We had the privilege of sitting down this week with the Head Coach of Toronto Metropolitan University WBB, along with Assistant for the Canadian NT, Carly Clarke! In this highly thoughtful conversation Coach Clarke details her thoughts on defensive clarity, decision making in “gray areas”, and discusses zoning BLOB’s and building a competitive mindset during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Carly Clarke: 0:00
This is a big part of our philosophy now, too is how do we continue to just be the best at getting better? And that is our focus? And I really believe, if we’re focused on those behaviors and things that we need to do every day, if we’re finding ways to get better all the time and then we’re resilient through the failure parts, I think that’s the most important thing. Okay, we messed up, we made a mistake. Grand scheme, we lost, we won whatever. But how? Okay, we messed up, we made a mistake, you know, grand scheme, we lost, we won whatever. But how are we finding ways to get better? Was our process the right process or do we need to adjust that?
Dan Krikorian: 0:36
hi, I’m Dan krikorian and welcome to Slappin’ Glass, exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we’re excited to welcome Toronto Metropolitan University head coach along with assistant for the Canadian women’s national team, carly Clark. Coach Clark is here today to discuss defensive clarity and decision-making in the grey. To discuss defensive clarity and decision-making in the gray. And we talk zoning baseline out of bounds and fostering a competitive mindset during the always fun start, sub or sit. Unique and absolute must the most helpful and highest quality coaching content anywhere. These are some of the comments coaches are using to describe their experience with SG+. From NBA and NCAA championship coaching staffs to all levels of international and high school basketball.
Dan Krikorian: 1:31
Sg Plus is designed to help curious coaches discover, explore and understand the what, why and hows of what the best in the world are doing Through our easily searchable 750 plus video archive on SGTV to our live coaches, social Las Vegas. Sg Plus is the assistant you would hire if your athletic director didn’t already give the stipend to football. For more information, visit slappingglasscom today. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Carly Clark. Coach, we wanted to start with this. We thought it would be interesting with you especially coaching at the professional level as well as at the collegiate level, and that’s installing a defense, getting concepts in your defense that have a lot of clarity, and how do you think about doing that with both the national team as well as with the college team and the similarities and differences and all of that in between. And so we’ll start broadly with just your thoughts on installing a defense that will then be able to grow throughout the season with your team.
Carly Clarke: 2:42
This is a really fun topic for me for a variety of reasons able to grow throughout the season with your team. This is a really fun topic for me for a variety of reasons, you know. The first part is I had a conversation with our college staff this year and they asked me if they think I’m a defensive minded or offensive minded coach. I think I split it somewhere in the middle, but certainly have defensive minded. They may think I’m a little bit more offensive minded, but I really believe in. You know the power of defense to help you win games and win championships and you know the IQ elements that you can develop on that side of the ball. I think it’s often talked about the offensive side of the ball. To get back to your question specifically, you know I think the starting point at every level for me has always been around identity and you know what are the general principles that you want to have as part of your defense. So we often will tie specific words to that. You know descriptions that will match what you want your defensive identity to be. So for us in our college team, that often leads with being disruptive.
Carly Clarke: 3:40
I think there’s a lot of different ways that you can be disruptive. But you know, I think that can initially begin to paint a picture of how you want to show up defensively. Some might be more contain-based, a little bit more. Pack is a common word, not necessarily the same type of descriptor, but along the same route, and I think from those description words you can then build out what you want your system to be. Obviously, if you want to be disruptive, you’re probably not playing in a lot of pack. At least, that’s not how I’m viewing disruption.
Carly Clarke: 4:12
For us, disruption or being disruptive is a word that we lean into a lot to give a specific example. And then from there it’s like okay, how do we want to control things? And answering the question to ourselves of what we’re willing to give up or what are the shots that are okay beating you and what are the ones that you want to make sure you don’t give up. You know, in a college season you can spend a lot of time building that out. You know, adapting throughout the course of the season, whereas a national team season you have a really short training camp. So the details and then the elements you get into may be a little bit less specific or there might be a shorter list of them. So there’s lots of different ways you can kind of take that from there.
Dan Krikorian: 4:53
Coach, I’d love to dive in on something you said at the top, which was and then we’ll kind of get back to building this whole thing out but you talked about there’s multiple ways to be disruptive, and I wonder if you could go a little deeper on that and what you think about with your defense, like the multiple ways that you think about trying to disrupt.
Carly Clarke: 5:09
Yeah, I think that word really could be interpreted in so many different ways, but how it starts for me is with pressure and trying to, I guess, disrupt or impact the flow of the opponent’s offense.
Carly Clarke: 5:23
So disruptive leads with putting on some pressure in the full court we play with the FIBA shot clock 24 seconds, taking away their time to execute their offense in the quarter court, throwing in some run and jump some zone pressure, potentially being in passing lanes, applying a lot of ball pressure and defending one-on-one are the initial ways that I think of disruption. But I think you know, as your season goes on, as you get into scouting, as you get into more tactics, it’s taking away the strengths of individual players, it’s working on defending the actions of the teams that you’re playing against, and then it’s, you know, changing defense. I think in game there’s a tactical element of, like I said, employing different pressures. Maybe you’re changing into some different zones, different looks to disrupt the flow. So how that shows up throughout the course of the season or in practice and training and into game can vary a lot.
Patrick Carney: 6:17
And coach with you know tying words to your defense. You know, to me then it sounds a lot like you have a nemesis on the clarity of what you want your team to execute or be defensively, and how much you think about then, as you start to build out your defense, defensive clarity and making sure that your message or your nothing is obviously overlapping or confusing and conflicting with one another. You know, what thought are you putting into that and how do you start to build that out?
