Some teams…they’re a man-to-man team, and maybe things aren’t going well, and out of a timeout, they go to a two-three zone for a few possessions. Everybody does that. But that’s not their system. Their system might be man-to-man. In our system, when I was at Georgia Tech, we changed defenses. That’s who we were, what we did, we played multiple defenses. We were different in that way. – Josh Pastner
We were joined on the podcast this week by former Memphis and Georgia Tech Head Coach, along with current college basketball analyst, Josh Pastner! We dive into the concepts of playing multiple defenses, unique zones, and discuss late-game timeout usage and marrying Princeton and Dribble Drive Motion concepts during the always interesting “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Transcript
Josh Pastner 00:00
Teams would call a timeout late game, they didn’t know what we were coming out of it. It takes a lot of courage to come out into a zone that might be a little different, that maybe give it open some shots, you know, because probably the most traditional is, hey, let’s just play man to man and switch everything. But I think it takes courage to be a changing of the defenses to try to keep the other team off balance. And we did that a lot. Also at times it didn’t work. And then you go home and you’re for the next 72 hours, you keep the covers over your head. You’re just sick to your stomach and you can’t sleep. So you know what happens on that decision when you’re sitting in that chair and you make the decision and it works, you are just delayed. And if it doesn’t work, you know in your mind for the next three days, it’s just gonna crush you.
Dan 02:06
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Josh Pastner. Coach, really excited to have you on today, thanks for making the time.
Josh Pastner 02:27
Thank you both for having me. Let me tell you this for a guy that just is a basketball junkie, a sports junkie. I love sports. I love especially basketball. What you guys have done has been absolutely outstanding, awesome for coaches, for people that love hoops, how you’ve done it. And I would say this whether I’m talking to you guys or not. So I’m being very direct and truthful with you that what you guys have been able to do and how you’ve done it and the content and the guests that you’ve had and all the actions and concepts that you’ve showed, you’ve helped so many people, including myself, and you both know basketball. So much of it, they talk about imitations really flattery is what it is. It’s a flattering deal. And that’s really what coaching is. You’re taking things from other people. Maybe you make an adjustment or tweak, but a lot of that can be taken from your guys’ podcast. And so credit to you both. Keep doing what you’re doing. And I mean that wholeheartedly.
Dan 03:21
Thank you, Coach. Thank you, Coach. Yeah, that means a lot. We appreciate that. And the thing we wanted to start with you off the top was going from man to man to playing more zone or just the shift of playing any zone at all. And I know when you were at Memphis, not so much, I don’t think, playing a lot of zone and at Georgia Tech playing more of it and different styles, different alignments and all of that. And just in your mind, what went into that shift for you as a coach?
Josh Pastner 03:50
Look, at 31 years of age, I’ve taken over the head job at Memphis, and being the head coach at Memphis, it’s like being the coach of the Yankees in about a 30-50 mile radius in a sense, because it’s just such an intense job in that radius. But I’m 31 following John Calipari, and I’ve said this. Look, I could give you two million names, not a million names, but literally two million names that were more ready to be the head coach at Memphis or more deserving to be the head coach at Memphis than myself. But I happen to be at the right place, right time because I was his assistant. Nobody wanted the job and they needed to give it to somebody because nobody wanted to follow him. So I happen to be that guy.
I say all that to say when you’re at a job like Memphis, where probably it’s the best job in the league at that time, resource-wise, and fan support, and everything else that goes with it, number one responsibility is you want to keep getting the best players that you can, because usually you can get the best players, and then the whole key is just, hey, keep the ball moving, share the ball, play hard, be good defensively, be good in the glass, and you’re going to win a good amount of your games. I look back, we won a lot of games at Memphis. I wish what I knew when I was going to Georgia Tech, if I could rehash that and do that all over again at Memphis, we would have won so much more. And so I look back at that now.
You could say that’s part of the growth of a coach and growth of this human being, but that was part of the process is, again, as much as we won. But when you take over a job like a Georgia Tech and you’re in the ACC, where it’s more of a rebuild, when I took over, you’re in a situation where, okay, what are you going to do? Because you might not be able to get the same exact player initially. One, there’s just based in the league of the ACCs, different than when the league that I was in at the time at Memphis. And then two, as I talked about the rebuild, how are you going to be unique and different? And I really studied the ACC, really studied it. And once I got the job, but I really studied that whole off season about what are we going to do? And I really had a conviction. I was locked in and I wish I was this locked in when I was at Memphis.
Cause I thought at Memphis, one of the things I didn’t do as well is I thought I changed some things year to year. I maybe didn’t stay as consistent within our system on both sides of the ball, even though we were really good on the glass, even though we were really good in transition offense and we were really good on made field goals being assisted. I just thought our system on both sides, we changed maybe too much. Whereas I went to Georgia Tech, I was had such a more clear vision of how to play, what I wanted to do and the avenue to get there. And one of those things was, what is going to be different in this league? And that is going to be, you’ve got to be different on both sides of the ball and unique to give yourselves the best chance to be successful in that system. And one of them was playing defensively. Now, yes, Syracuse was in the league and Syracuse was playing, everyone knew about the zone of Syracuse and it’s a great zone. Jim Beyheim has over a thousand wins, it’s worked for him, but they’ve played straight to three. I felt for us, we had to be a different type of zone team where it was more of a matchup. It was multiple defenses. We played multiple defenses, sometimes in course of the game, there could be times out of one possession we’d actually play three different defenses and it served us well.
Now, our best times we got best at defensively within our changing of defenses was when we had an older team because as guys kept getting older, they understood the system, they knew what we were doing, our different calls. The question becomes, because I have a lot of people always reach to me about asking me about our zone defenses or different multiple zone defenses. And I’ve always said, it takes time. You’ve got to be committed to it. You can’t practice it once a week, twice a week. It won’t work.
Otherwise you might as well just go play a normal two, three and just throw it out there when you can. So my vision of that and my clarity going to Georgia Tech, I said, we had to be unique. We had to be different. We had to be outside the box. How do we do that? One side of the ball had to be playing those multiple zone defenses.
Dan 07:57
To dive in on that, so being unique and trying to be different, obviously in a terrific league. Also being effective and what it was about those zones that you really wanted to either take away or was it just take them out of running their man stuff and what was it at the core.
Josh Pastner 08:13
A few things. Number one is I always felt that because of the changing of our defenses, we were a tough team to prepare for. I mean, even if you ask the coaches within the league, they would tell you, you really had to prepare for us on both sides of the ball because of the way we played defensively. But I felt our system matched up on who we were offensively too.
