Siena University head coach Nevada Smith joins the Slappin’ Glass Podcast to discuss the difference between speed and pace, the details behind “25 Speed,” and how his teams work to create advantages within the first five seconds of a possession. We also dive into offensive rebounding, and PNR reads during Start, Sub, or Sit.
Transcript
Dan Krikorian 02:36
All right, Coach, we’re gonna go right to the offensive side, which I know you love and won’t be pulling teeth to go here for you. Let’s talk about pace and something, a conversation that comes up quite a bit. We’ve talked about it here on the show a lot, and there’s all different shades of it. And wanted to start with this angle on it, and that’s how you decide and know what the right pace is for your team for that season and what goes into that decision, all the things that go into figuring out how fast or slow we’re gonna play.
Nevada Smith 03:05
Yeah, I think the first thing is you have to differentiate speed versus pace. So speed is how quickly we go from defense to offense, whether it be a make or a miss. So I think that’s the most important thing is we wanna get the ball below the free throw line or a valued shot in the first five seconds, whatever we wanna do. So we wanna push it as fast as we can. A lot of teams are, we wanna pitch it ahead, pitch it ahead, pitch it ahead. I’m good either way, as long as the ball gets below the free throw line. The one caveat to that is if we take a dribble, throw it up, and we take a open slot three for a good shooter, like, that counts. Any good shot in the first five seconds or get it below the free throw line. So that’s our speed kinda goal. We always talk speed before pace.
The pace definition, how quickly you shoot, doesn’t help. It’s just do you take early shots or not. I think some of the pace analytics are… They’re good if you wanna prove a point, but I don’t think they show much other than you shoot fast. If we do the right things, we’re gonna shoot fast, so I’m not really worried about it too much. I think to your question of how we go about building that, we break down practices through different segments. So we do a skill segment, vitamin segment, and then a speed segment very early into practice, where we’re putting these guys through different speed drills that we do, whether it be different one-on-one games, different shooting drills, five on five, three on three, where the shot clock’s low, where we’re trying to really make sure we’re doing a great job of getting our 25 speed on the floor, getting the ball in the right spots on the floor and in the right guy’s hands. I don’t… Shouldn’t say it like this, but it’s true. I don’t care about turnovers. We don’t pass the ball enough, ’cause we shoot quick, to be a high turnover team. I don’t think any team I’ve ever been a part of has been a high turnover team. I like when they turn it over early because it teaches me what guys can’t do and what we can’t do as a group. So we don’t even worry about turnovers unless they’re unforced, same mistake turnovers.
But if you’re making a hard effort, speed, where we’re gonna get a great shot from it, whether it be a wide open corner three, a play at the rim, something we’re getting a guy in the air, turnovers are gonna happen. Don’t care. Some travel turnovers, we’re trying to make a play with the feet, whatever. But I think once we do some of those things in the preseason, at the beginning of practice, it’ll tell us how fast we can play and how fast we can’t play, but we’re gonna recruit to play as fast as we can. So for us, the speed kinda takes care of itself. The one thing we do do, and I’ve stolen this from Coach Crutch and Coach V, is in the summer we do a lot of 150-point games, where we’re just playing up and down with different restrictions, different parameters, different bonus options, where the speed is a factor. And we learn right away that, one, it’s a great conditioner, two, they learn how to play, and three, the rest of our summer workouts are pretty much all individual.
Nevada Smith 05:47
So they’re really getting a time to put into play what we’ve been working on in our individual workouts. So that really helps.
It basically by itself dictates like, “Okay, we gotta be in great shape, and we’re gonna be in great shape.” And it’s gonna vary, right? Like, there’s always gonna be guys that aren’t as fast, that aren’t as good playing that way. But once we can role define what we’re looking for out of them, it becomes pretty fun.
Dan Krikorian 06:10
Going back to you said below the free throw line, and I believe five to six seconds, how did you get to that? Why below the free throw line and that amount of time? How did you land there?
Nevada Smith 06:19
We did a study at Marquette, and that kept coming up to the number. We call it 25 speed, five seconds. We want the ball below the free throw line or a valued shot up. I changed a little bit at Marquette. I’m going back to it this year here. I think anything in transition that gets below the free throw line really puts the defense in a bind. The great transition defenses still don’t really run to help side or the rim right away. The elite ones might, but you’re still gonna catch them out of position, especially if you’re driving it from the midline. We want the ball in the middle as early and often as we can, and then kick to the sides to make sure, like, the help’s not sitting and waiting for you. We don’t dribble it up the sideline. We wanna play in the middle of the floor. We want guys to hug their man, and then when we make a play, make a pass, drive it to the paint, the paint’s usually open, big guys trail behind. We want to collapse everybody. Once we collapse the defense, we’re playing close-out basketball. That’s our whole thing.
So yeah, 25 seconds, we wanna get the ball up there. Like I said, if we throw it ahead and we fire up a three, that’s a good shot for us. We’re good there. Our offensive rebound numbers in transition are higher than any other time outside of a missed layup, so we love those early quick threes, whether it be in the corner, in the slot. Obviously, corner threes are gold for us and for most teams, but we would just want a high valued shot for us. Pitch aheads are great, but we’re not absolutely saying we have to pitch the ball ahead, we have to skip the ball, we have to do this. No, we’re just trying to get the ball to a certain spot at a certain time, and if we do that, over time, really good options are gonna be available for us.
Patrick Carney 07:42
When you talked about your practice segments, and maybe this is a question marrying both in terms of your skill and your speed segments. If I can start with maybe from an individual perspective when you get to your skill or even your speed segments, what are the skills or the techniques that you’ve kind of learned over the years playing with this pace that you’re gonna be throughout the season working on your guys and in your program?
Nevada Smith 08:07
The biggest area that we work on early in practice in our skill sessions is finishing. We’re gonna get to the rim and shoot 50% of our shots at the rim, and a lot of the pull up mid, get to the rim debate is well, you’re gonna take a contested one, and that usually leads to rounds on the other end. Well, not if you shoot them at a high percentage or you learn how to put the ball in spots where they can’t guard it. So we do a lot of finishing pre-practice in our skill sessions, finishing off of drives that we create, finishing off cuts that we create, finishing off just beating your guy to the basket. A lot of the skill work we do at the beginning is predicated on finishing.
Now, we do a lot of other stuff. I believe every pass should be thrown one-handed, so we do a million one-handed passes within the finishing segment. Guys can’t always do it, but we wanna see if they can, and we wanna work on it just because a lot of defenses teach, “Hey, when the two hands go to the ball, get home.” Well, if two hands never go to the ball, we should have an extra half second. So we’re trying to throw every pass one-handed if we can. So that’s built into the skill sessions. We do some shooting things, but usually the shooting drills we do in that are coupled with something else. It’s coupled with a rebounding drill within the shooting drill, a passing drill within the shooting drill, a cutting drill within the shooting drill. So we’re trying to chunk a bunch of different skill sets into one, and a lot of them end with you go two foot, one foot. Why? You go outside foot, inside hand, inside foot, outside hand. Why? What do you do best? Is there a finish that you can’t make? I’m very big on Tom Brady didn’t throw many left-handed passes, so let’s try to score with our dominant hand. We’re a dominant hand finishing team, whether that be you can force us weak hand all you want, we’re still gonna get where we want to get to. But how can we finish both strong hand and weak hand? What are the ways we can do it? I don’t technically believe in off hand floaters. I think they’re really hard to make, and I think when guys make them, you see it on the internet on, and they post it because they don’t make it very often, right? It’s like a highlight dunk. Right-handed guys make a left-handed floater, they put it out there. Well, you made one out of seven. I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for. But can we give you enough options? Can we give you a menu that you can pick from? Different guys are really good at different things, and I use Tyler Kolek as an example. He was one of the worst finishers in the country his sophomore year at Marquette, and he turned himself into a top 10 finisher in the country his last two years because he was maniacal about the process of making it at full speed with no one on him, making it at full speed with some type of contest, making it full speed with a body. We just did it so much, he got so good at it, and I believe it’s a learned skill. And he got rid of the ones he didn’t like, right? Like the ones he couldn’t make.
