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

Happy Sunday! Welcome to all the newest subscribers from around the world.

ICYMI: Last week, we highlighted how peel switching can be used to neutralize the corner cut and 45 slide on short roll catches. Read the full newsletter HERE.

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This Week at a Glance:

👀 SG SoCal Coaches Summit! SG+ Exclusive Event!​

🔒 SG Plus Content: Attacking the Tag - Pin the Tag​

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Scott Lagas {Mercy University}

📢 Dr. Dish: Exclusive Slappin' Glass Discount!

🥇 Best of the Week: Rim Cut to Pin & Flaring the Split Defender​

🚨 Coaches Corner: August Roundtable Today @ 9am PST! Join Here​

📚 Interesting Reads

Let's dive in...

We’re thrilled to once again be hosting our 2nd Annual Slappin’ Glass SoCal Coaches Summit at Chapman University on September 5-6!

This invite-only event is designed to bring some of the best basketball minds together for a full day of sharing, connecting, and growing.

This year’s confirmed lineup includes (🎙 denotes SG Podcast conversation):

• ​Jerrod Calhoun 🎙– Head Coach, Utah State
• ​Johnny Tauer 🎙– Head Coach, University of St. Thomas
• Eric Glass – Assistant Coach, Miami Heat
• Zach Guthrie – Head Coach, South Bay Lakers
• ​Drew Dunlop 🎙– The Pro Lane / Skill & Performance Trainer
• ​Brittany Loney 🎙- Elite Cognition/Special Forces
  ​(Final speaker announced soon!)

Cost: $0.
We’ve got you covered with breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Saturday, plus drinks & appetizers Friday night.

Why This is Special:

• Space is very limited to keep the experience intimate.
• First-come, first-serve — once it’s full, it’s full.

Next Step:​
Click below to secure your spot or indicate your level of interest.

We have just a few spots remaining for the event, and priority is given to SG+ members. Interested coaches can get more details and complete the form below. If you’re a 100% YES and we have space (or you sign up for SG+), we’ll follow up with details on airports, hotels, and more.

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Pin the Tag

Some of sneakiest actions in basketball aren't always ones that attack poor defenses, but those that take advantage of good defensive principles by putting well intentions defenders in tough predicaments with no perfect solution...

Today we’re looking at how smart set design creates high-quality looks for shooters by forcing a tag—and then punishing it.

When you’ve got a shooter with deep range and the ability to make shots on the move, the wide pin is a natural option. But if your shooter is that good, the defense is going to know it too. Smart defenders simply won’t give up an easy catch-and-shoot three. They’ll stay attached, chase hard, or even blow up the action entirely with a top lock.

Creating open looks off of pin downs is often about creating initial separation for the shooter and building on the advantage with a conscious angle set by the screener. Today will look deeper at how both of these things can be accomplished by putting the shooter's defender in a low tag position before the wide pin down.

A great example of this is AS Monaco, who use their ballscreen spacing to force the shooter’s defender into the low tag—and then flow directly into a pin down to free the shooter.

Creating Low Tags

For the concept of pinning the tag to work, you first need to ensure the tag is coming from the defender you want. Monaco does this out of an initial horns alignment, with the ballhandler driving toward the side opposite the shooter.

Horns is an ideal starting point when trying to force a low tag—it lifts multiple defenders above the free-throw line, making any kind of high tag difficult. And since most defenses tag from the weakside, combining a horns alignment with the pick-and-roll almost guarantees the tag will come from the low, weakside corner.
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This is where you can leverage the advantage with a quick pin. As soon as the low man pinches in to tag the roll, the second big in the horns alignment runs in to set the pin...

Zooming In: One of the toughest assignments for a defender is executing a two-way closeout {🔒}, pinching into the paint to cover a cutter or roller, then recovering all the way out to contest a shooter. Smart offenses look to create and exploit these situations through their initial actions. Add in a sequential pin down screen, and the task becomes even more difficult for the defender to navigate.

With a typical wide pin, separation before the screen often depends on two factors: the defender’s physicality in re-routing the shooter, and the shooter’s ability to set up or play through that contact. The challenge is that shooters rarely welcome that level of physicality. Initiating a wide pin through the rim roll addresses this—putting the defender in a two-way closeout dilemma while reducing the burden on the shooter to combat physicality in creating clean separation.

Keeping The Defense Honest

Whether due to scouting, a preference to avoid defending a decoy action, or simple unawareness, a defense may choose to focus on taking away the pin down while ignoring the tag assignment altogether.

To keep the defense honest, the ballhandler must give a legitimate look to the roll. While the primary goal of the action may be to find the shooter coming off the pin, neglecting the tag opens up a high-quality opportunity to feed the big rolling to the rim.

Zooming In: Like most things in life, it’s about balance. While the set is designed to create a scoring opportunity for the shooter off the wide pin, the initial big in the Horns screen must continue to rim roll aggressively. This primarily forces the low defender to commit and tag, but every so often, if the defense tries to get clever and ignore the roll to sit on the wide pin, the rim is left unattended. For this reason the roller must commit to attacking the rim every time, and the ballhandler must give a look to the roller—punishing any defense that cheats off the roll and keeping both options viable.

