East Tennessee State head coach Brooks Savage joins us to talk through the evolution of his offense, why he moved away from trying to be different, and how his program’s identity starts with standards. We also get into keeping practice simple and competitive, offensive rebounding, playing without a traditional center, and how to create a comeback when the game starts to get away from you.
Transcript
Dan Krikorian 02:20
Coach, congrats on a great year last year, all the success so far. I know you’re gearing up for this season. We’re really excited to have you on today to talk about a bunch of stuff.
Brooks Savage 02:29
Thank you guys for having me. This is a really cool experience. I listen to you guys as much as I can. Huge fan. You guys have really built a podcast monster here, so just appreciative of you guys having me on.
Dan Krikorian 02:40
Thanks, Coach. Appreciate that.
Dan Krikorian 02:42
We were talking a little bit before the show, you as a coach have gone through evolutions on both sides of the ball, and we thought it’d be really interesting to dive in on the offensive side just because you mentioned to us in our kind of prep about moving from Villanova flow, blocker mover, five out, you know, all these things that you’ve gone through. And I think it’d be interesting to start on just where you’ve landed and why, and then we can kind of dive in from there.
Brooks Savage 03:07
Yeah. So coming from Wake Forest, we had some really good offensive teams. I was kind of the… Ran the offense, I guess you could say. Coach Forbes gave me a lot of freedom and responsibility there on that side of the ball. Worked really close with Matt Woodley. We had built this offense, you know, resembled Villanova with just the passing, exchanging, but it was really more rooted in the fundamentals. We had some really good players, Jake LaRavia and Alanis Williams, Ty Appleby. We had some good teams there.
And so when I get the job at ETSU, like most first time head coaches, we got this great plan and we know exactly what we’re gonna do. ‘Cause when you’re an assistant coach, you’re sitting there, and I’m gonna do this and this and this, and you got it all figured out. And I think there’s such an element of revealed knowledge in this game, but especially when you become a head coach, it’s, you can be as prepared as possible, but there’s just gonna be some things you don’t know until you just go through it. And so you have to think the ability to pivot in those moments is important. So I get to ETSU, and we’re doing flow, our version of flow, the Villanova what we ran at Wake Forest, and we don’t quite have the personnel for it. We just don’t have enough guys that can really break you down one-on-one and don’t have great pick and roll players. And we had back-to-back ACC players of the year and the 19th pick in the draft at Wake Forest. And then you’re just dealing with a different player and, and these guys were good, they’re just different. We had to pivot. We became really set oriented. Because we were really strong on the defensive side of the ball, you know, one thing I really believe in is being complimentary. You know, you hear a lot in football, but I think it’s really important in basketball too, like, your defense and your offense have to protect one another. And so we were turning it over too much. We weren’t getting great shots, and that was leading, putting pressure on our defense. So we became really set oriented. We wanted to play really slow. I think if you wanna play better defense, play less of it. And so in a really high-powered offensive league, we were trying to just control the game as much as possible. So we got really set oriented, which changes practice. You have to spend a ton of time in dummy and execution and, you know. And so that was the first year, and we landed on, in the end, kind of just hooping a little bit. You know, we had some two or three really good players that we kind of got high. We just kind of figured ourself out over the course of the year and… But we were still really set oriented. Then our second year, we started same type thing. We ended up at the end of the year, we had some injuries, and we ended up running a bunch of block and mover, again, just to try to play slow. And Kemari Peterson, who was the SoCon Player of the Year, he could really make those shots, great movement shooter, and we could really control safe ball handling, and we could really control the game that way.
Brooks Savage 05:46
And we were putting that in, you know, in two days and just kind of running it. So then going into this past year, we’ve run ball screen continuity. We tried the flow. We’ve been really set oriented. We’ve run block and mover to this point. And so this past year we tried to really dive into the block and mover in the summertime, and it kind of just didn’t fit our team great. We worked on it. I think it was honestly maybe better for us defensively in the end. Just when you have to guard motion, you’re just naturally better defensively. But we ended up back in flow.
But what I’ve kind of come to realize is, is one is recruiting. You know, obviously you have to have multiple play makers and handlers. But I think what we came back to is, is really just rooted in fundamentals of what you wanna do, what’s important to us, playing on balance, great spacing. A strength of our team this year was our two post players. We had two really good front court players, and so we tried to throw it in there a lot. And so we just kind of pivoted to the strength of your team. But man, we’ve tried it all on. This year we’re gonna be, you know, really modern NBA, more so than we have been with some of the set plays, but just kind of Utah Jazz, Will Hardy, five out big on the wing. So that’s kind of what we’ve evolved into, but I had this obsession coming in that I wanted to be different. I guess my advice to other coaches would be I think it affected us negatively too much on the offensive side of the ball. And so as I got more away from that, a coaching friend who I worked for as a freshman manager at Tennessee, Chuck Benson’s the head coach at Carson-Newman, awesome coach. We’re talking one day, and he’s like, “Coach, you guys already are different enough.” ‘Cause I didn’t wanna play like everybody with hybrid Princeton and playing through the five, coming through the door, ’cause our whole league plays that way. It’s like camp offense. And he’s like, “You’re already different enough with your competitive character, your physicality, your athleticism, the way you defend.” When I let that go before the start of this past season, I thought we were much better offensively. We set school record for offensive efficiency. We were like 116. You know, school record for two point field goal percentage, free throw percentage, lowest turnover rate. So as I’ve evolved and let go of some of that just wanting to be different, we got a lot better.
Dan Krikorian 07:54
Where do you find on offense that you can be unique? And I guess let me clarify my question.
Is it off ball screening? Is it how you screen on the ball? Is it your cutting patterns? Is it where things happen on the court? Fundamentally where when you said, “I wanna be different,” have you and your staff thought about like, “Well, here’s the areas or the screens or the patterns that we think are different enough to separate ourselves”?
Brooks Savage 08:17
I grew up playing for a legendary high school coach, active Hall of Famer, he’s retired now, but Tim Whipple at Irmo High School. I grew up running motion. I mean, I’m a motion person coach at heart, and that’s how I learned to play the game, and I love motion. And so that’s why I think for a lot of us, I think that’s why UConn really hits a soft spot i- in our hearts, because it’s all the motion sets and motion concepts.