Carly Clarke: 6:42
Yeah, I think you know I’m a coach who will tell you that I live in the gray in a lot of different ways, because I think the game is gray in a lot of different ways. So we certainly have some absolutes, but then it’s understanding and trying to build out. You know where those gray moments show up. So I lead with that to say you know I’ve talked already about understanding what shots were okay with beating us, but at the same time, knowing that you know our sport is an imperfect game and if we only respond to whether or not the opponent makes the shot, then we’re going to be defeated a lot. So you know my first few seasons as a head coach I coached at a smaller university here in Canada and we were completely rebuilding our program at that point and we weren’t winning really any games. So I think you know, early on in my career, as a bit of a tangent, I had to get really focused on the process and that was the only way I think me as a competitor was going to make it through the season was to understand the process. So I think that has helped build out my philosophy. Now you know specific to defense, to know that, like we may have a perfect defensive possession from our process, but the opponent may still score and that’s okay. So you know.
Carly Clarke: 8:00
Back to the question of the clarity element, it’s understanding which shots we want to give up. You know what we’re trying to take away and having awareness of how we’re executing that process. So that starts with the descriptor words, like I said, and then that builds down to even the positional identity. You know our forwards. We want them to be communicating, we want everybody to be communicating at a really high level all the time. But often our forwards are defending a lot of actions or they can see the whole floor a lot.
Carly Clarke: 8:31
So you know we’ll build out some descriptions for our positions and they can own their part of our defensive identity as well. And then how we build that together to execute a scout or execute our base defense and we’ll often start there. You know, in the college season in particular, scout or execute our base defense, and we’ll often start there. You know, in the college season in particular, like, this is our base coverage. We want to be great at defending one-on-one. This way we really emphasize kyp right hand, left hand taking away those strengths and then building it out as the season goes on and adapting to our strengths and you know the opponent’s strengths as the season goes on.
Patrick Carney: 9:04
Coach you to our strengths, and you know the opponent’s strengths as the season goes on coach, you mentioned positional identity and you went into the forwards and you know kind of their role of being communicators I mean, as you said, everyone is. But if we could just go, I mean I guess, the positional identity of then your guards or your forwards, or what you’re reinforcing with them on the defensive end, according to their position, yeah, I think you know we have some pretty versatile forwards, so you know what we do with them might be different than what we do with a forward that’s less versatile.
Carly Clarke: 9:32
you know maybe more of a rim protector as an example, but you know, I think there is so much decision making that comes on the defensive side. It’s often talked about offensively. You know decision making, but there’s so many different elements of defensive decision making that I think the forwards are often. You know decision making, but there’s so many different elements of defensive decision making that I think the forwards are often, you know, leading the charge with, because they’re screening defenders a lot, whether that’s on ball, off ball or their position is at the rim, where they have a lot of vision to be able to communicate and see what’s happening.
Carly Clarke: 9:59
The decision making elements from who’s in the action, from who you’re guarding, but also who your teammate is in the action. Do we want to switch this? Do we want to? You know, chase it, muscle it, take the gap. All those decisions come into every single action and that becomes super complex, which comes back to, you know, some of the gray elements that I talked about earlier. But you know, for the forwards it’s that communication piece that I talked about earlier. But for the forwards it’s that communication piece, it’s the positioning piece and having some awareness and engagement through a whole possession on and off the ball to be ready when they are involved in an action.
Dan Krikorian: 10:36
Going on the floor now and, once you have your vocabulary and identity that you want, starting to think about how you would build this, let’s say from a drill standpoint.
Carly Clarke: 10:47
Yeah, you know, when I started, I think my philosophy has evolved a lot because initially I, you know, was fixated on rotations and whatnot, which I think is super, super important ultimately. But for us now the base is one-on-one defense and we will start with that always. We will start the season with that. On emphasizing the ability to defend one-on-one and know who you’re guarding, like I said earlier, will influence weak most of the time. So are you guarding a righty, lefty, is it a shooter, is it a driver? And then just having the awareness to close out and defend one-on-one appropriately. So for us, that’s always.
Carly Clarke: 11:27
Our base is is the one-on-one piece, because often players will get into well, whose help is that? You know, am I coming here here? And the breakdown usually starts with, you know, a one-on-one situation that we didn’t control maybe as well as we could have. So we really try and get great in that area and then build it up to the two-on-twos, three-on-threes, small-sided games are definitely a huge part of what we do. You know, understanding where we want to support from, understanding how to try and limit long closeouts, because those are often the situations where you get into one-on-one breakdowns and have to get into full rotation.
Carly Clarke: 12:11
We still very, very, very much emphasize, you know, our off-ball positioning to be in support, to help those one-on-one situations, you know, be in position to rotate when we need to. And then we’ll build it up through different actions. And you know I’ve talked about ball screen a little bit with the forwards. That’s obviously a really important action to be able to defend, they think, in in multiple ways, ultimately at every level. And then, you know, depending on opponents, as the season go on, we’ll get into more specific actions and trying to prep for things we might see as the season goes on coach, with influencing week and kind of getting back to that gray area.
Patrick Carney: 12:42
obviously, ideally you don’t want to get people-on-one, but when it does happen, and with the influencing week, depending on where they’re on the floor, how are you rotating or working with your players again through this gray area of well, it’s not maybe always going to be forcing baseline, it’s going to be going middle sometimes. And where do we help from in these situations?
Carly Clarke: 13:00
Yeah, the weak defense of where I’ve gotten the elements from come from a Canadian legend here in Dave Smart, and his rotations and positioning are super detailed and his Carlton team spent a lot of time on breaking down those rotations and I certainly don’t get into the same level of depth.
Carly Clarke: 13:19
But you know, I think the overarching principle that I’ve really taken away and we try to emphasize within our defense is we want to force the opponent to make some decisions with their weak hand.
