HOF Insights: Choosing a System & Then How Much Do You Change It Over Time?

This Week’s Question-  Why did you choose the offensive or defensive systems that you used? Players change from year to year, how did changes in players impact your system? Did you stick with your system or did you make changes to your system? And finally, in the years you coached, how much did your system change thru the years? 

Greg King- Sterling

1.  When I was the HC, I ran the Wing T.  I played at Augustana under legendary coach Bob Reade.  Coach Reade put both Augustana College and Geneseo High School on the map.  He won 3 state titles at Geneseo and 4 straight NCAA Division III National Championships at Augie.  The offense was a combination of the Delaware Wing T and the Forest Evashevski Wing T from Iowa.  The offense was dictated on 11 people doing their job.  You did not need a superstar in a certain position like quarterback or running back to be successful. It relied on deception, where everything looked the same.  When I became a HC I knew I wanted to run the offense.  I left after 1 year as a head coach at a small school, to become an assistant at Rock Island with another Hall of Fame Coach, Vic Boblett.  We ran that system at Rock Island much like we did at Augie.  When I left after 11 years and came to Sterling, we implemented pretty much everything we did at RI.  I would hear little things like, why are we running Geneseo’s offense?  It will never work here.   Well…they had beat Sterling 8 times in a row I believe, so I might have said something in retort…better off for another time.  

2.  We did change things over the years.  I think you have to have a base set of principles that should not change, but you need to tweak things, by adding to or deleting certain things based on personnel.  One year we added the jet and rocket sweeps to our system.  Our OL coming back was not the most physical up front.  This was a way to hit the outside quick and not have to worry about getting a big push up front.  We added triple option to our offensive system to take advantage of what the defense was giving us.  One year we scrapped the triple option altogether, because our QB could not handle it.  Probably one of the biggest changes I made, was to run our offense from the gun.  I worked the Shrine all start game with the all time wins leader in IL, Ken Leonard.  We sat and he convinced me to try it.  We were highly successful with it.  It expanded our offensive capabilities tremendously.  I think it is important to have your philosophies that do not change, but can be tweaked because of personnel or opponents scheme.  Over the years, I have seen too many programs, change things week to week.  Needless to say, they might not have been the most successful programs in the state.

Mike Cooper- Ottawa

When I first started coaching I watched as many successful programs as I could to see what programs were doing to be successful. I also looked very carefully at the things others did to us that we struggled with. 

I wanted to be up tempo and press all the time so I taught everyone in the program how to deny the inbounds on both makes and misses. We tried to make it fun by stressing steals and 5 second counts. When we got a 5 second count everyone on the bench went crazy! 

We also sold the kids on the fact that scoring points is more fun than walking the ball up the court. Our defense was our best offense. 

Offensively if we didn't get points on transition I would develop an offense to fit the kids in our program.  Over the years we had alot of good 3 point shooters so we had a lot of set plays for our shooters. I lived by the set play because I wanted to control what we were doing on offense. A lot of our plays were sets that other schools ran and I thought were hard to depend. 

No matter what you do you need to research it and make sure you are able to teach it at a high level! 

Evan Massey- Galesburg

It is the classic question in college coaching classes- do you run a system and make the players fit into it, or do you change the system to fit the players. When I was in college, I was adamant that you change the system to fit the players. Now after 50 years of coaching, I am adamant that you find a system you believe in and fit the players into the system. 

We tried to fastbreak, and if we couldn’t, we ran set plays. We had 5 plays that were to be taught at every level of our program over the last 30 years. I added a 6th in the 2000’s. My thinking:

— The plays were a way to get the lower level coaches to teach basic basketball skills. They were simple involving- middle ball screen, side ball screen, cross screening, screen the screener, back screen, and flex. 

— College players and high school players could serve as summer coaches and they always knew what we were running. 

— By the time players got to the varsity, they had run these simple things for 8 years. They were not “plays” for the older kids, to them it became how they thought basketball should be played. 

— Rarely did a senior not create a counter or variation to one of these plays. They got so comfortable that they saw other options. Our all-state guard in the ‘90’s, Molly Watson had run our middle ball screen so many times by the time she was a senior, she knew exactly what she was looking to read and the ways she could break it off. While she was VERY good, I doubt she would have had the same creativity if she was just running that action for the first time. 

