Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.

com

Shaka Smart (Indy) - The VCU Press & Creating The Culture of Havoc

Books: Know Yourself as a Coach by Denny Kuiper, Mindset by Carol Dweck, Help the Helper
by Kevin Pritchard & John Eliot

A coach who is worth researching Jack Clark - Rugby Coach at Cal Berkley - learn as much as
you can about him and his philosophies because he is a master coach and unbelievable connector
of people.

New England Patriots have a sign in their locker room that says “We don’t become you, you
become us”

How make the players or people in your organization become what you are about? For us, we try
to constantly teach our players what we do at VCU down to the smallest details-I love the point
by Coach Eastman about inches making the difference in execution. We look to constantly
reinforce what we do-positive reinforcement when guys are following the plan and sometimes
negative reinforcement when they are not.

I think it’s really important for young people that we constantly provide for them the answers to
the test. There are two types of tests-there is the test where the teacher gave you the answers
beforehand and told you what to study and there is those tests where you had no idea what was
going to be on the test ... We all know which one we liked better. Must provide answers for our
athletes on and off the floor-if you give them the blue print, it’s up to them to follow it. For
example, at VCU freshmen receive “freshmen orientation” - twice a week someone from our
program or someone from outside of our program sits down with them over a meal or in our
meeting room and provides some elements of the answers to the test. By the end of the summer
our incoming freshmen will have heard from every member of our coaching staff about some
different element of what we do.

Ask yourself this (no matter what level you coach), every day we _____ and fill in the blank...
VCU example “Transitions” - Offense to defense, drill to drill -- our goal is to be the best team in
the country at “transitions/transitioning” Immediately after a drill, players are given short time
for water after water players are huddling - may be black team with black team or gold team with
gold team... Could be positional huddles point guards with point guards. Here’s another example
of “transitions” instead of working on mundane post moves - may combine with other things
(second finish, after finish clear the board and outlet to guard, then guard inbound pass like a
madman).

Something I learned from Jack Clark - Players have to know to the smallest detail what you
mean when you say something.

5 Core Values at VCU (These are things that we believe make you successful in life, basketball,
school):
Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

1. Appreciation - We see every opportunity as a gift - Very important to emphasize this with
players today, we’ve all coached guys with a level of entitlement. Something as coaches we
have to battle and fight... Something we monitor - Appreciation to Entitlement Ratio ...
Appreciation we believe is the foundation of what we are trying to do. There is a lot of gifts, a
lot of privileges, a lot of people we have in our lives that we should be highly appreciative of.
I believe when you are appreciative of something, you tend to make the most of it. When you
take something for granted, you tend to take not to make the most it.
2. Enthusiasm - If I had to pick one that was unique to us at VCU this would be it. We are
passionate and excited about our process for success. It’s easy to be enthusiastic after winning
a big game, it’s easy to be enthusiastic when your on a 10-0 run, it’s easy to be enthusiastic
when you personally do something that makes you feel good. We highly emphasize being
enthusiastic about our process and everything we believe in that goes into our success.
3. Competitiveness - Goes without saying but a lot us trying to go for something only a few of us
can have. There has to be an unbelievable desire to get that. We define competitiveness as, we
aggressively pursue greatness.
4. Team-ship - We fully commit to aligning ourselves with the team. Sometimes I think we forget
we are playing a team sport, I ask this all the time before we take the floor-what’s our goal,
what are we trying to do? Offensively - trying to score... Defensively - try to stop the other
team from scoring... These are both team endeavors. We are looking for guys who can get over
themselves.
5. Accountability - We are responsible for our team and ourselves. Three different types of
accountability that come into place with any team: 1st - When coach holds player
accountable... Every program has this - if not there is no structure... But I don’t think you can
be great with just coach to player accountability 2nd - Coach/Player holds themselves
accountable - good/great teams are full of people that hold themselves to a high standard-they
say they are about something and they hold themselves accountable to that. 3rd - Players
holding players accountable - this is when a team can become great... This is the one that we
really emphasize.

