Dan Krikorian, Patrick Carney and Eric Fawcett discuss the next stage of the offensive rebounding conversation: strict tagging up, crashing five, and the space between them. Pat shares his early experience with a staff sending five to the glass, while Dan breaks down the details that keep aggressive rebounding connected to transition defense: approaching on the high side, staying with the tag long enough, and making the rebounder’s first dribble go east-west.
The group explores freeing a strong offensive rebounder, adjusting to mismatches and scrambled defenses, and why the third player reaching the glass may matter more than adding a fourth or fifth. Eric shares observations from Division I tracking data, and Dan explains why transition numbers need to be checked against the film. The episode closes with a look at European teams and styles on the hosts’ watch lists.
Transcript
Eric Fawcett 01:24
Something we love to do on these deep dives is really kinda keep an eye on the trends, what’s going on around the world. And we also wanna really touch on the conversations that coaches are really having. What are the things that coaches are talking about the most? And I think right now the conversations that we are having the most with coaches at every level is everything surrounding offensive rebounding. And that could be tagging up, which is always something that comes up, or it could be not tagging up and how many players you send to the glass. So I do think we’re gonna center our conversation today around the offensive rebounds, different strategies around it, what we’re thinking about, what we’re hearing from coaches. And Dan, you are one among us that has probably coached the tagging up the most. And I think that with every offensive rebounding conversation, the conversation comes to tagging up eventually. Whether or not someone has personally done it, whether they have tried it and failed, whether they love it, it just seems like the offensive rebounding conversation always comes to tagging up at some point. So Dan, as someone who’s spent probably the most time among us teaching tagging up, using tagging up, I’m curious your experience, and also as you start to hear some coaches maybe that tagged up that are moving away from it, what some of your learnings have told you about that. Just for context, we’ve tagged up for a few years now, and so all the learnings, ups and downs, I’ve been through them all. I think to start, one of the reasons I think this is just such a hotly debated, discussed conversation on and off the podcast in every coaching circle is because I think that most coaches know there’s margins to be gained in this area of the game, and that there’s, one, a margin from, like, an analytical efficiency standpoint where teams that offensive rebound better, obviously those possessions, your efficiency goes up. There’s also, like, a toughness, hard to play against element that comes with tagging up or sending a lot of guys to the glass where there’s, like, a team identity standpoint that I think is worth talking about mixed in. So you have sort of the numbers that are telling you teams that offensive rebound at the highest levels are some of the best teams in the country historically. And then you also have, “This is just who we are” in an identity standpoint, and they kinda can marry together. And then I think on top why tagging up’s been so interesting is because it also, of course, marries in your transition defense, and you just sort of package it all into one.
So it kinda takes into account a lot of things in one fell swoop, and so I think that’s why it’s caught on with a lot of programs. We’ve had a lot of coaches on the podcast who are devout followers of it and have done it at a high level.
And then as you just mentioned, I feel like this spring and summer, and event- I’ll kick this to Pat in a second, we’ve had a lot of, “I like it. I don’t love it. I don’t love these parts of it,” which we can get into, “But I do wanna still be aggressive and send a bunch to the glass.” And so I think we’re starting to see a lot of tagging up, but slight pivots to it.
Patrick Carney 04:18
I think what’s been interesting for myself and the conversation that’s shifted for me is tagging up versus just crashing five. I mean, I still tomato, tomato, if you wanna say it, but I still believe I’m a proponent of sending five. But I think starting with our conversation with Coach Klask, who I thought just raises up some really good points about the conversation always, “Well, what about your guys who are really good offensive rebounders and forcing them to play in these rules?” And Klask acknowledged that then you’re kinda actually limiting them, taking away their aggression, guys thinking, “Well, I’m not really trying to get offensive rebounds ’cause I just have to go to the back.” He had really good points.
And then at the same time, I joined a new staff where we’ve decided that we’re gonna crash five. And kinda seeing it now going through preseason as we start season, you know, I’m kinda pivoting in that I really like the crashing five. And to me, what’s kinda clarified is that you’re giving the players kinda, like, the end goal in mind, that the end goal is we wanna be aggressive on the offensive rebounds and that your aggression will hopefully curtail their transition. But then it’s also we’re being aggressive to set our transition defense. And rather than, I think, tagging up maybe is now just giving them a task. And I don’t know, the buzzy word conceptual defense, but maybe in a way it’s like a conceptual transition defense that here’s the goal. We want you to crash, be as aggressive as you can, and we wanna set our transition defense. How you go about that is where we’ll help you, we’ll see, but these are the parameters. Start to work with them. I think basically then what my takeaway is now being, sitting in it a couple weeks is that you still end up teaching the same things. You know? Don’t crash on the low side. Did you have a chance for that rebound? Like, why go in? You know, don’t run all the way under the hoop like you’re only gonna be rebounding made shots. You know, stuff like that. You still teach the same stuff that, hey, that’s your matchup. You gotta get back with them. You can’t overrun. But I just think the level of aggression that comes through and not really trying to teach this technique of jamming up. I mean, if you have non-physical guards, you’re just trying to get them to move forward, get to where we can get some tips, and you can pick those up. So again, it’s like a lot of the same stuff you teach with tagging up, but I just like maybe actually the freedom, the aggression that you put in your players rather than the rules, the tasks you’re giving them. Where I go back to class, where I think sometimes it can actually curtail players or give players excuses not to really put an effort in. I’ll leave it there, but I think that’s been my biggest epiphany or transition from tagging up to just crashing five.
