Sundance Wicks on Contagious Culture, Advantages vs. Movement, and “Foxhole” Friends {Wisconsin – Green Bay}

Inside the Episode

“A lot of times as coaches, we created these adverse situations, but we do that so we can teach through them as well. And to me the adverse situations create teachable moments. My college coach, Coach Meyer, said ‘always look for the teachable moment.’ Most of the time the teachable moment is there when they’re vulnerable, and they’re approachable, because they failed and its been hard. And at that moment you have their full being. You have their full presence. You’re ready to make an impact…” – Sundance Wicks

A truly fun, energetic, and thoughtful week on the podcast as we were joined by Wisconsin-Green Bay Head Coach, Sundance Wicks! Entering his first season at the helm we discuss a variety of interesting concepts including:

• Combining “Scout Stops” with Base Defensive Schemes: Coach Wicks dives into his thoughts on building a defensive system that combines detailed scouting with base principles. 
• Weaponizing Switching: Within our conversation about building a defense, Coach Wicks discusses how/when they prefer to switch as a way to disrupt and keep an offense guessing. 
• And we talk Advantages vs. Movement, and Coach Wicks’ “ABC’s” of Contagious Culture during an always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”

Chapters

0:00 Defensive Structure in College Basketball

4:15 Constant vs. Variable

9:05 Defensive Strategies and Switching Tactics

16:38 Defensive Strategies for Basketball

24:45 Teaching and Perfecting Basketball Closeouts

30:24 Start, Sub, Sit

37:08 Teaching Accountability and Cultural Alignment

44:18 Teaching Strategies for Spacing and Cutting

49:32 Evolution of Offense

59:01 Investing in Foxhole Friends and Mentorship

1:08:31 Wrap Up

Transcript

Sundance Wicks: 0:00

A lot of times as coaches, like I said, we create these adverse situations, but we do that so we can teach through them as well. And to me, the adverse situations create teachable moments. My college coach, Coach Meyer, always looked for the teachable moment and most of the time the teachable moment is there when they’re vulnerable and they’re approachable because they’ve failed and it’s been hard, and at that moment you have their full being. You have their full presence, you’re ready to make an impact and you can change things. And they remember. I’m telling you, man, I don’t remember any of the good shit that happened in college. I only remember the hard crap, that’s it. I don’t remember the tough ass stuff that we went through and that stuff, to me, was transformational. It was absolutely transformational and to this day, there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about some of the suck that we had. That made me who I am today and will make our guys who they are going forward.

Dan: 0:51

Hi, I’m Dan Cracourian and I’m Patrick Carney, and welcome to Slapping Glass, exploring basketball ‘s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we’re excited to welcome Wisconsin Green Bay head coach Sundance Wix. Coach Wix is here today to discuss combining scouting with base defensive schemes, using switching as a weapon, and we talk contagious culture and spacing and cutting concepts during the always fun start, sub or sit. Costa Rica, spain, Italy, australia, south Africa. We’re excited to announce our newest partnership with the world leader and international sport course. Beyond sports Founder and former college and pro basketball coach, josh Erickson and his team of former athletes have built the go to company for coaches looking to take their programs abroad. From the travel and accommodations to excursions and service learning opportunities. Beyond sports does it all. For more information and to learn why more than 650 universities have trusted beyond sports, visit beyondsportstorescom and tell them. Slapping Glass sent you. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Sundance Wix. Coach, thanks for making the time. I know you’re busy in your first 90 to 100 days on campus, so I appreciate taking the time for us today, day 95, and who doesn’t want to be invited to the Met Gala?

Sundance Wicks: 2:35

I’ll tell you what this is like. You get the invite, you get the call, you look at your significant other and she’s like what happened? Like I just got invited to talk to Slapping Glass, and she’s like what’s that? You know? Because she doesn’t you know, and I’m like you don’t get it. You don’t get it. This is the Met Gala right here. This is the ball, all right. So I’ll pump to be here, super fan, listen to a ton of your episodes and all my favorite shows, and so you guys do a phenomenal job. Keep it rolling, man. The conversations are elite.

Dan: 3:00

Yeah, thank you. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. We are honored to have you as well taking some time. So let’s dive right in, and some of the stuff we were sharing off air before we popped on here was you right now taking over and thinking about defense and something that I know you’re very, very passionate about, and where you’re sitting now, how you’re thinking about structuring and starting to build the key concepts that ultimately will be your defensive structure this season.

Sundance Wicks: 3:28

Well, this is what’s unique about the situation. You know I think I’m day 95 on the job right now, almost close to day 100. It’s been a 90 day sprint. You know it’s 30, 60, 90 and you’re just trying to make it do 30, then 60, then 90. And ultimately it’s just day by day. You’re solving new problems when you get the job. What’s interesting about it? And you know, transfer portal and the whole dynamic and landscape of college basketball has changed in the last three years. It’s just basically been COVID pandemic, then it’s been a transfer portal pandemic, then it’s been an NIL pandemic and you get all three of those in the last three years and so it’s adapter dye and you’re trying to adjust on the fly as much as possible. So when we got the job, we basically had to reconstruct a whole new roster, right. So you’re sitting there and you go, all right, I got to get 12 out of our 15 players on the roster brand new to Green Bay and our whole staffs brand new, except we kept the director of basketball operations at the moment. So you know this going in. I’ve always believed that offenses are variable and defense is a constant. So if you have a defensive philosophy, it can be a constant for you. You always know that you’re going to have a base way. You play a foundational system for your defensive structure or core, offensively. To me, it’s always going to change based on the type of personnel you have. So every year, even though you may have certain philosophies that you like offensively, you just know that when you recruit you’re always going to have to wait and see a little bit. I think if you’re too eager and you jump in offensively and say we’re going to play this way and this is our brand of basketball and it’s going to be this way and it’s not going to change, then you’re going to surprise yourself after a couple of months because you’re going to realize it’s completely different than what you thought it was. So, defensively, I think you could actually get a head start. Anytime you get into a new program or new situation, you can get a head start on your culture defensively simply because you’ve got constants there, if you really believe in certain things. For me, right, it’s pretty simple. How are we going to defend the ball screen? How are we going to defend the post and starting those two spots? Are we going to force outside or are we going to play pacline? I mean, I think that’s kind of are you going to force outside or are you going to force middle? And for us we’re going to try to keep the ball on the outside. Third, we’re going to force it to the outside, we’re going to three quarter push down the post. A lot of times you might even get to fronting the post just based on personnel or scout. And so we’re going to start there and build out from that and then we’ll just talk philosophically how you want to rebound that different types of way of rebounding that you have for different positions on the floor. But really I think first and foremost you just decide where you don’t want to go. And I don’t want to get beat middle. If the NBA charts middle drives, we don’t want our guys getting beat to the middle. We don’t want our guys just giving up paint touch after paint touch to the middle part of the floor where the defense can collapse so they can get kick out or paint touch rotation threes. We don’t start with that. And then, secondly, how physical are we going to be inside? Are we just going to allow guys to get post catches and deep paint touches down there, depending on the type of big we’re playing. So we start with those two basic principles defending the ball screen and defending the post, which way we want to send them, the direction we want to send them and then we go into what we call scout stops or personnel based scouting. To me, that’s where the game really changes for us, because I’m really really big on the defensive philosophy of how you’re guarding individuals on the floor and where can you create advantages defensively based on their personnel.

Patrick: 6:20

Just off your last point. There the scout stops and then what you started with, that defense, is constant. So how do you think about having your defense being consistent, constant for the guys, but then game to game you’re going to have specific scout stuff. So I guess where there is like that variability, so now at this point in time, how you’re thinking about teaching your guys so you can add that variability to your overall consistent defense.

Sundance Wicks: 6:43

So I think when you have a constant defensive philosophy right where you’re sending guys, how you’re going to rotate out of it If you do, you know, escape the paint on a baseline, drive to put two on the ball, essentially to not get beat to the outside, and then you’re going to help sink and fill on the backside how you’re going to rotate out of that right. So you have your defensive philosophy. That’s built in and it’s ingrained. But now we can adjust some things. So let’s just say we have drivers on the floor. We love having drivers on the floor. We love guys that shoot under 30% from three that we know don’t take a lot of them that are, but we would essentially consider roadblocks. So now our gap presence can be so much heavier, we could be loaded up in the gaps. We can have deeper gaps. We can create more of a defensive loaded side, a loaded side defensively and create more of advantage to helping guard, maybe a particular player that’s better than others, or maybe sticking to shooters more. So I mean, the worst teams that we can play are guys that have spacers right. If you’ve got a really good guard and a really good big and you have three guys spacing around the basketball which, when we went to the incident late tournament at Wyoming 21-22, you had Graham EK in the post. He had a lot of gravity, so he required a double team. He had Hunter Model Nato getting into dribble downs, which he was an elite passer out of there. He required a lot of gravity, so you were going to think about if you’re going to choke on him or how are you going to do it from that side of the ball. Then you had Drake Jeffries, you had Brendan Wenzel, you had Xavier Ducell. You had guys who could just space the floor at a high level. Hunter Thompson is a pick and pop four, five. You had to decide what you were going to give up Ultimately. Most teams don’t want to give up three. So what they do? They just let two pre-season or mountain West players of the year play one-on-one. You’re picking your poison. That’s hard to stop. That was a really really hard team to scout against. Personally, just having coached those guys because they had so much gravity at every position, that’s a tough team. We look at which guys don’t have gravity. How can we load up in the gaps on Antoine Davis as the player of the year or one of the best players in the Horizon League and he gets a ton of shots. Are there guys out there that we can load up off of, because they don’t have as much gravity as him? Essentially, that’s going to help us try to scout stop Antoine.

