Hoopclinics Pack Line Defense E-Book
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Presented by HoopClinics Copyright 2008 HoopClinics All Rights Reserved Pack Line Table of Contents Introduction Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….. 1 Section I Defensive Philosophy Defensive Beliefs .…………..……………………………………………………………. 2 Defensive Expectations…………………………………………………………………… 4 Section II Six Defensive Phases Phase #1 Conversion……………………………………………………………………… 8 Phase #2 Establish and Maintain Defensive Spacing ………………………………….....10 Phase #3 Pressure the Ball……………………………………………………………….. 16 Phase #4 Keep the Ball Out of the Lane ….…………………………………………….. 17 Phase #5 Contest every shot …………………………………………………………….. 24 Phase #6 Block out, secure rebounds, loose balls……………………………………….. 24 Section III Special Situations Helping from Basket, End of Quarter, Free Throws, In Bounds, ………………………. 26 Catch Up Ball Screens……………………………………………………………………28 Section IV Teaching Pack Line Through Repetition in Practice Individual Skills, Six Phases, Shell Drill…………………………………………………29 Guarding Specific Movements, Competitive Drills, Disadvantage Drills………………. 30 Recovery Drills, Toughness Drills ……………………………………………………….31 Section V Pre-game Decisions and In-game Adjustments Defensive Matchups…………………………………………………………………..….32 Conclusion Defensive Evaluation………………………………………………………………..……33 Resources…………..……………………………………………………………..………34 Appendices Appendix A Playing Hard on Defense………………………………………..………….35 Appendix B Teaching Defense in Practice………..………………………..…………….36 The HoopClinics Version of the Pack Line Defense Introduction Thank you for your interest in our version of the pack line defense. This e-book is meant to complement the screen cast that we have prepared, not to be a word for word transcription. Some of the concepts and drills will be better presented with the animations on the screen cast. My hope is that between the two mediums, you will be able to pull some ideas that will help your defense. We are presenting this information as the complete pack line defense that we have used and that we feel that has fit our personnel the best over the years that we have used it. It has been our primary defense due to our evaluation of our talent compared to our opponents. It can be your primary defense or a part of a multiple defense system. It could be the defense you go to when you want to change the flow of the game. This is a rules based defensive presentation. One of the toughest decisions a coach makes defensively is to what extent you are going to make changes in your rules in order to defend exceptional players or teams that you face. We want our defense to become habit from what we have practiced, so we do not make many adjustments based on scouting. My objective in putting this segment of HoopClinics together is to give you some ideas to possibly implement in your pack line system. I am never in favor of taking anyone’s whole system and then implementing it into “The more they think, the slower our program as is. I believe that no matter their feet get.” what coach you learn from, that coach does --Jerry Tarkanian not know your personnel, face your schedule, and is not you. Your experience, personality, beliefs about how the game should be played, and many other factors will determine how you fit this information into your defensive system. Many of my ideas for developing the system that I am describing came from long time Indiana and Ohio boy’s high school Coach Mike Sorrell. Coach Sorrell won over 400 games without ever coaching an Indiana All Star. He consistently took jobs that had a history of being also rans and turned them into programs that no one wanted to play against. The game of basketball lost a great friend when he passed away. No one can profess to run a Pack Line Defense without having been influenced directly or indirectly by Coach Dick Bennett. Anyone interested in improving their ability to teach the Pack Line should read or watch anything you can get your hands on where he talks about the Pack Line. I have also studied the defensive ideas of Jim Boone, Tom Izzo, Thad Matta, Herb Sendek, Todd Lichliter, and many other high school and college coaches in regards to our Pack Line system either by hearing them at clinics, watching their DVDs, talking to some of their assistant coaches and former players, and just by watching and recording their teams on television. HoopClinics 1 The HoopClinics Version of the Pack Line Defense Section I Defensive Philosophy This e-book and screen cast is meant to be much more than just a rambling about “Clarify your beliefs in writing and philosophy, but I do think it is essential to you improve your behaviors developing your defensive system that you Change your behaviors and you know what you believe as a coach and change your results. Change your there is no way to gain clarity on that topic results and you change your life.” better than putting your philosophy in writing. I have always been inspired by --Unknown the quote to the right in all areas of my personal and professional life and feel that it is very applicable to developing a defensive philosophy. Knowing what you feel is essential to your defensive success will help you decide how to approach determining what style of defense to use; to building your defensive schemes, rules, how you will practice them; and most importantly, what you will see happen in a game. I believe that: 1. You should determine your style of play by what it will take to beat the best teams on your schedule and to advance in the state tournament. In our case, we have played the style that we think will help us to beat the teams in the season ending sectional (which is the first round of the Indiana state-wide tournament). We feel that in order to advance as far as possible in the state tournament we are going to, at some point, beat teams with more talent than us. I do not believe that you can beat teams with more talent by pressuring and trapping, which increase the number of possessions. I do not believe that any style of play will ever turn the tables so that an underdog has the upper hand, but I do believe that the odds of an upset increase as the number of possessions decrease. Dean Oliver has written a book entitled “Basketball on Paper,” which has statistical proof that a slower pace of play increases the odds of the underdog winning. It does make sense to me that the more possessions, the more chances the better team has to make plays. Pack Line defense does not increase the number of possessions by allowing opportunities for quick shots. It has been my experience that switching back and forth from pressure to pack defenses depending on who our opponent for the week is has not allowed us enough practice to get good enough at either one. We have selected the Pack Line as our primary defense to play and to practice. As such, we feel that we become HoopClinics 2 The HoopClinics Version of the Pack Line Defense better at it than if we only practice it half of the time and spend the rest of our defensive practice time on other schemes. When we do have the upper hand in athleticism, the pack line does help our opponent by minimizing the possessions, but it has been our experience (from the school of hard knocks!) that we still fare better sticking with what we do best and have rehearsed over and over than we do by trying to play pressure and trapping defense which we have not spent as much practice time on. 2. It is difficult to get the best teams to turn the ball over enough to use that as our primary plan to beat them. We also feel that by trapping, pressuring, and going for steals, it will lead to better shots for our opponents. 3. By not extending our defense, working to keep the ball in front of us and out of the lane, not forcing our players to cover large areas, we are minimizing the times where our players are going to pick up fouls due to being “out of control” on defense. Depth is almost always a problem at small enrollment schools, but we feel that regardless of school size and what is considered depth, there is almost always a group that comprises the best players who you cannot afford to lose due to foul trouble. The pack line defense does not play any less “When you are playing hard, you hard than a denial or passing move your feet and get in position, lane pressuring defense, it so you should not foul as much.” simply guards less of the floor which does mean less energy is --Coach Herb Sendek expended, but if played correctly, it does not take less effort to play. 4. The best ways to score in order of effectiveness when we have the ball are: #1 shoot free throws #2 shoot shots in the lane #3 have our best three point shooter shoot uncontested three point shots So, on defense we do what we can to minimize those opportunities for the offense and we feel that we can do that best by playing the pack line defense. I have not done a formal study and statistical analysis, but from my observation, I believe that the majority of the time, the team that wins has fewer field goal attempts for the game, unless they absolutely pound their opponents on the offensive glass. It has been my experience that the reason that a team with less field goal attempts usually wins is that more of their possessions end in free throw attempts rather than field goal attempts. We want to have a system of defense that HoopClinics 3 The HoopClinics Version of the Pack Line Defense does all that we can to keep the opponents off of the free throw line and out of the lane.