Kevin Sweeney and Eric Fawcett are doing an Xs and Os video podcast for Basket under Review, the new Trilly project, that seems pretty interesting. It’s called Scout Team. Worth checking out.
Their recent episode talked about a ball screen coverage variant called the hedge and plug.
We all know the hard hedge, where the screener’s defender hedge’s hard, while the ballhandler’s defender fights past the screen. And then there is a dance of switching coverage behind them. That was Tony’s go-to.
I suspect most of us know drop coverage, where the screener’s defender drops back to the paint to protect against both the roll (from the screener) and the drive (from the ballhandler).
In hedge and plug, the screener’s defender does basically the same thing as in a hard hedge, but the ballhandler’s defender, instead of racing back to the ball, plugs the passing lane. Interesting stuff: