Note | Coconote

welcome into another episode of a quick timeout podcast presented by dr dish basketball the off season is here which hopefully means for your players they are at the gym getting better if you haven't already purchased the dr dish shooting machine you're missing out the ct models and the plus models allow your players to train with virtual coaches and improve not just their shooting but also their ball handling skills you can visit dr dish basketball.com to find out how your school can add a dish to your program and if you mis mentioned quick timeout you'll receive 300 off your purchase again that's dr dish basketball.com you and your players will be glad you purchased the dr dish shooting machine been looking forward uh to this for a while now it's really excited to have with us assistant coach for the cedaw university women's basketball team john leonzo coach thanks for joining us thanks so much for having me coach i'm thrilled to talk and share and very grateful for the opportunity i'm sure a lot are already familiar with coach does a lot of great stuff on social media have you been doing the video stuff like regularly throughout the year or did you did you wait and kind of post these and do a little bit more of that yeah i i try to more load up on all the video stuff in the off season um of course as our season goes i just start collecting files and then kind of vomit it all out at the end of the year that's kind of my approach i haven't i hadn't planned to talk to you about this but i know i some other platforms i've been talking with some other coaches about the amount of information you consume and then how much you use do you uh do you just watch a ton or do you almost do you curate it before you even take your time to watch it yeah i think there's every year um either as i see other people post stuff or as i read about different coaches if certain teams stand out to me i just have a running list of everybody that i want to watch and i try to spend at least an hour a day watching somebody else's team learning something new and then in my synergy editor i i keep everything so i i have just tons and tons and tons of edits and uh from there then i try to take the best that i i have there and whatever sometimes we're not gonna use with our team and then i'll share that so if there's something i like that i know we're not gonna do in the next year i don't mind to give that away of course there's other stuff i do keep for our our team and our own personal use but i'm i love basketball i'm very curious about different ways to do it i really enjoy getting to watch other people play yeah i i feel the same could people will ask me like i don't know how you have time for that and i feel we're kind of kindred spirits as in it's almost like our hobby and it's almost our job too so i enjoy doing that um and so you you end up probably watching more than the normal person does whereas most people when they have to sit down they're watching it for work right how you feel about that but like i just enjoy what what do you feel like you get from those as you watch them visit is it i get the sense sometimes like as i watch things i'm not necessarily taking everything that they're doing and implement it but almost taking bits and pieces of maybe an action or something that i see and implementing it in you do you do more of that absolutely i think over the time that i've coached i've gone through quite the the path you know i used to see exactly what somebody does and copy it exactly i didn't have any really well formed thoughts about what i believed and what i liked um but thankfully through experience and personal coaching experiences you start to learn what you like what you don't like and you begin to develop your own style and now that i have that pretty much dialed in anything from anybody i can just say okay that would fit into this and we'll take that and we'll take this out and so even if the way that we play someone somebody would say it's unique it's really only unique in that it's a bunch of other people's ideas blended together um that ends up being with some sort of a unique product there at the end yeah that's good i think it's the idea of there's nothing new under the sun but you can still take a lot of things and make them your own and that's probably a lot of the hard you mentioned that the hard balance between like a younger coach i had a coach ask me the day like what do i look at i want to learn all of this but i don't know what that only comes through time is what i found like over time kind of figuring out what you like and what you enjoy and one of the things that i know you enjoy talk a little bit about dribble drive offense today i you know we were talking beforehand oddly enough i haven't had an episode about this before um you know i don't want to start at the very beginning with it but how how did this kind of come to something that you all do and in particular something that you enjoy talking about yeah absolutely so i just finished my fifth year here at cedarville we've played kind of a variety of different ways throughout my time here offensively um we started out as a true motion team where you know we had a really big post player we leave on the block we brought a lot of screening action high up on the elbows to try to bring help up and play through her and what we found playing that way is while it was really helpful for that one player who was a star uh we were playing a certain style at the expense of the rest of our players to where we were kind of bailing the defense out in some regards just running all of this action that we were just a team that ran action but didn't look to score and so there were a lot of times where maybe the action would create something we'd have a recovering defender but shooting was always the last thing that we were thinking about and so of course we turned the ball over a lot playing that way we weren't super efficient playing that way um and even though we still had a good team that year we just didn't think that we were getting the most out of the offensive end and so that was my first year here the mission then came with my head coach and i in the off season was how are we going to change how we play um to still have an inside out type of attack to play through you know either at the basket through a post player or through drives but be able to give the players the freedom to attack off every single catch and just make the defense have to guard everything so to speak um and so we moved into kind of like a side-to-side ball screen continuity and that was leading us down the dribble drive path to where there were certainly elements of triple drive in regard to like there's bigger gaps for players to put the ball on the floor and attack uh naturally and pick and roll the post player is opposite the drive and so you do have kind of the ending action looking like dribble drive but again there we just felt like as we continued to play that way even though we were getting better our efficiency was going up um the action was somewhat predictable because it was all scripted and there were some teams we'd run into that we're just able to switch pick and roll and not have any level of a disadvantage their center could guard our point guard their point guard could guard our center where they were really good and kind of loading up help and forcing us to skip the ball and just getting us off rhythm so the natural progression for that then went okay well i i think the players just need space so how can we play in a certain style where we might run a little bit of action early on in the possession but after that action the passing and cutting rules the drive reaction rules are such that we can maintain spacing throughout the possession the ball can freely move uh but there still is space for us to drive and so that led us into uh exploring dribble drive and we had run some elements of it as like a secondary offense when teams would switch um and there were things of it that we definitely liked and there were things we didn't like one of the things that we hated about it was girls were catching the ball and driving because the offense said drive um and that obviously i think is a lot of questions i get from people that maybe don't like triple drive is well what if not all my players are good drivers or um if i want the ball to move and not just you know have four individual games of one-on-one happening on the perimeter um and so we we tweaked it a little bit by stealing bits and pieces from other people to kind of make triple drive our version of it unique to us um to where there's different scenarios where the ball is passed multiple times before a drive or where the spacing is just a little bit different and then we ended up with our final product which is very similar to a lot of just traditional dribble drive but also has some unique elements as well um but it was a three year process we we've really used dribble drive exclusively for the for the last three years and we've done it with you know a pretty good level of success and certainly it's a fun way to play it's a fun way to coach and uh it's just a really good way to kind of embrace modern offense where players always have space to attack off the catch so go ahead and like summarize for me that in those those years that you have run it aside from what you just said there but like the pros the major pros of the offense so if i'm a coach that is this offseason kind of looking to add or change a little bit what would you say are the biggest pros for this type of offense yeah i would say number one it's it's easy to learn initially um you can put in the base framework of the offense and the players can pick it up and know exactly what they're doing in regard to where to space and where to move within a practice very easily the second reason is it really fits in line with our philosophy of skill development where we