Trending
YOUNGSTOWN -- So what is this up-tempo style new coach Jerrod Calhoun is bringing to the Youngstown State men's basketball program?
Like most of his coaching stops, the 35-year-old mentor has picked up a little bit of this and that to compile something that resembles the "Press Virginia" style used by the West Virginia Mountaineers.
He implemented this version of college basketball to help Fairmont State advance to the NCAA Division II title game this season and to lead the Falcons to five straight 20-win seasons in his five seasons at the school (located a half-hour southwest of the WVU campus).
The Falcons had one of the best D-II offenses in the country (94.5 points per game), while holding teams to 78.8.
"We want to get teams on the run," Calhoun said. "We want to keep them on the run. As we advance the ball, we want to get them in close-outs. We want to get easy baskets. If the defense levels out, we want to flow into something. We call it Level 1 offense, which is our fast-break offense. Level 2 is when the defense is set. Then, we've got to flow into things. We want to shoot a lot of 3s. We got into a lot of pick-and-rolls, created mismatches."
Fairmont State averaged 11 3-pointers made per game, while attempting 29. The Falcons limited their opponents to six 3s made and 19 attempted.
YSU soon-to-be assistant coach Paul Molinari, a former Fairmont assistant, said the Falcons started that first year with a deliberate half-court style because of a lack of depth.
"As the year went along, (and) we rolled into year two, we felt people didn't want to watch this," Molinari said. "People don't want to watch 65-60. They don't want to watch grind out basketball. Two years, we took some ideas, some press stuff. He looked at some stuff from West Virginia. We took some stuff from Villanova. We kind of tried to change defensively to get more possessions."
Molinari said he and Calhoun wanted to know what the teams who went to the D-II Final Four were doing after year three at Fairmont. They found out they were shooting more 3s. In year four, they put up 878 3s.
The final piece was visiting Huntsville, Ala., last September. They met with University of Alabama-Huntsville coach Lennie Acuff. The D-II Chargers have 371 victories in the 20 seasons Acuff has been there -- making the Elite 8 in 2011 and '12.
Fairmont wanted to get better offensively, while Huntsville desired a more air-tight defense.
Molinari said as the players matured, so did the Falcons' press.
"We want to get offense off of our defense. That's what we try to do," he said.
Calhoun said his style is similar to what Huggins does at West Virginia, but he and his staff added their own wrinkles on defense.
"You have to have a point man up top," Calhoun said. "You've got to have lines. You've got to have athleticism. You've got to have rim protection. If you don't have rim protection at the back of the press, we're in trouble. Then you fill the gaps in between. The whole deal is get the ball up the sidelines, try to turn them. We got two on the ball. That's how we play."
West Virginia has a style all its own, but like Calhoun, WVU coach Bob Huggins adapted his style from elsewhere -- from former Cleveland State coach Kevin Mackey, whose Vikings team advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1986. It's called a run and stun defense.
"The biggest thing is when I talked to Kevin Mackey, who I thought was the best guy to ever be doing it," Huggins said, "he said your half-court principles are fine. You don't have to re-teach any of that. You just have to move it full court.
"That's pretty much what we've done. Taken every thing we do half-court and move it full-court. Put a guy over the ball. Try to break down their spacing and trap them."
One might say the pressing style is migrating back to Cleveland, making a stop in Youngstown.