basketballjones

Yes I've watched that and I've seen the 1-4 high playbook we have. "Coach Tim Miles shows the various alignments he uses in order to control his motion offense. The five alignments include 4-out/1-in, high post set, one and two-guard fronts, 3-out/2-in, and a five-out set. He also includes four drills he uses in order to teach motion. Coach Miles also discusses motion rules and the trademarks of his motion offense. Each alignment has various options and is demonstrated on-court and with game footage. Coach Miles emphasizes touching the post, shot selection, and crashing the offensive boards." We rely heavy on what (I believe) he calls his high-post sets and/or what I would call his 3 out 2 blockers (a bastardized version of mover and blocker with just ball screens). Typically our possession goes 1. High post set into 2. Ball-screen revolving pattern into 3. TP calling for a high ball screen to chuck up a prayer.

You did a really good job. Doc attributed his offense to Eddie Sutton. I will ask: You think Doc's offense was worse than what you've seen this year? When Nebraska scores this year, it's usually because Petteway went off or Shields had a matchup. Impossible question for me personally to answer, swmckewon. Doc's talent was so poor. Docs offense had much better spacing to the wings and corners, and was built to have much more action to the hoop off of screens. I will say, I think TP and SS would have a lot more success coming off of Doc's backside (2 man side) down screen. Make defenders decide how they're gonna guard that gives us a ton of option.The biggest issue in my opinion? Both are terrible at creating advantages and help situations right away in transition... That's a whole other post.

I think I spent too much time describing what motion isn't, next time I'll do more of what it is.

