Boston College's Flex Motion Offense

Earlier, I posted an article on Gonzaga's Flex offense. Today, we look at Al Skinner and the Boston College flex. I would say, BC plays a more pure version of the flex than Gonzaga does. Gonzaga uses most of the flex screens and cuts but they've started to move away from motion and use more set plays. BC pretty much uses their flex motion exclusively. Watch the video and then you can read my thoughts below.



Setup:

Boston College has had a couple of good big men in the past like Craig Smith and Jared Dudley. The key to the flex is constant movement. It's a patient offense focusing on precise screening and cutting action waiting for the defense to make a mistake.

In my opinion, you must have a balanced team with players that all can shoot, finish, pass, and make good decisions. If forces you to share the ball and all players play all positions.

Down screen:

The flex is all about reading your defender coming off of the off-ball screening action.

Against a M2M non-switching defense, you want O3 in this case to take the shot because X3 is in a trailing position. Now against a M2M switching defense, O5 can pick and seal X3 and O2 can look for that down low. Against a M2M non-switch where X3 cheats underneath on the overplay, O3 can curl around O5 and look for a quick pop from O2 for a short jumper in the middle of the key.

Flex Screen and Cut:

The flex screen and subsequent flex cut is at the heart of this offense. This is where you'll get most of the scoring.

Once again, it's critical that O2 reads his defender before choosing which path to take. Most of the time, O2 is going behind O4 looking for the pass underneath the basket by O5 in this case.

Summary:

The flex is a very patient, deliberate offense. One high school coach around here who is basically a legend, runs the flex as his base. It can be adapted to any good team. It's advantages are that any player can be a threat to score and if run patiently, will almost always result in an open shot.

You can take a look at Mark Few's DVD Flex for Success, but Gary Williams of Maryland is probably a bit more pure in his teaching of the Flex so I'm recommending Gary Williams DVD on the Flex this time.

Also, be sure to check out the X's and O's Basketball Forum for the plethora of notes that I have including flex stuff.