We sat down this week with the HC of D2 Vanguard University, Rhett Soliday! The former NAIA Coach of the Year after winning the 2014 National Championship brings a wealth of knowledge to the show as we dive into Coach Soliday’s philosophy on winning with smaller guards, defending all 94 feet of the floor, and discusses BLOB tactics along with “teachable moments” as a coach during the always entertaining “Start, Sub, or Sit?! segment.
Transcript
Rhett Soilday 00:00
been in a deeper fight at this time with this generation or not just their head, but their heart. If you don’t have their heart, you’re never going to get to their head. They’re not going to learn basketball at the level they should. They’re not going to be consistent as a competitor the way they should.
And capturing the heart is about the posture you lead with and capturing the heart is I’m going to assume the best about you and I’m going to believe the best for you. Coaching somebody to their potential only is possible if now you have access to them as a person. And how do you gain access to a person? You got to speak life into them. You got to believe the best about them. You got to see something in them and then not just see it in them and keep it to yourself. You got to see it in them. And then even if it’s weird for the kid to hear it and receive it, you got to be able to look at them and say, man, this is what I believe in about you. This is what I see for you. And sometimes it’s about basketball and quite honestly, a lot more than that. It’s not.
Dan 02:16
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Rhett Soliday. Coach, thank you very much for making time. We’re really looking forward to talking to you today.
Rhett Soilday 02:29
Yeah, thanks for having me guys. Every day I wake up and get to work in the origin home of Dan Krekorian. That’s a pretty cool day. Costa Mesa
Dan 02:38
Thank you. Yes. This is a nice podcast because normally there’s like three different time zones that we have to coordinate for our guests. This one was a little easier you and I being in the same time zone, Rhett. So thank you for that. Coach, we wanted to dive in with this and something that I’ve always admired from afar, watching your teams play, which is your ability to win with small guards and construct really good teams around. And we had a point guard or two guards off guards that can do a lot of things that can pressure the ball that can make plays. And I think it’s a an interesting, I don’t know if it’s a decision you always made purposefully to build your teams that way or just how they fell. But we see a lot in Europe with teams doing that as well with smaller guards and having a lot of success. And so we want to jump off with just your thoughts on constructing a team and playing around smaller guards.
Rhett Soilday 03:30
It’s a fascinating concept because obviously, if you just compare everything apples to apples and you know that, I don’t know, the floor is 94 feet long and the rim is 10 feet high, and the old Hoosier scene of guys, it’s all the same game. You would obviously pick the guy that can get down the court in fewer strides, fewer steps, and the guy that’s arms are closer to the rim when he reaches up. That just makes sense from a practical standpoint. I guess it’s an impractical approach to what seems like such a simple decision.
One of the things I like about it is, okay, if it’s impractical to play with smaller guards at face value, then is there some practicality in there? You have to start, I think, with mentality because what’s the separator? If it’s not physical attributes in some respect, then I think you got to start with mentality. One of the things I’ve thought about over the years and even thinking about this conversation is, what is a mentality that could be present in a kid that’s been small his whole life? Like I’ve heard coaches say before, we never recruit the older brother, we only recruit little brothers because the little brother is going to have a level of grit and toughness and he’s been beat up and lost in wiffle ball a hundred times in the whole deal. I think there’s a little bit of an element of that in me. Now, I ended up playing in college, I’m about 6’4″, but I was actually a super light bloomer and I graduated high school at 17, which is almost unheard of these days, and I was always really little. I didn’t really shoot up till I got my junior year in high school. So I ended up being like a bigger guard in some respects, but I think about my own story and I was a small town kid and I never played AAU or any of the stuff. Went junior college route, I was in high school with 200 kids in Eastern Washington and was always really little. I started high school, I was about 5’6″, soaking wet. I don’t think they listed my weight on the football roster when I played and I was tiny and then grew into my high school years. But I start with the mentality piece in terms of the impractical approach. And what I’ve found over the years is, and it can be like anything else, there’s exceptions to the rule, but I have found that more consistently, a 5’8 guard with tremendous speed and tremendous toughness in terms of his mental approach to competing actually has the ability to create more advantage than maybe a 6’2 guard or a 6’2 to 6’4 guard who has always been kind of in that mold and been pretty good all the days he’s been playing. You know, like it was always one of the better players on his team and stuff like that. And think about how many stories there are of the little guard that people counted out and he always had to work for everything he gets. And so I think there’s a mentality that has to be present that I found you might find a little bit more in a smaller guard. And then with that mentality, it’s really asking the question, do they understand that? Those little guards, if they were always little, they didn’t one day go, I’m a big guard. You might have a 6’8 guy that he’s a forward type, but of course, what does the 6’8 forward want to be? Well, they all want to be point guards too. You know, the small point guard has no illusions of, or two guard of, I want to play the four or the five. I want to play in the trail. Let me make decisions. He already has some solidified understanding of who he is as a player. And because that’s true, I think, you know, I’ve heard so many coaches talk about the number one job we have is to get people to understand what they’re good at and then get them to play to their strengths. Well, you don’t have to do a ton of work on that with smaller guards in some regard. They understand, for me to impact the game, I may not get six rebounds a game from the guard position, but I might if I anticipate well and chase it down. What if I had that also? But they understand my job is to not play like a 6’4 guard if I’m 5’8, 5’9.
My job is to play like a 5’8 guard. And I think there’s just a deeper understanding of how that impacts winning. And so they’re able to let go of some of the other preconceived notions about what the game should look like for them and they just go after it. Experientially, I have found that to be true more in little guards and it fits the way we want to play. So, you know, my philosophy is if the floor is 94 feet long and 50 feet wide, we should defend all of it. What’s the best way to defend the whole court? It’s to have a level of toughness, grit, determination, and hopefully speed that can initiate that defensive approach. And we’ve had success with that over the years. And some years, we haven’t and we’ve stuck with it. And it hasn’t been as successful. But sometimes when it’s not, some of those younger guys have figured it out and they really get to a point where they figure out how to play the way we want them to play and do it at a high level.
Dan 07:57
So, I want to go back to how you build around a smaller guard, and you talked about some of the traits and speed, the toughness, and how then you want to play and defend the court. Thinking about the rest of the guys that are going to be around those smaller guards and how you think about building out that team, whether you want bigger wings or whatever it is that you think fits around that smaller, tougher guard?
Rhett Soilday 08:22
I guess to start at the defensive side of the ball offensively, I think every year it’s such an art, not a science trying to figure out how the pieces fit together. Usually by January, you figure out some of the actions and things you anticipate needing to be good at, it shifts and it changes. But I think you can tell pretty well within the first month of watching your team, where your defensive identity needs to go, maybe more than offensively because when we recruit guys, you hear it before, but you always see what they can do, and all the things are good at, and then once you have them for a month, you see all the things are not good at. But defensively, within a month, you know that guy’s in great shape, that guy’s got a great motor, that guy’s relentless, he loves to defend, he loves to rebound. You pick up more on those defensive concepts early in terms of what their strengths are, and you learn as you go a little bit offensively in some regard, and so much of that is influenced by their mindset offensively. That’s a learning process.
Starting on the defensive side of the ball, we want to build around with our personnel, the idea that a smaller guard has to have the ability to effectively shrink the floor for us. That means a lot of people used to hear the old school, not old school, but just a philosophy of like, okay, if you’re going to pick up full court, one of the goals used to be turn the guy as many times as you can. If you can really turn the guy in the back court, and I’ve found that that becomes maybe a little bit more problematic because guards are so good now, and they can butt ball you and they can pick a spot. So now we’re trying to be more intentional about, do we have a guard as the head of the defense that can do what we call pinch the floor and squeeze the floor and pinch into the sideline? So we set up a little earlier to effectively funnel the ball short-sighted, even if they’re going to their strong hand. We feel like the earlier we can establish one side of the floor, then we can effectively defend what we call the river. The river is just the middle third for us, and we feel like our ability to win with small guards is directly in proportion to that guard’s ability to shrink the floor early in the possession up one sideline or the other. And it’s okay, like, people have plenty of good counters to go, you know, whether it’s pistol actions or whatever, to like, oh, you’re going to make us play on the sideline, great. But we still feel like if the earlier in a possession, we can load our help side defense to one side of the floor, shut the river out, meaning denial stance, and taking away effective movement of the ball to the other side of the floor, it at least gives us a chance on that possession to have built-in rotations to force a back cut. We want to force back cuts in the middle third of the floor because we want that bottom guy in the weak side eye to be able to read and anticipate and make plays.
