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What Would You Do?

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Hello All,

I don't really have a question necessarily. I was just sitting around thinking about something and I wanted to see what your input would be.

I am asking this just to see what kind of varying opinions, ideas, and/or strategies concerning this. Thought it would be interesting so here goes:

You are coaching and it is late in the ball game. The score is back and forth. With five seconds left to go the other team scores to put them up by one.

Because there is so much time you know that they do not want to give you an easy look at the basket, so they opt to set up in a full-court man/denial press. You have to get the ball the length of the court, and need a very good shot. What do you do?

Tim,

www.simply-youth-basketball.com

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While I'm not a basketball coach (yet), I'll throw out what I would do. I would recruit Grant Hill and Christian Laettner and instruct them to do their thing.;-)

Actually, much would depend if the team was in the bonus and how many time-outs I had. Assuming the other team is NOT in the bonus and I had no time outs---I would inbound to my best dribbler, hope that he can get to half court with 3 seconds left and pass to my best shooter for the shot somewhere in the high post. Assuming that he can't get the ball to my best shooter I'd have the player simply get to the top of the key and take the best shot he could.

Did I pass? ;-)

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By the way you DO have time outs remaining. Sorry about that, I should have specified. Good answer Johnp2! Anyone else?

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Depending on the rules... In European (FIBA) basketball at any time out in the last two minutes of the game the ball gets moved forward to the three point line extended on the attacking side of the court.

In that situation I'd run my back door play.

Point guard/shooter at the top of the key. Best screener at the foul line. Shooter at the ball side low block, post player at the weak side low block.

Shooter runs screaming and shouting to the ball side corner, post player runs across the key, and posts up wide of the low block (to leave space in the key).

At the same time the point guard/shooter cuts towards the ball, high at the center line, screaming for the ball. But he then gets a back screen from the player at the high post who comes out to nail the defender. The point guard now speeds right at the rim where he gets a lob pass.

If the lob pass isn't open the player setting the back screen gets the ball then drives hard down the lane looking for a layup, a dump-off to the post, or to hit the point guard who has relocated to the weakside corner.

The play works - only on Sunday we got the wide open lob, the player caught the ball, then missed the layup. We lost by 2...

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You said "time outs", so if I had two time outs, I'd use one and set up a situation to get a pass to half court. I would call another time out and set up another situation to work with a half court offense to get off one last shot.

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I'll give two answers, one that I tried last year as Dad/Coach, and one that the coach of my son's select league (9-year olds) just tried. The parameters are a bit different than what you have in the original post though.

As Dad/Coach, on my son's Y team last year, there is no full court pressure. Defense has to push back to below the half-court line. End of the first half with 3 seconds left. Our kid in-bounds it from the base line by literally rolling it to our best shooter on the half court line. He picks up the ball, turns and shoots a half-court shot and banks it off the backboard. No good. Now the downside. At the end of the game, the score was tied. 3 seconds left. The other team had the ball and the opposing coach copied my rolling the ball strategy. But, his 9-year-old made the half-court shot!!

Next example: A couple of weeks ago, my son's select team was behind by 1-point in a 2-min OT with 1.8 seconds to go. They called time and drew up a play. Full court pressure by the defense. While the play didn't work, it was a good idea. They were supposed to inbound it, then the dribbler was supposed to head straight to a defender, grab his arm (i.e., get tangled with him), and hope for a foul call. Good idea, but the kid who got the inbound pass didn't execute.

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A few years ago I was coaching a group of 5th & 6th graders, kids from my neighborhood I'd known most of their lives, and we had something like this happen.

They hit the shot to take a 1 point lead with 6.1 seconds left. With two timeouts left, I called one. We knew the coach of the other team would go full-court, so I wrote up a double pass play. I'd have the inbounder pass it to a player cutting across the court by the foul line, who would then pass it to a teammate up the sideline. When we broke our 'huddle' I told the official that I'd be calling timeout as soon as it crossed half-court. The play worked, and we called timeout with 3.9 seconds left, which I thought was great.

We ran a play but as soon as the player caught the ball he was fouled. It was their first foul of the last two minutes, so no penalty, just the ball under the hoop with 2.8 seconds. Thankfully the players executed properly to get off a good shot. It missed, but the shooter was fouled, hit the second of the two shots and we walked away with a tie. (No OT in that league until playoffs.)

Point is - if you have two timeouts and players who'll execute you can set up one play to cross half-court and then another to win the game. Full court pressure doesn't help, but honestly when I'm in that situation as the coach on defense I only have 1 or 2 players playing full court; my other 3-4 are back, defending the basket. I only have those boys up there to slow down a speed dribble, I'm more concerned with the area that's in shooting range.

There are my thoughts, hope you like them.

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