Dan: 8:36

I’d love to actually kind of stay on the scout stuff for a second and maybe bring in another element here, which is switching versus not switching. One of the things always difficult is, let’s say, you don’t want to switch off of a certain guy for a scout, but then they’re sending him into staggers, things that are kind of hard to sometimes maybe not switch. I guess how you’re thinking about things that you’ll switch, things that you won’t switch when it comes to scout stops like we’re talking about.

Sundance Wicks: 9:02

So this is good. Rice Hamilton, unlv. Back in the day he was basically a 30-30 usage guy on Ken Palmer 30% of possessions used, 30% of shots taken. That guy had the ball in his hands, a ton. And if he didn’t have the ball in his hands he was coming off two back screens into a post, up back off a triple. So you’re sitting there. What are you going to do, knowing that he was the most gravity-ridden player on that team? Essentially, what we would try to do is just try to no catch him. So this is where the scout stops can vary a little bit. Here you have your principles, but then you go into a game knowing that this guy is the most used guy on the floor and he’s probably one of the most used guys in the country top five used guy in the country. We’re just going to not let him catch the basketball because everything is geared around getting braced the ball back. We would essentially scout stop him by no catching him. Now all that’s saying is we’re going to deviate a little bit from our core principles because if everybody’s equal right, then we can play our base coverages so we can do everything that we want to do. But not everybody’s equal. Not every team is equal. So you know that if Bryce Hamilton’s got it going, it’s going to be a long night for you. And we got beat by Bryce the first time. We didn’t no catch him and we let him get to his spots. We didn’t switch or emergency switch on anything. He destroyed us. And so if Bryce is going to be on the floor out there, we’re going to no catch him. It’s almost like everybody else is playing the normal principles. We’re going to find the guys that are drivers so we can be a little bit more loaded in the gap. We’re going to find the guys that we can help off of, and then we’re going to try to no catch Bryce and make everything distorted and try to take them out of rhythm. If offense is a game of rhythm, then defense is a game of trying to break rhythm. And so how can we break your rhythm? How can we break your flow? Well, offensively, you’re trying to keep the rhythm and distort our shell. We just always are looking for scout stop based guys out there drivers, non shooters maybe, guys that are just JYDs in the post that can’t really get to a hook shot, but they’re really good with an angle in the dunker spot. We will just load up on you and try to create a mismatch advantage on the other side of the ball.

Dan: 10:51

With the switching, maybe pivoting just a little bit, and I don’t know the other term other than maybe smart switching, aggressive switching, basically how you think about using switching, like sizes so that you remain intact. But it’s not just lazy switching where guys just don’t want to move and don’t want to defend, but they just want to point and switch to the next one. Like, how are you thinking about using it as an advantage or as a weapon?

Sundance Wicks: 11:14

more, I think for us it’s really match up based on it. So if we have a guy that we know is not a very good defender, we’d call him a sucker at Wyoming. We’re going to try to keep that guy off ball and hide him as much as we possibly can. That would be the sucker that you’re trying to spot From a switching standpoint. That’s really when we try to utilize switching as a weapon. For us, it would be to be aggressively switching guys that we know we want to switch. We’ll take an example of one of our guys that’s currently coming in Foster Wonders. We want Foster Wonders to guard three point shooters that stay in the corner. We don’t want Foster Wonders to have to switch on to Antoine Davis on the ball and have him guard on the ball on an island because that’s the switch they want. We would always try to keep our competitive advantage defensively by understanding who’s a switch guy, who’s not a switch guy, and this is why we recruit a little bit of intelligence and toughness. When it comes to our culture, I think you got to have guys who are intelligent, who are tough, who are smart enough to understand advanced scattering reports and not just base scattering reports. We rarely ever want to switch off ball. Just don’t like switching off ball. We see ball screens but in that case you’re going to have to put Foster and a lot of different ball screen coverages and you’re probably doing guard to guard type coverages than where we’re going to find out what’s your advantage. Are you ghosting, are you rubbing, are you brushing, are you slipping, are you setting? If that’s the case, then we got to really do a good job preparing against that. But rarely do we ever want to switch off ball. We’re going to have guys maybe they’re running the stagger for a guy and he’s just been running it all night long. It’s lock and trail, lock and trail, lock and trail or essentially, get to that top lock, get to that top lock and not let him come off those screens and not let him get the ball. But let’s try to eliminate off ball switching as much as possible.

Patrick: 12:45

I’d like to actually just sit on this, hiding your sucker defender, I think, when it’s off ball, trying to keep him in the corner. But when he does get put in those bad situations where he is put in the isolation or he’s put in the pick and roll, how do you think about fixing it or correcting it? In those situations, does anything change? Or is that what we just got to rely on, like you said, our schemes, our concepts at this point? Or are we going to run and jump on isolations? Are we going to be hedging them pick and rolls that he’s involved?

Sundance Wicks: 13:12

Offensive side of the basketball is in the league game. Nowadays, if you watch all the best coaches, right, the NBA is all about sucker switches. It’s all about getting matchups. You watch the Miami Heat just go to their delay action and set screens to get the worst defender on Jimmy Butler. Get the switch, get the sucker play, advantage basketball to that. I think what it comes down to is just having our shot profile, understanding our shot profile. If one of our sucker defenders gets switched on to a guy, what shots are we okay with giving up, first and foremost? So what are we okay with? We’re going to be okay with giving up high paint twos. So we modified our analytics at Wyoming from just saying we’re going to give up paint touch twos to now it’s either low paint twos or high paint twos. And the data was interesting. Every time we shot a high paint two. I charted a lot of our offensive shots we shot a high paint two was about 0.8 points per possession, points per shot. So we’re okay with giving up long contested twos, which obviously are non-paint twos. High paint twos, which basically halfway above the paint, just cut the paint in half, high paint twos and then pull up threes off the bounce. All those are going to be under 0.8 points per shot. So as we chart it, so we just tell our guys, even if that’s a sucker switch where a five gets to a one in a ball screen because of emergency switch or foster wonders, or one of our defenders who’s not an elite on ball guy gets switched on to somebody, we’re going to say, fight for one of our shot profiles, man, fight for the shots that we want to give up. And if you could just force them into that tough two, or you could force them into a pull up three, or if you can force them into a high paint two, we’ll live with that. Essentially, two. Good offense creates gravity. So now we get a guy, a sucker switch, on to a ball, our gaps are probably going to shrink a little bit more. We’re going to overreact a little bit and good teams, really good teams, who understand advantages, just hard to beat because they know how to play out of that advantage. So they see the overreaction and now they can kick it and maybe get a long close out and force a rotation. That’s why I love the game of basketball it’s chest, not checkers. So whatever we’re trying to do defensively, you’re trying to counter offensively and then you’re just constantly making micro adjustments throughout the entire game to figure out. All right, how do we stop this switch from happening, or what type of element can we add here on the scout base? Can we load up into gaps more? Or, if we do get one of our suckers switched on to the ball, is there somewhere that we can? I mean, we will literally play five on four. If there’s a driver out there, we will put a guy on the lane line or all the way rotated over on the opposite side of the midline just to stop another player who’s really good and make them get that ball back to the guy that we want to have. So as much as you’re hunting the sucker defensively, we are trying to make you hunt your sucker offensively.

Dan: 15:36

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Patrick: 16:38

In the pick and roll and outside of the sucker being in it, but just pick and roll general. How do you think about the pick and roll when you have your shot profile, the shots you want to give up and the coverage you want to play? I think about ice a lot.

Sundance Wicks: 16:48

I just personally don’t like having big guys come out, hedge blitz and create an advantage immediately in the possession. I hate it because if offense is about creating advantages nowadays more so than this ball rotation and ball movement because I think the elite offensive coaches are always looking for advantages more so than movement Just find the advantage early and, like Leonard would say, find the advantage, keep the advantage, use the advantage. We’re always trying to find a way to not get in a disadvantage situation. So most teams I think you got to really have a way that you want to attack the ice coverage. So we’ll keep our bigs in, keep them closer to the paint, really protect the outside and then know that you’re going to be in a little window right there. So that window, if you’re kind of a we call them ICGs a rational confidence guy, you may rhythm hezzo and then try to pull up from non-paint two or pull up from three, because we’re going to give you a little bit of that window in the ice. It’s not just going to be a ice blitz and so we’re going to try to bait you into some of those tough shots early, maybe because you’re an ICG and that’s fine. But then with the paint, touch stuff, even the high paint twos. A lot of times what happens in the ice if you’re really good at attacking an ice is getting into the window. You just throw that pocket, pass on the short roll. That big is playing out of the high post, he’s playing out of the high paint, and so now what we’re going to do is play cat and mouse on the backside and hopefully maybe that big guy shoots a floater. I mean, there’s very few guys in college where the big guys can actually catch it at the high post. Take one dribble, shoot a really good touch shot from 13 to 15 feet. It’s a tough shot for somebody to shoot. Now the good bigs that we’re playing with the gram Eke a new short roll. Gram Eke there he’s going to be able to pick you apart because he’s an elite passer and he’s really going to pop in his feet reading where that help side is coming. If they’re stepping up, if they’re staying back and maybe taking an advantage dribble or a crab dribble to get to a spot. If you’re playing against those guys, like I said, that’s going to be a long night because those guys are really really tough to play against. So I just think about it at our level you’re a little bit lower than the mountain west. Are you really going to have a lot of big guys that know how to play effectively and efficiently out of the short roll to be able to make those reads night in and night out? And then are you going to have a lot of guards from an ice situation that can make skip passes across the floor? Because ultimately, when you’re an ice, you’re going to load up your defense on the backside. You’ll obviously have two on the ball we’re kind of corralling him, as we call it and then you’re going to have your hot spot and then you’re going to have two backside. Are you going to be able to throw those skips if our defense is really loaded up, especially if there’s a sucker on the floor offensively?