I do think you can be different through your set plays, like if you wanted to run… If you had a ball screen kind of continuity, but then you wanted to maybe try to run some screening off the ball and set plays, I think you could be different there. We’ve done some of that. I think you can be different with how you cut. If you wanna be like a colliding team, I think that’s becoming more in vogue in that way. I kind of go the other way. Where we wanna be really different is in our discipline to the fundamentals. No other team in recent history for sure that has played was the Villanova teams in just playing off two feet, and we all say the same things. We’re all trying to rebound 35 plus percent offensively. We’re all trying to be low turnover. We’re all trying to play off two feet. But it’s like who has the discipline to do it is the big separator, and Jay Wright was just merciless. And we call it play on balance. Sometimes playing on one foot is on balance, but it’s play on balance. Pass on balance, shoot on balance, finish on balance, defend on balance, everything on balance. And so really holding them to that. I think really being strict on the fundamentals of whatever your core offensive things are. If it’s spacing, if it’s your cutting, if it’s how you screen, if it’s, for us, it’s on balance, really selling out to that. And I think the simplicity is kind of where you can be different the most.
Patrick Carney 09:59
In your evolution, when you talked about at one point you were very set orientated, when you were with that team set orientated, what was the information most valuable to you going into a game that allowed you to decide what sets to run? Was it just these are the sets for our best players, period, or here’s what our opponent’s gonna do, what sets can manipulate that defense to give us the best chance?
Brooks Savage 10:22
Both. Yeah, I think there’s some things based on how they guard pick and roll. We run some stuff out of Ivo, so if they’re a hedge team or if they’re gonna be up and pick and roll, you can run maybe the old slip pop play. You know, the first guy slips, and there’s some specials that you can kind of take advantage of based on maybe pick and roll coverage. For us, maybe a team, maybe they’re really aggressive on the ball, and so then maybe you can run maybe a couple more of your backdoor plays. Maybe they really pay attention to a shooter’s gravity, and so you can use them as a back screener. So I really like running those types of plays, you know, ’cause they’re gonna be stuck to those guys. So maybe you have a lot of it you like you can run. And so there’s some specials right there I think that you can kind of have in your pocket ATO-wise based on maybe something you saw in a film or something that you see in the game.
It’s mostly generated towards getting your best players the ball, and especially in crunch time. You know, Peyton Manning was on the Thursday Night Deal with Eli, and I’m watching. I don’t watch much NFL, but I happened to be watching this one ’cause I’m a Tennessee guy, so I like Peyton. I actually got to go drinking with him one time. That was pretty cool.
Dan Krikorian 11:23
Okay.
Brooks Savage 11:23
Anyways, I was with Jeff Saturday and Brian Stokely. I didn’t even know who they were.
They just looked like normal guys, and then like 30 minutes into the conversation then they’re like, “Oh, shit, y’all play for the Colts too. Damn.” Anyway. But Peyton’s talking about, you know, it was overtime, and it was like, okay, overtime you’re running your money plays. Like your money plays in crunch time and overtime. That stuck with me, and so, you know, we try to have our little package, like our crunch time package, and we try to stick to those, and that changes game to game. But I guess if you probably ask some teams in our league, there’s probably some favorites that are probably stuck on film by now. Mostly just getting those star players the ball in, in space and trying to get them an advantage.
Patrick Carney 12:03
You mentioned something really interesting when you were gonna be more set heavy about-
Speaker 4 12:07
How it changed the way you need to practice, and maybe as you move into now, like you said, maybe gonna be more 5-out conceptual based, quote-unquote. Compare and contrasting, I guess, what changed or what did you kinda have to work through when you were gonna be set heavy in terms of how you practiced and prepared?
Brooks Savage 12:25
So when I was a manager and a GA for Coach Pearl at Tennessee, he was really set-oriented as well. I’d been through those practices before with the long, the 45-minute dummy offense and the half-court execution, and, and I was kinda used to that, but I just do think it’s not really how I wanna practice. You have to spend a ton of time on that to be good at it. I don’t think you can really spend enough time.
You don’t wanna do it all 5-on-0. You wanna have a defense out there when you’re trying to run your stuff. So it’s scout team defense. There’s slippage, and there’s drop-off over time when they’re on their 30th straight possession of defense. And it’s not a great practice structure, I don’t think. You know, not everybody’s great at executing, and not everybody’s great at remembering them. And then you have guys playing multiple positions, and there’s just a lot more there than just r- drawing your play on the napkin. We’ve tried to get more and more away from it. It just makes practice really stagnant. When do you dummy? Do you dummy at the beginning? Well, then you gotta get them going so that you can do the things you want to do. Do you dummy at the end? Well, then is their focus still there? Like, you can’t dummy in the middle ’cause once you dummy, it’s over. So when do you do this? You know, is the great conundrum- … I think that we’ve found, and I think probably other coaches would agree. But yeah, we like to play. Like, our practice is just really… We do the same things all the time, and so I’m always challenging them to not get bored with the redundancy ’cause we wanna be really good at certain things, so that’s all we do. Like, coming up here pretty soon, practice will be, like, three things. One thing that I’ve kinda come to kinda on my own here, in the summer and the fall, first thing you do when you get your practice plan is what, Coach? You fold it, right?
Speaker 4 14:06
Yeah. Yeah.
Brooks Savage 14:07
And then you fold it again, so you can fit it in your pocket. Okay, so if it can’t fit on that top left quadrant, it’s too much, in my opinion, at this point in the year. This is just how we do it. But we do the same things over and over.
So yesterday, we did, like, three things. We’re gonna block out rebound, transition defense, and there’s gonna be, like, one little offensive thing tied into that, and that’s it. And we’re gonna do that for, like, an hour. And it’s a way we play. We like to play a lot, and we do the same type things. But when you dummy so much, it just… I just don’t think it’s great. You know, Van Gundy talked about it. You don’t fix a problem with a play. What I was talking about earlier, ours was more fundamental issues than maybe concepts as much or what we were running much at times.
Speaker 4 14:48
Coach, loved hearing about your practice plan. Can you go a little deeper on that maybe? How you’ve settled on, like, the three things? And then I think, too, maybe the next level of how you keep it an engaging practice when you’re just doing a few things. What does that look like?
Brooks Savage 15:02
Sure. You guys have coached, so you know, like, every team has a different capacity for practice. Last year, our team did not have a high threshold, and we won the regular season, but we were not a great practice team. If our bags were packed before practice, we stunk. Before a game or before practice, we were no good, so we would just leave and practice later in the day.
