Tuesday, November 4, 2003

I wanted to get a lot of my coaching thoughts down before I go to Southern California for six days. I won’t be taking a laptop with me. It will be strictly family time and catching up with old friends there. I have tried to spew as much in here as I had time for before we leave. I’ll edit later (much later). I won’t write again for a week or so.

NUTS AND BOLTS - DE FENSE FIRST – STRICTLY COACHING STUFF

We do a lot of things on defense here. We have specific responses to different things the offenses and offensive players that we face do against us. These responses (by us) are most always include some sort of an attempt to attack, a little or a lot, and to somehow disrupt whatever it is the other team likes to do the most.

We generally do not huddle around the goal on defense. It is much more of a trust-and-no- fear kind of thing that I sell here. We are aggressive and sometimes our slides become "holes" for the other team to exploit. That’s where the goalie hopefully comes in.

I am comfortable with a lot of the things we already do on team defense. I am not comfortable with the amount of people who don’t yet fully get it, but that always remains a work in progress. Translation: I am not at ease with our depth on defense even though we have a veritable platoon of "poles". I am looking closely to see which one or ones will emerge.

I also feel the compulsion to keep doing more to keep up with changes, and the different styles of offense that we will see. We like to tweak our defensive techniques all the time.

IN THE FLIPZONE –

Didn’t UCLA run that full-court zone press all the time while winning 10 championships in 12 years back in the 60’s and 70’s under John Wooden?

With plenty to do already, why am I so obsessed lately thinking about this little zone defense that we have tinkered with from time to time but never really developed? I must have better things to do.

The basic zone concept has traditionally been used in lacrosse as a way to sag a defense in, hoping to give it a better chance of being successful. It becomes a more passive, simplified form of playing defense as a team. It also is a way to supposedly hide a lack of talent. We have used them here on occasion in the past. What I am thinking is pretty much not all that.

The inherent weakness of the zone is that there are holes in them. The game moves so quickly that you can also quickly overload a zone with good stick work and body movement, opening up something, somewhere, and often it is the crease area that opens for a high percentage shot.

So, why would I want us to have an attacking sort of zone to use from time to time? Talented teams don’t use a lot of zones. An attacking zone would seem like a stupid idea anyway, an oxymoron. The concept is almost like volunteering to play a man down for instances, something we have never done that well to begin with. We already have holes in our defense to fill and no one to fill them sometimes as it is. Why do I need to create potentially more of them (holes)?

Teams will often try to take our major defensive weapon, Mark Plonkey (#17) to the crease to try to neutralize or minimize his influence on the game. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but either way we want to have an answer, something more and something different from what we now do. So I ask, why not just put him in there (crease) to begin with, and save the other teams the trouble of having to take him there? I feel strongly that we have the personnel right now to try some special kinds of things on defense.

Where did I put my John Wooden books anyway?

THERE IS NO LOGIC TO MY MAN DOWN PHILOSOPHY EITHER
But I can’t shake it. Is that "pretzel logic"?

I don’t emphasize playing a man down in practice as much as I might. I am not a very good MD defense coach either. I do get the rotations. We know them, use them. I just don’t want us to have a particular pride inside the penalty killing unit. We don't use goons or "enforcers" in this game. I want them (our team) to fear being a man short, because the team with an extra man is always going to have a decent chance to score if they don’t puke the ball away somehow. It is easier to play defense in even numbered situations, period.

My philosophy is to work as hard as we can to have few or, dare I say it,, NO penalties called against us.

I want for us to be able to take pride in the fact that we don’t get many penalties, and that none of them are of the stupid variety (if only that could be true). I always emphasize understanding the referees and playing as rough as we can inside the rules of the game. Besides, with us it’s like a "Catch 22" thing. The players that we most need to be in the game at times when a man short due to an infraction are the ones usually sitting in the penalty box.

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