Coach ,

As you know, applying pressure can disrupt the opposing team's offensive rhythm, wear them down physically and mentally, and help set a tone of urgency and intensity for the entire team. 

Yet, turning your basketball team into a stalwart, pressure-based defensive force is easier said than done with the right coaching. This is why studying elite coaches and how they teach pressure-centric defense can give you an edge. 

Joe Golding and Brett Tanner are among basketball’s elite in teaching this as you can remember when they upset Texas in the NCAA tournament a couple of years ago.

Coach Golding is the head coach of UTEP’s men’s basketball program now and Coach Tanner is the head coach now at ACU. His ‘Joe Golding/ Brette Tanner - ACU Pressure Defense’ clinic explains how culture can be built on the foundation of playing hard, along with ways to build a team defense on intense ball pressure and communication.

Building A Defensive Culture

Building A Culture

Coach Tanner explains that, first and foremost, players need to understand what’s important to a team. So coaches should decide what their team’s core cultural pillars will be. 

In addition, coaches should have portions of every practice that are dedicated to defense; especially pressure-based defense because it relies on timing, consistency, and good conditioning to execute well during games. 

Watching film with your team is crucial to playing good pressure-based defense, so your players can have a visual representation of what they’re doing right and wrong during any given play. 

Finally, a coach needs to speak their team’s defensive mindset and success into existence. 

Our Principles

Our Principles

At the beginning of every season, every team should be saying that they’re going to be the hardest working team in the country. While this will obviously be untrue for the vast majority of teams, the point is that setting a standard of hard work should be paramount to every coaching staff. 

Another vital aspect of Coach Golding’s defense is that his team can’t give up the middle drive. A guard driving into the middle of the paint puts pressure on a defense, which runs contrary to the pressure-based defense Coach Golding wants to run. 

He also wants to put hard pressure on the wings to dissuade three-point attempts and also emphasize rotating hard and often. 

Another reason they wants to keep shooters off of the three-point line is because more pressure on them means more dribbling, and more dribling means more mistakes (which leads to points). 

Rotate and Help

Rotate and Help

Because applying pressure in defense also lends itself to making aggressive mistakes, pressure-based defensive teams must be also elite at rotating. 

Coach Tanner explains that in order to improve his team’s defensive rotations, he runs the shell drill at least three times per week. 

While there are many variations of the shell drill, the essential premise is that it involves organizing four defenders around the key area while one offensive player stands at the center. This player will pass the ball around the wings, facilitating different rotations between the defenders depending on where the ball is at. 

The main goal of the shell drill is to facilitate communication between defenders and get the game-like repetitions that these defenders might face in a game. 

Never get out coached, 

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