We cut out stretching and film before practice entirely, and we just got right to the floor. Like, get out there 15 minutes early. We’ll do some pre-practice stuff, and then we’re gonna start, and we’ll get going. ‘Cause we only had about 70 minutes before our ADD started kicking in, and we couldn’t do it no more, you know? And so every team’s different. Generally, we like to get started right away. We like to do the same type things. Like, we’re gonna work on, we’re gonna hit most every day in practice. Me and Miles Lester, that’s on our staff, went to the Final Four practices. It was awesome. Illinois’ out there having, like, full prac– They’re blocking. Now, like, two different segments of, like, blocking out, and some people are probably like, “Why are they doing this the day before their Final Four game?” And I’m like, “This is why they’re here.” I love studying other coaches, whether it be football, baseball. Like, it doesn’t matter to me. And I think anytime there’s, like, a coaching change… I’m gonna get to your question, by the way.
Speaker 4 16:17
Oh, good.
Brooks Savage 16:18
I think anytime there’s a coaching change in football, week eight, the Jets change their head coach, and this guy stands up there, and, “We’re gonna put the pads on tomorrow, and da-da-da.” I’m like, “You shoulda had ’em on.” “You shoulda had ’em on.” You know, I… So we’re gonna hit every day in practice. We’re gonna run back. You can pop on the tape, and in about three minutes, you can tell the character of a team by how they run back or not.
People would say that everybody struggles with transition defense. I told the team yesterday, “No, that’s not true. The elite teams do not. It’s all the BS teams. It’s all the low character teams that ain’t really about it, that don’t really understand how important that is, how much that goes into winning.” And so we’re gonna hit, we’re gonna run back, and we’ve kinda changed our offensive rebounding from tagging up to more crashing. We’re gonna run back. We’re gonna play on balance. You know, and that’s gonna be emphasized the entire time, but we’ll do that in different ways, whether that’s through finishing or drive kick passing type penetration rules and actions, but we’re gonna play on balance and shot fake and things. We’re gonna play one-on-one and guard the ball. I’m not like this coach that just yells at the help all the time. It starts on the ball, and so we guard the ball every day one-on-one. And then we’re gonna do some o- you know, whatever offense looks like. Heavy shell team, whether that’s straight shell or pick and roll shell. And then w- you know, we like to play, so I mean, that’s pretty much it every day. Like, I think the dribble tag, we’ve started doing that a little bit. I think that’s great for passing and catching and playing on balance and pivoting and communicating and, you know, we’ll do that. We press almost every day five verse six. So you gotta get open as the point guard. You gotta get the ball, and then you’re gonna get trapped, and you’re outnumbered, and you can see who wants to hide in the back of pressure and not come be available and who’s soft and can’t get open. It’s great, but it’s good for sureness. You know, so we’ll do a sureness and playing on balance. Those kinda go hand-in-hand. But that’s kinda it. We don’t try to trick you. There’s no gimmicks. Like, we’re hedging pick and roll. It’s like Roger Clemens knowing Ryan. Like, here’s the fastball, man. If you can hit it, hit it. And I think a lot of times the opponent will work on their first play, and they’ll get it, and they are all excited down there, and we just kinda laugh ’cause you better have about 20 more of those Which is why we don’t have any zone offensive sets. ‘Cause I think by about the 12-minute media, you’re out of them, and then, then what? That was revealed when we played at Syracuse. We had our 10 plays, and we were ready to go, and then about halfway through the first half, you ran them all, and you got four of them, and now what? ‘Cause you’re not getting them twice. So we just try to keep it real simple and straightforward, and this is what we’re doing, and we’re gonna try to be better at what we do than you are at what you do.
Brooks Savage 18:52
We’re gonna try to be disruptive and dictate defensively the terms of the game. But practice is very simple. Try to keep it no more than 100 minutes. Sometimes I violate that, but not often.
And film is mostly on the floor. You know, the old times three. If the clip tape’s three minutes, that’s gonna take nine or 10. You know, we stand right there on the floor and watch it. We try to keep everything very, very short and simple. I don’t need to beat a dead horse with 10 bad pick-and-roll clips. Like, we can show three. It accomplishes the same thing. So just try to keep it very simple and straightforward, and get good at what we wanna be good at.
Dan Krikorian 19:29
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Brooks Savage 20:37
When talking about your practice and your transition defense, you mentioned your evolution from tagging up to just crashing. Yeah. So Bernie is a friend, and liked the concept. In our first two years, we were top 25 in the country in offensive rebounding. So it was good for us.
Last year, we weren’t as good. We had some other things to be good at, and that just didn’t get as much time or emphasis as it needed. I think you should, with the huge staffs that people have now, I think you should have one guy dedicated to rebounding. We actually only have three assistants in Adobo. We kicked it old school. I don’t know why we have so many coaches now. There’s not that much for you to do. We were just fine for decades of three coaches. Anyway, but I do think you should have somebody that’s on it. You know, I do think that should be a portion of the tape, if it’s important to you. We’ve gone to more crashing. Dwight Perry was the head coach at Wofford, so we hired him. He’s our associate head coach. He’s got, like, a kind of a different way. Like, I think what happens with tagging up is you just end up, if you’re not on it on it, you just kind of run and stand behind people. So we’re gonna be trying to get the ball a little bit more. You know, you don’t send everybody. It’s kind of where the shot’s taken versus who goes and who doesn’t go. It’s actually really simple. It’s great. It’s much of a mentality and an emphasis in spending time, and the good offensive rebounders are kind of wired to offensive rebound. They got a nose for it. They got an edge to them. I do think you can improve it as a whole for sure, but you know, I think if you looked at those first two teams that were highly ranked, I think that probably two or three guys get the large majority of them. But it’s good. You know, so I like being aggressive. It’s part of who we are. And but tagging up, you know, it’s expensive. You have to really spend time on if you wanna be a good offensive rebounding team. We’re all sitting here today saying that we’re going to be. Who’s actually gonna do it and spend the time and the emphasis? ‘Cause it is expensive.
Dan Krikorian 22:27
Coach, I wanna follow up on the tagging just for one more question here. And you said you tagged, and you were really good at it.
Where have you found, besides them just kind of running to their backs and staying, are there any other places that you felt like, “Well, I wanna go somewhere different”? Was it just matching up in transition? ‘Cause you mentioned the elite teams don’t struggle with transition defense. So did you find it more to be better in that part of the tagging up? Where else were you trying to improve?
Brooks Savage 22:52
Just offensively, just being better at playing offense. And so we didn’t spend as much time and emphasis on the offensive rebounding part.