Cause we played a little bit unique, different system on the offensive side with how we played at Georgia Tech. Secondly, what I would tell you is when you’re playing in a league like the ACC with the amount of pros in that league, especially the wings, the wings in that league all across the board, there were so many pros of the wing players. There was great guards, great bigs, but the wings were all, you know, six, six, six, seven pro type of guys. And I just felt that how do we keep those guys off balance? As you both know, majority of coaches feel most comfortable running just like you probably, everybody feels most comfortable running man to man offense. I mean, it’s just the reality of the game. So how do we do different things on thinking about that, be able to guard those type of pros where maybe we didn’t have those type of pros. Two other things with that coach is one is every time you went into a game, whether it was out of a timeout or whatever, it may be missed free throw, made free throw, whatever, there was a dead ball situation. We were constantly changing defenses. So the offense really struggled getting in a course of rhythm low and in a comfort zone because a lot of times they didn’t know what we were going to be in. So out of a timeout, they might have to run a zone play put in and a man play. Maybe they’ve got to put in a zone play for a one guard front defensively or for a two guard front defensively. They didn’t know when what we were doing. So that created maybe some confusion because it was different than maybe a normal game.
Secondly, I always thought about the amount of preparation they would have to prepare for us. So if we’re playing in, let’s say the ACC, it’s a Tuesday or Wednesday night, and then you follow back up on Saturday and we’re the Saturday game. If you haven’t played us the first time. So if you played us twice, the first time you play us, it’s a difficult time to prepare for because you haven’t seen that and it’s hard to simulate it in practice for 48 to 72 hours. Now, what I would tell you teams that played us the second time, maybe had a little better feel and understanding of it because they’ve seen it. Or I always felt we had to keep tinkering and adjusting and tweaking as we kept going along in the years that I was there because the coaches started getting a feel of it. And as you both know, coaches talk with each other in the league and say, man, how did you attack this? What is the majority of times when they come out of timeout? What do you think they’re running? What’s the best way to attack against their zone? So you had to keep trying to stay a step ahead to the best that you can.
And what’s interesting in zone defenses now, and I’ve studied all kinds of zone defense and we’ve played a lot, the zone offense has changed because it’s not like it was even when I got to Georgia tech, the five man now is becoming more of a perimeter player and a three point shooter. The shootings becoming farther out. If that makes sense as well too, people are acting things where it’s not always a guy low and a guy at the hype. I mean, they’re attacking five out four out. It’s different. So even playing against the zone defense, the zone offense has changed. And so you’ve got to keep adjusting and tweaking on that because the way the three point shot and the way the four and five man have changed and things that are doing, it changes the way you’ve got to maybe do some things zone defensively.
Pat 11:44
You mentioned with your defenses, you know, maybe it’s a one guard front, a two guard front, and I always admired how high and wide you had your forwards. But how did you think about alignments and formations of the zones, and maybe if it correlated to knowing that you’re in the ACC and you’re going to be facing some pretty talented wings?
Josh Pastner 12:02
Well, what I would tell you, coach, is one thing. The reason we are high and wide, my first couple of years we were playing, I had a coach from a non-conference team, a power five, you know, high powered coach called me up after the game. I loved how you ran your zone and you’re like you said, coach, you’re a high and wide and you’re up. And I had always felt being high and wide and with some aggressiveness, because I didn’t want guys offensively to kind of feel comfortable in allowing them to be able to get in rhythm, you know, the more against the zone where they can feel you and underneath that pressure, they can get on their heels in a sense.
And when you’re playing against those really good players, those are things where you don’t want them to feel comfortable. In any zone defense you play, you will always be able to get a three point shot. Always. There’s always going to be an advantage offense and being able to get a three. But here’s what I would tell you. One is a lot of the actions that you work in, in practice and free practice and all summer is your man offense of three point shots. And so a lot of times you’re out of rhythm when you’re getting the zone through. Yeah, it’s open, but it’s not the normal open shot that you’re getting within your man offense. Secondly, look, sometimes I’ve always said that if teams are just hot and making a bunch of threes, it is what it is. And it’s just better offense and not as good defense for that night. It could also be one of the things I’ve said as simple as could be that people say, hey, man, if you’re missing shots, the coach looks better on the defensive end. And if you’re making shots, the coast looks better on the offensive end. And it can be that simple, but you’re getting different shots than you would in man.
And so the pressure of it, I just felt we didn’t want them to feel comfortable. As I was saying, great players, when they’re feeling comfortable and they get going, it’s hard to take them out of it. But what’s interesting in a zone, if they feel a little bit awkward, unique, the way I always thought about it is, and you both know this, a really tall player that’s really good. Like I had this kid, Jose Alvarado, who plays for the Pelicans. Great player was the defensive player of the year in the ACC and steals leader and all ACC, small guy, five, ten. And he does the same thing in the NBA. I would always put him on like the six, seven, six, eight guy, even when we do we’re in manager because taller guys, totally dislike small guys being underneath them. It bothered them. It just something mentality wise, it frustrated them. I can’t tell you how many games high level wings in our league that were six, seven had their worst nights against us because of a guy like Alvarado just getting underneath them. And I felt the same type of mentality in the zone that it just kind of bothered them.
And so that’s why the thought process of being high, wide, being aggressive, because a lot of zones, as you guys know, sit back and are kind of in their heels. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s based on the coach’s philosophy. I believe being a little more extended on some things, depending on which zone you’re in. And one of ours is when we were extended like that.
Pat 15:00
When you are extended, when you’re high and wide, I guess so we can paint a picture. Where did you want your forwards? Where was the positioning and what couldn’t they give up?
Josh Pastner 15:09
Yeah, you know, what I would tell you, some of it would eventually go into scouting. But as I mentioned, because of the shootings better now where guys are, you know, they’re not just shooting in the slot at the three point line. I mean, they’re literally a foot or two behind the NBA three point line. Some of those guys shoot those shots with ease again against a zone defense. If you move the ball, you’re going to get some of those open shots. So the distance could be farther back. If they’re making a bunch of deep threes, it just kind of is what it is.
But I would like to get up to where the NBA three point line is and really get up there and put pressure on them. And so if they’re into that slot or even to the wing, to the sideline area, to that NBA three point line and really get out there and maybe even a step above that, if need to be, depending on who it is. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re just going out there wildly. It’s like a drill. You do this deflection drill, three guys. And I thought it was great for passing, fundamentally passing. And it was great for defensively in the middle for deflections. And it’s a great conditioner and you can use it as competition. And you set the guys like 12 feet apart. And this was good even for the zone. And both guys say, OK, they have a live dribble. And the guy in the middle, you put 30 seconds on the shot, clocks going back and forth, high hands, trying to get deflection. But if they have their dribble, you can’t be flying at them, jumping up and down. And then guys are just going to dribble by you and you’re just unsound and everything else. It forces you with the same mentality on zone defense. You’re coming up with high and wide hands, OK, being very active. But you’ve got to be able to stay in a stance that if they if they do dribble, you’ve got to win the first dribble. Like if he tries dribble, you’ve got to be able to try to cut them off for that first dribble. Second dribble, you don’t have to, but you’ve got to win the first dribble. And I think that’s really important in the zone. So we would do that both for passing and in the three man drill, just rotating on that for three man deflection drill, we’d call it. But I think that’s kind of our deal of being really active and pressuring them.