— It was as the coach to create options off the basic plays to take advantage of individual players each year. Amanda Gunther was an undersized, quick post who was always guarded by bigger, slower posts- we found a spot in a basic play where we could clear a side for her to drive. Megan Pacheco was a physical, 5’9”, all-state guard- for her we took our basic flex action and turned into a post up for her. 

I listened to an interview with Bill Self of Kansas this past year. He talked about a frustration of the transfer portal is that you don’t get a chance to allow players to develop. He pointed out in the past, many times some of the talented freshmen he had recruited had not learned the nuisances of his hi-lo offense, it took a couple years. Now it is tough because it is tough to develop. 

I feel strongly that coaches don’t realize how long it takes to develop a new offense, there is a value in the building and repetition in a program. 

Everyone who played in our program knew the basics. I had a guard who graduated in 1990 watch us play in 2024. After the game, she made the comment, “On #4 play, why doesn’t the guard look to refuse that screen more.” 

Bob Anderson- Williamsfield

Anyone who knows me and coached against me would know that we played alot of combination defense from the start of my career and all the way thru until the end. I always wanted to make your third, forth or fifth player beat us and not let your best couple of scorers have good looks against us. Sure it didn't work all the time, but we did win alot of games with it. Some of my teams were better than others at than others. It is just like any other defense you would play. It is amazing the things I learned about those defenses as time went on. 

Offensively I always believed in pushing the ball down the floor asap. I really felt that by making our opponent hustle back on defense all the time that we put some very good pressure on them on a full court basis. We wanted them to have to play the full court on both offense and defense. 

Offensively we used alot of motion type offense because i thought that was something we could set up to take advantage of the good shooters we had. Also like alot of us coaches, we ran some sets to get our better shooters some additional good looks. 

One thing I want to share with all coaches is that during the covid seaon we were young and not very good. On the offensive end we wanted to be a little more deliberate that year so we came up with this rule. If we don't have a layup we wanted to get the ball in the lane before we shot it. I’m telling you, when we got that ball in the lane we got great shots. We used that rule the rest of the years that I coached. Give that some thought, it was great for us. 

I'll tell you, if I could live my life again, I would love to coach basketball again. I loved sitting on that bench trying to out think the guy at the other end. That was fun.

Two defenses I would rethink about using more would be the 1-2-2 zone and most of all the switching man- to- man. I think you can do alot of things with the switching man defense. 

Offensively, I would like to run some flex offense vs the man defense. I like that offense and I think with patience it can be pretty good.

Jeff Parsons- Wethersfield

Our offense was made up of transition and sets. We wanted to create fast break opportunities if we could. Our motto was Defend, Rebound and Run. I wanted to know where the shot was coming from because we felt like we could rebound it better and get more second and third chances being in a better offensive rebounding position. We also ran a lot of ball screen motion because we felt the ball screen was the most difficult to guard and wanted to get our guards going downhill to create other shot opportunities for our other plays as well. Our best players shot the ball the most. We as coaches must teach them what a good shot and a bad shot is depending on the situation. With that being said, never squelch a shooter, if you do, they will have that in the back of their mind the next time and beyond everytime they shoot the basketball.

We mixed defenses constantly. We played man to man, zone to gimmick. I never wanted our opponent to feel comfortable in half court offense. We felt the more comfortable the offense, the better shots they will get at a higher percentage. We would love to get out and pressure if our players were skilled at that level. We also ran zones, but it was a more active zone putting pressure on the ball. We were always about defensive shot percentage. We also emphasized contested shots vs uncontested shots. All shots were expected to be contested. We ran 1 front zone, 2 front zone and 3 front zone depending on the strengths of the other team.

The bottom line for our offensive and defense we would run, was what was most beneficial for our teams to be successful.  We would always do what we needed to do to win and put our players in a position to win. Putting your players in a position to be successful is more important than a system that never changes. Sometimes, you are trying to put a round peg in a square hole and that will not promote success. Our system stayed consistent throughout all our years, but winning did as well. If you find something that works for you and your team, why change it?  Coaches need to adapt to their players strengths, not have their players adapt to their system.