Coaching Analysis of Thursday NCAA Men’s Tournament Games

Today we kick off the NCAA Tournament with the First Four Games to advance to the 64 team bracket.

Here is a breakdown of what you can expect:

Texas Southern vs. Mount St Mary’s

Texas Southern likes to play up-tempo and attack in transition using lots of ball screens to create an advantage. 

On Defense you can expect Texas Southern to be ready to stop the pick and roll. Here is a clip of Texas Southern Coach Brandon Chambers sharing his philosophy on Pick and Roll coverages.

Mount St Mary’s is a contrast in styles of play from Texas Southern –they like to slow you down and grind it out in the half court. 

Coach Rad Blocker Mover offense sits 356th in adjusted tempo, just ahead of Virginia for the slowest in Div. I.

Drake vs. Wichita State

Drake ranks No. 303 in the country in three-point rate, but still has the 19th-best offense on KenPom’s adjusted efficiency rankings because it makes 54.4% of its two-point shots — the 29th-best mark in the country. 

So you will see Drake run some of the BLOBs to get high percentage shots. Here are 7 looks out of a "Wide Box" alignment. 

Wichita state likes to play uptempo and shoot 3’s in transition. The team shoots 36.6% from deep this season. 

Appalachian State vs. Norfolk State

In this game be on the lookout for App State offensively looks to open gaps, use ghost screens and will attack you offensively all night.

Norfolk state coach will be ready. Coach Robert Jones thrives in pressure games, if you remember he beat #1 seed Alabama in 2019 NIT as a #16 seed. If the App State coaches are wise, they will avoid zone defense as Coach Jones knows how to defeat a zone defense. 

Hope you didn’t miss Coach Jones at the Summit where he shared 9 Half-Court Zone Plays and 1 Out of Bounds Play you need to know to easily defeat a zone defense. He explains that Ball and Body Movement are the most important things to break the zone defense. He wants to make sure you get the defense moving in order to easily get the zone out of position and even collapse.

Here he show what he calls “Flash”

UCLA vs. Michigan State 

Two teams that demand toughness on the defensive side of the floor. This will be a battle of two great defensive coaches. It may come down to who will be tougher than the other down the stretch

Mick Cronin’s teams are built on their defensive toughness and communicating on defense.

Coach Cronin discuses drills to help your team communicate on the defensive side of the floor

You can also expect to see UCLA get a high percentage of offensive rebounds. UCLA Assistant Coach Darren Savino shares in this video why they win by getting their rebounds.

Tom Izzo led teams are one of the toughest teams to knock out in the NCAA tournament. He prides himself on toughness on the Defensive side and offensive rebounds.

Coach Izzo breaks down his Jump to the Ball which instill the discipline in his team to not get beat on a face cut