You know, we were trying to be really disruptive defensively. I think just the big picture offense, big picture defense, I think just occupied so much of our time that we just weren’t as good at it. I think our personnel was a little bit different. We had a little bit better offensive player, and not as much of a football player, and the football guys will offensive rebound.
Dan Krikorian 23:20
Right.
Brooks Savage 23:21
You know, but they can’t make a shot. So it’s like there’s a lot of chuck and duck going on out there. You know, they’re, they’re running after it before their feet even hit the floor. I didn’t even wanna coach those guys anymore because I think against the elite teams, they block you out, and they run back, so you gotta be able to, like, score. It’s just a hard way to live.
You know, it takes an incredible effort to tag up and run back. It’s really hard to be good at both. Sometimes I didn’t love the floor balance. It was a lot of intense energy from me to demand both, of, like, everybody getting on the glass. Getting some of your guards to go is not natural. You know, then that guy’s in limbo, and then now he’s messing up the whole thing. Like, it’s an all or nothing thing to me, I think. Like, if somebody doesn’t go, that can cause some confusion, and we weren’t as good at it and, and got away from it a little bit. You know, I think the teams that you can offensive rebound on, you’re gonna offensive rebound on them anyway. And so I didn’t feel the need to, like, get everybody on the glass. You know, we should be good at it ’cause we have good size and athleticism. Again, it’s just something that you gotta really be on, and we just didn’t commit the time to it
Dan Krikorian 24:29
Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts.
We wanna transition now to a segment on the show that we call Start, Sub or Sit. We’re gonna give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one, sub one, and then sit one on the bench, and then we’ll dive into your answers from there. So if you’re all set, we’ll go to this first one.
Brooks Savage 24:46
I’m ready. I’m nervous, but I’m ready.
Dan Krikorian 24:49
All right, let’s do it. Okay. This first one has to do with identity clarity within your program. And these are gonna be three different things that, your start here would be what’s the biggest benefit of having a clear identity? And so I’ll give you three options where having a clear identity, you know, leads to these benefits, and which one you think is the biggest.
So identity clarity. Option one is it just clarifies your recruiting, who you’re going after, what you want, what do those guys look like? Option two is it clarifies your style of play, who you are, what you wanna do, you know, all those things we’ve kinda mentioned in the first bucket. And then the third option is it’s clear about your standards of your program, so the more clear you are with your identity, the more clear it is when standards are not met, and to hold players and coaches and everybody to those standards. So the biggest benefit of a clear identity, option one, recruiting, option two, style of play, and option three, your program standards.
Brooks Savage 25:49
Great question. That was, like, the biggest thing I had to do when I got the job. I was the fourth coach in five years. Program was in bad shape, and so we had to set that immediately from day one. I think your culture follows when you get the identity in place, and I think everybody knows from day one. I think one of the things that have really helped our buy-in, I think these guys figured out pretty quickly that I’m gonna do what I say I’m gonna do. I’ve booted really highly paid players. I’ve brought our highest paid player off the bench. Like, when we cross those lines, it doesn’t matter what stars or how much money you make. I think they figured that out pretty quick, and if you weren’t about the identity, that you will not play.
And so I think just number one, I would start standards. It just sets the standards for how you go about day to day. You know who you are all the time, what you’re gonna allow, what you’re not gonna allow. You know, it’s how you check in the office. It’s how you lift. It’s how you come to practice. Like, we have a really competitive culture. We don’t say family, because I just, I don’t think this is. I think it’s mafia family. I think you do right by the family, you get taken care of. If you don’t, you get whacked. Like, my daughter’s not going to another family because they let her watch scary movies and eat ice cream. You know what I mean? I just think that’s phony. You know, you can be a team, and you can be together, and you can be all pulling towards the same thing, but this is a culture of competitiveness, and those guys know that they’re gonna be held accountable to that in everything that we do all the time.
There’s gonna be pressure to produce. We don’t shy away from that. Like, you have to produce in your role, and so just setting the standards for how it’s gonna be. The guys that really like it, that they’re about it, they love it, and the guys that ain’t, they’re, they’re gonna shy away from it. And so I think that goes to probably number two, the recruiting. Because when you can recruit to this, I’m not really trying to convince anybody to come here. I think early on we were, and but as we’ve had some success, and we’ve, we’ve really gotten more comfortable with who we are and what this is, this is what it’s gonna be, guys. It’s gonna be really hard. You know, we’re gonna coach you hard. If you’re not about the team, this is not gonna work. If there’s any, like, prima donna hype, you know, if you need a day in the life video, and you have your own camera crew, this is not the place for you.
I don’t even like to call it old school. This is just very timeless values of, like, we’re gonna be about the team. We’re gonna work our tail off. We’re gonna really compete. We’re gonna be a team. And so when you can recruit like that, and then there’s no concessions made in recruiting because you’re trying to hold the standard. Matt Painter’s really big on that. It’s how you recruit them determines how you can coach them, ’cause there’s no unkept promises.
Brooks Savage 28:25
And then if you can have those two, then I think the style of play becomes easier, so I’d sit the style of play. Because people do this a lot of different ways.
You can play fast, you can play slow, you can press, you can do whatever. You can run flex, five out, whatever. But if you don’t have… So for us, hardest playing, best conditioned, most connected, toughest team, like, that’s a version of ’90s Knicks, Pat Riley, Van Gundy, Heat culture, just a shortened version. You can run whatever you want. If you’re about that stuff, the style of play will take care of itself.
Dan Krikorian 28:58
I’d like to dig a little deeper on your start. Outside of team meetings a- and you put quotes on the wall and, how are you getting there?
What is it about what you try to do? Are there any things unique to how you see that stuff getting to being real and, like you said, not phony?
Brooks Savage 29:18
Yeah, I just think it can’t be everything. When I got the job, and listen, everybody has a great plan coming in. I kinda talked about it at the beginning. Everybody’s got a plan, and I’m a coach’s coach. I love coaches. I respect coaches. So I don’t want this to sound disrespectful, but when I got the job, there was, like, this wall of, like, all these words, and we just took it down on day one. I’m like, “You can’t be all that stuff.” You know? I just, I come back to the simplicity part of it. Like, you just can’t be everything.