Guys, I decided to throw this together for you because I see a lot of misinformation and lack of understanding what a "motion" offense is. Hope no one finds this arrogant or thinks I am a "know it all." Just wanted to provide some insight and some information for the board, because I feel as if a few of you would enjoy this breakdown. Let's first learn what ISN'T a motion offense: Revolving Pattern Offenses Sometimes these can be hard to diagnose and catch onto, one, because if you do it right, you run them fast enough and with a solid enough pace that it just looks like good movement and good ball movement, and two, because with a shot clock and the 10,000 other sets teams have - a lot of the time teams don't flat-out get into their revolving pattern offense (I'll discuss this later). Every team has a revolving pattern offense installed one way or another. A revolving pattern offense is designed to give a coach an aspect of control, and players an aspect of familiarity. These are popular because it gives a great framework for coaches to plan practices around the types of shots they know they will get, the actions they will see, and points of emphasis to help develop players. Some examples.... : Flex - we should all know flex. Back-screen from the block, down-screen from the elbow, pop when you come off the back-screen if you don't get it, etc.... It keeps going and going and going. I personally love a lot of aspects of Flex. You will see cross-sreen/down-screen options on A LOT of teams play-books. It becomes flex (or some variation of it), when you find a way for it to continually revolve into the same motions and patterns. What we run - if you watch closely, the primary offense that we go to is a 3 out, 2 in offense (the 2 in is a formality), where the posts pop and get reversal passes to a 2 man wing side, the first wing will fake like they are coming off of a hand-off and go back door, while the next guy will come up and either get a hand off, or get the pass and receive a ball screen. Guy who cuts, cuts to the opposite corner, other post player pops on this action, then repeats to his side. Strengths - You know what shots you are going to get, and can typically be very effective in placing rebounders in statistically opportunistic positions. Some players tend to thrive in offenses like this where they are able to practice a specific shot they get out of their offense, whether it be off of a down-screen that is set every time, or something along that lines. You can really build your team and how you transition defensively and offensively off of how you run your pattern. Also, it can run clock until you either get the shot you want or until you have established your goal of slowing the game down and making it a possession ball game. Weaknesses - It breaks down and humans are not perfect robots. No coach or player is good enough to perfectly adapt to what the defense takes away every time and hit them with the perfect counter. Therefore it can be unreliable because of the timing and high level of execution it requires. Second, players get lazy and go through the motions. Notice how we rarely every get the back-cut on our offense anymore? We got that all the time last two years... Not to mention the other weakness of this, you are scouted easily. Opposing coaches get to game-plan to take away specific things you want to do. Thus, making it a constant trial and error, adjustment chess game. Continuity/Hybrid Offenses This is the middle ground between what is a pattern and what is motion. These offenses have a lot of guidelines, rules, and specific roles for players. The aspects and parts of these can be broken down and repped at practice very easily. A lot of teams offenses could be described in this way. Make this clear -- One could even argue what we run is more of a ball-screen continuity offense, which I would not totally disagree with. Some examples..... : Ball-Screen Continuity - LOTS of teams run this. Their bigs pop and swing the ball into ball screens just like we do. It has become the go-to of most NBA teams, and most college teams. Heck, I see it mostly everywhere in the high school level also. Ball-Screen continuity comes from a background of the triangle offense (I'll discuss), 2-game offense (I'll discuss that too), and spacing the floor aspects of the dribble drive and NBA principles. I love Ball-Screen Continuity, especially if you space the floor properly and are patient with the ball screens. That creates the spacing you need for the ball screen action, and long help-distances for 3pt shooters. If you have guys who can really manipulate ball-screens (we don't), athletic bigs who can catch and finish really well in a multitude of ways (we don't), and a good 3pt shooter or two (we don't), ball-screen continuity is a great offense to run in the half-court. 2-Game - I'm not sure who "invented" this or who was the first to run it, but Bill Self comes to mind when I think of 2-Game (or whatever you want to call it). You might remember 2-Game.... cough cough Doc Sadler cough cough. 2-Game is the ultimate hybrid offense. It has motion-style screens, ball screen-continuity, triangle offense concepts, and NBA style spacing. It allows for post-ups on triangle sides and 2-man sides. Problem is, when you do not have the dudes to make the reads and the counters, it's super easy to defend. Kansas looks so good in it, because he does not run it to get shots, he only runs it to get separation for his stud basketball players. When Doc was here, we ran it to get specific shots out of specific aspects of 2-Game. Which, in turn, basically made it a pattern. Did you ever go to a Doc Sadler practice? Our entire offensive practice was breaking down and trying to beat the motions and movements into our players. Failed miserably, in my opinion. Triangle - I love the triangle. Tex Winter, Phil Jackson - you've heard those names. The triangle is founded on spacing and getting post entries. It is the foundation for 2-game, and the foundation of a lot of NBA spacing and ball-screen continuity offenses. Triangle side with your best post, back-side 2-man game with your stud scorer and athletic post. Think Shaq sitting in the triangle, with Jordan or Kobe getting ready to get the ball on the cleared out side. However, NBA analytics are finding out pretty quickly that this is a pretty inefficient offense if you don't have Shaq, MJ, or Kobe (go figure?). Strengths - Not as easy to scout since it's more based on reads, guidelines, and spacing. Allows players to make plays and cuts, without "breaking down" the offense, as you would in a continuity. Weaknesses - If the coach wants too much control, these offenses just become patterns. See Doc, unfortunately. And, with every offense the book has, if you do not have the dudes that can fit these roles, well, duh, you know what happens. Have you made it this far? I'm sorry this has become so long-winded. Motion Offense Oh the beautiful game of basketball.... Unselfish players, moving the ball, screening for one another to get open. Players sweeping around screens, giving space for one another, placing the perfect pass into a cutter for a wide open lay-up, or looking off the cutter and hitting a slip screen... Ah, just beautiful. These things all developed from motion basketball. Basketball in it's simplest (yet hardest and most complex) form. No specific spots or patterns -- just rules, guidelines, spacing, and actions. Maybe some roles for players. Players playing to their strengths and what works best for them, and their teammates doing there's, hopefully all working together for the best result. Bobby Knight, Tony Bennett, Don Meyer, etc... Motion has a lot of forms, 3 Out - 2 in, dribble drive, 4 Out - 1 In, 5 Out, Princeton (kind of), Mover-Blocker (my favorite), read and react motion, etc... The primary and most simplest way to state what they are doing -- 5 players trying to figure out what the defense is trying to do, and doing the direct counter against it. Motion offenses can have people specifically designated to screen, some specifically designated to cut, some specifically designated to post or set ball-screens. Motion is free-lance that a coach can emphasize certain things he wants. Strengths - Can't scout what isn't planned. You can only hope to take a way a few actions that they try to do. For instance, if a kid is really good at coming off down-screens, you can only hope that you've drilled it enough in practice to teach a couple defenders how to get through down-screens effectively. Problem is, most of the time they do not know when they are coming, or if they are coming at all. Weaknesses - It gets stagnant. Sometimes motion just does not work, sometimes it just does not jive. Like a band who just is not feeling each other that night and are off a beat. Switching defenses can also give your team a lot of trouble because it forces cutters to have to pop a lot, instead of getting to the hoop because the pass is denied, and slips are hard to hit. It also results in a lot of teams settling for shots they do not necessarily want. Eventually as you do become scouted, they may learn you cannot shoot the 3, so teams start going under every screen, pack it in, and give you a 3pt shot hoping they play the percentages right. And, obviously, with everything - you gotta have smart dudes that can make plays. Sometimes you do not have them. --------------- What I haven't talked about yet (and this is important), and where it starts to get confusing for a lot of people -- most teams run sets plays or specific actions in the half-court, that when they do not work, they naturally evolve into their go-to half-court offense. Therefore, a lot people get confused because they see a team come down the court, run something that they do not know what it is, and their team gets a shot. What offense was that? It wasn't "their offense," per say, it was a quick-hitter, or set that a team runs to get into their offense. This might get them a look early in the possession, or create separation for drives and kicks. 2-game is notorious for having thousands of sets and formations that end up right back into the continuity. Quick-hitters are the types of things that are in teams play books. These are one to two screens and passes, designed to get a specific person a specific shot. Good quick hitters are typically designed to allow teams to easily get back into their spacing and spots for their continuity offense or revolving offense or motion. On the flip side - a lot of teams like to run their transition offense right into their continuity or revolving offense (or even motion), if transition didn't score, and in the waining seconds of the shot clock - they will call a quick hitter or call for a high ball-screen (like we do nearly every possession). Would anyone like to hear more? As in what our typical possession looks like from an X's and O's perspective? Teams that just run transition breaks and run and guns? Let me know, I'm getting tired of typing and I should be working.... If you disagree with anything I said in here, I'd love to discuss it, go easy on me please.

