Re-Analyzing Purdue's Last Possession Win Over Penn State

With so much going on with teaching and coaching at the moment, I haven't nearly had the time to watch as much college basketball as I used to. I was able to catch some games and highlights the other day and this ESPN segment with Doug Gottlieb breaking down Purdue's win over Penn State on a last second BLOB play.


Usually I don't disagree with most of what ESPN puts out there, because they usually have ex-coaches doing the breakdowns. But I think Gottlieb has it wrong here. With Penn State up by only 1-point, I'd rather have one defender down low crowning the basket, protecting the easy layup, rather than having him "up the line" as Gottlieb says to help on the switch who can then help on the shot. Even if Battle had gotten up to the FT-line where Gottlieb is pointing to below, he wouldn't have been in a position to defend the switch or challenge the shot anyways, and would've allowed the inbounder to get great position on the offensive boards,


To me, it was just a missed assignment. What the Penn State defender who got screened should have done was simply switched hard. That should have allowed the screened defender to jump out to challenge the shot or at worst, to force the player to put the ball on the ground and dribble into the help where Battle was in position to defend. Bottom line for me as a coach, if the offense elects to shoot a contested 20-footer, rather than a contested 2-footer, I'm OK with that, I'll take the numbers on that one anytime.

If you're looking for more great ideas for your SLOBs, BLOBs, jumpball stuff, check out Tom Izzo's new DVD on Dead Ball Situations. Coach Izzo is the head coach of the men's basketball team at Michigan State University.