You know? There’s a million ways to say the same things, and what I loved about those Villanova teams is, like, they always talked about, “That’s not Villanova basketball.” They alwa- or, “That is Villanova basketball.” Whatever it was, they knew what Villanova basketball was. And so we spent a lot of time defining the words that we say. We say the same stuff over and over, and I thought last year we really got to the point where we were all talking the same language. They were regurgitating the stuff that we talk about all the time. And I think when you can get to that point, that’s a reflection of your culture. I think that three things are a reflection of your identity, which ultimately shapes your culture. Like, will they regurgitate the things that you say? Your shot selection is a mirror into your culture. And then when you’re down, when things are really bad, and your bottle gets tipped over, so to speak, like, does the good stuff come out, or does the bad stuff come out? And so those are the three things, and I think just saying the stu- the same things over and over and over. We do a terminology test in the summertime of, like, 150 questions. There’s a video portion. It’s offense, defense, culture. We take it twice in the summer. We’re gonna take it here again in the fall. Like, we give them the information. We talk about it. It just cannot be said and explained enough, but it’s the same stuff all the time. There’s no pregame speech. I’m gonna write two phrases on the board. It’s either gonna be tough and together or edge and energy. Like, that’s what I’m writing on the board. On Monday night in the championship, I’m saying hardest playing, best condition, most connected, toughest team. Like, that’s it. There’s no like win one for the Gipper. It’s just very straightforward, and then I think that allows them to understand the expectation, therefore the standard, and I think it creates buy-in, the consistency of that, and being about it every day. And I think when you’re assistant coach and you’re trying to prepare to become a head coach and you have to put together your core values, and trust me, I tried on every word imaginable, and I came back to the ones that toughness, passion, attitude, and effort. And, you know, it was just kind of stuff my dad had told me since I was, like, eight years old, and just very simple stuff, but that’s my story. I can live that out every day, and I think that’s really the most important thing is that it has to be stuff you can really be about, and it has to be authentic and be who you are.
Brooks Savage 31:54
And I think then that drives the consistency, and then it just kind of happens when it’s the standard every day.
Patrick Carney 32:00
When setting your identity and establishing your culture, what role does the university play? What do you have to factor in about the university that you work at, or can your culture identity live in isolation of the university?
Brooks Savage 32:15
Man, that is such an insightful question. I do think that your identity has to kind of match that of your university. I think that’s why Davidson and Belmont have worked. They played a style of play that was conducive to, like, their student body and who they could get in school and who they were gonna recruit. It just all goes together.
I think VCU, the kind of same way. The pressing and the havoc, like, it just made sense at VCU. I just think that there’s those programs that it just makes sense, and I think the more that you can be that way… So yes, I think it’s, for us, like, this is a very blue collar community. Like, they love basketball here. They want you to play hard and play together, and it can be in the 80s or it can be in the 50s. They don’t really care, but you better play hard and play together and represent in the right way. And I think that when I came back here, just understanding that I think gave me an advantage, but it was also who I was. They’re okay with 50 to 49. They’re okay with that, you know? They just want it to be tough and cohesive because a very close-knit community, very blue collar, and there’s a lot of pride, and they want you to play hard in that uniform. And so I think one of the things that Coach Forbes’ teams did here when I was an assistant with him, and our teams too a little bit, is we’ve been able to capture some of the magic of, like, the… We look like the old teams, the 90s and the early 2000s when we had some historic success here. We look like those teams. It works. When we’ve been good here, I think all those teams had some things in common. But I think it is important that it’s gotta go together. We can’t run like Princeton here. We have to look a certain way physically, athletically for it to be at its best, and I think that makes sense.
Dan Krikorian 33:52
When a player falls below expected standards… When I say player, let me clarify. A player you kind of need.
It’s easier to maybe with the bottom guys, but when you need someone and that player’s just not quite there yet, what have you learned over the course of your career about getting that player to be above the standard in whatever way you can do it?
Brooks Savage 34:13
Great question. This is coaching now, right? Now we’re coaching.
Coach Pearl was, like, the mastermind of this stuff. He could just bring guys, like, he’s lift guys up and get them there, and I think this is why some of the great coaches are great. Tony Bennett’s magic to me is not trapping the post and hedging, although that’s really effective. It’s the magician, not the magic. And so I think that, you know, it starts with having relationships with them. I think it starts in recruiting. You gotta recruit the guys that you know you can coach, that you’re gonna be able to have a great relationship with, that wanna have a relationship. I mean, I think sometimes as coaches, we don’t have great relationships with all of them, and a lot of times it’s ’cause they don’t want it. It’s a two-way street, but you try to invest in all of them. And so it starts with having a great relationship with them. I think the more you can spend one-on-one time with those guys, the better. I think you gotta show them the importance of whatever you’re trying to get them to do. Like, you know, best conditioned is part of our identity, so being in elite shape is important to us. So we ended summer in July 31st, but we don’t start school till August 24th, so there’s three weeks. Well, on August 24th, we’re gonna run the mile. You’re not gonna be sitting around eating honey buns for three weeks. You gotta stay in shape. It’s just the great players, it’s a way of life. “So what’s the mile got to do with basketball, coach? What’s that got to do with… You know, I’m not a good long distance runner.” You know, whatever, so just being able to explain the why I think behind some things I think those guys need a little bit more. I think you gotta champion them when they do things to… You know, even the smallest thing right, you gotta champion and, and lift them up. Just get them to understand. But if there’s gonna be so much resistance to what you’re trying to do, then you don’t need them, I think. I think we, like, think we need these guys more than we do. Like, I don’t think anybody’s really all that special. You know, very, very few players. If there’s, like, to a point so much resistance of buying in, then they’re not your best player. You’re championing, you’re putting in too much investment and too much energy into the wrong guys. But I think that’s something that starts in recruiting. But we just keep things so simple, and we try to have great relationships. Staff does a great job. We explain things. We’ll do what we gotta do to make it work, but in the end, if you’re not gonna do it, you ain’t gonna do it. So we’re gonna move on pretty quickly. And I think that they know that there is a lifespan on you gotta get with it or you’re gonna get left behind.
Patrick Carney 36:31
All right, Coach. Our next start sub sit for you, we’ve termed this late game deficits. Now, with a caveat when we’re talking late game You know, maybe down double digits, but with 10 minutes left in the second half. So not under three, down eight, but maybe you’re facing a bigger deficit still with some time left on the clock.
And so we’re gonna give you three options. From your experience in the games you have been able to successfully come back, which has been the biggest factor in that comeback or the string you’ll kind of pull at to try to get back in the game with your team? Is it option one, changing something defensively and getting more aggressive, going to zone, just a defensive change? Is it maybe then changing the, what we’re calling the s- shot selection? “Hey, we’re down. You know, what is a good shot?” Maybe there’s a little bit more variance or, uh, leeway. Or is it lineup changes? You know, not being scared. We’re gonna go all small. You’re gonna play maybe lineups that you don’t use too often or just more drastic in size and speed, yada, yada, yada. So of those three, I guess which one is the one you go to when facing a bigger deficit in the second half?