Rhett Soilday 10:58
Not necessarily a full side defense concept, but really more just anticipating that people are going to try to still reverse the ball through the middle third, you know, and get to their actions in some capacity that way. So the more we can challenge that with a small guard, we feel we don’t necessarily have to have a tunnel length around them, but we’ve got to be able to trust that that guy is going to dictate early.
So once that guard effectively pinches the middle of the floor and squeezes the guy to the sideline, we begin to build out what we call our five Ds. And the first one is deny. We go from denial stance to then when the guy catches and how we defend that, you know. So deny is pushing out catches. And for deny, we used to be full shutout no matter what. And the reason that’s not effective anymore, in my opinion, in college basketball, they still do it in high school, but when they took away the five second live ball dribble in college basketball, I think that changed a little bit our approach to like how sold out we can be to shutting the lane because it’s not realistic. There’s too many good players. And so as soon as they got rid of that became a little bit more, oh, you’re going to pressure up and shut everywhere. We’re going to butt ball you until we can pick a spot, hit a gap. And we’ll play four on four. We’ll play three on three and lift guys out. And it’s not realistic. There’s too many good players. So for us, deny is blow up igniters. And an igniter is any pass that is caught with the timing that would lead to the next decision in a way the offense desires to see it happen. So it’s essentially our job is to disrupt rhythm by pushing catches out or forcing a back cut. We feel like if we can push a catch out or for the back cut, we’re against great pressure, making a guard make a decision that he doesn’t necessarily want to make early in the possession. And we feel like if the decision is don’t like the pass, don’t like the pressure release, we know people are going to send ball screens. That’s a different conversation. But we love the idea of that guy going, OK, the ball is not going to touch a lot of hands, this possession. I’m going to go make a play off the dribble. We still like that. And we have ways we try to attack that when they do that. But that would be the purpose of deny blow up igniters. You know, not necessarily we’re full shutout. And then the second D is dictate once we establish that we’re on the line up the line and we’re denying passes and stuff, then dictate means I now have to do a great job as the on ball defender of dictating. Number one, dictate means no middle drive for us, you know. And so that guy, if he’s dictating no middle, that actually requires. more intelligence about the type of gap I need. So we’re telling our guy in the back court, our little guards, you got to get up and you got to pressure, pressure, pressure. And if you can make that guy play faster than he wants, that’s great, we love it. But once that ball starts getting down into operation, dictate means if we’re denying in the middle third and you give up a middle drive, we effectively just gutted everything we’re trying to do defensively. And so dictate means the old thinking of like nose inside shoulder, inside dig hand. We say point and pinch, point and pinch. So we’re pointing with that dig hand where we want the ball to go and we work that technique a lot. And then pinches, squeezing that space where there’s early stunts out, often towards the ball because we know against a bigger guard, that guy can get us downhill and he can maybe play over us and stuff like that. In his mind, we want him thinking like, where’s the help coming from? Where’s the stunt? There’s a constant attacking mindset, one pass away and then the help. And that’s how we dictate.
We dictate by really being aggressive with now, where are we effectively pushing the ball? The hardest thing to do with that, to be honest, is foul discipline. It’s hard on the ball to really pressure and make that ball go where you want it to go and do it without fouling the way the game is called in college a little bit now. Deny, dictate and then direct. Direct is just, it’s kind of a lead off of dictate which is we’re directing him short side of the floor and as we direct him short side of the floor, that backside has to be ready to go and rotate at a high level. And then it’s one thing to dictate and direct, but it’s another to defend. So now we talk about guard your yard and smart gap and beat them to the spot and play with your chest and not your hands and all the technique things that everybody wants to be really good at. We try the best we can to be really good in those areas. Again, going back to foul discipline. The worst thing you can do in college basketball is think you’re accomplishing a lot with your pressure and maybe you’re even turning people over a lot. But if the other team’s in the bonus at the 12 minute mark every game, all this pace you think you’re creating is negated in a really horrible way.
Dan 15:18
Yeah.
Rhett Soilday 15:18
I think back to even some of those really good teams, I was a part of that concordio when I was coaching there, like the game has changed in terms of a little bit how they call it, a little bit how they put the point of emphasis on hand checking and some of those things. It’s really, really easy to get in foul trouble early as a pressure team.
So every day, tons of technique on that. Once we defend, then the 50 is dead, and dead is we believe that the secret sauce is in the pinching of the sideline, to the sideline, the shrinking of the floor, denial of the river. And then once we defend at a high level, we think that the secret sauce is like at the point of pickup, we want to be, we say quick to the stick. And quick to the stick is, we feel like if we can get 10 plus really good dead ball pickup traces per half, the numbers for us have shown that that’ll lead to approximately, if we have that mindset where we’re getting a lot of those dead ball pickups, and it may only be a one count where like you got a quick trace on the ball, and it’s only a thousand one and he got off it. But we try to track that stuff. And if we can get 10 per half where we said that was a really good pickup trace, quick to the stick, traditionally that has shown that when we chart defensive touches, which could be any sort of hand on the ball, defensive deflections, a tip on a dead ball, a tip on a back cut, even if we don’t force the turnover, 30 defensive touches per game usually has led to about 20 turnovers forced per game. So when we look at the game, we’re kind of like, that’s a good place to be for us. We feel like it’s not always realistic. Again, guards are so good. Teams are so good. But we did have a lot of games this year where we forced 20 turnovers. Then it comes down to really one big thing for us when you’re playing with smaller guards. If you can force 20 turnovers a game, even if the other team shoots 50 percent, it’s going to come down to one thing. How did you rebound defensively? Like what percentage of defensive rebounds did you get? And if you’re grabbing a high percentage of defensive rebounds and you’re turning people over, you’re likely creating some transition opportunities that are going to flip that game on its head. And so for us, kind of back to the original point, playing with smaller guards for us has been a little bit of an approach of, all right, if this game becomes a half-court game and we’re playing with smaller guards, we are at a serious disadvantage potentially. But if we can flip the game on its head a little bit and we can create a pace defensively that leads to some transition opportunities for us, some easier baskets for us, and we’ve effectively put the other team’s primary handlers in a place. So being unsure about how they’re supposed to operate, we feel like those are the times when if all things are equal and talent is equal, some of those things, maybe we can give ourselves a chance to extend a lead or potentially stretch a game to where it’s going in our favor. Maybe it won’t be a 10-point game with five to go, you know, or under 10 with five to go. I think the big question now is like, can you be built for success in the postseason with that approach? Knowing so many of the games come down to the half-court and things like that, that’s a great debate. We’ve had success.
I’ve seen success doing it. And I’ve seen times where I was like, that didn’t work. We needed to be a lot more traditional in the half-court and a great debate for sure.
Dan 18:23
When it didn’t work, what was maybe a common trait that you found?
Rhett Soilday 18:27
One of the things we found, you know, like one of the best coaches I feel like I’ve ever coached against is John Moore, who was the long time Westmont coach. Now he’s at USD with LAV and Coach Moore was incredible at just figuring out, okay, these are Vanguard strengths and we’re going to take their strengths and we’re going to actually double down and say, we love it.