But we want to make them put on the floor. One of the things I used to always say is and I got this from Vance Wahlberg as well to way back in the day, you know, he runs a lot of dribble drive, but he also does a lot of pressing. And one of the things in the pressing we talked about with him was you almost want to get beat to start the press, you know what I mean? Because the teams are just passing it around the entire time. Well, you’re going to get dissected. It’s against a decent team. Same thing in the zone, in the zone defense in the half court. If you’re just going to be allowed team just to pick you apart with the pass, you’re going to get yourself dissected. So there’s got to be pressure on that. Now, the more extended the zone gets, you can get dissected with passes. And we would work on that all the time, really just in a simple formation of literally, you know, a two one two set as wide and spread as could be and just have to guard different spots. Now, at a higher level, if you’re playing a team with four shooters that are good size, that can move it like that are really good against the zone, it makes it tough. Like when we played Notre Dame, you know, as great as Coach Brey’s teams were, he was very simple against his own, but it was all about the pass fake. It was all about passing and catching and thinking and seeing and just being, you know, shooting. And so those things made it tough because they could just really put almost four to five shooters on the floor. That really stretches your defense out and you’ve got to be flying and moving like you’ve never been before. And that can get you stretched. But those are some of the downsides on the defensive end.
Last thing, let me just say this. I heard Jim Boeheim speak at a clinic and I spent a lot of time with Coach Beyheim. I love him. He’s an amazing coach. But I would tell you this, he used to say this and I agree with him. You play zone and what happens is you hit a three point shot and the coach who doesn’t usually get out of the zone, go to man to man, get back to we’re done with zone. But you don’t have this if you hit a three against the man to man, the coaches were done with man to man. No, you say pressure more, get out there and guard the shooter, you know, close out closer, whatever it may be. But it’s sometimes when you play zone, you hit a three coaches are ready to get out of the zone like within seconds. And so that’s the different mentality where you’ve got to be really comfortable as a coach to be bought in on the zone defense because if you just practice it once a week or twice a week, you can use it here and there and it might change the flow of the game. But to be great at it, you’ve got to be committed to it.
Dan 19:34
I want to ask you about a spot in the zone that I think has probably shifted on how coaches view it over the years and that’s the high post catch and when you were playing zone, how much it concerned you if it concerned you early versus later in the clock where you would match up man to man after the catch. You know, for so many years it was don’t let it get to the high post because that would kill your zone. And sometimes that’s actually something you want where a non-playmaker gets caught there and going one on one. Has it changed at all or did it change at all on that high post catch for you?
Josh Pastner 20:07
Yeah, great question and it’s the truth. I mean, it has changed because back in the day, you didn’t ever wanted to get into the middle, ever. That was like the cardinal sin of zone defense. Don’t let it get to the middle. And the whole objective for the zone offense was to get it to the middle. Secondly, now, things have changed because I’ve mentioned the shooting and the stretching of the floor in the shooting has changed, that people are now, they’re able to space a defense. So to get to the three-point shot and because of, you know, you shoot 33% from threes equivalent to 50% from the twos in a sense. And so, you know, the three-point shot has completely changed the game. It’s completely changed it. It’s like the dunk was back 20 years ago where, you know, you someone has, and that changed the momentum and rhythm is now the three-point shot.
And so teams are now allowing it sometimes to go in the middle and then fanning out all over the place and almost playing, as you mentioned, they’ll go into man-to-man from that high post catch. What’s interesting is two things with that. One is teams are now starting to put a really good offensive player or like a guard in the middle where that was 15 years ago, 10 years ago. It would just be the four and the five. One of those two would be at the high. Now they get their guard in the middle because that’s what they want to do. Tony Bennett did this against Syracuse. They would get the ball to the middle and I think it was Kyle Guy. It was one of those guys, maybe it was a guy after him. And then the Syracuse zone would fan out. So they would get the ball to the middle. The Syracuse zone would fan out and they would have the five-man, Syracuse’s five-man take the middle.
Well Kyle Guy would bring it back out to the top of the key and the five-man’s looking like what do I do? The top of the key shot was like shooting practice and it was at Syracuse and they had won by a big margin and part of that was just on that alone. So they would either do that or he would pull it back out on the dribble or they would throw it in the middle. Guys would fan out and they would just turn around and throw it right to the guy behind him again because the two guards at the top would fan out. So those are the type of things that you’re mentioning that people now are trying to be more clever in zone offense, getting different people in there, how they’re attacking it and because of the shooting. Secondly, you know, you look at the sweet spot. It’s not always just the nail or the high post. It could be anywhere in there. It could be the ball side elbow. It could be the weak side elbow. It could be that first hash mark. You know, as you both know, it’s guys finding that opening, that sweet spot as I like to call it, but not everybody has a really good feel on being able to get to the sweet spot or how to play against zone in the middle. How many times do you feel guys catch it? They might be a good player, but they’re not great against the zone defense, but they catch it, their backs to the basket and they just turn around and dribble it and they don’t see what’s going on. They don’t have toys in there. It takes a skill set to have a feel against zone defense in that middle. It might not always be the five man. It could be your point guard. That’s why on zone offense at times, when guys are cutting and moving a constant, and I used to be this, one of my assistants told me this and I agree with him wholeheartedly, I was big on cutting at Georgia Tech, constant cutting, cutting, cutting, even in zone.
He says, coach, we’re having all these guys cut, but sometimes the guys cut, the guys getting the ball in the middle. He’s not real good at the ball in the middle. And I’m like, you know what? Good point. And so we need to get our main guys who are the best. Why am I cutting three, got this guy through and he catches the middle and he can’t do anything with it. You know, so I had to adjust and try to put the guys who are best in the zone offense and make sure we got them to the middle, not just cutting because I like cutting and it looked good. And everyone’s like, man, you cut a lot and you move a lot, but it did no good. And so those are things that you’ve got to feel when you’re dealing with that zone on both sides of the ball on that. So I think that’s been the evolution of catching the middle there.
Dan 24:55
I wanted to kind of zoom out for a second and maybe ask kind of a more philosophical question with switching defenses and something that I’ve heard from coaches sometimes who switch defenses is the challenge can be having an identity or stitching it all together so that you have a team that can switch out of timeouts or halftime and still be effective versus a team that just plays man to man the whole time and that’s who they are. Any challenges or things about playing multiple defenses and having it all kind of be melded together.