Brooks Savage 37:39
I love this one. So we’ve been down 20 with 14 minutes to play in the conference semifinal my first year against Chattanooga, came back and won in overtime, and we were down 17 in the second half this year to Western Carolina, came back and won in regulation. So we have unfortunately been in this spot.
You know, there’s other times we’ve been down too, but… So 2012, I’m coaching junior college with Coach Forbes, and it’s my first trip to Hutch. And we’re playing, we end, we end up losing in the national championship game, but we’re watching some other games, you know, going on in the tournament, and there’s like a 10-point game with like two minutes to go, and I’m like, “Ah, this one’s over.” You know, it’s another game we’re not playing. I’m like, “Ah, this, this is over.” And Coach Forbes, you know, old JUCO coach, he’s like, “Oh, no, Coach, this is JUCO, baby. This game’s just getting started.” You know, I’ve always kind of drawn on that. I do think there is so much game, like a lot of game left. So for starters, we’re saying, “Hey, a lot of game left, a lot of game left, a lot of game left,” like ’cause there is. So I just try to just totally just mess the game up as much as possible and just turn it into straight helter-skelter. We are pressing. There’s no rules to the press really. We are just all out, just playground. Like we are just trapping and running around and just trying to totally mess the game up. There’s a little bit more structure into it than I probably just described. You know, I think it starts with, “We gotta go.” Like it’s now or never. We have got to get the tempo of this game up. So I think just changing defensively, we would go right to pressing and pace of the game. I’d start changing defensively. The shot selection would probably be sit shot selection because I think changing defensively and the lineup does kind of go hand in hand because we are just gonna press and just go helter-skelter. Like we’re probably really small at this point. We’ve eliminated the center altogether anyways in our program, but like definitely in this situation, like we’re just… We got, you know, as many fast, athletic, mobile, hard-playing guys, and then we’re just gonna try and keep them as fresh as possible. And so shot selection, we’ve gotta score off our defense, so hopefully there’s layups and early clock threes. And so I’d start changing defensively ’cause we’re gonna press. The lineup I’d sub and shot selection I’d sit. But we just try to turn it into a JUCO game, and let’s see if we can’t just get you to turn it over and take some bad ones. And, you know, we’ve been fortunate in a couple of those situations to be able to mess the game up enough to get it in our favor.
Patrick Carney 40:02
Coach, you also mentioned something very interesting, and even in our prep, eliminating the center, and how you settled on that. Again, going back to the evolution process, you know, from the defensive standpoint, offensive standpoint, kind of what have been the effects of eliminating the center?
Brooks Savage 40:17
Nowadays, just can’t afford a good one. We had Hunter Perea from Indiana last time we were here, and Lucas Cassan from Oklahoma State. But those are like $2 million guys now. You just can’t afford a good one.
And so we’re talking about, you know, two or three inches. In our league, it’s such a high-powered offensive league. It’s the top five offensive league in the country, number one in three-point volume and three-point percentage, and then number one for lowest turnover rate. And so you gotta have some mobility on the floor to guard these guys. My first year, our first 50 games, we were in the drop. ‘Cause our first year, we didn’t really love our physicality up front. We could really block shots, but we just, you know, didn’t love that. We got bigger in our second year. Just weren’t good enough. And I think you have to make so many concessions in that position. You can only guard pick and roll probably one way. Where do you put them offensively? You know, do you want this guy handling the ball? Do you want him sitting in the dunker? Do you wanna throw it to him at all? We played UNC Greensboro my second year, and Kenyon Giles made like seven pull-ups in the drop, and he made them all. We lost the game by four. Our best player actually went 0 for 12. I’ve never seen that happen before. But anyway, we lost by a few points, but he made all these pull-ups. You know, second half of league play, four games to go in the year, I walk in the office, I say, “Hey, guys, these two guys are out of the rotation, and we are hedging. We’re blitzing.” And we changed totally defensively with four games to go in the year. And so when we did that, we needed the mobility of the continuous player at that spot that’s probably 6’7″, 6’8″, that’s more affordable, that’s a better player. When we went to that, our last four games of the year, we held our opponents to like .96. And again, it was a way that we could be different and be aggressive. It is more my personality. It’s more ETSU, like you talked about, Patrick. You know, more in line with who we wanted to be. And then I hired Miles Lester. He was a, at Drury, but he was a GA at Houston, so he was able to, to even make it even better last year. And we led the league in defense the past two years. And so there was only three things that I was ever afraid of at Wake Forest. It was Syracuse zone, and I’m not playing zone. But it was Syracuse zone. This is why we don’t have any zone plays. Lesson learned. Virginia, just like how are you gonna get in there? It’s the most sickening feeling not being able to get in the paint. They’re gonna trap the post. They’re hedging pick and roll. Like I just– how are you gonna score? And then Mark Williams was the third, and obviously we don’t get him or don’t have to play him anymore. But being able to get to the rim against Duke, he’s just monster standing in front of the rim. So we did away with the center, and we’ve been a lot better without it. And so just kind of those things were born out of necessity, and it’s really been good for us.
Dan Krikorian 42:49
Going back to the Start, Sub, Sit in the late game, timeouts. When you’re trailing and trying to mount a comeback, what’s the mindset of when you would use or save your timeouts?
I guess just overall, like, you need to come back, you need energy, you need to score points. How have you thought about in those situations? How many you want to have left under two? You know, I know there’s a media, all that, but just any timeout thoughts there at the end?
Brooks Savage 43:14
That’s a good one. You know, we say this a lot. You don’t ever know when the end of the game is. The end of the game, you could be up 12 at the end of the first half, like with two minutes to go in the first half, and if you go on, like, a 6-0 run to close the half, you’re up 18, like, that game’s probably over. Good chance you’re winning that game. If they go on a run… You know, so that could be the end of the game. The end of the game could be with eight minutes to go. It could be with one second. Like, you don’t ever know. So I take them.