Patrick: 19:03

In those situations and getting back to kind of the scout stops, like when you have a team that you know maybe can really punish your ice, are you more inclined to then maybe switch the coverage or just bring the big up more and get more aggressive with the big in his drop level?

Sundance Wicks: 19:17

You’d always have plan A and you’ll have plan B right From the ball screen coverage. I think it’s important. Plan A is obviously what you’re going to do every single day. Plan B is. You know this is probably not going to work. So let’s make sure we got plan B. So our scout reports we always go in plan A. Here’s our plan A attack. Plan B attack is going to be switching. Ultimately we’ll switch one through five if we have to. I just believe in it because when you switch one through five, nowadays they love to just ice a ball and they see that five on a one or they see that sucker switch, match up and they like to kind of get sticky with it. We’ll take our chances with our big guy, especially repiting into practice a lot of one on one situations advantage, disadvantage situations where we’ll take our chances with our big guy playing one on one and maybe forcing them into a tough shot, maybe gap them a little bit more and have them shoot a pull up three off the bounce. If we can do that and without them creating more movement or creating more advantages, we’ll let them play out of that and then you switch. Like I said, you’re probably going to be loaded up a little bit more. You’re going to be a little bit more overreactive, you’re going to be a little bit more on edge because of that switch, but we’re going to have a lot of confidence behind the ball and this is part of our culture is just always talking and giving the guy on ball confidence to defend. We can tell him to push up more. I got your gap loaded. There’s a driver over here, the ball is in the left slot and I got a guy in the left corner. That’s a driver. I can be loaded up in that gap and I can be like send them left, send them left, send them left, push up, push up. Our guys are always communicating behind the basketball to give him confidence on where he needs to go and where he needs to send them.

Dan: 20:39

If I could maybe pivot slightly and talk about defensive rebounding as it connects to the style of defense you want to play, and so Pat and I were talking about this the other day. You’s talking about being a little more no middle based versus packline based potentially can mean you’re in rotations more on baseline drives and on those shots. Then how your defensive rebounding plays into that and I guess, just overall, how you think about defensive rebounding as it connects to the style you want to play defensively.

Sundance Wicks: 21:06

Yeah, first and foremost, don’t get beat outside. We talk about if you don’t get beat you don’t need help. I mean that’s kind of the onus of the individual defense. But we also chart defensively how many points our guys give up, right. And so and I say that it’s not what you think it is, it’s not charting our guys playing one-on-one and he gets beat. It’s a trust-based defense, right. So we are kind of pushing to the forcing to the outside. Then our guy who’s guarding the post if it’s a strong side post has to escape the paint and stop the ball If he doesn’t do his job and he could be to the outside for a layup. That two points goes against the post player who didn’t do his job, it doesn’t go against the guy who was guarding the ball. It says you because we are having a steering factor to the outside. So, all that being said, pat Monahan is really good for us defensively. He came from Southern Illinois with Coach Mullins on, obviously, port-a-mosier imprint right there as well, from Loyola Chicago. Their thing is they want to give up 0.3 points per player over the course of the game and that would ultimately equate to 60 points a game, which is a really hard goal defensively is to try to get to 60 points a game. So if we do get beat to the outside and we’re forcing rotations, part of the reason why we ice and why we kind of push it to the outside is we want our big guys to stay in the battle, wanting to stay in the fight, and so they get forced to the outside and we get in rotations. Obviously we’re going to be in scramble mode. So our big thing is we’re going to contest one from the shot whoever gets to the contest. You’re going to contest and you’re going to go two hard steps, this little lender influence for you right here. You’re going to contest and you’re always going to take two hard steps back for the ball. We don’t want over pursuit. I think one of the biggest problems of rebounding nowadays is over pursuing. Guys just running to the restricted arc. If you know anything about shooting, the ball is going to rebound, most likely half the distance of the shot from a three point shot. You’re going to contest, you’re going to take two hard steps and kind of read and react to where that ball is going to go. Then our big who just got beat to the outside obviously has to go hit and get the biggest threat down there on the block area, because we’re probably not going to have our big rotating all the way out to the three point line. At that point we’re going to have to try to hit and get the biggest threat, the most likely threat down there, and then it’s. The other guards have to check and chase. So the offense isn’t going to send five guys to the offensive boards. Unless you’re probably Houston, then you might send everybody to the glass. Most send three, have a full back and a tail back, or get back guys as you used to call them. And so now you’re going to check your guys, see if he’s going, and if he’s not going, then you’re going to chase or pursue the rebound. So there’s hidden get situations where you’re inside the paint. That’s a hidden get situation. It’s a check and chase situation for our guards and the perimeter. They visually check with their eyes and then I’m probably pointing to, I’m physically checking just to make sure, like I’m going to check. I’m going to check, I’m going to look and then I’m going to chase and pursue that basketball and the contested guy is going to go contest too hard steps, pursue the rebound as well. So you might be in a hidden get situation, check and chase situation, depending on that rotation. But ultimately, like we all know, it’s effort. Rebounding is effort. If you don’t have the right effort when it comes to rebounding, I don’t care how much you teach it. It’s going to be a lot about effort and 90% of the rebounds taken are taken below the net. So it’s going to be about pursuit and understanding angles, and so we do a lot of where’s that ball shot from? What is the corresponding slice of the pie? So we teach our guys what’s the slice of the pie shot from the right wing, if it’s miscorrectly, it’s probably going to go corresponding slice of the pie to the opposite left wing side. It’s shot from the baseline. It’s probably going to be rebounded on the opposite baseline side. It’s shot from the top of the key. It’s probably going to be a V somewhere in between the midline and the intersection of the elbows right there. And so we’re always telling our guys what’s the slice of the pie? What’s the slice of the pie? And then, if you’re good off, it’s a rebounding team. You’ll send two on one to the weak side and we’re going to have to try to go two on two. Weak side hitting gets.

Patrick: 24:24

You mentioned avoiding long rotations, the best ways to not get beat. And then also one of the shots you’re willing to give up is pull up through dribble threes, knowing that you’re icing, you’re going to force outside what level of ball pressure you want, and then also just the footwork angles that you teach, so it’s not just a complete wide open lane that they’re still directing to the area you want.

Sundance Wicks: 24:45

We’re going to get pretty dialed in on the way we teach closeouts. I think closeouts are the hardest thing to do in the game of basketball. It is literally the hardest isolated skill and you have to practice those people that don’t practice closeouts, even just technical, just technique. On closeouts hand placement, foot placement what type of guy are you closing out to? Are you closing out to a player or a sniper or a driver? So where’s your hand and foot placement? The more you can rep closeouts in one on all situations, even in warmups. If it’s five on all situations where we just do a drill called star closeouts, we’ll just have every guy start from basically block, angle, midline and just close out to the top of the key, the wings and the baselines and working on hand placement, foot placement. So we’re not quote unquote opening the gate right, the flood gates for letting guys just get straight line drives or direct drives to the basket. And I think you have to constantly reinforce the art of the closeout. Now, you don’t want long ones, you don’t want to be in long rotations, but you do have to be able to become efficient with your feet, efficient with your hands and understanding what looks right and what looks wrong. So if we were going to break this down into micro nuance here, let’s just say we’re taking a closeout from if you’re looking at the basket, the right block area out to the right wing. We’re going to closeouts as we’re steering to the outside. We’re going to close out cheat steps. We always talk about little cheat steps. It’s like a guy at first base trying to steal. Second, we’re going to cheat step when we see that ball coming closer towards us or maybe that gap shrinking a little bit. We’re going to cheat closer to our man and then we’re going to crossover step. Take two hard sprint steps. Chop our feet. We simply go one hand up and one hand back. So I have a one hand up. Take away the shot, maybe stop my momentum, chop my feet. I want my right foot slightly above their top foot or on their high shoulder and I want to stay square to the sideline. I don’t want to open up the gate and just let them flood to the baseline and I don’t want to be below his top foot or top shoulder, because now I’ve given up a middle drive. So I’m really taking that one hand up on that shoulder and basically placing it on that shoulder, not even on the ball. I’m not even worried about placing it on the ball. I want it on the shoulder of that man. So I know that my foot and my hand are going to be in that spot Once you come at that angle. We have a slight arc on that. So we get to the high side. Slight arc, chop our feet. Boom foot and hand placement, top shoulder, top foot. Stay square to the sideline, don’t give up the floodgate. Direct drive, break yourself down, chop your feet. It’s almost like teaching elementary closed out. You come to our practice. You’ll watch us do. Really, really. Tim Gergivitz drills from back in the day just short one, six inch push steps, keeping a low white base. It’s about understanding angles. It’s about understanding our guys, what creates an advantage and a bad close out. And Coach Meyer man, we do thousands of close outs all the time and he’d given a ward out to the guy who did the perfect close out in the game. And the perfect close out is the hardest close out. It is where you’re at the midline, you’re two passes away and you know the drill the ball is skipped. So you have the longest close out in the history of mankind because you’re loaded up. Our guys were probably front in the post. We’re helping on the post from the backside. We see the ball gets skipped and you take that midline close out, arc it to the wing, grow your hands up, take away the shot, play the drive, take it in the chest, get a charge. That is the perfect close out. It should go in the loop, right? You see, one of those things. You’re like man, that is a. It’s one of those tapes that happens probably once every. You know 10,000 close outs. They don’t happen very often.