want to be able to attack off the catch we want to be able to finish the rim we always want to have really good options both ahead of us as we're driving and behind us to pass the ball if we're stopped and so it basically allows us to merge player development and our offensive teaching into one that as our skills are getting better we're doing player development we're also working on our offense and as we're working on our offense we're also working on player development those things mesh together and so it allows us to get better at a quicker rate um and then the third one i think it's just enjoyable for the players to play in you know we said often as a staff that as soon as we started playing dribble drive we felt like we were no longer fighting our players on offense to where you know no you have to do this and this because that's the play or when the ball goes here you have to do that and make that read it was very much just a time where we felt like we were on the same page as the girls on our roster and we were able to play in a way where they were enjoying it we were enjoying it and we were all working together collectively versus kind of at odds with each other so you feel like it has made you more positionless 100 has that allowed you to change the types of players that you recruit or even the types of lineups that you have within a game yeah absolutely i think any college coach that does recruit obviously whatever school they're at there's going to be challenges to get players there whether it's high academics whether it's low scholarship resources um you know cedarville is a great school it's a christian school and so there's a really specific type of kid that's attracted to our university and we're recruiting a person just as much as we're recruiting a player so our philosophy is always to find the girls that fit the culture of our school and then take the best ones we possibly can the benefit to that is you end up with a lot of really good players because you're not trying to fill specific position needs because we just can't operate that way in recruiting um but additionally the way that we have our offensive formatted is we always run some level of a quick action that flows into dribble drive and every year those actions change so that we can tailor them to fit specific strengths of the players on our team but we're always going to play the same way behind the play and everybody's coordinated in that effort the second part of your question was does it allow us to play versatile lineups it absolutely does so now you're in a position where maybe you need to put a certain group on the floor to defend or maybe you you need a little more scoring you can swap parts out very interchangeably because there's a shared understanding and style of play behind those actions everybody can get plugged in at every spot and just kind of go that's the common theme that i've heard from coaches that do play more positionless and conceptual and that kind of thing you get to play your best players you don't feel handcuffed totally and and obviously a ton of advantages to that okay so let's go ahead and just talk about this next one i'm going to test your ability to teach because i'm going to ask you to summarize something that probably it's not it's not going to do us justice to the time that we're going to allot to it but kind of big picture and by the way for people that are listening to this and as i listen to this and you have more questions to this coach john's got a ton of resources for this so we'll we'll direct them to that at the end there but kind of the the 30 000 foot view of installation of this offense how do you go about doing that whether that's over the course of the first few weeks of the season or even the course of the first couple years of a player's career there how do you go about how do you how have you found effectively installing that yep so we do everything uh from the parts into the hole so i know a lot of coaches like to start with the hole and then break it down and then come back to it we don't approach it that way and the only reason why is the way that our our year is structured from a schedule standpoint in the fall we do a lot of small group player development workouts where we're focusing on skills but we start to install our offense there in those small groups and so essentially what we end up doing is we start from attacking the rim and then we build out from there so it's going to be you know one on o learning the different finishes we have at the basket being able to score with a defender on my back or maybe on my hip and then the next level after we just do all those one-on-one finishing drills is going to be adding that low post player that's always below the block and opposite the ball kind of the the cornerstone of dribble drive spacing so to speak and now we'll leave the driver unguarded and we'll have that post player be guarded and so now we're working on the decision of when i go to take my layup if the help comes i transfer the advantage to the five man if the help doesn't come i go ahead and take my layup and then of course we start to manipulate where the five is at so they're getting used to okay the drives come in left and i'm on the left block now i need to loop underneath the ram and again just kind of building up those rates from one on one into two one two the next level then is the same decision should i pass or should i shoot at the rim or should i pass the ball but now we're going to be reading a perimeter player and so we'll then start to put girls on the perimeter whether it's two one two or three on three we'll teach our basic penetration reaction rules which is tony if i'm driving the ball at you you're going to stay in your spot or push away if i need more room but you're not going to run up at me and if i'm driving the ball away from you so if i'm at the top of the key going left and you're on the right wing you're going to fill behind one perimeter spot and so we start to teach those basic reads and movements and then add defenders out there so our girls are saying can i get a layup no okay i can't get it because i was stopped by someone's defender boom that's where the ball goes and so then we're in that kind of three on three element from there we go to four on four and then eventually we end up five on five um and so that just kind of flows throughout the fall to where we're not so much teaching offense in regard to like pass here go there pass here do that it's can i score at the rim no why because somebody helped okay that's where the ball goes and then it's getting the other players on the floor coordinated to be in spots where the ball can find them when those drives are stopped so we start at the rim 100 and then we just build out from there into the whole 515. i asked this next question because you and i have the advantage or disadvantage of recruiting the players that come into our program so we have some some choice with this as a high school coach listens to this and says i've only got these players i'm going to go back to that decision making component do you feel like the girls that you have they already have a higher level of iq coming in and so you have a little bit of an advantage of running something like this or do you feel like the system teaches the girls no matter what level iq they have to be better decision makers i.e can anybody do this yeah totally i would argue that yes anybody can i mean there's no doubt that the players that we're going to get at our level are going to be more ready to play in this system because they are you know the best high school player in their county or area um but that being said everybody that comes into our program doesn't come in already knowing it so there still is a large amount of growth that they're going to undergo from the time they're a freshman to the time they're a senior and their decision making is going to get better over the course of time and so i'm of the belief that if we can do that at our level certainly if you have a younger player who has more skills to build and is going to experience more rapid growth because there's such a area to cover i think it's beyond doable to have anybody uh do it at any level provided you're committed to it and i will say there's always growing pains you know even for us there's times in the fall where i watch us play and i think oh i don't love what i'm seeing um but we always feel like if if it looks good immediately we're not working on the right things you know we're doing things we already know we'd rather have some struggle some strain and then grow through that so you can't cheat getting good you're going to be good when you have good players and that's another benefit to dribble drive as those players develop through the system i felt like it accelerated their development but like you said there still was ugly in those early season games even though the only thing i posted on social media was the best clips exactly there's still a lot of other possessions that i i really didn't like but if you have the long-term view i do feel like they become better players faster even though it's probably not still as fast as what the coach would hope absolutely there's no doubt about that i know if you ever follow me on twitter you're going to think our girls never miss a shot we certainly have our moments yeah which is the truth of probably all social media um all right so let me talk about like the the t because there may be some who are already listening to this and you know it's it's how i feel when i go to a coaching clinic you sit there and you listen and you're like well i kind of already know about this but i'm listening closely for maybe the nuggets there and so the nuggets that i want to talk about are like coaching cues maybe some either some terminology um maybe something a little hack or something you know to help with their understanding as you teach this