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

Happy Sunday! Welcome to all the newest subscribers from around the world! We had an amazing time at our Annual SG Summit last weekend, more on that to come soon!

ICYMI: Last week, we broke down the Button Hook Rescreen and how a quick second screen can stress Hedge & Plug by forcing the coverage big to change direction twice. View the newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒 SG Plus Content: Offset Horns Flare - Randomizing Flares​

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Chad Dickman | Hood College

🔑 The Practice Lab: Passing Opportunities​

📣 NABC: Renew Your Membership

🥇 Best of the Week: Let's Get Creative!​

Random Horns Flare Action

Exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies, and coaches means keeping an eye on leagues at every level. Today, that takes us to NCAA Division III and Hood College, where we found some of our favorite offensive possessions of the past season. We also had an extensive conversation about the philosophy behind the offense in this week’s newest podcast with Hood Head Coach Chad Dickman.

Hood flows in and out of structured triggers, layering in randomized actions and plays after the play that continually force the defense to reorganize.

You may have already seen Hood’s Quadruple Ballscreen, but that was only a glimpse into what makes the offense so interesting.

Today, we’re looking at another piece: Organizing Random Flares Through Horns.

Rather than treating Horns Flare as a set entry, Hood can organize it at almost any point in the possession, on the entry, out of flow, or as a natural retrigger when the initial action fails to create an advantage.

The value is not in adding another action. It is in giving players a familiar structure they can organize randomly throughout the possession.

Anytime Horns

The Horns Flare itself is familiar, and for good reason. It can create an immediate double gap for the ballhandler or build on the advantage of a ghost by flowing directly into a flare for the screener.

That familiarity can also make it easier to guard. If an offense walks into the same alignment and runs it conventionally, the defense can usually sniff out what is coming.

Hood creates a different problem by changing when and where the action appears.

Playing Left or Right

In early offense, both screeners can arrive prepared to become either the ballscreener or the flare screener.

The ballhandler can play left or right based on how the defense is positioned, with the opposite screener immediately flowing into the flare. The defense now has to identify the direction of the ballscreen while simultaneously coordinating the coverage behind the flare.

What makes this interesting is not necessarily the Horns Flare itself. It is the uncertainty created around it.

A defense might know exactly how it wants to guard a ghost. It might know how it wants to guard a flare. It might even have clear rules for Horns Flare.

But when those actions appear randomly, with different personnel and from different areas of the floor, the offense can often organize faster than the defense.

Playing After the Play

That same familiarity becomes even more useful when the possession stalls, allowing Hood to find Horns again without needing to reset or call the next action.

The players recognize the shape as it develops and organize around it, turning a stalled possession back into coordinated movement.

That ability to play after the play may be the most transferable piece.

In the full SG+ breakdown:

• Horns Flare as an early offense entry
• Organizing it from the outer thirds of the floor
• Using Horns to solve a three man side
• Late clock retriggers and stalled possessions
• The reads that allow players to organize the action randomly

🔐 SG+ members can watch the full breakdown on SGTV now.

The Learning Loop

Thoughts from Drew Dunlop in building The Practice Lab

This week, I’ve been thinking more about one-handed passing, not as a technique to force, but as a tool for playmakers.

Brick

During the Ready-Up, we used three-player actions built around two consecutive passes before re-spacing into shots.

Later in the week, we played live out of the Horns Flare. When players let the ball hang before making a one-handed pass, the possibility of a drive or shot kept the defense on the ball a little longer.

That delay bought the receiver more time and space.

Takeaway

It reminded me of skilled intentionality: the ability to keep as many options open for as long as possible.

Not every situation calls for a one-handed pass. When it made sense, we cued players to let the ball hang and see how long they could hold the defense before releasing it.

Steve Nash was a master of this in ballscreens. The ball stayed live, his options remained open, and defenders had to wait before committing.

Nothing about the activity changed. We shifted the cue from moving the ball quickly to holding the defense a little longer.

Sometimes you don’t need another constraint. You just need a better cue.

Tinker

I’ve had a few recent conversations about building more passing into skill sessions.

In individual workouts, that might mean using coaches as defenders and live passing targets. In small-group work, it could mean designing actions where the timing and quality of the pass shape the next advantage.

The question I’m working through:

How can we create more passing opportunities without isolating passing from the situations that give it meaning?

Together with Hudl

Preparation Wins Before Tip-Off

The staffs that hit the ground running in preseason are usually the ones that prepared their systems before players arrived.

With Sportscode and FastModel already dialed in, film, playbooks, and scouting workflows are ready from day one—not still being built in week two.

What you set up in August determines how efficiently you can teach, adjust, and prepare once the season begins.

Hudl helps make sure the work is ready before the real work starts.

Learn more at hudl.com/slappinglass​

Subscribers to Slappin' Glass can also directly email Winston Jones of Hudl at winston.jones@hudl.com.

🎙7 Lessons from Chad Dickman

This week on the podcast, we were joined by Hood Head Coach Chad Dickman for a conversation on the offensive ideas behind one of the more unique teams we’ve watched over the past few seasons.

We covered jumbled spacing, going early in ball screens, quick re-triggers, screening angles, and the footwork needed to play fast without losing control.

Here are seven ideas that stood out:

1. Spacing is about removing help, not filling traditional spots. Hood’s “jumbled” three-man side intentionally clears space for the two-man game while making weak-side defenders cover more ground if they decide to help.
2. Let the ballhandler go before the screen is perfectly organized. Dickman would rather have the guard attack early and force the screener to adjust than wait until both defenders are set in their preferred coverage. The screen can even miss if the screener’s defender is still forced to react.
3. The first action does not have to produce the shot. An initial action may only force two defenders to recover or create a closeout. That disruption can make the second action far harder to guard than the first.
4. Teach players how to play through messy spacing instead of constantly fixing it. If two players arrive to screen or the floor becomes temporarily crowded, Hood has answers that allow the possession to continue. Stopping to reorganize gives the defense time to do the same.
5. Freedom sits on top of detailed breakdown work. Before worrying about chaining three or four actions together, Hood drills screening angles, speed, distance, spacing, and ballhandler paths. The randomness only works because the individual pieces have been trained.
6. Two-man and three-man ball screens can have different intentions. Hood attacks the rim more aggressively in two-man actions. In three-man actions, the ballhandler will often string the action toward the “lookout point,” creating an angle to see the slip, pop, or secondary action.
7. Pace requires players who can stop. Hood spends significant time teaching full-speed jump stops, balance, and reverse pivots out of the paint. Getting downhill matters, but so does being able to stop the possession from turning into a blocked shot, travel, or live-ball turnover.

Listen to the full conversation now on the Slappin’ Glass Podcast.

Together with the NABC

Stay Connected to the Coaching Profession

The season moves fast. NABC membership keeps you connected to the coaches, ideas, events and issues shaping the profession.

More than 5,000 coaches across every level are part of the NABC, with member access to the NABC Convention, regional clinics, mentoring, exclusive awards, discounts and professional development opportunities throughout the year.

Just as importantly, membership helps strengthen the collective voice of coaches on the issues affecting the game and the profession.

If coaching is your profession, the NABC should be part of it.

Renew your membership — or join for the first time — at NABC.com/membership.

Tactical

📺 Quadruple Ballscreen - Screen Concepts​

"Sending all four into the ballscreen to create confusion and generate early switches."

🔒 Pair With: A creative solution against the high front, use the backboard to open the passing angle.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Some of our more unique defensive breakdowns, including "Box & 1 on the Big" to defend the pop and plugging off a non-shooting point guard.

Interesting Reads

📚 Mark Few Took a Small School and Turned it into His Legacy​

“My kind of guy. He just gets it,” Kerr said at the Paris Olympics. “He’s passionate about the game, passionate about life, passionate about his family. Humble enough to know that he doesn’t have all the answers, but driven and smart enough to seek the answers. And above all, he loves being part of the staff. And so, the dinners and the coaches’ meetings, there’s great humor and joy. He’s just somebody I want to be around every day.”

📚 How to Fail Cheaply, Learn Quickly, and Perform Sustainably​

"It’s the most important thing that we do is to be present with each other… I might not agree with you, but it’s a requirement for me to understand a different person’s perspective, because that will reveal more possibilities."

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📚 The Happy Planet Index​

Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan, Pat, Eric, and Drew

info@slappinglass.com