated for our service, or that we should feel like I should’ve been paid.
I worked a lot of things for free, and I didn’t work a lot of things for free with the mindset of, “I’m just here because, you know, you should be thankful that I’m here to serve you.” I showed up, I worked for free, and then, man, I tried to make it as good as I possibly could. And then as a result, I learned a ton along the way, right? A lot of the things I served, I didn’t actually know what I was doing until I got there, and I kind of faked it till I made it. You know, whether that was working out guys, you know, Lamont Butler when they were young, and Nico Mannion, and Josh Green, and then taking me to my days at Cal Poly and ultimately Point Loma, like, the mindset is how can I serve? How can I invest myself into serving other people? And then ultimately, I’ve been rewarded tenfold because of those people that I’ve served and the reputation that I’ve, I think, built for myself, but also the opportunities that have come from that. And so investing in service and finding ways that you can serve others, and even coming out of pocket to do those things are really, really important.
Dan Krikorian 01:00:05
All right. Hey, Pat, let’s pop into this recap. Thanks for throwing an audible on me on the start sub sit. Really change it around. That was fun for us all.
So I really enjoyed where that ended up going, which we’ll get to in a second. But what a great conversation today. Coach Downer runs one of the top programs, I mean, in California, Southern California and beyond. I mean, tremendous success, and I think after spending an hour plus with him, it’s not a mystery why.
Patrick Carney 01:00:28
No, no, not at all. Shone through why.
Yeah, Point Loma has had the success they had, and one of my bucket lists in terms of not necessarily a coach, but is getting some sort of soccer coach on here to see how the game applies and what we can learn and take away. So I’m sure it’ll bleed into my first takeaway, but was super excited when he started talking about what he’s learned from soccer and how it’s applied to his coaching.
Dan Krikorian 01:00:52
Absolutely. Well, let’s dive into our takeaways from the show, and for the first one, I’ll throw it to you.
Patrick Carney 01:00:59
Just pulling from the first bucket, the four phases he discussed, and just how he kind of came about that, pulling from just studying their soccer team at Point Loma. Taking a step back, and what I mentioned to you before we started recording this, is I think what really shone through in that first bucket is the- I think how the process, the framework, the structure, whatever, I mean, all three of those things, whatever you wanna call them, how he’s really thoroughly thought about those things, and I think he made the key distinction is he doesn’t necessarily present all of those, “Here’s this phase, here’s that phase,” to the players. To them it seems more seamless, more in flow, not so rigid. But it gives them a framework to always come back to as a staff to identify, evaluate where we need to get better, what we’re gonna be teaching, you know, where we need to improve.
Like we talked about, I think you had a really good follow-up on just what this looks like in a day-to-day practice, you know, and evaluating, “Okay, let’s work on phase three today.” So I think that was probably the overarching big takeaway, just that this framework he’s kinda come up, it’s simplified it for him, for their staff to really then put the bones in place to really then add the meat and develop kind of a program that’s really humming at the moment. I really liked that. He mentioned, too, I think another big takeaway just in general from all the podcasts we’ve done is the power of three. That was sprinkled throughout everything. The power of three man actions, the power of three decisions, being good at the primary, so the whole phases and all the frameworks that he’s kinda put together to teach his offense.
Dan Krikorian 01:02:33
To your point as well, reminding me, so we’ve discussed here on the podcast, other coaches, we did a deep dive podcast on it, which is the concept of total basketball, which is sort of stolen from the total soccer approach, where it’s you’re just playing the entire game, the whole court all the time. But the way to get to that is by having clearly defined, I guess, phases of where you then can connect all of it together.
So connecting phase one to phase two. Like, that’s part of the way you play total basketball is being able to break down how you have these phases and work on ’em, and specifically the transitions between the phases. I go back to Michigan State women’s head coach Robyn Fralick a couple years ago on the podcast talked about the best teams are the ones that are good in small transitions of the game.
Patrick Carney 01:03:19
Conversions. Winning the conversion.
Dan Krikorian 01:03:21
The conversions of the game. Thank you.
The small conversions. So one of the reasons later in the show when you talked about them tagging up, tagging up’s such a great system if you believe in it and do it, because it sort of combines two phases into one and it makes it so, like, you’re not having to teach multiple things. So I thought it was a really, really good point. You just mentioned it, but I’ll say it again. They as a staff understand the phases. They talk about them. They know how to drill them, stop them, work on them, so that when you watch them play it’s not a mechanical, robotic thing. Like, they are just playing a seamless game. But to your point, they know then they can go back and look at the phases as a staff and figure out where do we need to progress or get better or make tweaks or all that stuff. So I thought that was really good.