We love the way you want to play, you know, they would break hard, but it depended on the game. Like they were traditional Princeton offense, set you up, they ran so many good actions and they would just slice you and dice you, you know, coach Moore’s goal was always every basket via the assist. And he was so good at creating that and you’d watch him play like a Biola or somebody in our league, you know, where coach Holmquist is making it a half court game and they’re pounding the ball in the paint. He knew how to operate in that and then he plays Vanguard and he doubled down and he said, okay, well, if you guys want to defend all of the floor, then we’re going to use all of the space, you know. And so they would play at a pretty moderate pace and they would feel the game out in the first half. And then it was like, they’d come out after half time and in the second half, they said, you want to play this pace, let’s go. And they would have an attack set up where we’re only going to live in the middle third of the floor. You want to pick up and pressure full. We’re going to find ways to get outlets on the run, whether it’s a made shot or a missed shot. And we’re going to actually play faster in the second half to a point where it’s going to soften you up in the first five minutes of the second half. And that’s the thing where when it doesn’t work, when it loses effectiveness is when there’s doubt about the ability to create the kind of momentum with your defense that you think you can create. Because there’s nothing worse than being extended and being super vanilla with your pressure. You might as well send three to the glass, send two to the safety, sprint back, build a wall, get your hands up, you know, and just do all the things that lead to, well, maybe we can get a stop on this possession. And so I think we lack success, to be honest, when people just double down and they said, we’re not going to try to get organized and run our stuff and get an entry pass and all those things. We are going to fly up the court and we’re going to live with a couple of mistakes, but we are going to make it known you don’t get to shrink the floor on us. So the interesting thing is now the game is kind of going that way anyway, in terms of the pace people are trying to create. There’s still a ton of different styles, but there’s a lot fewer teams that get rattled, in my opinion, by the pressure now. So we got to be a lot smarter with it.
Pat 20:43
Rhett continue to talk about pain points with a smaller guard when teams have had success in the half court when you’re in the half court How are you thinking about protecting smaller guards? And we talked a lot about obviously the damage they can do and their ability to pressure But in the half court just think about what are situation scenarios You’re always constantly thinking about with a small guard to protect them And you know whether it’s post defense or keeping them out of the rim help like you mentioned rebounding But just seem that constantly were reoccurring when you had smaller guards and just how you thought about solving that
Rhett Soilday 21:16
One would be like if you don’t have a smaller guard that’s really good at taking the charge, they tend to always find themselves in that bottom side of the help. That would be one where we try to work out a bunch of point switching in the backside and keep them up so they can play with the quickness and pressure up. If they weren’t super gifted at meeting a guy early taking the charge, stuff like that, which is, again, another play that’s slowly just exiting the game, then that would be problematic in the help side of time. Or even if they were the backside slamming down on a rotation, because we’re dictating no middle, we’re going to be in rotation. If you’re in rotation and you’re keeping the ball sighted, you’re going to end up with guards on that backside of the defensive glass a lot. There was times, we’ve lost some games where we just got out length on the backside and key moments down the stretch.
They won the ball and they went up late at F or an N1 and some of those plays late were the difference in the game where sometimes that long 6’2″, 6’3″, skilled guard with good hands and high IQ, he can match enough physicality to go win a rebound on the backside. Another area would be obviously in ball screen defense. Sometimes your smaller guards, even though they might be really tough, toughness does not always equate to great physicality. Sometimes they’re just slight and they’re little. And the ability, we love for our guards to go over a ball screen anytime they can, even if it’s a non-shooting guy, because it’s a mentality thing, again, that we want to establish. But the reality is sometimes those guys just physically flat out get hung up and even though they play with great quickness, maybe it’s just a reality that they’re going to get hung up sometimes in those scenarios and may not always be able to recover. So if it becomes a switch, I’m not afraid of switching and all that. And we try to do the deal where we look at X out opportunities and all those kinds of things. But the reality is as many ball screens as people are running and as many different types of actions you’ll see in ball screen scenarios, you’re just going to end up in switches a lot. And when you do, we work against that in terms of switches will become automatic blitzes if the ball goes in and then we’re in rotation and stuff like that. Still, you’re potentially committing two to the ball in a place where you don’t want the ball to go to begin with. So like one of the things we do when we pressure up, we’re on the line up the line in the post too. And we’re hard nosed on get topside, get to the three quarter, if you can X step in front of the post front in the post, make them throw it over the top, get tied in the help side and make a big make a decision on a post feed. But if it’s a direct feed with a little guy on him, how much better of a passer does a big become out of the post? Even if that doubles common, everything’s just easier because the first line of defense is so much less resistance than it might’ve been.
Rhett Soilday 23:46
Otherwise, those are a couple that come to mind. And then the other is obviously late game, late game against really good guards. Typically the best teams get the best player of the ball in his hands in space. And the best player is oftentimes going to be a guard who, if he’s the best player, one of the reasons he might be the best player is because he might be at our level, a six, two to six, four guard who’s long and athletic and shoot and can handle. And so the ability just to get a guy in space, especially when they know we’re a pressure team and get the ball in the middle third, what we call the river and the ability to own the river against us, which is something we take pride in. We don’t let happen. But the reality is there’s so many scenarios you can create that just get a player in space in the middle third to attack a smaller guard downhill. And no matter how quick and tough that guy is, if a guy can see an angle hit an angle and muscle his way downhill, he can make really good decisions if he’s a really good player on shoot pass or make the next play. Those are probably the big three.
Pat 24:47
I’d like to just follow up on the pick and roll coverage, I mean, you said you’re not scared to switch and that from a culture toughness or who you guys are always trying to go over the conversations with you and your staff or giving the guard the freedom maybe to go under or to avoid switching thinking about like blitzing or hedging more on the ball screen with a little guard.
Rhett Soilday 25:07
We used to be primarily blitz or blitz recover, we’d call it, where over the screen, under the blitz guy, we get it back and traditional show and recover. We love blitzing. I think one of the things that I loved about blitzing the ball screen early was kind of back to that five count, which is, I don’t know how long has that been, it’s been six, seven years when they got rid of it.
Dan 25:28
Yeah, some are, yeah.
Rhett Soilday 25:29
But we always felt like when a guy would get into a ball screen action with a live dribble, that had to be an automatic blitz because there was probably already some count on that it was the clock was going in his head a little bit a lot of times. And we liked the idea of that clock going into guards head. And now, I would say that was the primary reason we went away from exclusively blitzing the ball screen.
Then the other obviously is personnel driven depending on who your bigs and forms are. I think early on, not only did we have small guards, we had small bigs, we were in double trouble in some cases. So we said, hey, let’s make this a rotation game. Even if a guy steps into a shot in rotation, maybe it’s not the one they wanted or designed to occur at times. But now, I think we’ve gone away from exclusively just blitzing it and more to like when we go over, it’s a combination of either not a full drop, we would call it a mirror. And a mirror is just essentially like whatever that guard is doing, we want him to see our forward, our big, we want him to look him in the mirror, you know, wherever he goes. And I don’t like the drop coverage as much with our guys at our level.
I think the ability for bigs to protect the rim, we don’t have the 610 rim protector. So the ability just to drop that guy and say, hey, yeah, funnel everything to me, and I’ll take care of it. We don’t have that luxury. If we do, I would love to have that guy to probably drop more and just kind of protect the paint, you know, but our guys are more mobile, versatile. And we wanted to be in position where if they’re in that drop, they can bring some fight to the ball, but not necessarily have to commit if that guard, you know, really, we call it by the nail. And by the nail is if that guard can recover and square the ball by the nail, then we will either get back to that guy on the roll, or potentially X out on the backside if it’s a pick and pop guy, you know, and rotate on an empty, we have a few different ways that we would cover that on an empty ball screen. But yeah, the blitz, I think I think the blitz is always our foundation.
Like when we start teaching ball screen coverages early, we would start with the blitz is our foundation. Why? Because we want to teach guys how to rotate. And so we do a ton of early ball screen blitz stuff. And we say that’s our home base. And we want our bigs to learn how to like there’s value in teaching bigs how to blitz. I think it has implications for teaching them late game situations, how to switch onto a guard. And be able to understand angles and kind of guys angle, run, slide, run, all those concepts that they have to execute late. Because the reality is you’re going to end up in a lot of late game switch situations where that forward just has to guard a guard. And so we like the idea of fundamentally teaching blitz coverage to really teach guys just how to guard, you know, against our little guard, sometimes that’s really good. Like our current starting point guard, he is true to form, he’s five eight, and he’s a jet. And our bigs have a heck of a time defending him in a blitz situation in practice. And it’s the best thing for him to learn how to guard guys. And we say if you can keep Bryson Metz in front of you, you can keep a lot of guys in front of you, you know, that’s kind of foundational.