Nevada Smith 10:35
But we do a finishing tree with every guy on our team, whether it be our 7’1″ big kid to our 6’2″ point guard. They do the same finishing drills every day. Not saying they’re gonna do them on the game, but we wanna see it. We wanna see can you do it?
Does it give you another option? Is there something you do that we don’t do that we need to throw in there that you can work on? You know, I don’t mind fade away shots from the midline from four, eight feet. We get in there, we shoot those a lot in our finishing segments. Different ways to get the ball over shot blockers. We call them shot assists. All right, you got a big shot blocker. Let’s bring that guy over and just get the ball over his hand. Like, we’re good either way. So we work on all that stuff in the skill segments and, and it flows right into what we’re trying to do from a speed perspective.
Patrick Carney 11:14
And Coach, if I can just follow up, you said you’re a big proponent of one-handed passes, how you settled on that, and how you’re teaching one hand passes, kind of when you wanna attack rim and get into the paint and then be able to spray it out.
Nevada Smith 11:26
Yeah, we’re trying to buy half seconds. Like, we’re just trying to find half seconds on the floor and like I said, a lot of teams teach two hands on the ball, go home, so we never wanna give guys that extra movement where they can get that half second back. I think when guys get really good at it, you’re just creating a closeout where the guy catching the ball has a little bit more time to make a decision. What are you gonna do? Try to take a peek at your defender. You gonna shoot it? You gonna drive it? You gonna show him the ball? Like, what’s your menu? What are you gonna choose? We do stuff where we get the two foot. We call them foot throws. We do them every single day. Basically what other people call stride steps. We do foot throw drills every day. Okay, open up, see what you got. See a cutter, see an open three. Can you throw it with one hand? Are you dropping it behind your inside hip? How are you making the passes? What passes are gonna be available? Obviously on the move, those passes are tough. There’s a lot of old school coaches that think you need to throw every pass with two hands. I’ve never been in that camp. I think if you need to throw it with two, go ahead. I think in a perfect world, we throw them all with one. Even little kick corner passes on a slot drive, we just wanna push it out. When they commit to you, just throw it to them. And it comes with a lot of work and reading, and it’s things we do every day. We do a drill every single day where we throw one right hand, one left-handed, one-handed pass over and over and over and over again for two and a half minutes in an early vitamin, that you just see improvement over time. And there are certain guys, you know what? They can’t do it. Okay, you can add your second hand, but you gotta make sure you put more on it then. You gotta gain that s- half second somewhere.
So I think it’s important. It’s a skill for us. It’s a skill we work on. It’s, it’s something I think you can get better at, so why not work at it?
Dan Krikorian 12:55
Talked about the first five to seven seconds below the free throw line. Where do you find yourself teaching next when it comes to, okay, we didn’t get a shot in the first seven to eight seconds, how you keep the speed or what speed you wanna keep playing at once that first early advantage per se isn’t there?
Nevada Smith 13:12
The ball and the players kind of dictate what’s next, right? So depending on how the floor looks, can we get into some type of our flow, whether that be playing on the side of the floor, which we do a lot, we probably do it more than any team in the country. Can we get into an, an empty side, either pick and roll or some type of get chase action that, you know, one of our goals, lead the country in empty pick and rolls. It’s one of our goals.
Can we do it? I don’t know. I think we can. We’ll be close anyways. But can we find those, right? Can we do a good job with however the floor is spaced at not pausing, not holding? Can we find a bad defender on the strong side of the floor and put him in the action? Can we find a bad defender on the weak side of the floor and put them in the primary help spot? Are we good enough IQ-wise to do simple at an elite level? And that’s what we do. We only really work on our flow stuff in the summer, and we work on our minds, and can we do certain things? Can we put the worst defenders in the spots we want them? Because I think the one thing… And you hear people say different terms for different guys, right? And we call them suckers.
At different points, you hear them. You know, I, I’ve heard guys call them different things. Like we just say, “Who we going at and why?” So we’re going at number three because he’s bad in help. We wanna put him in as many help spots as we can. We’re going at number 12 because he can’t guard the ball. We gotta get him on the ball. You know, there’s an elite defender we don’t wanna go at, number one. He anticipates everything. We wanna put him in a spot where he has to make reads, where he can’t anticipate any passing lanes. Can we recognize that? I think we’ll get better at it. I think we’ll be better at it in February than we will be in October, November, but it’s something we talk about a lot. We’re a huge KYP team. Know your personnel, know your position. We do it times two, and that’s both ends. That’s offense and defense. You gotta know what you’re doing on both ends of the floor about the guys we’re trying to go at, and know the positioning of what’s next.
So on defense, where are you supposed to be? On offense, okay, if the ball goes here, what’s next? What’s my job? I have two options typically on every pass, every movement, every drive. Just gotta make sure that we don’t miss a prescribed cut. When we do that, it kinda clogs us. When we do a great job of seeing our prescribed cuts, it’s pretty fun to watch and pretty fun to play.
Dan Krikorian 15:13
Coach, could you just go a little deeper on why you wanna lead the country in empty pick and rolls versus some other type of pick and roll area or setup?
Nevada Smith 15:23
I think it’s the hardest to guard from a help standpoint. You really have to be comfortable leaving your man, and the closest help guy typically is the guy guarding the top guy on that three-man side, and we space further out on the floor than most. So are you gonna be comfortable if that’s an elite shooter going to the nail? I hope so.
I don’t know if teams will. I just want as much space as possible to create a driving lane, create an advantage with the screening action, put one and a half guys on the ball for a half second, which is all we’re trying to do, and then get into close out attacks. How are we attacking it? What are we doing? How are we cutting around it? It’s pretty wide known we’re a five out team that would never five out. We’re always four around one in some capacity, whether it be a cut, a drive, a roll off a screen, but we’re always five out. Our four out one in stuff’s, you know, not permanent typically. It’s within the five out movement spacing. Can we confuse a defender? Can we make him stay longer than he has to? Can we make him get out quicker than he wants to? And that’s kind of the game we’re playing. And, you know, if we can dictate where the defenders are, which easier said than done, but when you can and you get the guys that can really think the game, you could put some real pressure on the rim, on the paint, and on the three-point line.
Dan Krikorian 16:34
Coach, maybe if I could do a slight pivot within all this. Talked a little bit about attacking certain type of defenders and different spacings.
Where does your mind go as, you know, an offensive coach when the weakness of a team you’re playing’s defense is kinda hard to attack or not obvious, where maybe they don’t have a lot of terrible on-ball defenders, the rotations are good, you don’t have a matchup you like. Like these games where it’s kinda hard to have an immediate advantage, what do you do when there’s a tough problem to solve offensively?
