This week we were joined by Belmont Head Coach, Casey Alexander! In this episode Coach Alexander breaks down his offensive philosophy, defensive evolution, and coaching journey. From assisted-basket strategies to player empowerment, Coach Alexander shares how three decades of culture and continuity shape Belmont basketball.
Offensive Philosophy & Efficiency
- Assisted Baskets: Nearly top-10% nationally, built on recruiting unselfish, high-IQ players who prioritize team offense over isolation.
- Ball Movement with Control: High passing volume paired with impressively low turnovers, thanks to system-oriented players.
- Pace & Tempo: Focuses on shot quality, not the clock; emphasizes quick transition opportunities whenever the defense isn’t fully set. Runs a motion offense with freedom for players to break plays when advantages arise.
Teaching Style: Concepts over Details
- Conceptual Framework: Players learn broad principles, making reads in the flow of the game instead of memorizing plays.
- Player Empowerment: Every recruit gets the “green light,” fostering confidence and freedom from day one.
- Quality Shot Standards: Uses a unique “four-point shot” grading system in practice — shots only count if they meet strict criteria for rhythm, balance, and positioning.
Recruiting & Culture
- Personnel First: Success starts with finding the right offensive-minded, team-first players.
- Cultural Consistency: A 30-year standard of excellence, with a 3.5 team GPA and multiple Academic All-Americans.
- Flexibility in Recruitment: Willing to adapt for players with elite intangibles like toughness, competitiveness, and leadership.
Defensive Adjustments
- Late-Season Turnaround: From bottom-third nationally to top-10 defense in the final five games, driven by greater physicality.
- Switching Philosophy: Shifted from over-switching (which bred passivity) to a system that demands initial defender engagement.
- Simplicity in the Gray Areas: Prioritizes communication, effort, and competitiveness over complex schemes.
Coaching Development & Connection
- Player Relationships: Continuous growth focus, investing in personal connections and development.
- Direct Communication: Honest, demanding, but never manipulative.
- Career Foundation: 16 years under Hall of Fame coach Rick Byrd — patience and preparation that became his best investment.
Transcript
Casey Alexander 00:00
You always have to evolve and adapt and recognize strengths and weaknesses and be willing to make change. Right? That’s just living and aging and experiences and so forth.
So if I’m doing things now the way that I was 13 years ago when I first became a head coach, then I probably don’t have a very long shelf life in this business, you know. But on the other hand, when you get into trying to be something you’re not or try to start manipulating situations to make somebody happy or to reach them in a different way, you really open up the door for problems in my opinion.
Dan 01:59
And now, please enjoy our conversation with Coach Casey Alexander. One of the things we thought might be interesting to start with is the kind of broad topic of generating assisted baskets, and just for a little bit of context, you all last year were one of the best teams in Division I basketball at getting assisted baskets. Those were assisted almost 90th percentile for some of our analytics, and just a really incredibly high number of baskets to be assisted. And I guess going backwards on how you get there, how you think about that.
Casey Alexander 02:45
There are multiple answers to that, and it’s a 30-year answer, to be honest with you. It’s so much more about who we choose in recruiting and our style of play than it is what we emphasize and how we teach it on the floor from a day-to-day perspective. They go hand in hand, but we’ve always built our team with kind of a multitude of players that are high IQ and very unselfish and have kind of the offensive end maybe their cup of tea. And so the assists just kind of come naturally with that more than anything else. At the same time, I could look at the other end of the spectrum and say, we’re very little isolation. We’re very little trying to expose mismatches, things like that. So that’s how the numbers end up being what they are.
Dan 03:33
The other interesting thing, you know, when you’re going to be a high, high assist team like you have been, you’re also pretty low in your turnover percentage. So the ball’s being passed, it’s moved around, but you don’t turn it over at a super high clip either, at least historically, you know, last year. Hopefully the same for you this year. How do you get there? You know, how is it that your team’s passing so well, finding those open shots, but also you’re taking care of the ball?
Casey Alexander 03:58
It can actually be misleading because if you look at total turnovers, we seem to be high. The average basketball fan out there would look at it and say they turn it over too much. But per possession, or especially when you look at the number of passes made or maybe the length of some of our possessions, and then you compare that with assist turnover ratio, the numbers end up bearing themselves out to be really, really good. Again, it’s a measure of guys playing within a system, understanding what the greater good looks like for our team. You don’t get an assist unless the shot goes in. So we naturally have a lot of guys that are shooter scores, which kind of can increase that number as well. So there are a lot of things that go into that, to say the least.
Pat 04:40
The role that pace plays into all of this and the conversation within pace two of, of course, everyone wants to play fast and you know, is it trying priority shooting within seven seconds or is it trying to just play with pace throughout the whole possession, regardless if you can generate a shot in the first middle or last 10 seconds of the shot clock.
Casey Alexander 05:00
Yeah, we disregard shot clock entirely. I’m not concerned with when our shots come, but we emphasize quality of shot and like almost every coach does. We’re not trying to reach a certain number of possessions in our game. We’re not trying to expose depth or create tempo, anything like that. Essentially what makes us different than a lot of teams is that we rarely ever slow the ball down on made baskets. Everybody likes to get out and push on misses, but we typically get it in quickly and flow into motion just as quickly on made baskets. And so that’s what kind of facilitates our tempo. How we identify transition scores is really anything that happens where the defense never fully gets set. We don’t talk in fast break terms, we talk in transition terms. And our goal, every possession would be can we get a high quality shot where the defense was never set and established. That’s makes and misses. And that’s really why our tempo is what it is.
We’ve always been vastly majority motion offense with a lot of freedom to play. And that’s where the player movement and ball movement comes in. That’s also something that our opponents, it’s one thing that they have to get used to a little bit is just the movement within the possession from start to finish is pretty unique these days.
Pat 06:22
When you prioritize running on makes, how do you get your team to play with great pace on make?
Casey Alexander 06:28
Most of it is they’re not looking at me ever for what I want them to do. And so now we’re going to flow into some patterns, whether it’s a chin action or similar things to what everybody does. We’re just going to try to do it with more tempo. And I try to offer a lot more freedom with players to break the offense at any particular time. You know, naturally there are some that are going to be better than others with that, but it’s that fine balance between, hey, let’s give our players who are really good on the offensive end a lot of freedom so that they can be their best, even though we know that’s going to induce some mistakes along the way, yet also play with a concept and play with togetherness and play with unselfishness so that we can get the shot quality that we want.
