Pittsburgh's Late Game Inbounder Give and Go

I'm not a big fan of leaving the inbounder un-defended on the BLOB play. I wrote earlier how Kansas used the inbounder give and go play against Iowa St. who decided to face-guard the paint.

Tonight, the Pittsburgh Panthers saw WVU attempting to double DeJuan Blair while the ball was in the air. The double came from the inbounder and Blair immediately tip passed the ball to Keith Benjamin for the easy putback. Here is how it looked live,



I really don't understand the play. DeJaun Blair was not even having a great game up to that point, just 7 points on 3-for-13 shooting. If you really feel the need to double, I would've brought help from the weak-side and force the skip pass, or even from the wing and rotate down. Leaving the inbounder is just too dangerous in my opinion.

As you can see in the above screen shot, DeJaun Blair is actually already pinched in, and the inbounder's defender is not really doing anything. The better play probably would've been to defend the inbound, leave the pinch on DeJaun, rotate to cover #23 Sam Young who is their best scorer and leave the freshman Gilbert Brown open for the long inbound.

There were some other big mistakes by Bob Huggins team today. WVU really should've won the game, but their inexperience was what hurt them the most down the stretch. Missing free throws, and not staying with shooters. I've talked about earlier about what is good help and what is bad help, the Mountaineers demonstrated bad help on the game-winning shot by Pitt. But those are the signs of a young team still feeling out their new head coach. WVU will be fine in the long run.

For a great new video from a truly great basketball mind, take a look at Hubie Brown's DVD on Playbook for Success. Don't forget to check out the X's and O's of Basketball Forum to discuss this and other basketball topics.