FRESH AIR
Using more players in your rotation can lift your program to new heights.
By R.J. Anderson
R.J. Anderson is an Assistant Editor at Coaching Management. He can be reached at: rja@momentummedia.com
WHEN UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Head Men’s Coach Jamie Dixon describes his 2006-07 team’s deep, talented bench, he never uses the term “role players.” Instead, he talks about the play of his “nine starters.” “Every guy in our nine-man rotation was good enough to start,” says Dixon. “Even though we were only allowed to begin each game with five players on the court, we considered the four guys coming off the bench good enough to be starters.”
With nine players averaging more than 10 minutes per game, Pitt’s rotation helped maintain a pressure defense that left its opponents—who typically relied on seven-, or eight-man rotations—gasping for breath. By bringing wave after wave of able bodies off the bench, the Panthers finished games fresher and usually with more points than their opponents.
While not every coach has nine elite athletes at his or her disposal, most have the resources to build an effective rotation. The benefits of using more players will be apparent from the get-go. Whether you’re keeping key players fresh for a long, grinding season, giving younger, less-seasoned athletes more time on the court, or improving team morale, using more players provides both immediate and lasting positive effects for your team.
Building a rotation, however, involves more than just knowing how to dole out playing time. Assigning roles and convincing experienced players to accept fewer minutes can take a velvet touch. Integrating young, inexperienced talent into your rotation takes guts—along with a well thought-out strategy and an effective sales pitch. But once your players’ buy-in is complete, the added depth gives you a tactical edge of greater flexibility, energy, and teamwork.
Strength In Numbers
At Northern Arizona University, a 10-man rotation is a necessity for Head Men’s Coach Michael Adras. Playing home games 7,000 feet above sea level, NAU dressed 13 players and gave regular playing time to 10 in 2006-07. “We’re usually an up-and-down team that plays a lot of man-to-man defense,” says Adras. “At our pace and this altitude, we not only run the other team into the ground, we can also run ourselves into the ground if we don’t play enough guys.”
Putting more players into the game also improves athletes’ preparation. “If people know they’re going to get playing time, they’re much more motivated in practice,” Adras says. “They’re more focused when we go over scouting reports and videotapes because they have personal responsibility for the next game.”
At NCAA Division III Williams College, the nationally ranked women’s team plays a defense-driven up-tempo style that relies on nine or 10 players to make it work. With conference games typically scheduled on back-to-back nights Friday and Saturday, Head Women’s Coach Pat Manning divides minutes so that no starter plays more than 30 in a game. In 2006-07, seven Ephs averaged double-figure minutes, with four playing over 22, three between 14 and 16, and two around eight minutes per game.
Along with getting fresh legs on the court, Manning uses her rotation to help force the tempo, especially early on. “Usually about four minutes into each half, I’ll bring in two or three subs to make us a little quicker and a little more defensive-minded,” says Manning, who typically employs two guards and a post player as her first players off the bench.
This past season, Manning counted six seniors among the top eight in her rotation. Knowing that next season she will lose over half of her top players, she manipulated her rotation to get younger athletes playing alongside experienced veterans—especially early in the season—to build their confidence and prepare them for more significant roles later on. “I wanted them feeling comfortable and experiencing success when they were on the floor,” she says.
At NAU, Adras incorporates a similar philosophy of using the rotation to benefit younger players. “We don’t have McDonald’s All-Americans who come in and light the gym on fire as freshmen, so we typically have to develop young players into key contributors,” he says. “Our rotation is built on having five bench players back up the starting five. It’s like a buddy system with each starter tutoring the guy behind him.”
Adras feels that by assigning younger players a specific position to learn and giving each a mentor, they can more easily acclimate to NAU’s offensive and defensive systems. “I’ve found that freshmen are typically able to identify with one role and understand one position,” he says. “If I throw them into a second position, they get lost on the court.”
In Adras’s system, each starter averages between 13 and 16 minutes a half, with the sixth man playing 10 and the other backups seeing four to seven minutes. The key is to find playing time for the ninth and 10th players, says Adras, because “at some point we’re going to need those guys to come up with a huge play or to log extended minutes when our main guys are in foul trouble. It’s a lot easier for athletes to come in and contribute 18 minutes if you’ve consistently given them seven or eight minutes a game.”
