The Corner Step-Up
There's a new ball screen continuity in town and it involves the step-up.
Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.
Back in September, I tweeted a video that detailed Marquette’s use of the corner step-up screen within their offense.
The corner step-up screen is when a player — usually a guard — in the corner runs up to set a screen on the ball at around the wing or slot area. Here’s an example of Marquette using the action in their game last week against Butler.
Instead of setting a hard screen, #11 Tyler Kolek chooses to ghost the step-up. That ghost creates some indecision on Butler’s part and gives #1 Kam Jones a wide open lane to the basket.
However, Marquette wasn’t the main team that caught my eye for using the corner step-up this past week. I actually noticed two teams that were using the action even more than the Golden Eagles: Texas A&M and Houston.
First, let’s take a look at the opening tip-off from Texas A&M’s win over Kentucky. Notice what action Texas A&M gets into right away.
With #4 Wade Taylor handling the ball, #2 Hayden Hefner sets the corner step-up screen and ghosts it just like we saw from Marquette. Taylor gets cut off around the block area, but then the Aggies flow right into an empty ball screen with #10 Wildens Leveque.
Now let’s take a look at a clip from early in Houston’s game from Saturday — a one-point loss to TCU.
This time it’s #1 Jamal Shead setting the corner step-up screen. TCU miscommunicates the switch, so #4 LJ Cryer (Houston’s best shooter) gets a wide open look from three.
All three clips we’ve seen so far are examples of the corner step-up being used to start a possession — kind of like Pistol action.
But Texas A&M and Houston were using the corner step-up for much more than just early offense. Both Buzz Williams and Kelvin Sampson were running an offense that I personally haven’t seen before. My name for it is “Continuity Step-Up” because — similar to a patterned offense like “Continuity Ball Screen” — it features a patterned offense revolving around repeated step-up screens.
That Continuity Step-Up offense is the topic of today’s newsletter.