Pat 07:09
When you’re talking about these triggers or the secondary break, and again, looking through the prism, getting with pace, is it going to be a call from your point guard or is it going to be kind of how the spacing unfolded down the court that tells the team what action trigger concept we’re getting into?
Casey Alexander 07:24
Yeah, point guard is going to initiate most of the actions just by what he does with the ball, but none of it’s called. There are no absolutes, of course, but most of it, hey, if he slices the floor and hits a wing and makes an inside cut, then here’s some things that we can do. If the wing is waiting for him in a pistol action, here are some things we can do. He waves the trailer through, here’s some things that we can do. We have a wide variety of options offensively, and it’s really how our offense flows from start to finish that are all motion.
And then if I want something specific, then I can give that a name and kind of the language that’s exclusive to Belmont for what we’re actually looking for on a particular action. But that would be more of a slow transition. Maybe the ball gets batted away. We’re slow getting it in or slow advancing it. Maybe it’s a time of the game where I want something specific, then certainly I can call an action myself. But for the most part, point guard is just kind of each other.
Pat 08:22
When you are attacking off of a made basket, is it more so about you trying to get first side to side and then to generate a paint touch or is it more about whatever that first action is trying to, let’s say, break the paint and then play out of that?
Casey Alexander 08:36
We talk so much in concept and very little about specifics and strategy and so forth. And so literally our goal offensively is to get ourselves a high quality shot as soon as we can, but let’s don’t take a marginal shot before we have to.
And that may mean the ball is reversed three or four times within a possession. It may touch eight or nine or 10 hands. You know, we’ve had possessions literally with double figure passes and no dribbles, but that’s not because that’s what our offense is. That’s just what the possession lended itself to that particular time. And we’ve had others where we’ve scored a dozen times in a game with no more than one pass. So it’s really just kind of how the possession plays itself out and a lot less, you know, here’s what we’re trying to accomplish. Let’s reverse it twice and then let’s get into this action. It’s almost the opposite of how we run things offensively.
Pat 09:31
You mentioned at the top, this has been like a 30 year evolution for you. And then you just said so much of what you teach is basically not so much going into the details, but teaching through the concepts. Why is it just being more broad general concepts rather than let’s get into the nitty gritty, the details of it that yields the efficiency of your offense.
Casey Alexander 09:50
I will re-emphasize how important it is for Belmont to recruit to a certain style of play. We’re always going to recruit the offensive end first. We’re not going to neglect defense, but it’s very important to us that we have high IQ, highly skilled offensive players. Overall, everybody doesn’t fit nice and neatly into that box, but overall, that’s what our offense is. And then I want a tremendous amount of freedom so that our players are playing with confidence to do what they can do best.
And it’s hard for me to allow that freedom or push that freedom or build that confidence. If I’m holding the reins or if I’m dictating what happens within each possession, I think we’re really, really good based on out of bounds. I think we’re really good at set plays. There’s a time and a place for that in our offense. All right. So to better answer your question about the 30 years, 30 years ago, the vast majority of teams in the world were motion oriented. You got Blocker Mover, you got Bobby Knight, it’s just kind of how the game was played with a lot more free flowing. And we’ve never left that. I think the game has kind of come back to Belmont in a lot of ways with the five out and the European influence and so forth, where everybody can space the floor and can kind of do similar things. But that’s always been kind of our trademark is motion offense, guys that understand how to play floor space. And we were a four out one end team forever, really until we joined the Valley three years ago. We had a all conference caliber post player that we were trying to ram it inside to and then we spaced the floor with four shooters. We worked really hard on passing and making reads and screening and movement and things like that. That’s where our offense has been since Rick Byrd got to Belmont in the late 80s. And until I took over, basically, I took over in 2019, but then we made the change when we made the move to the Valley three years ago.
Dan 11:40
If we take a five on five early season segment as an example, when you’re a coach that teaches through flow and freedom and all this stuff, inevitably in the first two, three weeks month of practice, there’s like you mentioned, there’s sloppiness, whatever it is offensively. Sometimes offense takes a lot longer than defense to get all connected. Where do you feel like you fit in when it comes to stopping and correcting versus letting them play through mistakes? Where’s that balance so that you let them play through that early season mud, I guess, so they can get to that how it looks later?
Casey Alexander 12:13
Two ways. One, and we definitely are a whole part, whole teaching philosophy. We want to deal with five on five, four on four as much as we can early in the process. And we know that it’s going to look awful, but we’re really just trying to build some memory and let them see the big picture of how things can work, whether that’s good or bad.
Then we’ll break it down and get better at the specifics. And then when we put it back together, it tends to work itself out a lot better. I’m of the mentality and practice. I’m not going to let anything that’s a big picture item just go by without being addressed, but we work really hard not to disrupt the flow of practice any more than we have to. My comments and practice are almost always quick and out loud. Hey, you guys got a screen better right there. We missed a 42 action. And then we move on to the next possession. Very rarely am I stopping practice, walking out on the floor, telling both teams, this is what it should look like. I’d rather learn through repetition and more opportunities than I would with me breaking it down in a practice any day.
Pat 13:16
You also mentioned you want to give these guys freedom you want to empower them give them kind encourage them to break the play Kind of looking at again at the practice building this offense is that empowerment the same for everyone? I mean everyone’s role is different But how do you teach and get that fine balance between who you really want to empower to break plays? How you just help guys understand that and when’s a good time to break the play when’s like we got to keep the flow
Casey Alexander 13:39
Excellent question. We’re very much the opposite of traditional thinking in a sense that even in recruiting I will tell a kid, hey, you’re coming to Belmont and you’ve got the green light. That’s how you’re entering our program. This is not a, hey, when you earn it, then you can shoot that shot. Or when you prove it, then you can shoot that shot. It’s like, we believe in you. Here’s what we think you can do. So you’ve got the green light, go do your thing.