I think I just like the approach, looking at it the same thing but from a different angle, and what I’ve kinda seen with our team and our guys and the effectiveness I think we still are generating by actually giving them a little less rules and seeing what they do within the parameters first.
Eric Fawcett 07:09
Yeah, I like that a lot, and I wonder how, as things develop, do we start to see some hybrid tagging up? And the one that is easy to think about too is if you’ve got a five that’s really good at offense rebounding, do you let that guy loose? Because I think about what gets you beat in tagging up. If you don’t tag up well or even if you tag up well but the offense beats you.
Thinking about, say yous let your five loose. Everyone else is tagging, but like, hey, our five, go try to get the basketball. If he doesn’t, say he even crashed on the low side and he is now trailing his rim-running defender. Well, if everyone else has tagged up really well and they don’t get a clean outlet, they don’t get the ball up the sideline, are they beating you with that five rim run? And that’s kind of my thought as we kind of talk about maybe changing to some hybrid tagging up is could you do something like that? Could you send multiple guys to the glass but make sure you’re really tagged on the wings and the guards to make sure that the ball’s not flying up the court in two passes? So I think that’s something I’m kinda thinking about. And again, as trends develop, they start with the really traditional ones, and a lot of teams are doing really traditional tagging. And from there you start to see different changes. But this is where I do wanna go back to you, Dan, for some of those teaching points, some things that you have found to be really successful, and maybe a little conversation about what does get you beat if you don’t tag up well.
Dan Krikorian 08:30
You brought up some good points. I think what gets you beat are some things Pat just said. If you’re going low side, that’s just a complete cardinal sin of tagging up or really just, I mean, good offensive rebounders in general. Are there opportunities sometimes to go low and get it? Yes, but in general, if you’re going low and that ball bounced over your head, then they’re off on the break. The other thing that’s a sneaky problem with tagging up, players coming off of their tag too soon to try to switch back to their man, quote-unquote, in the back court. So if you tag up well but you don’t get the rebound, and then someone comes off their man too early to try to switch back, and then boom, there’s that outlet pass. That’s a killer.
Soft tags where you kinda go to their back and then you let them get the ball, and then you let them get a running head start anyway is a big killer. Teams that tag up really well too, if you go high side and your man gets the rebound, and you’re able to make that first dribble east-west, first north-south, that helps your defense too. So, like, those are just, like, the little teaching points that if you don’t follow those can really hurt you. I will also add in, and we’ve talked about this on the show, the quality of your tagging up is almost directly correlated to the quality of your shot you take. The worse shot you take, the harder it is to tag. Guys are just in random spots on the floor. A lot of times, like, bad misses or bad layups, like falling out of bound layups, you can’t really tag ’em, and then you’re gonna be in disadvantaged numbers going the other way. So the flight path, as we would call it, on the offensive rebound is hugely important. Not trying to re-switch too early in the back court is really big, making that ball go east-west. And then for us always it’s like the quality of the shot is gonna equal the quality of our tag. And we always talk about, and I think this is something I’ve stolen from other coaches, the better shot you take, the better we can tag. So it’s like you’re gonna get a higher quality shot, and you’re gonna get a higher quality tag, and your opportunity to get the offensive rebound goes up as well.
Patrick Carney 10:19
Dan, just quickly, I wish I could remember the coach who said it, to your point, like, trying to make that first dribble more east-west and less north-south. To think about it too, like, you tag and it’s almost like a one-second press.
Dan Krikorian 10:32
Yeah.
Patrick Carney 10:32
Especially if your man gets the ball, you gotta be on it not to just, okay, I tagged it and get it sprint back because inevitably trying to coordinate all five guys tagging perfectly or crashing and matching up right away is a tall task. You’re not gonna be perfect every time, but if you can be aggressive and pressure for that one second, that makes a huge difference in saving some of your players who may still be scrambling versus they catch it, they turn head up, and they can just fire because, you know, one of your teammates couldn’t identify the tag or was just, yeah, just tagged but then quickly got outrun.
I think it’s, like, a huge point that once you organize and get your guys understanding, like, what– whether you’re tagging, crashing five, the next step is then making sure, like, how do we continue to get pressure and not just immediately sprint back and kinda release all that good work you did in being aggressive on the glass.
Dan Krikorian 11:19
Eric, if I could add one more point ’cause you asked about some of the just difficulties or teaching points. The other thing that I’ve heard a lot from coaches, the question becomes there’s two things if you’re tagging up. One is, how do you practice transition numbers for your offense going the other way? Because if you’re tagging up well, there’s not a lot of natural transition three on twos, four on threes in practice if you’re doing it well.