Assembling The Pieces
Before cooking up a rotation system, coaches need to select the ingredients that will give it the best flavor. Often, the process starts with finding combinations of players who work best together during practices, early-season scrimmages, and non-conference games.
Lorenzo Romar, Head Men’s Coach at the University of Washington, gives his players plenty of opportunities to work their way into the eight- or nine-man rotation he uses during conference play. In addition to encouraging players to prove themselves during practice, Romar distributes minutes during the team’s early-season non-conference games by using a 10- or 11-man rotation.
“We really try to give everybody an equal opportunity to make their case for being in the rotation,” says Romar. “I like to give them time to show me their game. That gives me a chance to gauge non-statistical contributions and see how the team plays with certain guys on the floor.
“A player may not stand out when you watch him individually,” he continues. “But maybe he’s always in the right place on the court, helping out defensively, making the extra pass, or consistently getting the guys around him to play harder. Stuff like that is difficult to measure, but when someone consistently does it, you notice. We’re looking for those glue guys who make us better every time they step out on the floor.”
With so much talent to choose from, Dixon follows both his gut and objective evaluations to assemble Pitt’s rotation. He and his assistants film and keep statistics at every practice. In addition to charting deflections, charges, and loose balls, Pitt’s stat charts have a separate column to track wins during live drills and scrimmages to evaluate how well different combinations of players work.
“Everything we do in practice is competitive and whoever is on the winning team gets a W in their personal win column,” Dixon says. “That stat really sticks in my head when I’m trying to determine which combinations work well. It usually reveals which guys have the intangibles to help us win—because at the end of practice, they’re the ones with the most W’s.”
In setting up a rotation, NAU’s Adras makes sure to keep some firepower on the bench, even if his team’s five starters are not necessarily its five best players. “Some guys are good enough to start, yet we like to bring them off the bench because we don’t want a drop-off in the level of play from our first five to our second five,” says Adras. “Last season I had a center who statistically probably should have been the starter at that position, but he’s very good coming off the bench and getting into the flow of things. Most nights he probably played more minutes than the starting center.”
The Same Page
Once a rotation is decided, the next step is to convince some players to accept smaller roles or fewer minutes than they’d hoped for. At Pius XI High School in Milwaukee, Wis., Head Boys’ Coach Joel Claassen says the key to getting both males and females to accept roles is open communication before, during, and after the season.
“I hold individual meetings with each kid in the preseason and postseason to tell them where they stand and what we need from them for our team to be successful,” says Claassen, who is currently in his third year with the Pius XI boys’ team after 18 years (and 14 state championships) coaching the girls’ team. “I’m bluntly honest with my kids and tell them exactly where I see their talents fitting into our team approach. They may not embrace that role right away, but they know where I stand, and they know my door is always open if they want to discuss how to expand their role.”
Though it can be difficult to sell a sixth man role to a talented athlete, Claassen has succeeded by emphasizing the importance of the position. “My ideal sixth man is an energy guy who hits the floor running and brings a lot of energy,” says Claassen. “Last year’s sixth man had started the season before and I knew he was expecting to start again. So I talked about his strengths and how much it would help the team for him to bring that energy off the bench.
“I said, ‘You’re not going to start, but you’re always going to finish the game because I want you on the floor when it counts,’” he continues. “By selling the finish instead of the start, kids are more accepting of their roles. And that’s how it worked out: He had at least as many minutes as the starting guards and he usually played the last four minutes of the game.”
Williams’s Manning is also a big proponent of individual meetings. “I hold 20-minute meetings with each player at the beginning of the season and in early January when we return from winter break,” she says. “I start by asking if they have any concerns, then I talk about what I feel their role is and how they’re progressing toward filling it.
“I’ve had kids who don’t like their role and want something different,” she continues. “So I’ll say, ‘Keep working and that may happen,’ or ‘This is what the team needs from you right now.’”