You like to try to save them, but man, if you gotta take it, you gotta take it, because the last two minutes of the game may not matter if you don’t take this last timeout right now. You know what I mean? You’re down four points. You’re on your comeback, and you’re down four, and you get in a situation where, you know, there’s a loose ball and you got it, and you take that last timeout. Okay, maybe you make a three on that possession. Now you’re down one. You don’t ever know. You try to use your best judgment, as you guys know, but you don’t ever know when the end of the game is. I don’t, like, obsess about trying to, like, have one for the very end, because I may be cashing that in for a free corn dog.
Dan Krikorian 44:13
Well, Coach, you’re off the Start, Sub, or Sit hot seat. Those were really fun ones.
Thanks for going through all those scenarios there. So hey, we’ve got a final question to close the show, but before we get to that question, again, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate your thoughts today. This was a really fun conversation.
Brooks Savage 44:28
Yeah. Thank you, guys.
This was a blast, man. You guys are, you know, so insightful. You got so much basketball knowledge. The questions are always really well thought out, and had a great flow to it, so thank you, guys.
Dan Krikorian 44:38
Absolutely. Thanks, 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?
Brooks Savage 44:46
I think if you can have a great mentor, that’s invaluable. I had one, you know, with Coach Forbes and a number of other really awesome head coaches I worked for, Bruce Pearl, Ed Conroy, all of them. I think the best thing that any young coach can do, any aspiring coach, is really get to understand yourself. We do personality tests here. The more you can know who you are, why you’re wired the way you are, the– your strengths and your weaknesses and things that are maybe a blind spot for you, the more you can know yourself, the better coach you’ll be. And I think that when I really got into that stuff, whether it be, like, talking to a sports psychologist or the personality tests or whatever that looks like from, like, a psychology standpoint or whether it’s maybe just, you know, reading. Whatever it is that you do, can do to better yourself and w- understand yourself more, I think is invaluable.
Because being able to articulate who you are, why you’re that way, what you believe in, what’s important to you, I think just goes a long way to being authentic as yourself. That’s kind of been the best thing that I’ve done, like the self work. And then I tell young coaches this all the time. You know, it’s different how they come up now than how we came up. You know, we did it working camps and writing recruiting mail, and it was just so much different. It was just fewer spots and just, you know, there’s fewer hours. You couldn’t be on the floor. Like, it was just different. You know, I tell them this. Your development is a product of your own hard work and curiosity. Like, however much you want to study nowadays, these guys got so much access to technology. Be able to use AI, be able to use Sportscode and Synergy, and there’s so much more access to information. Like, you used to have to go and sit all day in a clinic to hear four speakers. You can listen to four speakers on the drive home, you know, like on a podcast, like what you guys are doing. The amount of access to information out there is greater than ever before. So it’s just as much as you want to spend time on it, work on it, and learn. You can’t do enough of that. It’s just investing in yourself, understanding yourself, and then your own curiosity and hard work driving your desire for knowledge.
Dan Krikorian 47:00
All right, Pat. Hop in and just recap Coach Savage. Just a fun time, great personality. Obviously very successful at what he’s done so far. Did not disappoint at all today in just what he gave in his explanations, and was a really fun conversation.
Patrick Carney 47:15
Couldn’t agree more. I really appreciated his honesty, especially asking a question when it looks at, like, the evolution of your offense and him being candid and-
Dan Krikorian 47:24
Yeah
Patrick Carney 47:24
… or the struggles or the learning points and kind of how he got to where he is now and having the success he’s having now. So was, like you said, really fun, enjoyable coach, and appreciate him being honest today with just his growth.
Dan Krikorian 47:37
We’ve had a fun run of coaches out of the state of Tennessee with Jeremy Shulman, UT Martin, Kim Caldwell, Tennessee women’s head coach, and now Brook Savage, East Tennessee State, so.
Patrick Carney 47:47
Leaning all into Tennessee.
Dan Krikorian 47:48
Yeah, exactly.
Patrick Carney 47:50
So Dan, let’s kick off this recap, and I’ll have you start us with your first takeaway.
Dan Krikorian 47:56
Let’s go to the first bucket and the first topic which, as we talked about coming in and you briefly mentioned, really cool when a coach gives insight into their evolution to a certain point and kind of going back through different phases of their career. And I really like hearing those because we all go through it, what works for one team at one school against certain opponents, and then just our growth as coaches and then getting to, like, what works best for where you’re at now. And so I just, first of all, really liked that entry point into it more so than I guess necessarily the, the technical tactical parts of what they’re doing, but just the why getting to those points. And so I thought that was just really good to listen to.
And then I think two other parts of that first conversation that just I’ll briefly touch on before throwing it back to you. When we got into his practice situations, like how they practice, I thought was really, really valuable and just the simplicity and all that. And then you and I just
Speaker 5 48:55
Kind of can’t stay away from a nice tagging up offensive rebounding conversation, and I thought the, the tagging up to then just the crashing conversation, thought that was really on point and really timely right now with I know preseason what coaches are thinking about, and like just from the spring and summer, the conversations on the pod, off the pod, at our SoCal Summit, like just everywhere it seemed to be like a top two or three conversation of what are you doing with offensive rebounding, why, and how did you get to it? And I thought this was another great addition to that.
Patrick Carney 49:26
I agree, and I know we’re gonna get into it, but maybe before we dive into the practice planning and the tagging up, I just wanna hit on two other things I enjoyed prior to us going on those kind of tangents. He talked about trying to be different led to problems from the offensive end, and then coming, I believe him discussing with another coach, just realizing his defense was the difference and that you don’t need to overdo it. I think that’s a trap we as coaches can fall into. Like the old adage like, do you do something different or just try to do the same but better? Both ways work, but I think we can try to just keep being different. Let’s, you know, buck trends or, or this and that, and then you realize you’re trying to do too much, and I think that’s what really kind of came through to me, just the value in being simplistic and then keep continuing to identify you don’t have to be different on both sides of the ball.
Maybe the defense is your competitive advantage, and just trying to find an offense that, like he mentions, marries well to your defense ’cause they’re both connected. So I like that thought. I followed up a little bit just on when he was set-orientated, what were the factors that go into that? We’ve had a lot of conversations, of course, on pace, playing more through concepts, position list, but there’s so many ways to win at this game and teams still winning very set heavy end. I feel like we haven’t had a conversation on that in a while, so it was just fun to hear his thoughts on just the information he needed to know in terms of how he’s gonna play call. We’ve had it with Coach Makrzak is another tremendous coach. He’s had a lot of success scripting plays and kind of hearing his methodology, so was fun to hear Coach Savage kind of go through it when he was with teams that were set-orientated. I did really like his point and kind of the conundrum of when do you dummy, uh, ’cause, you know, you have to be very into the execution of your plays and just the problems he faced with deciding when to dummy. To start a practice, then do you have to like rewarm them up, or if you do it at the end, are they gonna have the mental focus to get what you want done out of it and kind of in the middle to go from a live on live, like now we dummy, you’re just gonna lose guys. So just real-world coaching considerations that I appreciated him sharing.
