Four of Baylor Coach Nicki Collen’s Midseason Pick and Roll Adjustments

• By Grant Young

Midseason adjustments are vital for keeping the pick and roll offense effective as the basketball season unfolds.

While teams may find initial success with this strategy, opponents will quickly analyze and adapt to it. To counter these defenses, coaches need to make strategic adjustments. 

One approach is to rotate different players into the roles of the ball handler and screener, creating mismatches and preventing defenses from settling into predictable patterns. Tweaking screen angles and timing can also disrupt defensive schemes. 

Simple variations, like faking a screen or changing the roll angle, can create confusion for defenders. Recognizing defensive coverages is also essential—if opponents begin to switch or trap, exploiting rotation gaps through ball movement or off-ball screens becomes crucial. 

Developing players’ decision-making abilities will be key. Practicing various scenarios allows them to read defenses quickly and react effectively. By continuously evaluating and adjusting strategies, teams can ensure the pick and roll remains a dynamic and potent offensive weapon throughout the season. 

But these are all basic solutions to what can be a complex issue. This is why we’ve left the real analysis to Baylor University head women’s basketball coach Nicki Collen. 

Nicki Collen became the Baylor women’s basketball head coach in 2021. She enters her fourth season at the helm in 2024-25, and has started the season with a 16-3 record. Collen came to Baylor from the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream franchise, where she spent the last three seasons as head coach. She earned WNBA Coach of the Year honors in her first season there and helped the franchise to the WNBA Playoff Semifinals.

Coach Collen’s ‘Nicki Collen - Pick and Roll Offense’ clinic contains a ton of fantastic insights that will help you understand what midseason adjustment you can make to the pick and roll to ensure it remains a high-level and efficient offense for the remainder of your season.

Ball Handling

Coach Collen discusses how one way that she tried to minimize turnovers within the pick-and-roll offense is by having all of her players practice ball handling for 5-10 minutes at the start of every practice. 

The reason for this is that sloppy ball handling by either the guard who’s dribbling or the post player who could be receiving the pass on a roll can be a common cause for turnovers, which all basketball coaches know can be a death sentence. 

Outside Hand Passing

In addition to focusing on ball handling, Coach Collen notes that it’s crucial players practice passing the ball with their outside and non-dominant hand in a pick and roll scenario. 

This is because in many dribble drive situations off of the pick and roll, the only way a player can get a pass off in the correct location is by utilizing the off-hand. This might be to the roller or it might to be a wing player who gets open because their defender has to help defend the paint. 

Also important in practice is that players are starting their pick and roll offense at free throw line extended rather than closer to the top of the key. Free throw line extended should always be the priority when it comes to beginning these offensive sets because it spaces the floor and provides optimal angles for the drive, roll, and kick. 

Work Your Feet

Given the fatigue that inevitably sets in for any basketball player in the middle of a season, it’s common to see that players get lazy with their footwork in the pick and roll at this point in the year. This is why Coach Collen stresses footwork during the pick and roll segments of her practice. 

To do this, Coach Collen has her guards stutter their feet when moving part of the screen set for them. Once this stutter occurs, they will be able to make a read on whether to pass to the roller, continue driving to the basket, or kick out to a player along the wing. 

Another vital aspect of the pick and roll’s success is that the post player who sets the pick separates from the screen as quickly as possible and gets to their correct position. This is because the guard will depend on that player being an option to pass to while also keeping the lane uncongested. 

In order to separate as efficiently as possible, the post player needs to have their pivots perfected regardless of where they’re rolling to after the screen. Clumsy footwork in this separation phase can ruin any execution the offense has brewing. 

Twist the Screen

Another important concept that can add crucial layers to a basic pick and roll offense is what Coach Collen calls “twisting the screen”. 

This essentially means that after the additional pick and roll (that should be around the free throw line extended) an extra wrinkle an offense can add is that the post player who sets the pick can pivot back around and set another screen for the same guard, which essentially serves as a misdirection that can throw the defender off guard. 

The benefits to this are that it will open up for a baseline drive, a kick out to either corner, and/or set the post player up to roll into the paint or to get the upper hand on an offensive rebound. 

This extra screen twist is perfect to institute into an offense in the middle of the season to throw defenses off balance and give them something else to prepare for.