But we will like our counter if we feel like, hey, we’re playing a really dynamic guard that can touch paint, then we would say tag and under if he’s a shoot second guy and tag for us means just stay attached. When we get out, similar to tagging a roller, we want the forward to tag the guard and stay attached to the screener. So if he’s slipping or whatever, as he gets outside his body, he would stay attached to go with and we would just go under. And then I’m looking for advice from you guys on when people just, you know, twist the angles and do all the crazy stuff that like, I don’t know, man, it’s people are getting so good with it on our level even. That’s why everybody’s zoning. I know that’s that’s a whole. I don’t know if you guys know who Bud Presley is. He was the old coach at Menlo College way back in the day, in the 60s. And I had a friend give me his book, Bud Presley’s man to man defensive book, and he called his own defense. He called it like an invasion or an infection in the game of basketball or something refused to do it. And there’s genuinely something wrong with me that every year we have a zone in that I just never seem to go to in the game. I genuinely mean it like I got to fix my thinking, fix my thinking, I got to open up my thinking, I guess, prepare my thinking, because it can have huge help. But then I watch Chapman pick apart UC Irvine and just guard like crazy. And I think, man, sticking with it.
Dan 29:44
Not the last eight minutes, but thanks.
Pat 30:59
Rhett, sticking on this ball screen conversation, I would like to ask about now on offense with small guards. In the ball screen, just how you think about getting them downhill screening and spacing in order to take advantage of their speed when you’re forced to play in a half court situation?
Rhett Soilday 31:16
It’s really interesting, one of the things that I’ve discovered is being able to articulate and being honest about how good are our small guards at rejecting the ball screen, you know, because you kind of hear the progression of people talking about how you would use a ball, you know, number one read would always be reject a score because that’s the straightest line to the basket potentially. And then can you reject it to score? Can you use it to score? Or then can you use it to draw to, you know, and so in thinking along those lines and that progression with the first option being, can they reject this score? It’s I think being realistic about how effective is our guard actually at straight line drive reject in the ball screen, whether it’s off a catch in a threat position or live dribble, how effective is our guy this year at getting straight to the basket and being able to finish or getting straight to the basket and having the awareness to know right where the help came from and create that rotation right away.
And that idea of here people talk about simple quick decisions. And what I’ve found is if we feel like our guy can really reject at a high level and make the right decision at a pretty high percentage of the time, that has huge impact on our ability to actually utilize him with the dribble in a ball screen. And I’ve found that when we don’t really have a great sense of like, this guy can really reject it at a high level and make plays. I’ve gone more to the thought process, whether it’s zooms, D H O’s, getting them on the move on the run for handoffs or instead of that ball screen game going more to get games with that guy. I’ve even found we don’t shoot a high percentage like a smaller guard. If they just go under and they’re just like this guy’s fast, we’re just going to gap keep him in front go under. I don’t think our guys traditionally have shot a high percentage stop pop behind the ball screen as a smaller guard. And I think it’s more of a big guard thing. Plus they’re playing out at range and there’s so many implications for that. It takes a pretty special guard, an under six foot guard to be able to continuously and consistently stop pop behind the ball screen if they’re going under. And probably if they’re doing this, probably what the other team wants us to do to some degree, you know, even if the guy’s capable of making it, I feel like the ability to force them to make a decision with what they’re going to do. Number one, with that reject read, if they’re going to go under and then number two, if they’re just committed like, hey, we’re going to go under, we’re just going to gap this guy, whatever, use our length, all that stuff. I have found that finding ways to go more to the get games where maybe you can get them off the ball, get them on the move on a catch, hit and chase, that’s going to be a lot more effective. And I found we shot the ball better on that.
Rhett Soilday 33:42
If a guy hits and he chases, and now that guy’s maybe going under it, you know, that type of thing. Now receiving the ball on a catch, you’re square to the rim, the ball’s in the pocket, the guy jumps to one side, you go the other direction. We found it currently like our guard is much better in those hit and chase situations at shooting the ball. He’s much better at playing in straight lines a lot of times, and he’s much better at when he touches pain. It seems like there’s more pressure on the D where the decision becomes a little more natural.
Maybe that’s because our small guard is our point guard. He’s maybe not off the ball as much early in the possession, but when we get him off the ball and we get him on the move, it tends to help him a lot better and it tends to naturally go to more of those get game scenarios.
Pat 34:24
when your little guard does hit paint and then going back to the decisions. I guess how are you helping him navigate in the paint or theoretically as he keeps getting deeper and deeper in the tank the guys are getting he’s going in the trees and finishing being but then also kick out spray outs and reading the defense in the paint.
Rhett Soilday 34:43
We go through like a footwork progression that we do every day. We call it our short drive progression where we really just work it from 15 feet and then on just simple rip and touch where it’s kind of just breaking it down into smaller part. It could be out of anything we do, whether it’s a ball screen or a zoom action or whatever, but we break down that footwork of once they touch paint, we go one dribble and we go through this progression and our progression is all for the purpose of creating space. We’ll start off with quick finishes and stuff like that, inside hand, outside hand, protect against the vertical contest and stuff like that.
But then the reality is most of the time those aren’t available at the rim. So we work on, we call them novas, which is the big pickups, the high pickup and the side hops and stuff like that that creates space. And we feel like if we can drag a big with us with a Nova stop, that quick hop, we can kind of drag that guy with us and then play out of our pivot. The other thing we do, we call it a Nash pivot. You remember, Steve Nash was so good that downhill drive, we call it a Nash pivot or a pivot away, where it’s almost that reverse stride stop. And our guys know philosophically, if we can get our guards to a Nash pivot, number one, that means that when they pivot with their back to the basket, everybody understands, okay, where’s the cut? Where should the cut be coming from? Because everybody’s ball watching now, if it’s a corner cut or whatever, depending on where the drive occurred, where should the cut be coming from? Where do we replace space? And then part of that is also an understanding that anytime we can get a Nash pivot, a pivot away, where we’re seeing the opposite end of the floor, then as I’m playing with my back to the basket and I’m pivoting away, we tell everybody that if there is not an available shot right away, we expect him to shoot the ball because we believe that eight to 10 foot Nash pivot, baby fade is actually a pretty high percentage shot if we work at it a lot.
And we also believe that because everybody’s ball watching on that paint touch, in a lot of cases, we believe there’s tremendous offensive rebound opportunity. So like, for example, if we’ve got a guy in the dunker spot and we go paint touch, Nash pivot away, shoot, it’s not even necessarily about whether that’s a high percentage shot or not, in my opinion, so many people are, you know, everybody’s going, you know, key or three and going away. I would consider that still a mid range shot. It’s not necessarily a deep finish, a layup or a three. And yet if you look at it again, the percentage of offensive rebounds you can get on that, but I think it’s pretty high, you know, because eyes are locked on the ball, you know, the ball scores. And because the ball scores, I think a lot of guys, we try to get our bigs really good at going from dunker to duck on the offensive rebound positioning. Still like kind of a reverse duck up, you know, and you see a lot of teams are really good at that.
Rhett Soilday 37:25
And we’re not good at it, to be clear, like we’re trying, we’re trying, we’re like, if that’s the shot we know we’re going to take two out of four times, and the other two out of four are going to be, you know, sit and spray or see a cutter, we think we got a great chance to win a lot of those percentage of offensive rebounds. And we try to get our bigs to be really good and dynamic in that, you know, you have the advantage of one, seeing the ball off the hands, to position yourself on the inside potentially, because likely that big, at least to some degree stepped up and now he’s in recovery mode to win it on the glass.
And so we do use our guy a lot in the dunker in our various actions. That’d be one thought, repping that over and over about it’s sit and spray or it’s sit and shoot, you know, and then spacing after that is really critical because you guys know, okay, we did a great job touching paint. And if the ball doesn’t stay hot and you don’t find the next advantage and all that stuff, that guy’s got to be really good at knowing where to replace space, you know, and we try to work at that quite a bit too. So we’ll have drills where we worked out full work every day, touch paint, we’re going to the drift pass, you know, we’re going to the 45 cut and all those kinds of things. And then where do you replace? And then spurring out shot ready, because we feel like so many times that’s the guy that ends up open later in a possession on a shot because he did a great job sprinting and spotting.
Dan 38:39
Rhett, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts.
We’re gonna transition now to a segment on the show we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re gonna give you a question, three options, around to ask you to start one of them, sub one of them, and sit one of them, and then we’ll dive in from there. So if you’re all set, we’ll dive into this first one.