So how do you, like, implement that to make your transition offense better? The second one is for coaches that like to zone on makes or wanna zone, it can be, like, different where you’re tagging, but then when do you come off that man to get to your zone-
Eric Fawcett 11:55
Mm.
Dan Krikorian 11:56
-location? It can be a little tricky.
Do you tag and then get to a zone? Is it better to go to some sort of zone press where it’s like you’re at least up in the front court or back court more? Those have been some questions that have come up for teams that say, “Hey, I really like two, three zone, so we go, we tag, but then- Or a make or a miss, I guess. You’re just trying to get back into a zone, and how do you pass the guy off to get to your zone is just a tricky point, too.
Eric Fawcett 12:20
Yeah, tying in a few of the things you said, Pat, talking about the, like, one second press, which I think is really big because that kind of goes along my theory of if you have a really good offensive running five, could you… or four, could you send that guy to the glass just knowing that if the one second press is in place, they’re not gonna get that ball up quick enough to maybe punish you if now your four or five is playing behind their man? And then Dan, you mentioned something about the quality of your shot really leading to the quality of your tag.
So this is a situation I wanted to throw to you guys. Either of you can jump in, but something I’ve been watching a lot, particularly in Europe, where there’s a lot of tagging and a lot of mismatch hunting and attacking. So in a situation where you were to get a one five switch, so the opposing team’s point guard is now on your five. And say you were to send your five down on the block, and if you get a good quality three, let’s say from the wing, would you want your five to still tag up on the one and negate a possible offensive rebounding advantage that could be had by just letting loose? Or do you want that player tagging up on the one because tagging up on the one is one of the most important tags, in my opinion. And as much as I’m talking about, like, you know, sometimes I would like the idea of letting the five loose, talking about could you, you know, blend when you tag. What do you think about those scenarios of mismatches? Do you keep to your tag or not?
Patrick Carney 13:45
I can start. I don’t know if I have a good answer.
We’ve experimented with or thought about is on, like, that five crashing to get back, whether it’s crashing on a one or their normal matchup is at first we said always five matches up with five. So crash. If the five’s in front of you, great. But to your question, if it is a one, a two, we’re in good offense, got a mismatch, then they would just be sprinting, trying to find the five-man matchup. Where it’s kind of morphed now is we still say crash, and we just tell the five to get back to get to half court and then start identifying where the five man is, where help may be needed if the ball’s advanced quickly. And where I think it fits a little bit better with this crashing up, I could be wrong, it’s still very early TBD, but versus tagging up is I think when we say just crash, there is some wiggle room. Like, maybe come off of that man, go pick the ball up, and we’ll solve that a little bit, that we need to stop the ball first. You can get back to maybe some more principles that they’ve– are accustomed to, that they’ve always grown up teaching in transition defense, that, hey, we crash. We’re gonna send the five back off that crash. So if he’s leaving the point guard, the next closest man has to come up because now we do have at least that five hustling back to where if we can get good pressure, if they get a throw to the point guard, someone comes up, then it’s two passes to maybe find, let’s say in this scenario, and that open man that we had to leave to pick up the point guard. Again, I don’t know if it’s answering your question. This is where we’re kind of settling on it is that we just say crash, five sprints back. Most of the time it’s five on fi- the five is with the five. He’s just running back. You know, we’re not asking him to try to hedge a ball screen in the back court or pick up. We just want him to get in the gap. But in your scenario where I like the crashing up now a little bit better is again, it becomes then problem solving. It’s like, well, the five had to leave the point guard. We need the next closest guy to pick it up ’cause we’re not tied to a man and a tag. We’re tied to getting ball pressure and building our transition defense as quickly as possible.
Dan Krikorian 15:48
Eric, I would just say there’s areas that you’re coming from in your tags that make more sense to be aggressive and potentially come off of a tag than others. So two places are if you’re crashing from the corners or you’re in the scrum, like in the paint dunker spot area. Take the corners, for example. As long as you go high side above the block and maybe you swim off a tag and are aggressive, if the ball’s missed and it bounces more towards the corner that maybe you came off, you’re not getting beat as much probably in transition ’cause the ball’s bouncing towards the corner.
If you are above the break or the slots and up and you sprint past a tag wildly in there and the ball bounces over you and you don’t get it, now in those situations, that’s obviously riskier because now there’s a run out opportunity in the middle third of the floor for the offense. So I think where can you be chancier? If you’re coming from the corners and you’re going high side and you swim off, if it hurts you there, I feel like the ball’s gonna bounce to an area that’s not as big. If you’re in the scrum in the dunker spot, I mean, I think we’ve kind of talked about, like, I guess it’s really no tagging there as much as let’s just carve out space and try to get that ball. So dunker is kind of a battle down there. You’re trying to carve out space and get that ball any way you can.
The ones that really hurt you are where you’re coming from the middle third and you just fly in there to try to get a rebound and it bounces over you and then boom, there they go. So those would be a couple of areas I think that would be this doesn’t hurt you as much if it’s a mismatch type of situation, if that makes sense.