Carly Clarke: 13:30
So it’s less about we’re not allowing them to get to the rim going to their weak hand, because that’s not a good situation regardless. But if we can force them into passing versus pressure with their weak hand, that tends to be more disruptive than if they’re able to get to their strong hand or keep them on the outside. So for sure, there are some situations where you’re influencing them more to the middle of the floor and I choose that word really intentionally, of influence more than force, because again you’re not encouraging a beat. But from there we will play actively in the gaps on the weak side of the ball or towards the weak hand to be able to show some length, to stunt support, and then our rotations are ready to come still from the weak side. You know we won’t fully help off the ball side shooter in the left corner because you know that’s where the person is, but we’re in position to be in support there and again force some decisions with that passing. We can passing and still emphasize you still have to guard the ball.
Patrick Carney: 14:34
You know if you can guard it for one or two dribbles then that’s going to negate or limit the advantage that the offense can create coach, if we can look at the ball screen and as you start to build out your defense, I mean, of course we’ve hit on, it’s the one-on-one. But now, if we’re looking at the ball screen, where’s next for you and how you start to build out your ball screen coverages and the defenses.
Carly Clarke: 14:55
Yeah, I think again this is something that continues to evolve for me. Going back to the weak defense, we will cover it differently on different parts of the floor. So we’re pretty aggressive on the right wing when we can get them going to their weekend and that’s the emphasis all the time. You know, left wing will do a lot of icing or or downing whatever your term is in the middle again, trying to get them going over, but forcing them to their week and playing out of those situations. But for me it’s also become really about who our team is and what are the strengths of our players.
Carly Clarke: 15:28
So two years ago we had incredible one-on-one defenders on the perimeter. So our ball screen coverage did not change much because one line that our national team head coach says all the time is no screen, no scheme. So if we can get through the screen we don’t have to worry about how we’re covering it. So you know that’s the initial base. But from there, if we have incredible one-on-one defenders, then you know we’re not doing any switching. We may be more aggressive. So some random doubles, some hard hedging you know those types of scenarios because of how disruptive our, our on-ball defenders are. But for us this season we were a little bit less disruptive, had a little bit more IQ and we were way more switchable. So we got into some situations where we were switching we were veer switching, we were jump switching, depending on different situations and matchups. So for me, it really evolves based on who your team is, who your players are and, again, who you’re defending as well.
Dan Krikorian: 16:28
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Patrick Carney: 17:34
Coach you mentioned a couple times in just now. But in terms of when we get into the season and your base versus scout base defense and as you start to get on who the matchups and who you’re playing and how you want to exploit them or attack them, how do you think about delivering a game plan to your team and moving through the week to prepare it and make sure that they can go out and execute it and you’re not overloading it? And I guess going back to like it’s clear and they’re not confused on anything.
Carly Clarke: 18:01
Yeah, you know our setup is fortunate but also challenging in some ways, because in our college league we’ll play a lot of Friday, saturday, so we have two different teams to prep for on back to back days. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and working through different ways to prep throughout the course of the week. But you know, coming back to those identity and descriptor words and our base defense, like that is always our foundation and that’s always our starting point. And then, as we do get into these scout scenarios and game plan scenarios, you know, I think it can show up in a lot of different ways depending on the strengths of your opponents. So we’ll have three or four days where we’re prepping to build up for our competition and I think there’s different elements, again based on what your opponent’s going to bring.
Carly Clarke: 18:48
But that often starts for us with small-sided games and we won’t even necessarily tell our players the first day or two of the week.
Carly Clarke: 18:55
We’ll just begin to break down some specific actions. You know, maybe it’s two on two and a get action, two on two and a ball screen, three on three and a split, just working on actions we expect that we’re going to see from our opponents, and then we’ll do some positional splits as well, and some of that might be understanding the strengths of the individual players and sometimes, week to week, that’s going to change. You might play a team with an incredible post player who you’ve got to work on, challenging their catches. You want to send them in a certain way. You’re going to bring a double team from a certain spot, so that might influence our positional work, that might influence our small-sided games and then ultimately, we’ll build it up to four-on-four, five-on-five shell to see the full team picture.
Carly Clarke: 19:41
And those progressions will happen throughout the week. Sometimes you might see an opponent that has, you know, a tremendous point guard and then you know we’re not going to work on our post defense all week. If that’s the instance, obviously we’ll work on you know how do we be disruptive a couple different ball screen coverages, or challenging their catches, or full court pressure in order to disrupt their flow or their ability to initiate offense, you know. So those are, you know, two different positional examples of, again, how we might break it down with positional work and then the team together and build it up to full teamwork as the week progresses.
Dan Krikorian: 20:15
Coach when it comes to game planning, any thoughts or learnings on how much information to actually give your team, whether it’s number of sets, personnel, keys to the game, things like that.
Carly Clarke: 20:26
Yeah, I think this is something I’ve grappled with a lot too and experimented with, but certainly through my studying of learning and retention, we try and operate with a rule of three. Maybe it’s three game keys, it’s maybe three offensive keys and then three defensive keys. We still do a fair amount of depth with our opponent’s personnel. So we will go through the majority of our opponent’s roster if important to what we’re going to see, but again, again, with that there’s a bit of a rule of three. Are they a shooter, are they a driver, are they right, left? You know what are those key elements that we’re trying to disrupt with the players individually. So hopefully there’s a thread of that. You know three, maybe four things that they’re keying into, but in each section. So I just talked about offense, defense, general game keys, personnel in those four different areas.
Dan Krikorian: 21:23
Coach earlier on. You mentioned that earlier in your career you really learned about sticking to the process when coaching a team that was not as talented and I guess I wonder, going back to that team, what you really did learn about that. Some of the biggest takeaways from those years Number one for me is just the process.