Josh Pastner 25:28
Absolutely, there’s challenges to do it because you’re not going to be great at everything. It’s hard. I mean, you’ve got to pick three to four things that you’re going to hang your hat on to win games that you believe in. I say all that to say if you put a practice plan together for two hours, two and a half hours, I need to cover this. We need to do this. We need to do this. I mean, by the time you get two hours and 15 minutes, you’re like, I haven’t done what? I haven’t done this, this, this, this. And it’s hard to even get to the next day because there’s so much to cover when you want to be a really good team that you’ve got to then kind of go backwards and say, man, we just got to just focus on these three, four or five things and be great at them. We don’t get to this. We just might not be good at this. That’s just the reality of it.
And so when you’re dealing with changing defenses, you’ve got to practice it, you know, and you’ve got to have belief in it. And that’s no different than the zone. Like, again, I have people call me all the time about what to pick my brain on the zone defense and stuff that we did. But I would tell them if you’re not going to, you know, because I was talking about the slides and this and how we guarded this, you’ve got to be committed to it. And if you’re not committed to that, it’s very hard to be good at it. And you should then just do it like I mentioned earlier, just kind of maybe do more of a traditional zone. And that’s the same thing in changing defenses. I think there’s a lot of benefit of it because it can keep teams that are more talented in you, eat them off a rhythm, keep them off of balance, keep them out of the flow and maybe continue to have to look back at coach on the sideline and see what are we running on this coach, the preparation for it’s different, but you’ve got to then practice it, you can change defenses.
And if you don’t practice it constantly in practice, you can end up getting dissected and looking terrible. And then what happens, the guys lose confidence, whether it’s in the system or that. So that’s got to be part of your system. You’ve got to believe in that some teams will, you know, they’re a man to man team, and then maybe the things aren’t going well. And at the time out, they go to a two, three zone for a few possessions. Everybody does that, but that’s not their system. Their system might be man to man. In our system, when I was a, we changed defenses, that’s who we were, what we did, play multiple defenses. We were different in that way. That was part of our system. So that was part of our belief. And you’ve got to be all in on that to do that.
Pat 27:37
How did you think about allotting your practice time and with knowing you wanted to play multiple defenses? You know, I guess in the install of like a preseason, was it one week, you know, just this defense will really hammer in, we’ll just keep, you know, we’ll kind of let those other defenses go, then next week we’ll sharpen on that defense, or was it every day trying to hit on all of them? How did you approach just allotting your time for these multiple defenses in a practice setting?
Josh Pastner 28:00
It takes a lot of time to practice it and to be good at it. When I first got to Georgia Tech, my three assistants of Eric Reveno, Tavaras Hardy, Darryl LaBarrie, we spent a lot of time in the summer, how are we gonna put all this stuff in on both sides of the ball to be organized as much in practice? And so I had felt at the time, I said, okay, to be very successful at Georgia Tech, in my belief that we needed to get old, stay old, and we needed to have a system because of how we were playing on offense, with very like Princeton type of offensive stuff and dribble drive and other offenses, and then also mirroring it with our changing of defenses. We would have multiple offenses and multiple defenses. And as a guys, we’re in the program system, they’ve got really good at it. And so in your practices, we try to do whole part whole. I try to put it in, have guys understand it, make mistakes on it, then maybe break it down into parts and then come back to whole. But it took a lot of discipline from me to say, hey, look, what are you going to do when you’re not covering things that you need to cover? We’re not real good on blockouts, or we’re not really good in something on another area, maybe in transition offense. Well, yeah, you can do it for a day or two and you’re picking up on it, you’re driving them on the film, but if you’re not doing it every single day and driving it home, it’s sort of like if somebody came to your practice, they should be able to tell, okay, this is what is important, this is what he emphasizes, this is what he reinforces, this is what they’re about.
And what we were about was cutting, was changing defenses, was playing with like your hair on fire. You’re constantly, when you’re in zone a lot of times, the way we played our zone, you had a stunt and then go back. It was literally you were at a two-on-one disadvantage a lot of times, so the way you were moving and rotating. But that’s how we played and on the offensive end, everything was cutting, cutting, cutting. There’s things that we probably weren’t as good at that we needed to be. Now I’ve had time to decompress and look at things. When I get back to my next opportunity, do I do all that we did or should I maybe simplify some things so we can be better in some of the other areas that I think is probably gonna really help us win more than on the bigger part of just changing defenses, the zone defense and then cutting on the offensive end. Because all that takes a lot of time.
Pat 30:26
Having multiple defenses, what were the common slippage points? Was it, like you said, offensive rebounding? Was it your man-to-man defense just got lazy because you’re always just relying on zones or working on slides?
Josh Pastner 30:37
Well, you think about it, for example, like the Syracuse 2-3, it was an awesome defense for Coach Boeheim, won over a thousand games. But they probably could folk practice on their slides, they know where they’re going to be, and they knew exactly on who they needed to get on defensive rebounding, on the areas they needed to cover. Maybe in zone defense, that it may be a person you’re crossing out, it’s more of an area to cover. When you’re changing the amount of defenses that we played, okay, well, if we’re in this zone, this is your area, but if we have a completely different zone, then this area is totally different. As you mentioned about the slides, how about when we did go to man-to-man, because we also played man-to-man. How many changing defenses on the ball screen coverages could you have, and how are you guarding that? And so how much time would you spend on blocking out? So you’re trying to do those things, there’s slippage in areas that’s probably the little things that when I look back to saying, okay, we spent a lot of time on how to kind of play with your hair on fire, because we did a lot of disadvantage drills, four on three defense was always down, four on three, five on four, three on two, because that forces you to play harder, because you’ve got to make multiple efforts in one possession, I’m a big believer in that. And how many multiple times can you make two or three or four plays defensively in a possession? But what happens is, is you might not be as good as you need to be in the defensive end on limiting teams to one shot, we didn’t spend enough time on just hammering that because of the amount of different defenses, because you’re trying to do different slides, making sure the guys covered in this area, are their hands back when we the proper way we’re sliding and if they get to an overload over here in this defense, but if it’s an overload in something else that we did, being able to adjust to all that because of the different defenses, so you can have slippage. And that’s where I go back to as a coach when I decompress and look, was I doing too much and it helped us win a lot of games, you know, we were fortunate to end up winning and had some great years and won a championship. But looking back, was it too much on the sacrifice of some things that I thought, OK, if we took this out and just focused on more on these little, little details over here, would we have one more? And that’s just part of the maturation of a coach.
Pat 32:50
When you didn’t work on your man to man defense, what did you find was like the best in terms of like synergy between, okay, you know, we’re going to be in multiple zone defenses. So in terms of three directional force or a force baseline or a force middle, do we square, you know, maybe on ball coverage is I guess what kind of had good synergy with playing zone defense most of the time.
