Coach Basketball's Modern High Post Offense

By Kevin Sivils

Coaching basketball successfully often boils down to matching the offense to the available talent.

The modern high post offense works at every level of play be it youth basketball or at the elite levels of the game. Whether your team is loaded with talent and you need an offense to provide balanced opportunities or you have average sized players who play hard, the modern 2-1-2 high post offense has something to offer your team.

Positive attributes of the high post offense include:

• Balanced positioning and excellent floor spacing.
• Every position is a threat to score.
• Allows an emphasis on post play as well as the 3-point game.
• Can be used against any defense with slight adjustments.
• It is an easy to learn offense with countless options available.

 

Coach Kevin Sivils, an 8 Time Coach of the Year award winner with 479 varsity wins to his credit, is the author of Coaching Basketball's Modern High Post Offense. Profusely illustrated with 231 diagrams and 45 photographs Coaching Basketball's Modern High Post Offense is a fantastic teaching guide and includes:

• details and concepts teach the offense.
• the skills needed to execute the high post offense.
• how to adjust the basic offense to effectively attack a zone defense.

Get a copy of Coaching Basketball's Modern High Post Offense and coach your team to more wins than ever before!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Sivils
• Release date: Sep 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223025283

Kevin Sivils

A 25 year veteran of the coaching profession, with twenty-two of those years spent as a varsity head coach, Coach Kevin Sivils amassed 479 wins and his teams earned berths in the state play-offs 19 out of 22 seasons with his teams advancing to the state semi-finals three times.  An eight time Coach of the Year Award winner, Coach Sivils has traveled as far as the Central African Republic to conduct coaching clinics.  Coach Sivils first coaching stint was as an assistant coach for his college alma mater, Greenville College, located in Greenville, Illinois. Coach Sivils holds a BA with a major in physical education and a minor in social studies from Greenville College and a MS in Kinesiology with a specialization in Sport Psychology from Louisiana State University.  He also holds a Sport Management certification from the United States Sports Academy. In addition to being a basketball coach, Coach Sivils is a classroom instructor and has taught U.S. Government, U.S. History, the History of WW II, and Physical Education and has won awards for excellence in teaching and Teacher of the Year. He has served as an Athletic Director and Assistant Athletic Director and has also been involved in numerous professional athletic organizations. Sivils is married to the former Lisa Green of Jackson, Michigan, and the happy couple are the proud parents of three children, Danny, Katie, and Emily.  Rounding out the Sivils family are three dogs, Angel, Berkeley, and Al.  A native of Louisiana, Coach Sivils currently resides in the Great State of Texas.

Book preview

COACHING BASKETBALL’S MODERN HIGH POST OFFENSE

Maximizing Player and Team Potential

Kevin Sivils

KCS Basketball Enterprises, LLC.

KATY, TEXAS

Copyright © 2023 by Kevin Sivils

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Kevin Sivils/KCS Basketball Enterprises, LLC

Katy, Texas 77450

Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

Coaching Basketball’s Modern 2-1-2 High Post Offense – Kevin Sivils.—1st ed.

Unless otherwise noted all photographs are by Jermey Yutzy of Yutzy Photography.

To My Two Mentors:

Coach Jack Trager and Coach Don Meyer

THE SPIRAL OF MASTERY*

In Mastering the Skills, you Demonstrate Ability.

Demonstrated ability breeds Confidence.

Confidence allows you to stay Calm Under Pressure.

Calmness leads to Concentration or the ability to Focus.

Concentration leads to Proper Decision Making.

(Proper Decision Making is defined as accessing the correct skills and strategy learned in practice)

Proper Decision Making leads to

Effective Execution of the Skills.

Effective execution of the skills leads to success!

By Jerry Meyer

Collegiate Basketball’s All Time Career Assist Leader

*Used with permission

CONTENTS

THE SPIRAL OF MASTERY*

SELECTING AN OFFENSE

THE OLD 2-1-2 HIGH POST OFFENSE

REASONS TO USE THE 2-1-2 HIGH POST OFFENSE

USING THIS BOOK

POSITIONING PLAYERS

GUARD THROUGH

DOUBLE GUARD THROUGH

DRIBBLE OVER

DRIBBLE POST

GUARD AROUND

DRIBBLE LOOP

HIGH POST STEP OUT

TWO MAN GAME

QUICK HITTER ONE

QUICK HITTER TWO

QUICK HITTER THREE

PRESURE RELEASES

FAST BREAK INTRODUCTION

FAST BREAK ENTRY ONE

FAST BREAK ENTRY TWO

TRAP OFFENSE

ZONE ATTACK

PRINCIPLES OF CUTTING AND SCREENING

POST PLAY PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS

PRACTICING AND TEACHING THE HIGH POST OFFENSE

THE LADY MUSTANGS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE

SELECTING AN OFFENSE

Every basketball coach in the history of the game has been faced with selecting an offense to use. Some coaches pick an offense that is the latest trend, others run what they were taught by their high school or college coach, and a select few are true innovators and create their own offense.