Patrick: 27:59

Coach, just your philosophy on why a one hand close out versus a two hand close out and the benefit of keeping that one hand low.

Sundance Wicks: 28:06

Pendulum momentum.

Patrick: 28:08

Okay.

Sundance Wicks: 28:08

Everyone teach some different right. So I look at if I go up there and this varies from how I was taught in college by playing for Coach Meyer and Coach Meyer taught, like I said, the most close out is the history of man. He would teach you to go up there and throw your thumbs in your ears both your thumbs in your ears right and try to take away the close out. You know, take away the shot thumbs and ears and get your momentum backwards. And I’m sitting here thinking like both my hands are up in my ears. One, I’m not really getting ready to contest a shot or take away a shot. Two, like I don’t ever defend like this, I feel like I’m in a scary movie, like I’m just trying to scare it Right. So I’ve never, conceptually, I’ve tried to process this and be like should I teach it swear or not? I the one hand to me and the other hand back. So I’m going right hand up on the right wing and I go one hand up and I go left hand down and back. Now what I’ve done is I put Zoom with my top hand to take away the shot and I have the momentum of what I call my sickle hand or my deflection hand to now push, step and lunge or punch when that first dribble, at the same time, and versus taking both hands up, bringing one hand back down, because that’s how you’re naturally going to slide with your hands both up, you’re going to bring one hand back down and use that momentum to try to push, step and slide or maybe, you know, beat them to the cutoff on the outsides. So I really believe in the art of the pendulum, where I go right hand up, left hand back and now I can use that momentum with my right hand, right foot to push, step and maybe cut them off to the outside.

Dan: 29:24

Coach, I don’t think you understand that this is Pat’s wheelhouse. He does closeouts every morning himself personally. He loves closeout conversations. I’m always on the search for that perfect closeout.

Sundance Wicks: 29:35

Oh man tell me it is like searching for the holy grail. Pat, good luck.

Dan: 29:41

A quick thank you to our newest partner here at Slapping Glass, one of the best tech companies in the world of sports, huddle. As many of you know, huddle extends an array of useful products to coaches, from their auto tracking camera, huddle Focus, live streaming tool, huddle TV, wearable athlete performance tracker, wimoo and their newest offering, huddle Instat, an all in one data powerhouse platform that combines advanced tagging with the global film library. For more information on all that’s offered with Huddle Instat, visit Huddlecom slash Slapping Glass today. Thanks to Huddle for the support. And now back to our conversation. Coach, this has been awesome so far. We want to transition now to a second week called Start Suburse Set. Thanks for all the defensive thoughts, those that maybe you’re listening for the first time. We’re going to give you three different options. Ask you to start one, sub one, sit one and then we’ll discuss from there. So if you’re ready for this will dive into this first one.

Sundance Wicks: 30:39

Coach, it’s already for start, sub or sit me the most cumbersome part of this process.

Dan: 30:47

You have not heard any of these yet, so these are completely brand new to you. So, coaches, first one you know you send us some stuff earlier about creating a contagious environment that I’m at that you’re hoping to create at green bay, and then part of that, too, is also some guiding principles that you have as well. We’re going to ask you to start, sub, sit three of your guiding principles here to get to the bottom of what’s the most important for you start, sub or sit. These are three things that are on your guiding principles list that you sent us For your program. So option one is protect the vibe, option two is embrace the suck, and then option three is know your ABCs.

Sundance Wicks: 31:28

Yeah, I’ll tell you what we’ll start with. Sit first is the player I know I don’t really have to have in the game right now. I’m gonna sit, protect the vibe. It’s more of an intangible element to all this. This is really good to Ben McCullum again on me, because he always talks about you have too much crap going on all the time. Simplify your process, right. Old master Yoda over there can simplify everything. I’m going to start embrace the suck and I’m going to sub know your ABCs. Here’s why I love the idea that progress is never linear. Jimmy et al, our strength coach at Wyoming, would always talk about that. When it comes to guys, you know, working in the weight room, I always wanted to see these results and gains and all you know strength. You know this is long process. I mean this is the compounding interest over four years where you actually like see the benefits of it all to become a better athlete and a better player. Progress is never linear. We always know that. You guys have talked about it a lot here in the last three or four episodes about plateaus, right, and so you’re getting to that point like how do you break through plateaus? You train, you train, you train. You talk with coach Bechner and you train at a high level and you get to the point where you’re at these plateaus. What do you do to break through them? And embracing the suck can be something as simple as what coach talked about is simplifying it and just getting back to the very, very rudimentary side of a skill development issue and saying that we’re just going to hammer this away and hammer this away. So embracing the suck to me is adversity is going to come. We have to create an adverse environment so our players can be better prepared to handle it when it happens. We don’t know when or where or how that adverse situation is going to hit us. Basketball is so unique in the sense of two fouls first three minutes of the game. What do you do? That’s a Harvard. Your best player gets two fouls first three minutes of the game. How are you going to embrace that suck? That’s tough man. So somebody going to step up or you’re going to try to ride them and hope he doesn’t get three. All right, that’s an embrace the suck. We got to get up early in the morning and work out and train. Maybe we have a scheduling issue. So now we’re going at 5 30 am and you’re used to going to in the afternoon and you’re used to playing at certain times. Embrace the suck Doesn’t matter. Maybe she’ll talk about full benefit all the time. Let’s get the full benefit out of this situation the more that we just get accustomed to all the things that happen to us and not looking at them as good or bad and labeling them, but just experiences that can help us in this life. An adverse situation can always be an assist for us. We’ll hear us talk a ton in our program about adversity assists and embracing the suck is simply just an adversity assist. Man, use that adversity as an assist. Let’s fail forward. It’s just fail harder. You always fail harder, fail harder, force failure, fail forward. All those battle cries that we have in our program because ultimately, man, there’s a physical element to it, there’s a mental element to it and I think there’s a spiritual element to be, to come into play and the physical body you’re going to train. I mean it’s part of the easiest process we do is train the physical body. We always forsake the mental side of this aspect that so many players now are looking for sports performance enhancements. How can we psychologically skills train our guys to be better equipped to handle tough situations, that coping mechanisms that we’re lacking nowadays with teaching our young men. I’m very passionate about this side, and so we take all these moments and a lot of times as coaches, like I said, we create these adverse situations, but we do that so we can teach through them as well, and to me, the adverse situations create teachable moments. My college coach, coach Meyer, always looked for the teachable moment, and most of the time the teachable moment is there when they’re vulnerable and they’re approachable because they failed and it’s been hard, and at that moment you have their full being, you have their full presence, you’re ready to make an impact and you can change things. And they remember. I’m telling you, man, I don’t remember any of the good shit that happened in college. I only remember the hard crap. That’s it. I only remember the tough ass stuff that we went through, and that stuff, to me, was transformational. It was absolutely transformational and to this day, there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about some of the suck that we had. That made me who I am today and that will make our guys who they are going forward.

Dan: 34:58

When it comes to embracing the suck, how you’re thinking about putting your team through those things before a tough situation hits your team, whatever it is that you and your staff are thinking about, how you can make things difficult and put them through adversity yourselves so that they’re better prepared when those things hit.

