[UCCBball] Some video analysis

[Chas Stan-Bishop]

Hey all,

So, following up on the discussion I had with Alwyn after our last game, 
some video analysis. It's from the game before last (since I don't have 
the last game video yet), and I've only gone over the first video/~half 
in detail, so it's not perfect. Hopefully better than nothing though.

There were a total of 28 play in the clip. We fully reversed the ball 3 
times, which is not great. But, as I suspected, on only _one_ of the 25 
occasions where we didn't was it because a pass wasn't available. Even in 
that instance, it was the weak wing that was unavailable, not either slot, 
and it was because the cut to the weak side was slow (Tommo was posting 
rather than cutting), and the second pass was too hasty (player was
completely unguarded, and never looked like driving/shooting).

We mostly aren't swinging too slowly. We're just choosing not to swing at 
all. We frequently just repeatedly bang our heads against the strong side 
defence.

Some examples:
1 - The aforementioned play
 	http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:21:07&end=00:21:20

This is a good example of a couple of things. Note Tommo's defender. 
That's a guard following Tommo all the way down to the low block leaving 
a single defender guarding everything above the blue line, and 4 defenders 
in a line just above the restricted area. Tommo possibly thinks he's 
posting up a centre, since the forward went out to the corner (giving us 
an advantage), but he isn't. When the ball reverses to the slot (Seb), 
he's _totally_ unguarded.

Look at the weak side defence; it basically hasn't shifted. It has no 
cause to. Seb's obvious play would be to shoot, but they're not worried 
about that because a) Seb never even thinks about shooting, so no threat 
there and b) they might let us have that shot anyway, if they've got time 
to carefully consider.

We could drive that, but we're unlikely to get anything at the basket with 
three defenders still inside. Most of us will likely end up taking a 
midrange pull-up.
I would argue that our two best options might well be;

1) Do nothing. Seriously. The defence isn't playing us, so there's no 
reason to do anything until they start to shift. Continuing the reverse to 
Alwyn gets us nowhere, since there's no-one on the weak wing and the weak 
slot is still guarded. Until something changes, it costs us nothing to 
hold the ball indefinitely and look like we're considering shooting. 
They'll move eventually, just because it feels wrong not to.

2) Drive, with every intention of kicking the ball straight back out 
again if the defence covers the drive/inside options at all. We can just 
run a strong side drive and kick repeatedly, gradually shifting the 
defence over, with the proviso that we _reverse the ball once the defence 
has shifted_. We usually miss that bit. For an example of this nearly 
working out, see
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:17:45&end=00:18:06

We make a few questionable decisions here, resulting in repeated strong 
side play/missing reversal (a whole other discussion), which causes Alwyn 
to eventually get bored and cut from the weak slot when he's not supposed 
to, screwing our spacing a bit.

But look at what happens to the defence each time the ball gets passed on 
the strong side. They gradually shift further and further across, 
especially when Andrew takes a step in that direction. By the time Alwyn 
bails, only the weak forward is paying any attention to Alwyn and Chris on 
the weak side, and no-one is really in position to play solid defence. 
This burns them when Tommo eventually skips it to Chris and Alwyn reverses 
course for the backdoor play.

This is better than the situation when the ball first goes back to the 
Chris at the strong slot. The weak side guard has shifted across a bit, 
but still has his eye on Tommo at the weak slot. Multiple people are still 
watching the baseline cut.

My point is, that we don't need to _always_ swing the ball as soon as we 
touch it, in an effort to beat the defence to the weak side. They often 
don't initially move much, and the more time we spend on the strong side 
(as long as we look vaguely threatening), the more time we give the 
defence to decide to shift across and begin to over-focus on our 
strong-side action.

The important thing is that when we _do_ swing the ball, everyone who 
touches it looks threatening (to make the out of position defenders feel 
like they have to play you, rather than ignoring you and returning to 
their optimal zone assignments), and all our weak side players are in 
position to take advantage. It's not speed that matters, it's timing and 
threat/misdirection.


Returning to the original clip, if Seb fakes a shot, not only does it 
potentially attract the weak guard, resulting in an Alwyn drive rather 
than the mostly pointless high post entry, but it also gives Tommo time to 
cut through to the weak corner, which would almost certainly draw the 
weak forward out i.e. exactly what we're after.