Eric Fawcett 17:12
That’s good, and I do think that just everything about the quality of the shot impacting the quality of your tag is big because I think the other thing we’re starting to see, especially in Europe, and I really like it, is if you are in kind of a neutral setting, like let’s say you gave up a contested, a closely guarded catch and shoot three, everyone gets it in tags. But now we’re starting to see teams that are like, “Hey, if we break the paint and we swing it and we get a one more and it’s a wide open three and the defense is scrambled in rotation, everyone go try to get the ball.” And I wonder if that’ll be one of the changes we see in as much as there’s the could you tag up with some players but not all of them? Could we also see teams start to tag up on some possessions and send five aggressively trying to get the basketball and others? And I do really like that concept.
I feel like when defenses are scrambled in rotation, they’re not in position to box out particularly well defensively, and it’s also some situations where if a defense is scrambled it in rotation- And I think everyone even listening to us can kind of visualize it quite well. If you can imagine a defense in rotation and a shot goes up, trying to tag up to the areas in which a scramble defense is in rotation can also just put you in some bizarre settings. So, you know, I think that one thing with tagging up so often, coaches that don’t like it often will say like, “Well, I just don’t think I can get my players to tag up every single time.” I know with a lot of concepts that are a little bit more difficult, there’s coaches that are like, “Oh, I just don’t wanna make my players think that hard,” or, “I don’t think they can.” So that might get in the way of a system where you tag up on a contested three, and if it’s a wide open three and the defense is scrambled, we send five to try to get the basketball. That’ll be interesting, but that is something I’m very much monitoring, and I do think that that maybe transitions into some things that we’re hearing a lot more. Dan, when we were at our coaches social at the SoCal Summit, there was a whole lot of, “Screw it, we’re sending five.”
Dan Krikorian 19:09
Yeah.
Eric Fawcett 19:09
And, “We don’t care about our transition defense rules. We don’t care about… We want five guys to go with the ball, and we’re gonna put so much pressure on the defense that way that they’re not gonna be able to hurt us.” Um, that’s maybe oversimplifying what some people were saying. I also don’t think it’s oversimplifying what a lot of other coaches are saying. So you mentioned that there seems to be a little bit of a pivot away from… Like, we may have reached and surpassed peak tagging up. Tell me if I’m wrong. Is that something you’re hearing, and if so, what are some of the reasons you’re hearing?
Dan Krikorian 19:38
So, one, you are correct that we’re hearing a ton of, like, coaches that have tried tagging up. And I think this is what’s good about the evolution of the game, obviously, is when it came in, not a lot of people had done it. Credit to Aaron Fern and all those that introduced this. And now a lot of people have tried it, and you’ve seen it way more across the world. And now I think you’re getting the next evolution of people that like parts of it, love the whole thing, differences in personnel. So I think this is kind of the fun part is now everybody’s saying, “All right, we’ve tried it for a season or two. Now here’s where we wanna potentially go.” I think the one reason people I’ve heard that are not gonna tag up but are gonna send, like Pat’s team, like five or four, you know, everybody but the shooter, is because two to three seasons of analytics and numbers, if they send four or five, has shown that even if they don’t tag up perfectly, it’s still worth it to just go because you’re not getting hurt as much as you think in transition if you’re not as disciplined. I think it’s sort of the general theme of the trade-off of we’re gonna go and get four in the paint every time. The trade-off of doing that versus trying to be perfect and tag on the high side is that, one, we’re getting more offensive rebounds, and then two, our worst fear of having eight to 10 run outs, wide open layups the other way is just not happening. And I think that’s why you’re hearing and seeing teams saying, “We’re just gonna be more aggressive, and we’re not gonna worry about the tagging.” Or we’re gonna say, “We’re gonna, quote-unquote, ‘tag.’ We’re gonna go high side, but we’re gonna allow our players to be aggressive once they go high side and make plays.” Sort of like looking at, like, offense and defense, like on the defensive side. You’re in this gap. That’s our rule. If you can go get it because they spin or whatever, then be aggressive. Go get it. Same thing in rebounding. If you can go high side, then go spin off and get it, go get it or, you know, make a good decision. The 2027 NABC Convention is heading to Detroit April 1st through 5th, alongside the Men’s Final Four, and it’s not too early to start making plans. Each year, the convention brings coaches from every level together for five days of clinics, conversations, networking, and everything surrounding one of the best weekends on the basketball calendar. Registration opens this fall, so start planning your trip now and make sure Detroit is on your calendar. For more information on the 2027 NABC Convention, head to nabc.com/convention today. The season is live. How long does it take for your staff to put together a full scout? How many platforms are you bouncing between to do it? The programs running Hudl, Sports Code, InStat, FastModel, all connected, aren’t asking those questions. They’re getting to the clips that matter faster and spending that time actually coaching. Film, data, and scouting in one place. Fewer tabs, faster prep. Learn more at hudl.com/slappingglass today.