I also thought that when we got to some of the pick and roll stuff, I thought that was some-
Patrick Carney 01:04:09
Yeah
Dan Krikorian 01:04:09
… just teaching gold in there with-
Patrick Carney 01:04:12
Yeah
Dan Krikorian 01:04:12
… one, the three phases of the pick and roll, two, so you talked about the three phases a second ago, but your defender, the on ball or the other defender in the pick and roll-
Patrick Carney 01:04:21
Yeah
Dan Krikorian 01:04:21
… as the second, and then the help as the third, and just talking about that, and that conversation around all the things there. Can you beat your defender, one. Okay, if not, you shouldn’t be in a pick and roll.
How do you then help your team navigate those kinds of things? So I thought that was a really good conversation, and then you also just threw in the five ways that a team’s gonna guard you. The passively, aggressively, switch, double, or disallow was another great teaching point on just the simplicity or framework of how someone might guard a ball screen.
Patrick Carney 01:04:52
It was around that kinda conversation, too, we talked about his view of primary ball handlers. Maybe it’s an early miss from us, and probably we coulda had a whole nother bucket on it, because I think how they view the primary ball handler, and he mentioned himself, a little untraditional in that how they go about identifying and roster building, recruiting, like, decision-makers, and I thought he made the really interesting distinction of how they process their processing, not always just falling in love with, let’s say, just reading a box score.
Like, did they get the assist? Did they whatever, you know, how many turnovers? But are they really attempting to read the game at a different level, their IQ? And based off of that, putting them in a primary ball handler role, and he gave great examples of a jet guard versus a 6’7″ big guy, and the uniqueness that they, or the challenges they present to him building their offense and figuring out. But I think what is underneath that is what we’re all after is, like, just putting the ball in the hands of your best decision-makers, you know? And those are why he goes away from the word point guard and more primary ball handlers. I thought was a really unique point and a good distinction to think about.
Dan Krikorian 01:05:58
Absolutely. Another within that first bucket miss of mine, not from Coach Downer of course, but he did mention how early in the season there’s guys who will struggle who are more, like, off-ball players.
Like, earlier in the season, the messiness of your offense building that sometimes the, you know, players with the ball in their hands that can just create an advantage because they can get in the paint and whatever are farther along than ones that are gonna require cutting, off-ball movement, off screens. I thought it would’ve been interesting how we had more time to talk about those players, too, because how you get them up to speed with your offense if they’re someone that requires help from other people without them getting overly frustrated, because I think we all have those players that-
Patrick Carney 01:06:39
Yeah
Dan Krikorian 01:06:39
… you know, you start the first week of practice, some players get it, have the ball in their hands, can get downhill, while others are struggling because they just, they’re not touching as much or they need something else. I thought that was a good teaching point that obviously he thinks a lot about and would’ve been interesting to talk to him as well.
Patrick Carney 01:06:54
Agree. I think it probably ties into the conversation about just developing, like, your three greatest leverage points, and I think we all can identify the guys that can just get buckets, can, like you said, just can play with the ball in their hands.
But as you build out your offense and playing to the strength of the other guys who need off-ball action, need a system around them to help them excel, and that can also then add tremendous value to your offense and Can from game to game be the difference makers based off opponent scout and all that stuff.
Dan Krikorian 01:07:26
For sure.
Patrick Carney 01:07:27
All right, Dan, let’s keep it moving. I’ll throw it to you for the second takeaway.
Dan Krikorian 01:07:31
I thought the start, sub, sit, well, the one that we had planned, not the pivot one from you. But we’ll get to that one in a second.
But the growth systems between the productive adversity, rewarding efficiency, feedback loops, obviously those are all so important. I loved what he said about before we play games, I am the adversity or I’m the opponent as a coach. Really liked that framework, and then him talking about how just his philosophy on kicking guys off the court.
Patrick Carney 01:07:57
Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 01:07:57
For slow or bad decisions, and not necessarily stopping to overexplain, overteach, but just kick them off and then they’re probably coming right back on. You know, very like the cutthroat style of practices.