Josh Pastner 33:10
That’s another great question. That’s part of the slippage you could have and trying to mirror everything because in some of our zones, the way they were constructed and it was hard to play against and you look at our three point defense, people are really good at guarding the three incredible at it, even in the zones, but part of it is when we went to man, maybe we guarded the ball screen in a way didn’t always mirror to man to man.
You might say, well, why don’t you just mirror man to man the same way? But the way we played it, we didn’t play conventional zones. We did unique things. And so you had to maybe change the way you guarded ball screens and zone compared to man to man to your point. That’s where those things made it tough. And that’s where you were at your best. When you had older teams, the goal was to do the best you can to mirror everything as in terms of strategically. But as I always said, motor and intensity always beat strategy. Multiple efforts, multiple possessions, playing hard, competing, competitive excellence always was more important than strategy.
Dan 34:16
Coach great stuff there. We do want to transition now to a segment on the show we call start sub or sit We’re gonna give you three options around a topic ask you to start one of those Sub one of those and sit one and then we’ll discuss your answer from there So coach if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first one.
Let’s dive in Okay this first one you did briefly mention your offense there in that first segment a little bit of Princeton and dribble drive concepts that Were built into it. And so this first start subset has to do with that and it has to do with the Princeton concepts That aid dribble drive motion so the things that you would run within sort of Princeton that would then lead nicely into dribble drive concepts and your start would Be what you feel was the best or the most important into being able to do some of those things so option one is just the four out spacing or the alignment of Princeton allows it to flow naturally into some dribble drive concepts option two are the cutting concepts Within Princeton that open up double gaps triple gaps Whatever it is for you to then take advantage and then the third option is the screen the angles all that it creates closeouts So the Princeton is going to create a closeout that which you can then attack and then get into dribble drive concepts So start subset alignment cutting concepts or creating closeouts for Princeton to dribble drive
Josh Pastner 35:39
I would start cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. And you have to practice cutting. You’ve got to spend hours on cutting on just the speed of the cut. I believe in cutting. It’s very hard to guard. Moving without the basketball is a real skill. I would say sub would be alignment, because I do think the alignment makes it great because you can do multiple things, as you mentioned. Princeton, you can do dribble drive. You can do two-game, you know, kind of like the different things that Coach Beeline ran at Michigan. You could run spread, first cut, second cut that Coach Underwood ran and Coach Dana Altman ran and Johnny Orr started it back in the day. So there’s so many things you can do that, and you can flow into the zone. And I would say sit would be the closeouts. Again, people might say the best thing to go against offense is attacking a closeout because, you know, with the screening and forcing a closeout, because you’re getting the defense in rotation. But I do think that happens naturally with it, but those are the order I would be in that.
Dan 36:42
Coach, great answer. I’ll start with your start, which from the beginning, I had a sense the cutting might start for you. Wanted to ask though about more details with teaching cutting and kind of teaching to cut to score, cut to create space, cut to move the defense. And you mentioned how much you love it, but I know there’s layers to how you teach it and in this sense, how you would think about it.
Josh Pastner 37:07
Again, cutting, it’s a skill, as I mentioned, it’s a skill set to be able to do it. You’ve got to practice again. You just can’t run to cut and you’re not even looking at the ball or trying to score. Every cut’s got to be trying to score. A lot of people say this, you want to score twice on one cut. You want to score for a layup and then you want to get out to the three-point line to shoot a three on one cut. And so I always say the entrance cut coach is very important. How many players do you see as the exit cut that they’re not good at? They just kind of hang around or they cut to the rim and then they mosey on around and lollygag out to the three-point line. The training of the exit cut is just as important as the entrance cut and the violence that you’ve got to cut to the rim and putting pressure on the rim.
To me, it’s no different than you’re driving the ball, trying to get downhill. It’s the same thing on the cutting. You’re trying to suck the defense in and to open up an advantage somewhere else on the floor. And that’s done by cutting. And so again, you’ve got to practice it. It’s no different than five on oh. People say, well, cut hard, cut hard on five on oh, cut hard. But what is that? What’s cutting hard? You’ve got to literally drill it to the best of you can, even if it’s in five on five, and that’s got to be something that’s important to you. You can time it with a stopwatch that if you cut to the rim, you’ve got to get behind the three-point line in almost two and a half seconds. From your first cut to the three-point line, you can go two and a half to three seconds. You’ve got to be falling like that. Your hair is on fire, that type of mentality. And so it’s that type of emphasis. So you can use anything that you want within a drill sense of it. What happens is, is guys get to the entrance, they get to the rim, and then it just mosey on out, and they don’t ever finish their cut. It’s completing it, trying to get two baskets, get a layup, and then get your feet behind a three-point line in time for you to get an open three-point shot.
And then to do that, you’ve got to be fine. And to cut like that in the course of a game and also playing good defense, you’ve got to be in elite cardio shape. You’ve got to be in good physical condition to do that.
Dan 39:08
On this cutting concepts and then how it’s aiding your dribble drive and I guess your thoughts on Princeton and dribble drive coexisting and you mentioned the uniqueness in which you played offensively and I guess how these things on a bigger level sort of fit together.
Josh Pastner 39:25
You look at the NBA, everybody is running some sort of almost Princeton action. Now, it might not be the whole flow of it and the traditional sense of it, but, you know, you can call it whatever you want to call it, splits or point away. A lot of people use a terminology point when they’re talking on kind of the Princeton concepts over maybe down the middle into whatever it may be, because they get the ball to high post and then they’re playing two game action. You know, a lot of that stuff, you know, you look back at when Coach Correal back in the day with Princeton, how it started, a lot of the Ivy League runs it.
So it’s okay, when Princeton breaks down, what’s the next thing you go to? And that is the play after the play. You know, what’s your play after the play? I really believe 85 to 90% of basketballs break down offense. You know, how much do you really score in the play? I mean, you might score because you ran a good play or the guy gets an open shot and he hits a three or whatever it may be. But the reality of it is most teams know what you’re going to guard when you call play one, when you call play two, they know what’s coming. It’s the play after the play. And so what’s great about the dribble drive after Princeton is you have a flow into it. You’re flowing, you’re not pulling it out, looking to the sideline and say, okay, what are we running in this late clock? You’re kind of moving into it. So I think all those things go hand in hand. And that’s why I love the alignment because you can do different things and get yourself back quickly to it without having to reset. And then when you have to reset or pull it out, you’re allowing the defense to really load to the ball and get back to their help positions. And now you’re not maybe as effective offensively.
Pat 40:58
Coach how do you think about using the big and this play after the play type scenario and i’m kind of envision like your grand point so he’s at the high post he’s at the elbow and then you’re starting to get your dribble drives i guess what became important to you with the big and playing off the drive playing this play after the play and spacing.
Josh Pastner 41:15
Yeah, you know what I would tell you is the big in Princeton point action, whatever it may be, because you playing through the big. And I would always say like the big would be he’s your point guard in that position. And if you can get really good at it, like some of the Princeton stuff, they would be able to snap different guys into that elbow spot there where we’re always have to be the big. It could be even a guard.