Rhett Soilday 38:55
Lets go. I never know how to be like, you’re in a conference meeting, you know, like conference meetings, all the coaches were supposed to vote on stuff. I’m always, I don’t know what to vote on, you know? So I may ask your opinion.
Dan 39:08
Well, this first one has to do with teachable moments. And these are things we’re thinking specifically for, you know, maybe younger or newer players to your program and three different moments in a season that your start here would be the one you would think would be the most teachable moment for that player to grow and for you and your staff to handle.
And so start subset. The first is after a benching, performance, whatever it is, you sit the player down, don’t put them back or take away their minutes. So option one is a benching. Option two is a late game failure, miss a shot, turnover, whatever the mistake is, is option two. And then option three is like a bad practice or tough practice where the speed, the focus isn’t there. They’re maybe not picking up your offense, your defensive concepts, and they’re just struggling through a tough practice. So start subset, what would be the most beneficial for you, teachable moment, benching, late game failure, a tough practice.
Rhett Soilday 40:13
I would order these based on my own self-awareness and where my areas of weakness are. I would definitely start a substitution situation where I would need to address it clearly, but with some love and some grace potentially needed. To be honest with you, in the heat of battle, so many moments, I think we’re all like wounded people and so anytime I’ve got to yank a guy from a game or he’s getting subbed out, maybe I just think he’s tired, but he has a different opinion about it. I think the moments where the tension is the highest are the moments when I’ve got to be the most clear communicator and when I failed in that area, the most has probably potentially caused the most damage because I didn’t address it in the moment. I just moved on, hey, we’re out of the next play, you got to figure it out.
That to me is the most relevant, teachable moment and they may not get it in the moment if there’s frustration or whatever, but at least the seed was planted. One, I see you, I understand and yet this is what’s going on, this is what I see. I just think because that’s maybe the most difficult to do, that probably needs to be my number one, I would start that and then sub would be a bad practice and one of the reasons is just the recognition that there’s just going to be bad days. Because we know it’s true, we don’t have to pretend like it shouldn’t be true, it probably should be true when they’re in college. Things are tough, kid broke up with his girlfriend, another guy didn’t sleep, whatever and we should anticipate it, we should expect it, we should hope for it sometimes because we know there’s going to be a growth opportunity there.
I enjoy the most of the days when the guys are maybe a little bit off, I might be the most frustrated and the reason I enjoy it the most because it forces me to regulate emotionally, to say like, all right, how do we address this in a way that’s going to be actually productive and not just a way that they know I’m frustrated or I’m not happy about what they’re doing in the moment and they got to learn grace as people, they got to learn how to love people no matter what. If I don’t model that, then there can be somehow an attachment to your performance determines your value and so the ability to communicate to them that, hey, we love you and that’s why we’re frustrated with you because we know you’re better than this, those are great teachable moments, I think.
And then the last one, why am I blanking on the last one? Late game failure. Oh, yeah, thank you. Usually, I would just own that and say that’s my fault. So, yeah, free throws are tough, if a kid misses a free throw in a key moment, but everything else, I don’t know, I usually try to shift the focus to man, I could have done something better for you.
Dan 42:34
I love to ask about your start, which was sitting a player down in the game. Then you mentioned either the moment you mentioned you trying to be better and be clear communicator. Have you found over the course of your career, you are coaching a game that is pressure defense, your guys are revved up. They’re trying to create chaos defensively, offensively, you’re playing hard. There’s a lot of heat in the game, the way you play. And then when they come out, the emotions got to be taken out of it or whatnot. Have you found that the style you play and how guys come out of the game, is there any cause and effect to how you handle them when they sit down?
Rhett Soilday 43:09
The way we play, we’re kind of a case study, sometimes like what a dysfunctional huddle on the court could look like, because it’s healthy to create conflict and confrontation in practice and all those things. And we embrace all that and the scoreboard is on and there’s a, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn in practice and all that is happening.
And so, because the emotions are revved up, sometimes we’ll get a guy who’s really deregulated emotionally as he’s coming out. And there has to be like, so one thing at simple tangibles that we do is like, number one, no matter what, go get your guys down the line, go get your guys. And sometimes just that physical affirmation from a teammate or just the comment, you’re good, here we go, you know, like if there was a mistake made, I think those are critical and like giving a few more breaths and a few more opportunities for a guy to regulate emotionally a little bit. And that usually is the time I need, if I’m frustrated about something or I think there’s a lack of listening or attention to detail or whatever it is, a lack of fight overall mentally or physically, you know, I usually need that time too. And so I try to embrace the discipline of let him get his guys, let him find his seat. And if it’s something that I think I need to address in the moment, I feel like I’m more regulated too. And then I think the big thing, I’ll tell you again, like my biggest, call it failures or just awareness about my human nature is our disposition tends to be to assume the worst. And it’s amazing when we assume the best what it actually does for our ability to establish relationship with our guys.
And so I’ve always said, we want to become a team. You know, our big three, and I got from Rick Croy, who was my assistant coach in college, who’s at Cal Baptist now, Rick’s big three, always that I love and was like, we always want to be the toughest, the tightest and the most selfless team we can be. And I’ve always found that my nature is, and as human nature is to assume the worst. And I’ve always said, I want to be the kind of team that when a guy fails, we can kind of look at each other and say like, well, something must have happened that we’re not aware of, like Patrick got blown by and Dan wasn’t in the help side in the hole. He didn’t rotate, something must have happened to Dan. You know, he was communicating something on the backside. He was doing something productive, but a mistake was made. And if we can become the type of team with each other that can assume the best, it changes everything about how we communicate to each other, you know? And one of our struggles this year, to be honest, was we didn’t always assume the best about each other. It was a human nature disposition that, you know, certain personalities just kind of had. And then before you know it, I’m the leader, the head coach of the team, and I begin to embrace that a little bit and even subconsciously, you know? And so the posture from which I communicate, the posture I take towards them about, we are going to assume the best about you every day and every scenario until we have a reason not to, it actually, I think it gives a lot of guys a leg up. This is kind of the stuff I’m really passionate about.
We’ve never been in a deeper fight at this time with this generation or not just their head, but their heart. If you don’t have their heart, you’re never going to get to their head. They’re not going to learn basketball at the level they should. They’re not going to be consistent as a competitor the way they should. And capturing the heart is about the posture you lead with. And capturing the heart is, I’m going to assume the best about you and I’m going to believe the best for you. And I’m going to coach you to your potential. You hear people say, but like, that’s true. Like coaching somebody to their potential only is possible if now you have access to them as a person. And how do you gain access to a person? Well, you got to speak life into them. You got to believe the best about them. You got to see something in them and then not just see it in them and keep it to yourself. You got to see it in them. And then like, even if it’s weird for the kid to hear it and receive it, you got to be able to look at them and say, man, this is what I believe in about you. This is what I see for you. And sometimes it’s about basketball. And quite honestly, a lot more than that, it’s not. When you get a young man who is in his college years and he doesn’t understand how to really empty the tank at a level where he can finish every day and go, man, that was hard and it was worth it. If you can’t get a guy there, there’s something else going on. And you’re never going to get them there until you figure out the what else is going on. And so many times, to be honest, it’s identity related. How they view themselves is going to have huge implications for how they receive you as a coach. And so we try to speak into how we want them to view themselves. And for me, my personal life is that’s based on who I am and whose I am. And it’s deeply rooted in my faith and that I believe we tell our guys all the time, we make them say it like we asked who are you and they got to say, I’m a miracle. And I think we have a lot of young people today that actually live on accident because they think they’re an accident. And we try to tell them every day, no, you’re a person who has value and you have purpose. And our desire here at Vanguard is for you to lean into your purpose and to believe that you have a purpose and we’re here to help you find that. And that has nothing to do with basketball and it has everything to do with basketball.
Pat 48:58
All right, Coach, our last start sub sit for you, getting back to the defensive end, we want to look at baseline out of bounds situations, giving you potentially three tough to defend baseline out of bounds situations. So your start would be, which was the toughest for you.