Taking What The Defense Gives

A savvy defensive team may try to adjust their tag responsibilities by tagging high with the second big in the Horns alignment. This takes away the easy two at the rim and gives the shooter’s defender a better chance of staying connected on the pin.

Even so, it remains a difficult coverage. Once the second big commits to a physical tag on the roller, they’re no longer in position to steer the screener or provide help on the pin. That opens up the middle third of the floor, giving the screening big freedom to set their angle and the shooter space to come off into high-value real estate.

Final Thoughts: At its core, the “Pin the Tag” concept is about making a defender’s job just a little bit harder on every possession.

What if, instead of a simple closeout, we forced a two-way closeout?
What if that two-way closeout ended not in space, but by fighting through a screen?
What if we pulled the passer’s defender so far out that they couldn’t even offer help on the shooter?

Framing offensive actions through this lens—asking how we can add one more layer of difficulty to each defender’s task—is a powerful way to become harder to guard in every way.

To continue learning more on this concept and it's application in empty-side ballscreens SG+ Members can now view the full breakdown now on SGTV!

Together with Dr. Dish

Slappin’ Glass subscribers get ready to score back to school savings with Dr. Dish! Unlock $2,000 off the Dr. Dish CT+ to prepare your team for the upcoming season, plus an additional bonus discount when you mention the Slappin’ Glass Podcast. Score these savings before August 31st!

Slappin' Glass Podcast

🏀 Top 3 Takeaways with Coach Scott Lagas

This week we sat down with Scott Lagas, Head Coach of the Mercy University Women’s Basketball program. Coach Lagas has elevated Mercy to new heights in recent years, and in our conversation he dove deep into his Wolf Defense, how recognition drives culture, and why rim pressure is at the core of his Princeton-inspired offense. Here are our Top 3 Takeaways…

1. “Five players stopping one ball.”

Coach Lagas has built Mercy’s Wolf Defense around a no-middle, pack-style system where all five players defend together. By forcing action baseline and loading up with active hands, his teams disrupt confidence and rhythm. As he explained:

It’s not just about help rotations, but about building a disruptive and aggressive identity every possession.

2. “Recognition fuels culture.”

For Lagas, culture isn’t abstract—it’s built through daily recognition. But he’s quick to note the fine line:

From the accountability mirror (pairing players to give each other honest feedback), to the famous cowbell rung in practice when the offense produces a “paint-to-great” action, recognition is both fun and formative. Over time, it creates a culture where teammates celebrate each other as much as the staff does.

3. “Two feet in the paint, two hands, numbers showing—the ball has to go in.”

On offense, Lagas has installed a hybrid Princeton system with an emphasis on high splits and rim pressure. His philosophy is clear: cut hard first, collapse the defense, and then flow into skips, pops, or re-screens. The spacing of the high split creates long closeouts and isolation opportunities, but the top priority never changes:

That clarity has helped Mercy’s two all-conference post players thrive inside a modern motion system.

🔥 Whether it’s defense, culture, or offense, Coach Lagas’ approach is a great reminder that simple, clear, and consistent principles can drive big results.

👉 If you haven’t already, check out the full episode for all the details, drills, and philosophies we couldn’t fit here.

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

📺 Inbounder SLOB - Clear Cut • Gut Screen​

"Cutting the inbounder to the rim before bringing them back to the ball with a gut screen."

✚ Pair With: Several creative actions involving rim-cutting a shooter first, before running them off a screen.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdown on Tenerife's creative set design for shooters.

🎧 Pair With: Our recent podcast conversation with Latvian HC Luca Banchi.

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📺 Attacking the Switch - Flaring the Split Defender​

"Attacking the post mismatch with the weakside flare screen of the split defender."

✚ Pair With: The effectiveness of a Tomahawk Cut, or Blade Cut, to attack the Split defender.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Our breakdowns on attacking the switch through the "Drive the Big" and "Drive the Wake" concepts.

Interesting Reads

📚 Find Your Specific Knowledge Through Action​

So this is life lived in the arena. You are not going to know your own specific knowledge until you act and until you act in a variety of difficult situations. And then you’ll either realize, “Oh, I managed to navigate these things that other people, would’ve had a hard time with,” or someone else will point out to you. They’ll say, “Hey, your superpower seems to be X.”

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📚 There’s No Speed Limit​

Kimo’s high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me that “the standard pace is for chumps” — that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than most people, you can do way more than anyone expects. And this principle applies to all of life, not just school.

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📚 Useful Learnings from High Achievers ​

8. Lead with trust – You don’t have to earn it. You have it. I’ve found that giving trust before it’s earned attracts the type of people I want to be with.

9. Never waste an opportunity to be generous – Praise others, write thank you notes, and speak kindly behind someone’s back. Tell their loved ones how awesome they are. Be a good gift-giver. Giving is more enjoyable than receiving.

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Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan and Pat

info@slappinglass.com

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