[lawrence-newsletter]I was pondering as to the best way to do this BadgersWire x’s and o’s series, and hopefully with a mix of video, images, and words, I will be able to get the diagrams across to you in an understandable way. Hopefully you enjoy diving into the philosophy that has carried Wisconsin basketball on the offensive end throughout the Bo Ryan and Greg Gard era’s. In part one, I will take you through the very beginnings of initiating the swing offense.
So, an initial question is why is the swing offense called the swing? This offense is designed to swing back-and-forth from side-to-side in a symmetric way. Like a pendulum, it ideally swings without every being pushed too far to one side. Keep in mind that these basic principles become second nature and it allows for a ton of freedom for Wisconsin players when they know the basics, and understand their options in each scenario to be able to read and react at game speed. In part one, I will only take you through the very beginnings of the offense. In part two, we will get into how the swing symmetrically works itself out. Brace for the nerdiness, and hopefully I know what I am talking about enough to not completely confuse you. I’m no expert, but here goes.
Now, here is the basic setup of the offense when the point guard (1) brings the ball up the floor:
Starting with the basics, here are how your positions, one through five, are aligned on the floor to initiate the basic swing with the “1” (the point guard) bringing up the basketball. Your one is your point guard and the five is your center. Notice how the right side of the floor begins with a ball-side triangle between the 1, 3, and 5 (the point guard (1) has the basketball right now hence the circle around the number). There are elements of the triangle within the swing as the offense flows from side-to-side while creating ball-side triangles. The point guard begins at the top of the key above the lane line, the big begins down low, and the two and the four each begin around the wing area extended on opposite sides of each other.
A reason why Wisconsin tries to recruit bigs that can stretch the floor is because the five man will end up replacing the one and so on. All five positions within this offense have to be interchangeable for the unit to flow best. Head Coach Greg Gard touched on this in a recent coaches clinic with NABC. “We love multi-dimensional bigs. A lot of our bigs shoot the ball; in fact we recruit that way and develop that way,” said Gard. You will see in just a bit how the 5 man ultimately replaces where the point guard is initially and may have an open three-point jump shot early in the possession.
The first look for the point guard (1) when bringing the ball up would be to look straight down for the five man who would have excellent post position if he is open. Obviously, especially in the half court offense, that look usually is not there right away at the division one level. So, the one passes to the three and the offense is underway.
So, the 1 has now passed to the 3 who has the basketball hence the circle around the number. After the 1 passes the ball, you see the 5 man coming up to set a screen near the elbow. That screen by the 5 man triggers what is known as a “UCLA” cut (video below) for the 1 who as you see has two routes he can take towards the rim. He can either go away from the 3 or closer to the 3 when he cuts. That is simply a read and react decision for the point guard based on his defender. The 5 man then replaces the one up top and may even have an open three-point jumper. If the 3 cannot find the one on the cut he passes back to the five man. Here is the legendary Bo Ryan leading a coaches clinic and showing this exact “UCLA” cut action. Notice how the three man now has the basketball, and the guard can make a decision as to where he goes off of the screen:
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As this is happening, the opposite side of the floor (the 2 man and the 4 man) simply interchange spots to keep the defense occupied.
In part two of the basics, I will get into how the next step of this offense is ultimately creating the same formation that we started with, but on the opposite side of the floor. We leave off here with the 3 man having a decision to make regarding whether he passes down low to the 1 in either a lob action or a low-post feed, or looks back up top for the 5 man. One theme with the swing is the need for solid low-post entry passes. Coach Gard touched on work that Wisconsin does in order to develop better entry passes in the swing in his recent clinic. “We work a lot daily on post feeding whether its a dummy drill to post feed or live action,” said Gard when asked about drills that the Badgers run.
Here is the entire starting movement of the basic swing offense from an in-game clip:
[wpvideo lDQdPyFK]
Hopefully you followed part one, and part two will be coming at you shortly. If you can think of a way to hopefully improve the diagrams, please let me know. Thanks for reading this far into the nerdiness.