So many people think that the majority of coaching is on-field or on-court decisions (play calls, "adjustments", timeouts, "play some zone" etc). But that's only the smallest part of it. 95% of good coaching happens before game day: + getting the right players into the program + figuring out what each can do *right now* to help the team + helping them get better at what they can do *right now* (i.e., in-season) + helping players/motivating them get better in the off-season + choosing offensive and defensive systems which generally fit your personnel + getting your entire staff on board with those systems and the intricacies of teaching assignment and technique at every position + game-by-game scout and game plan including determining the match up strengths and weaknesses between your team and the opponent and emphasizing your strengths while covering your weaknesses as well as possible + and then, finally the game-day decisions Most people have no idea what goes into the scout or game plan, which, given the fact that everything else except in-game player performance and coach decisions is set in stone, is the determining factor in what staff wins the most games. This is something that Tyler Bowen had a low success rate at. He is/was terrible at understanding what matchups we had and advantage in and then constructing a game plan (not "plays" but an entire plan which emphasized our strengths and protected our weaknesses as well as possible). Sometimes it was clear he lost sight of who our best players were, and even if he didn't often he showed no inclination to be able to build a game plan that would help our best players help us win. Duffy and her staff seem to be aces at this despite the ignorant cries to "play zone!" when we are having trouble on defense. uva, for example, is a team that tries to play both man and zone, depending. And then it turns out they aren't good at either. That doesn't surprise most people who have been involved in playing or coaching pretty much ever. But they tried to play man against us this last time because without Rose on the floor we had 5 players who could operate on the outside, most of them who consistently hit 3s at a high rate (except for when Mack is out there, who could hit them but has zero confidence in it so she doesn't). But guess what? They aren't used to playing man defense. Their bigs are used to just running back and planting themselves in the lane in transition defense, which you can do when you're playing zone but you CANNOT do when playing man against a good shooter. Watch Lattimore do that when she's supposed to be guarding Carys at the 6:02 mark in Q1. LOL. She gives Carys 18 feet of cushion to get this 3 off. Swish! Then later, just 30 sec after Carleigh back-screens Noyan to give Carys another wide-open look, they have Lauterback try to guard Carys. LOL!!!!!! She has no idea how to play a pick-and-pop and guess what? It's another 15 ft cushion for Carys. Swish! That's bad coaching, a bad game plan, and the failure to choose a system and drill your players over and over and over on the game situations that they will encounter with that system. And all you people who cry "play some zone!" really need to understand it, although I have little hope you will. A good coach CHOOSES a system and coaches the hell out of that to the players. Man defense has help principles for mismatches in defending on the perimeter. You don't have to, and shouldn't, just "go into a zone" when you have a mismatch guarding on the perimeter. Why? Because you're going to play the zone poorly because you cannot drill the principles of two entirely different systems well. Please don't argue with the two examples in the history of coaching who succeeded at it. Failure to choose a system and then recruit and coach to it is a losing game that gets coaches fired. Now, let's talk Megan Duffy. Rose goes out and can't play against Syracuse. But they have two very good post players that were already going to be a mismatch vs Rose & Carys. And now Peterson has to try to guard one of them. But she's not ready to do that, regardless of whether you're playing man or zone. She just is young, and first off is not nearly physically ready to guard and player like Kyra Wood (who is an experienced senior who is bigger, stronger and quicker than Peterson). Plus she will never be able to guard a player like Varejao, who has 3" of height and probably 6-8" of reach on her, plus is a skilled offensive player with moves over either shoulder in the lane, plus can hit from 3. As soon as Rose was not available we were going to lose the matchup all game long. The only thing that could have helped would be for either player to go out with foul trouble or injury (check - Carleigh got Varejao out of the game) AND for Burrows to not bury 3s all game. But the inside mismatches meant that Burrows was going to get wide open 3s. There was nothing to do about it except to outscore them because Syracuse is BAD on defense -- guess what, they play a zone!. The team played hard and as well as they could, but with a lineup that had those mismatches, and without playing that way all game any game all year, it was too much. There is NOTHING that Duffy could do to prevent the mismatches. Syracuse has two very good post players and we were left with one with Rose unavailable. So a narrow loss, which made the team disappointed. Now, go to the uva game. uva only has 2 good players: Johnson and Lattimore. Johnson is better offensively than anyone we have to guard her on the perimeter, and Lattimore is better offensively than anyone we have to guard her in the post. That's tough. But in this case Duffy has options (and, no, it's not "play zone!"). It's bold, and it takes great recognition and recovery effort to execute. + Carleigh and Mack would have to get out on Johnson to prevent open 3s, then help with both post and ball-side perimeter player on high alert to help on Johnson drives. + Run double- and triple-teams at Lattimore to get the ball out of her hand, make easy shots more difficult, and prevent ORBs But you have to have players who are coached perfectly in the man defense help principles. First, the help defenders have to recognize when they are going to help *before they have to help.* That way, on the pass to the post they are running to wall off or dig. Weak-side defenders need to be rotating to the next most dangerous offensive players, especially lane cutters *as soon as the help defenders are in motion.* Then the players have to know how to wall off (so the offensive player doesn't just step through), or dig (so they don't get cheap reach in fouls). Then *everyone* has to recover *to the correct spot* when the ball goes back out. We did it flawlessly. Lattimore had to get rid of the ball to a player who couldn't score over and over, and was so frustrated she didn't know what to do. For help on drives, the ball-side defender must constantly help to squeeze the driving lane (or even make it seem like there is no lane), then recover to their man so there aren't wide open threes, or cuts to vacated lane. The other thing the coach has to choose is how to guard ball screens (pick and roll). Well, we chose to fight over the screen (to prevent open 3s) and have the post player sag off the screen preventing Johnson from turning the corner and driving to the goal, knowing that's what Johnson likes to do. Both Peterson and White did this flawlessly. Every time Johnson had the ball, our primary defender got up tight and made sure she wouldn't have easy looks from 3. And as Johnson turned the corner our post player was centered right in her lane, backed off by 5-6 feet and in a good defensive stance. Go watch the game again if you don't know what I mean. Also, the ball-side perimeter player would slide in to help as well. That stopped Johnson for the most part so the primary defender could recover. We didn't hold her scoreless, but she couldn't score consistently enough to make a difference. This stuff takes hours of drilling to teach and do well, and believe me they have been working on this since the pre-season. BUt we had very inexperienced players that needed to execute it. Thankfully Duffy's spent all year prepping them to do so. Instead of panicking and "playing zone." And thankfully Duffy and the staff she brought in seems really, really good at the scout and game plan (not to mention the development) aspects of coaching. That's how you win so many one-score games and have winning records everywhere you coach. ** Edited by King of Hokies at 2/11/2025, 4:42:35 PM