Speaker 5 51:25
Yeah, we’ve all been there, where you, you try to put it somewhere in the practice, and I know a lot of coaches talk about when they’re gonna do an install, a lot of times they think about putting it like right at the beginning, kind of even before practice starts, let’s say like before you stretch or do your dynamics or-
Patrick Carney 51:40
Yeah, before you get going.
Speaker 5 51:41
Yeah. With that said, let’s keep this moving, and for the second takeaway, Pat, I’ll throw that to you.
Patrick Carney 51:47
My takeaway comes from your start subset, Dan, when we talked about just the value of a clear identity and determining how you recruit the standards that you wanna hold up to and then the style of play. I think what stood out was really, I mean, he started standards. I liked when we got into the recruiting piece, and a quote that kind of stuck with me is, “How you recruit them tells you how you can coach them, too,” in that recruiting process. And I think for me it just resonated now that especially with like NIL or dealing with budgets, you know, you can get enamored with like, okay, can we get the best guy, but do you forfeit maybe the right fit for your culture, for your program? And I think, of course, not always the case, but then the team can suffer, your program can suffer because you just kind of identified the talent, and I think, of course, the sweet spot is the right fit with the best talent.
But it’s like really being able to nail your culture, your identity allows you to really nail your recruiting. I think we can still get enamored with talent and try to make concessions on that end where it shouldn’t be the case. That should always hold true, and then just trying to find the best talent that fits well with that culture, and I really thought Coach Savage spoke well on that and just the value of him clearly identifying his identity, especially coming into a program that was struggling the last couple of years prior to him getting there.
Speaker 5 53:03
So the big takeaway for me from that, I really liked he said, where does your standards show up? And he talked about like the tests that they give I thought was good, and then he said it shows up in what they say or what you say, and then the shot selection. You could tell someone’s culture and identity by their shot selection, and I think when things get bad, I think he talked about that’s where you see it, those three things. So I thought that was like a really good takeaway of just this is where they see it lining up or this is where they see those things taking place.
So I thought that was really good. And then with that, he talked about obviously Villanova and who they are and how they play. I thought that was just good. One of the things that we were after with this conversation and that Coach Savage talked about is not identity and culture from like a it sounds good standpoint, but I think all of us know culture’s important. I think that’s like a well-proven fact, but it’s where does it show up that actually result in winning, I think is the question for all of us as coaches. This is important because it actually does drive results in certain areas, and it drives results in areas that, as all of us know, like when it’s the hardest, and I think he mentioned that a little bit. Go back to when we were talking about offensive rebounding, and he said like, “Well, you can send three or four against bad defensive rebounding teams no matter what. You’re gonna get it. It’s the great teams that you gotta be great against.” And I think like with the culture and the identity, it’s so important ’cause it holds up when things hit the fan, and I think that was like a great piece that he talked about with just that’s why it’s an advantage, that’s why it’s an edge, and that’s why it’s so important obviously to, to him and, and many others, but I really liked him talking about that today.
Patrick Carney 54:31
This conversation bled in actually well to the late game deficit because that was kind of his biggest point was, well, when you get down 15, 17, will your culture show up? And you know, that’s what he preached.
We’re– got tough guys, we play intense, and that’s really what he’s leaning on and trying to make it helter skelter, not so much any sort of strategy or we’re prepared for this, we have this special trap. It’s just like does our culture kind of show up that we have-
Speaker 5 54:56
Right
Patrick Carney 54:56
… guys that are gonna compete and fight, and this is what we’ve talked about and they’ve kinda echoed. Throughout the year, and now this is the moment where we can kinda see it.
Whether we win or lose, you know, there’s so many other factors, of course, in the game, but the one coming through is that the culture of, of your team to kinda keep competing.
Speaker 5 55:14
For sure. Hey, there were a ton of things that we went deep on, of course.
Were there any misses from our standpoint? Not from Coach Savage, of course, but anything you wish we had more time on and went deeper on?
Patrick Carney 55:26
You hit on it a little bit in the recap, but his terminology test, I mean, I don’t know if we needed to get into the weeds on it, but I would’ve, like, just followed up a little bit more. I mean, he talked about, of course, what they’re testing, but just always curious with how programs implement, establish their culture, so what that test would look like. You know, just following up a little bit further on that.
And then, too, I think there’s a really interesting conversation that we had at the end about going without a center, and maybe, I mean, he talked about kinda the defensive end of the ball, but then tying back into how he views offense and maybe also, again, tying it into the evolution of his offense and kind of playing more five out, just what he’s seen and learned about trying to play offensively without a center as well.
Speaker 5 56:08
During that late game deficits start subset too, which was great, you did have a great quote, “You don’t know when the end of the game is.”
Patrick Carney 56:14
Yeah.
Speaker 5 56:15
I really like that, and this isn’t necessarily my miss, but there was more interesting stuff there with runs, stopping runs, going on runs. We’ve talked about that before, like some of the analytics point towards, you know, when you go on or give up a 10-0 run at any point during the game, the chance of you winning that game, depending on what side you’re on of it, goes up and down quite a bit. So just interesting with that quote. I thought that was really good in there to tag onto your point as well.
I’ll just add my miss from my standpoint was twofold. One was he talked about playing on balance, and he also talked about two-point field goal percentage. I wish I would’ve followed up a little bit more on the connection between those two for them and finishing over length and bodies or around people in traffic when you’re playing off of two and how they continue to work on getting that two-point field goal percentage from a player development standpoint with into what they do, ’cause he just talked about the simplicity of it. So I wish I would’ve asked him that. And then the other thing I just wish I would’ve followed up on or would love to have him back at some point talking about his zone concepts then, because he talked about we’re just not gonna put in 99 sets and try to beat him. So what is the mindset when a team is good against a zone? And maybe, like, are they less set heavy, like he mentioned, but they’re kinda, like, more triggers or more just, “Hey, these are some actions we wanna get to,” rather than sets? I mean, like, what is the philosophy there around the no zone sets would’ve been interesting to go a little deeper on.
But awesome stuff today from Coach Savage, so once again, we thank him for coming on. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and we’ll see you next time.