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ICYMI: Last week, we explored how to keep non-shooters involved on the perimeter through Jimmie Oakman’s uphill DHOs and Flash concepts, Mody Maor’s inverted screens and chase step ups, and blocker mover ideas from McKillop’s Motion Offense. Read the Newsletter HERE.

This Week at a Glance:

🔒 Non-Shooting Bigs on the Perimeter Part 2: John Andrjezek - Ballscreen Continuity Solutions​

🧪 The Practice Lab: Work in Multiples

🎧 Slappin' Glass Podcast: Joe Crispin​

📣 NABC Convention: Register Now!​

🥇 Best of the Week: 5 Out Offense​

Let It Flow

Last week, we explored ways to keep non-shooters involved through dead corner solutions and blocker mover concepts. This week, we’re moving closer to the basket, looking at how duck-ins, rim seals, and high low solutions can create constant rim pressure when one of the non-shooting bigs is spaced on the perimeter.

In our newest Film Room, former podcast guest and Louisville Associate Head Coach John Andrzejek walks us through how he used these concepts at Campbell, also drawing on his experience as an assistant with Florida’s 2025 National Championship team. The central question: when one big screens and rolls, how do you make the defense account for the other?

A hard rolling big already demands attention. The challenge is giving the second big a job that keeps their defender from freely protecting the rim.

Let the Coverage Determine the Spacing

Against drop, the guard has space to turn the corner, and the second big can occupy the rim help with a duck-in. Against aggressive coverage, that same positioning becomes less useful because the guard cannot get downhill. Bringing the second big high creates an outlet and opens up a different set of decisions.

The coverage helps determine where that player can be most effective.

Timing the Duck-In

Against drop, the duck-in creates a driving lane or a scoring opportunity near the basket. But recognizing the action is easier than getting the timing right.

Zooming In: Coach Andrzejek teaches the low big to initiate as the guard turns the corner, occupying the help at the moment the ballhandler needs that space.

The two bigs also have to coordinate their positioning. If the roller and the duck-in occupy the same lane, one defender can guard both. Creating gravity requires separating their paths while keeping both involved around the rim.

What If They Still Won’t Guard the Big?

Against aggressive coverage, lifting the second big provides an outlet. But what if their defender stays in the paint to take away the roll?

What’s worse than a player who doesn’t want to shoot? A player whose indecision makes them hold the ball and stall the offense.

Campbell attacks that problem directly: stampede the catch and drive at the sagging defender.

Zooming In: Driving into the space forces the defender to make a decision. Stay back and the big keeps attacking. Step up and the other big becomes available near the rim. Help from the weak side opens a pass to a shooter.

The conceded space can also help the offense reach its next action before that defender can provide support. That’s where the connections between the two bigs become especially valuable.

Keep Both Bigs Involved

In this week’s SG Plus Premium Newsletter and full Film Room, we go further into those connections: using Barkleys to attack the space, reaching the second side before another hedge, and pairing banana rolls with dives and perimeter fills to punish the rotation.

Coach Andrzejek also explains how corner spacing changes the roll, why handoff depth matters, and how the second big adjusts to penetration without bringing their defender into the drive.

​Join SG Plus to read the complete breakdown and watch the full Film Room on SGTV, with the film examples and teaching details behind playing two non-shooting bigs together.

Work in Multiples.

Thoughts from Drew Dunlop in building The Practice Lab

The art of in-season training is knowing who needs more, who needs less, and what they need more or less of.

A high-minute player might need a feel-good workout to stay sharp and confident. A low-minute player might need a get-good workout that challenges their capacity and continues to drive development. It's a balancing act. And it's where the art of coaching and training design really comes into play.

I've been thinking about one question in particular:

Can we take the same training concept and scale it to meet players on both ends of that spectrum? All in the context of the principles of play, system, and their respective roles?

Brick

Along these lines, I've been experimenting with a familiar concept: Work in Multiples.

Rather than treating every repetition as a single event, we're stacking multiple actions and decisions into each sequence. Multiple shots, actions, and decisions before the rep is completed. And then add a validation like make a free-throw or make two out of three spot-up shots before exiting.

The interesting part is how we can scale the same structure.

For a high-minute player, we might reduce explosive efforts while turning up the volume on passing, spacing, and shooting calibration. For a low-minute player, we might increase the number of live decisions, explosive actions, and consecutive efforts to challenge their capacity.

Same concept. Different demands. Different doses.

Takeaway

In-season training isn't necessarily about doing less. It's about being more intentional with what we ask players to do.

Working in multiples allows us to manipulate the demands of a workout. We can reduce high-intensity drives, jumps, and finishes while increasing opportunities to pass, relocate, read defenders, and make decisions.

The goal is to maintain or increase the density of meaningful basketball experiences while managing the physical cost. And more actions doesn't have to mean more of a physical load.