Eric Fawcett 22:35
So one of the reasons that I’ve loved the offensive rebounding conversation over the last couple of years is the fact that there aren’t really clear analytical markers that point you in the direction of what you should do. There have been some conversations in coaching that have been very driven by analytics, and that’s great, but it kind of makes the discussion a little bit less interesting.
Whereas where it comes to rebounding and its relationship to transition defense, there hasn’t been, like, clear numbers that support a single point, and that’s made the discussion a lot more interesting because it’s really been, like, discussions. But what I do think has changed or will change the conversation around rebounding will be tracking data. I think that’s something that we’ve seen in the NBA has really changed their relationship to offensive rebounding, transition defense. I also do think it’s part of the reason we’re seeing offensive rebounding really move up. People are really offense rebounding more in the NBA after they were really not doing it for about a decade. So the player tracking data that can really say, “Okay, what is the effect of sending one versus five,” or, “How does it affect your transition defense?” I think is really interesting, and that’s something that not a lot of levels have had access to. But just recently, uh, I got access to some Division I player tracking data, and I wanted to give you guys some numbers, some interesting takeaways that I had.
So again, I did not look at every single Division I team in great detail, but I did look at the teams that were in the top 10 at various levels. I’m gonna have about three points if you guys just wanna kinda think about those and, and respond to any one of them. But the first thing to kind of note is the way that this tracking data can tell the difference between if you sent one, two, three, four, or five players. So of course, the first thing I wanted to look at are the best teams in the country sending three, four or five. It was no surprise to me that Tennessee, who was number one in the country in offensive rebounding rate, they also led the country in possessions where they sent four or five players to the glass. So that’s not breaking any new ground. But I actually think the most interesting thing to me was when I was looking at the top rebounding teams, there was a huge difference between if you sent two or three players. So for example, for Florida, who’s a really good offense rebounding, the difference between sending two or three players to the glass was 8%. For Illinois, it was 15%. For Duke, it was 9. So that’s the difference between sending two or sending three. However, the difference between sending three and four or five started to be really diminishing. It started to be 2 or 3% between sending four and three or sending five and four.
Eric Fawcett 25:14
So that’s also something that will be kind of interesting to watch, is still some of the best offensive rebounding teams in the college basketball were Florida, who just had three really big players and said, “Hey, you three are going to the glass, but, like, we don’t always need to send five.” So I think that was one of the things that I was interested in is, if you’re looking to really crank up your offense rebounding and you’re, like, a little bit scared by Pat saying he’s sending five in Germany, well, like, maybe sending three is a good place to start. So that was one of my kind of takeaways was when do you start to get diminishing returns or where is the biggest leap? And it’s very clear that the biggest leap is between sending two and sending three, and that kind of just seems to be the mark of are you trying to offense rebound or not? Because a lot of teams are not and are just sending two. So that was something I noted.
And then something I had to do kind of manually by watching a little bit of film or just going from my knowledge is the difference between when I was looking at teams that send five, are they teams that are sending five to go offense rebounding, like go get the ball, send five, or was it a tag up team send five? And it actually was really interesting to me, just as I logged teams that were tagging up versus going to get the ball. Tag up teams had much higher offensive rebounding rates on three-point misses, but teams that crashed trying to get the ball had much higher rates on two-point misses. So I thought that was kind of an interesting note. If you’re trying to get offensive rebounds, that– and it kind of goes back to the way I’ve been thinking about on a contested versus an uncontested three versus a two, like do you tag it up? Do you not? I thought that was interesting. And then probably my last note, and then you guys can respond to anything I pointed out here, is with the tracking data, we can see if players are boxing out or not. And I thought that I was gonna look at the best defensive rebounders in the country, and I would be like, “Oh, Dan, he boxes out eighty-five, ninety percent of the time. He’s always getting a body.” Or, “Oh, Patrick, like he’s boxing out seventy, seventy-five. That’s why he’s such a…” Again, it’s tracking data. Maybe you don’t trust it all the time. A lot of the best defensive rebounders in the country, they only box out on thirty-five or forty percent of possessions. Now, again, some of that is, hey, if Dan is guarding me and shot goes up and I run back on defense, Dan is not gonna get credit for a box out ’cause he didn’t have someone to box out. But then you start to watch the clips in the film, and players just don’t box out as much as you think. And I think there is a lot of advantages to be had about preying on the fact that players are not boxing out a hundred percent of possessions, even the really, really good ones. It’s really hard to box out all the time. When you look at the numbers that just objectively show that a lot of even really good defensive rebounders are not finding bodies.
Eric Fawcett 27:43
They’re looking up at the shot and looking at the rim and looking to locate the ball, and can you play on that by simply sending guys to the rim because you’re gonna get more free runs? I think that was one of the things that shocked me, and I looked at some of the best players. I also looked at some of the best defensive rebounding teams. Still some of the best defensive rebounding teams are below fifty percent in box out rate, and players just don’t box out as much as we think or as much as we tell them to. Defensively, that’s where I’m like, oh yeah, if people are boxing out on less than fifty percent of possessions and we send guys to the glass on a hundred percent of possessions, there should be opportunities. So those would be some of my takeaways.
