Top 10 Plays (HV Weekly: 8/16/2020)
Horns, Iverson, Wheel, and more.
Welcome back to the Hoop Vision Weekly!
Today’s edition is a little lighter than usual. Over the past several days at HV headquarters, we have been preparing for an upcoming deep dive on a particularly interesting team/coach — one that we haven't covered in the past. That was originally planned for today’s newsletter, but we pushed it back to give it the time and attention it deserves.
In today’s edition:
A new video on the 10 most common actions and sets in the country
A roundup of content from around the internet this week
A vague tease at next week’s defensive analysis
The Plays “Everybody” Uses
Over at the YouTube channel, we put out a brand new video this week. The 15-minute voiceover breakdown details the most common plays, actions, and formations used by NCAA teams around the country.
The video is broken up into 10 different sections and includes a combination of: History behind the plays, the best teams at using them, and counters used by different teams and coaches.
For those of you that have been following along for the past two years on Twitter, you might recognize some familiar clips — like the Calipari lob set or baseline out of bounds flex action.
Topics and Timestamps:
Corner Rip (0:37)
Spain Ball Screen (1:51)
Iverson Cut (3:20)
Wheel Action (4:56)
Flex BLOB (7:19)
Zoom Action (8:22)
Overload Pin (9:36)
Horns (10:45)
Split Action (12:13)
Continuity Ball Screen (13:31)
More from this week
I went on the Feel for the Game podcast with Jeremy Rauch on Tuesday. We discussed the history and growth of Hoop Vision and some general basketball philosophy.
Gibson Pyper proved once again that he is a robot. Just this morning, he published a nearly two-hour NBA playoff preview covering all 16 teams. The video includes detailed timestamps if you’d like to skip around.
Rob Dauster started a new Substack newsletter called The Rebound. I’ve already subscribed and would urge college basketball fans to give it a look. Rob’s YouTube channel is also a great mix of reporting, X's and O's, and draft prospect evaluation.
And one more reminder… The Watch BALL SCREENS Smarter video is available for purchase at the Hoop Vision Store.
Coming next week
Most of the Hoop Vision focus over the past two months has been on the offensive side of the ball — culminating in this week’s video on the top plays in the country. Next week we’re shifting gears to the defensive side of things.
In the past, we have done extensive work on three main types of man-to-man defenses: No-Middle, Pack Line, and Help-Only-When-Necessary. Our spring video — Should You Help One Pass Away On Defense? — compared all three of the styles to one another.
But there’s a (very successful) team and coach we haven’t talked about, who combine elements of all three schemes in a particularly interesting way. We won’t spoil the surprise quite yet, but we have plenty coming in the near future on the scheme.