Sundance Wicks: 35:14

I’m a little quirky when it comes to some of these cultural things. I think people find out it’s like bentox, you know, because like you just got to come see it a little bit, you know, but for me it’s we’re going to be overly animated in our weight room. So part of being adversity is forcing it, right. I’m going to tell our guys you can literally not stop talking and stop chanting or stop vibrating or stop communicating or stop touching for the full 45 minutes that we’re in our workout and it will drive our strength coach nuts. But you literally have to be like jacked up, insanely contagious energy. There’s got to be a lot of juice in there, right, and it’s got to be crazy and it’s got to be relentless. It’s going to piss everybody off that’s around that place, like, because they’re like what are these guys doing? But you know how hard it is to do that for 45 minutes consecutively, where you’re going to sit there and you’re going to pick someone off because you’re going to look over there, you’re not touching, you’re not connecting, you’re not talking, you’re not bringing energy. It’s not the standard. It’s 45 minutes full on today. Then we’re going to flip it Thursdays. We’re going to lift and we cannot say a word, but we can only have touch or connections, because I need them to see both ends of the spectrum. Even it was so hard to talk for 45 minutes straight or connect for 45 minutes straight. Equally as hard in a competitive arena, not to talk, to be silent, but to try to give energy through nonverbal communication, and so that’s an adverse environment. Cranking up the music or fake crowd noise in the Dick Bennett practice facility to a point where nobody can hear anything, so that we can replicate, maybe, a championship environment that they all dreamed of playing in, where you get to those games I mean, I remember playing in the double A when we were making our NCAA tournament run in Wyoming and you just couldn’t hear a thing. When you’re playing in the VA host San Diego State and they’re going on a run, you can’t hear a thing. So you crank it up to the point of what happens. I will intentionally blow my whistle in the middle of a practice, in middle of our five on five segment, and pull out one of our better players and say he’s injured, can’t play. What now? Who’s in? Who’s in? Solve the problem? We don’t have a guard. What are we going to do and tell them FiL, figure it out. These things happen. Guy goes down with a sprained ankle. He’s got to leave for five minutes to go tape it. Maybe he comes back, maybe he doesn’t. Do you replicate these things in practice or do we just always hope it’s never going to happen? Because if you do, that’s foolhardy. We know these things are going to happen at some point. Your big guys are going to get a foul trouble. You’re going to play small ball. How do we create that element of right? Here we go, blow the whistle. You’re out, let’s go Small ball. What’s your small ball weaponry? So we practice our small ball lineup or small ball attack. We got to adapt on the fly, getting up at the crack of dawn to go do a workout. Obviously, that’s the easiest way of forced adversity that most coaches know, but creating those things that are so mentally and physically challenging that when they’re done, they got the full benefit. Conversely, the mentality I just got to hit on this too, because I think this can’t go not talked about is that you can’t create these adverse environments and then ridicule them and belittle them for not making it through or not figuring it out. This is a teachable moment. That’s why we create adverse environments. We create adverse environments so they can learn to figure it out. So that may not happen the first time, or second time or third time, but it may be the fifth time that they’ve gone through the situation, or sixth time, or whenever next time that they actually finally get it, and your guys will never push themselves past the level of comfort if you’re always constantly on them for not getting it right the first time. It’s philosophically, maybe, where I differ than a lot of other coaches. I’m not going to expect you to be perfect, because this is an imperfect game. It’s a game of broken rhythm. It’s a game of challenges and obstacles that you always have to overcome. So to me, this is always going to be about like are we growing through this process?

Patrick: 38:29

Coach, you sub know your ABCs. What are your ABCs?

Sundance Wicks: 38:33

So we have our culture code right. So we have 26 practices this summer. 26 practices, 26 letters in the alphabet A through Z. Each day is a different emphasis on our ABCs. Now, this is our culture code. This is kind of the things that, when you graduate from this program, I want you to take these ABCs into your life. Very few of them have anything to do with basketball. So knowing your ABCs to me is the long game of this. And so, while the start of this is the adversity situation because most of the time when you come into a new situation, come into college, it’s going to be diverse, it’s going to be culture shock, it’s going to be program shock the ABCs is the long game. So I sit them because you know what. You may have to sit for a while before you figure it out, and most players don’t come in ready to play right away, but when you know your ABCs, you’re going to have to sit and understand these a little bit before you truly dive in and connect with our culture. So the ABCs, it’s literally A through Z right here. There’s different acronyms, there’s different phrases that I’ve just collected over my career as a coach from being around different mentors, around people have impacted me. But, like, if we start with the A’s, like you know your A’s, we talk about our players all the time, about being accountable. Right, that’s huge being accountable, being aware and being aligned and for me, accountability is real simple code for us in our program. So, knowing your ABCs, let’s know the A’s. What does it mean to be accountable? Because that’s the first thing that you’re going to have to be in our program is accountable. You got to show up. 90% of people don’t show up. If you show up, you’re better than 90% of the people. If you show up now, you got to do the work and not the required work. Right, if you want to be good, you can do the required work. If you want to be great, you’ll do more work. If you want to be elite, you’ll do extra work on top of more work and then you’ll serve others. So it’s our accountability code is show up, do the work, serve others and not help others. Not tell others what to do. Not essentially lead others, but serve others, to serve down. Right, to tell people like I’m going to do this with you, I’m going to show you how this is done to serve others and then being aware, we always talk about. This whole journey that you’re on is about being self aware, learning how to become self aware, know who you are but, more importantly, know who you are not. This is a journey of self, this whole experience that we’re doing this basketball as a vehicle. If you don’t have a deeper reason for why you coach, if you don’t have an overriding mission for your program other than winning, I don’t know what you’re doing, because ultimately, this is as long as it stays amateur. To an extent, this will always be a mission about molding young men and women and helping them for the next 40 years of their life. That was just instilled in me by a college coach, but accountable, aware, and then aligned, and that was just the A’s, and so we’ll just get the.

Patrick: 40:52

A’s.

Sundance Wicks: 40:52

That’s just a full day of the A’s and we’ll go to the B’s and the C’s. You know it just goes down. But these little micro lessons that we teach our program and I think you know probably the thing that coaches will take away from this is, if they ever want to know our ABC’s, just reach out to me. I’ll send you our ABC’s, because Coach Meyer always said you don’t use all the good ideas. You take them all. That’s why you guys have this podcast. We take all the ideas that come from this, but we can’t use every freaking good idea that you guys put on. So you can take the ABC’s, but you may not like A through Y, but you like the Z. My Z’s are really good one, by the way.

Dan: 41:24

You want to know the Z we do. That’s a heck of a good thing. Yeah, you can’t do this.

Sundance Wicks: 41:30

You want to know the Z? The Z’s are good ones. Zoolander couldn’t turn left. Work on your weaknesses.

Dan: 41:35

I like that.

Sundance Wicks: 41:37

And it was Z? Z’s a hard one to find a word for, but ultimately Zoolander couldn’t turn left. That was why that showdown at the end, right there with Hansel man yeah, that’s right. He worked on his weaknesses. He got the dub Loose steel Loose steel.

Patrick: 41:53

You said in the A’s it is a lot. So I know you live it. So as far as and you said it’s a long-term process. But how do you introduce it to your players? You give them the sheet, but is it something you give it to them all at once and then you just start to live it, or is it on a week by week? You introduce another letter.

Sundance Wicks: 42:11

Yeah, they’ll get the sheet and they’ll never look at it, right, they’ll come in and like here’s the sheet and they’re like, yeah, what’s this crap? Right, but ultimately it’s what we do. So this whole sheet is what we do, this is what we believe, this is who we are, this is our program, this is our cultural alignment. And so when we introduce something you know me, I’m just a quoted movie right there, but I’m a quirky guy. I like to do things a little bit outside the box. I love tying in any sort of movie or any sort of story or book that could help maybe sell or paint the picture better than I can, because ultimately, I don’t want to hear me talk about these things over and over again. They’re going to hear them throughout their tenure here in our program. So when we introduce it, we try to introduce it in a fun way that creates maybe a blink moment or creates a memory or an experience where they can always reference our be as believe, right, believe in something greater in yourself. And how will we introduce that? We’ll introduce it with Ted Lasso. It’s pretty simple, right? We’ll introduce the whole evolution of the believe sign in Ted Lasso, and even to the last episode which was super impactful for me. I love watching that show. It’s the only show my wife are watching me because she just only watches HGTV. So she’ll watch Ted Lasso because it speaks to the soul on so many levels. It speaks to the human side of this stuff, because we’re all going through different things that we have no idea what somebody else is going through. We’ll show some believe clips in Ted Lasso and maybe it’ll inspire some of the guys to watch the episodes. But ultimately, like, it’s beautiful and we just find unique ways to do things like that. So I challenge our staff all the time to not just have boring meetings, not just be acidic and talk on paper, but to find ways to imprint something on our guys.

Dan: 43:36

Coach with all of this stuff, with the culture building the environment. You know you were a head coach Missouri Western before going back and being assistant Wyoming. I’m just wondering anything that you took from the experience as head coach the first time, then going back to being assistant being a different program and now, as you’re going back to being a head coach, what you learned about that first time when you’re trying to implement this environment that you’re taking into this one.

Sundance Wicks: 44:00

The first time you’re head coach, you have no idea what you’re doing, so you just kind of stumble upon some of these things, you kind of like Jar Jar Binks right, you know you just all of a sudden it just seems to work out for you. I don’t know why, but like it works out for you if you have the right intentions. So going into it and trying to create it the first time you have all of these years, you know, if you’re assistant for 15 years, you have 15 years. All the times you said I would have done this and this situation to the head coach that you were for. I promise you this is I would have done it this way. And then you get there and you’re like, oh crap, like you know I don’t know if that’s right, bro, I don’t know what the answer is so that first time you’re head coach you just really rely more so on. You always find that there’s a North Star inside of you, there’s a compass inside of you that’s always pointing in the direction. That kind of your gut tells you it’s right. You just trust your training. And it’s the old mantra. You don’t automatically rise to the occasion, you default to the level you’re training, and so you default to level your training, you trust it and then you find out. You know, I wasn’t so far off. That, to me, was an exciting part about being a first time head coach was the discovery side of this. It was so organic, right. It was so visceral, everything was so real. Every single second, every decision was magnified times a thousand, and so that was monumental. For me, going back to being assistant for Coach Linder, is because now I, having sat in that seat two years, whatever, having sat in that seat, it allowed me to go, look through the lens of Coach Linder and say he doesn’t need this, he doesn’t need this, he needs this, this and this. I can take this off his plate, he doesn’t need to be bothered this way. Rex Walters always said a good assistant knows what the head coach needs before they need it. So you go back and sit in that seat. It was revolutionary just to be able to maybe empathize with Coach a little bit more of what he’s going through. If you take those losses differently, you take those wins differently. Everything that happens is different, and it’s 18 inches. 18 inches slide over. It’s not that far. It might be 18 inches and eight inches, you know, or it’s a lot longer than you think it is.