I do think this tracking data is very powerful stuff, and I do think it’s gonna start to change the way that teams look at, at offensive rebounding now that they have some data like this.
Dan Krikorian 28:26
Eric, great stuff. All those things are really interesting. I do wanna go back to the first stuff that you talked about, which was the percentage difference of rebounding when you go from two to three to four to five and some of those numbers. As coaches, I think we all know if you want three guys to go to the glass, you gotta demand four, because during a game, there’s always slippage. One guy’s not gonna go, something’s happening. So I think that’s where when you see the biggest difference, we say, hey, difference between two and three. When we’re talking about sending five, sending four, I think the reason that coaches are talking about trying to send more is because we all know, like, well, in a game, you’re not gonna always get four or five every single possession, but it’s so worth it to make sure there’s at least three in the paint on a shot attempt that you gotta demand more go. That was my big takeaway there.
If you’re not tagging up or you’re gonna send five or send four, it’s because it’s worth it to for sure have three in there. The numbers are pretty clear to what you just said. If you’ve got three in there, you’ve got way better chance than obviously if you’ve got two, so that makes a lot of sense. I also think that so much of this is obviously it depends contextual thing, but how your offense cuts around movement also plays a lot of role into how you offensive rebound. Let’s just take the slide cut for a second. When a team is constantly slide cutting, like we see this in Europe, on a drive or on a shot, you are automatically getting one guy or two, like at least going to the rim there. So, like you’re not having five guys just standing outside the three-point line and then demanding that three or four go. You are having someone probably always a rim roller and a cutter. So you got two in there, so can you just get the other two or at least one of those other two to get in there? And I think the quality of your cutting and spacing also helps with your offensive rebounding, because if it’s so randomized, it can be harder to get guys to go ’cause they just don’t know where that shot is.
Patrick Carney 30:14
Picking up on your point, Dan, I think the thing that jumped out to me is, Eric, what you said that tag-up teams had a higher offensive rebounding rate, if I’m correct, on three-point misses. To Dan’s point too, I think it really ties in the systematic approach that we’re gonna generate these good threes.
On these threes are, you know, those are when we wanna really get our tags, organize it. But crash teams were getting two point misses, or maybe it’s just because crashes, you’re breeding more of a, I don’t know, let’s say an attitude, an intensity, you know, that we’re gonna go every time. And especially maybe the tag up, going back to keep quoting class, uh, it’s a two point, I don’t really wanna run to the guy’s back. There’s more of an out. I’m just, here’s my match up. I’m not gonna go, versus, yeah, again, like just the crash. Me just kind of speculating, that’s what kind of first came to my mind, that tying the tagging up to, again, you’re coordinating the shot selection. It’s a three point miss, it’s easier to tag up, versus a two point miss, we’re just gonna go because that’s what our identity is. We crash and we go hard.
Dan Krikorian 31:11
It is harder to tag two point shots.
Patrick Carney 31:13
For sure.
Dan Krikorian 31:14
I think that’s something Andrea Trinchieri talked about on the pod, how you differentiate a long two pull up versus someone driving into the slot and a turnaround little jumper. Eric, maybe some of those analytics point towards it’s easier to tag up a three. I think that’s why you see more of Europe tagging on threes and all that because it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s obvious, but a lot of times when you’re generating that shot, it’s a high quality shot. Players are spaced pretty well. It’s usually off of a paint to extra pass. So you’ve got the structure to tag the three really well.
On a two, you think about a lot of times when someone’s taking a two, why, you know, where is it coming off of? Maybe a pick and roll where they penetrate, they shoot up a quick pull-up. A lot of times those situations, depending on your philosophy, you might still have guys spacing or trying to figure out where to cut or move with the ball. It’s not as obvious that the shots may be going up all the time, and so tagging can be a little more gray of like, well, I didn’t tag ’cause I was sliding to the corner ’cause I didn’t know if he’s gonna pass it to me or shoot it. So I could see where it’s like, well, if it’s a two and he shoots it, just go because you don’t know really where you’re gonna be at, versus a three, like it’s a little more obvious most of the time.
Eric Fawcett 32:15
I think that the next piece of it too, looking at some of this tracking numbers, would be, okay, so you sent five or you sent three. How is that affecting your transition defense? Because I think that that’s something that anecdotally a lot of coaches have come to, and it’s something that I kind of agree with, is the teams that didn’t wanna offensive rebound a ton, especially just sending guys to crash, because they were worried about their transition defense. I feel like a lot of coaches are just starting to think like, “Oh yeah, like I just like don’t think you get hurt as much in transition defense if you send a ton as you think.” And that was another, you know, conversation that we had at the SoCal Summit a bunch with some of these crash five coaches that are just like, you don’t get beat in transition defense like you think.