Kind of a mentality. Now naturally, some guys are better than others. As we get closer and closer into the season and so forth. Then we understand and it just kind of naturally cream rises to the top a little bit. And we know who’s going to be taking more shots than others. And we try to get a little bit more specific about what that should look like across the roster. I use Garrison Matthews as an example. He played for me when I was at Lipscomb. He’s been just finished maybe a sixth year in the NBA and he was a tremendous college player. And he always jokes with me like I never called offense for him. He was just the best player. So the ball found him more often and he had a little bit more freedom to take shots off the line than the other guys. And he played more minutes than the other guys. Ben Sheppard would be another great example. I mean, he was a first round draft pick for us a couple of years ago. We did very little to get him shots. We did very little to slow it down and say, okay, we need to go to Ben on this possession. Ben just found a way to insert himself and be the best player on our team because that’s exactly who he was. I say though, I mean, it’s fair that our biggest kryptonite is shot selection. And especially early in the year, like if you come watch us in the summer or fall before we’ve gotten into games and scouting reports and winning and losing and everything else, I mean, half the people that come through our practice facility, you know, think that we’re crazy with the shot collection that we have. So it’s just over the course of time, then we really try to emphasize the quality of the shot or who is taking or when it came. And we just verbalize that. We’ve got all the analytics, we’ve got all the numbers that would back that up, but it’s a lot more like, let’s just let this play out the way that it should naturally. And most of the time it does.
Dan 15:42
Have you always done it that way, or have you flipped to, say, giving them the green light to start and let it naturally take place, or have you done it the opposite way where you sort of make them earn it? Why have you found that to be better from an offensive standpoint?
Casey Alexander 15:56
I have always done it this way as a head coach and really, I work for Rick Bird, Hall of Famer, won however many 800, 900 games at Belmont before, two I played for and worked for for a long time. And so, so many of the philosophies are similar, but for me personally, I do want us to play with tempo. I do want us to be hard to guard with player movement and ball movement. I want a lot of action in the possession. I want you to play with confidence. I don’t want you looking over your shoulder, wondering what’s good and what’s bad.
We’ll worry about that when we have to, you know, so it’s just hard to really have that kind of mentality and then pull the reins back at the same time. You know, I say all that we got a couple of guys on our team that I mean, they played a ton of minutes last year. They didn’t shoot a single three. So it’s not like they don’t have the same freedom or they at least have come to learn over time. Like this is not our strength. We spend a lot of time with each player talking about strengths and weaknesses and, you know, watching video and analytics and stats and everything else. So there’s a lot more that goes into it other than roll the ball out and you guys play real fast, you know, but I do want them to play with so much freedom. I want it to be fun to play and I want it to be fun to watch.
Pat 17:05
You gave some examples of you’re better players in the past and that you avoid calling plays for them But I’m curious how you think about the hierarchy of your team and how you think about maybe building practices or situations Where the team recognizes who are the guys that are gonna make the decisions that they naturally see like these are the guys that are Probably gonna break plays more often I may or may not be these guys but establishing like a hierarchy within the team without you being a coach having to be so On the head about it
Casey Alexander 17:35
I honestly think the strength of our team offensively is our ability to get an easy basket after a free throw, dead balls based on out of bounds, whatever the situation calls for. Naturally, the vast majority of those calls are going to go to the best players.
So they will accumulate some points and some opportunities throughout the course of a game and definitely over the course of a season because their number is called in those situations a lot. It’s really almost, I wouldn’t say it’s polar opposite to what happens in motion, but it’s very different in a sense that when we need a bucket, we’re going not necessarily our best player every time, but we’re going to play strengths and weaknesses during all of those moments.
Dan 18:15
One other thing I wanted to ask you about is diving into your analytics a little bit last season. You all were unbelievable, one of the top teams in Division I at your at the rim finishing. So you all shot 68.5% at the rim, which is an incredible number, obviously.
The thing that was interesting is you also won the lowest attempted teams at that. So you shot low amount of attempts at the rim, but you shot such an incredibly high percentage. I guess as a staff and yourself, when you see something like that, where you’re really, really efficient, really, really good in something, but maybe you’re not doing it at the high rate. Do you care? Do you try to get more attacks at the rim? Do you just let it play out and actually plays out? I mean, I guess what do you think about that variance as a coach?
Casey Alexander 18:58
do let it play out naturally. It’s great if you can be well-rounded and great at everything, but sometimes it’s personnel, sometimes it’s league or injuries or depth or whatever the situation may call for that can influence what those numbers look like. But historically, two things. One, since we’ve been to vision one, we’ve made more threes than any other team in the country. I think Duke, second, Florida, third. So that’s always been important to us.
We’ve already talked about the assist, but we’ve also led the country in 2.5% multiple times as a team in our 25 year division one history. And we’ve had multiple players lead that statistical category individually over the course of time. And so it’s always been very important to us that we’re efficient both from two and three. I mean, effective fillable percentage is as important to me as any stat that I’m ever going to look at on an individual basis. It’s really the only thing that matters to me offensively on an individual basis, adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency is the only thing that matters to me on the team basis. But every team is going to be better when you’ve got the ability to score from both places. We did not have a real dominant or low post player last year where we were going to get a lot of easy baskets around the rim. We were not a great offensive rebounding team last year where we were going to get a lot of easy opportunities around the rim. So that’s why the numbers were as low as they were. We definitely are trying not to play in mid range like every other team in the country. And so the numbers, would I like to have more shots at the rim? Absolutely. But not at the expense of a bad possession. If we shoot 53s in the game and they’re all good and we shoot 10 twos and they’re all good, I’m fine with that. It just depends on the quality of the shot, regardless of where it comes from.
Dan 20:37
And just to maybe follow up on the shooting, you know, close to 70% at the rim percentage, what goes into that, do you think? I mean, is it playing off too?
Is it how you finish around the rim, your finishing package, you know, as a team, how you get it that high?
Casey Alexander 20:51
We definitely work with player development on all of those things and trying to be tough and physical around the rim, but most of it literally is just the quality of the shot. Last year, for example, we went through a good stretch of time and practice where in all of our competitions, which for us is four on four or five on five, if you made a three and we didn’t think that was a quality three on the line, on balance, on rhythm, open shot, your team didn’t get points for it. Even if you’re a great player, we didn’t differentiate from player to player. And then the same thing with twos, you might drive in there and make a tough two through contact and fall down and one everything else, but it wasn’t a very high percentage shot. If it’s not like a 70 plus percent two point shot, then we’re not going to give you credit for that in practice. Your team got zero points.
