Villanova's Weakside Corner 3-pointer Against George Mason

Trying to catch as many games as possible these days. From a couple of nights ago, the Villanova Wildcats won a thriller over the always tough George Mason Patriots. The game went down to the wire, with Nova hitting some clutch 3-pointers. A coach emailed me the other day asking for a quick hitter for a 3-pointer and I responded with a dribble drive to the weakside corner 3-pointer. I love that play because the weakside corner 3-pointer is probably the most difficult to guard in basketball. Take a look at how Nova executed it out of their 4-out 1-in offense:



Weakside Corner 3-pointer:

Here's the thing. How many teams prepare defensively on how they will take away the weakside corner 3-pointer?? Most teams focus on ball pressure, stopping penetration, and closing out. With proper spacing on offense, it is impossible for the defense to do all those 3 things. That's what the weakside corner does, it stretches out the defense and makes it really hard for a sound defense to cover all the bases.

The play is quite simple, the Wildcats are in their 4-out 1-in motion offense. After a few handoff exchanges, the forward comes up from the block to the top of the key to set a screen for one of the guards on the opposite side. The guard with the ball here decides not to use the screen and drives the wing towards the hoop,

O1 is able to blow by his defender, and X5. X3 is too worried about O3 to help. That leaves X2 to drop down from the weakside. Well, its a decision really, to help or not to help. As coaches, we always teach to stop the ball first so help is always the first option. O2, shuffles down to the weakside corner and O1 finds him for the open 3-pointer,


I think this play would work even if you didn't have a break your ankles point guard. Because with O5 setting the screen, O1 really should be able to penetrate the lane. Now if the defense decides to hedge hard, then you can run screen-roll and have O2 still shuffle to the corner as X2 will probably still drop down to cover the rolling forward.

Now, the only other assumption here is that you have good shooters. But if you're designing a play for the 3-pointer, you better be sure you have a player that is a knockdown shooter.

For more quick hitters out of 4-out 1-in motion, check out Jay Wright's DVD on 15 Great 4-Out 1-In Motion Offense Plays. Jay Wright is in his 8th season as head coach of the Villanova Wildcats.