Nevada Smith 17:02
I’m under the belief that great offense is impossible to guard. The defense is always reacting unless they are going to do something to make you react, which pretty much gives you two on the ball. So we are comfortable with what we do, creating space, creating gaps, creating two on the ball, creating different confusion points throughout the half court that you can’t be good at everything. If you’re good at everything, you’re gonna win a national championship. We probably aren’t beating you anyways.
But hopefully, we call them confusion zones. There’s different confusion zones on the floor that we just wanna put guys in and see if they make the right movement and right call. I think the hardest thing in basketball is to get teams to talk, so we wanna put you to the test on that. We also want to attack your defensive absolutes. Like whatever you teach in practice day one, we’re gonna try to exploit. We want your guys talking to themselves. We want your guys talking to their coach about, “Coach, they’re killing us with this. We gotta get out of this.” That’s what we want.
That’s when we excel. So if you teach, “Hey, we’re gonna tag the roller,” like you better believe we’re gonna attack you attacking the roller. Like if that’s something you do day one and we can see that, it’s pretty easy to see when you’re watching teams play, like what their main like one or two values are that they do every single time. Like we’re gonna go at it. You know, pack line teams typically, we do a great job of attacking ’cause we’re just gonna move you around and create gaps because of the way you play. Old Texas Tech, Chris Beard teams are gonna force you baseline. Like, we’re gonna get the ball to the middle, and then you’re gonna have to react. Everything you don’t want to do, everything you preach can’t happen, like, there’s ways to do it, and we gotta make sure we put your defense in a spot where hopefully it breaks, and when it does, you’re going to option two, option three, which you don’t practice as much as option one.
Dan Krikorian 18:35
Coach, you mentioned a second ago confusion zones. Could you dig deeper on that? Maybe what is one of the confusion zones and how you’re helping your guys or w- the actions you wanna be put in the around that or the spacing around these zones?
Nevada Smith 18:47
The biggest one is on guard to guard actions, 95% of teams switch. It might actually be more than that. So what point, and each team’s different, at what point do those two defenders not quite know what to do? How close can you get? How far away can you be to where those two are like, “I don’t know if it’s a screen or not. I don’t know if we should switch it,” and make them communicate? You know, typically the first round of the first four minutes of the game, you’re feeling that out, and then you’re using that the next four, next four, next four of, “Okay, let’s change up the zone. Let’s change up the point. We’ve been touching. We don’t need to touch. Let’s go a step early. Let’s find the point where they don’t know what they’re doing, where they don’t know switch stay.” And then we’re looking at different areas on the floor where is it my help? Is it your help? Make them talk. Make them communicate. Put them in a position where they gotta do the really hard things all the time, which, you know, is easier said than done, but it is the guard to guard stuff we do every day. We start switching everything in practice because we see it the most, and then we add stuff in later just because what we’re gonna do, but we wanna get really good at attacking switches because most of the teams are gonna switch us. So how do we do it? What do we attack? What are we looking for? Bad defenders, confusion zones, close out points, where can we create the most space? So we’re talking about that all the time in everything we do, and we’re literally just doing our flow stuff for most of that stuff, and, you know, we have set action to get the ball in certain spots on the floor. But we don’t like to… Perfect game is we call nothing but ATOs and after free throws. That’s perfect. That’s all we wanna call. If we can rely on teaching our guys how to play and them just, just hooping and playing, then we’re in pretty good shape.
Dan Krikorian 20:26
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Film, data, and scouting in one place. Fewer tabs, faster prep. Learn more at hudl.com/slappingglass today. Kind of studying your time at Marquette and the offense that you guys were running and maybe within your flow now, you always space pretty high in the slot. You know, like you said when you’re talking about the empty side to kind of put that nail closest defender in a tough spot. What are you teaching the offensive player in that slot? Because they are very high in the slot, so if the ball is coming, I guess getting them comfortable with being able to play so high and away from the three-point line.
Nevada Smith 22:01
It’s a huge adjustment. It’s one of the first things new guys to, you know, playing the way we play talks about after week one. They’re like, “I’m not used to this spacing. I’m not used to being in the parking lot. I’m not used to being way up here.” It’s different.
I’m like, “Well, once you learn how to play within it, you’ll understand why we do it,” and they all do. The big thing with me is we always wanna play downhill. If you’re always that high on the floor and you stay above the ball, you’re always gonna play downhill. When you get too low, you gotta go uphill then downhill. I think you lose a lot. I think you lose your advantage on a defender. I think it’s more difficult to get a shoulder by that way. It’s a little more difficult to make a move after. We teach a lot of, like, downhill drives, quick change of direction, quick change of pace. What are we doing to get by by? But up there it’s different, right? So you’re working on shooting from up there. You’re working on movement around the action. You’re working on, okay, what are my reads? Ball goes here, ball goes here, what do I do? And we do that all the time. Once you get it, the hardest thing to do is to get it after the actions kind of happen and we change sides of the floor to get back up there. You know, it’s initial spacing action. It’s not a complete spacing idea for the possession. You know, once the ball starts getting in the paint, once the ball starts moving, you know, we wanna be in scoring zones with all five players. When we’re setting it up and pulling you out and trying to create advantage, we want you to be up there. We want you to go to your normal spot and see if we can make a play and create some confusion that way. But it is a lot of work trying to teach those guys how to play from up there. But I think once they get it, they love the options they have, they love the menu that they get, and they start understanding where their shots are coming from, which is what I think is so important and why we play so much in the summer is guys work.
This day and age, the individual development is way better than I can remember from a standpoint of guys actually doing it. Now, some of it is great and some of it is bad, depending on who you work with and what you’re trying to work on. But once you understand where your shots are coming from and how you’re getting them, you can really start implementing that into everything you’re doing individually, and I think that’s really big. And when they see it and they start seeing success, you get true buy-in. If we did it and we stunk, I don’t know if they would do it as much as we do it now. You do it and you’re drilling shots and you’re getting by and you’re like, “Wow, that was pretty easy,” and maybe we stink on defense, but, you know, we do a great job of, like, getting the shots we want and getting downhill So, you know, hopefully we play against the same defense that we play. But it does take some getting used to, but I do think the, uh, the benefits of it can be pretty high.
Patrick Carney 24:27
One last spacing question, since I kinda put you on the topic. The corners, you know, whether in the initial transition phase, where do you see that in terms of are you telling the guys, “Get dead corner. Get elevated off the baseline”? How do you like to fill that corner area and where you’re telling guys to space?
Nevada Smith 24:43
We use an imaginary line from the top of the block, so we wanna be below the top of the block. In a perfect world when we shoot, we wanna be high foot right on the top of that block, but it’s never perfect. Just kinda gives you the most square. We want straight shots from the corner if we can. We want the ball to release and go right to the middle of the basket. Just gives us the best chance of making the shot, gives us the best chance of rebounding the miss.
The one thing we do that’s different than most teams is we never cut through from the corner. So a lot of teams in transition, if they’re stacked on one side, they’ll cut the co- Like, we never, ever do that. We kinda wanna race to the corner. The corner always gets shots for us or the corner always, like, ends up making the best play. So it should be a race to that corner. Both of them if you can, but if you’re all on one side, go ahead, line up. Doesn’t matter. Just space accordingly. We’ll figure it out. Our whole thing is get to the rim. We wanna get to the rim as much as we can. We don’t wanna take extra defenders down there so they can stay there. We want them running out to you at the three-point line because hopefully we have threats out there that they’re worried about, which leaves the paint open for, you know, a second or two where we can maybe get in there and make a play.