After the first season is over, once again each coach is now faced with a decision regarding offense. Do they become a system coach, one who uses the same system of offense each year with modifications as necessary to fit personnel changes and other challenges, or do they start over with a brand-new offense from scratch?

Complicating matters further is the choice of what style of offense to run. Coaches can choose from three basic categories of offense:

Continuity

Rule based offense

Set plays

Continuity offenses usually have a repeating pattern that creates shots from specific spots on the court. Once a continuity offense is initiated it usually becomes position less as each player will occupy each spot in the offense as the offense is run. Examples of continuity offense includes the Flex or the many shuffle offenses that were popular in the past.

Pros: Excellent choice for a team that lacks size and athleticism. Forces the defense to expend energy while allowing the offense to control the tempo.

Cons: Good defensive teams can plan to disrupt a continuity offense at specific junctures of the continuity, disrupting the entire offense and often requiring the offense to be restarted. Can be extremely difficult to score rapidly when behind. Often boring to run.

Rule based offense operates from a set of rules or guidelines. It is like continuity offense in the sense that once initiated, a rule-based offense will be essentially position less. Unlike any other type of offense, be it a continuity or set plays, the movement of players in a rule-based offense is unpredictable if run correctly and is based on reading the defense instead of forcing a particular offensive option. Motion offense is a common rule-based offense with common approaches including 4-out-1-in, 3-out-2-in, and 5-out motion. Other options can include Blocker/Mover motion offense or Dribble Drive Motion Offense.

Pros: Difficult to scout. The very nature of rules-based offense allows for attacking the weakness of any defense. Can be played at a variety of tempos. Allows for an emphasis on player skill development. Once mastered, it is an easy system for players to pick up again when resuming practice.

Cons: Takes time to learn and requires a sound system of teaching. Very difficult to integrate players who come from another sport after practice has begun (football). Selfish or low IQ basketball players will disrupt this offense at every opportunity.

Set Plays are a one-off play that usually sets up one or two players for a specific shot. When the play has run its course and a shot attempt has not been made the offense must pull the ball out, rest the offense, and run another play.

Pros: Great for specific situations such as a dead ball or when a quick score is essential. Allows for great control to create a shot for the right player.

Cons: Easy to scout. If one player is missing it can disrupt the entire execution of the set play. Requires large amounts of practice time to rehearse the play with all the possible personnel combinations. This can cause there to be inadequate practice time for skill development.

If the pros and cons of the three types of offense aren’t confusing enough, there is the additional consideration of system versus wholesale change.

System coaches create an offensive system that allows them to utilize it every season. The continuity and carryover maximize practice time and allows for skill development, more time to be allocated for defense, special situations, etc.

Some system coaches build in flexibility so as personnel changes the system is easily adapted when practice for the next season starts. Other system coaches don’t change at all, either because they are blessed with the right mix of talent each season, so it isn’t necessary to adapt or out of a sheer sense of stubbornness that this is how it’s done, and nobody is going to stop us (there is something to be said for this attitude when not overdone).

Other coaches have great success in starting from scratch and installing an entirely new offensive system. This could be due to change in personnel, rule changes that can be exploited offensively (back in the dark ages, this thing called the three-point line was introduced and it had an impact on offense), or innovation. Some coaches just like following the latest trend.

There is no real right way to go about things. For every coach who picks some combination of the aforementioned approaches to offense there are examples of coaches who have failed and lost their jobs as a result and coaches who brought home the state championship trophy.

What is important is to understand your own personality as a coach and the reasons why you are making the offensive choices you have made.

CHAPTER TWO

THE OLD 2-1-2 HIGH POST OFFENSE

John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, and winner of TEN NCAA Division I National Championships while serving as the head coach of the UCLA Bruins utilized a version of the 2-1-2 offense for most of tenure as the coach of the Bruins. The exception was during the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar years. Wooden felt Jabbar was such a unique talent that the team would adapt.

The 2-1-2 offensive set has a lot to offer. It can be used to run a continuity, a rules-based offense, or set plays. The offense itself allows for great flexibility in adapting to available personnel, thus allowing system-oriented coaches to maintain the set from one season to the next and simply place a different emphasis on specific segments of the offense.

By utilizing the 2-1-2 alignment, set plays can be run without tipping off the defense. For teams with players who possess a high basketball IQ, the 2-1-2 can smoothly flow from one play to the next, based on what the defense gives up, taking advantage of the positives of continuity and rules-based approaches to offense.

A basketball court with numbers and lines Description automatically generated

Diagram 1

The original 2-1-2 high post offense was created before the advent of the three-point line. The emphasis was on obtaining the highest percentage shot possible which meant a heavy emphasis on cutters and