Q&A with Assistant Coach Nevada Smith, Year 3

We’ve gotten a chance to talk with Nevada Smith, now an assistant coach with Marquette, each of the past 2 seasons, and not wanting to be the one to blame should things go sideways next year, wanted to cover some ground before the season once more.

Below is a condensed transcript of our conversation.

With your new title and role, what has changed now in your day to day compared to the past 2 seasons at MU?
The biggest thing is being in the lines in practice and workouts all the time. Whereas we’d pick and choose before depending on who was traveling. It’s every day now which has been awesome. It’s been a really a good transition so far this summer. I still have some of the same duties as before.

Does keeping same staff over time help?
It has a huge impact. There’s no one on the immediate coaching staff that hasn’t spent a year together. Even Devon (Mulry) and (DeAndre) Haynes spent time together at Michigan. You can just look at someone and know what they need. It’s a lot we have to handle and can be chaotic, and so to have that synergy is a huge help. The players see it, which is big. They can go to anyone on staff and get an answer. It’s not like that at every school.

With so much of the (incredibly successful) core returning, how do you/the staff change what you emphasize in the offseason. Seems like the basic tenants won’t need much of a rehash?
Biggest difference is we got to go to Italy. We got to ramp up early and have practices. So we were able to see guys in live situations against others, which you usually never get to do. The leadership of our older guys, not just Tyler (Kolek) and Oso (Ighodaro), but even the sophomore class has done a great job of teaching the freshmen what to expect on and off the court. How we respond. When you start with the off court stuff in May, the basketball stuff becomes easier and quicker. There are a lot of learning styles from different people, so you can’t always just explain. You might have to physically show them for them to learn. I’d say our learning curve was accelerated with the ability of returning guys to teach it. As an example, we’ve been able to dive deeper into exotic things at this stage compared to January or February in previous seasons.

What does returning mega minutes tell us?

You all really surprised teams (and fans) last season with one of the most fun, fluid offenses in the country last season. Now that there is a season’s worth of tape, do you adjust the principles in preparation to other teams adjusting to you?
The nice thing about how we play now is there are no set rules about what you have to do. Which means the defense has to guess. We react to a lot of those actions. We want to always put the defense in a situation where they have to guess. But to be honest, I don’t see teams doing a lot different against us. Every team has their base defense. Are they going to change all that just to go against us? 98% of teams will switch 1 to 4, which our offense plays into, I don’t think that will change.

We have really good personnel for how we like to play. They all fit. They understand what they have to do. It’s just fun. After another year playing together, we probably learn more from them (the players) than then from us. We might stop and ‘ask wait do that again.’ They are very confident, which plays into it, but they also put in so much work to get to that level.

MU’s offensive rebounding wasn’t amazing (248^th) but did jump from 22.5% to 26.2% in one season. I know you told me last year you guys mapped out every shot last offseason in an effort to identify areas to attack, so I’d say, how much of OReb is personnel vs an emphasis on it?
Great personnel will lead to great offensive rebounding. That’s one of the most translatable skillsets. But Cody Hatt took it over last year and did a great job with our guys. Yeah, OMax took a huge jump, but Jop had some elite offensive boards. That’s an underrated skill. He can read the trajectory of the ball very well. And we’ve challenged our guys to keep progressing. Maybe the top 50 is not realistic, but to make a jump was the goal last year and we did that. We were better, and we can we be even better this year. One big thing is not assuming the ball will go in. Our guys like to get excited and are confident about their teammates, so we have to fight that battle of not taking a make as given. I’m anticipating will do a better job.

And on the other end, how much of a focus has defensive rebounding been?
It definitely has been a focus. But we’re not going to be the biggest team. We won’t outsize people in the league. We won’t outphysical them from a plain strength standpoint. We don’t have a bunch of power players. Our bigs like Oso and Ben (Gold) and Al (Amadou) are guys that excel 15 to 18 feet away. We have to be more diligent on boxing out and punishing opponents.

The emphasis on grabbing the ball is huge. Oso is one of the best tippers in the country, and does an amazing job keeping plays alive on offense. But we need to possess it more and get it out. We want to get two hands on the ball and secure it. Tyler is a very smart rebounder, he’s always in the mix. When we rebound at a higher rate, that’s huge on the offensive end as well. So it’s always a focus, but we probably won’t be the best in the country at it.

Kam shot 24.6% from the left wing on 61 3s last season vs 41.6% on 89 3s from the right side. The split was 38.7 vs 46.2% the year before as well. Have you seen anything that would identify why that gap may exist. (Could it be Kolek being a lefty?)
Not really. The Kolek point probably is more accurate. The fact that our 2 primaries ball handlers are lefty impacts that, so they make cross court passes to the right side. Plus lefties generally shoot on better on the right side. They get going to middle with strong hand. Vice versa for righty. Also Kam is incredible. You could have him shoot from 47 feet and from a foot on the line and his percentage won’t change much. Can’t imagine there are many better long long range shooters than him.

You’ve talked about the importance of 2-for-1s, having the last possession of a half, and potentially fouling in a tie game to control the outcome. How do you teach that to players when the vast majority of their playing experience has been dominating high school basketball and free-for-all AAU tourneys? Is that part of the Shaka recruiting structure, where he finds kids he thinks can grasp these concepts that go beyond X’s and O’s?  
All of that helps. We drill it a bunch though. Coach (Smart) is terrific at recognizing the situations and saving for those situations. He’d call a timeout after we score with more than 30 seconds left to give us that opportunity and make sure they can’t inbound it easily. He’s great. And our guys are high IQ players, they understand what’s right and what’s wrong. It helps that this is something you can simulate in practice, we show them and talk about it. When they’re just watching games and see teams screw up, we’ll get a text about them screwing up a 2-1. They see it and understand it. When we mess up those spots, it’s usually because the other team did something great. There’s so much buy in. You can also tell about the buy-in just from shot selection compared to 2 years ago. They own and police it in practice. Can squash bad habits themselves.

What’s the WORST shot you’d feel comfortable with his team taking to secure a 2-for-1?
Let me be clear these are my words, not Coach Smart’s, but there are very few shots I wouldn’t feel comfortable with. We did a lot of this in the G-League with former Murray State guard Isaiah Canaan. We had a 2-for-1 call and the play was shoot from as close as you can get without getting contested. 35-30 feet, didn’t matter. Sprint at a guy as fast as you can and take a clean shot. We will be in the right spots to rebound a miss anyway.

Was the Sean Jones shot against UConn at home that call?
It wasn’t necessarily a play, but on that Sean Jones one, yeah, he flew up the court and banked in a 9-footer to beat the buzzer. It was a huge momentum play. Similar concept with the difference being in a 2-for-1 you don’t always know how many seconds you’re going to have when you get the ball back.

We’ve asked every summer so will ask again, who has surprised you the most?
This is going to sound like coach speak, but it’s actually all of our guys individually, as a whole. All of the guys have gotten better or gotten stronger or added something. Even Tyler remade his shot. There is no one that people will watch and say didn’t improve. The freshmen are terrific as well and they work hard.

One surprise may be how well guys are shooting it, that maybe people don’t look at as shooters, Stevie’s overall shooting, no one that can beat him in really hard shooting drills. There’s Chase and Ben and Sean. And you kinda expect Jop and Kam and Tyler to shoot around 40% in practice. The overall skill level reflects how much work they’ve put in as a program.