Dan: 45:49

For sure.

Sundance Wicks: 45:50

Going back to the third time now sitting, this situation is you’re a little bit more dialed in on what you believe and you understand what worked the first time, and so you don’t need to deviate too far from the plan, but you still have to always adapt to the human beings that are around you.

Patrick: 46:03

Coach, our next start subset. We’re going to get to the offensive side of the ball. This is one of our tough to teach questions and it has to do with spacing around penetration. So the toughest to teach when there’s a dribble penetration is it who’s cutting around that penetration, who’s spacing and how to space around that penetration and how the post or the dunker is going to react to that penetration.

Sundance Wicks: 46:25

Easy for me on this penetration. I’m starting who’s cutting, I am subbing who’s spacing and I’m sitting how the post moves, how the post respaces.

Patrick: 46:34

Okay, I’m going to follow up with your start. How do you get players to be better cutters and what rules versus reads, I guess, in the cutting?

Sundance Wicks: 46:42

There’s so much that goes into it because it’s so personnel-based, I think a lot of times or you can have set rules I would almost prefer you have set rules but then if you don’t have the proper personnel on the floor and you tell a shooter who’s a great spacer to cut because that’s the rule and you leave a driver on the perimeter, are you really creating an advantage or are you just allowing the defense to load up some more? Let’s just take an empty side ball screen and it gets refused to the outside and you got sandwich spacing on the backside where you have a slot of 45 in a corner. That guy’s beaten to the outside and you got a shooter at the Lebron spot or at the 45 spot. Are you going to dive him Just because that’s what you should do, is dive at the 45 cut? Or if you’ve got a guy in the corner who you know is the driver, are you going to maybe smile, cut him, smile, cut him over and maybe shift the wing to the drift and then maybe slide the slot over to the diagonal? It’s so ambiguous. There’s so many ways you can go, based on how you want to teach it or how you want to go. This is like out of the corner and you’re driving from the opposite slot to the left slot to the right corner. Are you going to that guy’s up in the gaps or are you just going to automatically check him? Or are you going to try to keep that guy spaced and maybe see if he stays in the gap and you can penetrate and kick? There’s a lot of reeds that go into it. There’s a lot of bit of feel and flow. That’s the hardest one to teach. I think you have to be pretty dialed in on personnel and I think you either have to have a philosophical like I’m holding the line here, I’m always going to cut the 45. That way there’s no confusion, because then if you have ambiguous rules or they overlap, or maybe it’s based on personnel, if you don’t have something set in stone, then maybe nobody cuts. Now you’re stuck right. I go through this long. This rabbit hole is basically a base of what should you do, and is it always based on personnel or is it based on are you just going to stick with that concept? That’s going to be structured. You could battle this all day long, right.

Dan: 48:23

Yep, coach, before I went, pat and I were talking about this. We’re just talking about respacing, spacing options, cutting options, all these kinds of things. One of the things was your sit and the post-dunker reaction. I guess the reason we threw that in there. Pat and I were recently looking at some film somewhere in Europe I forget where, but how good some of the guys in those dunker spots are at reacting to drives, and whether they’re circling under the rim when the ball’s coming at them to find space or when the ball’s going away, they carve out space for an offensive, rebounding or whatever. They’re just not hanging out watching the drive. I guess just your thoughts on trying to teach younger players how to be active in those dunker low post spots.

Sundance Wicks: 49:04

I think you could program more down there. I think there’s some pretty hard line reads where you can rep certain situations that happen a lot. We’re a force to the outside team, right. Let’s just say there’s a guy in the opposite dunker spot and our team gets beat to the outside and that guy basically loops over because that five man’s in the hot spot and he escapes the paint first, bounce help 9-1-1, and that guy loops over. He’s going to be in that window. There’s that second there where if our guy doesn’t be back quick enough, then that’s going to be an automatic read. You can program that a little bit more. I also think the game has changed too. There’s very, very few back-to-the-basket bigs anymore, right, they’re just posting up on the block, taking that space up, where now it’s like you can put an athletic, very mobile lob thread better mover type big in a dunker spot and create ladder spacing to flatten and stretch the defense out and not destroy space by keeping them on the block. Conversely, you’ve got a load down there. You’ve got a Zac Eady, right. He’s freaking massive down there on the block and you drive and all he does is, if you’re driving based on it, he just eye cuts just a little bit up the lane line and you just throw it up because he’s got a 7-7 wingspan or whatever and just catches it and just shoots it over the top everybody. That’s hard to guard. So I played there was a three-out, two-in principles. We played three-out, two-in motions and it’s a hints of blocker mover Dick Bennett back in the day a little shout out here. But our bigs were programmed and if we drove baseline they eye-cut it up the lane. If we drove, they L-cut it and stepped out to the dunker spot to create space. It was an eye-cut and an L-cut back in the day. Now you just move the bigs flatter and now you’re loop under or loop over type concepts. I don’t think it varies too much from those principles other than maybe adding a little bit of feel and a little bit of. If you have a really good defender who can keep his gap and really play that gap well, that would be the hardest part for that dunk spot guy to read and how to relocate.

Dan: 50:48

I actually like to follow up with something that you said in our defensive segment earlier and ask you about it here, because you mentioned correct me if I’m wrong, but you said a lot of elite or great coaches now think about teaching advantages over movement, and I wanted to follow up with that here, as we’re talking offensive now A little bit deeper on what you meant by that and then how that relates to how you’re thinking about offense currently.

Sundance Wicks: 51:11

Leonard, was a paradigm shift for me working for Coach Lender, because my college coach I always reference how you played and, like I said, we were four out of one or three out two in and back in the day. This is the late 90s, early 2000s. If you went to a clinic it was talking about third side to inside. You got to get the ball to the third side and you got to get inside or you got to have. We would do restrictions in games If we were up 10, you’d be like nine passes, nine passes Like we’re like nine passes, like you know. The shot clock was still like you know 40 seconds back in a day or whatever it was. You know it was a long possession, right, turning as many passes as you can to drain that clock and get that ball moving side to side. And I can’t tell you how many times we teach the big spacing drill where we try to get three reversals first side, second side, third side, then go inside and was an advantage really created or did we just move the shell a little bit? And I think so many times you talk about can you take a team out of their shell? How many coaches still rep? You know the basic shell drill principles. And if your goal in defense is to keep your shell and the goal in offense is to distort it, well then just moving the ball around the perimeter side to side isn’t distorting a shell. That’s literally the shell drill. So it’s changed to the advantage type concepts where it’s a lot more gravity. Now recruit gravity or have gravity on your roster. Who can pull the defense? You know what’s gravity keeps us grounded right, so pulls us back to the earth. Put guy on your team has gravity and can pull the defenders away from earth, can pull the defenders away from their gaps. And so all these coaches now we’re searching for first and foremost, like how are you defending the ball screen? You’re going to blitz us? Great, I would love for you to blitz us. We’re just going to create this advantage where we’re flattening you out. We’ll bring our five up short roll ran EK to the nail. We’re playing four on three in the backside and we’re already playing out of an advantage rotation. So you’re going to have to decide. Are you going to go to Graham? If you are, then he’s got to be good enough to find the next pass. And that rotation creates an advantage, creates a long closeout and you just try to play out of as many advantages as possible, because the best shots we can get are what Paint touch, rotation threes, paint touch twos, beat outsides, that force, rotations, and so all that, every single. You know some people can hunt the switch and but I don’t think the advantage is necessarily playing one on one. I think the advantage is rotation. That’s where, instead of moving the basketball side to side, you can get caught up thinking like that’s really good basketball. But you can also create great ball movement through an advantage rotation type situation. And maybe you’re not seeking sides nowadays, you’re not seeking third side. You’re seeking one advantage. Second advantage in the possession, third advantage. So first advantage may be getting the best defender in a sucker switch off of our best offensive player and now we bring up our best shooter into a ghost action which confuses the coverage, which creates an advantage. So now we have a bad on ball defender into a ball screen situation they’re not normally accustomed to. And now we’ve just created two advantages women. The first, you know, five to 10 seconds of our possession.

Dan: 53:59

Coach, you’ve just said a lot of interesting stuff and I want to go back actually to gravity for a second, and as coaches, we know the gravity of our players, sometimes more than they do. I feel like where they don’t understand even the good players, how they can create advantages by just who they are on the floor and I guess, how you think about, within this conversation of spacing and cutting and creating advantages, you’re better players, teaching them and helping them understand the actions and the movements and the spacing or whatever it is that they can help your team on, a, you know, consistent basis every time down the floor.