Tinker

I'm continuing to explore how to stack demands without simply stacking fatigue.

Can we challenge endurance through connected actions? Can validations add pressure without unnecessary volume? Can we increase passing and spacing opportunities while reducing forceful efforts?

Ultimately, how can we get more basketball out of fewer physically demanding repetitions when a player needs less, and scale those same repetitions to challenge a player who needs more?

Together with Hudl

From the First Film to the Signature

Signing day starts with the first film session.

The player you’re celebrating in November? You spotted them months ago. Watched their film. Followed them through the circuits. Built the relationship.

Hudl connects that work. With Recruit+ and FastRecruit in one recruiting workflow, move from the first highlight to signing day with a clearer path to your next recruiting class.

See how Hudl connects your recruiting process. Learn more at hudl.com/slappinglass​

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

Slappin' Glass Podcast

🎙 Joe Crispin on Playing with Soul, Creating Unkind Defenses, and the Coach’s Role | Air Force

Air Force Head Coach Joe Crispin joins us this week for a conversation on helping players play with soul, confidence, and a feel for the game. We explore the practice constraints behind his fast style, how he balances freedom with shot selection, and why he lets players help reveal the concepts that fit the team. During Start, Sub, or Sit?!, we also get into creating unkind defensive environments and the coaching characteristics that shape his approach.

Seven Lessons from Joe Crispin

1. Know a player’s core before asking them to change. Crispin sees players as puzzle pieces. The edges can be adjusted so the team fits together, but the qualities that make a player effective need room to survive.
2. Teach judgment alongside confidence. Can you?, should you?, and did you mean it? are separate questions. Skill and confidence matter, but so do the teammate who is rolling, the game context, and whether a player committed to the decision.
3. Use constraints to make the desired decision obvious. Offensive advantages and short shot clocks can help hesitant players build the habit of shooting and attacking. Scoring rewards then reinforce the outcomes the team values.
4. Let players help reveal the offense. Crispin begins with pace as a priority, watches how players create advantages, and then narrows options or adds structure where needed. The team gains ownership while the coach continues to guide it.
5. Teach defense from the moments when it breaks. Starting at a disadvantage gives players experience recovering to neutral, solving rotations, and forcing a shot the defense can accept.
6. A fake trap needs a credible real trap. Uncertainty works when the offense believes pressure might actually come. Crispin also adjusts the decision to the ball handler, including leaving the ball with an opponent he wants handling it.
7. Manage the kind of game your team needs. Crispin connects scouting and in game decisions to the larger contest: pace, pressure, foul situations, and disrupting what the opponent wants most.

Listen to the full conversation here...

Together with NABC

Your next coaching adjustment could start in Detroit.

A new action. A different approach to leadership. A conversation that changes how you teach the game.

Join coaches from every level at the 2027 NABC Convention, April 1st–5th in Detroit, for five days of X&O clinics, educational sessions and opportunities to connect with peers, all alongside college basketball’s championship stage.

Come with questions. Leave with ideas for your team.

​Explore the convention and register →.

Tactical

📺 5 Out Offense - Burn • Cross Court DHO​

"Using a burn cut to clear space for a cross court DHO and a downhill attack."

🔒 Pair With: Shallow Cut • Veer Screen. Shallow cutting the shooting in front of the ballscreen directly into the veer screen

🔒 Pair With: Wide Pin • Baseline Stagger • Flare PG. A wide pin entry, with variations including stagger flex, double ballscreen, and flares.

🔒 SG Plus Content: Multiple Bigs Offensive Spacing. Our breakdown of Mark Pope’s spacing strategy for playing multiple bigs within the 5 Out Delay.

Interesting Reads

📚 Your High-Performance Culture is a Performance Killer​

The teams that sustain excellence over years? They've flipped the entire equation.

Instead of treating human energy as unlimited and expendable, they treat it as their organization's most precious resource. They consciously replenish people rather than depleting them.

It starts with a fundamental mindset shift. Instead of scarcity thinking - "we don't have time for breaks," "we can't afford to slow down" - they invest in energy because they've learned it multiplies results.

📚 How to Build a Team that Keeps Improving.​

The research found that leaders of the highest-performing teams were much more likely to admit when they didn’t know something, ask thoughtful questions, and actively learn from their teams. That behaviour creates psychological safety because people stop feeling that they need to pretend they know everything.
​

📚 What I Learned Rebuilding a Team Without a Script​

The book has a name for what my team was avoiding: elephants. The emotional, uncomfortable, unspoken stuff that sits in the middle of every team meeting while everyone very carefully talks around it. The things that create a toxic environment.

Quote of the Week

Thank you for reading and have a great week coaching,

Dan, Pat, Eric, and Drew

info@slappinglass.com