Coach ,

Ever since Nate Oats took over the University of Alabama basketball team, Roll Tide went 117 - 53, making a back-to-back-back tourney to the NCAA tournament and as you know made it to the final 4. Even though Bama has the top offense and been able to bring some talented recruits, the biggest difference in winning the tight games was the defense.

Coach Oats and the staff always emphasize these three strategies when building a successful defense:

• Set Your Non-Negotiables
• Guarding The 3 Ball 
• Attention to Detail when guarding picks
• Keeping Track of Hustle Plays

Today, we are going to have Alabama’s Head Coach Nate Oats and his Assistant Coach Charlie Henry breaking down each of these pillars and talks about how to properly prepare players to execute them in the game.

Set Your Defensive Non-negotiables

We must set our own defensive culture from the very beginning and we must choose our non-negotiables that we emphasize in every drill and every practice. Coach Oats puts extra emphasis on communication, running the floor no matter what, and having a proper defensive stance. As simple as it sounds, if you keep these non-negotiables as pointers for players to focus on, it will become second nature for the players. Watch Coach Oats break down his non-negotiables here: 

Set Your Defensive Non-Negotiables

Guarding The 3 Ball

What stands this Alabama team apart is their drive and effort on the defensive end. They hold their opponents FG% low and 3pt % even lower - last year they held their opponents to an incredible 29% from the 3pt line. 

Let’s take a look at how former Alabama Assistant Coach Charlie Henry explains their philosophy on how to guard the ball to prevent the same side 3’s and make offense to switch to the weak side of the ball. 

Guarding The 3 Ball

The Switching Game

Alabama got their method of Jump Switch on the drive from Toronto Raptors. Jump switch allows them to quickly react to on-ball defenders getting beaten and recover the position while stopping the ball from penetrating to the rim or getting an easy shot.

The advantage of Jump Switching is that it is fast and when done right, it is hard to take advantage of mismatches.

Watch the breakdown Roll Tide switching below: 

The Switching Game

Measuring The Hustle

Last but definitely not least, Alabama puts effort on measuring the hustle plays.

They keep track of getting loose balls, diving on the floor, charges, deflections etc. Coach Henry calls it the Blue Collar Scoring Chart. This makes players more motivated to keep making hustle plays and enhances the culture of hustle. 

Measuring The Hustle

It is important to figure out how we want to defend early in the year and prepare for multiple scenarios, and having the flexibility and the ability to adjust once the season is in full mode, however, having the ability to slow down opponents 3s and motivating our players to make hustle plays is ALWAYS going to translate to any type of defense we want to run.

Thank you to these fantastic coaches willing to share and help grow the game!

-The Coaches Clinic Community of Coaches Helping Coaches