is there anything like that that maybe a coach who's already doing this can improve upon by using these hacks or these coaching cues yeah absolutely i think the thing that we're always trying to do and really teach our players and this is in my opinion the crux of any offensive system is getting players to understand when they have an advantage and when they don't and dribble drive is no different i think one of the hesitations i had in coming into it was again i don't want one player beating the crap out of the ball trying to get by their girl the way that we want to play is i'm going to catch it if i can beat you i'm going to do it if i'm not i'm going to share the ball so so much of our development is always focusing on our players understanding what's the relationship between me and my defender um and how big of an advantage do i have and so for us a big advantage anytime i can get my shoulders past my primary defender they are in full out recovery mode the teaching points for us whenever we have that is to get in the way of them we want to actually take our drive and work inside their body to use our back and butt as a means to shield them out and then hopefully make a play for myself or if help comes move that puppy to somebody else that would be a big advantage a small advantage for us on a drive would be if i'm shoulder to shoulder or maybe they're opened up and their chest is pointed to my shoulder we want to continue to drive there but we'll probably have to play off of two feet um but if i'm in neither of those circumstances if i put the ball on the ground my defender slides over hits me with their chest and we're chest to chest we have no advantage and so right then and there our players we teach them to shift their mindset from it's dribble drive i gotta give my girl she stopped me i need to change direction and keep going too i've lost my advantage what's the next action and in those circumstances based on where i'm driving i always have someone to go to in front of me i always have someone to go to behind me um and then of course it's just a matter of getting everybody on the page to where they're making those quick decisions to read and understand that a lot of our finishing drills that we do are putting players in positions to make those decisions as do i have a big advantage small advantage or no advantage um and we always try to even in our one-on-ones give them the option to throw the ball to a coach re-space and cut and then we throw it back so they're not taking shots or playing where they're just driving the crap out of the ball when they have no advantage so that's a big piece of it for us is trying to get them to understand that concept and playing that way and whether we're ball screening whether we're playing dribble drive whether we're playing motion that still applies to all those offensive systems and i think that's where the magic is versus the actual x's and o's yeah that's good um okay so like maybe dribble drive i think if coach understands what it is there's a kind of like they're all the same do you feel like you do anything there that is unique yes um so a couple things number one let's talk like single side drive so i'm have to bolt top of the key i'm driving to my right hand there's one player spaced in the corner a lot of dribble drive teams you know talk about if you can't get by your girl at the elbow you're going to jump stop in that drop zone the corner corners gonna lift up and i'm gonna go ahead and play with them for us we don't do any kind of level of drag zone breakdown zone drop zone we don't we don't mess with any of that um for us again it's all about the driver reading where i'm at versus my defender and then my teammates doing the same so for us in that single side drive as i'm coming to the corner that corner players default is not to lift up their their default is to read my shoulders and if my shoulders are facing the baseline that means i'm attacking they're going to hold their space they may take a step lower they may take a step higher so they're not in line with their defender in the ball um but we don't want them lifting automatically however if i do get to the elbow and my shoulders aren't downhill but they're facing the sideline that's a cue to that player now to come out of the corner i can keep my dribble alive and kind of just pitch it to her versus stopping and then what happens to us when we stop is everybody goes to their girl they deny and we kind of lose our flow by eliminating those zones we're able to go ahead and then just kind of keep the flow going so that's one thing that's different the other thing that's different for us now is let's say we're driving towards a double side so i'm in the corner tony you just drove it to me on that single side and kicked it now i'm driving from the right corner middle with my left hand there's two people spaced ahead of me a lot of dribble drive teams take that player at the top and again they bring them closer to the ball and they try to like loop on top pitch behind and then drive for us what we found whenever we start doing that is it's a really easy switch for teams we're so close together we kind of give the ball there and maybe there's space to shoot in between that switch but ultimately we're not putting a lot of stress on the defense and so for us we'll take that player who's normally filling and we'll just hold them on that slot and if i can't get downhill i'm going to kick it to them and instead of replacing myself i'm going to go all the way to the corner taking my defender low eliminating a switch situation and then giving that driver space to come back going to the single side so that's within our basic flow some different things that we do um there's also some different things that we do that allow us to drive the ball baseline and that's really unique to dribble drive teams and basically that's just two different scenarios one of them would be if i'm driving to that single side corner and i do pitch the ball early and i start to cut through if that player decides to put the ball on the ground and go baseline i just stop and i backpedal up to the wing we call that an escape cut got it from doug novak his teams are excellent with it that allows us to utilize some baseline drives um or if i'm driving to that single side and there's two players behind me filling and i stop and throw the ball backwards that to us is an automatic cue that that player is going to catch it and attack opposite down that lane line um and so a lot of teams would start to like either switch our stuff or close out taking away the middle and those two cues or options allow us to have baseline drives also which is unique i think to the way that we do dribble drive and something that we think is really important that's good um so the question i always get the two questions related to if the defense switches remember the defense plays zone you've already addressed some of the switching if you want to say anything more about that maybe adjustments that you have for that or even something that you tell the girls or they just immediately adjust to on their own i know some teams kind of adjust the way that they drive or how low they go or you know where the guy cuts where the player cuts that doesn't have the ball so maybe something like that or the zone how do you how do you attack the zone um whether that's you know i would guess probably most are going to be playing like a 2-3 so you don't have to tell us like boxing one i always do get the one question the coach is going to give me like way out there like what if they're gonna place in a triangle and two like right all right you got me like not that just like standard like two three what what are some suggestions you have for those yep so i'll start talking switches um number one our baseline rule again is when i pass the ball i cut to the same side corner and we want that cut to be deep as as deep as possible so that switches are hard and so our terminology there especially when we're playing things that we know are going to switch is get a piece of paint on every cut that way if i'm throwing to you and you're in the corner even if that means i have to like take a big old j shape to get out that's fine we want to bring that defender low now that doesn't always happen there's plenty of times where maybe a drive gets leveled out and i'm throwing the ball to you and you're six feet away from me and like of course i'm not going to go hit the paint not a problem so when switches happen we don't want to stop the ball big believer that like it all comes out in the wash um and eventually what's going to happen is there's going to be a switch excuse me where two people are on the ball momentarily and a big rule for us and automatic in our offense is that if you have the ball and you see two defenders you throw it behind you and that's going to be the girl that just pitched it so i pitched to you coach you're driving you see two i'm going to the corner you throw it right back to me and now i have an open three or a baseline drive and we're able to kind of exploit some switches that way so ball movement getting a piece of the paint throwing it backwards whenever you see two people are all things we emphasize versus switching in regard to zone this was new for us this year but we wanted to play a similar style versus zone that we did man-to-man the first couple years we did dribble drive people would get in the zone and we would turn into like high post and short corner x-ing ball over my head like holding it for forever and it's just an entirely different way to play our players go from attacking off the catch looking to shoot being aggressive making people guard the drive and when teams can do that they're like okay we'll just get in the zone because they're going to change their offense and now the things that hurt us won't hurt us so this past summer with the break from covet and everything