Patrick Carney 25:44
You see so much now too on middle penetration. Teams will cut the corner and kinda the Clyde cutting, whatever you want.
Does anything change on you with how you’re cutting system? You know, you mentioned you never wanna cut through from the corner. Are you always trying to hold corners you’ll cut differently, or if there is a middle penetration?
Nevada Smith 26:01
In the half court, different rules. Half court we will cut from corner slots, dunker. We’ll cut everywhere. Just wanna move the defense, keep the defense. The one thing that cutting does, you might not score, but your guy is gonna make contact with you most of the time, which kind of eliminates a help defender.
So cutting for us, we have prescribed cuts. We have cuts that are random. Both are great. Both are important to what we do, and both can be from anywhere. The big thing is we gotta replace ourselves when we do. We do leave certain spots. Like if you cut a corner, we wanna replace the corner. If we, you know, we cut a slot, it’s not as important. But the way we play, the way we space, the way we drive and look, corners are a pretty big proponent of how we do things. We want guys there if we can, even if they’re a late fill after a cut or after a drive.
Dan Krikorian 26:43
We’ve talked about pace a lot, and how fast and speed and the movement. Are there times during the game that you feel you need to slow it down or control it? I know time and score late and all that, but, like, let’s just say it’s either too fast or team’s struggling with reads. When now in game might you or might you not slow it or control it more if it’s not going the way you want?
Nevada Smith 27:04
Very rare. We pride ourselves in being better in that game than everybody else. So we want that game. Even if it, you know, we take a couple questionable ones, we turn it over a couple times, we gotta believe in our process and what we do and, and keep going.
When I was in the D-League, now G League, I’d struggle to make that change. I love the old Developmental League. I always told the guys, “You got 44 minutes, I’ll take the last four. We’ll take you home when we need to.” And we will slow it down at that point. We’ll slow it down certain situations where it makes sense for us to do a two for one or whatever we wanna do. Like, those situational basketball plays we will, but for the most part we never wanna put the brakes on. Our guys know that it’s a rollercoaster the way we play. Like, we’re gonna have 20-point leads that evaporate, and we’re gonna be down 20 and we go up 20 in the same game. So they understand that mentally it’s not the same as probably what they’re used to, and they gotta get used to it, and next play mentality and wipe it away. Like, we can overcome any deficit, and we hopefully can overcome any run a team makes. But from a standpoint of slowing it down, not very much, no.
Patrick Carney 28:00
What will in those last four minutes you change? You just mentioned how volatile the style of playing can be, up 20, down 20.
But if you’re in the close game of the last four minutes, what will you be mindful of or try to dictate?
Nevada Smith 28:13
The first 36 minutes will give us the blueprint of what we’re trying to do in the last four. Is there somebody that has it going? Is there a matchup we like? Is there a defender we don’t wanna go near? Is there someone we want to put in a certain spot, both our guys and their guys? We’re kinda figuring all that out through the first 36 minutes, and then we’re gonna execute it at the end.
We’ll always have a plan for what we wanna do pre-game, but most of the time you might use the base of that or the shell of that, but something else in the game has popped up. Or you use a player in a game and you’re gonna … You know they made an adjustment and you wanna kill that adjustment late. So, you know, that’s what the offensive competition coaching is, right? Like, can we make the right adjustments in the last four minutes? Can we get the ball to the right guy in the last four minutes? Have we worked on that enough where they’re comfortable in whatever package we wanna run at that point of the game? And then can we execute it? You know, if we do the right thing, get a wide open three and miss it, is that good or bad? We always talk about process is the most important thing until November 2nd, and then, you know, results kinda matter. So are your guys tough enough mentally to handle doing everything right and losing, doing everything wrong and winning? Are we good enough with our set stuff? ‘Cause we won’t have a million things. Are we good enough with what we wanna do in those situations? And then can we come off the board and make a couple adjustments within what we do, or maybe something completely crazy that we haven’t done all year. Can we do that? And we work on that stuff a lot. So not saying we’re gonna be great at it. We’ll improve at that. We’ll be better in February than we are in November with that kinda stuff. But we’ll have a menu, and then the menu is always gonna be ever-changing, even throughout the game. Whether they change a matchup, whether they switch something that we weren’t expecting, you know, you’re always having plan B, plan C.
Dan Krikorian 29:53
We wanna transition now to a segment we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re gonna give you three options around a topic, ask you which one you’ll start, which one you’ll sub, and which one you’d sit on the bench.
And then we’ll, uh, have some fun discussing from there. So Coach, if you’re all set, we’ll dive into this first one.
Nevada Smith 30:08
Let’s roll.
Dan Krikorian 30:08
Okay. First one has to do with offensive rebounding and thinking about how to increase the margins there. Basically overall how to be a better offensive rebounding team. So these are three different, uh, considerations or things from that standpoint.
So the first option is teach your team how to attacking on the release of the shot. Basically, just like their instincts to go once that ball’s released. The second option is reading the shot location, like where is that shot coming from, and that’s how we’re gonna crash or, you know, where we go. And then the third option is really teaching rebounding areas, like where you’re going to all the time on the flight of the ball. So start, sub, sit, attacking on the release of the shot, reading where the shot’s coming from, and then demanding the rebounding areas.
Nevada Smith 30:58
Sit, rebounding areas. Where you are on the floor’s gonna determine where you’re going for the most part, so I’d probably not worry about that one too much. The other two are tough because it is… I think they go together. For us, I would say where the shot’s coming from is start. That’s gonna tell you kinda how the shot might come off, which I think is pretty important. We want to go on the release for sure, but I do think if you’re a second late sometimes, it’s advantageous to you because you can see what your defender’s gonna do. If he’s gonna hit, he might check, and you might stand there, and he might turn his head the other way where you get a clear run. So I would say that’s, for us, probably the most important thing.
I don’t know if I’d say that for every team. But the onus we put on our shot selection, a lot of it is based on offensive rebounding. So it’s important that we know what shots we take and where we take them from and where the ball might go. And then probably sub on the release. I think it’s important, I do, and we teach it, but I think where the shots come from are probably, for us, just a tiny bit more important for us to really, you know, win that 1 or 2% margin that we’re trying to get.
Dan Krikorian 32:03
On the whole, how much emphasis is put on this whole thing for you? Like h- what part of your, you know, offensive philosophy is what you’re doing in this rebounding area?
Nevada Smith 32:14
It is as important as our personnel will dictate it. I think we have great offensive rebound personnel with this year’s team. We are gonna fly around. There’s gonna be times we send five. If you wanna play with us speed-wise, go right ahead. You wanna get a rebound and push ’cause we crashed five, hopefully we don’t give up a run out, but if we don’t, the pace is probably gonna turn to how we wanna play anyways, and we just wanna be more aggressive.
