Geno Auriemma Coaching Notes

I recently purchased Championship Productions' "Learn From the Legends Series."  It is six videos of Coach Geno Auriemma and Coach Bob Knight talking about and demonstrating their offensive and defensive philosophies.  Here are my notes for Coach Auriemma's portion of the series.  Note that I didn't take many notes on the first three videos (for one I didn't take any notes).

Geno Auriemma Notes

The Essentials of Coaching

-Starts practice the same way every day.  Not a lot of drills but the uses the same ones every day.  Only covers things that players will do in a game.


Building Creativity into Your Motion Offense

-You want the best offensive player on your team catching the ball at the high post.


Zone Offense

-Spend more time on your offense than defense

-“If you can’t make a shot, what difference what plays you’re running?”
-If you don’t have good shooters, work on shooting the ball, a lot, in practice

-Don’t put anyone on the floor who can’t help you offensively.

-Practice different types of layups

-All the great offenses in the world won’t work if you can’t dribble, pass, catch, and shoot.

-Spend time shooting the ball every day

-The guy who hits the other guy first wins
-Post-ups

Zone Offense Strategies

-Penetrate the Zone with a dribble or a pass

-Girls don’t play zone or press because girls aren’t big and fast enough
-They don’t take up enough space

-On closeouts it is impossible to take away the three AND stop the drive
-One or the other

-Don’t shoot jump shots against the trap

Drills

-There’s only so many things you can be good at

-There’s a lot of different ways you can win.  You have to decide what works for you.

-First Man to Man Defense decision: Where do you pick up?

-You are either a pressing team or you’re not.  If you press you have to be committed to it.

-At some point your Half-court Defense is going to have to win a game for you

-A mistake players make on D is, once they player starts dribbling, they body up and foul.  KEEP YOUR SEPARATION.

-Coach A fronts the post but is undecided if this is the best strategy because it gives up an offensive rebound.

-4 on 4.  Defensive 4 start in the paint.  Offensive four outside the arc.  Coach passes to a random offensive player.  Defenders must closeout and/or position themselves accurately based on how many passes away they are.


Defensive Tactics

-No easy way to defend good ball screens

-UConn does a hard hedge on a ball screen.  Then recover quickly.

-Run ball screens for a really good player.  Don’t run ball screens for a weak player.

-Pick and roll is an opportunity to trap.  But very difficult to trap in the middle of the court.  Sides are much better.  Trap any screen going to the sideline.

-Pick one way to guard Pick and Roll
-Trap
-Switch
-Hard Hedge (Auriemma prefers Hard Hedge)

-You’ve got to coach like your best stuff won’t work
-Be ready to adjust

-The easiest teams to play are the teams that run a set play.  Once you take that away they fall apart.

-When playing a better/more talented team, back up your defense.  Play soft, sagging man to man.  On offense try to fast break.  Don’t want to let a good team set-up their defense.  Try to set-up your offense where your two best offensive players are together on one side of the floor.  Everybody else screens.  Hope the other team plays poorly.

-If you don’t give up open three’s and you don’t put people on the FT line do you know how many two’s a team has to make to beat you?  A lot.

-My timeouts have gotten better because I’ve realized my players are dumb.  Only give players two things to do.  No more.

-Put best big athlete on the ball on inbound situations.