Carly Clarke: 21:42
You know I’ve had a Michael Jordan poster since I was in grade eight that still hangs in my office. That reminds me of the number of shots that he missed and I’m sure you guys are familiar with the quote I won’t nail it, but you know he’s failed over and over and over again and that is why he succeeds and that is something that’s lived with me when I was a young player, now through to as a coach. So from that we emphasize a champion’s mindset and understanding that our everyday behaviors, actions, et cetera are going to build the qualities that we need if we want to win at the end of the year. So I’ve pulled on all those threads from that experience and for me, I think it just forced me to constantly think and this is a big part of our philosophy now too is how do we continue to just be the best at getting better? And that is our focus.
Carly Clarke: 22:35
And I really believe if we’re focused on those behaviors and things that we need to do every day, if we’re finding ways to get better all the time and then we’re resilient through the failure parts, I think that’s the most important thing of okay, we messed up, we made a mistake. Grand scheme we lost, we won whatever. But how are we finding ways to get better? Was our process the right process or do we need to adjust that? I think that has really spilled over and is the foundation for how I approach every single day and every season with our team.
Patrick Carney: 23:07
Coach, how do you evaluate your processes at the end of the season?
Carly Clarke: 23:11
I think, again, constant evolution, and that’s something I just love about coaching. So much is. You know, for me, no team, no season, no experience is ever the same, and if it ever felt the same for me that’s probably when I would get tired of it. But I love the newness, and you know the constant challenges and different experiences that are thrown at me. So I’m constantly trying to evolve how we do that.
Carly Clarke: 23:34
But in general, for me it’s always receiving feedback from our players and our staff and I want that to be, you know, as honest and direct as possible. You know, if I’m going to have the philosophy of being the best at getting better for our team, I also need to own that myself. So we’ll try and put together as much feedback as we can, both from the environment, the athlete experience, how they’re learning. We’ve got a bunch of different buckets that we’ll evaluate and get feedback on. We do a culture survey to get feedback on those areas and then we’ll look at, you know, different analytical pieces as well. You know what are the best teams in the country doing, what are we doing? You know where are gaps, where do we need to get better? You know evaluate the roster. I think you know, the list of things that you can look at are truly endless, and year to year, what you need to look at might be a little bit different.
Patrick Carney: 24:28
You mentioned a culture survey. What are you surveying?
Carly Clarke: 24:31
Yeah, there’s a few values. Every program generally has values, formally or informally, that are really important to them. But from my experience with the national team, I was exposed to a mental performance coach who’s now become a great friend and he’s actually started a company that this is their job, to evaluate cultures, both in sport but also with companies. So we use their survey and we’ve been a bit of a training ground for them as it’s evolved. But now it comes down to, I think there’s five sections, both performance based and more like personal or human based. So it’s everything from belonging to accountability to adaptability.
Carly Clarke: 25:11
I won’t be able to remember the full list right now, but they have the expertise in that to generate the questions and then give us the feedback. Have the expertise in that to generate the questions and then give us the feedback. And for us it’s all anonymous and you know I don’t use it as a evaluation tool but, like I said, a feedback tool where our actions matching what we say we want to be. Are we holding the athletes to the same standards? Is there, is there feeling of belonging? Are they feeling the level of accountability that should be required? So it’s really a measurement tool and over time it might indicate hey, we have a bit of a gap here and you know how adaptable we’re feeling or how resilient we’re feeling, and that may drive a decision of okay, we need to work on these skills a little bit more over the next couple months, the off season, you know it will help drive what we’re going to emphasize.
Dan Krikorian: 26:04
Thank you very much for all your thoughts there. We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call start, sub or sit. So for those maybe listening for the first time, we’ll give you three options around a topic ask you to start one of those, sub one, and sit one on the bench, and so.
Dan Krikorian: 26:15
but if you’re ready, we’ll dive into this first one let’s go, yeah okay, this first one is called tough to defend and this is for the a baseline inbounder. So actions that teams will run for the player inbounding the ball on a baseline out of bounds play and things that are hard for you to defend or have been hard to say this season, seasons past. So option one is turning that inbounder into a screener, so a lot of times turn it right into a flex screener, let’s say. Option two is turning that inbounder into where they’re running off screen, so like a single double or pins either side floppy action. Option three is sprinting that inbounder right into a DHO, so big pops, maybe right away, sprint right off into a two man game or maybe into a gut DHO something, some kind of DHO action. So start subset. Tough to defend on a baseline inbounder.
Carly Clarke: 27:12
Yeah, great one to start with. Here I’ll share how we be a little bit disruptive in these things. Maybe at the end, but I think you know for me I’d probably start that inbounder to being a screener. Okay, I think for me that tends to be the most difficult to defend. You know, I’d probably sub off screens and then sit the sprint to the DHO just because your ability to follow the ball with that one a little bit more.
Dan Krikorian: 27:38
So just diving right away. You said sharing some ways you try to be disruptive With all three of these. How would you try to be?
Carly Clarke: 27:44
Well, something that we’ve done in the past and we actually re-implemented it this year is we started to zone baseline out of bounds almost exclusively, and now there’s some specific alignments that could really challenge how you play your zone and line out of bounds. But we struggled with some inline situations this year so we went back to our zone. We used to have a bit of a tactic where we would only use it in certain situations, but this year we went to it full time by the end of the season because that inbounder to a screener or inbounder to an unpredictable action was causing us a little bit of trouble. So it allowed us to keep the rim protected. It allowed us to switch some of those things you know. You mentioned the flex screen in particular. I think that can be one of the more challenging ones to guard on the end line once they get the ball inbounds. So you know, zone kind of takes away those actions of you know, a slasher. Coming back to the rim perhaps.
Dan Krikorian: 28:41
Okay, I don’t want to ask you to give away too much here, it’s okay. You mentioned that there’s some alignments that cause a zone problems from underneath. I guess I wonder what one of those might be and then how you try to rectify that.
