Bob Seggerson: Coaching 101: Focusing on defense

It was no secret I considered the defensive end of the court to be most valuable during my coaching career. When the season began, I made it clear to my players if they expected to get playing time they had to defend. Even the most gifted offensive players found their playing time severely limited if they had a habit of letting their man score when the game traveled to the other end of the court. My emphasis on defense actually happened by accident.

In my first year as head coach, the 1978-79 basketball season, I was forced to wait an extra week to begin practice because almost every one of our players was involved with football. When they finally reported to practice, I realized scoring was going to be at a minimum because my players had not touched a basketball in several months. We had trouble scoring even when I took the defenders off the court. The solution was pretty simple to me. If we had a problem scoring, then we had to make it even more difficult for our opponents to put the ball in the basket.

My predecessor and friend, Jim Carder, gave me two Bobby Knight instructional tapes when he stepped down as head coach. One was on Knight’s passing game offense and the other one was on his philosophy of defense. The offensive tape didn’t intrigue me, but Knight’s tape on defense captured my imagination and his rules and philosophy became the cornerstone of our defense for the next 32 years.

In our first practice each season, I stuck a roll of athletic tape down the middle of the basketball floor from the baseline past the top of the key. I informed my players that each side of that tape had rules depending on where the ball was located at any particular time. If the ball was on your side of the floor, the rules were simple: Pressure the ball and deny the pass. If the ball was on the opposite side of the floor, I wanted my players to move to the tape and be in position to help their teammates. The concept of “help” became the critical element of our defensive philosophy. We tried to make rules that would cover every possible offensive maneuver that we encountered. I wanted to create a clear set of rules that would apply at all times and that our players would execute without thinking.

Making those rules second nature to our players required a commitment of time in practice every night. The basketball court is an extension of the classroom and coaches have to teach. Just talking about defense is not enough. As a coach I committed time and effort to teaching our players those rules and then reinforced them with drills that emphasized the point. Players learned quickly that the most important factor in playing defense was simply the value of hard work.

Selling defense to a group of adolescents in this day and age is no easy task. The glamour of the game is on the other end of the court. ESPN basketball highlights rarely feature an outstanding defensive play. They are reserved for aerial acrobatic dunks or ankle breaking moves that bring the fans to their feet. I wanted my team to be sold on the value of defense so I continued to sell the message to them every night and every opportunity that I could find. In my mind it’s an easy sell.

Look at every sport and then go the championship finals. It can be NCAA basketball or football, NBA basketball, NFL football or any high school state championship. In virtually every sport, at every level, when you get to the final four you will find teams that got there using all kinds of different offensive systems. But the one thing all those teams will have in common is that they defend at a very high level and any exception to that is rare.

Want to see some great defenses? Watch the OHSAA basketball state tournament games. It’s there. NBA? Three of the last four teams in the playoffs last year were ranked in the top six defensively. In the NFL this season, New Orleans and Green Bay spent the entire regular season putting up ridiculous offensive numbers. But both lost in the first game of the playoffs to teams that bank on defense. Do you think the SEC has dominated the national championships in college football over the last decade because of their high octane offenses? Think again. They have dominated because they consistently shut down their opponents.

There is an excellent rule of thumb in the game of basketball. All great games come down to the ability to score in the half court and the ability to defend in the half court. That was the scenario we were faced with in the closing seconds of the last game I ever coached. In the state championship game two seasons ago our opponent, Orville, had the ball out of bounds and needed a 3-point shot to tie the game. We needed to stop it.

As the ball was in-bounded, Orville set up a play to get the basketball to Joey Bescanson, their leading scorer that day. He was guarded by Austin Stolly, an excellent defender.

As Joey dribbled the ball behind the first pick looking for a shot, Stolly did not take the shortcut under the pick, which would have given Bescanson the room he needed. Instead, Austin fought his way over the block, just as he rehearsed so many times during practices that season. Stolly handed Bescanson off to his teammate, Desi Kirkman, who stepped up behind the pick and forced the shooter further away from the basket.

Now Desi was guarding Bescanson as he dribbled for a second pick at the top of the key desperately looking for room to launch his shot. With the clock ticking off its final seconds and the crowd roaring at a fever pitch, Bescanson dribbled toward the final pick.

Kirkman fought over that pick and now Bubba Krieg stepped up and “jumped the pick,” a maneuver we practiced over and over during his career. Krieg’s move forced Bescanson to pick up his dribble and pass the ball to his teammate Zach Wasson, a post player who had only taken a handful of 3-point shots during the season. Wasson’s shot missed the mark and as the horn sounded to end the game, bedlam ensued, on and off the court.

A lot of people have asked me what was going through my mind in those closing seconds of that state championship game. I can tell you I was admiring the way my guys were playing defense. It was textbook. They were proving an age old adage: Defense wins championships.

(Contact Bob Seggerson by email to bseggerson@lcchs.edu)