You scored, but you got zero points because it wasn’t the shot quality that we want. That example alone, and we talked about it all year, we called them four point shots. That example alone is probably answers a lot of the questions that you’ve already had for how you have freedom, but at the same time, some reasonableness for how you play and the shots that you take.
Pat 21:57
What is a quality shot at the rim and what is the quality shot of the three point line that you want your team hunting?
Casey Alexander 22:03
Two answers to that. The first one was we don’t differentiate between player A and player B. We’re not really going to get deep into the weeds on that. So it was the same for everybody.
So for threes, it literally was on balance, on the line, on rhythm, and open, gray area for all this. A guy’s coming at you with a sprint closeout at the three-point line, and maybe he ends up contesting it, but you caught it on balance, on the line, on rhythm, and you were open. Good college basketball player ought to be able to make that shot, even though he was contesting. And then so around the rim, we’re really looking at circle scores. If you’re a low post player with your back to the basket, it’s got to be a rhythm score. If you’re driving and there’s a secondary helper or something like that, you’ve got to have shoulder square, you’ve got to be able to take the ball through his chest. Those are the only ones that are even ambiguous. Most of them end up being layups or power moves where anybody that was grading those shots would give it a high quality.
Pat 22:54
When you say on the line, and again, I know there’s gray area, but is it on the line stepping in to the three or catching with movement or is it a little like having stationary catch shoot right on?
Casey Alexander 23:05
There is definitely some wiggle room there. I say on the line, almost nobody has their toes on the line, you know, so we may be a foot off of it, but it’s really more about the balance and rhythm.
Because we’re coming off screens, there are plenty of catch step plant threes in our offense. If they’re on rhythm and online and not deep, then they’re probably pretty good shots for us. I’ll let a guy go shot fake one, catch on the three, shot fake maybe sidestep one dribble, but if he can get himself back square and on the line and on balance and on rhythm, then that’s a good shot. But coming off a ball screen and five dribbles and, you know, pull up with a hand in your face, even if he’s a great player, he’s not going to get credit for that for us. That’s never a good shot for us.
Dan 24:16
We’re going to transition now to a segment on the show that we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re going to give you three options around a topic. I asked you to start one of them, sub one of them, sit one of them, and then we’ll dig into your answer from there. So first one has to do with coaching areas of growth. So these are just three different general topics that at the end of every season, you find yourself year after year kind of going back to see where you can improve on going into the next season. And so your start here would be the one that you think most about, not necessarily like not good in, but just one that you’re always thinking you’re trying to get better at. So coaching areas of growth, here’s the three skills. Option one is your teaching skills, how you teach whatever it is you teach on both sides of the ball. Option two is your connecting skills, how you connect with players, staff, you connect everything within your program. Option three is organizational skills. As a head coach, how you organize the flow of everything that has to be organized in your program. So Start, Sub, Sit, teaching, connecting, organizing.
Casey Alexander 25:21
Yeah, start connecting easily. I think that’s where athletics in general, but definitely college basketball is so much more about individual attention to players, skill development, personal development, personal growth, lifelong learners, whatever you wanna say. I mean, I just think that kids these days are craving that kind of attention. They all come in, haven’t had trainers, and it’s just so much more what they are looking for.
I think it’s always been true that as coaches that we’re gonna get very little out of our guys. If they can’t trust us, they don’t know that we love them. They don’t know that we’re here to help them achieve everything that they wanna achieve, but it’s never been more important than it is today that you connect with them on and off the floor in every way that you can. I don’t think that we’re poor at that, but I think that every year it’s important for us to continue to research that and see how we can get better. So I would say that the teaching part, we’re always trying to tweak things naturally. You’re trying to catch any advantage that you can on either end of the floor. These days with so much roster turnover, used to be very different for Belmont in a sense that here’s a fun fact for you. Before the transfer portal, we lost two players to transfer in 17 seasons. Now if we have two a season, it’s rare. And so you’re always teaching and trying to come back to the basics and almost starting over from season to season. I don’t think we have the organization part licked necessarily, but that’s the part that I would sit.
Dan 26:50
Coach, great answers. I’ll start with your start and the connecting piece relating back to our first part of this conversation with your style and your offense. How have you found that the way you coach and teach offense helps you connect to players? Because I would imagine the way you teach offense and recruit and the types of shots and all that is a way to connect with players differently than say other ways or other styles. And I guess, how do you think about that?
Casey Alexander 27:16
Let me answer it this way first. I don’t want to imply at all that our people are better than anybody else’s people, or we’ve got better personalities on our team than anyone else, but at Delmont, we’ve eliminated a lot of risk and a lot of problem and a lot of things that go on outside of the confines of the team that a lot of schools have to worry about. Our team GPA was a 3-5 last year. We’ve got more academic All-Americans than any school in the country since we’ve been out in that as well. We’ve got a group where we’re very like-minded, even if we have new pieces. I played here in the early 90s, and the culture in our program today is so similar to 30 years ago. The players are better, and the league is better, and the game has evolved, but there’s almost no difference in the type of people we have in our program now compared to what it was like then. Delmont University as a whole is very similar to that, so that gives us a great opportunity to just focus on keeping the main thing the main thing. If connectivity is really important to us, it’s easy for us for our starting place of connection to be advantageous for us. There’s a high level of trust, like-mindedness, things like that that really allow us to just focus on being a great basketball teammate and a great basketball team.
Dan 28:37
For sure. Coach, it’s hard to do year after year. Are there things that you really, really look for in the recruiting process from a personality standpoint that, you know, are there yellow flags that you’ll accept because, you know, once they get into your culture, they’ll be okay? Is a little ego okay? What are the things that maybe you’re really looking for to get to that cultural piece?
Casey Alexander 28:59
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I think it is very important for us that we do not limit ourselves to recruit student athletes that have to fit inside our nice little tiny box. We can take a guy on the fringe at a skill level. You know, maybe he’s not a great shooter or offense isn’t his thing, you know, but he’s got to be a really tough kid, a really competitive kid, a great teammate, a great leader, a really good student. He can find his way on our team if he’s not a great three-point shooter or an assist guy. You could really use maybe a guy is not athletic enough to play at this level, but he’s a highly skilled guy and he’s a great leader and he’s got a great IQ. You know, JJ Mann was a great player for us and our conference guy has been playing overseas forever. He’s one of those guys. He would not pass the look test for anybody at any time in his career. And he’s been an unbelievable college and professional player because he just was able to get things done at Belmont for all those reasons.