Carly Clarke: 28:53
Yeah, the one we see the most is four low, which I think is a pretty common end line inbound alignment these days against player to player or zone.
Carly Clarke: 29:02
But obviously if you’re in a zone and you put some shooters in each corner when you’re inbounding on the end line, that’s going to stretch the top of your zone, depending on what your alignment looks like.
Carly Clarke: 29:12
We are essentially in a two, three when we’re in our end line out of bound zone, but we will morph our alignment to make sure that we have those corners covered and then we understand how to rotate and reposition ourselves once the ball’s in bounds. And I think that’s the important piece is. You know, I talked at the beginning of the defensive clarity and mindset of understanding what we’re trying to take away and what we’re giving up. And you know, on those end line out of bounds, we we’re trying to take away and what we’re giving up. And you know, on those in-line out of bounds we’re really trying to take away a direct score from that inbound passer. So we’re protecting the paint. You know we’re willing to give up some contested threes to certain people in those situations and we’ll have awareness of where you know the best shooters are, the most threatening players are on the floor.
Dan Krikorian: 29:55
When the ball does come in at you in zone, the rest of that possession.
Carly Clarke: 30:04
Do you switch it up? Do you match up? What do you do once it’s in? Yeah, we’re in zone. The rest of possession.
Carly Clarke: 30:07
We have a couple of variations where we’ll actually try and trap or shoot a gap out of the zone end line because I think the tendency is well, we’re going to pressure, release and inbound the ball here and then try and throw it here so you can begin to predict, like, if there’s a strong side, wing or corner entry, that one’s often pretty easy to try and get a double team with and then shoot the gap from the weak side. But if we miss then we know how to rotate and just be in our zone. And you know a lot of teams when they see a zone they may just like throw it in over the top and now you’ve already disrupted what they want to do from the end line. For us it’s usually a 14 second or less shot clock in those instances. So you know we may have some instances where if they set an on ball screen we’re into matching up or those types of situations, but often we’ll play the zone for the full possession.
Patrick Carney: 30:55
That was going to be my fault. When, then, they do set an on ball screen, will you switch into man?
Carly Clarke: 31:00
yeah, I think our zone has varied over time but typically if we’re in a two, three and our top person is guarding the on ball, we’re trying to keep it to the outside. So it may be more of like an ice coverage and the middle is there to to support, essentially to be in a drop. Like I said before, if there’s no screen, there’s no scheme. So if we can guard the ball and blow it up a little bit, I think the on ball in his zone is often trying to against a two, three is trying to pull those two top defenders to then get a kick out to a shooter and whatnot. So we try not to get into a switch, certainly with, like, the two tops and if it’s a little bit lower on the wing and the the bottom’s guarding it.
Dan Krikorian: 31:38
I think that’s an easier switch out if they’re coming to the middle type thing flipping back to, I guess, the question we asked at the beginning to start subset with all these in the past, when you have played man to man underneath, just the question on what to do with the defender guarding the ball and their responsibilities, whether they’re up on the ball under the rim, guarding the rim somewhere in between. You know, I know it’s probably player dependent and scout dependent in some instances. Overall, I guess, when you have guarded it well man-to-man, what your thoughts are on guarding the inbounder yeah, I think first and foremost for me is protecting the basket.
Carly Clarke: 32:15
You know, I think a screen the screener is a pretty common end line, out of bound action that’s trying to create a switch or trying to get you to help a little bit to is protecting the basket.
Carly Clarke: 32:18
You know, I think a screen-the-screener is a pretty common in-line, out-of-bound action that’s trying to create a switch or trying to get you to help a little bit to free something up at the rim. So we really talk about that on-ball defender helping to protect the rim so we don’t have to get hung up on helping those screening actions. So that’s the first part. And then you know, as you get maybe more scout dependent or aware, we’ll talk about using the five seconds differently. So maybe you start on ball or if you know, you know somewhat what the action is. Your first second you’re going to show here your seconds two, three, four, protect the rim, and then five. Let’s get back to the inbounder because, like your original question, they’re probably coming back into the play to do something. So we do have awareness of how that will shift through the five seconds of the inbound time.
Patrick Carney: 33:03
Coach, with wanting to be disruptive. Were you more inclined to not switch and tell your? You know your defenders, we’re going to be physical, we’re going to blow up stuff or switching and using them. The inbound defender maybe to switch out and attempts to be disruptive inbound defender, maybe to switch out in attempts to be disruptive.
Carly Clarke: 33:21
We haven’t done a lot of switching out and I think my natural gut instinct or preference is to try not to switch those actions. So if we can muscle through and blow it up, you know, take a shortcut to maintain our matchups. That’s typically what I’ve found to be most effective, or at least where my comfort lies.
Dan Krikorian: 33:38
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Patrick Carney: 34:13
Moving along our last start subset for you In our prep and talking with you a little bit before, you mentioned your importance of building a competitive mindset on your team. So this start subset has to do with the benefits of a competitive mindset and which one would be the most beneficial in your eyes. So option one would be their ability to perform under pressure. Option two is its ability to build team cohesion. Or option three is its ability to create a resilient team.
Carly Clarke: 34:46
You guys are going to stump me on this one. I think All of these are starting for me. I think, okay, but well, okay, where to start? I would probably sub no, maybe sit, perform under pressure but I’ll get to my reasoning for that in a second. And then I’ll start with, uh, team cohesion, and then sub the resilience. And my only real justification for that is the sequencing in my mind because, like I said, I think they’re all vitally important, but I’m not sure you can build a resilient team or a team that can perform under pressure if you don’t have a certain level of team cohesion. So that’s why I would start there.