Sundance Wicks: 54:32

Yeah, this is part of the awareness, the self awareness process of this coaching. I grew up, you know, playing for a coach who’s really good at defining roles. But I think if you’re really good at defining roles, you tell them like this is what you are, this is what you should be, this is what you need to do, and you do limit a little bit of the capacity to be creative and to learn and you can be really good in a role spot, right. But when you’re talking about your best players and how they use our gravity because your best players have the most gravity, right, your best weapons If you’re Graham EK, then you require a double team and a lot of times you require a triple team because you’re going to have two guys trying to get the ball out of your hands and you’re going to have one guy that’s spying you a little bit just in case something happens. So you’re like Michael Vick or Lamar Jackson or like a quarterback that’s moving out of the pocket. You’re a big threat, right, you have a lot of gravity. So helping them understand that you don’t have to go one on three Like, just because you’re a really good player and you have a lot of gravity, sometimes they think like, well, I could just fake that and look, no, they’re trying to get the ball out of your hands. That’s okay. So if the advantage is we’ve already created a rotation by a simple post-entry, then be okay with looking for that opposite diagonal pass or that 45 cutter coming from the LeBron spot. Be okay with that and be okay with playing out of that. And know that not every team is going to try to W, but when they do, you’ve got to be okay with making the right right read every single time. It’s just kind of like quarterback with check downs. You’ve got a good player who you know is going to get blitzed. Well, recruit other players who can really compliment Batman. You know, let’s have some Robbins out there so that they don’t just blitz your best player and you get the ball out of his hands and the advantage dies because the only guy that can create an advantage to the guy with the ball in his hands. It’s a lot of time saying, okay, well, if this is, you’re not going to be a primary handler, but you can be a secondary handler and you can get that short roller. You can get that go screen slip out. You know what to do with it. You could punch it a couple of times. It’s okay, we can teach you how to play out of a long closeout. You don’t have to be a wiggle guy. I think you’re onto it right there. You’ve got to really dive into the skill development side of it nowadays because if it’s about creating advantages, then you can’t just, like I said, have one guy who’s an advantage guy and everybody else is an advantage destroyer.

Dan: 56:31

You and I were talking a little bit off air too, and just even off the ball stuff too. These great players understanding how they’re cutting spacing screening actions off the ball have so much advantage for your offense too In the NBA.

Sundance Wicks: 56:43

They allow you to set legal screens all the time, right, even in Europe. You watch European like it’s, like those guys are. That is moving, but you know it’s just what it is. It’s the culture of the game, right, it’s a different physicality, it’s a different style and level of play. You know we’re going to get the over whistle here in college a lot of times, you know, and you’re barely moved and they’re going to ding you for it. But one thing that’s changed is the freedom of movement and having done Air Force Scouts and Joe Scott in the Princeton offense for the last three years, which is, you know, a nightmare for any assistant coach, so any assistant coach that can empathize with me that has to do the Air Force Scout, just call me. We can talk about it. We can just help each other get through these tough times. They’re just like those concepts. Though there’s a certain concept out of the Air Force’s offense that I would really implement because it blurs the lines between cutting and screening. There’s a niche there that I don’t think a lot of people have dove into as much, where the hard cut, the Princeton cut, the checks, you know, the back doors, all those reads, the jet steps, the fold screen to smash ins, the pin downs that look like cuts but end up turning into screenings, because and the refs never call the foul because they’re so used to seeing the Princeton style of cutting that when they cut they get bumped, but it’s really a screen. There’s this crazy to weird underbelly of advantages here. In some of these hard screens that are disguised as cuts, so to speak, we’ll have traits of Air Force, some of Air Force’s unique actions in our style of play. I’m going to tell you that because every time we’ve went against it, we’ve literally had to like rep certain ways they do things and it’s different every time and you just can’t scout it the right way. If you can create some actions that create those screening slash, cutting advantages, I think there’s a spot where you can steal a couple of possessions.

Dan: 58:15

Coach, you’re off the start subset hot seat. Thanks for playing, that was great.

Sundance Wicks: 58:19

Yeah, I tell you what the hot seats man it’s burning over here. I don’t know what it is. Something’s burning over here, man Jeez.

Dan: 58:25

Well, we appreciate hearing about your environment. Some of the spacing stuff that was great. So, coach, we got one last question before we close, but before we do again, congratulations on the job, much success. Thanks for coming on the show today.

Sundance Wicks: 58:38

Awesome guys. You have no idea, man. I learned way more Just listen to the questions you ask, the way you pose questions and the way you dive into it and the way you unpack stuff. Honestly, there’s an art to that and it’s beautiful. So thank you.

Dan: 58:49

Coach. Our last question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?

Sundance Wicks: 58:56

Unintentional investment stumbled upon, I think is extremely important and we talk about this a lot is. I think you got to find Foxhole friends, abyss brothers and quarter calls and some may call that mentoring, but to me a Foxhole friend, you got very few people who are in your Foxhole that you know that, no matter what happens like they’re going to be in your Foxhole, they have your back, they have your blindside, they’re your right hand man. However you want to call it, you got to invest in Foxhole friends. I think, being in this profession, there’s a lot of times where it gets really, really lonely and you don’t know who you can trust a lot of times. And so really finding Foxhole friends and what I call Abyss brothers, guys who don’t try to pull you out of the dark spots when you get into them, but who come down there with you and who sit with you, who share part of their journey and empathize with you a little bit the Abyss brothers, the Foxhole friends, and then the quarter calls that coach, my, you should say. You know, back in the day when there’s pay phones, if you had one quarter left in your pocket, who would you call? And I think you should one take some time to self reflect on who those people are. So let’s say you can have three Foxhole friends right that are in Foxhole with you because those are pretty tight. You can have a couple of Abyss brothers. You can’t have too many, too many Abyss brothers. Things get really dark and really weird. So you can only have a couple of those. And then who are you going to call if you’re down to your last quarter and I would really think along and hard about who those people would be for you in your life, because the best investments I made is narrow in my circle is spending time in dark places with some of my best friends, because we all go through tough times in life. I don’t ever want to sit on here and act like it’s better than what it is. I think too many times coaches have to put on the shield armor like nothing ever affects them. It’s really not the case. Every single element that happens in your program affects you in some molecular level and so in this era now where we are really being proactive in the mental health space it’s not just players managed coaches to. People have to be a little bit cognizant of that. People are reckless out there nowadays with how they treat some of the coaches and how they go about their work. I’m not saying everybody’s perfect, because nobody is and we’re not in the perfect profession. So the best investments I’ve made are Foxhole friends, having a BIS brothers and then knowing like who would I call if I had my last quarter in my pocket. That always gets me grounded. It always brings me back to kind of a piece where I know like there are people out there that are really, really rooting for you on every single level. It’s a big thing for me.

Dan: 1:01:03

All right, pat man, there’s so much I know we’re going to dive into, but just off the top, just getting to talk to Sundance before and after, and personality wise for him, I mean he really does draw you in and such a good guy and really looking forward to see what he gets chance to do now with Green Bay. But was a pleasure having him on today.

Patrick: 1:01:20

Absolutely. His energy was contagious, if we use that word for his culture. For me, we got to talk closeouts and movie references, so it was a complete episode. In my opinion, it’s a good day.

Dan: 1:01:32

I’m slapping glass pot, if we can throw some Zoolander in there. For good. Yeah, I mean his energy was infectious. I mean it comes through our recording here on Zoom. I can only imagine you know when you’re with him every day in person in the gym, I mean how much that helps. So we will touch on that here in a second. But we talked to Sundance a little bit beforehand last month or so about kicking around different ideas and he had sent us at some point kind of like a defensive checklist of things that he was thinking about, and so we just thought that would be a fun place to just really dive in on and get to hear his thoughts on how he’s going to try to build the defense with Green Bay. I thought that was awesome Ton of nuggets in there. So I’ll kick it to you here to start.

Patrick: 1:02:14

The two things that I think when we were looking at that sheet or we were hoping the conversation would get to, was the scout stops and then like avoiding the ball. So mission accomplished, I guess we got to it. I enjoyed the scout stops and then the conversation we had about just hiding the sucker and thinking about then the shock spectrum when the sucker is put in bad situations and how they try to solve those. Another big takeaway was I loved all his sayings that he had, of course, when we got into the culture conversation, but then also when we’re talking about rebounding the hit and get the check and chase, like I appreciate. You know, ryan Pannon, I thought was really good at this when you can transmit your concepts, your philosophy through sayings that are easily understandable guys can get, and our action words. My page is just littered with all of the sayings that he shared with us. Yes, slice of the pie, rebounding was the cheat step that he had in that. Close out, the NBA, the next best action. I mean I just I don’t even really know what part of the conversation they were referring to anymore, I just was like writing him down, but that was a big, big takeaway for me and I just like to see how guys teach through their language.

Dan: 1:03:24

Yeah, another really great person on that is Paul Kelleher.

Sundance Wicks: 1:03:28

Yes.

Dan: 1:03:29

With Ireland, his podcast and all the way that he phrases things, like we always love hearing him talk about basketball stuff. And within all this, too, boy, we got a chance to talk. Some closeouts for you. Yeah, it was your day.

