UTSA Women's Dribble Drive Motion Offense

I watched a little bit of the women's college basketball game last night between UTSA and Virginia Tech played at Tulane. I watched for a bit when I did notice that UTSA was essentially using the dribble drive motion offense. They got clobbered in this game and VT won easily but I did look up UTSA a little bit and they've been pretty good so far this season. There were 6-2 heading into the game, and they start 2 freshmen. Their lineup is pretty small and they use the press a lot on defense. They also push the ball a lot after rebounds and makes. I only had a chance to take a few clips but they show the dribble drive well in a different situation other than Memphis. Watch the video and read my thoughts below,



Drive, Kick, Clearout:

The court is spread in a 4-out 1-in set. Here, UTSA likes to have their forward play closer to the sideline to create even more space in the lane to drive. The key point here, is that once you drive and kick the ball out, you must clear out to either corner and fill, the corner player should move up and fill the vacated spot.

The first one doesn't go really anywhere so O3 just hands it off to O1 and clears out to the opposite corner. O2 moves up to fill the vacated spot at the top of the key.

O1 attacks the middle and kicks it out to O4, O1 clears out to the corner. O4 attacks the middle again and this time draws the foul.

Use Handoffs:

The handoff is a good play to use because it uses a screen as well as rapid change of direction. Here, O1 dribbles hard at O2 and then handsoff the ball. O2 then curls around and attacks the hoop for the score.

The only thing I don't like about the way this play is executed by UTSA is that O1 doesn't really set a screen. She kind of just gets out of the way quickly. In my opinion, right after you hand the ball off, you want to set a screen and hold the defender, make them really work. Here, the defender, X2 is basically stride for stride with O2 and O2 just makes a good drive and layup. It would be more effective if O1 set a good screen on X2.

The UTSA Roadrunners were beaten badly mainly because Virginia Tech broke their press scoring a bunch of easy baskets and also they got outrebounded badly due to a big size mismatch. They are a young team and with more experience running this offense, they will no doubt improve.

For a relatively new video on perimeter play improvement, take a look at Jason Shay's DVD on 33 Perimeter drills. Coach Shay's is an assistant with the University of Tennessee men's team. Don't forget to check out the X's and O's of Basketball Forum to talk about this and your favorite basketball topics.