To persuade players to buy into their assignments, Romar allows team chemistry to begin jelling before finalizing athletes’ specific roles. “We practice for several weeks and play a couple of games before I say, ‘This is your role. Here’s how you can get playing time on this team,’” he says.
“For example, a couple years ago Will Conroy was a three-year starting point guard for us,” continues Romar. “Will was a good playmaker, but a lot of times he looked to score instead of running the team. I told him, ‘If you’re looking to score, then we’ll judge you based on how you compare to the other scorers on the team—you’re probably only our fourth best scorer. The role we need you to fill is to run the team—you’re number one at doing that. If you fill the playmaking role, you’ll start. If you want to be a scorer, you won’t play very much.’”
Ready To Rotate
As the pieces fall into place, the coach’s next challenge is figuring out how to best utilize a rotation during games. Dividing up playing time and knowing when to substitute bench players is no easy task, and at Pius XI, Claassen uses a big-picture approach to analyze his players’ time on the court.
Before the season begins, he breaks down his roster, estimating how many minutes each player should log per game. He then multiplies that number by the team’s 20-game regular season. For example, a starting point guard playing 22 minutes a game should total around 440 minutes for the season. Then, throughout the course of the season, Claassen reviews the totals from each game to make sure his players are hitting those targets.
“My ideal number for the top players is between 400 and 440—if they play more than that they become too fatigued,” says Claassen. “If you’re going to give a kid 500 minutes or more over the course of a 20-game season, he’s going to lose his legs in March when he needs them the most.”
When making in-game decisions about his rotation, Dixon likes to get the ball rolling by scripting who will play during the first part of each half. Having a set rotation not only takes the guesswork out of how he plans to sub during the game, but also allows players to anticipate when they’ll be used.
“Before each game, I put a chart together that details how I want to sub early in the first half,” says Dixon. “Our rotation is pretty set. I’m trying to get 10 minutes in each half for the guys in the rotation and I want them to anticipate the order and situations I’m going to put them in. Then we adjust according to fouls and how individual matchups are playing out.
“About halfway through the first half I have a pretty good idea of who is going to be playing for the rest of the game and how much,” he continues. “At halftime, my assistants and I regroup and forecast what should happen in the second.”
Claassen takes this idea one step further, choreographing the plays his team will run to start each quarter. “We have three plays for the first quarter and three for the second. Then at halftime we assess what is working and decide which plays we’ll run in the second half,” he says. “We prep everyone before the game and before each quarter so if we sub someone in, that player will know exactly which play we’re about to run.”
When he can, Claassen substitutes specific players combinations at once. “For instance, this year we had two post players who came off the bench together to play the four and five,” he says. “We usually played them as a tandem because they had such good chemistry.
“Those two changed the flow of the game because they were both tough, physical post players who we we’d put in to replace two athletic, finesse post players,” Claassen continues. “By bringing in those two, we went to an entirely different defensive setup based on their skills.”
Carrying Over
How a coach decides on the makeup of his or her rotation varies from year to year and is largely dependent on the talent of their roster. However, using a deep rotation and finding roles for eight to 10 players can provide a competitive edge for the current season, and also help develop next year’s contributors.
At Washington, Romar is doing just that. He uses the sixth man role to develop talented freshmen and sophomores such as future NBA players Tre Simmons and Brandon Roy, and starting shooting guard Ryan Applebee. He has also had great success developing less talented players by giving them significant roles within his rotation.
Hans Gassner, who saw minimal time as a freshman and sophomore, has worked his way up through Washington’s rotation the last two years, averaging 10 minutes a game as a junior and 12 as a senior. “Now, Hans understands our system as well as anyone,” says Romar. “That wasn’t always the case, but over the years he’s worked hard to move up in our rotation and improved enough to become one of our team’s main contributors.”
Romar says it’s important not to bury players like Gassner on on your bench. “We call it ‘keeping them alive,’” says Romar. “You keep a player alive by giving him a few minutes here and there and get them in with the starters when you have a comfortable lead. By keeping players alive throughout the season, they’ll be ready when you do need them to play big minutes in a pressure-packed game.”
