pera eer a Laken canice Mal saris ett of i al pupa Mell Alexneder aay nabeanrl usar ath heel ho bee ropa och ty Rig 2 player at Nokomis HS, and embraced it, with tremendous results, in his fst high school {acing job at Bushnell re City HS, and later at Lncln Alexander ale played allege ball at Monmouth Cole. The 1-2-2 Ball Press has become one of my trademarks as a coach and for 31 years has been the hallmark of the Lincoln Community High School basketball program. This ball press is designed to be a controlled and contained type of defense in which we press on both made and missed shots. Through the years, I have become Using this style of basketball at Lincoln for the past 17 years has awarded our teams nine 20-win seasons, three 30-win seasons, 12 regional titles, four sectional titles and three Elite Eight appear- ances. We have also won several holiday touraments and in 1996-97, we won the prestigious King Cotton Classic Tournament in Pine Bluffs, AR, First and foremst, the 1-2-2 Bal Press i designed ta be an equal izer of talent. How did | come to believe init so ardenty? In 1971, 1 was a senior member of the Nokomis High School basketball team. This was my final year of playing high school sports and it was also a year of many changes. Nokomis had just hired a new head basketball coach by the name of Loren Wallace and the Ili- nals High School Association had started the new two-class system ‘of A and AA, Nokomis, a small school located in the central part of the state, fell nto the Class & division. I had been several yeas since the Redskins had won a regional tite and acvanced in postseason play. As a team under a new coach, we set some high goals for our- selves; litle did we know that we would end up playing for a sectional ttle. Coach Wallace introduced us to the 1-2-2 Ball Press and it took our team half the season to believe inthe concept of play- ing defense to win games. While he made believers out of our team, litle did | know that this would become my way of coaching years later and my trademark as a coach. ‘ter a successful and exciting senior season, | continued my basketball career at Wionmouth College, @ Division ill school out of Monmouth, Itinols, where we played man-to-man defense. After grad ation, | began my high school coaching career using the man-to-man philosophy since | had just played it for the past four years. At the end (of 11 seasons, my coaching record was 123 wins and 155 losses. Being 8 very competitive person with a strong desire to win, | thought ong ‘and hard on how to improve my coaching style and bring success to ‘ny teams. In 1988-1989, forthe first time, | introduced the 1-2-2 Bell Press to my current team, Bushnell-Praire City. By the end of that sea- son, we had produced 23 wins and | had become a vety firm believer in ths type of defense. Infact, since I have embraced this syle of play, my teams have compiled a record of 423 wins and 140 losses. in 1990, | accepted the basketball coach's postion at Lincoln ‘Community High School, There, the 1-2-2 Ball Press was already the foundation of success for its teams. My former high school coach, Loren Wallace, had brought the press there in 1976, achieving a record of 271-68. His successors, Cal Hubbard (39-14) and Don Fults (4-20), both used the ball press. Already a conver, | have continued the tradition, compiling 2 387-120 record at Lincoln to date, From 1976-2007, Lincoln Community High Schoot’s cumulative record is 701 wins and 220 losses for a winning percentage of .761. For the past 31 years, Lincoln has been one of the state's most successful programs. Coaches, players and even the community believe in the ball pres as the way to play basketball and win games. [AS noted previously, the 1-2-2 Ball Press is designed to be an ‘equalizer of talent, My philosophy is that we want to keep as much pressure on the ball as possible and we want to pressure our oppo- nents, Some years, we are not athletic enough to be able to do this mman-for-man and the ball press allows us to have our players in defensive position to have a man-and-a-haif on the ball at all times. By pressuring the ball, we hope to do the following. + Force the ball to certain areas where we have help waiting. + Force the opponents to pass off the dribble. * Force opponents to shoot off the dribble. Continued on poge 7 iLorg Pots by Vu imagePhotooraphy, wmnviscomTo that end, we require that All playets have active hands. «Players away frm the ball must be in @ ready position to pick up foose balls. ©All playets move while the bal sin the ait. The following are some requirements for players utilizing the ball press: « Must be in great physical condition, + Must communicate, + Must anticipate ‘Must react with the pass—not after the pass has been made, + Must pressure the ball at all times—never allow a player with the ball to stand and look over the defense, + Must approach al traps with the proper angle ‘Must approach all aps with arms up and knees bent. ¢ Must keep arms up and moving when trapping, + Must not teach once the trap is set * Must not allow the traps to be split, + Must have all ive players working together. Backs must be active. Here ae the advantages tothe ball press + Applies constant pressure by wearing down ‘opponents + Exploits the speed and quickness of your guards + Forces opponents to one side ofthe floor. « Forces opponents into an unoiganized type of play. + Forces opponents out of ther normal ofense + Allows you to come from behind and do What you do best to get back into the ‘game—you can increase the pressure. + Forces opponents to hurry and make errs + Forces opponents to take shots they usually don't take. + Doesnt require your team to take the ball away but emphasizes having the offensive team give it away, + Creates opportunity fr the fast beak on steals and rebounds. + Demoralizes the opposition + Requires your team to play with defensive intensity Is great for team spiit—~players like to press. Commitment to the Ball Press ‘At Lincoln Community High Schoo, itis not hard to get com- plete commitment to the ball press purely because of the success that the program has had over the past 31 years. In implementing the ball pres, its very important to use dls to make your players react tall situations instead of just thinking about what movements ‘and rotations are needed. Repetition of drils that are designed to ‘create ball-movement situations is what we do so players know and feel comfortable at their postion. Once players are accustomed to ‘what they are doing, everything becomes automatic and reinforces their beliefs in the system, Ifyou wish to un the ball press, you must ask yourself certain ‘ough questions and be comfortable with the trade-offs, For instance: = Are you going to spend the time? It is very important for coaches and players to understand that 50 ta 60% of our prac tice time is devoted to our defense. Coaches and players know that we will execute our defense to perfection before we spend time on other phases of the game, The question I'm often asked by coaches trying to install this into their programs is: Do we have to do this 100% of the time for it to be successful? | believe that you need to comimit totally to the ball press fori to be successful AND convince yur staff and players that this is how you are going to play the game. If things are not going well and you change to some other ‘ype of defense, your staff and players will feel that the defense is not sold and they will not believe in the system. Patience and hard work are winat is needed to make everything fall into place = You are going to give up some lay-ups. You will not be 2 strong rebounding team. Are the turnovers going to outweigh the negatives? Over the course of time, we have nat been 2 vety good rebounding team. Two reasons for the lack of rebounding consistency are 1) with our pressure defense and the movement in the defense, it seems we are out of position mast ofthe time, and 2) most years we just don’t have the athletes to go get the ball. However we feel thatthe amount of tumovers we force outweighs the lack of rebounding, Dur ing the season, we wil force our opponents to commit an average of 20 turnovers per game. Along with the large number of defensive turnovers that wwe force, we also ty to keep our turnovers down (to eight or less) at the offensive end to help offset the lack of rebounding, ~ You will need to be able to adjust if ‘teams are beating you. Do you move the press up or back it of? At the beginning of games, we stay pretty consistent with our defense. Once again, to help make believers out of our staff and players, we stick with our defense. Very few adjust: Tents are made daring a game as our philosophy to keep pressure on teams to where they become tired of it and lose their concentration, When this happens, they stat turning the bal over and we come away with the turnover. In most {gamnes, we force more turnovers in the second half than we do in the fist half. However, our point quard determines where our defense begins. If he moves up the floor, al players must move with fim. Spacing is very important with all players. The following diagrams (see page 8) show ‘our basic rotations. We want to keep pressure on the ball at all times. Along with the diagrams depicting the rotations, | have included some teaching points that we use for our players that help the defense become more effective ‘+ Move while the ball i in the ait. + Keep the bal onthe sideline and out of the middle. + Allfive players must be working at all imes. A player who is not playing with intensity wil leave a hole in the defense ‘+ Keep your hands and feet active. « Always be in @ defensive stance, ready to anticipate any loose balls that you can recover. « Set good traps and no one splits the traps * Do not reach and foul when you have a trap. Players involved in the trap are not to force bad passes to where the players outside of the traps are the ones making the plays. « Play hard. tt takes no talent to play hard. It becomes a habit, very important to the 1 + Practice hard dal ‘An area that “on the ball defense.” Each day during practice we run a series of ils that we call "Rail Pride.” These dis are designed to help our players become quicker and in control of our defensive movernent. 2 Ball Press is ‘The drills cover defensive slides and hove we respond once we cut the sidaline, which is a must in our defense. With that done, we Continued‘automatically jump back to the middle, Keeping the sideline open and forcing our opporients to stay out of the midle of our defense, These drils help to enhance the commitment from the players and coaches and make believers out of them, Players must be drilled daily to perfect the defense as we want to react, not think, about our next move. All coaches throughout the program use these same drills to help emphasize how important defense s to winning basketball ames the Railgpiter way! This is the initial set up of the 1-2-2 Ball Press. Our point guard begins at our free-throw line awaiting the initial pass in. The second row is our wings. They have the responsibility of setting up the initial traps and covering the middle of the floor. The last row 1s our backs. They are responsible for covering the middle of the floor, as well as any long passes up the floor. ‘4 you can see from the second dagram, our point guard leads the dripbler into the trap withthe wing. Opposite wing covers the middle of the floor. One player back, cover- ing the strong side, covers passes up the sideline and the back on the weak side is positioned in the middle of the floor in the paint-protecting the basket. GG The third diagram goes over the reverse pass back. Here, ‘our point guard must sprint to the opposite side of the floor to set up the next trap with the other wing. The wing involved in the first trap must sprint to cover the middle of the floor. The players back must also react as well. The player that was covering the basket must cover any pass up the sideline, and the other must now sprint back towards the paint to protect the basket. The fourth diagram is a breakdown drill working on dow- bling the ball and reacting to the pass out of the trap for our 1-2-2 Ball Press defense. in this drill, the ball begins in the paint with an offensive player at the wing. On defense, we only have our point guard and one wing. We use two coaches in this drill who represent the pass back and the middle of the floor. On the pass from the paint, our point guard and wing trap the sideline. When the ball is passed back to the coach up top, our point guard and wings must react quickly to cover the bail and prevent the pass to the middle of the floor. The last diagram is similar to fourth diagram. This time, however, the bail starts on the sideline, The wing must. prevent the ball from being dribbled to the middle and force sideline. When the ball is reversed back to the mid- dle of the floor, the defensive players must react to put pressure on the ball and cover the middle of the floor.