Exploring basketball's best ideas, strategies, and coaches around the world

Happy March Madness! Welcome to all the newest subscribers from around the world!

ICYMI: Last week, we looked at UConn's use of "Forced Curls" within in their multi-layered pin down screening. Read the newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒 SG Plus Content: Continuity Ballscreen - Nail Cut​

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Clare Murphy {Storyteller}

👀 Podcast Guest Recommendations: Someone in your network a great potential guest? Let us know HERE!​

🥇 Best of the Week: 5 Out Offense & Attacking Spain "Hedge & X-Out"​

✍️ 2026 NABC Convention! Sign Up HERE.

Nail Cut

Variations of continuity ballscreen offense have been a staple of the game for decades. Heck, two years ago we did an entire two-part series on many of them {🔒}. One of the reasons for its staying power is its adaptability. Small tweaks in timing, spacing, or cutting can give the action an entirely new feel.

As the basketball world turns its attention to the NCAA Tournament in the coming weeks, we want to highlight a common variation we’re seeing breathe new life into the offense, one that’s powering some of the most efficient attacks in the country, including the Wisconsin Badgers (yes, we know they're out now).

For those familiar with traditional continuity ballscreen offense, the standard “Burn” cut from the 45 is a foundational piece, a rim cut triggered by the forward dribbling at the wing to create an empty-side ballscreen with the player lifting out of the corner.

While this cut can theoretically produce a backdoor opportunity, it’s often more sacrificial in nature, serving primarily to clear the side and set up the ensuing action.

What's The Problem With This Cut?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the traditional rim cut, but it does come with tradeoffs. Even if it’s not designed as a scoring action, it still sends an offensive player to the rim, and with it, a defender.

For a brief window, the paint becomes congested.

Against well scouted defenses, that burn cutter’s defender will often sit in the paint rather than chase the cut, loading up as the low man. From there, they’re in position to clog the roll, shrink driving space, and disrupt the ballhandler if they’re able to turn the corner.

What's a Solution?

Instead of cutting the wing directly to the rim and then filling out to the opposite corner, teams are now cutting that player through the nail.

This subtle adjustment carries a number of benefits, most notably, it keeps unnecessary bodies out of the scoring area and preserves that valuable space for the offense’s primary threats.

Today, it’s all about that Nail Cut.

Emptying The Paint

In any continuity ballscreen offense, there’s constant pressure on the rim, whether it’s the ballhandler getting downhill or the forward diving for a pocket pass or lob. So instead of placing a non-threatening cutter in that space, why not route them through the nail and keep the rim clear for the offense’s primary threats?

By cutting through the nail, the offense maintains spacing while still allowing the cutter to arrive in multiple spots:

• The opposite wing
• The opposite corner—taking the high road through the nail and keeping the rim open
• Lifting or shallowing out to the top of the arc

Against switching coverages, each of these options carries the potential to create valuable real estate for a backdoor:

A common way to guard continuity ballscreen is to switch the burn cut and deny the corner player. This can be effective, especially against teams running the action robotically, where the corner is lifting up into the ballscreen every time.

Back cutting that denial is a natural counter, but if the burn cut goes all the way to the rim, the space is crowded and often met by a waiting help defender.

By routing the burn cut through the nail and holding the corner, that valuable real estate at the rim stays open, leaving the switching defender scrambling to close space to the corner with no rim help behind them.

Attacking The Low Man

With the nail cut removing the defense’s ability to switch, teams are forced to guard more conventionally, with the low man at the rim closing out to the corner.

This long closeout opens the door for the offense to build multiple advantages.

Rip Attacks

By sending the cutter through the nail, coupled with the forward’s weakside replace to the slot, the offense lifts the entire weakside defense away from the rim and out of a quality help position. Therefore, the offense should look to reject the screen on the reversal as often as possible, ripping baseline off the catch.

Over Easy

While the rip attack punishes the low man’s closeout, the nail cut continues to work beyond the initial rip look to create downhill advantages. By forcing the long corner closeout the offense creates an easier, deeper catch for the empty-side ballscreen, increasing separation from the next nearest defender and opening space to attack through the elbow.

With the catch occurring lower and the defense already stretched, the offense is now playing with more space, more time, and a clear advantage to drive, collapse, and create on the second side.

Zooming In: As shown above and in today's breakdown, instead of the burn cut through the nail, the offense uses an “Over” cut, with the wing running over the top of the ballhandler and around the perimeter. The “Over” action also introduces confusion around low-man responsibility, and the cutter can often relocate into an easy catch-and-shoot opportunity after completing the cut.

The power of the nail cut isn’t in changing the offense, it’s in refining it. By rerouting the burn cut, the offense clears the paint, disrupts coverage rules, and creates a cascade of advantages. Small shifts in spacing and timing can unlock entirely new layers within familiar actions.
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Additonal Study Material

• ​High Point's PG Read Option {🔒}
• ​Marquette's High Slot Spacing {🔒}

Together with NABC

Develop as a coach and grow as a leader at the 2026 NABC Convention!

Join coaches from all levels of the sport April 2-6 in Indianapolis for the industry’s premier professional development and networking event. The NABC Convention features five days of X&O clinics, educational sessions, award ceremonies, division-specific meetings, networking receptions and more – all alongside college basketball’s championship stage in Indianapolis!

