DES MOINES, Iowa — Penn State assistant coach Mike Farrelly is flanked by fellow assistant Aki Collins as they shuffle to their seats across from Texas’ bench hours prior to the Nittany Lions knocking off Texas A&M. In this case the Aggies’ home state brethren are in for a slightly better afternoon, holding off a pesky Colgate team to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. That’s what No. 2 seeds do.
Meanwhile, Farrelly and Collins are watching, taking notes, keeping an eye on things. Because it’s tournament season, and that means getting ready for your next opponent before you’ve even played your first one.
The art of scouting is balance between being prepared and not overthinking things. It’s getting ready for what your upcoming opponent likes to do without getting too caught up in absolutely every single detail. Maybe you’ve watched and studied a dozen games of Texas basketball, now you’ve got to boil that down to the important points, teachable, memorable and important keys to victory. Easier said than done.
“They’re talented, very talented, athletic, very similar to A&M in terms of athleticism,” Collins said after Penn State’s win over A&M. “They have [more shooters than A&M] a really good basketball team. We’ll watch tape tonight and watch tape in the morning with the guys and kind of come up with a game plan to try to beat them but you know, we’re gonna stick to our principles.”
“We have to stick to who we are. Now you have to adapt a little bit to who you’re who your opponent is and take away different things that they do well, but for the most part, you stick to your core principles […] hopefully you worked enough throughout the year to put your guys in position to play to win the games. And like coach just said we’ve been playing tournament games for the last three weeks. So it’s nothing new for us.”
The actual details of a scout? It’s a bit of everything. Sometimes it’s tendencies players have, sometimes it’s about how a team runs a certain set or how they handle certain situations. It’s understanding strengths, exploiting weaknesses and not getting caught up in too much changing yourself. Because at the end of the day it’s going to come down to the basics. The ball is either going in or it isn’t, but it sure helps to know what might swing those percentages in your favor.
When it gets to the point of presenting the scout the team, it comes down to keeping it simple. Of course when you’re talking about high level college basketball players, simple is all relative.
“You end up watching only eight, nine games and either late game stuff and their special teams,” Associate head coach Adam Fisher, who was the primary scout for the Texas A&M game said. “So we just really tried to hone in on that. And then what’s the simplest way to present to the team, I don’t want to overload them with too much stuff. So really focus on what guys do and try to take what they do well away. We go through about 10-12 actions that we think we’re gonna see the most of. Here’s how we’re going to guard them and then you just work on that for three straight days before you get ready to play.”
In a world of film being available from every angle on demand, it does beg the question “why scout in person?” The answer to that is what you might expect; everyone looks different in person.
Not to mention everyone is easier to hear too.
“You maybe try to hear some things that the coaches are saying if it’s loud or that people hold a sign up you can kind of see that sometimes,” Fisher said. “But you’re really just trying to get a feel live for a team versus on the tape.”
When it comes to remembering everything you have to talk to longtime Penn State guard Myles Dread who is by his own admission a scout expert. Ask him to recall the scouting report from a game three years ago and he has a surprisingly good memory. The key to that might be a little bit of what goes on between Dread’s ears that is simply unique to him, but sometimes it’s just a matter of caring.
Nobody wants to be the guy who makes a mistake, and nothing leads to a mistake like not knowing the scouting report.
“I’ve always had a great memory,” Dread said. “I don’t really forget things often, if ever, but I mean it’s true. For scouting reports I just take it so personal that I’m going to make sure that I know the scouting report front and back every single time. It’s a lot of film, a lot of film and a lot of comparing the film to your principles as a team and finding how to execute against their offensive defense. It’s the want and will to be that guy to say hey, I’m not gonna let my team down because I didn’t know that number, whatever doesn’t go left.”
As for Penn State’s upcoming scouting report against Texas, the Nittany Lions will practice on Friday evening roughly 24 hours prior to their game against the Longhorns. A veteran team can make up a lot of ground simply through walkthroughs but as Farrelly – Penn State’s primary scout of Texas – noted like all of his fellow assistants – you better keep it simple.
Especially with a quick turnaround.
“You got to keep it as basic as possible,” Farrelly said. “We have a good experience with doing this sort of thing in the Big Ten tournament. You can’t give them everything you’ve seen for the whole year, right? You’ve got to boil it down to the key concepts, right? I thought we did a great job of that. Especially with Indiana who we hadn’t played in a while. So just a couple of those basic concepts that Texas uses the most so it’s gonna be a lot of ball screen stuff and some post ups, because they have a bunch of big guys and some size and some guys they can post up so a lot about the game plan on that. But thankfully, with our defensive system, we kind of do what we do. We stick to our principles a lot.”
And of course the challenge for coaches is the same it has always been. Don’t overthink it.
“Coaches are gonna to try and watch every play and every possession they’ve had all year. The biggest thing is when you boil it down for these guys, you got to keep it simple for what they can absorb in a short amount of time. That’s the biggest thing – how do you go, okay we know all of this, watching every baseline out of bounds play Texas has run all year. But how do I give that message to them? I know that our staff will be super prepared for what they do but we got to give them the information that they need to be successful and carried out on the court.”
Easier said than done, then again the Nittany Lions didn’t win by almost 20 by mistake.