For an example of what I was talking about regarding timing of the 
slot-to-slot cut, see this
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:03:43&end=00:03:57

When Seb passes to me on the wing, the strong guard's attention is 
initially on us. He follows the cut a bit, then switches focus to the ball 
on the wing. He's a little out of position. The weak side guard drifts 
across and down to cover the post. But look what happens when Dave cuts 
across slightly early (I contend). Dave isn't getting the ball right away 
- I need to wait for Seb to get to the short corner - but the strong guard 
sees Dave cut out of the corner of his eye, and shifts back to make sure 
he can get there if the ball reverses. The weak guard recognises this, and 
hands off responsibility before Dave even catches the ball, leaving him 
time to recover to Tommo. The reversal gets up something, but not as much 
as it could.

If Dave holds off his cut for a couple of seconds, the strong guards 
attention would zero in on me. I would pass to the spot as Dave was on the 
move, and when he catches the ball, it would not be 100% clear who's 
resposibility it is; the defence wouldn't have had time to think about it. 
Dave can freeze dribble at the gap, freezing the weak guard, giving Tommo 
a clearer path on his cut. Now it's not clear if the guard can cover 
Tommo's cut, so the forward has to split attention between him and Seb. 
Which tilts the mistake lottery heavily in our favour, and probably makes 
the pass to Tommo much easier.

This shows the second half of what I mean
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:04:19&end=00:04:25

Tommo reverses slightly early from the wing*, but it does mean that Dave 
catches on the move despite the early timing of his cut. The strong guard 
has no time to adjust/recover, so the weak guard picks him up Dave. This 
results in the weak forward picking up Seb on the swing (questionable, 
unless he thinks Seb is lights out from 3, so I wouldn't count on that), 
and we might have created some great baseline action if Seb's pass hadn't 
been deflected.


*Note: I say early because there's no time to investigate the two man game 
between wing and short corner. I'm okay with that on the first wing pass, 
since it's mostly to draw the defence across anyway, but we probably want 
to be more deliberate on the weak wing if we can get it there.


Anyway, here are some more clips of us not reversing, despite having the 
option. I'll start with probably our worst decision of the game (me 
shooting rather than a driving and dishing for a likely uncontested 
layup), just so this email feels less like me beating up other people. :P
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:05:38&end=00:05:48

And some more:
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:14:14&end=00:14:29
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:06:21&end=00:06:34
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:11:09&end=00:11:20
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:15:44&end=00:15:58
http://chas.ucc.asn.au/basketball/BasketballClipPlayer.html?v=GUyRA7YmFcA&start=00:18:59&end=00:19:07

That'll probably do. There are more (I can list them if people want). 
14-15 of our 28 plays involved us not reversing the ball when we have the 
option (not saying we should have reversed on all of them - there were 
some great options in there), 6-7 involved the ball entering into the high 
post early and never leaving (shot/foul/tie-up), and the remaining 6-8 
were either reversals, our single missing reversal option, or a bit weird 
(broken plays, early turnovers etc).



So. For our next game, I think we simply focus on completing the reversal 
unless we can get all the way to the bucket, or they just completely 
refuse to defend us.

I think we think of our initial wing pass as a setup pass. Wait for the 
play to fully develop and the defence to shift, and only shoot or 
agressivley seek to make a play under the above conditions (layup/lack of 
defence).
Then fully reverse the ball, with the same provisos. I also want to try 
leaving the high post weak side, ready to screen the weak guard to stop 
him helping on the weak side, but we can talk about that at the game.
Then I want to actually play a bit on wing. Seriously think about a 3, 
especially if you are Tommo or Alwyn. Wait for the cut to reach the 
short corner and see if you can safely get it there. Look at the two man 
game between short corner and wing - screens and kickouts. Look at the 
high post _now_, rather than before we've even hit one wing. Play for a 
bit. _Then_ swing it and try again on the other side.

TLDR; We need to reverse the ball more often, but with less haste/panic.

Probably enough wall of text. Hope it made some degree of sense - I 
haven't been sleeping great, so it might all be nonsense :P. Feel free to 
disagree/let me know your thoughts.

Chas