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ORU: The Cradle Of Modern Basketball Offense?


Old Titan

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Pretty interesting nuts-and-bolts article about the Bill Self "High-Low" offense", which includes this fascinating intro (lifted from a Missouri Tiger fan page, with references to new Mizzou coach Kim Anderson, who will be installing the offense in Columbia):

 

This version of the High-Low was developed while Self was the head coach at Oral Roberts in the early 1990’s. He inherited a team that was bad, and tried to win with a true motion offense which failed, and failed hard. For two years ORU lost a lot of games, so Self and his staff developed an offense that would suit their players better, and what they found was something quite amazing. They found that this offense does a great job in just about any settings because it works for both skilled and unskilled big men. It works for scoring guards and passing guards. It creates space for shooters and for those attacking the rim. The Self High-Low is so dynamic that Kim Anderson isn’t the only one who has adopted it. The offense itself, or elements of the offense, can be found throughout college basketball.

 

Because much of the offense is predicated on having 4 players on the perimeter, it's easy to go back to Mizzou's offense in 2012 and see many influences of the Self High Low. For those who were really paying attention (like me), you may recognize some of it in this post. So this offense, or at least the principles of it, have been run at Mizzou before.

 

From it’s name alone the High-Low is a very inside-out approach to offense. Going back, the term "High-Low" meant the action where a high post player (somewhere in the area of the free throw line) and a low post player (somewhere in the vicinity of the low block) are working off of each other. The offense would try to enter the basketball into the high-post in order to catch the defense out of position in order to enter the ball into the low post, with the low post working to seal off his defender and keep him from the basketball as it is entered. This was basically a counter to the defense playing in front of the low post player. However, as the game evolved, so did post play. Post players became more and more effective away from the basket. Gone were the days of George Mikan, who made a hall of fame career out of layups and footwork on the low block. Here came the days where your post player wanted to be out at the three point line shooting jumpshots. What the Self High Low did was take advantage of a post players yearning to play outside the paint area, without risking him hoisting up a bunch of three pointers. It makes all 5 players involve themselves in the offense, without being a motion offense.

 

Breaking Down The High-Low Offense, Part 1: In The Beginning (SB Nation)

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