The Importance of Being Different

When determining what kind of offense and defense to install, it’s important to implement things that are not often seen by your opponents.

A previous head coach that I worked for preached this constantly. The league that we were in was extremely athletic and if it was a track meet, we probably would not have one a single event. However, we slowed the pace and ran a Princeton style offense and mixed it up defensively in order to keep our opponents off-balance. I often heard him say that we were an “off-speed” team in a “fastball” league.

At BSC, we try to play very fast. Faster than anyone else in our league. We try and score in the first 10 seconds if at all possible. We pick up full court for the entire game, and play almost exclusively man to man. We do this because we feel like we have at least 10 guys who can play significant minutes and we play them accordingly. We feel that because of our breakneck pace and subbing players freely that we can wear down other teams “regular” rotation of 7-9 guys.

This has worked for our program for quite some time now. So to use my former coach’s terminology, we try to be a “fastball” team in an “off-speed” league. With that being said, we also try and execute in the half court as well in case we have trouble dictating the pace of the game.

When determining your philosophies, both offensively and defensively, I think it’s very important to try and be different than most of your opponents. By doing this, you make your opponents prep for your team much more difficult than if you were to do something similar to other opponents.

These decisions should be made by looking at your team’s strengths and weaknesses and how these things match up with your opponents. What do you have that they don’t? Whatever your answer might be, try and find something that fits well.

In my opinion, this should be one of the first things to figure out when determining what your plans are for your team.