Twirl Action
How coaches use twirl in conjunction with other actions to create misdirection.
Welcome back to another edition of The Starting Five. To read last week’s version, you can click/tap here.
Before we get into today’s topic, I want to thank everyone for the support of Hoop Vision over the past few weeks. January has been one of the best months of subscriber growth in HV history. Your support of the newsletter is greatly appreciated!
Also, we have a new feature I want to bring to your attention.
In the past, one of the issues with Substack has been that it’s fairly tedious to scroll through the archive of past newsletters. Over the weekend, I attempted to make that process a little bit easier.
If you go to the Substack homepage (hoopvision.substack.com), there are now tabs at the top of the page that allow you to view past newsletters by category:
Only the best newsletters have been included in those tabs, so I think it’s a good way for new subscribers to look up some of my older work.
Okay… now let’s get to today’s topic!
Twirl Action
Over the weekend, I was watching Dayton blow out Rhode Island on Saturday afternoon. Dayton is now 12th in the country in kenpom adjusted offensive efficiency and a particular set play they ran caught my eye.
That play is shown below.
The play starts with a slice screen into a stagger screen on the right side of the court, but then turns into another stagger screen on the left side of the court.
On that second stagger screen, #6 Enoch Cheeks twirls the stagger — setting a screen for #4 Koby Brea instead of using the screen himself.
Twirl action is when an off-ball player curls the first of two staggered screens.
It’s probably best understood by simply drawing it out. The diagram below of twirl action is borrowed from The Basketball Action Dictionary.
Dayton is far from the only team to use twirl action. It’s a common action for confusing the defense and generating misdirection.
So in today’s newsletter, we are looking at several different ways offenses use it. Including ways that coaches layer the twirl with subsequent actions to trick defenses.