Carly Clarke: 35:31
And you know we emphasize communication connection every single day. That’s really a foundational piece for us. So I think that helps in order to create some clarity and purpose amongst the team, some togetherness, in order to build out the resilience. And I’ve already talked about the Michael Jordan quote and I think one of the most important things or pet peeves of mine is how do we build resilience? And working through mistakes and making sure that you know our game is imperfect. So if you’re going to get caught up or hung up on a mistake, then that two points is going to turn into six or eight for the opponent, and then you’re in trouble. So try and minimize the compounding mistakes, and then performing under pressure is vitally important. But if you don’t do the first two things, then I’m not sure you’re in a position where there’s pressure on you in those key moments yet. So that’s my justification, but, like I said, they all start for me.
Patrick Carney: 36:27
Absolutely, coach. If I can start, maybe broader, when looking at a competitive mindset, how do you build it in your players and maybe like on the court? What do you think about it from like? Is it a drill perspective? Or how do you build it in your players and maybe like on the court? What do you think about it from like? Is it a drill perspective? Or how do you challenge them in a way and stress them to build this competitive mindset?
Carly Clarke: 36:46
there’s a few different levels to that one. For me, I think the first one is really trying to intrinsically motivate our individual players, you know, and for them to understand how our process links to their success. Every single thing that we do has purpose behind it and I’m not afraid to share why we’re doing anything, because hopefully that motivates them just to want to compete, to get better Reference being the best at getting better and I think those types of philosophies hopefully motivate the individual athletes to try their best every single day and in every single rep. But with that we’ll then build a competitive setting into our daily training environment, our training and practice environment. You know we do different things, from like shooting ladders to know what the top scores are in certain shooting drills to every drill having a score and keeping score.
Carly Clarke: 37:41
And you know I’ve talked about the process earlier. You know it’s not just twos and threes. We keep scoring a variety of different ways. Sometimes a charge will win the drill. You know if you get beat strong hand you go back to zero. You know the differences in our scoring systems will vary over what we’re trying to emphasize in certain settings, but there’s always a score and there’s always a winner at the end. We visibly have tracked wins in practice, so players know when they’re winning and losing, and that kind of comes back to that performing under pressure. If you’re, you’re losing. Every drill, all practice, are you building some resilience and we’ll even do things around? You know practicing how to hold each other accountable, to build that competitiveness as well. So, you know, I think it shows up, hopefully in lots of different ways throughout our whole practice where they’re just building the skills almost unknowingly.
Dan Krikorian: 38:33
With this in mind the competitive mindset and a lot of stuff that you do are there anything that you’ve, I guess, thrown out over your time as far as it didn’t work for you in trying to build this, or something that you were trying to do because you were coached that way and it just wasn’t how you were that you, I guess, you’ve learned in all of this building resilience, cohesion, all these things.
Carly Clarke: 38:54
For sure. I think that there’s. There’s a lot of things. I’ve been so fortunate, from both playing and coaching, to be exposed to some incredible coaches that have taught me so much.
Carly Clarke: 39:06
I think, when I was getting started, it’s so natural to well, just do this, this and this because that’s what my coach did. But, as I’ve touched on earlier, really reflecting on the why, for every single thing that we do has been something that I’ve probably learned the most, and also narrowing down and evolving my own philosophy over time. How does everything that we do link to the team that I want to have, the identity I want our team to exude, the behaviors that we want to try and create? So I think, over time I’ve just pulled on all the different elements. I for sure still do some drills that I did when I was playing in college, you know. I for sure still do some things that my high school coach did with our team, and then, you know, those things have all evolved and melded together to hopefully fit my style and fit our team the best way, and I think that is constantly changing every single season.
Patrick Carney: 40:04
You mentioned habits that go into being a competitor, let’s say an athlete that really competes. Is there maybe one habit that takes longer, or that with your college women that you’ve got to kind of more work on with them?
Carly Clarke: 40:17
I’m finding more and more these days that the resilience element is challenging. I feel like I’m old in saying this a little bit, but there’s just the desire for the instant gratification. So constantly reminding you know, our players and our team, that you know you’re working hard for one day but you’re not necessarily going to reap that reward today or tomorrow, or even this month you may. You know we started in September you’re going to recognize the progress you make, hopefully by February and March, and really reminding of that process and that our process is never error free, that we should be expecting mistakes, we should be expecting some discomfort and frustration, and that it’s not supposed to be easy.
Carly Clarke: 40:56
And I think sometimes I don. And that it’s not supposed to be easy and I think sometimes I don’t think it’s intentional by any means, but there’s a perception or desire for it to just work right away. And I think you know building that competitive mindset of like, oh, it’s okay that I’ve messed up, it’s okay that I’m not getting it right away. But you know, I do think that’s one of the most rewarding things that hopefully we can instill in our players is for them to recognize wow, I’ve really been working on it and now I see that that works turned into success and recognizing sometimes how long that will take and what that success looks like might look different for every player, every situation as well as well.
Patrick Carney: 41:39
How do you think, then, about correcting mistakes in a game, knowing that you want to create this environment in a practice setting? How are you, like you said, translating it and following through in a game when mistakes happen?
Carly Clarke: 41:47
I think selectively I say that word a little bit like hesitantly because I don’t want to, you know, imply that we don’t correct.
Carly Clarke: 41:55
But I think it’s knowing what the most important things are in that game moment. And what those things are, or the level of correction, may vary from September in your preseason competition to what you’re emphasizing in playoffs, and you know early in the season you might be on much more, whereas later in the season you know there’s certain things that maybe you’re living with because you’re completing to win a playoff, and that’s not to say that you’re not executing your values or you’re not holding people accountable. But I think you have an awareness of how much feedback your players can handle, what’s important for them in those competition moments. And ideally, by the time you’re in competition, your athletes are executing a lot of what you’ve worked on in practice. And all of a sudden, if in a game you’re working on correcting a lot of things that you’ve never practiced, well, that should be a reflection on yourself of well, something’s on me to make sure that I’m preparing us properly, if you know the errors that are coming up are not things that we’ve been prepared for.
