Offseason Studies to Improve Your Program

Your season just ended and you are motivated to do whatever it takes to make your program better. Here are four studies you can conduct to get a more accurate view of your progress.

Over the course of the last two years, one of the topics that I have written about the most has been the self-examination of my own coaching. Due to the limitations of coaching in Massachusetts, I spend far more time examining my own decision-making than I do actually coaching players in a live setting. With that being said, the point of this post is not to highlight the limitations of MA coaching, but rather highlight the advantages that can be gained in self-examination of our own coaching.

With some honest evaluation and the use of modern technology, I think we can get a better reading on our successes and failures than ever before. The statistical data and game film accessibility that is present today is something that was not even available to coaches ten years ago. With those advantages in hand, the four studies that we are going to dig into in this post are all attempting to define who our programs are. Through the use of Hudl Game Film, Statistical Data, honest Self Reflection, and the use of Google Sheets, we will dig into four different ways to pick apart our own coaching.

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Self Study -

Conducting a Self Study after the season is something that I have done for the past four years. The inspiration for the self-study came from an article, called Self Scout - Asking Tough Questions. The article essentially suggests that we conduct an autopsy of our program after our season. Within that autopsy is an assessment of our program's pillars, a look into our team's analytics, and what the successes & failures of the season were. To me, this has always been a good exercise to not just judge the season by our win-loss record, but truly dissect what took place.

Designing the Self Study -

After reading the article I decided to turn it into a document that I could use as a template each year. Over the years this document has become the starting point for my offseason projects. There tends to be a lot of emotion that exists at the end of the season and this study helps me rely less on that emotional reaction, and rely on a more accurate assessment of how things played out. To create the document I decided to first break down my assessment into three separate categories; Pillars, Analytics, and Strengths & Weaknesses. To complete each section I will use a combination of game film, statistics, old practice plans, and my own intuition to assess our team's performance.

Sample Self Study -

Pillars:

The first two sections of the self-study focus on assessing your Pillars and Style of Play.

This is the aspect of your Self Study where you are reflecting on what aspects of the game matter most to your program.

Analytics:

Given our access to technology nowadays it makes a lot of sense to dig into the numbers to get a more accurate story. Some of the statistics I'm looking for include:

Strengths & Weaknesses:

The last part of the Self Study starts with a look at what we did well over the course of the season. We dig into the aspects of the game that went well, and any statistical or film-related evidence that may help provide this conclusion. Once we look at successes we want to dig into our failures for the season. After an honest evaluation in those areas we want to dig into some future plans on "What to go Big On?" and "What our Next Steps" are as a program.

Scored Created Study -

One of my favorite offseason projects to do each season is the Scores Created Study. This study looks at every made field goal and free-throw from the entire season and categorizes how it was created. The results of this study give me a better idea of what phase of the game we are scoring in, and what actions are creating those scoring opportunities. To make sure that defense is not being ignored I also conduct this study for our opponents' scores as well.
 

I believe that one of the biggest benefits of this study is to use the results to examine your practice planning strategies. For example, let's say you spend almost 80% of your practice working on half-court offense and baseline out-of-bounds sets. However, after conducting this study you realize that only about 45-50% of your total scores come from those two areas the perhaps that is a piece of evidence that you use to adjust your practice planning moving forward.

Data Collection -

Gathering the Data for this kind of study is much easier than it looks on paper. I tag each of our games on Hudl, and having that data available is most certainly an instance where technology has made life a lot easier for coaches. Here the basic process I use for the study:
 

1. Open a Game Film on Hudl

2. Filter the Game to "Our Team" and then "All Makes"

3. Go through Each Make and determine "What Created the Advantage"

4. Record the Points Scored on my Google Sheet Template

5. Undergo the Same Process with "Our Opponent" and their "Makes"

On each possession, I am looking for what "action" created the advantage that led to the score. For instance, if a player received a staggered screen and then attacked his man's closeout (which was created by the off-ball screen) then I'm recording that as an Off Ball Screen score. Conversely, if the basketball is simply swung and then a player drives from the wing to the rim then I am recording that as a Wing Drive score. So figuring out what "Created the Advantage" is at the heart of how I chart the scores.