we decided we need to find a way that we can still play drive and kick versus the zone and even if it means you know it's different passing cut rules we want to play concepts that are similar so talking 2-3 zone then for us what we're going to do is we're going to put three people on the perimeter and they're going to try to locate themselves in the gaps between the defenders so those top two defenders that'll be our top girl and she's going to stand in between both of them her goal is to always make a perfect triangle that she's the tip of uh and her at the top of the key her role is the only rule you can't hold the ball she can't catch it up there and be like looking around and trying to do something she can shoot it swing it drive it whatever you want to do our five man is going to be on the right block and her job down there is just to wreak havoc on the zone rotating screen in duck in screen out seal out whatever you want to do but you need to be hitting heads in there and making those bottom uh rotations be a little different and then our two girls beside our top guard they are going to be getting into their perfect triangle position in between the bottom side defender and then the top defender closest to them and then lastly in the right corner we're going to have our best shooter and she's going to be a baseline runner and her basically her main rule is i stay spaced in that corner until the ball finds me if i can't shoot it and i move it i then just take off and run the baseline so if you can envision this with me as all these girls are kind of position positioning themselves in that perfect triangle spot what happens is the ball starts moving as the zone starts matching up and so if i'm at the top of the key and i throw it right the top right defender is going to go take the ball for me i need to be in a perfect triangle there so i'm actually going to move closer to the ball which is counterintuitive but what happens is that takes the left top defender and brings her closer to me and so now when we throw the ball back i'm at the top of the key i have to be a mover and i throw it left giant gap is now created for our opposite wing player to drive that ball and you have the five opposite you have your shooter in the corner so if the middle girl takes me i have one read to make do i hit the five do i take three and so we just teach that same basic concept against really any zone whether we're you know in that three out alignment i spoke of or if we have four guards out we don't have a runner trying to find those gaps getting multiple reversals then puncturing the paint and making some sort of a decision once we get in there and the benefit that that had for our team is we went from being at like .97 points per possession versus man two years ago and at like .75 points per possession versus zone to this past year being at 0.99 points per possession versus man and at 1.15 versus zone so we were really efficient on both ends and you know part of that is we made a lot more threes this year and that's a really good way to have an efficient offense is to make a lot of three-point shots but i think a lot of those opportunities were created because we're playing in a way that we're familiar with and that's similar and we're not changing our style of play just based on the defense that the opponent runs sure have you you know talking about the even the threes there and against the zone have you found that you get more open three-point attempts yeah i think whether it's versus man or zone absolutely um because i have i have found that it almost takes your mediocre shooters and turns them to above average above average to great because just simply of the if the defender helps and the the girls are naturally trained to quickly pitch that to an open shooter you now go from being maybe a foot open to now two feet open b just because they recognize earlier that that teammate is open absolutely you know we shoot the ball really well from three and there's a lot of factors that go into it number one you our players are good there's no doubt about that they put in the work and they they deserve the majority of that credit we do spend a lot of time on it but of course that component there that you just mentioned coach is so true of that when you're taking stationary standstill threes versus long recovery you're going to shoot it a lot better than when you're running off screens and having to set your feet real quick and shoot with somebody flying at you and that's that's made a world of difference for our team absolutely good uh you talked before about the the small group workouts and i kind of want to circle back to that now that we're in the off season i don't feel like this is something that you start on day one and like you said just because of how it's structured you don't teach them an offense as we traditionally think an offense is taught it's more of building to it whether even if they do start with the whole you eventually got to go back to the parts from what i've found through those small sided games and you know whatever that that you're building up back to that instead of because i am going to have you at the end share where they can find some more resources for this i don't want you describing any more drills or whatever but the fundamental skills that you say that you're hitting on in every single practice yeah that eventually makes you successful in the overall offense what are those like mainstays yeah absolutely so as far as like hard skills go finishing at the rim is one and that's being able to finish multiple ways off of one foot with either hand sometimes off the same foot with the same hand or playing off two feet we teach all those finishes that's absolutely critical another one is going to be being able to pass on time and on target when you have contact on you um so a lot of the passes that we get sometimes are i get into the paint i get bumped off my line and now i have to move the ball and if i can throw it on time and on target that fast pass is going to make for a slower rotation from the defender therefore we can keep playing how we want to play being able to catch shot ready with our chest facing the rim every single time is a big skill that we work on so no matter where i'm spacing whether i'm coming from the corner up to the wing or the wing to the corner being able to as the ball comes to me get my hips around and catch with my shoulders and hips facing the rim so i can attack either way my first step can break the three-point line is extremely important to us of course shooting and then i would say decision making is a skill for sure and that's one that we try to incorporate and work on in every single workout because ultimately any offense is just those skills applied correct me if i'm wrong but i have found that by practicing like this whether it's team or in small group workouts that you actually get more reps practicing the skills that you say that you actually that you say that you practice in traditional block or just traditional work group workouts yeah i think definitely and anytime you have a small group together and and staff there that can kind of guide them decision making is so important in my opinion because i think players have a lot of time especially at the division two and three level where they're not on campus throughout the summer to to do those reps by their own to finish by themselves with no defender to shoot with no defender so how can you leverage the time that you have with them i think adding decision making for sure is key there and then you're you're getting not just more reps but also more meaningful reps and i think that certainly leads to improvement yeah for sure all right so tell people where they can find out more because a lot of coaches i know are interested in this and most of them are trying to piece together things that they're finding on the internet and i know that you have a lot of those pieces already put together for them so what kinds of things do you have available and where can they find those resources yep the absolute best place to start is going to be my website which is just my last name leonzo leonziobasketball.com when you go there on the home page it's going to have a big old thing that says dribble drive offense just click on that and there there will be a clinic video where i kind of break down the basics of how we operate a section of a lot of the small games that we use to teach it um as well as a comprehensive resource called the ultimate guide to triple drive offense that's available where that walks you through from a to z the nitty gritty man zone small group workouts installation everything you could want that's available there as well so leonzo basketball.com is the place you can find all that if you do want to learn more um also my twitter handle i think you can see by my face there it's at john underscore leonzo and again that's elio nzo um i try to post some different stuff there as well about what we're up to lately um my dms are open so if you want to ask a question that's a great way to reach out to me as well yeah great that's coach john lianzo assistant coach for the cedarville yellow jackets thanks again for taking the time to come on absolutely thanks so much for