Dan Krikorian: 42:53
Coach, you’re off the start sub or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. I know that last one was a tough one three starters there but we appreciate going through that. So thank you very much, coach. We got one final question before we close the show, but before we do again, thanks for coming on. Congrats on all of the success. This was a really fun conversation today.
Carly Clarke: 43:12
Yeah, I’m thrilled to be here. I’m listening to you guys all the time, so it’s really an honor to be part of it, appreciative of all the work you two are doing.
Dan Krikorian: 43:20
Thank you, coach. We appreciate that, Coach. Our last question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best?
Carly Clarke: 43:28
investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach? I’ve heard this question asked a few times, so I’ve been reflecting on it a little bit. You know, one thing that I absolutely love doing and that I think has helped me the most is to try to watch and or connect with as many coaches as possible. You know I’m a big, huge Ted Lasso fan and his dart scene with the curiosity is something that I think so accurately, you know, kind of depicts my approach to coaching is I just try and be incredibly curious. So the more that I can you know kind of depicts my approach to coaching is I just try and be incredibly curious. So the more that I can, you know, watch coaches at every single level.
Carly Clarke: 44:04
When I was coming up 10 or 15 years ago as a player, as a coach, I would watch the men’s team, I would watch the high school team, and I still try and do that to this day because I feel like I get something new or different or that, you know, triggers a thought in my mind or challenges my own thinking or approach, and I just love seeing the different ways that people can approach coaching, building their team, their environment. There’s so many different, endless elements to it all and the ability to connect with coaches you know in conversation but to watch them in action, I think has been the thing that has helped me develop my own philosophy and approach the best awesome having coach Clark come on today and we’ve got into nuts and bolts of defense and some competitive mindset and something we haven’t talked about in a while, which is guarding underneath, out of bounds.
Dan Krikorian: 45:01
So there’s a lot here today. Let’s dive in the first bucket, which was installing a defense defensive clarity. You and I both thought this would be interesting just from her time at multiple levels, and I’ll kick it back to you on just first takeaways with the defensive stuff. I mean what?
Patrick Carney: 45:17
stood out to me is how she I mean she kept saying disruptive, but the use of words to build defensive identity and also help with the defensive clarity but also within the conversation she had on many times is just, I think, the gray areas and teaching kind of defensive IQ. So I mean not that it goes against defensive clarity, but you have your principles, you have your identity. But I think she has a really good understanding that there’s going to be a ton of moments in the game and we’ve had conversations on this before and how you try to. In the same way, you want to build IQ on the offensive end. How do you approach the defensive end?
Patrick Carney: 45:50
With the same kind of mindset of how do we make smarter basketball players and I think it goes a lot to what she hit on too is like first, of course, understanding our base defense, but then, as you get through the season and like start to implement some scout-based defense this is where you need the IQ of your players and you know, at the end we talked about like the rule of three and then kind of keeping it a three things so they can operate within these grays but know what to prioritize and what is important to maybe winning that game or defeating this opponent, and I found that really interesting the whole. You know, we got on kind of like the defensive clarity, but then a lot was these gray areas and navigating the gray.
Dan Krikorian: 46:27
The other thing that I really liked was the position and the descriptions of the forwards versus the guards and being involved in different actions there and what her philosophy was on, you know, forwards being able to see more stuff in front of them, be involved in different actions there, and what her philosophy was on forwards being able to see more stuff in front of them, be involved in more screening actions as opposed to guards being more like on playmakers or on the ball, was an interesting point. And I did just want to double down on identity and the use of verbiage and words and like how important like an identity is to building this whole thing out makes me think of our conversation with coach andrea trinkerry talking about building a team identity. He didn’t think our questions were boring. That was nice of him on that podcast a long time ago. But these really great coaches they just think about words, verbiage, identity to start with and then everything like the decisions you make on ball screen coverages or rotations. It builds on top of that baseline stuff.
Patrick Carney: 47:21
Yeah, and she mentioned because I think maybe like an early miss for me or maybe a conversation I would have liked to explore more, is with this identity piece and like how you know, obviously you know the team you’ve put together, so is it this will be our identity or is it something you sit team and build with? But then also, okay, you want to be disruptive, but then how that looks, we press, is it, we switch? You know there’s different ways to be disruptive. And again, kind of the conversations or the process she gets to finding out what is disruptive for this team. And she gave a great example with I think she said when she had really good on ball defenders, they look to be more aggressive in the pick and roll. Good on ball defenders, they look to be more aggressive in the pick and roll.
Patrick Carney: 47:59
And then this year in this team she had really a high iq team and they were more switch based, you know. And again, like yep, two sides of the same coin kind of they’re both being disruptive but in different ways. And yeah, kind of an early miss is, I guess, going more into the process of how she thinks about the identity and what the identity will be. It was. You know what. I’d like to explore a little bit more I’ll give you another.
Dan Krikorian: 48:19
Just something I would have enjoyed exploring more was we hit on it briefly, but is the weakening everything or sending it left for the most part. And she brought up dave smart, legendary coach, well, well known for that lock left defense and really forcing things left, and I just always think it’s interesting conversation, she. She did mention it a little bit and we talked about the passing or things like that, but I could have gone deeper there too. As part of, like, the whole identity piece, let’s go to start subset, let’s start with the underneath, out of bounds, and I’ll kick it back to you on just your first takeaways on that conversation.
