Looks exactly like how my HS JV team used to run flex.
Ugly, ugly stuff
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I too learned Flex on my HS JV team. We also ran a very classic 3-2 motion offense that we called UMass for some reason. It had a lot of UCLA cuts and never got anything good.
It’s very funny that Jay Huff has now encountered this offense from an obscure D3 team twice now in his career:
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I’m a sucker for oddball coaches doing off-kilter things:
The world of an average college basketball coach is foreign to Crutchfield. He barely watches any other basketball, and when he does, he caps out at about five minutes. He’s currently binge-watching “The West Wing”. His favorite show is “Dateline”.
Monday night in January: Big Monday on ESPN or “Dateline”?
“‘Dateline’. By far. Not even close.”
They press off of missed shots like real sickos:
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I was about to share that same article. Really interesting, but even after I read it, I still had no idea what his system is except for pressing defense.
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More about the Memphis Grizzlies unique offense. Soak up all that knowledge Johnny Carpenter, then come back to Charlottesville in four years to lead us back to the promised land.
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He knew of it already. The guy on the Grizzlies staff that brought the offense to them (Noah Laroche) consulted with the staff before the 2020-21 season to implement the offense.
Details here: The Ball is Tipped (HV Weekly: 11/27/20)
In addition to the new personnel, Tony Bennett has experimented heavily with a new offensive scheme through the first two games.
The new scheme is modeled after an unlikely team: St. Joseph’s College — a D3 school in Maine.
During the 2018-19 season, St. Joseph’s — with the help of an outside player development coach Noah Laroche — revamped their offense to a 5-out free flowing read and react system. The season before, St. Joseph’s averaged 73 points per game. With the new offense, they averaged 93 points per game.
Kevin Thomas wrote an article covering the St. Joseph’s offensive transformation for the Press Harold. Coach Daniel broke down the X’s and O’s of the offense on his YouTube channel.
Laroche has worked directly with the Virginia staff to implement the system.
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There are many things I would love to hear a candid retrospective from TB on (not that he’d be likely to ever want to do such a thing), and the 2020-21 offense is on that list.
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They cut off a little of the beginning. Rohde just simply drives it and then kicks to the open Dai Dai. Why do we never just drive and attack normally like normal team instead of all the standing around waiting for the play to generate etc. etc. It’s so simple and yet we waste all this empty action for Buchanan to catch the ball in the midrange where he can do anything with it and if he hands it off will just look to rescreen elsewhere instead of rolling to the rim.
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This play when watching Utah State stood out to me a few weeks ago
(glad someone put it on YouTube the play by itself)
Falslev walks up and is just open so he just shoots it. He doesnt slow walk it and wait for everyone to get into their positions.
We have had moments like that where no one picks up the ball handler in transition but we NEVER punish it.
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I thought this video did a really good job of demonstrating how focusing on simple offensive concepts (cutting if your man has your back to you, occupying weak side defenders, cutting through/respotting when backside help has two defenders etc.) by having all 5 players reading the difference can lead to offensive success.
It’s interesting to contrast it with our offense where guys know where to be in our “modern” offense but don’t understand simple offensive concepts. Part of it is having a young team and poor guard play, but I think it’s obvious when you watch this UVA team that the staff has not instilled basic offensive concepts along with the offense. This is part of the reason why outside of some basic actions, pick and roll, pick and pop it generally it looks like guys either don’t understand the purpose of the actions we’re running or look like they’re just going through the motions of the offense 15-20 seconds of each possession.
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Agree. I think that this is why returning to a more basic offense has paradoxically improved our offense. There are fewer reads, young/inexperienced/unfamiliar with one another players can choose from a smaller menu with more scripted responses.
Cool video find.
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Fascinating read…
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Clips in tweet (damn you twitter)
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Grinnell is wild to watch. Though it’s kinda funny that the potential lesson of the story is “being like 15% more normal actually was much better for winning purposes”
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Yeah, Grinnell basketball is absolutely wild. And my dad went to the University of Redlands which runs a fairly similar philosophy (though more explicitly pattered after the Loyola-Marymount teams of the late 80’s) and set some of the records which Grinnell then broke. He used to send me absolutely ridiculous box scores of some of their more dramatic games and only semi-jokingly said he wanted Redlands to try and hire CTB after he retired.
Grinnell and Redlands actually played each other in 2008 which got a little bit of fanfare at the time, because people were hoping for like a 180-160 record shattering regulation outcome. Which was plausible, as Grinnell was part of the record for most points scored in a single game (315, when they lost to Simpson 167-148) and Redlands has the record for most points scored in a loss (153, which they’ve done twice. Once in 3OT and once in regulation) plus the record for both 3s attempted and made in a single game (106 and 37, albeit in different games).
Unfortunately, the final score was a pretty pedestrian 108-100.
All that scoring, Tony Bennett must be rolling over in his grave
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