So using some of these tracking numbers to maybe back that up and see if, like, is there a tangible difference between sending three or sending five? So that’ll be something I’m kind of monitoring ’cause I feel like that’s also what we need to kind of complete the picture. I will also say one of the other takeaways was, again, at least at just the Division I level, and it might not be a fair comparison because there are more teams that don’t tag up than do tag up, but still the best offensive rebounding teams by offensive rebounding rate are crash teams. There was a couple tag up teams in the top 10, but generally speaking, and it’s the crash teams that are ahead, and I think that that is also something, Dan, I like that you said like if you want three, you better send four or five. Because also just seeing that Tennessee was most successful in the most possessions that four or five were sent, that just speaks to like they were successful in getting possessions where four or five guys crashed, and they got results. Obviously, they have the players for it as well. But that’ll also be something that I know that so many coaches right now are manually tracking rebounding numbers. The ability to be able to have some of this stuff with tracking data will be really helpful. But I do think that tying in the transition piece will be most interesting ’cause, yeah, if you’re just looking at offensive rebounding rates, if you’re gonna look at the tracking numbers, you would be like, “Yeah, just send five, and that’s what you do and don’t tag up.” That would be kind of the, if you want the ball as many times as possible. But that’s also where the conversation is really interesting to me because there are coaches, particularly in Europe, one good example being Guillaume Vizade at Le Mans a few years ago, where they went to tagging up and their offensive rebounding numbers skyrocketed, and they drastically increased their offensive rebounding when they went to tag up. Now, I don’t think that that happens for a lot of teams, to be honest.
Eric Fawcett 34:34
I think a lot of times if you’re gonna tag up, you are going to lower your offensive rebounding rate at points, but you’re going to improve your transition defense to generalize, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for everyone, and I thought that’s where it became interesting talking about the offensive rebounding rate off missed threes versus missed twos when it came to these crashing teams versus tag up. So I still need to work on, you know, tying in some of the transition defense stuff.
I’m no analytic genius, as you guys know, but I certainly love to look at it and find some stuff. And I do think the tracking data will change a whole bunch about the way that coaches are able to look at numbers when it becomes available at different levels, and maybe that’s a whole other conversation we have on a different podcast. But I do think that rebounding is going to be one of the quickest and biggest ways that this tracking data entering different levels of the sport is gonna change how coaches think.
Dan Krikorian 35:23
Eric, two quick points at the end that you made. One, I’ve made this mistake postseason myself. If you look at some of your efficiency ratings in transition, let’s just say from InStat, Synergy, wherever you get your stuff, you can’t just take that at face value. You’ve got to actually go into the transition numbers and look at the clips, because a lot of times you could say, “Oh, our transition was this,” but then you look at the clips, 27 of those clips were because we turned it over and it was a layup the other way. It wasn’t actually our offensive rebound and defense rebound. I think, like, that’s obviously an important thing that I think some of these coaches we’ve talked to have gone back and said, “Well, when we’ve really looked deep at it, there’s only been X amount that have really been like a just blown coverage, low side, get beat the other way.” I think that’s, like, worth a mistake I know I’ve made, where you just kind of look at a number and take it at face value, and it’s like, no, you gotta kind of dig into that to really see what that truly is.
The other thing I think is interesting is offenses are punishing tagging up teams a little bit too on made shots by these- Higher up on the floor, flat ball screens or pistol actions before they get into the half court. So what I mean is, on a made shot, instead of just letting someone tag up, ball goes in, we’re gonna get up, walk into the half court. Some of the really good offensive teams have set those really high go screens or, Pat, we’ve seen a lot, like these screens in the back court where honestly it can really bother your tag because now you’ve gotta switch and communicate. And so, like, the offenses have also said like, “All right, you’re gonna tag? Fine. We’re gonna punish you early in the back court and make this thing a race into the front court, and we’re gonna have a switch or a mismatch early because you’re trying to tag up and be so aggressive. We’re gonna hit you with it on the other side,” I think is another thing to watch as well. The kind of total basketball we’ve talked about here on the show.
Eric Fawcett 37:11
Yeah. So with that, I thought we would transition into a little segment at the end where we talk about what teams we want to be paying a lot of attention to this year, what teams we’re watching this year.
One of the questions we get asked all the time is, who are you watching, particularly in Europe? So I wanted to start with you, Pat. What teams are you looking forward to watching this fall?
Patrick Carney 37:31
The team I’m most interested in, and it’s a little serendipitous because I think, Dan, we’ve been having coaches ask about just looking into weak ice with, like, a lot of next, heavy gap help, heavy nail help. And that kind of got me, of course, thinking myself, but then watching teams and thinking about a team last year, Bamberg, but this year the coach moved to Munich, Anton Gavel. So, long-winded way of saying Bayern Munich of the EuroLeague. Excited to watch them because he’s bringing defense to the league.
It’s proven it is very successful in the German league, but to see it in EuroLeague where they’re trying to ice weak ball screens and they’re gonna be super heavy, bringing over that third defender, whether it’s a next switch or just being in the gap. I mean, at times it looks like there’s almost three players with the on ball defender, the big, and that gap defender there on the ball. Super aggressive, super interesting defense that I’m just excited to watch and try to learn from and see how it translates to the EuroLeague.