So they don’t have to fit inside that box nice and neat. We think that the positive peer pressure on our team, maybe it’s an average student, maybe a guy’s a fighting like crazy to be a 2-5 or a 2-8 or something like that. Well, if he comes to Belmont and he’s a knucklehead and he’s not real interested in academics, he’s not going to survive here. He will learn pretty quickly that he’s the black sheep and that it’s not going to work well for him unless he decides it needs to be important. So we think we have those things going for us. Coach and…
Pat 30:21
Continuing to grow your communication skills, how you form connections, how you build trust. When looking at the current athlete today, has there been one thing that has stood out in terms of the change that is required on your end to build these connections, or maybe you’re just like a shift in what maybe you need more value than it was, say five, 10 years ago?
Casey Alexander 30:47
We always have to evolve and adapt and recognize strengths and weaknesses and be willing to make change, right? That’s just living and aging and experiences and so forth.
So if I’m doing things now the way that I was 13 years ago when I first became a head coach, then I probably don’t have a very long shelf life in this business, you know? But on the other hand, when you get into trying to be something you’re not or try to start manipulating situations to make somebody happy or to reach them in a different way, you really open up the door for problems in my opinion. I’ve always been very direct with our players. I don’t like false manipulation at all. I just want to be as honest as I can. I want to be demanding, but I want to do that with the right spirit and try to help those each player become his best self so that our team can become its best self.
My job is to make sure that Belmont is proud of what we’re doing out on the floor, and that’s how I make all of our decisions. And then it’s the same with the athletic department. Then it’s the same with our team.
Pat 31:47
Coach, can I just follow up on demanding with the right spirit and just ask you, I think I understand, but just elaborate on, I guess, what the right spirit is and telling that line between being demanding and not a drill sergeant.
Casey Alexander 32:00
I have to be flexible and I think the way that we play answers that question a little bit. You know, I’m not moving all the chess pieces myself and I’m not a drill sergeant in a sense that it’s my way or the highway. There are a lot of ways to get things done, but I am demanding in a sense that I expect everybody to be a great teammate before they’re anything else and I expect everybody to represent Belmont the way that I believe Belmont needs to be represented. And even if that looks a little different or if it’s not cool some days or we might lose some kids along the way because it’s not a good fit for some people.
But let’s know who we are. Let’s recruit to that. Let’s believe in that. Let’s preach that. Let’s model that. And then let’s see what those results end up being on the back end of things. We’ve got a long track record that says the results are pretty good.
Pat 33:57
All right, coach, our last start subset, we want to look at the defensive side of the ball. What? We’ll be brief here.
We’ve turned this defensive gray areas and we want to look at the defending D.H.O. versus a pitch ahead. You know, is it a D.H.O.? Is it a pitch ahead? And I want to give you two different types of players that can be involved in these actions. And which one has the greatest variance for you and how you will help your team try to defend it? So when you look at a D.H.O. versus a pitch ahead, the greatest variance, toughest to defend is option one when it’s a guard to guard in either of those actions. Option two is when it’s a forward to a guard or option three is when it’s a guard going to the forward for the handoff for the pitch ahead.
Casey Alexander 34:52
I’m definitely going to set the guard to guard. They’re definitely with ghost screens and, you know, just the multitude of ways that you see those actions. If the offense is good at them, these are all very, very difficult. Conceptually they’re easy, but if the offense can use these as a strength, they’re all very difficult. But I would set that one because I think those are the most predictable, the easiest switch. I think 10 out of 10 coaches in the world are going to switch the screens. In a similar way, I would sub the forward to guard because those are so highly conventional and ordinary as well. Those two combined are going to be the vast majority of what you’re going to see in a game and in a season.
So by process of elimination, I would say the guard to forward option is going to be the most difficult and the one that I would start. If you’re talking about defending it, I may have answered that entirely backwards, but no, but that’s the one that’s going to be the hardest. If that’s what you’re asking me, yeah, you know, it’s easy for me to sit here and coaches in general. Well, let’s just switch it. Last year we were a bad defensive team for the better part of the season, but historically we’re not. We’re always in the top third, top half of the league at worst. But last year we felt like we had a lot of interchangeable pieces and we had a lot of new pieces and we said, let’s minimize the ability to make mistakes defensively by switching more screens, whether that’s ball screens, pin downs, whatever. We switched a lot more and the truth is like we didn’t make very many mistakes because we switched all those things, but it caused us to be so passive. There was no mentality to bust through anything. There was no mentality to really stay in front of our man because we’re always just looking to switch and take the easy way out. So just one of those great examples of conceptually it sounds great and easy. Like this is obvious, but whether it’s offense or defense, regardless of situation, you’ve got to be really good at executing that action if you want your players and your team to be good at defending it or running it offensively.
Pat 36:37
Yeah, when looking at these different sizes, whether it’s guard going to afford for going to a guard. How do you think about the clarity and how you teach these coverages?
Casey Alexander 36:46
The first thing for us, regardless of who it is, is we’re going to identify who switches with who, not necessarily who we’re playing. For us, it’s always, if we got 15 guys on our roster, one through 12, you’re switching with each other. 13 through 15, you’re switching with each other, or one through 15, whatever the numbers end up being. That’s where we’re going to start the conversation.
But these scenarios, I mean, is it a good screen? Did he exit out early? Did they twist the screen? Did he even hitting? Was it a ghost screen? So it doesn’t matter who you are. There’s a high, high level of communication that has to happen early, and then there’s got to be a high level of stance, effort, toughness, competitiveness that helps you execute that situation. To me, that’s a lot more important than all the ways that we can guard this thing. And for us, we never extend our defense. We’re not trying to cause turnovers. We’re trying to minimize mistakes defensively.
We’re going to play the three point line as best we can. The longer I’ve gone, especially in this league, the more we take the UC Irvine approach of let’s let bad shooters take bad shots for them, you know, they can go in. In video, it might look like a good shot because he’s wide open, but he makes 31% of those. Let’s play a little bit more analytics with that and personnel with how we guard actions than necessarily what you’re asking, which is conceptually, if it’s a forward to guard, we’re going to go under. If it’s a guard to guard, we’re going to switch it, you know, those kinds of things.
