Coaching against Grinnell

• Ironman92

  

  What would you do?
  
  I know one thing...if it was determined we couldn't win....Taylor wouldn't be open for anything.
  
  If we're winning and he's jacking up 50 shots and scoring 80....that's fine...but if it's a back and forth game or they are close, something will be done to control.
• Laley23

  

  If it's not Taylor someone else will do it. They always have Gus who put up 50+ consistently.
  
  Id probably tell my team to go run with them and have fun. Not often you play a game like that (if ever) and you coach D3 basketball...
• Ironman92

  

  Laley23;1537791 wrote:If it's not Taylor someone else will do it. They always have Gus who put up 50+ consistently.
  
  Id probably tell my team to go run with them and have fun. Not often you play a game like that (if ever) and you coach D3 basketball...

  If you are in their conference.....do you try to change what they do? Say you are both 4-0 in the conference and are meeting to see who is the front runner to win the conference title.
• robj55

  

  Take care of the ball and use the whole shot clock and get quality looks. Get back on defense and control the boards. Don't press because that will just speed them up/
• dlazz

  robj55;1537953 wrote:Take care of the ball and use the whole shot clock and get quality looks

  It's going to be hard to do that. They full court press the entire time and double team the guy with the ball.
  
  I kinda want to see a game of theirs just to see what it's like.
• reclegend22

  

  Based on how Grinnell plays, it's almost impossible to stop them. They want to run and score as fast as possible at all costs, and they will actually give the other team open layups in order to just get the ball back and restart their offense. That is actually one of the tenets of Pioneer coach David Arsenault's offense. Trade twos for threes. So when they are giving you open twos, you're going to take them, which in turn keeps the game moving at Grinnell's pace. You'd almost have to refuse to score the open layup and try your best to stall...
  
  Going to a Grinnell basketball game is like going to the circus. It's not basketball. It's about breaking records and having fun and not so much about winning (if they win, then great, it's a bonus). One of the Grinnell announcers during last year's record-setting 139 game actually stated that Arsenault seeks out the weakest opponents on the schedule to look for potential record-setting contests. Which, I imagine, is why Jack Taylor ended up setting that mark against what amounted to a one-room schoolhouse. All in all, I'm not that impressed with any of it. What impressed me were actual basketball teams like Loyola Marymount, Oklahoma, Arkansas, LSU and UNLV in the early '90s, who scored in the 120s and 130s against top 25 teams.
• reclegend22

  

  dlazz;1537984 wrote:It's going to be hard to do that. They full court press the entire time and double team the guy with the ball.
  
  I kinda want to see a game of theirs just to see what it's like.

  [video=youtube;bQ9zKNQKwuw][/video]
• Heretic

  

  reclegend22;1537991 wrote:Based on how Grinnell plays, it's almost impossible to stop them. They want to run and score as fast as possible at all costs, and they will actually give the other team open layups in order to just get the ball back and restart their offense. That is actually one of the tenets of Pioneer coach David Arsenault's offense. Trade twos for threes. So when they are giving you open twos, you're going to take them, which in turn keeps the game moving at Grinnell's pace. You'd almost have to refuse to score the open layup and try your best to stall...
  
  Going to a Grinnell basketball game is like going to the circus. It's not basketball. It's about breaking records and having fun and not so much about winning (if they win, then great, it's a bonus). One of the Grinnell announcers during last year's record-setting 139 game actually stated that Arsenault seeks out the weakest opponents on the schedule to look for potential record-setting contests. Which, I imagine, is why Jack Taylor ended up setting that mark against what amounted to a one-room schoolhouse. All in all, I'm not that impressed with any of it. What impressed me were actual basketball teams like Loyola Marymount, Oklahoma, Arkansas, LSU and UNLV in the early '90s, who scored in the 120s and 130s against top 25 teams.

  
  Pretty much all of this and reps.
  
  If I'm coaching against Grinnell and have essentially a glorified high school team like, I'm guessing some number of their opponents are, might as well roll with the punches.
  