We’re aggressive offensive rebound mindset. We’ll have rules. We spend a ton of time reading the ball flight, which I think isn’t taught as much as it used to be. We got… And I tell our guys all the time, like, “Don’t think you’re just getting managers and coaches to rebound for you. Like you need to rebound so you can learn flight of the ball.” We played tips, the old tips game, to learn flight of the ball. Shot goes up, there’s two guys underneath it, they gotta tip it in, then they gotta read the ball, and that to us is a skill that’s not taught enough, and that’s an easy way to do it, is just play that game over and over and over again, and they’re reading the ball all the time, and they’re understanding where the ball bounces and why. Different shooters, the ball comes off differently. So we spend a lot of time on that, and then it’s just you want the ball or not. A lot of it is just go get it. Just want the ball more than the other guy. I do think you can get better rebounding the ball. It’s a skill that you can improve on. But I do think you recruit rebounding. You recruit rebounding on both ends. It’s what guys do. It’s a skill. When guys do it at a high level, they pretty much always do it at a high level. I think it’s the one translatable skill that usually is never off. Like sometimes you get a shooter that doesn’t translate, but if you have an offensive rebounder, they’re always gonna offensive rebound because it’s just in their blood.
Dan Krikorian 33:48
Follow up quickly on your offensive thoughts on offensive rebound, and let’s just take out the, okay, rebound and it’s a easy put back.
Nevada Smith 33:55
Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 33:55
But the ones that you get that are a little outside the zone, what do you want offensively after that to just take advantage of that next possession?
Nevada Smith 34:04
The big thing is if you don’t grab it, how quickly can you find a spot on the floor that we wanna take up? Don’t waste time.
Obviously, we’re crashing, we’re inside the arc. You know, find a spot that we value. Find a place behind the line. Find a spot behind the defense, one of the places on the floor that we talk about, as quick as we can. Once we do that, you know, our thing is if you rebound the ball and you can see it, you can see the rim, and you feel like you can make it, go ahead. If you can’t, let’s look to kick it out. We don’t wanna dribble, ’cause usually there’s a ton of hands in there. We wanna keep it in between your shoulders if we can. Make the right play. If everyone goes out and now you ideally have a chance to maybe make a play one-on-one, go ahead. If you don’t love it, you know, play uphill, play to someone outside the arc, and let’s get to a second action. You know, tip dunks are extremely valuable from a, obviously, point per shot, but also just the emotional standpoint that that can really help you in a game, especially a big game, but we also know that doesn’t happen a ton, so we don’t work on a million tip dunks.
But we do work on tipping the ball out. We do work on tipping the ball to teammates. We work on getting a hand on it, getting hands free. I thought Cody had did a great job at Marquette teaching rebounding to our guys. Thought we got better at it. We’ve stolen a lot from that, and we talk a lot about like, okay, if you’re opposite corner, for us, the weak side corner is such a huge rebounding spot because of the way we shoot the ball from three. You have to be able to rebound that spot on the floor. You have to be able to get your hand on a couple. You have to be able to read a couple. We track ball flight. You gotta be good at that ball flight and understand if it’s… You know, if the ball’s right on, it’s either coming directly to you or wedging. If the ball’s off right or left, get to the middle of the floor. Don’t wander. Get to the middle of the floor. It’s gonna come out there. Just get a hand on it. You don’t have to grab it. Understand where your teammates are gonna be. We do spend a ton of time on it.
Patrick Carney 35:45
Coach, talking with the weak side corner and, you know, the rules, structure, whatever you wanna call that, you’re gonna give that offensive rebounder. In terms of, you know, when you are gonna crash five, the other four positions above the break, top of the break, top of the key, are you giving them any sort of technique, structure other than we just want aggressive and read ball flight and crash?
Nevada Smith 36:06
Aggressive ball flight, understand where the ball’s probably gonna go. You gotta calculate some things pretty quick. Gotta make a decision. I think when you go, unless you get under the basket, you’re not making a wrong decision.
You can make a decision that’s better than another one, and then the shooter always has a decision if they’re gonna go or not. You know, we want them to make sure that their number one objective when they go to release the shot is to just make it. The only time we really want them going is like you see it when really good shooters know where the ball’s gonna go when they shoot it, they kind of run in. I think that’s fine. I think most of the time shooter’s not gonna go. He’s gonna be the back guy. You know, the corner three-point shooters are gonna kind of shoot and work their way up as the ball’s in the air. That’s kind of what guys just naturally do. And then when we shoot a corner three, we just gotta make sure someone’s in the middle of the floor. Still going, but putting pressure on your guy that’s trying to either tag you, box you, whatever they’re gonna do, and make a decision that way.
Patrick Carney 36:55
If we can take it the next step, the debate between tagging up that maybe has a little bit more structured rules, you get to your back versus just we wanna crash five, be aggressive. And when you’re gonna crash five, what is the sticking point or what have you found within just building the next step of your transition defense and maybe in terms of just helping the guys identify their match-ups?
Nevada Smith 37:17
Yeah, I think if we were to press, we would do tagging up, but we don’t. Not every possession anyways.
So we just wanna go. I think the one thing that you gotta be really good at is whoever’s gonna probably be at the top of the key back most of the time has gotta be elite in numbered break situations where they’re trying to get a kick, trying to get a tip, trying to make the other team. ‘Cause you’re gonna give up some two-on-ones. You’re gonna give up some three-on-twos, maybe some three-on-ones. Can you make them make enough passes where our guys can get back in the play? Can you get a kick to reset it? I mean, that’s a huge play. You’re on a two-on-one, you get a kick, I mean, that’s as good as making the greatest block ever at the rim, honestly. Really just sets you up and you’re like, “Oh man,” the other team’s like, “God, we lost two points. You know, 1.65 points are gone. We’ll never get them back.” So we do a lot of two-on-one transition stuff where we put the guy that’s gonna be back a lot in those situations on both teams. All right, we’re going at, you know, player A, player B. They’re back the most. Let’s go at them today. Can they get 50%? You win 50% of those battles, you’re probably pretty good from a standpoint of shots. Not saying 50% makes, just can you make them do what you want 50% of the time? Like, they have an advantage. You’re probably gonna give something up. I think that’s big and I think the first two or three steps after the other team has the ball, depending on who you are, if they rebound the ball and, and I’m a elite defender and I just wanna poke at it to maybe give us an extra second, not go for a steal, not put myself in a bad position, not get behind the ball, but kind of poke and make them turn, make them look, make them go the other way, that gives us enough time to kind of run back, sprint back. You know, we don’t have man in transition. We’re just matching up. We’re fine with our smallest guy taking their biggest guy. It’s not a big deal. And we just wanna make sure that we control the basket, control the ball, and then put the ball where we wanna put it from a KYP standpoint.
Patrick Carney 38:59
Coach, thanks for going through that first one with us. Our next one, we’re calling this point guard mastery, and I’m gonna give you three skills that you can help teach your point guard to manipulate a defense. And so the start would be the skill that you think is the most disruptive to your opponent’s defense. So point guard mastery.
The first one is just helping the point guard understand changing screening angles, being able to just adjust screens, work with their screeners on changing a screening angle. The second one is understanding how to commit a second defender. The third one is understanding opponent rotations.
Nevada Smith 39:37
Easy first one, we’re gonna sit the screening angle. Our screening angle is dictated by the screener. So our point guard will manipulate it after that, and so they gotta be on the same page, but it’s more up to the screener. Getting multiple guys on the ball is definitely start. That’s everything we talk about. That’s everything we do.