Patrick: 1:03:42

Perfect. I love the detail he shared with us on the technique the hand placement that’s what I wrote yeah, the top foot, having the top foot above on the shoulder and the hand on the shoulder to make sure they’re not going to beat middle but not obviously open in the gate, being squared to the sideline. And then the conversation of one hand versus two hand. And, yeah, I wish everyone could have seen the kind of clinic he was putting on in his chair on closeouts. I thought he was going to start sweating. Yeah, you couldn’t see it. But swiveling around and showing us all the technique, I loved it.

Dan: 1:04:10

It was great we got a personal clinic from Sundance, which was good. Maybe we can show the video somewhere on our stuff with that. But, to your point, I really liked what he was talking about with why he preferred the one hand because of the pendulum and being able to keep your balance and it makes a lot of sense. And he was kind of joking about being taught how to have your hands by your ears when he was taught and just how that just doesn’t do anything, doesn’t alter the shot, doesn’t get you in good position and all that. Just you know the evolution of the closeout and what I liked about it too, because a lot of the conversation was centered around as well that they’re going to play no middle basically, and so how the foundation of a no middle defense then relates to the closeouts and how he preferred to have his foot angles and you know just throughout the conversation you’re hearing and you’re piecing together basically how he’s building out all this stuff and his thoughts on it and how you got to talk some closeouts. I really also enjoyed the rebounding conversation and just a little bit of thoughts on you know if you’re going to be in rotations, and he was really good talking about the different ways that you’re going to rebound. We just talked about the slice of the pie, rebounding, teaching guys where that ball is probably going to go, based off of where it’s shot. But then where you are on the perimeter or inside depends on what you’re going to do. So some guys will be hit and get, some guys will be. Well, you say check and check and chase. So it’s not one size fits all, but it’s like hey, be a basketball player, and if you’re closed down on the perimeter it’s going to be different than if you’re down in the trenches around the rim. So I really liked his teaching points there as well.

Patrick: 1:05:42

Yeah, one last point, just on closeouts he mentioned, and that’s why we enjoy doing these podcasts and hearing different opinions and how coaches are Teaching things. So you know, we had Tobin Anderson recently on crunch time and he was a big, too high hands guy on closeouts and Sundance, even mentioning some coaches. I don’t emphasize technique or it’s more like a get it done approach.

Dan: 1:06:04

So, speaking for you to this way, it’s always fun to have these conversations with coaches from all over and just what they emphasize, what’s important to them and how they go about it for sure, and because it is the hardest thing in the game and we talked a little bit about what you expect from them to be able to guard but also like the rotations behind it because, let’s be honest, you’re gonna get blown by quite a bit. Some of the interesting teasing points I know I’ve heard on it is can you guard to dribbles in the closeout? Like? Your job is to really not get blown by on the first dribble, compete like heck on the second and then at that point, if you’ve done that, I mean your other four guys should have at that point rotated into hell and I didn’t mean to cut off your point with the rebounding, but that’s why, then, I really thought it was a good follow by you to go, and it’s gonna happen.

Patrick: 1:06:48

We’re gonna get the put in rotations. And how do you then the emphasis on also finishing the possession course, solving the rotations but then boxing out and finish the possession?

Dan: 1:06:57

Yeah, moving to start subset, we went a little long on first one, the guiding principles because it just was worth it to keep going Down the rabbit holes with him. And you know you listen to him for 10 seconds and you understand the kind of energy that he brings and I know you know I’ve talked to him off air about stuff and how big he is on contagious environments and energy and Building all that stuff up at Green Bay and so I know it was probably cruel for us to start subset three of his guiding principles to see, but I really enjoyed where he went with it and I mean just embracing the suck, the start. It was interesting and powerful to hear him talk about how he thinks about that and how he’s gonna try to bring that to his team in a way that is gonna help them. So I’ll kick it back to you there, but that was a really fun question that we got to talk to him about.

Patrick: 1:07:51

Yes, he said not labeling situations as good or bad and that they’re only adversity assists. And then it went to your follow up, which I was gonna ask, to some Most important things that someone asked it about just what that looks like, how he teaches adversity to his guys so they’re prepared when it happens in a game. So I mean I gotta get down and see one of his weightlifting sessions. That Just sound crazy. I couldn’t believe it. For 45 minutes just be a jungle in there.

Dan: 1:08:21

I could go the day where it’s 45 minutes of silence. I’ll do that day but he was good with that.

Patrick: 1:08:27

I agree and I’ll throw back to you there with the embracing the sucker. I mean I know the two, the ABC conversation, what kind of stood?

Dan: 1:08:34

out on your end. Well, first, yeah, the ABC’s was awesome. I mean the coaches he did mention to email him, yeah, or you can email us. You know we can get your contact about that list of ABC’s because I’d like to personally look through it even more as he went through the A’s and the Z’s with Zoolander. There is awesome. I’ll say this I would have in this conversation if we had more time because we went long on it. This is kind of going maybe a little bit to my miss, like something I wish we had more time on was just knowing Sundance a little bit. I know he really studies other sports, business leaders, you know people that an outside of basketball and I wouldn’t have minded maybe if we have more time going down that rabble hole with him of what he takes from outside of basketball that he puts in to Disculture and who he considers to be some of the better leaders outside of the sport. I had that down as a potential question but we had such good conversations around it with the other stuff that they will have back at some point to do that. But Overall I really thought that the embracing the suck thing was important conversation.

Patrick: 1:09:39

I agree with our second start subset down on late. You kick this one off. We wanted to have a spacing, reshaping conversation for you. What in his response? What stood out to you when we were talking about kind of the spacing and teaching, cutting and the post we talk?

Dan: 1:09:52

for a long time. We have working drafts of like two or three different types of questions for this and we settle on the penetration one because I think we’ve had some conversations about pick and roll, spacing and things like that and so I can’t remember if we’ve had a lot on when the ball is Getting into the pain or driving baseline and how you teach the movement and the spacings around it. And I think that he mentioned and it’s one of the things that he said was the advantage over movement conversation we can maybe get to in a second. But At some point with good offence is you’re going to get a penetrating drive over the top into the pain or baseline and how that whole team moves as a unit with guy spacing, guys cutting guys, kind of. You know that dunker spot we talked about for a second. Yeah, I just think you see the great teams Do it. There’s not just a guy driving and four guys kind of hanging out standing like everybody is on a string and finding open windows and finding good cuts. So I think we wanted to just pick his brain on those things and, like always, we’re endlessly interested in teaching cutting. And it got back to he mentioned it depends on who that player is, and so what stood out a lot to me is he mentioned how they really like those baseline drives to within their stuff I guess one of the best drives to have, and so I kind of started that as well. As far as just something, I also could have asked him more about you alluded to your follow up of the old thought process of the ball movement.

Patrick: 1:11:18

Getting it side to side versus, I think with the game is kind of shifted and just like getting an advantage. I enjoyed talking through that kind of paradigm shift in the game and to like what an advantage is. You know we talked about the post he mentioned. You know, if it’s just we throw it in there, you get a double. That’s the advantage. Let’s play out like these little mini bandages and trying to seek one, two, three and it’s not just like the only advantage we’re looking for is a clear blow by, but it’s just yeah, they’re gonna blitz us, are a perfect. That’s an advantage. We throw it and I think we did hit on that conversation with Linda when he was on the pod. Yeah, I just enjoyed that, hearing him talk through what an advantage is and that’s what they’re seeking now in the game and I think maybe for a miss on my end. I would just be always curious and how it looks in practice, how he likes to teach it. Is it just three on O, is it five on O or is it playing these games of advantages, words of three on two plus one or five on four? You know just kind of methodology he uses to build the understanding and the movements and those guys. I think would have been something I would enjoy to have gone down with him.

Dan: 1:12:19

Yeah, also to. He mentioned a team that we’ve looked at and will continue to look at, and it’s a coach that we would love to have on the podcast. That’s Joe Scott from Air Force, and their offense is just awesome to watch and, as Sundance mentioned, an absolute nightmare to prepare for, so we’d love to have him on the podcast at some point. But hey, I think we both kind of talked about our misses and stuff, so we can start wrapping this up. Is there anything on your end as we start to close here?

Patrick: 1:12:48

Just the last when he talked about coach Scott and what he thought maybe was something to exploit and what Air Force as well as screens disguised as cuts. Yeah, I wrote that down. I really like that. Looking at that more to is interesting. I know we’ve talked about like I like those 45 cuts that turn into post ups, but I think with Coach Tranquiri we talked a little bit of how he likes the 45 cut and if someone’s going to kind of bump that cutter, he would just say to turn it into a screen or just let him bump you because they’re going to lift that corner.

Dan: 1:13:18

Eric Olin with UC San Diego as well, did that a lot. One. Those drives over the top or baseline, they’ll 45 cut and then if there’s someone in front of them they’ll just turn the cut into a screen and they’ll kind of lift a guy behind. So remind me of that too. My closing thing to that on was his best investment question answer was awesome. Yeah, and you know the foxhole friends, the abyss brothers and the quarter calls. Just how he talked about finding the right people who are going to be there for you in the tough times. I mean, obviously this is a tough profession across all levels and to have those true friends and those true people that will be there, I mean, as he said it, better than I will right now, but that was a great response and one of the better, best investment answers we’ve heard, yeah same for me. That was one of my favorite answers. Well, once again, thanks to coach Wix. We appreciate everybody listening, pat, nothing else, we’re up this up, absolutely. See you next time.