VY Chow
There are some basic concepts that everyone talks about to effectively break
the mark:
- use your core to stay balanced while you fake and pivot to get your marker off balance;
- learn to fake and throw/release at different heights;
- engage your marker by drawing them closer or moving them side-to-side with your pivots.
However, my favourite ‘move’ to teach, regardless of playing level, is how to
redefine your throwing lanes when you have the disc. Put more simply, don’t
let the marker control your throwing lanes.
Almost all players catch the frisbee and then, if they don’t throw a continue
pass right away, square up with the line of scrimmage irrespective of where
the marker sets up. Likely the only adjustment that is made occurs at the
sideline when players are often told to keep their behind to the sideline. But
that adjustment is a general concept that can be used anywhere on the field.
Let’s start with the disc on the sideline example. When a thrower close to the
sideline stands with her bum to the sideline instead of square with the line
of scrimmage, she automatically shifts the throwing lanes to facilitate an
easier dump pass to get the disc off the sideline. If marker shifts position
in response, the thrower now has the upper hand and is dictating what/where
the throwing lanes are and where she can throw. Doing the same thing away from
the sideline often produces remarkable results. If the mark is forcing one-
way, the thrower should square up to the marker instead of the line of
scrimmage. In doing this, the thrower has now shifted the field and created
different throwing lanes - the thrower is now playing the mark more straight-
up. The inside-out throw looks more like a regular open-side throw and that
step-around doesn’t really look like a step-around break anymore but looks
more like another open-side throw. With a flat mark, the thrower should try
turning his hips one direction or the other, so that they aren’t square with
the marker and see what happens.
Whatever the mark, don’t simply square up to the line of scrimmage. Set
yourself up so that you take control of your throwing lanes. And you might
find that you never really seem to throw a ‘break mark’ throw…
VY Chow
Team defense begins with an understanding and analysis of the strengths and
weaknesses of your team’s defensive talents, followed by the development of
defensive philosophies that are executed by specific team-oriented strategy.
Too often, “team defense” is taught in terms of situational defensive sets
such as zone, clam, poaching, and whatnot with an over-reliance on individual
athleticism to play man-D. While high-flying layout blocks are at times
warranted and necessary, it appears the spectacular has come to define a
team’s defensive prowess along with foot-races and gravity-defying leaps.
Rather than focusing on improving individual D (with a run harder, jump
higher, and spit further mentality), teaching broader defensive concepts can
help a player step up both their own and their team’s D by seeing the field
better.
One way to think about it, is to have players answer the questions “where and
how is the team going to get a turn?” This team defense philosophy shifts the
onus from the individual player creating and getting a block to the team
generating opportunities for everyone to get turnovers and, in theory,
increasing the chances of any player on the field to earn a D. Obviously when
the opportunity arises, the individual(s) must still make the defensive play
but the overall strategy relies on the entire team creating specific outcomes.
Instead of the “play hard man D” or “run harder and faster than the O and get
a block” motto, the underlying tenet is that turnovers are created when the D
forces the O to do what the D expects, which allows any player on your team to
earn/get the turn.
In addition to forcing the O to do what the D expects, force the O to choose
their second or third or fourth options. The O clearly has an advantage if
allowed to play to their strengths, so structure your team’s D to expose and
exacerbate their weaknesses. Dictate how the O will have to beat you through
team D strategies and your team will likely have a better chance of
winning—i.e. if you get beat by Rondo hitting pull-up jumpers all night, then
tip your hat off to the other team. But if you let The Truth take you down the
river then shame on your team D.
How does this translate onto the field? Something simple such as forcing one-
way (forehand/home) for a point needs to be translated into a systematic team-
wide approach. Pit the strengths of your team against your opponent’s
weaknesses. Evaluate what types of D-players you have on the team and how the
O likes to score. One scenario can be if your team is full of short(er) speedy
players and you know the O prefers to bomb the disc down the field to score in
minimal throws. Thus forcing the O to repeatedly cut under to make them throw
more passes is a good start to a team D strategy. But it doesn’t stop there as
the D can systematically further reduce the offensive options.
The team will make sure to disrupt any sort of big throw, so when a marker
sees the thrower wind up for huck, she will step-off and be bigger and more
straight-up, forcing a less than perfect shot. The marker is also responsible
for holding the force but given the throwing talent around today, that isn’t
always possible. However, this too can be turned into a D-earning opportunity.
If the O is going to break your mark, how does that fit into your D-strategy?
In the case of forcing a team under repeatedly, the O will be running full
steam to the disc on the in-cut so where do you want to generate a block? Do
you want the O to try throwing floaty IO’s or do you want the O to throw zippy
IO’s or do you want flat wide step-around backhand break throws and will those
be fluffers or zippy? Does the wind affect any of those choices? Does the O
run mainly through their handlers? If the lane cutters rarely look up-field,
do you want to force the disc into the hands of the lane cutters more often
and take it away from the handlers? How does each of these things change the
mark? The important thing to note is that the mark isn’t “giving” anything but
making sure that if they are broken, it will be by a certain type of throw
that the entire team will expect and can either deny and/or contain. At this
juncture, the team D strategy has now defined which lanes and spaces the
downfield D will control and clog, what throws are expected, and as a result,
when and how a turnover can be achieved.
Obviously, this is just one over-simplified scenario of forcing one way, but
it demonstrates the types of questions that the entire team needs to be able
to answer and that team defense is a general philosophy and not only
applicable to fancy defensive sets.