Dan 38:18
Last year, it started to become more obvious to you and your staff that you weren’t going to be a fantastic defensive team. Mid-season, that’s hard to fix, really.
You kind of are who you are with your roster and who’s playing. I would imagine you went through iterations of, well, do we just drill down a one-on-one defense more? Do we emphasize this? Or like a schematic thing, do we throw a zone? Could you take us through, I guess, when you figure out you don’t have a great defensive team in the middle of season? What are you thinking about doing with that?
Casey Alexander 38:46
This is exactly what happened last year. We were in the bottom third of our league the entire year. We were in the 200s overall the entire year and we were trying everything. We get down later in the season six, seven, eight games to go. And essentially, this is amazing that this is what we did, but we basically just said, you know what? Just start fouling the crap out of people. Let’s just be more physical and let’s box out harder. Let’s bump guys on cuts more. Let’s body people up on drives more. Let’s get helpers there to block shots faster. It was just entirely an aggressiveness scenario where to do those things well, this is the subconscious part of it. You’ve got to play in a better stance if you’re going to do a different mentality if you’re going to do those things. I think it was the last five games of our year, which two of those were in the conference tournament. I think we were a top 10 team in the country defensively in those last five games after doing that the other way the whole season. It’s not that simple, clearly. And I don’t know if we can survive that way for 32 games, but I can promise you that the guys we have returning this season were far better this summer because of the last five games last year than they were at any point in time.
And it has nothing to do with anything but the mentality of how you play the game. And it’s not even us. I mean, we emphasize defense. We practice it. We’re not a Princeton offense where we’re going to go offense 90% of the time. And then, oh yeah, we got to play defense too. We talk about it a lot. We watch it a lot. We drill it a lot. But sometimes it’s pretty simple on that end of the floor. How much do you care and how hard do you play?
Pat 40:24
When you switch, you had a lot of passivity. So going into this season and knowing, I’m sure you will switch how you think about eliminating the passivity of a switch defense.
Casey Alexander 40:34
For example, can you still top-lock a great wing coming off a zoom action? Or are you going to defer to the switch, or are you going to bust through the top side? If you’re a great player and I’m guarding you and you’re coming off a D.H.O., I want to get through that if I can. That’s an aggressive mentality.
I’m the best defender. You’re the best offensive player. I want to guard you. And so I’m going to bust through that, and I’m going to get back in front, and I’m going to be squared up, and we’re not going to have to switch anything. But when I get nailed on a screen, and my teammate’s there, and he’s ready, and he’s communicated, we can switch that so that I don’t have to fight through a screen guarding a great player. It’s a fine line, and as we’ve already discussed, there’s just gray areas all over the defensive end of the floor with what you’re going to do. But there’s a big difference in that. And I say, hey, we’re switching, so I’ll let you go off the screen. And then the next guy accepts you coming off the screen, but he doesn’t have that mentality either. It’s a fine line for sure.
Dan 41:26
Coach, you’re off the start-sub-sit hot seat. Thanks for talking defense with us there.
We’ve got a final question to close the show before we do. Thank you again for your time today and for all your thoughts. This was a fantastic conversation.
Casey Alexander 41:37
Enjoyed it guys. Thanks a lot for what you do. It’s an awesome podcast. Thank you.
Dan 41:41
Coach our final question that we asked all the guests to close What’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Casey Alexander 41:48
Yeah, easy answer for that. I stayed at Belmont as an assistant coach for 16 years. Unique story in a sense that when I finished my playing career, we were NAIA headed to Division One. They went from one assistant coaches to two, and I was two. And we went to Division One, we were independent for five years, no conference. Then we went to the ASUN, then we went to the OVC. In 16 years for a young bullheaded assistant coach like me, who thought that I was ready to be the head coach of the Lakers when I was 25 and tried to get every job in the world. That was hard.
I felt like I was ready for my next step. I was so ready to climb the ladder, but whether it was fate or decision or just the fact that I was wrong, I stayed and worked for a Hall of Fame coach and worked in a program that had really, really high level of success. And so I was forced into patience and I was forced to learn and I was forced to develop. Naturally over that period of time, I grew a lot as a coach. I thought as a head coach that whole entire time, Pittsburgh gave me great opportunity and responsibility within the program. But I often think about what would have happened if I had left early for another opportunity. It could have worked out well or better, but I’m really pleased with how it worked out the way that it did because I stayed at Belmont.
Dan 43:08
All right, Pat, let’s hop in. Terrific conversation today, both sides of the ball, coaching areas of growth. Fun to get into the mind of Coach Alexander and as mentioned on the show, Belmont has been such a great program over the years and a team that’s always just fun to watch and pick out things that they’re doing. So it was a pleasure having them on today.
Pat 43:29
Yeah, absolutely. As you mentioned, some topics we’ve been discussing in the course, but really enjoyed hearing his approach, his ideology philosophy behind it, and like you said, the sauce behind Belmont’s success.
Dan 43:41
Absolutely. Well, let’s dive into our top three takeaways. I’ll kick it to you for number one since you’re talking to sis. Yeah
Pat 43:48
Appreciate it. Hopefully my feet are set.
Dan 43:50
Yeah, or this won’t count. This answer won’t count.
Pat 43:53
So my first takeaway, I think we have to start with the first bucket, and like we kind of, you know, preface the question with from a shot efficiency stat standpoint, and like they were tremendous. And hearing his thoughts on just how he thinks about offense, and it was about teaching it, I really enjoy it. And, you know, I think we all talk about reverse engineering it, but I think how he presents it to his team, like reverse engineering that these are the shots we have after. And it took us till the end of the conversation to get to like how he defines quality at rim, at three shot.