welcome into another episode of a quick timeout podcast presented by dr dish basketball the off season is here which hopefully means for your players they are at the gym getting better if you haven&#39;t already purchased the dr dish shooting machine you&#39;re missing out the ct models and the plus models allow your players to train with virtual coaches and improve not just their shooting but also their ball handling skills you can visit dr dish basketball.com to find out how your school can add a dish to your program and if you mis mentioned quick timeout you&#39;ll receive 300 off your purchase again that&#39;s dr dish basketball.com you and your players will be glad you purchased the dr dish shooting machine been looking forward uh to this for a while now it&#39;s really excited to have with us assistant coach for the cedaw university women&#39;s basketball team john leonzo coach thanks for joining us thanks so much for having me coach i&#39;m thrilled to talk and share and very grateful for the opportunity i&#39;m sure a lot are already familiar with coach does a lot of great stuff on social media have you been doing the video stuff like regularly throughout the year or did you did you wait and kind of post these and do a little bit more of that yeah i i try to more load up on all the video stuff in the off season um of course as our season goes i just start collecting files and then kind of vomit it all out at the end of the year that&#39;s kind of my approach i haven&#39;t i hadn&#39;t planned to talk to you about this but i know i some other platforms i&#39;ve been talking with some other coaches about the amount of information you consume and then how much you use do you uh do you just watch a ton or do you almost do you curate it before you even take your time to watch it yeah i think there&#39;s every year um either as i see other people post stuff or as i read about different coaches if certain teams stand out to me i just have a running list of everybody that i want to watch and i try to spend at least an hour a day watching somebody else&#39;s team learning something new and then in my synergy editor i i keep everything so i i have just tons and tons and tons of edits and uh from there then i try to take the best that i i have there and whatever sometimes we&#39;re not gonna use with our team and then i&#39;ll share that so if there&#39;s something i like that i know we&#39;re not gonna do in the next year i don&#39;t mind to give that away of course there&#39;s other stuff i do keep for our our team and our own personal use but i&#39;m i love basketball i&#39;m very curious about different ways to do it i really enjoy getting to watch other people play yeah i i feel the same could people will ask me like i don&#39;t know how you have time for that and i feel we&#39;re kind of kindred spirits as in it&#39;s almost like our hobby and it&#39;s almost our job too so i enjoy doing that um and so you you end up probably watching more than the normal person does whereas most people when they have to sit down they&#39;re watching it for work right how you feel about that but like i just enjoy what what do you feel like you get from those as you watch them visit is it i get the sense sometimes like as i watch things i&#39;m not necessarily taking everything that they&#39;re doing and implement it but almost taking bits and pieces of maybe an action or something that i see and implementing it in you do you do more of that absolutely i think over the time that i&#39;ve coached i&#39;ve gone through quite the the path you know i used to see exactly what somebody does and copy it exactly i didn&#39;t have any really well formed thoughts about what i believed and what i liked um but thankfully through experience and personal coaching experiences you start to learn what you like what you don&#39;t like and you begin to develop your own style and now that i have that pretty much dialed in anything from anybody i can just say okay that would fit into this and we&#39;ll take that and we&#39;ll take this out and so even if the way that we play someone somebody would say it&#39;s unique it&#39;s really only unique in that it&#39;s a bunch of other people&#39;s ideas blended together um that ends up being with some sort of a unique product there at the end yeah that&#39;s good i think it&#39;s the idea of there&#39;s nothing new under the sun but you can still take a lot of things and make them your own and that&#39;s probably a lot of the hard you mentioned that the hard balance between like a younger coach i had a coach ask me the day like what do i look at i want to learn all of this but i don&#39;t know what that only comes through time is what i found like over time kind of figuring out what you like and what you enjoy and one of the things that i know you enjoy talk a little bit about dribble drive offense today i you know we were talking beforehand oddly enough i haven&#39;t had an episode about this before um you know i don&#39;t want to start at the very beginning with it but how how did this kind of come to something that you all do and in particular something that you enjoy talking about yeah absolutely so i just finished my fifth year here at cedarville we&#39;ve played kind of a variety of different ways throughout my time here offensively um we started out as a true motion team where you know we had a really big post player we leave on the block we brought a lot of screening action high up on the elbows to try to bring help up and play through her and what we found playing that way is while it was really helpful for that one player who was a star uh we were playing a certain style at the expense of the rest of our players to where we were kind of bailing the defense out in some regards just running all of this action that we were just a team that ran action but didn&#39;t look to score and so there were a lot of times where maybe the action would create something we&#39;d have a recovering defender but shooting was always the last thing that we were thinking about and so of course we turned the ball over a lot playing that way we weren&#39;t super efficient playing that way um and even though we still had a good team that year we just didn&#39;t think that we were getting the most out of the offensive end and so that was my first year here the mission then came with my head coach and i in the off season was how are we going to change how we play um to still have an inside out type of attack to play through you know either at the basket through a post player or through drives but be able to give the players the freedom to attack off every single catch and just make the defense have to guard everything so to speak um and so we moved into kind of like a side-to-side ball screen continuity and that was leading us down the dribble drive path to where there were certainly elements of triple drive in regard to like there&#39;s bigger gaps for players to put the ball on the floor and attack uh naturally and pick and roll the post player is opposite the drive and so you do have kind of the ending action looking like dribble drive but again there we just felt like as we continued to play that way even though we were getting better our efficiency was going up um the action was somewhat predictable because it was all scripted and there were some teams we&#39;d run into that we&#39;re just able to switch pick and roll and not have any level of a disadvantage their center could guard our point guard their point guard could guard our center where they were really good and kind of loading up help and forcing us to skip the ball and just getting us off rhythm so the natural progression for that then went okay well i i think the players just need space so how can we play in a certain style where we might run a little bit of action early on in the possession but after that action the passing and cutting rules the drive reaction rules are such that we can maintain spacing throughout the possession the ball can freely move uh but there still is space for us to drive and so that led us into uh exploring dribble drive and we had run some elements of it as like a secondary offense when teams would switch um and there were things of it that we definitely liked and there were things we didn&#39;t like one of the things that we hated about it was girls were catching the ball and driving because the offense said drive um and that obviously i think is a lot of questions i get from people that maybe don&#39;t like triple drive is well what if not all my players are good drivers or um if i want the ball to move and not just you know have four individual games of one-on-one happening on the perimeter um and so we we tweaked it a little bit by stealing bits and pieces from other people to kind of make triple drive our version of it unique to us um to where there&#39;s different scenarios where the ball is passed multiple times before a drive or where the spacing is just a little bit different and then we ended up with our final product which is very similar to a lot of just traditional dribble drive but also has some unique elements as well um but it was a three year process we we&#39;ve really used dribble drive exclusively for the for the last three years and we&#39;ve done it with you know a pretty good level of success and certainly it&#39;s a fun way to play it&#39;s a fun way to coach and uh it&#39;s just a really good way to kind of embrace modern offense where players always have space to attack off the catch so go ahead and like summarize for me that in those those years that you have run it aside from what you just said there but like the pros the major pros of the offense so if i&#39;m a coach that is this offseason kind of looking to add or change a little bit what would you say are the biggest pros for this type of offense yeah i would say number one it&#39;s it&#39;s easy to learn initially um you can put in the base framework of the offense and the players can pick it up and know exactly what they&#39;re doing in regard to where to space and where to move within a practice very easily the second reason is it really fits in line with our philosophy of skill development where we want to be able to attack off the catch we want to be able to finish the rim we always want to have really good options both ahead of us as we&#39;re driving and behind us to pass the ball if we&#39;re stopped and so it basically allows us to merge player development and our offensive teaching into one that as our skills are getting better we&#39;re doing player development we&#39;re also working on our offense and as