Patrick Carney: 48:54
Yeah, was looking forward to hearing her response. I mean, yeah, was looking forward to hearing her response. I mean, the actions we kind of, whereas we were putting this question together, I mean obviously they’re all tough to guard but actions we like, we like to use, especially I mean she sat the dho, I mean kind of just went right after you on that one, but, yeah, it’s okay, it’s okay but and then she threw out the zone and then I I think both of us started to kind of like solidate when she said, okay, well, you’re going to go, she would go zone and it’s like all right, and not only zone, but she mentioned trouble alignment. So she was really just kind of setting us up there. Well, and I enjoyed the conversation talking about, of course, why are you zoning, how she’ll defend certain actions, trap certain actions, but then yeah, the trouble alignments and the four low and what that kind of presents and challenges the zone and how they dealt with it.
Dan Krikorian: 49:40
Yeah, and I honestly appreciate her being pretty thorough about some specific stuff there.
Dan Krikorian: 49:44
First off, I always love and start subsists when we give like three examples and then the coach says these are all great, but we do something else on top of that or, you know, we do something different and I liked her reasoning.
Dan Krikorian: 49:59
Just, they started man or she’s done man to man underneath and all these things have been difficult to guard and that’s why they kind of went to zoning more.
Dan Krikorian: 50:03
And then she did detail how they would zone and trap the corner and be more aggressive and almost turn a situation which is, you know, difficult to guard balls underneath the basket, into a situation that where they can, going back, be disruptive, like she mentioned in that first bucket. And then the other little thing I did like and I mentioned it to you and her right after was if they were going to guard man-to-man, how they think about guarding the ball and that on-ball defender doesn’t just need to stay in one spot the whole five seconds, that they can actually, you know, start under the rim and get towards the ball or move back and forth. And we’ve talked to I believe gonzalo rodriguez, assistant coach with orbidoro, had mentioned that if a defender gets caught on like a late screen coming towards the ball, that on-ball defender will fly out and switch to the shooter. Yeah, like kind of peel switch out yeah, and you know referencing too.
Patrick Carney: 50:52
We had a fun conversation with tobin anderson in a recent crunch time and he talked about too, I mean in man to man, that they were disrupted by they wouldn’t switch anything, they were going to fight through everything. I enjoyed that conversation as well and I mean that’s why I kind of followed up too with a question for her. With this disruptive mindset, and you are going to play man, you know. Then what? Are you willing to switch or not switch and trying to blow stuff up?
Dan Krikorian: 51:21
Yeah, let’s move to the second star subset, the competitive mindset. I’ll actually kick it back to you to talk about this one, because I know you did a lot of research on this topic.
Patrick Carney: 51:25
Yeah, doing research and hearing her talk, I mean she puts a lot of thought into I mean sports, psychology, visualization and high performance stuff, but for me what stood out is kind of this competitive mindset, and where the conversation ended up going was how do you really train a competitive mindset on the floor? What are her practices, what is she reinforcing, what is she talking about? And so I appreciate her again sharing like what it looks like, how she tries to intrinsically motivate them like to build. She mentioned the habits of this competitive mindset and then how that then starts to build into what she started the team cohesion set, the team resiliency is that right? She started team cohesion.
Patrick Carney: 52:03
Yeah, sub resiliency, sat under pressure yeah, and then sat performing under pressure, but like kind of, I mean, because she said it was like a trickle down effect yeah, it’s like an impossible question.
Dan Krikorian: 52:13
I know we asked her and she struggled with it because they are so important. I think what I really liked is you saw and heard her breaking down like, even though they’re all starts for her. She mentioned if you don’t have a cohesive team, then you know you don’t have a team that’s resilient to stuff. Then, like the pressure situation stuff, it’s probably going to fall apart, even though they’re all important. It starts with the cohesion and I think that that was just good to hear her kind of break down the order for me and then kind of getting into her drill design Really great stuff. We both kind of mentioned some misses or areas we could have gone deeper on throughout. But is there anything else as we wrap up here?
Patrick Carney: 52:49
No, those were really the two ones that immediately get in more into the team identity, the process behind it, and then, of course, like we said, yeah, the process behind it. And then, of course, like we said, yeah, the, the survey I think we were when we still are ready to go for another half hour on that.
Dan Krikorian: 53:02
Yeah, absolutely, and I’ll just double down on I. I think the influencing week is really interesting as just a whole topic and you know, definitely continue to talk about like really specific types of coverages with it and get into the weeds with it.
Patrick Carney: 53:20
Yeah, like really specific types of coverages with it and get into the weeds with it. Yeah, I think my one thought on the week too is and it goes to like I think, with the week and the depending on where it on the board, is like teaching player recognition of what that triggers in terms of ball coverage, in terms of help and then what she hit on with us a little bit, but then also, like I think it does become important you got to be able to navigate in the gray and have some IQ because, yeah, it’s not always going to be necessarily the same situation, although you’re influencing weak will always be the same. But yeah, what that looks like based on where it is in the court, I think is always the interesting conversation we kind of keep coming back to.
Dan Krikorian: 53:51
Yeah, we did have a good conversation a couple of years ago with Eric Henderson, south Dakota State men’s basketball coach, who congratulations. Well, when this come out, they made the NCAA tournament and we discussed with him like pick and roll coverages, different thirds of the floor with if you’re going to weak, what do you do on the left side versus right side? And going back to coach Clark, she mentioned icing one side versus maybe switching or hedging on the other side, and I think coach Henderson was talking about to take away some of the confusion. They would just blitz outer third screens even if they’re weaking stuff other places.
Dan Krikorian: 54:24
So, yeah, you can go back and reference that podcast if you want a weak conversation. Not a weak conversation, but a conversation about weaking, a strong conversation, a strong conversation about weaking, exactly. All right, I think that’s our cue to go. Again, thanks everybody for listening, pat. There’s nothing else. We’ll wrap this up, I’m good. See everybody next time.