But you know, I think being demanding in that, and holding guys accountable to that. And like he said, you know, if they don’t deem it, they’re going to not count that score. But with that end in mind, presenting it to the team, and then giving the concepts that we talked about when it was, you know, of course, made or missed how they want to push the pace, but these are the concepts. And I thought it was really interesting when he said, you know, teaching the concepts not getting bogged down in the details, but you know, knowing the end in mind, giving these concepts. And then I think both of us agreed, starting from the point of giving them the green light, I think we had a lot of tremendous conversations and got to earn a shot and different sort of shooting systems or metrics or numbers that players have to get to to earn different shot profiles, they can or cannot shoot. But just starting with they get the green light, you know, he talked a lot about he wants to give them freedom to build confidence. So kind of not getting bogged down. And like I said, the details or everything that can come in between how you start and finish the elements, but rather like, here’s how we start, here’s the end in mind and empowering them. And I thought that was a really refreshing take on it and the results speak for themselves.
Dan 45:30
I’ll add on to a lot of your points there. What’s always intriguing for us is when you get a coach on that their teams are hyper-efficient. I mean, we’re talking about hyper-efficient here right now with Bell Mommy, you look through all of their analytics and it doesn’t matter what shot attempt you look at, they’re efficient in that shot attempt. We didn’t talk really like mid range twos and pull ups. They’re efficient in that too. You and I find what goes into that very interesting, and I think today what was interesting is, of course, they’re pretty analytically leaning in a sense, but the way they get there, it’s refreshing. Like you said, it’s conceptual, it’s freedom. I love the green light that you have it. I mean, I’m sure that works well in recruiting for them as a player. You’d like to hear that, that it’s coming in and kind of letting the natural status of a team take place. We recently had coach Kobe Carlin talk a little bit about letting guys, figuring out how guys naturally flow within the team through a lot of competition and stuff like that, like things get figured out. I thought that was a really good point.
And also to your point too, like the practices, like he hit on the quality of the three, if they don’t shoot it, it doesn’t count. You’re not necessarily like, that’s like a, I guess, sort of the CLA ecological design, interesting thing where you’re not just beating them over the head with a stat, but like through your constraint and through how you view a great shot, you’re getting the team there and they all kind of get it. And I also like, they look at the shot attempt, not the person as much or at all, like, so an open three, it doesn’t matter if it’s centered for the best shooting or shooting, like that is what they ultimately look at. And I think that’s probably freeing for a team to know, Hey, if I have this shot, no one’s going to look at me because I’m shooting 34% versus a guy shooting 40%. Of course you loved it to be the 40% guy shooting it, but these efficient offenses are just so concerned about getting the great shot for the team that I think it frees players to work together to get to that.
Pat 47:28
Yeah, there’s such clarity in the shot that they’re after, I think drives a lot of it. And even when we had kind of the interesting conversation on like the hierarchy of the team, because the other thing is he empowers players to break the play.
But I think it naturally comes out through competition, if you’re breaking a play, but you can’t generate the shot criteria, then you’re naturally going to figure out because the shot won’t count or, you know, you’re not going to be able to generate the shot you think you could have got. And I think it naturally then plays out that the hierarchy forms itself with the players who are capable of breaking the shot to generate the shot criteria that they’re after. And like that clarity there, just in driving pretty much everything and not being so technique driven, just being more results driven, like, are we able to generate this shot? Then either let’s keep doing it, whether it was something through a concept, through a player breaking rather than like he talked about chess boards moving around and thinking that it’s because of set design, you know, that they’re able to get this efficient.
Dan 48:27
Yeah, I’ll just end it here with the other part I found interesting was we got into the variance of they were so great at the rim but didn’t shoot a ton at the rim and what you do about that and whether or not you try to, not when you try to shoot them more. I think that’s, of course, like you got to just let the offense create what it creates and they want to shoot a lot of threes and they were high percentage on that.
But I kind of like just a little rabbit hole about why they shot almost 70% at the rim. And he talked about like getting through a guy’s body, being square, I think the circle that they want to be in. So I think mentioned by summed it up was it’s the quality of the shot that’s going to help you shoot that higher percentage.
Pat 49:03
And I think it’s the shot criteria that drives the volume correct when they were able to generate the shot criteria They took the shot and when they weren’t they were disciplined enough then to Kick it out of whatever. I mean to keep hunting the shot criteria.
They’re looking for damn. It’s a great point by you Well, it’s only because you set me up Just by you Yeah, thanks Anyways, we’ll keep it moving before it gets off the rails. Yeah, i’ll throw it to you for the second point of our conversation
Dan 49:32
Yeah, I’m going to steal from your start subset the defensive gray areas and specifically the kind of end where he talked about the last five to 10 games them really becoming a good defensive team. What the adjustment was or you know, I asked him what do you do about that and you know scheme and all that and I’m sure they went through all the iterations and he basically came to just being tougher and more physical and that that made a lot of difference down the stretch.
And he mentioned there’s a lot goes into it. But interesting sometimes how that can be not as simple as it is, but we can go into like scheme mode first as coaches to fix our stuff. And I think this goes back to our latest conversation with Jeff van Gundy. Do you add a trickier thing? Do you add a zone? Do you try to trap this or do you just go back and say like, we’re just not playing hard enough. We’re just not physical enough. We’re just not executing what we want to do at a high enough level. And you just double down on that. It’s just so dependent on your own team. It’s always interesting to hear coaches talk about that because it’s not of course a black or white answer. And for them getting to the last I believe said five to 10 games, we’re going to be more physical and I’m sure there was a lot of that like just in practice. And that is hard to do that late in the season. How much credit to be that good because you and I know you get to February, January, February, your team is kind of not who they are, but like to get them to increase their level of physicality that late is not an easy task. And so I thought that was a really interesting part of the defensive gray areas. Of course, all the stuff we’ll talk about the pitches, but that stood out to me a lot.
Pat 51:09
But, you know, that switch conversation also applied very much to the start-subsit conversation that, you know, we look at all these actions and yeah, is it approaching like, yeah, it’s always greater. Is it four different coverages that we have to work on or can we get to one coverage?
But again, we as coaches start to overthink, start to put the carriage in front of the horse and that, yeah, okay, here we can do this, this, this. And to your point and wrestling coach today and coach Van Gundy, it really just comes out like, okay, well, who are the guys that can switch one regardless of size or if they are like size, but early communication, early physicality and like, it probably goes a long way in solving these things we like to overthink about and forget as coaches that we should be starting there and we just like move right into the scheme mode, the coverage mode. And then we make everything much too complex than needs to be, you know, rather than honing in on the basics, kind of building out from there.