If you’re a basketball coach, you belong at the NABC Convention! Learn more and register now at nabc.com/convention.

🎙 Clare Murphy on Shared Narrative, Connection, and Building Team Cohesion

In this episode of the Slappin’ Glass Podcast, we sit down with master storyteller and communication expert Clare Murphy to explore how narrative, connection, and shared experiences shape the cultures of high-performing teams.

Working with leaders across sport, business, and mission-critical organizations, Clare has spent decades studying how humans actually absorb meaning, build trust, and transmit belief. Her core idea is simple yet powerful: culture isn’t built through information—it’s built through story, shared experiences, and the everyday moments that shape how teams communicate and relate to one another.

Throughout the conversation, Clare helps coaches rethink how they approach team communication, leadership, and culture-building, from the stories we tell our players, to the narratives we carry about ourselves as coaches.

We also explore how storytelling can be used to accelerate cohesion within teams, why great cultures rely on flexible leadership and shared ownership, and how simple rituals, traditions, and reflection practices can strengthen belonging within a group.

Clare also challenges coaches to reconsider some of the most common communication environments in sport—such as the halftime locker room—and how leaders can better regulate emotion, simplify messaging, and transmit belief during high-pressure moments.

The conversation ultimately centers on a powerful idea: the stories teams share and the narratives leaders embody become the foundation of culture itself.

What You’ll Learn

• Why shared narrative and storytelling are powerful tools for building team cohesion
• How coaches can use stories and rituals to strengthen trust and belonging within their teams
• The concept of “membership over leadership” and how flexible leadership can strengthen team culture
• Why information overload often undermines communication in high-pressure moments like halftime
• How leaders can transmit belief, confidence, and clarity through presence and emotional regulation
• The role of co-creating team narratives with players to build ownership and accountability
• Why coaches must examine the stories they tell themselves about their leadership and identity
• How building a trusted peer network or coaching “tribe” can accelerate development and combat coaching isolation

Listen to the entire episode below...

Together with Hudl

Hudl Powers Every Possession

If you’re already using tools like FastDraw, FastScout, or FastRecruit—you know how essential they are to your workflows. And now that they’re fully part of the Hudl ecosystem, they’re more powerful than ever. From film and play diagrams to scouting reports and custom recruiting boards, everything flows together. One system. Built for high-performance programs.

​Learn more about Hudl and their variety of products or subscribers to Slappin' Glass can also directly email Winston Jones of Hudl at winston.jones@hudl.com.

Tactical

📺 5 Out Drag Entry - Single Reject • Peja​

"Rejecting the wide pin down flows the shooter directly into a Peja, rip screen to get, action."

✚ Pair With: Burn cutting a shooter into a flex action out of 5-Out Delay.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdown on Coach Oded Kattash's transition offense with multiple bigs.

📺 Attacking Spain "Hedge & X-Out" - Roll • Corner Pin​

"Rolling the big immediately into a corner pin screen to prevent the tag defender from x-ing out to the corner."

✚ Pair With: Alternatively, burn cutting the corner to create an empty-side Spain ballscreen against the x-out.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our recent updated breakdown on the "Hedge & X-Out" coverage.

Got a coaching question? Ask us.

Our Monthly Mailbag on YouTube is your chance to bring real coaching questions directly into the Slappin’ Glass conversation.

Each month, we select and break down questions from coaches across the game—covering tactics, team concepts, leadership, podcast topics, and anything else you want us to dig into.

📩 Submit your Mailbag questions HERE, and keep an eye out for the next Mailbag episode dropping early February on YouTube.

Interesting Reads

📚 23 Learnings on Building Community and Holding Space​

5. Community is a thousand one-on-ones, not one big warm room.

18. What you celebrate becomes what you are: choose with extraordinary care.

19. What your community doesn’t talk about shapes it as much as what it does.

...Communities that celebrate transformation over performance, repair over perfection, consistency over brilliance, generosity over charisma. These are communities whose culture gradually comes to embody these values because the members are being shaped, through repeated ritual acknowledgment, toward them.

Think about what you mark and what you let pass unmarked. The things that go uncelebrated are the things the community will slowly stop doing.

📚 Reflections on a Coaching Philosophy​

Reading this reminds me of an insecurity I dealt with as a younger coach. I was afraid to be perceived as an authoritarian. As such, I was too democratic in my approach. This led to slow decision-making at times and interfered with progress. As I have matured as a coach, I try to balance this cooperative style with executive decision-making. Athletes expect their coaches to tell them what to do. Offering them too many choices can create confusion and instill a lack of confidence in the coach. Therefore, finding a balance between “guided discovery” and a more active-directive approach is key.

📚 What the New Grand Theory of Brain Science Can Teach Athletes​

When we put more weight on predictions, we become more narrowly focused on a given task; when we put more weight on sensory data, we have broader attention, are more inclined to explore, and have a more positive mood. By “zooming out”—thinking about the big picture or the future, talking to ourselves in second person—we can shift the dial toward sensory input and loosen the grip that our predictions sometimes exert on us.

Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan, Pat, and Eric

info@slappinglass.com