A quandary for you, 49r - if Bo Spencer and Terran Petteway are on the same team - who shoots the ball?

There we have it folks. The final circle of Nebraska Basketball Hell. The stage where we start to bring back names from our torrid past. "If only we would just have this guy and this guy from that team and that era, we'd be fine."Obviously we've been talking about missing Rey all year, but that's not uncommon for any team to miss a senior from the year before. But when we start bringing up the Conk's name, you know the season is over. Took us a while this year, proud of everyone.

We do not run a motion offense. We run a revolving pattern.

See, jimmy, I get the complete opposite feeling about Dakitch. I honestly believe he loves him some Huskers...he couldn't stop gushing about the facilities and the fans. At one point he was trying to get Tirico to comment on PBA and the Haymarket (but Tirico is too much of a pro to get involved in that conversation). Heck, Dan almost seemed to openly root for the team during the comeback. Sure, he was critical of the effort of the team in the first half, and of Terran specifically (and rightly so IMO), but not nearly as much as most of the fans on this very message board were. It's almost as if he graduated from NU, not IU. 49r, I agree, I almost got the sense that Dan really likes our team but was severely disappointed in how we play. I think he was expecting a lot more because he likes our squad.

I don't know what everyone's opinion on Dan Dakich is (I like him), but he was absolutely drilling last night. It's like he read this board pregame. Dan, are you here?!?!

What I've been saying for two years now.....

