If You Are Going to Try to Really Slow it Down. THEN IT HAS GOT TO BE “NOTHING BUT A LAYUP OR A FOUL SHOT” PHILOSOPHY

When teams say that they are going to slow down the tempo of the game to limit their more athletically skilled opponents number of possessions and try to frustrate the more talented team, then they had better take nothing but layups or foul shots.

Point in case, were several tournament games that saw teams try this strategy but fail to discipline themselves ENOUGH to “Take Nothing but a Layup or a Foul Shot”.

When they were really patient they usually got layups, but too many times they settled for jump shots and 3 point shots instead of running more time off the clock until they got a layup.

When trying to be successful in slowing down the tempo, coaches MUST INSIST that their teams take nothing but LAYUPS AND FOUL SHOTS.

Teams that tried this strategy and lost was because when they waited for layups they scored, they just took way to many poor shots that were not layups and this did not reduce their opponents Possessions enough.

The shot selection at crucial points in the games were really poor decision making on the part of the players…..just plain and sinple real poor shot selection at real crucial times in the games and they had the lead.

They should have been in the nothing but a layup strategy and if a player took anything other than a layup whether they made or misssed the shot they should have been on the bench during the next dead ball and made to sit there until someone else took something other than a layup.

What is so hard for players to understand the philospohy of nothing but a LAYUP?

In order to get layups against man to man defenses teams need to run some type of continuity offense that is constantly searching the defense for open layups, like shuffle, cat and mouse, 4 corners, flex etc.

This way the offense determines the shots to be taken not the players.

I saw no teams run any of these types of offenses. What they did run was stuff that was run high off the foul line which was not designed to get layups, but instead to let the players decide what was a good shot and what was not a good shot.

If you go into a game with this strategy in mind then it has to be run on every single possession as it makes no sense to keep the ball for 45-60 seconds and not take anything but a layup.

As long as you are ahead or tied then you should take nothing but a layup or a foul shot. If you fall behind then you may have to change strategies. but until that happens you are not fufilling the committemtn as a team to take nothing but a layup or a foul shot and this has to be done by discipline and great basketball decision making skills.

It is like “you need to dance with the one that brung ya” as long as everything is going the way you wanted it to.

Teams that tried this strategy took over 30 shots, which is way to many in this type of situation unless they are 30 layups.

They also relied on their players to make the decisions on what type of shots to take in what situations.

It makes no difference if you lose by one or you lose by 20, you still lose. If you are going to try this strategy to upset a stronger more athletic talented team, you have got to commit to “Nuthin but a Layup or a free throw”. or you are risking too much on the decision making skills of your players in pressure situations.

However, the teams that were playing defense against the teams that were trying to hold the ball, also helped the underdogs by not going after them with some kind of man to man full-court pressure. They just played half-court man and this allowed the offense to slow it down more.

The defenseshould have gone to some kind of run and jump man to man into a zone trap if they wanted to speed up the tempo od the game.

So, in this situation both terams made mistakes, but the teams trying to slow it down made the biggest mistakes because they did not take “nutinn but a layup or foul shots”.

Too bad, because a couple of these teams would have had their upsets if they had used this philosphy for the full 32 minutes, especially when the defenses helped them with the slow down offensive strategy by not putting any full court type of man to man pressure on them especially early in the games.