Switching It Up (Hoop Vision Weekly: 12/18/20)
It's really okay to switch out of convenience. Texas Tech and Kansas do it all the time.
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In today’s edition:
The defensive battle between Kansas and Texas Tech
Why I think defensive switching has been held to unfairly high standards by past coaches
Bill Self’s game-winning baseline out of bounds play
West Virginia-Richmond YouTube video breakdown
40 minutes of switching
When thinking about the most extreme schematic changes in basketball over the past decade, offense likely comes to mind first: Increased three-point volume, 5-out spacing, and small-ball.
Thursday’s matchup between Kansas and Texas Tech featured all of those elements. During certain stretches of the game, there were 10 guards on the court at the same time.
But it was actually the defensive side of the ball that was on full display — Kansas scored 0.91 points per possession and Texas Tech scored 0.89.
Even without prototypical 7-foot rim protectors (like Udoka Azubuike or Tariq Owens in the past), Kansas and Texas Tech are both top 10 in adjusted defensive efficiency.
Last night we saw a major reason why: Switching.
A branding problem
For better or worse, switching has traditionally been viewed by many coaches as the “easy way out.”
Here’s one of the earliest tweets — by long-time NBA assistant (and NCAA head) coach Kevin Eastman — I could find on the topic from all the way back in 2009.
“Switching out of convenience” — that is what has long been considered a no-no in coaching circles.
To be fair, there are several potential problems with switching. First and foremost, it obviously takes defenders away from their individual assignments. In a perfect world, a defense would prefer to have its best defender guarding the opponent’s best player.
But perhaps the biggest reason for the anti-switch philosophy was the idea that it might promote laziness on defense. According to some, switching is seen as a crutch.
Texas Tech has almost single-handedly obliterated that narrative.
“Lazy” is the last word I would use to describe Texas Tech’s defense. (After all, announcers constantly rave about Chris Beard’s culture of toughness and effort.)
Yet the Red Raiders have switched nearly every screen — whether out of necessity or out of convenience — for three straight seasons.
Proactive versus reactive
In the past, switching was generally viewed as a reactive strategy — acting in response to a situation rather than creating or controlling it.
That’s where the branding problem began. Switching was seen as a loss of control.
On the other end of the spectrum, helping has generally been viewed as a proactive strategy — proactively gaining control over the offense.
Let’s go back to Kevin Eastman’s tweet and replace the word “Switch” with the word “Help”.
Helping on defense thought: Help out of necessity not out of convenience or ease!
You almost never hear coaches opine that reliance on help makes a defense lazy. Instead of being viewed as a crutch for the on-ball defender to fall back on, help is viewed as a positive — and selfless — strategy.
So despite having fairly similar overall goals (stalling the offense), helping and switching are often branded very different from each other.
(We are now, however, seeing some defenses only help when necessary. It’s still not very popular in the college game, but Michigan and Luke Yaklich certainly had a lot of success with it.)
Switching technique
The beauty of switching is in its simplicity. Compared to a complicated coverage that involves communication and execution from all five defensive players, switching is (theoretically) quick and easy.
Still, that’s not to say there aren’t legitimate problems that arise from switching out of convenience.
Here’s an example from Kansas and Texas Tech that would (rightfully) upset Kevin Eastman.
#0 Marcus Garrett comes down and sets a very innocent screen for #10 Jalen Wilson. #25 Nimari Burnett tries to tell (and even shoves) #2 Jamarius Burton to switch out onto Wilson, but Texas Tech’s communication is too late.
The technique many coaches teach to avoid these situations is to “come together” on switches — talk, touch, take. In other words, don’t just point out the switch.
“Talk, touch, take” is great in theory (and has great alliteration!), but it’s not always practical — especially against motion-based offenses with false movement.
For the majority of Thursday night’s game, Kansas and Texas Tech simply pointed out their switches — and it worked.
In the screenshot above, Garrett and Braun are (supposedly) committing the cardinal sin of switch defense. And to be fair, that pointing (instead of “talk, touch, take”) does open up an opportunity for Texas Tech’s Mac McClung to slip to the basket — right across Braun’s face.
But now let’s see the full clip…
As it turns out, Kansas is fronting Marcus Santos-Silva in the post. That means Christian Braun has to provide help on the post while also communicating the switch. (Baylor is extremely good at doing both tasks at once.)
By choosing to not come together on the switch, Braun is actually able to stay in better help position.
As always, team defense is a game of prioritizing what to take away and what to tolerate. If the goal is to never to give up a slip to the basket, the defense should come together (“talk, touch, take”) on every single switch — or just not switch at all in the first place.
But the goal isn’t to never give up a slip, it’s to minimize the expected value of a possession. (It’s in some ways analogous to the “If You’ve Never Missed a Flight, You’re Probably Wasting Your Time” idea.)
Switching simplifies so many aspects of help and off-ball defense. It’s a strategy that is more about what doesn’t happen than what does happen.
Bill Self strikes again
Kansas escaped with the 58-57 win in Lubbock thanks to a familiar out of bounds play.
As Jesse Newell pointed out, Kansas actually ran the play in the first half — and the Texas Tech coaching staff was well-prepared.
At the end of the game, the play actually wasn’t Self’s first choice. During a timeout, Self drew up a different play that led to a Texas Tech foul. But Kansas wasn’t in the bonus and didn’t have any timeouts left, so Self called out the new play on the fly. Despite some initial confusion from Jalen Wilson, Ochai Agbaji (with a nice pass from Marcus Garrett) made it work.
Over at The Athletic, CJ Moore wrote about the play — including quotes from Self.
West Virginia shuts down Richmond
This week, our Starting Five newsletter focused on West Virginia’s dominant win over Richmond. More specifically, how WVU stayed aggressive with pressure and denials against Richmond’s Princeton offense.
We also released a short voiceover video on the Hoop Vision YouTube channel.