Absolutely

First off, your post hit home hard. My team can't score, and as I evaluate, I realize maybe we're focusing on the wrong things and overcompensating with defensive stuff. However, you're a bit off in my opinion, on Coach Mo's influence. We haven't chanfed defensive scheme, were still a pack-line, switch ball screens/hand-offs, fight through off-ball screens, force back to the middle team. We also rarely have ever pressed under Miles. Most D1 teams not named Louisville, Kentucky, or VCU don't. So it's not a shock to hear we haven't practiced it much. As someone who's been a head and assistant - assistants are for recruiting, scouting, individual workouts, and providing input (primarily defensively) for game-plans. The general philosophy and team dynamic comes from the man up top, and doesn't shift much because assistants change. If you ask me, my guess would be TM went after Coach Mo because he assumed scoring wouldn't be as difficult as it has been, and he wanted to bring in someone who could amp up their defensive abilities and game-plan really well. IMO, we've never had great flow on offense under Miles. And now the conference has seen it and has us scouted like crazy. If I'm Coach Miles I'm probably just as flabbergasted by our offensive woes. I also would have assumed our individual talent was good enough to score points. I'd be in the same boat right now as him. Would have had the same assumptions and priorities going into the season.

I know what you mean (I think) and this might be splitting hairs but you can't have unpredictable slashing and cutting. You need to be in synch with your teammates as much on offense as you are on defense. You can have some universal reads where everyone get the same read and everyone now knows a cut is coming. For instance, one of the most common reads down to jr. high is when your defender extends any part of himself over the three point line you MUST cut back door. So I agree with you and after splitting your hairs I think you mean unpredictable to the defense team, not to your teammates.Yes, unpredictable to the defense (as much as you can be anyways). "Random," people cutting into the high post and low post. We have the general size to get different people different looks in paint touch situations. If I told you before the season you'd get a 6'10" kid who can shoot 3's, two 6'6"-6'7" strong and athletic kids who can score from anywhere, and an athletic, long 6'4" SG/PG, I bet we'd be pretty excited to see an interchange, motion offense.

Ewww... I dunno HB. Obviously I agree recruiting and team building is the most important thing. But I disagree with your assessment of this team and how good they are. We have two 6'7" guys who have shown the ability to get 25+ at any given time. That's more than 95% of the teams in the NCAA can say. We play incredible defense. And they may be limited in their offensive games, but we got two big dudes who should be able to do SOMETHING.I think our issues are quite mental. I think we're gonna be fine towards the end of the B1G run. Just my thoughts At that point it may be too late....We have 5 road games and 4 home games remaining. Out of the home games two feature the top two teams in the Big 10. And at this point...I'm not sure outside of PSU if this team can win a game on the road. I think we are going to find it tough to be in position to get a NIT bid considering our schedule. We will probably be underdogs in 7 out of the last 9 games. All year we have been waiting for a third scoring option to show up...it hasn't happened and at this point it doesn't appear it will happen. Shields and Petteway are typically very solid but like most players they have nights where they are "off." When that happens it's almost a guaranteed loss for us. Hoping and praying that next year White will be that third scorer. Well I guess there we have it... Better just shut the squad down and close the doors. Start working on next year. That's what you got out of my post? Interesting. Should we not take a realistic approach to our remaining games based on what we have seen out of this team thus far? What in your mind is a "run" that you are expecting down the stretch? I will be very happy if this team finds a way to finish .500 in league play based on our remaining schedule. Sorry, was just kidding. Sarcasm + Internet = doesn't compute

Well said, Dean. Feel the same way.

Hopefully no one thinks I'm bagging TM or our players. I'm 100% on the TM train and think we've got as good of shot as anyone at turning it on late.

I couldn't figure out how to embed it into the post.... I'm slow...

