In the Paint: Coaching strategy wins and loses more games than talent

Former Springstead coach Pat Kelly proved that coaching can beat out talent. (Courtesy of the St. Petersburg Times)

With the prep basketball season back in full swing, some debates have come back up centered around what makes up a winning program. Last season, Springstead made an improbable run to the Class 4A Final Four with a rag tag group of solid athletes but no true superstars or big men. Why? The answer to that question is coaching.

What the Eagles had was an ingenious strategy that was perfected over the course of the season and chemistry between three or four key players that carried them through the tough times that every team faces at some point. Regardless of the opponent, Springstead pressed each opponent deep in their own backcourt, forcing turnovers and easy buckets. This allowed the Eagles to build early leads.

The biggest player on the court for Springstead was Isaiah Mason, an undersized 6-foot-5 forward. Many believed that the Cinderella campaign would end as soon as the Hernando County program ran into a team with any size under the basket. However, these theories never took form. Against West Port in the regional final, three of the players on the court for the Wolf Pack were bigger than any of Springstead’s players at a given time.

This made no difference whatsoever. To overmatch a team in the post, you still have to be able to get the ball to the post. Springstead’s full court pressure made that nearly impossible. It wasn’t until late in the first half of the state finals that someone with both talent and solid coaching was able to solve the underdog Eagles.

So, what’s more important: size and athleticism or strategy and coaching? With the spectacle that we witnessed from Springstead last season, it is a wonder that this argument is still taking place. Even in Hernando County, where Nature Coast is starting 6-foot-8 Tyler Bergantino at center, many believe that Springstead has no shot at defeating the up-and-coming Sharks.

Steve Thompson took the reins of the Eagles program from Pat Kelly, and employs the same kind of pressure as his predecessor. With over 400 victories at the prep level, Thompson knows how to win basketball games. Nature Coast has yet to prove it can handle the kind of press that Springstead will throw at them if players like returning captain and point guard Nick Steadman are healthy for the game.

This philosophy translates everywhere. Down in Pasco County, where Ridgewood has been the supreme program under Gary Anders for years now, Mitchell has a talented team as well this season. In a game at Ridgewood last week, the Mustangs came out slow. While the Rams have the size and athletic advantages over Mitchell, strategy is an important way to offset that when possible.

In the opening period, Ridgewood was giving Mitchell open looks from behind the 3-point arc, but the Mustangs, a terrific 3-point shooting team, weren’t taking advantage of them. In a brilliant move, Anders played off of Mitchell’s shooters, waiting to see how long it would take the Mustangs to start pulling the trigger from deep. While the team was set on trying to maintain ball movement and drive the basket, they were overlooking the opportunities right in front of them.

Eventually, Mitchell made the adjustment and briefly took the lead. However, if coaches had made the adjustment early and allowed the players to rely on their strengths to dictate the pace of the game, Mitchell may have been able to knock off Ridgewood in a key game early in the 2009 campaign.

It’s so frustrating to sit back and watch good teams lose games because of missteps in strategy and coaching. So many people believe that coaching doesn’t mean much at the prep level because talent always beats a lack of talent. To an extent, this is true. Nine times out of 10 a really athletic team isn’t going to beat a slow, inexperienced team, no matter how good the coach is. When the circumstances are close though, the difference comes down to coaching and fundamentals.

Who is going to win the turnover battle? Who is going to substitute at the right times? Which team is going to play which kind of defense? When should you take your time outs? These are all crucial decisions that some coaches really take for granted. All of them have come back to bite a team and cost them a game at some point.

Let’s not get this twisted. This is not like second-guessing coaches at the professional level. We’re not talking about Bill Belichick going for it on 4th down and 3 on his own 30. We’re talking about simple pre-game strategies and mid-game adjustments that good coaches make and average and bad coaches sometimes do not. When you’re team is stuck in mediocrity season after season, it might not be the players you should be looking at. It should be that man or woman sitting on the bench yelling game after game with few results.

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