That is the most important part of being a point guard for us. I’m gonna go on a little tangent. You get a job and you get a lot of people saying, “You gotta recruit this guy. You gotta recruit that guy.” And for me and for our program, the most important position is the guy with the ball and we’ve been blessed. You know, we had Tyler Kulig, we had Cam Jones, we had Nigel James with Marquette. We had elite, elite, elite players with the ball. And possession point guards I think are great guys that can get you in an offense and can talk and start your defense. They’re not gonna be what we look for ever. Like, we need some type of dynamic skill, whether it be scoring, passing, defending, getting to the rim, creating havoc, whatever it is. But if you’re just a good solid point guard who gets you into their stuff, that’s how your coach would describe you, like, we’re never gonna recruit you no matter what. So anyways, that’s my little tangent on point guard.
And then understanding how to read the defense, I would, you know, sub. It’s probably the hardest skill to get, but once you get it, you kind of have it. It’s like riding a bike. Once you figure out who moves where and why, in the first three possessions of the game, you’re gonna understand what they’re trying to do. Kulig was the best at that. He would come over like, “I got it. I know what they’re doing.” All right. Okay, good. You just kind of give him a, a little pat on the ass and move forward because he kind of had the rest of the game. And you kind of help them when they adjust, so we’re not all blessed to have that, I understand. I think once you can get them to a level that they can really understand, like, why they’re doing it and what movements offensively trigger their defensive rotations and where they go, once you get it, you can’t forget it. You just kind of know it. And then you can pick people apart and then if you find teams that do it a different way, then you really got an advantage because what we do is probably gonna really disrupt them. But yeah, getting two on the ball for any player is number one. That’s the number one. In my mind, that’s the number one key to winning basketball games on the offensive end is getting two people to guard the ball.
Patrick Carney 41:42
You mentioned valuing dynamic skill, so driving, shooting, passing. If maybe I pull away from a point guard, but just within your flow if you have that dynamic shooter, outside of calling set pieces for them or ATOs after made free throws, how are you helping them, or maybe it’s more helping your offense understand the power that they have with their shooting to commit two to the ball and getting, like I said, more out of flow, out of maybe some randomness?
Nevada Smith 42:11
Yeah, I love exceptional skills. I love guys that, man, he’s a high major shooter, but he can’t do anything else. That guy’s perfect for us.
We love guys that do something at a level that maybe is higher than us, but maybe they have some other skills that aren’t as high as what we are, and how can we put those guys together? But I think if you can have five guys on the floor that they all do one thing at an elite level and they all know it and they all can play to it- Really, really hard to guard. I think shooters are the one thing that we run most of our plays for and run most of our set action for because in flow they get some screens, they get some plays. They’re always gonna shoot a ton in transition, so we work on that with them a lot. But their little set packages, I think for shooters it’s really important. I think for the bigger guys it’s really important. Most of the drivers are gonna find their way just through the flow of getting to the basket. You have some things for them, but I think, you know, kind of what you said, the shooting, the elite shooters, you know, we’re gonna typically do most of our baseline, sideline, out of bounds for them, if not for them, for them to create advantages for everybody else. They’re gonna be something that you have to worry about them on every single special just to put pressure on the defense. Like you always need to worry where the shooter is, and if you can put two on the ball… Like in my mind you’re on a special, you’re playing, you know, four guys against five, so you gotta be great at manipulating movement, creating an open space, an open gap, and finding ways to get, you know, like you said, a shooter a shot, a big guy a slip, something that is harder to create just in random flow stuff.
Patrick Carney 43:39
To follow up with the start with the dynamic point guard or driver, someone who can break the paint, maybe it ties back to your one hand passing all the way at the beginning, but what are you working with them to help them understand not only like, yes, you’ve committed two because two are standing in front of you, but maybe the gaps, they’re too far in the gaps, leaning two way, where, yeah, we have that shooter. You don’t even maybe need to make that dribble or it’s just one quick dribble and kick it versus over-dribbling, I guess is probably the question.
Helping them understand when the advantage is created without over-dribbling.
Nevada Smith 44:10
We talk about offensive defensive balance. Offensively we strive to be on balanced defense. We want to attack them when they’re off balance. A simple one is, let’s say it’s just a two guard front and we drive it middle, and the guy in the opposite slot is kind of coming in ready to shoot and his defender is coming to help. Like we wanna throw the ball when his body weight’s moving towards us ’cause then he has to stop, plant himself, get on balance, push away. Like if he’s already planted and you throw it, they’re gonna push away and get there a little quicker. Again, we’re trying to find half seconds somewhere. So I think that stuff for us is important, and how we can break the plane, how we can get in there, how we can do different things.
Every guy’s gonna be different with their strengths in the paint. Every guy’s gonna be different with the way they read the floor, how they use their feet. Are they good off one foot or are they better off two? Can they do both? Can they do one? I think guys that are really athletic have to be able to learn how to do both. There’s times that you have to go off two, like everyone’s gonna teach you one, one, one, one, one. And there’s times where bad athletes play off one and they need to create that gap separation, use their shoulders, use their bodies. Like Tyler Kulick had no dunks, but he was so good at he could make both foot, one hand, two hands, spin. Whatever you wanted him to do, he had it in the bag, and he was so good at understanding like when to use a one foot finish and when not to. Those guys have the ball so much, you’re living with some mistakes. Like if those guys are making all our decisions and they have three turnovers but they have 11 assists, that’s pretty good, right?
Even eight and four are pretty good. At the end of the day you’re looking like, “Oh man, four turnovers.” Like I don’t care. You have the ball a ton and you have four turnovers, that means our team’s under 10 probably, so that’s pretty good for us. But I do think some of the pad stuff people do finishing can be good, but it also can be bad. You talk about creating contact, then you’re just creating off balance drives where you’re seeking out this contact that’s not typically there. Like you never really go and just throw your shoulder into something. So we want the pad like on you the whole time. Like if you could move it a little bit, create those subtle little movements to get a little separation, to work on your timing of how can I throw off my defender’s timing where they’re jumping later than I am, I think that’s the biggest thing in finishing.
Just running in and hitting a pad really hard, like what does that do? That just teaches me how to get a charge? I don’t know. Teaches me how to get off balance if I get the two feet. You know, I think each guy’s different, but we do a lot of different things. I think the finishing, the passing, the movement, getting the two feet, the throwing your foot, I think all that stuff is in the paint. It’s below the logo. We wanna get in there as much as we can.
Nevada Smith 46:26
And if we’re getting in there, the process of finishing it or making the right play will keep getting better. This summer we missed a million layups, but we got there a million times. So you know what? I’m good with it.
We’ll get better at making the layups. We’re getting better at understanding what guys are getting what plays at the rim and how they can finish it at a higher rate. So I’m great with that. The hardest part is getting there.
Dan Krikorian 46:45
Earlier you said with the sit about how it’s the screener’s job to create the right screening angle. How do you work that dynamic between the ball handler and the screener on getting that correct angle and who’s reading who and what they’re trying to read to create that advantage?
Nevada Smith 47:01
We don’t do a ton of group work, but the guy with the ball and the guy that sets most of the screens do a ton. I think it’s important that they play twos, they’re playing two on O’s, they’re playing with GAs. And managers understanding when do I wanna flip the screen, when do I wanna twist the screen, what angle do I want, where’s my defender that matters if my guy’s below me or my guy’s gonna be in a coverage above me. So that’s a symmetry that we try to get going as early as we can. And then it’s important that both guys can communicate what they want. The big guy can come up and communicate a non-verbal cue of what they’re gonna do, and the guy with the ball has to set it up because if he doesn’t, then it’s gonna be a legal screen.
