10 Reasons Why You Should Run the Pack Defense?
- It gives you a chance to beat the best teams on your schedule.
- I would love to get out and pressure full court every game and give our team an opportunity to generate easy baskets, but most good teams if pressured will exploit your defense and get high percentage shots.
- It gives your team an identity.
- We feel strong enough about our defense that I think it helps give our team an identity. Our players can articulate our defense to fans and recruits. Everyone in our program knows what we do defensively is who we are.
- It can keep your bigs out of foul trouble.
- One of the major strengths of the pack is keeping your bigs out of foul trouble. When you are denying, the help often times comes from post players. In the pack, a majority of the time the help comes from the perimeter. We are building a wall with 5 players vs. the ball. “We play 5 vs. the ball”
- Your team is in good rebounding position.
- The positioning in the pack, allows defenders to be in a good position to rebound. With the help coming from the perimeter, we reduce rotations that may result in one of our guards having the assignment of blocking out an opposing post player.
- You can guard the three-point line.
- Your position is your help. We do not help and recover. If closeouts are executed properly, a pack team can be very effective guarding the three-point line.
- Your defense will improve throughout the year.
- When I first started coaching, we would try to develop a more complex defensive scheme for each opponent. While employing the pack, we only make minor adjustments from game to game, and continue to focus on our defensive principles. Repetition of these principles gives a chance to keep improving throughout the year.
- Athletes with limited athletic ability can be successful in the pack.
- As a college player, I did not have the athletic ability to deny, help, and recover. Our position is simply your help and we drill and drill the recovery/ closeout every day. A player who understands how to closeout with the proper angles can be successful in this defense.
- The pack is a good defense vs. teams who drive the basketball well.
- Like it or not, the current phase of in basketball is to drive the basketball. We all have teams on our schedule that we feel like are just sticking their head down and driving the ball to the basket. We feel the pack gives us an advantage vs. these teams.
- Your players learn to rely on each other.
- The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. We are a pack team, which means we are always looking to help a teammate. You have to be there for your teammate.
- Your team is system-based instead of scouting-based when preparing for an opponent.
- There are often times when we have a tight turnaround for a game. In the pack, we are able to call out offensive actions and know exactly how we would like to defend them. Having a system on how you guard most actions can allow you to prepare for an opponent with an experienced group in a short period of time.
