Coaching the System

Book excerpt: "If you are interested in Coaching the System, you must be either desperate or crazy!" At least that's what people told authors Gary Smith and Doug Porter when they began investigating this revolutionary style of play almost a decade ago. Ignoring the critics, they went on to coach the two highest scoring teams in men's and women's college basketball history: the University of Redlands, California (132.4 ppg), and Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois (104.1 ppg). From its origins as the Sonny Allen Numbered Fast Break, to Paul Westhead's Loyola Marymount up-tempo game, the System has been around for decades. But when Grinnell College's David Arseneault added platoon substitution patterns and hockey-style short shifts, placing a priority on creating three-point looks for his "preferred shooters," the System truly came into its own. Smith and Porter learned the Grinnell version of the System from Arseneault himself, adapting it to fit their situations coaching men's and women's programs. In the past decade their teams set 32 NCAA and NAIA records between them, including most 100-point games in a season (Redlands-23; Olivet-24). Olivet also holds national records for defensive turnovers (36.3 per game) assists (23.8 per game), and three pointers made in a season (509, 15.6 per game). Redlands owns college basketball records (all levels) for field goal attempts (110.3 per game), and three-pointers made (23.8 per game). Now you can learn every detail of this devastating full court run-and-press attack that allows you to dictate tempo and force your opponents out of their normal game plan, capturing the imagination of your players and community, and making coaching fun again! You'll learn exactly how and why the System works, how to adapt it to fit your personnel, suggestions for conditioning players, organizing System practices, and even ways to respond to the inevitable criticisms that come with playing the game this far "outside the box." Other chapters offer complete descriptions of the Redlands Attack (Coach Smith's variation of the Grinnell offense), the LMU Attack (which Westhead popularized and used to advance to the NCAA regional finals in 1990), and the Olivet Attack (Coach Porter's hybrid version of the LMU and Dribble-Drive offenses). Finally, you'll learn System defensive principles, terminology, and how to cover every conceivable press attack and press-breaker alignment. Also included are 57 drills and over 300 diagrams to illustrate System offense and defense, providing you with a complete blueprint for "Coaching the System!"