How Creighton Gets 3’s off Ballscreens.

One of the best offenses in the college game has to be Creighton. Coach Greg Mcdermott is one of the best coaches in the college game at bringing down NBA concepts and using them with his team. It is a very fun offense to watch and one that uses a good mixture of spacing, skill, and innovative actions to score at a high level.

Looking at the number this year on synergy Creighton ranks in the 99th Percentile in total offense at 1.02 (6th for all of Division 1) points per possession. They were also 99th percentile in the “Off-Screen” playtype. They were led by 2 main guys in the play type. Mitchell Ballock and Marcus Zegarowski were both in the100th percentile. Ballock was at 1.84 PPP and Zegarowski was at 1.92 on 19 less possessions. Another crazy stat is that Ballock shot 98.3% in aFG% and Zegarowski was at 113.6% in aFG%. Those are insane numbers.

Creighton had multiple ways they scored in this play type, but I think the way that intrigues me the most is how they used the Ballscreen to create these opportunities. This concept of a “Veer Pindown” is one that was effective because they were such a good Ballscreen team and they had very good shooters that were able to hit shots off the pin downs.

One of the best concepts I have learned this offseason is the 2 ways to attack defensive coverages. You can either “Prevent the coverage” and not let the defense get to the coverage they want. An example of this could be a ram or wedge screen for the screener. The second attack would be you can “Punish the Coverage” which would be letting the defense get to their coverage, but running action to beat it. To me this is a great way to punish the drop because it gives great opportunities for the offense to create wide open shots.

**If you want to learn more about these concepts from Ross McMains & Zico Coronel they run an awesome site called Efficient Sauce and the rapid fire sessions have been one of the best things I have done this Spring. Check it out here***

In these clips we are going to look at how Creighton leverages the threat of the roll to punish the defense by setting the Veer Pindown for a shooter. Most of these are against a drop coverage. The hedge defender on the drop has to stay in coverage which provides an opportunity for the big to screen for a shooter without help on the screen.

This is an effective action that they used multiple times out of many different alignments. I think that the things that make it most effective are that it relies on the defense to sniff the action out early. It also preys on the fact that the players outside of the ballscreen are responsible for tags and help.

The main parts that coaches need to think about and coach are:

• The ball handler must engage the defender guarding the ballscreen. He has to take the bait and guard the ball for at least a step or 2.
• The screener must engage and separate with pace. The screener needs to sell the Ballscreen so that his defender will engage in his coverage. Then the screener needs to sprint with a good angle to set the screen for the cutter.
• The cutter has to have a good setup. The player recieving the Veer screen has to “Have an Act” as Bob Mckillop would say. He must occupy his defender and lull him to sleep then at the point of the screen happening explode to receive the screen. The more you slow down on this cut, the more your defender will peek at the Ballscreen and prepare to play that. It is basically a 2 on 1 in the screening situation.
• The veer pindown is most effective in ballscreen sets you already have in your playbook as a counter.
• It works best after some movement. You will see in the clips that they usually run action into the actual veer. Sometimes it is for the screener in the form of a ram screen. Sometimes it is action like a weave to manipulate the defense.

Finally, if you would like to see some more of the clips I pulled, here is the full video.