I’m really hard on big guys and really forgiving to the guy with the ball. Might not a great thing to say for our future big guys that come in, but if you have an illegal screen, it’s on the big. And you know what? If they’re moving early, just get out of there. Don’t hit them. If they move before you get there, just don’t hit them. Simple to say, but I think every legal screen is the screener’s fault because you don’t have to make contact. If they’re not setting it up the right way, just get out. We’ll live to fight another day, we’ll live to make another action. But having those non-verbal and verbal cues where those guys have a connection, a symmetry. You know, the one summer that Cam Jones and Oso Ighodaro spent together just doing that daily, every day, rep after rep after rep after rep. I had the privilege of working for Coach Spo. That was his thing. We’re just gonna rep it more than everybody else and we’re just gonna be better at it than you because we rep it so much, and I think it really does pay dividends for things you do the most. I don’t think you need to do it for everything, but I think the things that you’re gonna do the most, you need to be really good at. The teams that get spread too thin and they’re just kind of average at stuff, maybe good at a couple things, I’d rather be excellent at one or two things and then we’ll figure out the rest
Dan Krikorian 48:39
Coach, you’re off the Start Sub Sit hot seat. That was a ton of fun. Appreciate you going through that with us.
Got a final question to close the show before we do. Thanks again for coming on. Congratulations on the new job. This was a awesome conversation today, so thank you.
Nevada Smith 48:53
Oh, appreciate you guys again for having me, and you know, I, I love listening to you guys when we get a, a long car ride or a walk. I’m getting too old.
I can’t believe I’m saying it. I don’t run as much as I used to, but a nice steam and a walk, this is, uh, it’s perfect content.
Dan Krikorian 49:06
Appreciate it, Coach. Hey, our final question to close the show that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Nevada Smith 49:15
Yeah, you know, I obviously listen to you guys. I put a lot of thought into this because it’s important for us to grow the game to the younger generation. I think the one misconception out there is the networking piece, that you just gotta get to know a million people. I think that’s great. It’s good. It can help you in certain situations. I think you need to have a group of four or five people that’ll tell you the truth, that can be honest with you in every situation. About 23 years ago, we got a text chain of five guys, and we talk every day. And you can ask them anything. They’re all basketball coaches, varying levels, and we can talk about life, we can talk about current events, we can talk about basketball, we talk about jobs when that stuff comes up. But you know the answer you’re getting is genuine. It is what you need to hear, even when you don’t want to, and you’re gonna get something that is thoughtful, that the person cares about you. You’re not gonna get the generic answer back. I think that’s really important.
I think having a core group of people that you can bounce things off, it just helps. We do a Zoom every year. My network is so small, I just invite the same people, and we talk about different topics because, you know, I’m big on trust. I’m big on making sure that people don’t ask you the same questions at the Final Four, like, “Oh, how was the season? How’s your recruiting class?” Like, I don’t care. I don’t. How’s your wife? How’s your kids? You got a player going through certain situation, how are they doing? How are you doing mentally? Like, how you did last year, how your recruiting class is, whatever. Like, don’t ask me that stuff. If you do, I’m gonna make up an answer anyways, just because I refuse to answer that stuff. But when you can start asking and getting feedback on more than surface level stuff with people, I think that’s when the true growth happens. You can network and know a thousand people, but are those thousand people gonna respond when you get fired? Are they gonna answer you? You know that the four, five, six of your main people that you rely on for stuff will be there for, in any situation you could find yourself in. Good, bad, life, basketball. So I think investing into people more than the surface level, it’s changed my life. It’s changed, you know, the trajectory of my basketball journey. I wouldn’t be here without those guys.
Dan Krikorian 51:15
All right, Pat, hopping into this recap. Coach Smith, someone that’s come highly recommended by a lot of coaches we trust, and gotten to know him a little bit over the last month or so, and just did not disappoint today as far as just his thoughts on the overall game, and is someone that will be fun to study as we go into this season.
Patrick Carney 51:36
Yeah, as you mentioned, highly recommended from a number of different coaches in how he teaches his philosophy. Really looking forward to this pace conversation.
Like I said, it’s one we have had often, but as you alluded to at the very top, like it has so many shades, it has so many like levels of gray and can mean so many different things to so many different coaches. So it was really fun to finally get him on the pod and dig into offense and pace with him and hear his thoughts. So I’m excited for this recap, and I’ll kick it to you with the first takeaway.
Dan Krikorian 52:06
Yeah, so kind of recording this coming off of the heels of our SG SoCal Summit, and tons of coaches from all across the country came and spoke and connected at the socials before and after, which, you know, have come to be some of the most fun part of the weekend. Talking about pace was like one of the things that just kept coming up, and the difference between the slowest, fastest, where the advantages are, how do you create it, first seven seconds, last seven seconds, just all the fun things you can imagine.
And so leading into this today, it was fun to just go in with that conversation in mind because it’s just one of the most important, I think, decisions you can make as a coach about what you’re gonna do with your team. It’s not just about, like as he mentioned, this is where I’ll start getting into his takeaways, it’s not just about the pace of how fast you shoot. I thought one of the best things he did was right away say, “Hey, pace and speed are two different things. I don’t really care so much about the pace because it’s just sort of an analytic that maybe gets overblown. I care about the speed and how we do things and how fast we do things and why.” So I think that was my big takeaway, was right away him distinguishing those two things.
We’ve talked about that a little bit before as far as like, hey, pace is a number based off how fast you shoot, but what about the re-triggers and the first five to seven seconds and all that? So I really, really like that. So he kind of called it the 25 speed, I believe.
Patrick Carney 53:29
Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 53:29
At the top is within five seconds, we wanna get that ball below the free throw line.
And if you remember a while, while back when we had Cal Poly slow head coach, Mike DeGeorge on, one of his assistants, Ron Dubois, did a study with maybe it’s Uruguay.
Patrick Carney 53:44
Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 53:44
Basically just looking at when the ball got below the free throw line in X amount of seconds, the efficiency of that possession bore out to be higher than if you didn’t. So I think going back to like the way back machine, going to those things and just looking at why that’s important to get that ball below and how that bears out.
Patrick Carney 54:02
I’m always impressed when we have these conversations that the convictions of the coach, no different today with Coach Smith, but the conventions, the principles, the level of actual like detail that goes into it all, I think sometimes too you can hear pace, we just wanna run fast, we wanna shoot early, and that’s just what we’re preaching. But there is like so much nuance to it. That’s always like the big takeaway from me, just like the level of detail and thought that these coaches really put into how they build out their pace, build out their programs. So that’s like the overarching takeaway.
I think another thing that he kept kind of hitting on too is just like ways to just gain .5 of a second, whether it’s the one-handed passing, the offensive rebounding. He talked about in terms of building then their transition defense, if they can just make their opponent think, hold up, dribble to the side, just winning .5, and I think it goes back to the speed, you know, how they try to do things just- To win the smallest of margins, that .5, and it makes then such a huge difference in possession battles, PPP, where your shot’s going, your ability to break paint, play against a scramble defense. So that was my first one, the .5 kind of also ringing throughout the whole conversation. Moving through that first bucket, I really then enjoyed the confusion zones, when he talked about just guard to guards and really working on these areas where the defense can be the most susceptible. And then I thought what was really interesting too was them trying to lead the country in empty side actions. And you know, I enjoyed hearing him as to why and he thinks how favorable that is for the offense and the stress it puts on the defense. But those two things later in the conversation I really enjoyed hearing his thoughts on.