Eric Fawcett 38:35
I’m gonna throw in mine quickly. So I’ve got two. Lietuvos from Lithuania has been one of my favorites for years, so until someone unseats them, they remain one of my favorite teams to watch and the team I’m looking forward to watching this year. And Dan and Pat will know this from just a lot of clips that I send them. I’m sure all our Slap the Glass subscribers will see plenty of them this year. But they just have, like, some sugar on all their sets. Like, everything that is set up like a regular Spanish ball screen will have something that’s just, like, a little bit unique. They’ll set a flare from just a little bit of a weird angle, or they’ll mess with your pattern recognition and throw in a back screen on one progression earlier than you think. They don’t run anything in the most traditional sense, but they line up in these conventional ways and you think you know what’s coming, and your pattern recognition comes in, and you’re like, “Yeah, they’re gonna twist the stagger,” and then suddenly they do something you just completely don’t expect. And that league has gotten a lot better overall, and there’s a lot of teams I really enjoy watching, so that’s also why I like watching Lietuvos, ’cause I also still wanna watch Neptunas and, of course, Algirdas and Rytas. So that’s the team I’m really looking forward to.
And then another quick one is Manresa, who I just want to plant my flag on. The Manresa will be the next Paris or Valencia trendy, fast, up-tempo team. And I really like the way that they do it because their overall pace numbers would not jump off the page. They will play with great pace in the half court if they don’t get something off their initial look. They’re also one of the teams that, like, yeah, if you make a free throw against them, be ready, ’cause they’re gonna get that ball up the sideline in a second and might dunk it before you’re set. I also just like the way that they are able to play really fast but also very under control, so that’s another team I’m really looking forward to watch. But Dan, we’ll go to you now.
Dan Krikorian 40:16
Yeah. I guess I’ll close with less of a exact team and more of a developing, obviously, situation in Europe when it comes to NBA Europe proposed start date in 2027 and the relationship with EuroLeague and what’s gonna happen there. We’re gonna know much more about that here in the coming weeks.
And I just think it’s gonna be an interesting watch all year, specifically to the Champions League, the BCL, because it has been said that the top two, the winner and the runner-up from that league this year, will get an invite to the NBA Europe 2027 inaugural season. That could change by the time this podcast comes out, but, I mean, that’s at least what’s been proposed. And so I think just from a standpoint of watching that league this year, knowing that what’s on the line for those top two teams is gonna be fun to watch. And so I think that, you know, you’ve got Berlin in there, Athens in there. I mean, you got a lot of really good ACB teams as well. Murcia, Unicaja, Joventut, Pat, I think is in there as well. So I think there’s some really good ACB teams in there. Obviously, the ability for those two teams that are at the top to get into the NBA Europe I think is gonna be just interesting for us to keep our eyes on.
Eric Fawcett 41:23
I love that. And the way that you mentioned some of those teams, like, that’s what I also just love about the Basketball Champions League is for the history of European basketball, it’s been the top budget teams are largely in the EuroLeague.
There’s, of course, the next tier is EuroCup, and those are gonna have relatively similar budgets. But when you get to those Basketball Champions League teams, there’s such a wide range in markets, in budgets, and you’ve got a lot of coaches that have had a lot of success with less and a lot of teams that have found some really interesting ways to win. So even just basketball stylistically, the BCL has been super fun to watch. And now that there’s tremendous stakes, at least for the time being, like you said, things can change, the stakes will make a lot of those games really fun.
Patrick Carney 42:04
That’s what I’ve enjoyed the last several seasons, just the wide variety of styles that kind of come out of that competition. EuroLeague, EuroCup, I mean, obviously, of course, are really good competition with really good teams.
But maybe they play a little bit more homogenous or, probably the better word is there’s just more familiarity. Like, we all know these clubs, but getting the chance to kinda… I mean, I think that’s how we discovered Nymburk and Coach Tabellini because they had a tremendous run in the Champions League a couple seasons ago. So that’s what I always enjoy, too, just- Discovering new teams, new styles. It’s been a very fruitful competition for us and our content to watch.
Dan Krikorian 42:41
Absolutely. I think the fascinating part of this year is gonna be obviously what teams come out of it, but I just think overall how the NBA and how the EuroLeague, what that looks like as NBA tries to kick off the 2027 season.
And so I know that you might have cities, location clubs that maybe aren’t traditionally historic clubs that end up making NBA Europe because the market’s right, and then it’s obviously gonna have the NBA backing. So for me, it’s just gonna be a fun watch from both a basketball side, but, like, the business side, and just honestly the growth of basketball across the world I think is gonna be fun to watch.
Patrick Carney 43:16
Yeah. And I will say just I think my favorite part of the segment is hearing us try to pronounce European club names. Our apologies to all of our Lithuanian and Spanish-
Dan Krikorian 43:25
Yes
Patrick Carney 43:26
… listeners as we just butcher their club’s name.
Dan Krikorian 43:29
I got Murcia. I got the TH there.
Patrick Carney 43:31
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You were good.