So option number one would be defending a dangerous shooter on the baseline out of bounds set. Option number two would be if the opponent has a lob threat, a big man, a rim threat. Or option number three is a dangerous inbounder, a team that utilizes the inbounder after the pass in very well.
Rhett Soilday 49:34
That’s good. I would go start. I think I’m going to keep track of these. The way you said that was really good, and I think I’m going to set up my whole obese schemes next year based on those three concepts. Actually, we might have a lob threat finally after 15 years. I think the inbounder is number one. I would start most difficult to defend, is doing really good things with the inbounder. The reason is, for us, the way we defend, we say where the rim is a hat. Our philosophy is close your stance, send them all back to the weak side of the floor. We’ve got our fifth defender wearing the rim as a hat, and he’s going to clean up everything on the backside, and that’s philosophically how we do it. Very few things, do we actually switch? We say ball foot closed, meaning that foot closest to the inbounder side, we close it, we fight like crazy to get through, we send everything backside. Because that’s how we do it, the inbounder has had success against us, whether it’s like you see so many people now, they might even send the lob threat, screen out to the ball side wing, lob threat to the basket, hit and get, chasing it off that, things like that. I think we tend to struggle with things like that, where people utilize the inbounder at a high level. Shooter, I feel pretty good, the way we stay attached, we don’t end up in a ton of switch scenarios, where all of a sudden two guys chase a big to the rim, and the shooter ends up open. We feel like we’ve kind of solved for that a little bit, but it would be more of like, again, an inbounder coming into a screening action that gets them off to a shot, you know, that type of scenario. And then lob, at the percentage of the pass, again, at our level, there’s not a ton of guys, like you might see, that are really receiving lobs at a high level above the rim. I mean, there’s plenty of great athletes everywhere, you know, division two is full of great athletes, but I haven’t seen that be a consistently utilized thing at the rim. A scarier lob threat would be more like, just playing over the top to a big, you know, simple, we call them an ear situation, where you’re just going quick hitter over the top, you know, stuff like that. We have more trouble with that probably, than a lob threat at the rim. So I wouldn’t sit that long.
Pat 51:30
I’d like to follow up with your sit would be the shooter and you mentioned you guys don’t switch and you want to force away I’m sure you see a lot You know like the staggers or kind of the screens at the elbow bringing a shooter to the ball How are you working with your guards? I see chasing but then not giving up the slip off of maybe the bigs who won’t switch of course on the shooter But of course are trying to aid maybe your defender chasing the shooter
Rhett Soilday 51:54
Yeah, it’s got a little trickier. We do not give a gap on guys, let’s say they’re in a box set or whatever. No matter where that alignment of the boxes, we are body to body. We’re down low. We say tight to the hip, close your stance, send them back. So let’s just say it’s a traditional box set, stagger for the opposite elbow. Over that big is looping and staggering. Our big defender will never extend on that screen. He doesn’t extend and show. Even if the guy ends up coming off and our guy got hung up on the stagger and he’s curling to the rim, we will attack that. We tell our inbound defender, you got to read eyes and shoulders, just like you would in a ball screen blitz situation if you’re rotating. And so our inbound defender is what rim is a hat, read eyes and shoulders. And if that guy’s eyes are going towards that action on the ball side now, we begin to shift our help over that direction, ready to help if need be, ready to get with the inbound as he steps in. And so I think the ability for us to like stay pretty resolute on, we never extend outside of a body and we will still make them curl to the ball side as the guy’s coming off. We hope that’s going to blow up all the slip situations or potential switches. And we tell that guy, no matter what’s going on, and obviously scouting comes into play and we try to have indicators on what’s coming and talk them through it. But yeah, we try to make sure that there’s never going to be a time when we would give up a slip to the rim from the ball side action, if that makes sense. There may be a slip on the backside, you know, hammer screen or whatever on the backside, but we feel like with that extra defender, we’re safe on that backside a little bit, but everybody’s zoning out. So, you know, like everybody’s going to zone in the OBs and I got to look at that too.
Pat 53:31
Quickly following up on that situation. Let’s just take that box that we’re in.
The guard who’s chasing the shooter, are you telling them, I mean, knowing you have the fair at the rim, just get on their outside shoulder or trying to wedge them in between the screen? I guess how do you want the defender chasing
Rhett Soilday 53:46
We drill that as like an early thing too. Maybe the way you would do shell drill early in the season to like teach technique. We try to teach baseline OB technique early in the year. We do it usually on a day when we’re doing that. We’re doing free throw box out technique, the special teams stuff. So we consider that a special teams skill that we’ve got to have. And so we do close our stance. So if you picture, if my fingers are squared up to the screen and the ball is over here on this side, that we would say closing your stance means we are almost my lead foot. My inside foot is almost even with that guy’s inside foot. Not quite, because if we go too much, we’re going to give up a straight line cut that maybe nobody can defend. If you sprint that opposite block to the corner and you straight line cut that guy down the lane or something like that, that’s too easy. So we say find that perfect balance where you close your feet, but you’re not going to get completely straight line cut.
And then we work that technique. We call it grabbing an air with our lead foot. But you got to extend and grab air and work. The goal is that there’s never a shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip entry into that first screen, that that guy at a minimum is going around the screener versus off the screener. So we work that technique. We’ll set up a two on one drill where it’s a screener and a defender. And we’re working technique. I’m getting that lead foot on top. It’s not going to be enough to stay in a slide. As we know, like once you get that lead foot on top, now it’s a series of sprint slide. And it’s two seconds of work. That’s what we tell the guys, for two seconds, you got to not get screened. It’s not acceptable to get screened in this scenario because you know where your extra defender is.
Dan 55:20
Coach, the reason we ask you this question is because I don’t know if you’re aware, but you’re one of the top teams defensively last year in Division 2 and defending baseline out-of-bounds. I think you’re in the 99th percentile.
Rhett Soilday 55:31
I quit looking at stats. We had three or four really tough losses in a row. And you know, and then you go, none of it matters get tougher. You know, so like I was in that mode the rest of the season. So I never looked.
Dan 55:42
Well, good news for you, post-season, you were one of the best teams in this and that’s why we wanted to pick your brain on it.
I guess my last question on it is just with your start and someone that has a good in bounder or at least they have sets that are going to turn into like floppy or whatever it is that what you do or maybe some decisions on whether you’re on the ball, you said halfway off the ball, under the rim, you know, based off their alignment, based off the players they have, like what you do with that on-ball defender to make them as effective as possible.
Rhett Soilday 56:10
One of the things we would look for in scouting was, where can we take that guy and double up the action in the first couple of seconds of the inbounds? Because again, it goes back to the two-second rule, like the first two seconds, because three through five is like secondary decisions that the inbounders now trying to find the alternative, right? And so the two-second rule is based on the alignment, are there some things we know in scouting where we can say, okay, maybe I know right now there’s no threat on the backside. Obviously one would be like, if they line up in a line on the lane line ball side, we may know when they line up in that, that there’s one or two primary options they go to. So, okay, now we know we can go double up that big for a two count because that’s their primary option based on how they break or whatever. And so we’re communicating that type of thing.
So the number one thing we would look for is what are actions early in the first couple of seconds that we can double up with our inbound defender to be able to say, don’t go to that option, then they can release. And then a lot of times we know that as that guy’s releasing and the ball is going to a secondary option, a lot of times the inbound defender is in the action. So the other thing we do is where can we double up? Where can we read eyes and shoulders and be active? And then as soon as possible, we say on the flight of the ball, even if the ball’s going in an area where maybe we could get hurt with that guy not anchored under the rim, we still want to sprint and get to the body. Because almost every team has actions where the inbounder gets into the play, especially if you get to a secondary option in the set. So we try to meet the guy on the hip before he steps in bounds. That’s one of our philosophies too, is ball in the air. So I’m defending ball on the air, ball side somewhere, straight to the hip and attached, and then figure out what they’re trying to get done. So I think those are two big ones. Where can we double? How quick can we get attached to the inbound defender?