As a final note, team D is firmly ensconced in the concept of deny and contain
D. First deny the disc to the O-player but if the disc goes up and the D isn’t
150% sure about getting the block, then he switches immediately to containment
mode. This means the D-player no longer goes for the block but now works hard
to get into position to ensure the designated force is put on the early on the
imminent thrower. How many times have we seen a team break the force and the
disc move quickly up the broken side for an uncontested score? Or how many
times have we seen someone whiff a diving block or lunge past the disc thus
giving the thrower an uncontested look downfield?
The beauty of team D is that it doesn’t rely on just a few individuals on your
team to either get blocks or shut down specific people on the O. You don’t
want to rely on individuals to win you games since you just don’t know who
will get injured or who will simply have a bad day. As one of the smartest and
most successful players once said—someone always blows a knee at Nationals but
if you have a team philosophy and strategy, that won’t kill your chances of
winning. Don’t screw your teammates, follow the plan of attack, and more often
than not, you’ll get the turnover you want.
VY Chow
There seems to be two diverging philosophies on how to defend against a very
skilled deep thrower that has also hurt you going deep. The first philosophy
is perhaps considered old school, focusing on team defense and changing the
team’s defensive strategy. The second, new school, philosophy is what I like
to call the “hack-a-Shaq” tactic, and although not exactly the same as its
namesake, the results are comparable. The hack-a-Shaq consists of
intentionally fouling the thrower to significantly disrupt the offensive flow
(and deep shot) without consequence to the defending team and, I hate to say,
is indelibly efficacious.
Currently, I still prefer the so-called old school strategy of changing up the
team D. I somehow feel the second is a violation of SOTG but will freely admit
that it is increasingly tough to play against teams that use the hack-a-Shaq
approach. The old school philosophy begins with recognizing that the very
skilled deep thrower does the most damage to your team when they have the disc
on the front half of the field - the ability to open up their team’s offense
with seemingly unstoppable long throws makes lane cutters difficult to defend.
There are a few things your team can do to limit the damage this handler does
against your team.
Likely this handler is adept at getting open and thus getting the disc.
Pushing them deep is still killing you. One approach is to acknowledge that
you can’t stop the thrower from either getting the disc (in or out) or putting
it deep. To limit the damage, you want to herd and “allow” the thrower to get
the disc on the open side with the defender close enough to put on a mark that
will only give up the huck on the open side. Too often, the handler-defender
attempts to totally deny this handler from getting the disc and this often
backfires with the handler getting the disc in a position without a mark and
the whole field in which to throw. This approach relies heavily on downfield
D, and this might still be ineffectual even if you try and help deep or do a
lot of switching. So what next?
The next strategy is to play some sort of zone or poachy, junky D for a few
passes or until half field and then switch to man. The basic idea of the
junk/zone is to reduce the ability for the O to isolate lane cutters deep,
push them into help, and once you’ve shortened the field and taken away the
dangerous deep threat, switch back to man. A further move is to play zone/junk
D with man D on that handler. The goal of this is to make it more difficult to
get the disc to the handler, neutralize the deep threat with the zone/junk D,
and to encourage the O to get the disc to less dangerous players - this is
obviously a combination of two basketball tactics (1) variations of the box
and one with your zone/junk D and (2) making it easier to put the ball in the
hands of someone who ain’t the best shooter and let them shoot.
The hack-a-Shaq philosophy is extremely effective and used in both the men’s
and women’s games. This strategy is implemented a couple different ways. One
method is to constantly bump and foul the thrower in the first 5-6 seconds and
then step back as the count gets higher to avoid the foul call and to avoid
resetting the stall to zero. Teams generally don’t want to call fouls in the
first few seconds because this stops the flow of the offense and the D gains a
tremendous advantage to survey the field with the stoppage in play. However,
if you don’t call the foul, then your O has missed the first and/or second
shot because you couldn’t get the throw off and often your O is onto your 3rd
or 4th option. So, do you call a foul and stop play or do you hope that your O
is running on all cylinders that day?
Another hack-a-Shaq method is to intentionally foul the thrower only when they
attempt to throw (open/break, it doesn’t matter) and the marker doesn’t
contest the foul call. Obviously this approach is also very effective as the
deep throw, or any throw, is unlikely to be completed and even when it is, the
thrower is always being hit and hacked when they throw. In the women’s game,
this approach of “intentional fouling during the throw” seems to be more
prevalent than the the first type of hack-a-Shaq strategy I described. It
feels like this type of hack-a-Shaq is becoming more and more common in the
women’s game over the last couple of years.
There isn’t anything in the rules against either of these hack-a-Shack
defensive strategies. They are overwhelmingly effective not only in taking
away the offensive flow but can cause even a seasoned handler to lose their
composure under the constant physical duress. I have to say that as more and
more teams move towards either version of the hack-a-Shaq philosophy, it
becomes harder and harder for me to cling to SOTG and stay with the old school
approach. Perhaps it has nothing to do with SOTG, but is simply a further
evolution of the game. The efficacy of the hack-a-Shaq tactic is certainly
persuasive but before it becomes systemic, I wonder and perhaps hope there
will be some change in the rules to even the playing field for the offense
(not to mention, the constant stoppages of play is unfriendly to viewers). One
thought is to tally uncontested marking fouls and after a certain number of
uncontested marking fouls, the O gets to advance the disc 10-15yards
thereafter for each additional uncontested marking foul. But that is straying
into a whole different issue. For now, we will be sticking with the old school
D.