we&#39;re working on our offense we&#39;re also working on player development those things mesh together and so it allows us to get better at a quicker rate um and then the third one i think it&#39;s just enjoyable for the players to play in you know we said often as a staff that as soon as we started playing dribble drive we felt like we were no longer fighting our players on offense to where you know no you have to do this and this because that&#39;s the play or when the ball goes here you have to do that and make that read it was very much just a time where we felt like we were on the same page as the girls on our roster and we were able to play in a way where they were enjoying it we were enjoying it and we were all working together collectively versus kind of at odds with each other so you feel like it has made you more positionless 100 has that allowed you to change the types of players that you recruit or even the types of lineups that you have within a game yeah absolutely i think any college coach that does recruit obviously whatever school they&#39;re at there&#39;s going to be challenges to get players there whether it&#39;s high academics whether it&#39;s low scholarship resources um you know cedarville is a great school it&#39;s a christian school and so there&#39;s a really specific type of kid that&#39;s attracted to our university and we&#39;re recruiting a person just as much as we&#39;re recruiting a player so our philosophy is always to find the girls that fit the culture of our school and then take the best ones we possibly can the benefit to that is you end up with a lot of really good players because you&#39;re not trying to fill specific position needs because we just can&#39;t operate that way in recruiting um but additionally the way that we have our offensive formatted is we always run some level of a quick action that flows into dribble drive and every year those actions change so that we can tailor them to fit specific strengths of the players on our team but we&#39;re always going to play the same way behind the play and everybody&#39;s coordinated in that effort the second part of your question was does it allow us to play versatile lineups it absolutely does so now you&#39;re in a position where maybe you need to put a certain group on the floor to defend or maybe you you need a little more scoring you can swap parts out very interchangeably because there&#39;s a shared understanding and style of play behind those actions everybody can get plugged in at every spot and just kind of go that&#39;s the common theme that i&#39;ve heard from coaches that do play more positionless and conceptual and that kind of thing you get to play your best players you don&#39;t feel handcuffed totally and and obviously a ton of advantages to that okay so let&#39;s go ahead and just talk about this next one i&#39;m going to test your ability to teach because i&#39;m going to ask you to summarize something that probably it&#39;s not it&#39;s not going to do us justice to the time that we&#39;re going to allot to it but kind of big picture and by the way for people that are listening to this and as i listen to this and you have more questions to this coach john&#39;s got a ton of resources for this so we&#39;ll we&#39;ll direct them to that at the end there but kind of the the 30 000 foot view of installation of this offense how do you go about doing that whether that&#39;s over the course of the first few weeks of the season or even the course of the first couple years of a player&#39;s career there how do you go about how do you how have you found effectively installing that yep so we do everything uh from the parts into the hole so i know a lot of coaches like to start with the hole and then break it down and then come back to it we don&#39;t approach it that way and the only reason why is the way that our our year is structured from a schedule standpoint in the fall we do a lot of small group player development workouts where we&#39;re focusing on skills but we start to install our offense there in those small groups and so essentially what we end up doing is we start from attacking the rim and then we build out from there so it&#39;s going to be you know one on o learning the different finishes we have at the basket being able to score with a defender on my back or maybe on my hip and then the next level after we just do all those one-on-one finishing drills is going to be adding that low post player that&#39;s always below the block and opposite the ball kind of the the cornerstone of dribble drive spacing so to speak and now we&#39;ll leave the driver unguarded and we&#39;ll have that post player be guarded and so now we&#39;re working on the decision of when i go to take my layup if the help comes i transfer the advantage to the five man if the help doesn&#39;t come i go ahead and take my layup and then of course we start to manipulate where the five is at so they&#39;re getting used to okay the drives come in left and i&#39;m on the left block now i need to loop underneath the ram and again just kind of building up those rates from one on one into two one two the next level then is the same decision should i pass or should i shoot at the rim or should i pass the ball but now we&#39;re going to be reading a perimeter player and so we&#39;ll then start to put girls on the perimeter whether it&#39;s two one two or three on three we&#39;ll teach our basic penetration reaction rules which is tony if i&#39;m driving the ball at you you&#39;re going to stay in your spot or push away if i need more room but you&#39;re not going to run up at me and if i&#39;m driving the ball away from you so if i&#39;m at the top of the key going left and you&#39;re on the right wing you&#39;re going to fill behind one perimeter spot and so we start to teach those basic reads and movements and then add defenders out there so our girls are saying can i get a layup no okay i can&#39;t get it because i was stopped by someone&#39;s defender boom that&#39;s where the ball goes and so then we&#39;re in that kind of three on three element from there we go to four on four and then eventually we end up five on five um and so that just kind of flows throughout the fall to where we&#39;re not so much teaching offense in regard to like pass here go there pass here do that it&#39;s can i score at the rim no why because somebody helped okay that&#39;s where the ball goes and then it&#39;s getting the other players on the floor coordinated to be in spots where the ball can find them when those drives are stopped so we start at the rim 100 and then we just build out from there into the whole 515. i asked this next question because you and i have the advantage or disadvantage of recruiting the players that come into our program so we have some some choice with this as a high school coach listens to this and says i&#39;ve only got these players i&#39;m going to go back to that decision making component do you feel like the girls that you have they already have a higher level of iq coming in and so you have a little bit of an advantage of running something like this or do you feel like the system teaches the girls no matter what level iq they have to be better decision makers i.e can anybody do this yeah totally i would argue that yes anybody can i mean there&#39;s no doubt that the players that we&#39;re going to get at our level are going to be more ready to play in this system because they are you know the best high school player in their county or area um but that being said everybody that comes into our program doesn&#39;t come in already knowing it so there still is a large amount of growth that they&#39;re going to undergo from the time they&#39;re a freshman to the time they&#39;re a senior and their decision making is going to get better over the course of time and so i&#39;m of the belief that if we can do that at our level certainly if you have a younger player who has more skills to build and is going to experience more rapid growth because there&#39;s such a area to cover i think it&#39;s beyond doable to have anybody uh do it at any level provided you&#39;re committed to it and i will say there&#39;s always growing pains you know even for us there&#39;s times in the fall where i watch us play and i think oh i don&#39;t love what i&#39;m seeing um but we always feel like if if it looks good immediately we&#39;re not working on the right things you know we&#39;re doing things we already know we&#39;d rather have some struggle some strain and then grow through that so you can&#39;t cheat getting good you&#39;re going to be good when you have good players and that&#39;s another benefit to dribble drive as those players develop through the system i felt like it accelerated their development but like you said there still was ugly in those early season games even though the only thing i posted on social media was the best clips exactly there&#39;s still a lot of other possessions that i i really didn&#39;t like but if you have the long-term view i do feel like they become better players faster even though it&#39;s probably not still as fast as what the coach would hope absolutely there&#39;s no doubt about that i know if you ever follow me on twitter you&#39;re going to think our girls never miss a shot we certainly have our moments yeah which is the truth of probably all social media um all right so let me talk about like the the t because there may be some who are already listening to this and you know it&#39;s it&#39;s how i feel when i go to a coaching clinic you sit there and you listen and you&#39;re like well i kind of already know about this but i&#39;m listening closely for maybe the nuggets there and so the nuggets that i want to talk about are like coaching cues maybe some either some terminology um maybe something a little hack or something you know to help with their understanding as you teach this is there anything like that that