And the way the game is evolved now, you can almost have your big, your five, in a sense, on the perimeter because you can be interchangeable stuff. But once you got into it, when you play through him and he would make the pass or dribble handoff or whatever action it was, if the guy up top went away or he went over or down the middle or, you know, anything that happened. Once the screen was set, you would a lot of times would have them sprint to the rim. And from there, because it’s a pick and roll situation, you’re playing out of that. And so the next play, if you don’t have something there, the next pass, you’re flowing into dribble drive. So within there, the five men into dribble drive is already sort of we would call an alley. You’re deep in the dunker spot, the alley, you know, different terminology for that. Now you’re flowing into it. So it from Princeton into dribble drive, kind of the play after the play right from there.
Dan 42:27
You mentioned some time with coach Wahlberg and obviously well known for some dribble drive concepts and how much of the dribble drive traditional cuts and double triple gaps, would you spend time on day to day or was it just more of like a play after the play drive kick mentality?
I mean, where was it?
Josh Pastner 42:44
We spent a lot of time on it because to be traditional dribble drive, you might think in dribble drive, hey, just drive the ball and drive it and try to score because you can use it as an offense. And when you’re using it as an offense, there’s pickups involved. There’s rotations offensively on where guys are moving on the drives, where guys are cutting on the certain drives, where you pick up and how you’re playing off of two feet, using your pivot feet all the way around and how to play. You guys have heard the terminology, the Barclays, like you get down there to the post and guys are using their rear end and kind of like backing them down now. Villanova was known for that at the time with Coach J. Wright and obviously it’s transition in the NBA like that. So I think the dribble drive, we use it as an offense and we use it as an offense with the pickups with the ball. So where we pick the ball up would trigger guys cutting or where they would move up into and how we could play for that. So we would spend time on that. So we use it as an offense. Absolutely use it as a complete offense.
Pat 44:58
Coach moving along, our next start sub set has to do with late game timeouts and your start subset, most important why you would want to keep one timeout in the pocket. Option one, to have the ability to set your defense. Option two, the ability to set your offense, run an ATO. Or option three, in case you need to get it in, inbounding against pressure.
Josh Pastner 45:22
Start with option three. I always wanted to have a timeout to get the ball in bounds against pressure. I would want to sub with option B to have a chance to set up a play. And option C, I would say sit defensively because at that point we’ve had spent so much time on changing of defenses. We had a flow of it. And so what we were in, whether as offense, on a made or a miss or out of a timeout, we would have been already locked in on that. We could use it as a sit. But I always like to keep a timeout always just because if you’re up late, getting the ball in bounds just for that safety valve to get it in.
Pat 45:59
I’d like to start with actually your sub when you said the set defense and kind of going back to our first conversation, did anything change with your strategy when it’s a close game, late game and how you approach multiple defenses?
Josh Pastner 46:14
When the teams would call a timeout late game, they didn’t know what we were coming out of it. It takes a lot of courage as a head coach. You know, you listen to your assistants, you talk to your assistants, but it takes a lot of courage to come out into a zone that might be a little different, that maybe give it open some shots, you know, because probably the most traditional is, hey, let’s just play man-to-man and switch everything, especially if a team needs a three or, you know, obviously you can always foul if that’s what you believe in as well too, but if it’s a two-point game, let’s just be sound and not give up a three. But I think it takes courage to be a changing of the defenses to try to keep the other team off balance.
And we did that a lot. Also at times it didn’t work. And then you go home and you’re for the next 72 hours, you keep the covers over your head. You’re just sick to your stomach and you can’t sleep. So, you know what happens on that decision when you’re sitting in that chair and you make the decision and it works, you are just delayed and if it doesn’t work, you know in your mind for next three days, it’s just gonna crush you. Fran Fraschilla always talks about this, and I agree with them wholeheartedly, kind of have it in your flow, in your mind, these situations prior to getting the situations. Do the pressure situations in non-pressure situations. Think about these things in the summer, in the fall, in the practices where it’s not as much pressure on you.
Now, I was a feel guy with some of the things that we did. I believed in feel, just like in subbing, I believed in feel. And so it was the same thing in the defense. And I just had to feel sometimes like, in my gut, I just think we should just sit in this one zone on this one, on this coming out of this timeout. Or you know what, let’s just go man to man and switch one through five or let’s, we call it redding or blitzing the ball screen. A lot of it was a feel when you had that timeout to make that decision.
Pat 47:56
Let’s say you’re defending a baseline out of bounds Was there a certain zone alignment you liked or what became important if you’re going to defend a baseline out of bounds with the zone?
Josh Pastner 48:07
Same thing, we’d go man or zone. And that’s going back earlier, when you’re doing zone, you’ve got to practice base out of bounds, special team situations, defensively, how are you guarding certain things, the different actions, if you’re because of different alignments, whether you’re in zone or man, obviously, you know, based on your system, when you’re changing defenses, you know, that takes time, and that takes time also in shoot around, if you’re going to play different defenses, you might have to cover different things in different alignments, if you’re just saying, hey, we’re only going to play man or we’re only going to play zone and base out of bounds, then you don’t have to worry, you can just focus on that these are alignments, regardless, we had some great wins where ball was late clock, base out of bounds underneath, and we had to make a decision and we would go, you know, whether is if we made a zone decision on that time, and it worked, it got guys to steal and I can remember a game we played against Georgia at our place, we were up one, and it was their ball based underneath, and they called timeout and we came out in zone, and we got to steal in the inbound, they had maybe some opportunities to get some things, but they weren’t able to get it there, we got to steal, we win the game because of it, just as something as simple as that. And so it takes practice. And you got to have buy in on that, but you’ve got to be able to deal with the different alignments.
And as you know, now, because remember, in zone, when you’re guarding the out of bounds, it’s five on four, your advantage. The key question you’ve got to ask is, what are you going to do guarding the ball? Are you having a person on the ball? You know, a lot of people like to have a big guy there, maybe or someone sitting like in the pain or at another place, like almost in a two three set, two guys up top and three across the baseline to protect that because you have five on four. If you put a guy on the ball, now you’re playing four on four. But those are decisions that you’ve got to make before you get to that point on how you want to guard on that situation.
Pat 49:55
Offensively, were there any alignments or actions that gave the zone trouble in the baseline?