If you want to read more here are a few helpful links:

I - The Study

Perhaps one real criticism of coaches could be that what they say they do and what they actually don’t always match. For example, a coach might say “we send four guys to the glass” on every shot - but when you look at that team’s missed shots you rarely see four players crashing. With this thought in mind and with the interesting philosophies presented by Coach Pannone and Coach Ferne circling in my mind, I wanted to look at our own team’s performance on the offensive glass.
 

I thought that the self-study that Coach Klatsky introduced in his podcast episode was the perfect method for me to get this information. His study gave insight into offensive rebounding performance and the correlation between the number of “crashers” on each missed shot and the opponent's subsequent transition offensive opportunity.
 

The Colgate Study Charted: Coach Klatsky Podcast Episode

So over the course of a week, I took a look at every game film from the 2018-19 season. I started with the location of each missed shot; at the rim, midrange, or the three-point line. Then I recorded how many players made a concerted effort to crash the glass; including whether or not they got the rebound, and if they scored off of it. If we did not get the rebound the last step was to determine whether a transition opportunity was created and if they scored off of that opportunity.

Data Table Explanations -

Quick Table 1 - Results By Crasher:

Here the data is sorted by the number of crashers who pursued a missed shot. The key statistics are in the last four columns, which show our OREB% in those scenarios, our PPP if we rebounded the ball, our opponents Transition Opportunity Percentage if we did not secure the rebound, and finally our opponent's PPP in those transition scenarios.

Quick Table #2 - Results By Range of Shot:

Here the data is sorted by the location in which the missed shot was taken. One column of note here is the "Crashers" column which averages the numbers of crashers on each missed shot from that area. The last four columns represent the same critical data as above but by location rather than the number of crashers.

II - Reflections on the Results

Once the charting was finished I wanted to compare my results to those of Coach Klatsky. One his podcast episode he talked about four basic conclusions that their staff came too after completing their study:

Before completing the study I had a feeling that our results would look similar to the Colgate coaching staff's results. There was part of me that thought the skill of college players and factors such as shooting, floor spacing, higher defensive rebounding percentage, etc. would have an impact on the results. In the end, we came to all of the same conclusions they did.

If you want to read more here are a few helpful links:

Defensive Identity -

One of my favorite talks from last Spring was delivered by UIC's Luke Yaklich on Building your Defensive Identity. Coach Yaklich has become one of the hottest names in College Basketball Coaching circles in recent years. His name became nationally recognized while serving as defensive coordinator under John Beilein at Michigan. During his time there his teams became one of the best defensive units in the Big Ten. Last season he served in that same role for Shaka Smart at Texas, and was recently hired as the new head coach of the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Coach Yaklich's talk touched on a number of topics including; his own defensive beliefs, some of his favorite 'vitamin' drills, and of course some general coaching wisdom. However, the part of his talk that resonated with me the most was his advice for building your own defensive philosophy. He posed a number of questions that we as coaches should be asking about our own beliefs.

Coach Yak's Philosophy Questions:

1. What is your Mission on Defense?

2. What do you Emphasize?

3. What are your year-to-year Principles?

4. What are you going to hold your Team Accountable to?

5. What are you going to hold your Players Accountable to?
 

The Defensive Identity Tool -

This part of his talk got me thinking, and I wanted to use my notes from his clinic talk to create a "Defensive Identity Tool" that coaches (and myself) could use to examine their own beliefs. I took those questions that Coach proposed above and simply created a Google Doc that coaches could use to examine their own beliefs. Here is what I came up with:

Concluding Thoughts -

I don't think that coaches need to revamp their entire belief system every offseason, but I do think it is worth revisiting and reassessing. We should use everything that we have available to us to conduct these assessments, including shot charts, statistics, game film, practice plans, and general observations. Perhaps the biggest benefit of these exercises is that it provides us with opportunities to look at our teaching with a less-biased lens. There is always this emotional pull at the end of the season that clouds our weighs on our assessment of the season, and in different ways these studies help to take out some of the emotion and provide us with more evidence-based analysis.

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