Countering Switches
A new way to attack switches, Dayton step-up screens, Oso Ighodaro’s versatility, and Northwestern off-ball action.
Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.
Somehow, this is already our last newsletter of February. At this time next week, we’ll be into the month of March.
We have added a lot of new subscribers over the past couple weeks. So before getting into today’s content, I want to highlight a few of our best newsletters from earlier this season that you may have missed.
The Ball Screen Coverage Spectrum — a statistical breakdown of the the most aggressive and passive ball screen defenses in the country
The Corner Step-Up — an X’s and O’s breakdown of a new ball screen continuity being run by Houston and Texas A&M this season
Twirl Action — an X’s and O’s breakdown of how coaches uses “twirl” in conjunction with other actions to create misdirection
Now on to today’s newsletter…
In this edition, we bounce around several different topics and observations from the past weekend of games. Those topics are listed below.
Countering Switches — a concept used by BYU and Duke to take advantage of switching defenses
More Corner Step-Up Screens — how Dayton is using similar action to Houston and Texas A&M in their half court offense
Oso Ighodaro’s Versatility — the Marquette big man is one of the few ball screen setters in the country that also receives ball screens as the handler
Northwestern Off-Ball Screens — a screening action used by Northwestern after the ball goes into the post
Countering Switches
One of the questions I consistently get asked by coaches in emails and Twitter DMs is if I’ve seen any good ways to attack switching defenses lately.
Because of the nature of switches, it’s a tactic that is inherently tricky to attack with action. The whole point of switching — after all — is to eliminate action and force one-on-one play.
Some of the obvious suggestions against switches include: Screen your own man, boomerang pass, and hi-lo flash to feed the post mismatch.
However, there’s a different solution that I first noticed when studying BYU’s offense recently.