We need to as coaches constantly expose any type of hypocrisy in our program-whether it comes
from a player, an assistant coach, whether we say we are about as a head coach but we are not
following through on. That’s when teams get themselves into trouble - when they say are about
something and they are really about something else. We have to battle this everyday. I believe it’s
our job as leaders to expose hypocrisy and help our players understand what they are going to
have to do to be successful. It’s not natural to be a champion. If it was natural to be a champion
everyone would do it. You have to be extraordinary.

I do think it is important that you have an identity for how you play and what you do. Havoc for
us is our mentality-it’s the way we practice, the way that we approach the game... In terms of
style of play we break it down into five areas: 1st - Havoc is our full court pressure defense ...2nd
- Our half court pressure defense... 3rd - Our transition offense (love to score within first 5 to 6
seconds or get a good shot)... 4th - We always want to be attacking--get into the paint in half
court offense... 5th - We want to relentlessly attacking the glass... We want to be the more
Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

aggressive team of the two. When I look back to last year, I can’t find a whole lot of games
where we were the more aggressive team and lost.

There’s two different types of pressure defense... They are very different but they go together, we
utilize both. First kind of pressure defense is where you are matched-up, you apply unbelievable
pressure on the ball, you apply pressure off the ball through denial, you’re physical, you take
away cuts, you take away passing lanes. You can press without trapping-we do both... Couple
reasons why we trap and don’t trap in our pressure defense:
1. Element of surprise - If you know it’s coming, it’s evidently not going to be as good-easier to
attack. At the same time, if they think it is coming and it doesn’t, can be very effective-getting
the ball hander to pass prematurely, pick up dribble in certain area of the floor, etc... Trapping
and non-trapping pressure work well together. We want to keep the pressure on-most good
teams break the press... Need to keep the pressure on.

The best pressure defensive teams I’ve been around - you have some guys that are instinctive-
you don’t want them to be worrying about when you want them to trap-you want him to just go
trap.

A big part of offensive philosophy is to get two guys guarding the ball and then play out of that.
And we’re saying we want to put two guys on the ball defensively... If it is a good trap, you are
most times going to get a good result. If you have a bad trap-9 out of 10 times you are doing
yourself a disservice and you better get back on defense. Bad traps will kill you. Your ability to
play in out-numbered situations is critical (2on1s, 3on2s, 4on3s, 5on4s)-it’s something you have
to work on all of the time (something we work on everyday).

You will also need to be good at “fix-it” situations (going from not being matched-up to being
matched-up in your press-transition rules are applied--for us our transition rules are basket, ball,
and ball-side)--we don’t think that teams are good enough at our level to get the ball over and
exploit mismatches... We will do our best to switch back later on in a possession.

Once we’ve “fixed it”... We want to keep the pressure on them-we may trap again in the half-
court... Wing entry may be a trapping situation... We may not trap again, we will pressure the ball
and deny entries. Most important pass you can deny-first pass into a teams offense. Simple rule
on our team... No elbow catches. You may say, “You’re going to get beat back door”, we get beat
backdoor every now and then, it happens, but I would much rather have the ability to take teams
out of their offense then allow them to enter their offense. Think about this, how many times to
you get beat backdoor without making a pass into their offense-most times ball is entered to high
post and then wing back cuts... Our answer, the man on the ball must pressure the heck out of the
ball handler so that it makes it tough to complete backdoor pass (first pass especially).

Reasons why we press/Things that we get out of the press:

Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

1. Turnovers - I would argue with Billy Donovan... He would say, “You’re not going to turn good
teams over” ... I disagree. It is harder-but certainly doable. We charted this... How did we do
against teams at the top of our league, middle, and bottom. We found that we turned over the
best teams and the teams in the middle about the same. If you have a good team, you probably
going to beat the worst teams on your schedule regardless of how of you play-we are more
focused on the other Two/Thirds of our league (Middle of the road teams, best teams).
2. We want to force quick and bad shots - If we can make a team take a quick or bad shot, we
feel it is almost as good as a turnover.
3. We want to create offensive opportunities for ourselves. We can have a bad offensive team,
bad shooting team, but a great pressing team.
4. We want to force tempo.
5. We want to disrupt the other team’s offensive flow.
6. Make opposing players do things that they are not comfortable with. This is how we play, this
is how we practice... If we can get the game going our way, say the 4 man bringing up the ball-
they don’t practice this, etc.
7. It is a difficult style to prepare for. Most times only have a couple days to prepare for your
game.
8. We use this style to create fatigue-we’re working year around with our strength coach to get
into the kind of shape we need to be in to play this way. Our players know, it’s not a question
of whether you are going to reach fatigue or not... It’s a question of, what are you going to do
when you reach fatigue-that’s for our team and the other team. We want to be the better team
under fatigue. This style of play can create fatigue, this style of play can create a cumulative
effect over the game. A question we ask our guys all of the time, “Who is going to get tired
first? But more importantly who is going to recover fastest?” One thing I encourage the
coaches at universities and colleges-If you are at a bigger school, your school probably has a
department of exercise science or something similar... Utilize those folks in the department
faculty-It’s amazing what they can do for you in terms of understanding your players’
conditioning levels, certain components of their bodies-this summer we had all of our players
tested for their VO2 max.
9. We want to make depth a factor - When we recruit, we recruit so that we can play 6 through 11
significant minutes. A question we ask our bench is... “Who 6 through 11 is better-ours or
theirs?” The perfect team to press with, is a team with no great players-everyone is pretty
much interchangeable.
10. Exciting style of play for the fans, for the players, for recruiting. This style of play does take
a level of control out of your hands as a coach. I think it works itself out because it takes a
level of control out of the other coaches hand too.

These are the things we emphasize as a pressing team:

1. Energy - Most important, you cannot play in this style of play without terrific energy. People
ask me... “How do you get your team to play so hard?” ... I think a lot of different teams play
hard playing a lot of different ways. One of the reasons I think they play hard is this style will
make you look bad if you don’t play with great energy. They have learned that for us to be
Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

successful, they have to play hard in this style of play. Three caveats: 1. Fouling negates
hustle-we want to fly around and be aggressive without fouling. 2. No matter how much depth
you have, if you play this way, your energy from day to day, game to game can be
inconsistent. Must have a really good feel for that as a coach. “Do our guys have it tonight?”
And if they don’t quite have it, maybe you make some adjustments- a little bit less aggressive.
2. Communication - Talking makes you quicker.
3. Transitions - We define as going from one thing to the next. I think basketball is simply a
game of transitions... Everything you are doing is a multiple effort action.
4. Deflections - Being the first to the floor, ball pressure is huge-if you don’t put good pressure
on the ball, it’s going to be hard to create good traps.
5. Stunting - Stunting is a foot and a hand fake.
6. Back pressure - You are going to get beat sometimes when you are trapping... What do we do
when we get beat-we don’t stop. We want to run from behind, pressure people from the back,
get our hands on the basketball and get below the level of the ball.
7. Out numbered situations - We practice everyday. You are going to find yourself in those
situations. (Fix-it situations)
8. Defending multiple position - you are going to find yourself on some else in different
situations. We love guys who can guard multiple positions.

We divide the court into three areas. The court is divided by

the lane lines. The middle area is referred as the “middle
tunnel”... We do not want to trap in the middle tunnel,
however there are exceptions.

Here is an ideal situation to trap... Ball handler is out of

control-which leads to an element of surprise-he can’t see
you. The location is out of the middle, closer to the sideline
the better.

“Who do you guys trap?”

1 Man Trap - We feel like with some of the match-ups that we

can trap with one man - put pressure on the ball forcing the
ball handler to make a poor decision without bringing another
defender to the ball.
Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

From the first day of practice we will play full

court 1on1 with every player on our team.
Defender will straddle offensive player’s hip with
defenders forearm (“hammer”) on his hip-so he
can’t get beat deep.