maybe a coach who&#39;s already doing this can improve upon by using these hacks or these coaching cues yeah absolutely i think the thing that we&#39;re always trying to do and really teach our players and this is in my opinion the crux of any offensive system is getting players to understand when they have an advantage and when they don&#39;t and dribble drive is no different i think one of the hesitations i had in coming into it was again i don&#39;t want one player beating the crap out of the ball trying to get by their girl the way that we want to play is i&#39;m going to catch it if i can beat you i&#39;m going to do it if i&#39;m not i&#39;m going to share the ball so so much of our development is always focusing on our players understanding what&#39;s the relationship between me and my defender um and how big of an advantage do i have and so for us a big advantage anytime i can get my shoulders past my primary defender they are in full out recovery mode the teaching points for us whenever we have that is to get in the way of them we want to actually take our drive and work inside their body to use our back and butt as a means to shield them out and then hopefully make a play for myself or if help comes move that puppy to somebody else that would be a big advantage a small advantage for us on a drive would be if i&#39;m shoulder to shoulder or maybe they&#39;re opened up and their chest is pointed to my shoulder we want to continue to drive there but we&#39;ll probably have to play off of two feet um but if i&#39;m in neither of those circumstances if i put the ball on the ground my defender slides over hits me with their chest and we&#39;re chest to chest we have no advantage and so right then and there our players we teach them to shift their mindset from it&#39;s dribble drive i gotta give my girl she stopped me i need to change direction and keep going too i&#39;ve lost my advantage what&#39;s the next action and in those circumstances based on where i&#39;m driving i always have someone to go to in front of me i always have someone to go to behind me um and then of course it&#39;s just a matter of getting everybody on the page to where they&#39;re making those quick decisions to read and understand that a lot of our finishing drills that we do are putting players in positions to make those decisions as do i have a big advantage small advantage or no advantage um and we always try to even in our one-on-ones give them the option to throw the ball to a coach re-space and cut and then we throw it back so they&#39;re not taking shots or playing where they&#39;re just driving the crap out of the ball when they have no advantage so that&#39;s a big piece of it for us is trying to get them to understand that concept and playing that way and whether we&#39;re ball screening whether we&#39;re playing dribble drive whether we&#39;re playing motion that still applies to all those offensive systems and i think that&#39;s where the magic is versus the actual x&#39;s and o&#39;s yeah that&#39;s good um okay so like maybe dribble drive i think if coach understands what it is there&#39;s a kind of like they&#39;re all the same do you feel like you do anything there that is unique yes um so a couple things number one let&#39;s talk like single side drive so i&#39;m have to bolt top of the key i&#39;m driving to my right hand there&#39;s one player spaced in the corner a lot of dribble drive teams you know talk about if you can&#39;t get by your girl at the elbow you&#39;re going to jump stop in that drop zone the corner corners gonna lift up and i&#39;m gonna go ahead and play with them for us we don&#39;t do any kind of level of drag zone breakdown zone drop zone we don&#39;t we don&#39;t mess with any of that um for us again it&#39;s all about the driver reading where i&#39;m at versus my defender and then my teammates doing the same so for us in that single side drive as i&#39;m coming to the corner that corner players default is not to lift up their their default is to read my shoulders and if my shoulders are facing the baseline that means i&#39;m attacking they&#39;re going to hold their space they may take a step lower they may take a step higher so they&#39;re not in line with their defender in the ball um but we don&#39;t want them lifting automatically however if i do get to the elbow and my shoulders aren&#39;t downhill but they&#39;re facing the sideline that&#39;s a cue to that player now to come out of the corner i can keep my dribble alive and kind of just pitch it to her versus stopping and then what happens to us when we stop is everybody goes to their girl they deny and we kind of lose our flow by eliminating those zones we&#39;re able to go ahead and then just kind of keep the flow going so that&#39;s one thing that&#39;s different the other thing that&#39;s different for us now is let&#39;s say we&#39;re driving towards a double side so i&#39;m in the corner tony you just drove it to me on that single side and kicked it now i&#39;m driving from the right corner middle with my left hand there&#39;s two people spaced ahead of me a lot of dribble drive teams take that player at the top and again they bring them closer to the ball and they try to like loop on top pitch behind and then drive for us what we found whenever we start doing that is it&#39;s a really easy switch for teams we&#39;re so close together we kind of give the ball there and maybe there&#39;s space to shoot in between that switch but ultimately we&#39;re not putting a lot of stress on the defense and so for us we&#39;ll take that player who&#39;s normally filling and we&#39;ll just hold them on that slot and if i can&#39;t get downhill i&#39;m going to kick it to them and instead of replacing myself i&#39;m going to go all the way to the corner taking my defender low eliminating a switch situation and then giving that driver space to come back going to the single side so that&#39;s within our basic flow some different things that we do um there&#39;s also some different things that we do that allow us to drive the ball baseline and that&#39;s really unique to dribble drive teams and basically that&#39;s just two different scenarios one of them would be if i&#39;m driving to that single side corner and i do pitch the ball early and i start to cut through if that player decides to put the ball on the ground and go baseline i just stop and i backpedal up to the wing we call that an escape cut got it from doug novak his teams are excellent with it that allows us to utilize some baseline drives um or if i&#39;m driving to that single side and there&#39;s two players behind me filling and i stop and throw the ball backwards that to us is an automatic cue that that player is going to catch it and attack opposite down that lane line um and so a lot of teams would start to like either switch our stuff or close out taking away the middle and those two cues or options allow us to have baseline drives also which is unique i think to the way that we do dribble drive and something that we think is really important that&#39;s good um so the question i always get the two questions related to if the defense switches remember the defense plays zone you&#39;ve already addressed some of the switching if you want to say anything more about that maybe adjustments that you have for that or even something that you tell the girls or they just immediately adjust to on their own i know some teams kind of adjust the way that they drive or how low they go or you know where the guy cuts where the player cuts that doesn&#39;t have the ball so maybe something like that or the zone how do you how do you attack the zone um whether that&#39;s you know i would guess probably most are going to be playing like a 2-3 so you don&#39;t have to tell us like boxing one i always do get the one question the coach is going to give me like way out there like what if they&#39;re gonna place in a triangle and two like right all right you got me like not that just like standard like two three what what are some suggestions you have for those yep so i&#39;ll start talking switches um number one our baseline rule again is when i pass the ball i cut to the same side corner and we want that cut to be deep as as deep as possible so that switches are hard and so our terminology there especially when we&#39;re playing things that we know are going to switch is get a piece of paint on every cut that way if i&#39;m throwing to you and you&#39;re in the corner even if that means i have to like take a big old j shape to get out that&#39;s fine we want to bring that defender low now that doesn&#39;t always happen there&#39;s plenty of times where maybe a drive gets leveled out and i&#39;m throwing the ball to you and you&#39;re six feet away from me and like of course i&#39;m not going to go hit the paint not a problem so when switches happen we don&#39;t want to stop the ball big believer that like it all comes out in the wash um and eventually what&#39;s going to happen is there&#39;s going to be a switch excuse me where two people are on the ball momentarily and a big rule for us and automatic in our offense is that if you have the ball and you see two defenders you throw it behind you and that&#39;s going to be the girl that just pitched it so i pitched to you coach you&#39;re driving you see two i&#39;m going to the corner you throw it right back to me and now i have an open three or a baseline drive and we&#39;re able to kind of exploit some switches that way so ball movement getting a piece of the paint throwing it backwards whenever you see two people are all things we emphasize versus switching in regard to zone this was new for us this year but we wanted to play a similar style versus zone that we did man-to-man the first couple years we did dribble drive people would get in the zone and we would turn into like high post and short corner x-ing ball over my head like holding it for forever and it&#39;s