And I just thought hearing him talk about that stuff and the productive adversity was really good, and how earlier in the season he wasn’t overly concerned as well. I think you asked a follow-up about success early versus adversity later, and basically he was saying, “Don’t care about it. We’re gonna hit them with adversity right away, and then they’ll start to feel the success later.” And so I just thought he gave really good insight into just how when you pair it with the first bucket, when you have all these decision trees and how they’re playing, and then with this start, sub, sit, and how detailed they are about getting things correct or playing the right way. And if not, we’re just gonna kick you off and we’re gonna create adversity so that it’s really hard. We’re not gonna overexplain. Like, you could tell it, like, creates this mindset where they’re just trying to fix things quickly, and they’re gonna get to being really, really good fast with all these decisions and things that they do and how they play. So I just thought it was a great bridge from the first conversation.
Patrick Carney 01:09:06
Completely. I think within, you know, the takeaway I took within this, like, learning loop that he talked about, teach, drill, compete, and then the teach, drill where he’ll kick guys off, kind of forcing those units, those five-man groups to then communicate, try to problem solve on their own.
But then as you move to the compete, or I think probably one of the most valuable things a team can have is being able to just keep playing through mistakes, play through adversity, and that’s when, quote, just he wants them to almost drown in those compete phases. And then that’s where the value of the film, you know, if they can get more film on them struggling and trying to fight through, and that they can use in the film session. Also enjoyed the comment he says, of course we all have a finite amount of practice time, but an infinite amount of film time.
Dan Krikorian 01:09:51
For sure.
Patrick Carney 01:09:53
Which play- we all know players love, but it’s a great point, and I just took away, I wrote down like, yeah, almost drown in those competes. You know, no stops, trying to not even provide answers, but if they ask, like, trying to tell them, you know, go ask your teammate. You know, again, just creating the mentality of doing it together. The coach isn’t always gonna have the answers.
Trying to compete through, communicate with your teammate I thought was teaching gold. A lot in there for me.
Dan Krikorian 01:10:18
Yeah, reminded me of recently we had WashU head coach, Pat Yocum, on, and he talked a lot about in practice he had teach, learn, compete segments.
Patrick Carney 01:10:28
Mm-hmm.
Dan Krikorian 01:10:29
So, you know, Coach Downer’s would be the drill, Yocum was the learn. But he talked about during the teach and the learn, this is Coach Yocum, about that’s where you’re stopping, that’s where you’re teaching, that’s where you’re understanding of what we’re doing.
But then when you get to the compete, really shouldn’t be stopping it unless it’s an egregious situation where you gotta stop it. But otherwise, players hate it when you say you’re playing to 10, and then coach is stopping it and giving the ball back to the offense for-
Patrick Carney 01:10:52
30 minutes later.
Dan Krikorian 01:10:53
Yeah. Well, then you can just tell they, sometimes they lose what you want, which is, like, you want them to play hard and play through stuff. So that was a point well taken there, for sure.
Quickly as we wrap, your, the phases on defense was great, too, because it led into tagging up. It led into a little bit of the forcing left.
Patrick Carney 01:11:10
Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 01:11:11
I thought there was a ton there, too. Like, we could have probably had a three-hour conversation with Coach Downer about all these things, but it led to some really interesting combinations of ways of thinking about coaching or just being difficult to play against.
Forcing teams into difficult situations I thought was a great part of it, too.
Patrick Carney 01:11:28
The point when we were talking about switching he made with how being a lock left team allows them to be more physical in the switches because I think, I mean, of course, one, it’s the mentality. But what I always think about, too, is especially as if we’re in a gap position because, whatever, we’re no middle.
To his point then, on both sides of the floor, you’re, you’re kind of constantly shifting gap positions where lock left, you’re still gonna be in gap positions. You still have to move and shift as a defense, but everything is kind of the same because everything is being funneled to the left side, where then allows you, I think, to limit the situations that maybe are more complex, that require a little bit more like, yeah, okay, these are gonna be harder to switch, but you’re only gonna get a couple of them, and the other ones we’re gonna be prepared for and spot on. Like, the same thing, I think, why we talk about hedge and plug or all these other great defenses. They create clarity, and then you just can get good at the situations you’re gonna constantly face because you know what’s coming. I thought that was a really good distinction he made with what the lock left has allowed them to do, especially in terms of switching actions that they’re seeing.
Dan Krikorian 01:12:28
Absolutely. Once again, we thank Coach Downer for coming on, giving such a great conversation today. We appreciate everybody for listening, and we will see you next time.
Patrick Carney 01:12:42
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit slappingglass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slapping Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.