Dan 52:01
Yeah, I think that got into a little bit of the defensive decision-making and when you talk about conceptual offense and conceptual defense, when you get to these gray areas that there’s so many on defense as he mentioned, it becomes the great defense is just know like this is what we’re not giving up. We won’t give up these kinds of shot attempts or whatever or make the mistake being aggressive and you’d rather have a guy hedge out harder than he was maybe supposed to rather than being passive and guys are living in the paint downhill.
So I like that. I have it as a miss too for me, not by coach Alexander, but I would have loved to explore a little bit more like that late season defensive turnaround and what the scout looked like, how long these practice drills were to get this mentality across. That was not a miss because we talked about it, but I could have gone deeper on that because that’s hard to do.
Pat 52:47
Yeah, yeah. You know, he talked about to like getting guys in a stance. I’m sure it’s probably just falls on just prioritizing that they get in a stance, but they were not getting a stance enough. How do you mid season not kill your guys with getting them in a stance, you know, when it’s now month four, five, six.
I think my last point too, is when we address kind of eliminating the passivity in the switch and, you know, putting the onus on the initial defender to steal the canoe to fight through actions, and then use the switch rather than just over relying immediately like, well, we’re switching, so I’m not going to engage or work to compete. I’m just going to trust that the switch will take care of it and then that you’re empowering the offense with too much space, freedom of movement. I liked his thought there too, on how kind of correcting the passivity that can result in switching.
Dan 53:30
Absolutely. Pat, good stuff there. Let’s move now to our last takeaway and I’ll kick that back to you.
Pat 53:37
Yeah. So my last takeaway is I’ll go to your start, subset, our question about continuing to evolve as a coach or analyze the previous seasons and improving as a coach, my takeaway has to be with his thoughts on the connection piece, building trust.
Again, I think I probably go back to how we just talked about defense and offense. It always kind of just starts from the basic as a coach, just being direct and honest, there really is no secret sauce, but starting from a place of knowing yourself and not putting any sort of false front or over promising. I mean, when he said he’s going to give the guys the green light, he gives them the green light. It’s not some BS that he’s saying it because he thinks it can get the guy in. And then he immediately says, well, you get the green light if you can make, you know, 80 out of a hundred threes, or you get the green light only in these shots. I don’t think that we’re breaking any news there, but I think a lot of that is tied to a coach knowing themselves. And I think that’s where it can get hard at times. And I think we talked about this too, with coach Carl being able first to get comfortable with yourself and continuing to grow as yourself and how you think about relationships and growing relationships, not even on the court, but out of the court that then allow you to build this trust within a program and your players.
Dan 54:53
So, the other thing he said in there was demanding with the right spirit, I thought was just a good quote and you followed up and I like to hear him talk about that, like what does that look like? When you go in the head, you kind of understand what trying to be a demanding coach is, but what is the right spirit and he kind of went into a little bit about the connecting and who they are.
I’d also like to just go back, the start for him, the connecting. I kind of asked him a follow-up about it, but I do think the benefit of going back to the first bucket, he talked about offense was like a 30 year thing. The benefit of alignment of your program on like all things, I think just allows for the true connectivity and communication to come through and be better. So when you’re aligned on how you play, on how you coach, on how you recruit, on how you do all these things that he mentioned throughout, then the connecting to the players becomes more seamless because for the most part, on the same page with how you’re doing things. Like what I’m getting at is he knows who he is, he knows who Belmont is. You could tell he talked about who a Belmont player is that they go after, what the university is about, how they play stylistically. That makes it so then when you’re connecting and having that player become a part of your program, it’s more seamless than, well, we do this this way and then we kind of play here and this is what we’re figuring out who we are on this end of the floor. Like that’s, I think the big benefit of if players are confused on who you are as a program, what you want to do, how you want to play, switch, not switch, all these things that we have to deal with, the more aligned I think as an organization you are, the easier the flow of communication and then probably the easier it is to connect with players because you can have really true, clear conversations all the time. And I kind of took that away that he has that going at Belmont and that makes it so that he brings in new players from the portal. They’re easily able to kind of slide in quicker because of the alignment of the whole program.
Pat 56:50
Yeah, hearing you talk, I had a conversation with another coach, but even going back to our conversation with Coach Bonke, when he took over the Latvian national team, and whether you’re at Belmont or at a club in Europe or a national team, the importance of knowing that institution, that nationality, the mentality or the standard that they expect from the players you bring in, then obviously, as a coach, if you understand that, if you know that, then you can recruit to that. But I think then that helps reference Coach Owen Eastwood.
I think then forming the belonging of a group is much more seamless. It’s still not without its difficulties and its hurdles. But when you can just start from you’re bringing in the right guy, because you know, the institution, you know, the national team, you know, who you should be bringing in goes a long way and getting that quick belonging, building the trust, and then ultimately, hopefully building on court success. And what ultimately led to then I think, as you see, Belmont sustained success over the years, because the clarity of who we bring in who we recruit that what we value, because our institution values, it goes a long way and sustained success is probably job security too.
Dan 57:59
100%. Pat, I kind of sprinkled in a couple little misses from my end, not from Coach Alexander, of course, but is there anything else you think we could have or would have gone deeper on how we had more time?
Pat 58:11
He mentioned early on that they were a four-out, one-in team, and he said that they had pretty good post players, but as they moved conferences, they started to shift. And I wish I’d followed up on if it was just what he saw in the new conference that changed their spacing philosophy, or if it was maybe just personnel, they just weren’t getting the post players they thought that could thrive in that situation.
But I wish I had followed up there on just their shift from a four-out, one-in, one-changing conferences.
Dan 58:37
Yeah, kind of was in and around another one of my small misses, but he was talking about that. And we got into a little bit about them really wanting to get out and transition on made baskets as well. One of the falls that just the conversation moved away from it, but you and I were talking beforehand about who takes it out. Where do they take it out? What do the lanes look like? Like, if you’re going to run really well in made baskets, how many guys can take it out? Is it just the four and five? Because sometimes that slows it up. Or can anybody take it out? And, you know, maybe just a quick follow up on technically or how they actually run on made baskets would have been something I would have followed up on in around that four out one conversation.
But once again, terrific conversation today with coach Alexander. We really appreciate him coming on. Thank you everybody for listening and we will see you next time.
Pat 59:29
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit slappinglass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slappin’ Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.