Dan 58:00
Makes sense. Coach, you’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. Coach, our last question that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Rhett Soilday 58:13
I had thought about this and I think the number one thing I did that was the best investment. I got two if that’s okay. Number one is I asked my wife, do you really want to go on this journey? And I got married young. I was 23. She was 22 when we got married. I was a dad by 25 and I started coaching at Concordia University for Ken Ammon is a great coach and was my college coach. And I started right away right out of college and dove into it and then got married the next year. So, I was already a coach before I got married, but knowing that coaching is a journey that takes the whole family on the ride and knowing the implications of that, there was nothing more important to me than my marriage. That had to be foundational and there had to be alignment there. So the best thing I did was invest in my marriage over basketball. That’s the best investment I made.
And the more I did that, the more I think there seemed to be a line for my wife of like, there’s that assuming the best from her to me when it’s like, yeah, you got to go back to school. You got to go meet with that guy. He’s going through a hard time or yeah, like we need to spend some time. When can we have the guys over to the house, you know, that type of thing versus the alternative we’re putting in the same hours regardless. But the alternative is there’s a lack of alignment there or frustration because the reality is sometimes a team becomes the family and that can be hard on the immediate family. That’s the best investment I’ve made is putting my wife in front of it all, even in front of my kids in the coaching journey. And then the second thing is I believe there’s three levels of relationship that we all should maintain if we want to be healthy as leaders. You know, it’s one thing to feel confident as a leader, but confidence flows out of health where there’s no health, there’s no confidence, you know, and so my confidence is wavered as a coach because of a variety of reasons and the scoreboard being one of them at times, you know, and we’ve won the last game of the season, you know, in a national championship and we’ve not made the conference tournament, you know, I’ve experienced it all. But going back to the three important levels of relationship, I believe we should always have a mentor, somebody who we can call and we trust them unequivocally to tell us the truth as they see it because they know us deeply. I believe we should have a mentee, you know, somebody that we’re actively saying, I want to pour into you and having a mentee has nothing to do with like, oh, I have something to offer you. It has everything to do with I’m here for you. I’m invested to do life with you. And I learned that from Fred Kroll, who was the founder of NBC camps and one of my heroes. And then obviously a peer, a peer that you really trust that you’re doing life with, whether it’s a coaching peer, somebody at the same stage of life, whatever, but three truth tellers and the best investment I made when I heard that in my 20s was I got really intentional about doing that and finding three people. And to be honest, those three people have shifted a little bit over time, but I’ve always operated and tried to lead from a healthy place. And I’m at my healthiest when those three levels of relationship are like really active in my life. And that takes work. Just like any other relationship, it takes work and it takes asking a lot of important hard questions of those people and asking them to really give you the honest feedback.
Dan 01:01:20
All right, Pat, that was tremendous. I’ll just start by saying, Coach Soliday, I’ve gotten to know very well over the course of my career. Vanguard is local and not too far away from Chapman, and I’ve gotten to know him as a person, as a coach over the years, and one of the best people in the business, and obviously a terrific coach as well, won the 2014 National Championship. I’ve always respected how his teams play, and it was awesome to pick his brain to have him on the podcast today.
Pat 01:01:47
I couldn’t agree more. I thought Coach Soliday was one throw. I mean, we were excited to have this small guard conversation, been sitting on it for a while. And he was very thorough. And I mean, just well thought out, I think, and everything he does. Very intentional, as we’ll get through with talking about little guards, but then the baseline, but then of course, how he deals relationships, which I thought was a really good piece of this conversation today. So Dan, let’s hop right into it. I’ll throw it to you with the first takeaway of the podcast.
Dan 01:02:15
You know, we were excited about the small guard conversation. Like you mentioned, because his team’s historically been so good with guards that are not, you know, six, four point guards, you mentioned five, eight, five, nine, six foot, and he’s had a ton of success and I’ll just say going against this ourselves, like we for years and years would always play Vanguard in an exhibition and it was always so good for us because all the stuff you were working on the first two weeks of the season and your entries and how you flow, none of it was available. Because they’re denying or taking out of it. So, you know, you got really good at your pressure release stuff going into the Vanguard game and afterwards, it was so good for us.
Kind of leads me to my point of the mentality that he talked about. And I liked how he kind of gave background of how he got to this point with recruiting and wanting to build around smaller guards and how, you know, guys that are maybe overlooked or undervalued and have a toughness and a grit and a speed, these intangible things, they know who they are. They’re not trying to be somebody else. I thought it was a good place to start. And I think the whole conversation obviously grew and centered around that. I think my first takeaway was just, if you’re going to build a team or have smaller guards, the mentality that has to be in place and then how that kind of branches out into the rest of your team, I think it was unique. I don’t think we’ve really had that conversation quite yet on the podcast. We’ve had toughness conversations. We have mentality conversations and pressing and pressure, but building it from a small guard perspective, I thought was a unique entry point today.
Pat 01:03:45
Yeah, I really liked how he framed it when he was talking about his mentality, but finding the practical and the impractical of why you would want to recruit or get small guards. And as you hit on the whole mentality piece and know where they are was something we weren’t thinking about, but it was just kind of like once he started to go into, it was just staring you in the face. This made a ton of sense.
Now you can kind of build around those type of dudes and just want to get after it. And then when you, you know, he goes into his whole defense and the pressure they want to apply and protecting the river and pinching the floor. I mean, that’s, we’re all kind of piggyback off of you. I really like just the five D’s he explained, the deny, dictate, direct, defend, and dead. And just everything he said in there, I don’t want to repeat it, but I think it’s really worth going back and listening to, just hearing kind of his whole philosophy and how they teach their defense and what they’re trying to take away. The other thing I enjoyed then is when we went to the other side of the ball and I really enjoyed the conversation. You know, we wanted to approach from both ends, you know, the strengths of undersized guards, but also then like the pain points. And offense was another, of course, the ball screen and just thinking about getting the guards downhill, being undersized, you know, maybe with coverages that give them trouble and understanding if they can make decisions off the reject and being realistic with the reject. I thought was another great point he said.
And I think it’s true. Of course, we all hear we’ve had on this conversation. It is true, like reject first, but right, you know, understanding if your guy can then make a read off the reject. And if they can’t really make that read, not going to go any better when they get in the ball screen. And then his preference to play to the gets kind of the handoff game splits, zooms. I really like that thought. And I’ll throw it back to you because I know we’re both interested in this. But then my final thing is when he got into the rim decisions and teaching the stride stop, it’s something I think we’ve been looking at for a while. But he called Nash pivots and just what it can create in terms of open shots. But I really like his point on telling the guys to shoot that shot and maybe one of their ability to make it. But then also the offensive rebounding opportunities that opens up for his team.
Dan 01:05:45
Absolutely for a second I wasn’t sure with the five Ds of his defense how close they were going to be to the five Ds of dodgeball. I’ll just put a pin on it with your stuff with the Nash pivots and then having him having that guard shoot it. You and I were talking right before we hopped on this about, yeah, a great concept because having that stride stop and then the movement around it, there is usually a great opportunity for that player to shoot it and it’s a makeable shot. They’re on balance usually. I mean, obviously he said there’s something that they practice. I mean, he mentioned they have, they’re short.
Pat 01:06:18
for drive rotations.
Dan 01:06:20
Yeah. So like there’s something they work on every day. So you get downhill, playoff too, and then it’s a good shot for a lot of players. And also, like he mentioned, the defense is often turned and kind of looking. And so when that shot goes up, you have offensive rebound opportunities. I thought that was a subtle, but really great point there.
Pat 01:06:38
I think you see it all the time and like that over help that comes from the second help defender on that drive, just drifting down the baseline and how it flattens the defense, the initial drive and just the opportunity to have kind of like just catch and shoot threes at the top of the arc. That is something I think we should look into for future video projects, but as a hell of a weapon.
Dan 01:06:58
Absolutely. Pat, let’s move on to point number two and so for that I’ll kick it to you.
Pat 01:07:03
Yeah, point number two was pretty clear for me was when we got into your start sub sit question about teachable moments. And he talked about, of course, benching being number one, but then how it just led into his whole thoughts on really being a leader and forming relationships and the important of how we as leaders posture, communicate and regulate our emotions. And then what I think really stood out to me was he talked about just assuming the best and how if you assume the best in your players, it helps in forming the relationships. And he mentioned, you know, that these kids, you got to get to their heart in order to get to their head, especially as coaches, where I was trying to teach them something on the court. But if you don’t have their heart, and I think it’s completely true, you just will never get to their head.