just an entirely different way to play our players go from attacking off the catch looking to shoot being aggressive making people guard the drive and when teams can do that they&#39;re like okay we&#39;ll just get in the zone because they&#39;re going to change their offense and now the things that hurt us won&#39;t hurt us so this past summer with the break from covet and everything we decided we need to find a way that we can still play drive and kick versus the zone and even if it means you know it&#39;s different passing cut rules we want to play concepts that are similar so talking 2-3 zone then for us what we&#39;re going to do is we&#39;re going to put three people on the perimeter and they&#39;re going to try to locate themselves in the gaps between the defenders so those top two defenders that&#39;ll be our top girl and she&#39;s going to stand in between both of them her goal is to always make a perfect triangle that she&#39;s the tip of uh and her at the top of the key her role is the only rule you can&#39;t hold the ball she can&#39;t catch it up there and be like looking around and trying to do something she can shoot it swing it drive it whatever you want to do our five man is going to be on the right block and her job down there is just to wreak havoc on the zone rotating screen in duck in screen out seal out whatever you want to do but you need to be hitting heads in there and making those bottom uh rotations be a little different and then our two girls beside our top guard they are going to be getting into their perfect triangle position in between the bottom side defender and then the top defender closest to them and then lastly in the right corner we&#39;re going to have our best shooter and she&#39;s going to be a baseline runner and her basically her main rule is i stay spaced in that corner until the ball finds me if i can&#39;t shoot it and i move it i then just take off and run the baseline so if you can envision this with me as all these girls are kind of position positioning themselves in that perfect triangle spot what happens is the ball starts moving as the zone starts matching up and so if i&#39;m at the top of the key and i throw it right the top right defender is going to go take the ball for me i need to be in a perfect triangle there so i&#39;m actually going to move closer to the ball which is counterintuitive but what happens is that takes the left top defender and brings her closer to me and so now when we throw the ball back i&#39;m at the top of the key i have to be a mover and i throw it left giant gap is now created for our opposite wing player to drive that ball and you have the five opposite you have your shooter in the corner so if the middle girl takes me i have one read to make do i hit the five do i take three and so we just teach that same basic concept against really any zone whether we&#39;re you know in that three out alignment i spoke of or if we have four guards out we don&#39;t have a runner trying to find those gaps getting multiple reversals then puncturing the paint and making some sort of a decision once we get in there and the benefit that that had for our team is we went from being at like .97 points per possession versus man two years ago and at like .75 points per possession versus zone to this past year being at 0.99 points per possession versus man and at 1.15 versus zone so we were really efficient on both ends and you know part of that is we made a lot more threes this year and that&#39;s a really good way to have an efficient offense is to make a lot of three-point shots but i think a lot of those opportunities were created because we&#39;re playing in a way that we&#39;re familiar with and that&#39;s similar and we&#39;re not changing our style of play just based on the defense that the opponent runs sure have you you know talking about the even the threes there and against the zone have you found that you get more open three-point attempts yeah i think whether it&#39;s versus man or zone absolutely um because i have i have found that it almost takes your mediocre shooters and turns them to above average above average to great because just simply of the if the defender helps and the the girls are naturally trained to quickly pitch that to an open shooter you now go from being maybe a foot open to now two feet open b just because they recognize earlier that that teammate is open absolutely you know we shoot the ball really well from three and there&#39;s a lot of factors that go into it number one you our players are good there&#39;s no doubt about that they put in the work and they they deserve the majority of that credit we do spend a lot of time on it but of course that component there that you just mentioned coach is so true of that when you&#39;re taking stationary standstill threes versus long recovery you&#39;re going to shoot it a lot better than when you&#39;re running off screens and having to set your feet real quick and shoot with somebody flying at you and that&#39;s that&#39;s made a world of difference for our team absolutely good uh you talked before about the the small group workouts and i kind of want to circle back to that now that we&#39;re in the off season i don&#39;t feel like this is something that you start on day one and like you said just because of how it&#39;s structured you don&#39;t teach them an offense as we traditionally think an offense is taught it&#39;s more of building to it whether even if they do start with the whole you eventually got to go back to the parts from what i&#39;ve found through those small sided games and you know whatever that that you&#39;re building up back to that instead of because i am going to have you at the end share where they can find some more resources for this i don&#39;t want you describing any more drills or whatever but the fundamental skills that you say that you&#39;re hitting on in every single practice yeah that eventually makes you successful in the overall offense what are those like mainstays yeah absolutely so as far as like hard skills go finishing at the rim is one and that&#39;s being able to finish multiple ways off of one foot with either hand sometimes off the same foot with the same hand or playing off two feet we teach all those finishes that&#39;s absolutely critical another one is going to be being able to pass on time and on target when you have contact on you um so a lot of the passes that we get sometimes are i get into the paint i get bumped off my line and now i have to move the ball and if i can throw it on time and on target that fast pass is going to make for a slower rotation from the defender therefore we can keep playing how we want to play being able to catch shot ready with our chest facing the rim every single time is a big skill that we work on so no matter where i&#39;m spacing whether i&#39;m coming from the corner up to the wing or the wing to the corner being able to as the ball comes to me get my hips around and catch with my shoulders and hips facing the rim so i can attack either way my first step can break the three-point line is extremely important to us of course shooting and then i would say decision making is a skill for sure and that&#39;s one that we try to incorporate and work on in every single workout because ultimately any offense is just those skills applied correct me if i&#39;m wrong but i have found that by practicing like this whether it&#39;s team or in small group workouts that you actually get more reps practicing the skills that you say that you actually that you say that you practice in traditional block or just traditional work group workouts yeah i think definitely and anytime you have a small group together and and staff there that can kind of guide them decision making is so important in my opinion because i think players have a lot of time especially at the division two and three level where they&#39;re not on campus throughout the summer to to do those reps by their own to finish by themselves with no defender to shoot with no defender so how can you leverage the time that you have with them i think adding decision making for sure is key there and then you&#39;re you&#39;re getting not just more reps but also more meaningful reps and i think that certainly leads to improvement yeah for sure all right so tell people where they can find out more because a lot of coaches i know are interested in this and most of them are trying to piece together things that they&#39;re finding on the internet and i know that you have a lot of those pieces already put together for them so what kinds of things do you have available and where can they find those resources yep the absolute best place to start is going to be my website which is just my last name leonzo leonziobasketball.com when you go there on the home page it&#39;s going to have a big old thing that says dribble drive offense just click on that and there there will be a clinic video where i kind of break down the basics of how we operate a section of a lot of the small games that we use to teach it um as well as a comprehensive resource called the ultimate guide to triple drive offense that&#39;s available where that walks you through from a to z the nitty gritty man zone small group workouts installation everything you could want that&#39;s available there as well so leonzo basketball.com is the place you can find all that if you do want to learn more um also my twitter handle i think you can see by my face there it&#39;s at john underscore leonzo and again that&#39;s elio nzo um i try to post some different stuff there as well about what we&#39;re up to lately um my dms are open so if you want to ask a question that&#39;s a great way to reach out to me as well yeah great that&#39;s coach john lianzo assistant coach for the cedarville yellow jackets thanks again for taking the time to come on absolutely thanks so much for

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