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Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

Dribble-drive originator says it's all about attacking

Talk to the man who invented the offense Kentucky will use this season and one surprising bit of information jumps out like an alley-oop dunk. He said he thinks the name coined by UK Coach John Calipari — dribble-drive — is a misnomer.

"Cal did it a little disservice," Vance Walberg said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "Everybody thinks it's a dribble-dribble-dribble offense. That's not what it is. It's an attacking offense."

Walberg also finds Calipari's catchy nickname for the offense — Princeton on Steroids — a reflection of the UK coach's marketing degree.

"We both know Cal is a great businessman," Walberg said. "As good a coach as he is, he's a better businessman. He can sell anybody anything."

Marketing aside, Kentucky fans and players are about to learn all about the dribble-drive motion offense beginning with the season-opening game against Morehead State on Friday,

Walberg, who as a junior college coach introduced his offense to Calipari in October 2003, said it will take time for people to grasp what's going on. More importantly, UK players will need patience to understand and fully use the offense.

"You're not going to change a player's mentality (quickly) who's used to being so robotical," Walberg said. "That's what you want to get them away from.

"Next year when these kids come back, they'll have so much better of an understanding of it. Believe me."

After that October 2003 introduction, Calipari visited Walberg three more times before getting comfortable with the offense. And Walberg recalled Calipari routinely calling in the middle of Memphis practices to ask follow-up questions.

Calipari has said the players will run it incorrectly 70 percent of the time or more early this season and might still be wrong a third of the time by season's end.

"The key for you guys is for it to be working when?" said Walberg, whose career in coaching leads him to ask rhetorical questions.

Uh, March?

"Damn, right," said Walberg, now an assistant coach for one of Calipari's basketball disciples, Derek Kellogg, at Massachusetts.

Walberg, 53, cited three basic premises on which the dribble-drive offense functions.

■ "Attack the rack."

■ "Open gaps" for drives.

■ "Great spacing."

The dribble-drive isn't a patterned offense controlled by a coach calling plays from the bench. "In this offense, with my guards, if they look to me, I take their butts out," Walberg said. "What you're teaching them is how to play the game and not teaching them to run plays. It's 'I'm coming down your throat.' "

The players are supposed to attack the basket with purposeful drives. If your perimeter player cannot beat his man one-on-one, he's not suited for the dribble-drive.

If the defense rotates to blunt the driver, he passes to an open man, often the offensive teammate left free by the second defender. Practice brings familiarity, which means reading options on the fly. Coaches yield control and trust the players to make the right reads.

"Quite a bit," Walberg said. "In a game, you're yielding a lot more control. So the key is how well you do coaching that in practice."

During a talk to the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches, Calipari talked about what the dribble-drive is and isn't.

■ No more multiple passes and multiple screens to set up a shot. "You have to put that aside," Calipari said.

■ When you catch the ball, look to drive.

■ If the defense sags into the lane, shoot the three-pointer.

■ Don't fall in love with the trey. "Anytime we shoot 30 threes, we lose," Calipari said. "Seventeen, I'm happy. What we want is layups and dunks."

The players must read not only the defenders, but their teammates, especially the ballhandler.

"If I stop on a certain place on the floor, my teammates know what I'm going to do," Calipari said. "If I spin on a certain place on the court, they know what that means."

Five players thinking as one, plus moving and adjusting as one.