Josh Pastner 50:01
Depending on your alignment because if you’re in zone and you put someone on the ball and you’re again you’re in zone not man to man or four across let’s say the baseline you know that’s not always easy if you have somebody on the ball now going back to our earlier conversation like florida state leonard hamilton they play man to man they switch man to man but if you watch them on their base out of bounds what they do is how they are the base out of bounds because they have it makes it tough to get the ball in bounds when you’ve got some pressure on there as i mentioned earlier just like in the half court you want to make guys feel uncomfortable in the zone you know pressuring them high and wide do you believe the same philosophy which i did putting a guy on the ball inbounding so he couldn’t just pick you apart you had to have some high-end activity make it not easy for him i say all that to say one four low was tough when you had a guy on the ball because in the zone your guarding areas and if guys come kind of load over and get to that sweet spot which was the ball side elbow in that first hat if you kind of load guys over that made it tough
Dan 51:08
I always question what to do with that guy on or off the ball underneath out of bounds. So it’s interesting to hear that.
Josh Pastner 51:13
It’s the debate of all debates. You know, what do you do with the guy on the ball? It’s really easier to be man to man, because it just takes out any gray area on that. And you just guarding and how you want to play it. When you’re in the zone, there’s a lot of questions. There’s more gray area than black and white when you’re playing zone against base out of bounds.
Dan 51:30
Coach, you’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. That was a lot of fun.
We’ve got one final question for you to close the show before we do. Again, thank you so much for your time, your thoughts. All of this today was really fun. So thanks for coming on the show.
Josh Pastner 51:45
Oh, thanks for having me guys. I really appreciate it. It’s great to talk hoops. I could talk hoops every day all day. You know, I got to still take my kids to school though. They don’t want to hear
Dan 51:56
So 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?
Josh Pastner 52:03
Great question. I mean, what best investment I’ve made, I love studying the game. I love learning about the game. I think probably one of the things that I’ve done well, if I’ve done anything well, is the investment of really watching other coaches do what they do offensively, defensively, every clinic that you could think of. I’ll call guys in high school, I saw something in high school and I’m like, hey, man, that’s a great drill that you ran. Can you tell me about it? I’ll ask people, hey, have you seen something that’s unique or different, whether it’s division two, division three, NAIA, overseas? So I think my greatest investment that I try to have is continuing to be a learner and keeping open minded and being humble enough to know that I have a long way to go.
I have a lot to learn. I think I’ve gotten better as a coach. I’ve been a head coach for 14 years. I’ve been around great people. We’ve won a lot of games, but I’m excited about the next 30 years. And I hope I get, you know, I want to be coaching until I’m 75 till I’m 80 because I love it. And so I hope my investment is that I continue to be the best thing is that I’m open minded to continue to learn, to change, to make adjustments, to improve, to get better, because in the end, as you guys know, it’s a people’s business. You’ve got to have great players. I don’t think there’s any secret to that. But in the end, it’s you’re dealing with people, your relationships that you come across and all that parts, the fun of it. And obviously the competition. And if anyone has anything that’s listened to this, please reach out. I mean this, please reach out to me like you’ve got an idea, a thought, a drill, a unique defense, a unique offense. My email is JoshPastner@gmail.com. I mean, just please J O S H E A S T N E R at Gmail dot com. Please reach out to me. And if you don’t get a response, you didn’t send it to me. I respond to everybody. Well, I don’t care if it’s email, text message, phone call. I respond to every single person that reaches to me. If you’ve got an offense, a defense, you’ve seen a team that’s a high school team that you man, I’ve seen this coach run this stuff. It’s so please let me know. Reach out to me as you talk about investment, all those things. You never know what you can come across to help you down the road.
Dan 54:24
All right, Pat, these all are really interesting in their own right. But Coach Pastner just so willing to share in such a learner of the game like he just mentioned in his best investment and you can just feel it off of him. He’s known as a terrific recruiter as he was coming up with a profession and known for his energy. And that sort of just flows through the microphone. It’s fun to be around.
Pat 54:48
Absolutely. You felt his passion and love for the game and love for coaching and appreciate him coming on and sharing today with us.
Dan 54:55
So to dive right in, I thought that the first bucket, the first topic with the man to zone thoughts on all of that super interesting, you and I have personally seen the rise of unique, interesting zones all across different parts of the world and all the different ways that defenses are trying to gain advantage over an offense. And I think like we’ve mentioned before, as players get more skilled, as even coaches just understand how to coach offense more with spacing and all these terrific actions you can run. Sometimes in man to man, it can make it tough because teams really know how to take advantage of that. And so being able to have a zone, whether it’s your whole lifestyle or just a curveball in your pocket can be really beneficial. And I just really liked hearing his thoughts on going from Memphis to Georgia Tech and that it was going to be part of their system. It was going to be part of what they do. They’re going to change defenses. They’re going to switch all the time to make it hard to play against. And I think he talked really well about the challenges of that, the benefits of that, and just sort of his growth through that whole process. you
Pat 56:00
Definitely. With discussing his philosophy, I think the big takeaway for me was he was very open and straightforward with it, that it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort to do multiple defenses and you’re going to sacrifice some things. And he was just brutally honest, you can’t do it all. And so for him, the multiple defense are important, but it’s about finding three to four things that are important that you’re going to hold your guys accountable to that this is going to be kind of your identity, your system. And of course, you work on the other things you try to sort up when we got in the man to man, but his acceptance of the understanding what he’s giving up and hopes that he’ll gain when he looked at the ACC, he looked at their athletic wings and thought this would help them win. And for me, that was like the big overarching takeaway theme of the whole podcast is there’s the pros and cons of everything you do and what he chose to do and why and start to finish just really enjoyed kind of getting a big 360 view on multiple offenses, changing defenses.
Dan 56:56
Yeah, I’ll just throw in an early miss for me. I could have gone deeper on the defense to stop the best players in your league. I thought it was a really interesting thought on when he went to Georgia Tech and he said how deeply he studied the ACC. And you go, okay, well, coming in, we’re not getting the Duke, North Carolina type guys right now. But the wings of those places were pros. And I thought like a little light bulb went off for me thinking about wherever you’re at right now, high school to MBA, like thinking about constructing your defense to make it difficult for the best players in your league to play against was just an interesting thought. I probably could have pressed down on that a little bit deeper on those kinds of things. And even just myself thinking about what kind of defenses can be constructed to guard and cause problems for the best players in your league was an interesting little point.
Pat 57:48
Yeah, I think it’s a topic we’ve been circling a little bit lately that maybe is worth a bigger conversation on. We just had TJ Sain on when we were talking about the delay action. And you mentioned you have all these kind of these base defense, how you’re going to guard certain action, but what makes them tough is when the best players are in them and they can kind of destroy, you know, your base defense. And so going along with why he, you know, today, coach Passner was looking at NBA like wings. I think that’s an interesting discussion, something to maybe that we should dig into deeper, just like ways to stop good players and defenses and, you know, strategies and how they change your principles or, you know, affect kind of your baseline defense and what needs to be done to counter that. And, you know, we’ve looked at, of course, hitting or, you know, blitzing or boxing ones, but just the effect they have and how to game plan against them, I think is a really interesting conversation moving forward.