Things I notice: 1. Everyone who catches a pass on the move is typically catching it going to the rim or curling to the paint. 2. Those that don't have an angle off the catch CREATE for someone else and GET OFF the ball, which we do a miserable job of. Petteway and Shields only pass because they've exhausted their dribble move. Someone has to have the mind set to drive and draw, to create for others. 3. They get post players touches in the post. Those post players are looking to create for others. 4. They shoot kick out 3's off of someone else's attack. Admittedly, we do also, we just don't hit a good enough percentage of them. 5. They don't run one thing for one dude, see if it works, run something else, see if it works, etc... (Which we fall into that trap frequently). It's constant motion, finding the guy with the attack angle and moving the ball. Clarifier, I'm not trying to say Tim Miles is doing a poor job or that I have all the answers. I'm just showing why Virginia is so efficient and comparing some observations I've seen between the two of us. Because God knows, I sure as hell HAVENT figured out how to get a team to score yet! I know, it's Jimmy and Joe's, not X's and O's. But there are some philosophical things Virginia does that we could sure benefit from. What are your thoughts?

Easy now, don't go too far, haha. I have coached at the hs level, GA'ed at the college level, and now I'm back coaching hs ball -- but I'm still quite the novice. Poster DeanSmith is the resident, "forgotten more about basketball than we know," poster here. Example of two people seeing the same thing, two different ways, and both having their merits. I see that as prime examples of why our issues are mental. We play to our competition. It's the same reason we were able to beat Michigan State. We bring inconsistent effort and mental toughness. I love TP, but he's a prime example of this attitude wise. And as good of a guy as Shavon is, he does the same thing. Inconsistent attitude and effort. I was just kidding, sarcasm is hard to read on the internet. My bad.

Ewww... I dunno HB. Obviously I agree recruiting and team building is the most important thing. But I disagree with your assessment of this team and how good they are. We have two 6'7" guys who have shown the ability to get 25+ at any given time. That's more than 95% of the teams in the NCAA can say. We play incredible defense. And they may be limited in their offensive games, but we got two big dudes who should be able to do SOMETHING.I think our issues are quite mental. I think we're gonna be fine towards the end of the B1G run. Just my thoughts At that point it may be too late....We have 5 road games and 4 home games remaining. Out of the home games two feature the top two teams in the Big 10. And at this point...I'm not sure outside of PSU if this team can win a game on the road. I think we are going to find it tough to be in position to get a NIT bid considering our schedule. We will probably be underdogs in 7 out of the last 9 games. All year we have been waiting for a third scoring option to show up...it hasn't happened and at this point it doesn't appear it will happen. Shields and Petteway are typically very solid but like most players they have nights where they are "off." When that happens it's almost a guaranteed loss for us. Hoping and praying that next year White will be that third scorer. Well I guess there we have it... Better just shut the squad down and close the doors. Start working on next year.

Ewww... I dunno HB. Obviously I agree recruiting and team building is the most important thing. But I disagree with your assessment of this team and how good they are. We have two 6'7" guys who have shown the ability to get 25+ at any given time. That's more than 95% of the teams in the NCAA can say. We play incredible defense. And they may be limited in their offensive games, but we got two big dudes who should be able to do SOMETHING. I think our issues are quite mental. I think we're gonna be fine towards the end of the B1G run. Just my thoughts

But I also agree, Norm. These dudes need to hash it out and figure out what's going on as a team. They'll be alright I think.

A big problem I have noticed is how few actions we have that are going to the rim. The only action we have is the back-cut in our revolving offense of the ball-screens hand-off that we run until the shot clock has gone down and we find Petteway to get a crappy shot. If you watch Virginia play, so much of their action goes to the hoop. Their go to, revolving offense is the 3 out, 2 post in the mid range offense that sets a flare on one side and a down screen on the other side at the same time. Then posts roll to get post touches. But the primary point of this is that guys are curling to the rim and attacking the paint with their cuts, and the passers hit them in rhythm to get paint touches. That's why they're so efficient, IMO, great cutting action with unselfish passing that gets paint touches. Also, they get posts the ball on the block, something we rarely do. People don't realize, a post touch is vital to an offense. And it's just the touch, it doesn't mean the dude has to score. He just needs to face up and draw two. Just my thoughts. Could be wrong! Probably am!

I would love to see us go a little 5-out with some unpredictable slashing and cutting. Just something I would try... Who knows if it will work!?

Agreed, Norm. Shavon's problem is between his ears. Confidence and consistency kid!