Izzo's hit-find-fetch rebounding philosophy (and drills)

[tux]

Thought some here would find this Grantland article (http://grantland.com/the-triangle/war-tom-izzo-michigan-state-spartans-rebounding/) (with embedded videos) interesting.

[CDu]

This is a great article. The following quote hints at part of why we've historically been a weaker rebounding team:


Michigan State players spend a good portion of their practice time honing this technique and mentality under Izzo’s watchful eye. Many other coaches spend only a cursory amount of time on this facet of the game — not that it makes them inherently better or worse, just different.

For years, many have lamented how poorly our players box out on rebounds. I think that the quote above summarizes a great deal of why. I suspect that, due to constraints on practice time, Coach K has put much less emphasis on rebounding technique and more emphasis on other phases of defense (and offense). The logical extension of this focus in other areas is that our players generally aren't as adept at grinding out rebounds.

Izzo's formula makes sense. He isn't able to consistently recruit top-tier talent, but he's able to take mid-tier talent and "toughen" them up. And as a result, they're able to do fairly well by fighting and clawing for every rebound and every loose ball. They then just hope to mix in enough skill players to turn that blue collar approach into a really successful team.

I look at a guy like Branden Dawson as a prime example of Izzo's effect. Dawson was a McDonald's All American and a freakish athlete in the Corey Maggette mold physically. He was a bit on the raw side offensively though. Had he gone to Duke or UNC or Indiana or Illinois or Michigan, he'd probably spend his time at SF working on his 3pt shot and perimeter defense. But he went to MSU. So while he started off as a raw SF, he has become an undersized PF for MSU over the past two seasons. And he has become one of the better rebounders around as a result, in spite of being undersized for the position.

The down side for Dawson? He hasn't developed any semblance of a perimeter game. He has taken 9 career 3pt shots (and has missed them all), and he's shooting below 60% from the line for his career with virtually no offensive skills to speak of. He has bought in fully to the system that Izzo employs, and has really excelled at it. But the downside is that investing fully on the effort/hustle/grit side of things means less time spent working on the skill side of things.

It's just impossible (given the NCAA-mandated practice time restrictions) to give every aspect of the game the necessary attention to excel at it. It's why we don't play zone, and it's why when we do play zone we stink at it. Coach K has talked in years past about why we didn't have a good press breaker play. He said that when he had Hurley and Dawkins/Amaker and J-Will, he didn't need a press breaker. The press breaker was just to hand those guys the ball and clear out. But when you have a Paulus, Ewing, Scheyer, or even a Wojo, you have to change things up a bit because those guys aren't as comfortable against the press.

Coach K chooses each year to focus on certain aspects of the game, and historically rebounding just hasn't apparently been one of them. So even though we often have very good defenses (sometimes this is not the case), rebounding has rarely been a team strength. And as this article suggests, perhaps it is with good reason.

[bbosbbos]

How many hours can our players practice with coaches each day in the bb season? Can players practice without coaches?

[CDu]

How many hours can our players practice with coaches each day in the bb season? Can players practice without coaches?

I want to say it is something like no more than 20 hours per week during the season, and no more than X hours (4?) during any single day. That includes games. So if you play two games per week, you are down to under 15 hours of practice time per week. Note that practice would include any activities supervised by a team staffer (including staff-monitored weight training). So there really is a very finite amount of time for the coaches to work with the players.

Players can participate in unsupervised activities that don't count against this number. But I suspect that the coaches would not want the players doing any high-contact training activities without staff supervision. So I would expect any outside work to be scripted (specific weight room tasks; shooting drills with walk-ons; etc). Working on boxing out and physical drills to improve rebounding would not be the type of thing to be done independently.

[-jk]

...Players can participate in unsupervised activities that don't count against this number. But I suspect that the coaches would not want the players doing any high-contact training activities without staff supervision. So I would expect any outside work to be scripted (specific weight room tasks; shooting drills with walk-ons; etc). Working on boxing out and physical drills to improve rebounding would not be the type of thing to be done independently.

I think this is where pickup games with experienced current and former players comes in really handy...

-jk