Dan Krikorian 55:44
And I’m with you. We’ve, on SGTV, done a deep dive breakdown on that Marquette deep spacing with the empty side stuff, and he was huge obviously part of those teams and that offense, and so it was kind of fun today to pick his brain on why and, and obviously the details behind it. So I really did like that empty stuff, and his reasoning to where you’ve got to commit that defender to help on it and then what you’re gonna do on the backside to kind of try to attack that. So I really enjoyed hearing that as well.
And then just one last thing to add, he had KYP times two-
Patrick Carney 56:19
Mm-hmm
Dan Krikorian 56:19
… was just a huge part of what they do, and who am I and also who am I playing against, and just that knowledge helping them within their flow. So a ton of just like really, really good teaching points, nuggets on a conversation beyond just let’s play fast and get downhill.
It was really a good nuanced conversation there in the first bucket. To keep things moving, Pat, our next takeaway, I’ll throw that one back to you.
Patrick Carney 56:45
I enjoyed both start subsets. Obviously we wouldn’t put one out there we weren’t curious about. So I don’t think I’m breaking any news there.
But I think it’s gotta be the offensive rebounding. Offensive rebounding and pace are the conversations we’re always coming back to, and I think where there’s real margins to be gained. And I like the three we came up with, attacking on the release, the shot location, the rebounding areas, and getting to hear his follow-up thoughts, especially the emphasis he puts on reading ball flight. So one we didn’t have in there. He talked about the tip game, the importance of tips and coming out and reading that ball flight. More specifically I think within offensive rebounding, of course the conversation’s always how many to send. But you and me are finding ourselves in a lot of conversations of, well, if you’re gonna send all five, do you tag up or just crash? We had a good conversation with Klask. Does it sometimes restrict your most gifted offensive rebounders? Does it de-incentivize them in a way that then it’s not really yielding the results you’re hoping for? And so hearing Coach Smith’s thoughts on just like crashing, the importance of the weak side corner that, you know, they’ll probably put a little bit more discipline, some rules to there in that they have to get tips, but just on really trying to ramp up the aggression I think is like the next kind of real interesting conversation that’s being had right now in terms of offensive rebounding.
Dan Krikorian 58:03
Yeah, I mean well first just I did really like his start, which was reading the shot location, and he mentioned that it’s just so important that they take great shots because when they know where the shots are coming from and then they crash all five or four and one back, then they have a better chance of knowing where that ball’s going to go.
Patrick Carney 58:19
Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 58:20
And increases your numbers I think. We’ve talked about this on the show.
We’ve had guests talk about it. But if you’re gonna say tag or send a lot, you can’t tag bad shots. Quick fall away twos or crazy spinning layups where you slide and they’re falling out of bounds. Your team’s just not ready to go forward and tag, so the better shot you take, the better chance you have getting the miss is what he was getting at too with reading that shot location. So I really liked that. And then just to double down on your point, this is just conjecture at this point, I think based off the conversations we’ve had all spring and summer and the number of offensive rebounding conversations that are being had, a few years ago when tagging became more popular or was starting to become more popular, I think the thing was, well, if you don’t tag perfectly, then you’re gonna get crushed in transition. And maybe four or five years later, some of these teams that are tagging and maybe not tagging perfectly or sending four or five, and they’re not getting crushed because teams are just so concerned about getting the rebound instead of leaking out. There’s more film and data on like, well, you know what?
Patrick Carney 59:24
Mm-hmm.
Dan Krikorian 59:25
Just keep sending more guys because you’re actually not getting beat in transition no matter what. Teams are so concerned about the defensive rebound, the numbers are bearing out even better, like just keep going forward.
You might give up one or two, but I think coaches are not overreacting as much to one or two leak outs here and there as opposed to just the overall benefits of sending more, whether you tag or just have them all go.
Patrick Carney 59:47
I agree. Like you said, the numbers are bearing out the value of that extra possession to be gained.
I think what Coach Smith said and maybe then the teams that are understanding this and really gonna be aggressive, what they do put emphasis on is then like the disadvantaged two versus ones. And I think our conversation with Kellen Samson from Houston-
Dan Krikorian 01:00:06
Yeah, that was good
Patrick Carney 01:00:07
… they talked about how they really then, yeah, we’re gonna crash, we’re gonna go hard. We’ll give up some, but we’re gonna then also try, okay, well let’s maybe the next step behind that is like let’s get good at getting comfortable in these two-on-ones. And again, going back to can we just get a kick out? And as Coach Smith said, that’s as good as maybe just a blocked shot at the rim, you know? It buys another half second to get everyone back.
So I think like that’s the next step that teams are starting to find out. It’s like it’s still advantageous. We’ll be in these situations. We’ll– then maybe the next step is putting our most common guys who are gonna be maybe the guys that are gonna find themself most frequently at the top of the key, like well let’s get them comfortable in two-on-ones. Let’s try to find some ways to, yeah, can we save it 50% of the time? But even the 50% of the time you’re getting scored on, I think the numbers still bear out The advantage, the fruit that can come from crashing all five still outweighs the couple possessions you’re going to be in some disadvantaged transition numbers.
Dan Krikorian 01:01:07
Yeah. Were there any areas that we missed that we could have asked him about or explored deeper?
Patrick Carney 01:01:12
I think what jumped out was his speed segments. We did dive into it. I asked about the skill that within the speed they’re trying to work on, try to develop. I would have loved to just kind of keep going down that rabbit hole, maybe like conceptual.
He mentioned like some three-man drills. So maybe just building out concepts within playing with speed that they try to do within the segment. So I wish I had followed up a little bit there.
Dan Krikorian 01:01:36
Yeah. For me, there was no misses from Coach Smith, but early on he talked about Jim Crutchfield playing the 150 point games at Nova Southeastern and how they would do it. I just missed on asking him what constraints he put on that to what that looks like. I’ve heard that a lot, playing to 150 gets them in shape, you know, like all the things that are positives of it, but maybe going a little deeper into what that game actually looks like, how you score it, incentivize certain things, especially early in the season. So like I said, that was a miss from Coach, of course, because he mentioned it and we didn’t ask him.
But then I just also wanted to say I thought his best investment answer was terrific. And we’ve had like a run here of really, really great best investment answers. It reminded me of, so Stan Van Gundy a long time ago mentioned that in coaching you want to have, you know, people you like working for, but then you also need friends, people that are going to tell you the truth and like be there when shit hits the fan and like the difference between acquaintances, people you work with, and then also like true friends in the industry. And it kind of reminded me of that a little bit about having a group of four or five that you kind of come up together, different levels, and will just tell you the absolute truth on anything and how like the power of a small group like that obviously is beneficial for your career or for jobs or openings, like all the things he mentioned. Just that was a really cool answer. So I enjoyed listening to that at the end.
Patrick Carney 01:02:55
It also reminded me of Coach Sundance Wicks. He talked about foxhole friends.
Dan Krikorian 01:03:00
Yes.
Patrick Carney 01:03:00
Same kind of sentiment there.
Dan Krikorian 01:03:02
Absolutely. Well, once again, we thank Coach Smith for coming on. It’s a terrific conversation today. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.
Patrick Carney 01:03:15
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.