Full Court Pressing Systems

Talk about a busy busy busy summer for me.  With going back to graduate school to get my masters in Education Administration, I have had a lot less time to do basketball stuff, which is strange for me.  I just got back from a family vacation where we went up to Minnesota to fish for a week.  We had a blast.  We didn't catch as many fish as we normally do, but the family time was great. 

With that being said, our school year starts tomorrow and will be around my computer much more often now to post basketball items and resources on a daily basis.  So thanks to those of you who still come around checking things out.  

To get things rolling this week, I am going to share different resources on pressing systems.  There are so many different variations of pressing systems out there that I could spend a month sharing resources and philosophies.  In our program, we use a couple of different presses to speed up the game and keep our opponents on their heels.  I spent a lot of time studying coaches who use pressing systems as a part of their program.  These included Dan Ninham, Rick Pitino, Billy Donovan, Don Meyer and Vance Walberg.

The reason we press is not that different from other coaches who press regularly.  These reasons include:

1. Increasing the number of possessions a game
2. Play deeper into our bench and deeper into our opponents bench
3. Wear down (mentally and physically) the opponent, especially their guards
4. Increase the number of transition opportunities
5. Create chaos 

With that being said, if you are going to be a team that presses, whether it is selectively, all game, an aggressive press or more of a passive press, I feel that you as a coach need to be willing to accept a few things.  

1. Control - You need give up some control of what takes place on the floor.  We try to limit the amount of thinking that players have to do.  Not because they are not capable, but because we want them to be reactive and to make plays within the system we have created while not having to do a lot of thinking.  For example, we tell our players that if they find themselves in a situation where the ball ends up in a trapping situation, even though it is not a designed trapping location, to TRAP the ball.  As a coaching staff, we understand that we are going to get burned at times and give up lay-ups.  However, as long as our players are playing hard and making good basketball reactions, we know that down the stretch our pressure defense will wear teams down.
2. Fouls - Granted, no coach teaches his/her players to foul (other than in special situations).   However, the more aggressive your philosophy, the more willing you need to be with your players fouling.  With that being said, I do not believe that allowing players to foul is a good thing.  In fact, we get on our players heavily for fouling while keeping in mind, when kids are playing hard and trying to make plays, they are going to foul.   I believe that having an aggressive mindset, this is bound to happen and I need to keep an open mind about this trade-off.  
3. Variations / Selectiveness - I believe that the best pressing teams are selective and vary their presses.  I could spend a whole week on this topic alone as there are so many different ways to vary your presses or be selective with your trapping.  For example, one method that we use is using the same pressure but varying our pick up points.  22 High for us means face guarding the inbounds pass, while 22 Mid allows the ball to be inbounded.  Both presses follow the same rules and principles other than handling the inbound, which makes carry over for players from press to press simple.  We can do the same thing out of the 2-1-2 with only a minor adjustment.  For example, 21 High, we still deny the inbound pass.  

With all this being said, in the upcoming days, I will be sharing different press systems that are used at various levels.  I hope that this will give you some ideas on how you can use full court defense to help you win games.