Dan 58:43
Quickly, my last other little point in the zone conversation was the conversation around the high post catch for me. We did run a decent amount of zone this year and that was always a topic of what do you do with the high post catch? Not what do you do with it, but how much emphasis do you put on not letting it get there? I think that Joe Gallo is one of the best zone teachers around and their zone was once again Merrimacks zone was one of the best in the country. He talks about different ways that the ball gets to the high post and a pass that’s a straight line like a zip pass can never happen. It’s got to have some air under it, it’s got to be a lob or a bounce and if it gets there on a lob or a bounce, it’s okay and then same thing they spread out and let that guy kind of maybe operate one-on-one from the high post. But I just think that has been a fundamental shift too of never letting it get there versus now of teams saying okay, it’s probably going to get there but now let’s take away the three and coach Pastor talked about that, changed a little bit too.
Pat 59:44
He even mentioned dribble penetration, you know, where that was like, don’t let them get to the middle. I think now, you know, with how teams are rotating and sliding, all of the clutter is in the middle. So it doesn’t kill you as much, you know, or maybe making those swing passes for three or more damaging versus, yeah, okay, you prevent kind of do a laying closeout, force the ball back to the middle, right into the heart of, or maybe you’re funneling them into the five man. We talked about that with Coach Gallo as well. Yeah, it’s just been interesting, seeing the paradigm shift from how coaches, teams attack zone and thought about zone offense to where it is now and how the game obviously has changed.
Dan 01:00:19
Hey, let’s move to start sub or sit and we’ll start with the Princeton to dribble drive and kind of the marriage of those two offenses. And we’ve actually had a number of fun conversations this year so far about Princeton and dribble drive, basically how they ate each other, how they can easily be stacked together. And one of my favorite quotes of that whole first start sub sit was 80 to 85% of offense is the play after the play. He was discussing why dribble drive concepts are so important no matter what you do to start your offense, whatever Princeton type set or cut you make, it’s going to become some kind of play after the play driving kick type of thing. So I’ll kick it back to you though on any other thoughts on Princeton and dribble drive.
Pat 01:01:06
Yeah you hit on it before when we were prepping for this question and, you know, how we wanted to approach, we knew we wanted to talk about Princeton dribble drive and you kind of hit on head and what he brought up is so much of the offense always ends in dribble drive concepts. And it’s just choosing how you want to maybe build your advantage through ball screens, through handoffs, through Princeton, through, like you said, kind of playing the point over. All that stuff is preference, what you can teach, what you want to teach player personnel, but it all is going to kind of end in the same was a penetrating drive and knowing how to space, how to react. And even mentioned maybe within the pickup points are and what that triggers, you know, the cut set it triggers. So another part of the conversation was of course cutting and how to teach it. The quote I liked was you score twice on one cut. And that’s when we got into the importance of the exit cut. Yeah, you score twice. The first one’s the layup. The second one is the exit cut out of the three point line.
Dan 01:02:00
Yes. Like a great example of that I think about is everybody can think of like Steph Curry, cut into the rim, doesn’t get it, fills back out, and maybe now they’re setting like even an exit screening for him, scoring off of that. And most of the time when you cut hard to the rim, that man also becomes a help or tag defender on that next action. So the faster you get out, get your feet set, what he’s talking about is the faster than you can be in position to make that next play, whether it’s a catch and shoot or create the next advantage.
And so it’s been fun so far this year, a lot of film breakdown, things we’ve been doing for SGTV and on the podcast that adding Princeton, adding Euroflow, adding, you know, two guard John Beilien type of stuff to start your offense. Those things are, you know, the away series that Alabama does that, that pin away, whatever it is. But then like it just gets into how good are you teaching advantage basketball with the dribble drive concepts and things like that. Moving to the second start subset and I’ll kick it to you on first takeaways, but we thought we haven’t had a late game coaching discussion in a few episodes. So we thought we’d revisit timeouts and you and I were talking beforehand on if you’re going to save one, we’re watching the NBA playoffs right now and how important timeouts are down the stretch and what you’re going to save them for. And so interesting to hear his thoughts on setting his defense, his offense or needing an emergency kind of get it in type of situation.
Pat 01:03:29
We have a hunch again, preparing this question that, yeah, probably the emergency get it in timeout would be the start. So I think with this question, we were kind of after the the prefer to save a timeout to set his offense up an ATO or set his defense. He subbed having a timeout for an ATO, but our conversation kind of centered around setting your defense. I enjoyed the conversation. I thought it was really interesting tying it to playing multiple defenses, and he brought up a really good point that we even talked to afterwards. When you do play multiple defenses and you come out of timeout and you decide to change the defense and just as a coach that can keep you up at night if you decide to change the defense and they score.
Dan 01:04:08
Yes. If you change defense, then they score. You blame yourself. If you just go man to man and switch, you can blame the players and you feel better.
Pat 01:04:18
Bro, the name of the game is a coaching biz.
Dan 01:04:20
Yeah, who can I, who can I point my finger at? Deflect. Yeah.
Pat 01:04:27
So he said it takes a lot of courage to do it and then it morphed into kind of situational defense.
Dan 01:04:34
Yeah, and a mini conversation too, I think, about guarding baseline out of bounds that we’ve discussed before. So we had Coach Karlie Clark on and had to start a subset about guarding underneath out of bounds. Also, Coach Gonzalo Rodriguez has had good thoughts on guarding out of bounds and maybe switching out off late screens from the inbounders. So just a couple other inbound conversations, and he mentioned, and something we always think about, is switch versus not switch, guard the ball versus guard the rim, player dependent, team dependent, totally get it. But that’s also another area I could have gone deeper on is, and even just an area for myself personally, kind of off season trying to figure out the best teams, how they guard underneath, where they put the guy on the ball, off the ball. Do they switch certain screens versus not switch certain screens? Do they zone?
Pat 01:05:24
Also a miss for me following up on that. Do the alignments play a role? You know, before a cross, hey, get off the ball. Is it, I don’t know, a box, you know, go to the ball or whatever, or a line, go to the ball. You know, if alignment play a role in how you decide to guard or not guard the inbound.
Dan 01:05:41
Hey, I gave one kind of early miss on my end. Anything else from you you wish you had time or went deeper on?
Pat 01:05:48
big glaring one that I wish I asked or followed up about was just the communication and how he gets his guys to talk, who’s the most important voice, backline, the center, with changing defenses, playing different defenses. You know, I mentioned a little bit that usually on dead balls, free throws are going to change it, but how he just thought about communicating all this and getting everyone on the same page, I think is also the trick with multiple defenses.
Dan 01:06:14
Yeah, absolutely. Well, once again, thank Coach Pastner for making the time coming on and having such a great conversation. Thank you everybody for listening. Have a great week coaching and we’ll see you next time.