Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
My late friend Orris Miller looked up from the huddle and ripped into our quarterback Jerry Yennie. “Quit licking your fingers every time we pass,” Orris snarled.
He’d picked up on something that few high school football players do. He’d read the signs of the next play before the snap. The rest of us didn’t notice, Jerry didn’t notice either, but Orris had and it was a lesson I never forgot over the ensuing decades that followed.
Reading an opponent is part of competing. If they give off telltale signs, you can use that knowledge for a little extra edge, especially when you’re playing defense.
Another lesson I learned from the first head coach I worked under, Jerry Fullmer at Lusk, was to read the fullback.
“The fullback will point you to the play,” Jerry repeatedly told the boys. He was right.
In later years, as the fullback position has gradually been phased out of modern offenses, I taught my kids to read the guards. A guard can block head on, “OIL” style, meaning on, inside or linebacker, they can double-team, they can trap, or they can pull. A good coach knows that guards are as important as running backs in a ground game, maybe more so.
We were playing Hanna Elk Mountain a long, long time ago. I was coaching the Lusk Tiger defense and my middle linebacker, Kevin Ellis, was having a problem with one of the officials.
The officials were from Laramie. We were already a little annoyed when we arrived at the Hanna field and discovered it had been used as a dog park the previous summer. There were little Fido style “Land mines” all over the field. Jerry cited the field safety rule and demanded that school officials clean the field.
They balked, but after a few minutes and a dozen or so Hanna personnel, the little piles were removed.
The umpire that afternoon was a guy I’d gone to college with and we did not get along.
Kevin was the best linebacker I’ve ever coached, but the umpire kept lining up between Kevin and the center, way out of position. Hanna didn’t have a fullback and Kevin told me the official was blocking his view of the guards and he wasn’t able to get a read on the play. I told Kevin to politely ask the umpire to move back to a standard position.
The official’s response was predictable, “Shut up kid, I’ll ref the game, you keep your mouth shut.”
We called a timeout and I asked the umpire to move. He modified his reply a bit, “You say one more word and I’m tossing you and your kid out of the game.”
Kevin gave me a puzzled look. “Level him on the next tackle,“ I said. Hanna ran a dive and Kevin stuffed the play at the line of scrimmage, with the umpire tied up in a knot between the two boys. He lined up between the safeties on the next play. Problem solved.
Basketball has keys a player or coach can read just as easily.
Tim Nolan, retired coach at Greybull and later Kelly Walsh, was a master of reading the other team.
One year after the season was over, at a track meet, Tim told me how he’d read my point guard in giving his defense an edge.
Brian Clemetson was a talented point guard. He’d been awarded the Most Valuable Player award in our 1988 state championship win over Mountain View as a junior.
I never noticed Brian’s tendency in bringing the ball up the floor to set our half court offense, but Tim had.
This is what Tim relayed to me during the postseason that year. “If went to the middle, you were running either a high pick and roll or a high/low post exchange. If he went to the right, you were picking away, trying to post up on ball side. You never set up a play on the left side.”
Well, shoot, he was right. We were predictable in those situations, and a little bit of predictability in the hands of a good opposing coach can cause problems.
You don’t need keys when playing some teams. My late friend Alfred Redman had that type of program. Either you broke the Wyoming Indian press, or they buried you with it. If you could keep them from running, you had a chance but keeping them from running is like convincing a bison not to charge. It’s easier than it sounds.
I picked up a 1-4 press breaker from a camp in Grand Junction, Colorado that did the trick, but then you had to run a patterned offense, otherwise a quick shot and you were back in fast break mode with a bunch of two-legged greyhounds. It’s never been easy playing the Chiefs.
Al’s press and run style was so effective it changed the face of Wyoming high school basketball in all four divisions. No one has ever had the effect on the game in the Cowboy State that my friend Alfred did.
One year at the Wyoming Coaches Association annual clinic, the organizers asked me to run a session in how to break the press.
I wasn’t thinking when I agreed to do it. In a classroom off the Arena Auditorium, I set up with a whiteboard and about 40 coaches in the audience. In the front row was Alfred and my other late friend, his longtime assistant Bryan Trosper.
They looked at me with big grins on their faces. “Go ahead, show these guys how to break our press,” Alfred said.
He had a dual purpose. He knew we’d had great luck in breaking his zone presses with this, but that luck would soon run out since he would know exactly what we were doing.
What the heck, I trudged on and described all the nuances and player requirements to run our 1-4.
After the session, the three of us hit the “Little Brown Jug” across from the dorms on Grand Avenue and had a few laughs over a couple of cold ones.
Now, that’s a tendency you can guarantee when coaches get together in the summertime.
Three years ago, I was in the stands at Norwin High School in a Pittsburgh suburb watching the Knights play West Mifflin.
Sure enough, Norwin was telegraphing each play. The right tackle was the giveaway. He just brushed the grass in his stance when they passed, but he shifted his weight onto his hand if they ran his way. If the play was in the other direction, he never dropped his rear end into a decent stance. I started telling my son-in-law Adam and his parents what the play was going to be. After calling seven in a row, people sitting near us began to ask how I knew what was about to happen. I started to explain keys, stance, reading the linemen, but their interest waned and they turned away.
To some it’s just a game, to others, there’s a bit of science and detective work in playing good defense.