What was it? Trinkery also said, you know, in the past, we could yell as loud as we want. And the message was always received. And now if you don’t deliver the right message in the right tone, it’s never going to be received. And I think this speaks to the heart of it, too. No pun intended that you’ve got to form a relationship, have a solid foundation with that player in order to properly communicate, which is what he said. You know, that’s again, the assuming the best also improved his communication with his guys and with the players amongst each other. And I thought that was really profound and really well thought out by Coach Soliday, credit to him.
Dan 01:08:19
I also did like, before we got into that, him discussing that moment when a player comes out of the game, because he started the bench, you know, when you take a player out and just his learning about himself and who he is and how he has to communicate in that moment when players emotions are high and deregulated, as you mentioned, and you know, I followed up with because they do play at a high pace and their pressure. And to me, it was that can breed players just being hyped up emotionally too, when you’re trying to get that pace.
And all of a sudden, you take them out and sit them and I think he had a good little nugget in there about you got to go dab up all your guys, you got to go see your team. And you know, in that 30 seconds while they’re walking down the bench and talking to their guys, maybe it’s just enough so then when they come back towards the front, the conversation is better, you know, regardless of what it is.
Pat 01:09:07
And he said to cool himself down as well. I think that gives him time to regulate himself when he approached him. I thought that was really smart. A hundred percent.
All right, Dan, well, let’s bring it home. I’ll throw it then back to you for the last takeaway of our conversation.
Dan 01:09:20
Yeah, so I’ll go to the baseline out of bounds, start-sub-sit, and you and I were discussing this a lot beforehand just on how to ask this question. As mentioned on the show, they were one of the best teams defending baseline out of bounds this year.
And so, I don’t know, anytime we see a stat like that, we got to ask about it. And I was interested in just the philosophy behind some of the not switching stuff. Like he mentioned, I think there was a lot of good points on just how they’ll guard the screen-to-screen reaction, not get slipped. But I also like at the end of it, we got into the two-second rule. We talked about this before too with the guy guarding the inbounder, doesn’t this need to just pick a spot and stay there the whole five seconds? Some of the better inbound teams seem like they do a good job with kind of cat and mouse with that inbound defender. So you don’t quite know, are they off the ball? Are they on the ball? Are they moving forward and back throughout the possession? And his two-second rule of helping take away the first most obvious, most dangerous action first, and then the last two to three seconds, that guy’s just trying to get the ball into a secondary action. So using that inbound defender to help take away the most dangerous things first, then obviously getting attached or whatnot, because he also started when you have a clever good inbounder, that can be the hardest to guard. Our guy throws it in, comes right back in for a handoff or comes on off the stagger or pin down, whatever. And so I did like that tactical part of it, the two-second rule, and then what you do with the inbounder.
Pat 01:10:50
Yeah. We had a really good conversation with coach Shulman, of course, on defending the inbound, but what to do with the inbound defender and moving him around and applying pressure. And he got in, I mean, what Shulman also used the deep defense. Just to follow up on your point, all these little details make a big difference.
You know, you just think, okay, wear the hat and just sit there for five seconds, but like to your point, and coach Salade is using him, moving him around, reading eyes and shoulders. I think these are the little details that make huge differences. And the other takeaway I took is just when we got into not switching, I think, and how he taught the footwork, riding through screens. We had a really good conversation in our film room with coach Tobin Anderson on just why he doesn’t like the switch and just kind of the mentality of not switching. And what did coach Salade say, not even giving a body of help or helping outside their body? Yeah. Bigger the screener. To me, what really is boiling down from our conversations is you probably should be either zoning or just not switching. I think those seem to be like the two biggest trends that are having the biggest amounts of success and really thwarting creative and bounce plays.
Dan 01:11:54
Yeah, because everybody’s got good stuff underneath that about. It’s just like, everybody’s stuff is good. And the balls in a dangerous spot under the rim though.
Pat 01:12:01
neutralize their set or you’re just, you know, instead of trying to match their trickiness with your trickiness, just blow it up, throw everything away, force everything up in a way and just fight through and really hold guys accountable for controlling their matchups.
Dan 01:12:16
I’ll end it here, but if you’re not going to switch, you have to be as detailed as Coach Soliday is on how you actually force things away, how you guard, how you get over the top. And then honestly too, how good inbound defender needs to be in reading stuff because like he mentioned, if you’re not switching and that guy gets caught up on a screen, he’s kind of curling around that last screen towards the corner and you’ve got an inbound defender that just kind of bob it up and down.
There needs to be potential help from somewhere and it’s going to be him. If it’s not off one of the other four. And so I know Coach Gonzalo Rodriguez mentioned that a lot, having that inbound guy being able to fly out on a stagger shooter if you’re not switching those things. So you could tell the level of detail. I mean, you mentioned they do it in a drill. They work on how they’re guarding it. And so it’s no surprise that they’re one of the better teams defending basically out of bounds. So Pat, as we kind of close here, were there any misses, not from Coach Soliday’s course, but any misses or things you wish you would have went deeper on or could have gone deeper on?
Pat 01:13:14
One potential miss or what I would have maybe like to have gone deeper on is getting back to the offensive side of the ball with a small guard. You know, he did mention obviously getting the gets and kind of more of the off-ball stuff, but I believe we did talk about it before hopping on with him, just how tough flip screens are or slip cuts like these kind of fake screens.
We’ve talked about ghost screens, but just creating gaps for a guard who has tremendous speed and maybe how he thinks about also then manipulating his screener, the clear space and not actually worry about screening angles. I guess it’s something I’m always thinking about too when you have like these small guards and just again trying to remove bigger bodies from the action, you know, even if you are trying to get the right angle or set of screen that may be involved on these guards, but just trying to use in a clear space and how we think about all the way.
Dan 01:14:00
Yeah. And your points well taken, he did mention on the show, the reject being such a big thing for his guards.
Now, I was just thinking during the show, when you’ve got small, quick guards, you really are trying to just open up space and straight line drives for them rather than bigger, more physical guards where they can maybe snake it, put a guy in jail and keep him on his back and be physical in the on-ball. I guess the point I’m getting to is the flipping the screen, the opening up angles. If you’re constantly thinking about how can I just create a straight line drive opportunity for a smaller guard, I imagine that’s what obviously he’s thinking about a lot, whether it’s a reject on an empty side or flipping it in the middle so they’re not navigating the hedge or whatever. They’re constantly being able to get downhill straight line, something to think about.
Pat 01:14:48
Yeah, Dan, throw the same question back to you, any misses or anything you wish to dive deeper into.
Dan 01:14:55
So in the first bucket, conversation just kind of moved away from it, but you did throw out there about turnover ratio and defensive rebounding percentage being two kind of big stats that they would look at with the style of how they play. And it would have been interesting to kind of go down the rabbit hole about defensive rebounding when one, as we just talked about, you’re recruiting and playing smaller guards. So right away, you’re thinking, is that smaller guard as good a rebounder as, say, a bigger 6-3, 6-4 guard? And then two, when you’re in denial and you’re spread guarding all 94 feet, and then also when you’re in a no-middle stance and you’re rotating and you’re in rotations, how you can still be a really good defensive rebounding team because you’re just flying around, you got smaller guards, you got probably mismatches, you got guys that are in the low hole that might be smaller having to box out. So I guess just thoughts on with the small guards and with the pressure and 94 feet still being really solid rebounding defensively.
Because I think teams that pack it in have big guys, big guards. It makes sense they’re better rebounding teams historically. So just his thoughts on that.
Pat 01:16:09
that’s really interesting because to your point you think then your defense is gonna get caught on the high side of their matchups you know and not always yeah kind of in between ball and rim or their man and rim.
Dan 01:16:22
Yeah. Like when you’re no middle and you’re forcing it down and that MIG’s coming over and they skip it out and you’re in rotation. So like the box outs, it’s not always as clear as if you’re not switching and you’re packed in and you know where your guy is and you can hit a guy. And obviously teams are still great rebounding out of that style.
I just would have, you know, if we had more time, kind of dove into his thoughts on how he does that more. Definitely. I guess we’ll ask him another time. Yeah. Well, once again, we thank coach Soliday for coming on and giving such a great interview today. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.