Here are some fundamentals when trapping:

1.If you are running to go trap - you’ve got to

closeout to the trap. Closeout and then close the
gap of space air tight... We do not want the
defender having any room to breathe. Offensive
player should smell your breath.
2.As defender pivots from the pressure, defenders
take away the space he gives-be extremely greedy.
3.If he has a live dribble... We stay no escape. If
offensive player back dribbles to create space, we
want to close the gap again. Must be elastic-if he
tries to break up the sideline, must stay with him-
you can’t be stiff.
4.No splits, no fouls. If our guy gets split... He has
to come out of the game.
5.Extremely active hands in the trap. Mirror the
ball. Something that bothers me especially early in
the year... If defender has ball overhead, defenders
must continue to have active hands-if ball goes up,
your hands must go up. One thing that we do... We study what teams do against the press-most
teams are pretty predictable.
6. Force obvious pass - Informs interceptors where to go.
7. If you are going to foul, foul with your lower body-referees never call lower body foul.
8. Interceptors have to think like trappers.

“FIST”

Defensive player on the inbounder is called the mad man-he has to go absolutely nuts. In our
main press we just play man to man-if you want you can put a specific man on the inbounder, for
us we put whoever’s man on the ball. Important details... 10 toes on the line, inbounder should
smell your breath (John Beilein in his 1-3-1 would say “Breath in his mouth”), if he moves-you
move, you want to get your hands on the ball as much as possible.

Other 4 Players off the ball-put your “hammer” forearm in the ribs of your man (inside
shoulder)-we deny with the other arm.
Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

Areas we want to be great in...

1.Pressure on the ball - It’s not going to work if we

don’t put pressure on the ball - That’s why 1st day
in workouts we are playing full court 1on1. We
don’t force middle or sideline - preferably want
them to go sideline but we don’t want to get beat up
middle/sideline...
2.Position off the ball - When you are off the ball
(unless you are guarding the deepest guy) - We are
in 1/3 position - 1/3 the distance from my man to
the ball - must see both (your man and the ball). If
your man moves, you must move-If you have to
take a step back to see your man, do so.
3.If the ball is dribbled towards you stunt at the ball
- foot and hand fake

5on5 Press Work Drill...

•Players circle ... Coach makes lay-up. Players must

communicate and setup “Fist” press.
•Mad man has to smell breath-put immediate press
on the ball.
•Outlet catch defender cannot allow catch with full
head of steam.
•Transition into your 1/3 positioning...
Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

There are two different ways we trap...

1.We trap the turn.
a. As soon as X2 see’s the back of 1’s head - he looks to go trap.
b. X4 thinks like a trapper and becomes interceptor.
c. Important that X5 cheats to the easy pass-reads hips and
shoulders of 1.

What a lot of teams do especially if they have a good guard-they

will clear everyone out.

2.We force the action-must get the ball out of the middle.
a.Once the point guard passes 3pt line extended the middle man
goes and traps. Until this point, the middle man is stunting and
faking at the guard.
b.3 and 4 are the interceptors... 5 is the basketball protector.
Notes by Jon Giesbrecht -- Winnipeg, MB, Canada -- CoachGiesbrecht@gmail.com

“Circle Trap” Game 3on3

Offense catches the ball... They have to hold One

Thousand 1, One Thousand 2... Offense has no dribble,
and they cannot move off the ball. Defensively the two
closest guys are going to trap. Typically I would have
multiple basketballs if the ball was deflected. As the ball is
passed to x3... 3 and 1 become the trapper and 2 becomes
the interceptor.

We would do this for a minute long... If the defense is

doing a great job - they will get 6-9 steals deflections in a
minute.

How much trapping or press work do you do?

We do 1 trapping drill a day. We do 1 pressing/rotation

drill everyday. Other than that, the only times we are
working on trapping or pressing is when we are playing-
teaching through 5on5 play.

Favorite “fix-it” Drill

Coach throws the ball either up the sideline, middle 45, or

reverses it. We also do this out of trapping ball screens in the
half-court-players must scramble... Cannot have 2 or none
go to the ball out of the trap... Must have 1 defender go to
the ball.

We pay more attention to the our team’s press offense and

offensive half court entries more than anything.

Offensive rebounding philosophy: Will crash 3, 4, and 5. We

send 1 and 2 to the volleyball court line... If make they have
to get back in the play, if miss they are getting back.

We most times will only press on miss if it is a missed free

throw because it is a set situation.