  If I have a real team, just go crazy on them and win 147-78 or so.
• sleeper

  

  Based on how Grinnell plays, it's almost impossible to stop them.

  If this is the case, why don't D1 team do this? The offense is a gimmick and only works against crappy opponents who they could beat with a conventional offense as well. Just take the free layup and then play solid defense on the other end and you blow this team out 150-39.
• reclegend22

  

  sleeper;1538018 wrote:If this is the case, why don't D1 team do this? The offense is a gimmick and only works against crappy opponents who they could beat with a conventional offense as well. Just take the free layup and then play solid defense on the other end and you blow this team out 150-39.

  I agree with all of this.
  
  When I said that Grinnell is almost impossible to stop, I was speaking about their style of play. Aside from standing at half-court and playing keep away all game long and not shooting until the shot clock is at zero, there is no way to slow Grinnell down because, as you said, their system is a gimmick and they will give the opposition free lanes to the basket if a steal is not made in the initial six or seven seconds of the opponent's offensive possession. Just so they can get the ball right back and score quickly.
  
  If Grinnell makes 50 threes in a game, however, which they do on occasion, that's when they win.
• dlazz

  I think they get away with it in DIII because DIII competition is garbage. That team in the video above looked completely helpless. They blew 3-4 uncontested layups in the first few minutes.
  
  in DI those would be uncontested dunks.
  
  Why that method wouldn't work in high school is beyond me. I could see it being very effective.
• birddog23

  dlazz;1538092 wrote:I think they get away with it in DIII because DIII competition is garbage. That team in the video above looked completely helpless. They blew 3-4 uncontested layups in the first few minutes.
  
  in DI those would be uncontested dunks.
  
  Why that method wouldn't work in high school is beyond me. I could see it being very effective.

  Keith Diebler and Upper Sandusky did it pretty well. Won a state championship, made it to a couple final fours. But he had some really good players (both his kids and Micheli). He's now at Genoa High School, they went 2-20 last year….
• reclegend22

  

  The opponent in that 138-point game video from above was Faith Baptist Bible School (enrollment 250) or something and is not even an officially sanctioned university. It's a basically a church league team.
  
  I first read about Grinnell back when I was in middle school (around 2001 or so) and I remember being really excited a couple of years later to hear that ESPN was going to broadcast one of the school's games. Guess they weren't ready for prime-time because they scored like 48 points and shot like 5-for-50 from three. It was the worst game I've ever watched by far.
• reclegend22

  

  birddog23;1538102 wrote:Keith Diebler and Upper Sandusky did it pretty well. Won a state championship, made it to a couple final fours. But he had some really good players (both his kids and Micheli). He's now at Genoa High School, they went 2-20 last year….

  That's the big difference. Keith had two state player of the year quality players anchoring those teams, one of which was arguably the greatest scorer in Ohio high school basketball history and later one of the Big Ten's all-time best shooters.
  
  Keith also employed this same kind of run-and-gun offense at Gibsonburg years earlier, when his eldest son Jeremiah was playing for him, and had great success, reaching the regionals one year. The difference, however, was that Keith's attack wasn't so concerned with scoring that it would openly give the opposing team free points just to get the ball back. His teams played a gambling 2-2-1 or 1-3-1 full-court press, but when they had the horses, it was a legitimately effective defense.
• sleeper

  

  dlazz;1538092 wrote:I think they get away with it in DIII because DIII competition is garbage. That team in the video above looked completely helpless. They blew 3-4 uncontested layups in the first few minutes.
  
  in DI those would be uncontested dunks.
  
  Why that method wouldn't work in high school is beyond me. I could see it being very effective.

  Exactly. The other team in that video is hapless as shit and would be lucky to beat a 6th grade girls team. Honestly the record game needs to be ignored as having anything to do with the NCAA as its an absolute joke.
• Ironman92

  

  Bevo lives on then. Lol
• Midstate01

  

  birddog23;1538102 wrote:Keith Diebler and Upper Sandusky did it pretty well. Won a state championship, made it to a couple final fours. But he had some really good players (both his kids and Micheli). He's now at Genoa High School, they went 2-20 last year….

  This is exactly what I was gonna refer to. They basically did the same thing. They pressed, and if you broke it, you got a layup. But US was gonna make a bunch of 3s and your 2s couldn't keep up.
• se-alum

  

  Midstate01;1538562 wrote:This is exactly what I was gonna refer to. They basically did the same thing. They pressed, and if you broke it, you got a layup. But US was gonna make a bunch of 3s and your 2s couldn't keep up.

  That Upper Sandusky team would beat Grinnell by 50 points. At least. Jack Taylor was the only kid on the court that could actually dribble a basketball at a fairly high level.
• Classyposter58

  

  birddog23;1538102 wrote:Keith Diebler and Upper Sandusky did it pretty well. Won a state championship, made it to a couple final fours. But he had some really good players (both his kids and Micheli). He's now at Genoa High School, they went 2-20 last year….

  Yeah he's gotta get the athletes out and developing. Once the football program became really good most of the top athletes began more focused on working out for football than the upcoming basketball season. That team last year was essentially a JV team but they'll be back
• robj55

  

  dlazz;1537984 wrote:It's going to be hard to do that. They full court press the entire time and double team the guy with the ball.
  
  I kinda want to see a game of theirs just to see what it's like.

  No press is unbreakable, I saw Chris Quinn break Brookhaven's vaunted press by his self years ago. Space the floor and handle the ball/move it and keep it out of the corners and you can beat it.
• Laley23

  

  You can beat a press easily. But can you beat a press and not start playing jow the pressing team wants???
• reclegend22

  

  Laley23;1538908 wrote:You can beat a press easily. But can you beat a press and not start playing jow the pressing team wants???

  Exactly. That's why most of the teams that beat Grinnell (or Upper Sandusky in the post-Jake and Jon years) win by scores of 130 to 100 or 115 to 98 or whatever. If Grinnell is not hitting its threes and the trade two-for-three philosophy has failed, then you will probably win, but you will do it playing their game. It's why Grinnell has led all NCAA divisions in scoring for like 18 of the last 20 years (averaging as much as 125 points a game some years). Due to their frenetic press and rule of shooting within five seconds of obtaining possession of the ball, they decide the style of play before the game even starts.
  
  That's what I was arguing above. If Grinnell is determined to run their system, then in order to win more times than not the other team will have to do so by playing along and beating the press all game long. But it's almost impossible to stop their pace.
• robj55

  

  Laley23;1538908 wrote:You can beat a press easily. But can you beat a press and not start playing jow the pressing team wants???

  Yes, it's called discipline.
• Laley23

  

  robj55;1539346 wrote:Yes, it's called discipline.

  lol ok.
  
  You have clearly not watched Grinnel play. They dont give a fuck if they win or lose. They just want to score 3s. Why the hell would you break a press and not take a lay-up? Hold it for 30 seconds and then take the lay-up? What does that do?? Nothing. Cause Grinnel will still be back down the other way and jack another 3 in 7 seconds.
  
  Its simple. No matter how you play on offense wont mean shit. If Grinnell makes their shots, they win. If they miss, they lose.
• robj55

  

  Laley23;1539359 wrote:lol ok.
  
  You have clearly not watched Grinnel play. They dont give a fuck if they win or lose. They just want to score 3s. Why the hell would you break a press and not take a lay-up? Hold it for 30 seconds and then take the lay-up? What does that do?? Nothing. Cause Grinnel will still be back down the other way and jack another 3 in 7 seconds.
  
  Its simple. No matter how you play on offense wont mean shit. If Grinnell makes their shots, they win. If they miss, they lose.

  That takes them out of what they want to do and forces them to play at your tempo, like you said, they want you to take the lay up. Marietta played like this a few years ago, not sure if they still do. If you limit their possessions then they get less shots, simple. Sure it would be fun to play in an uptempo style like that, something you would never forget.