Coaches turned film buffs

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

CROWN POINT

Box out, the standing command for the defensive team on the free-throw line, had a double meaning for Valparaiso High School when Scott Martin and Rob Hummel were playing for Bob Punter.

It was actually the next play call for the Vikings’ offense.

Punter had other furtive ways to signal plays to his team, like taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes or standing in the coach’s box a certain way.

He had goofy names for plays, like “Hey, Rob, you’re too high,” an isolation play for Hummel on offense; or “What are you doing, Scott?,” a play for Martin inside.

Punter’s CIA approach to calling offense was inspired by former Crown Point coach Tom Johnson, who boasted to Punter once that he would watch film at school, sometimes crashing in a sleeping bag when he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. Then, he’d wake up and watch more film. Punter figured the strange names and normal basketball conversation, which fit his droll sense of humor, made it difficult for coaches to pick up the plays off film.

“I think it was hard for opposing teams to scout us,” he said. “They never knew I was calling a play.”

Said Crown Point coach Clint Swan: “He was the master at really obscure calls.”

Figuring out the opposing team’s plays is all part of the game.

Perhaps no one is more conscious of what other teams are trying to do than Swan, who is absolutely devoted to game preparation. Watch Swan on the bench and sometimes he can be seen looking at the other coach, like a baserunner in baseball trying to steal the signs from the catcher. In this case, it’s the play call he’s after, which Swan almost certainly knows after watching anywhere from four to eight hours of film per game.

For instance, for the Portage game the previous night, Swan had extensive clips (about 15) of Tony Cheky that he had isolated from GameBreaker Plus, his state-of-the-art software for sorting and categorizing basketball film. He actually had clips like that for every starter. Swan’s high-tech program is so sophisticated that he can pop the DVD of the game in his computer after a game and show each touch his center, Jared Smoot, had.

Or each individual turnover that Michael Albrecht made. Or every drive that Sean Crary made.

Scouting games is a different component of preparation.

Someone from Crown Point had scouted the Indians multiple times (as an example, he said they have watched Merrillville eight times). Swan typically sends an assistant out for the in-person scouting.

It’s all part of trying to get an edge in an area where most teams know each other like the inside of their houses, anyway. Because teams in the Duneland Conference play each other twice, the amount of film study Swan decreases over the season. There really is nothing left to know at some point.

“Everybody does this,” Swan said.

Yes, but to different degrees.

Lowell coach Nate Richie isn’t much of a film guy.

He spent hours watching film in college when he played for Drake and he didn’t like it much, calling it “overkill.”

“It was absurd how much film we watched,” he said. “I think you can prepare too much sometimes. At the end of the day, you have to stick to your core principals.”

Richie tries to scout a team once or twice personally before the Red Devils play and then he watches maybe 30 minutes of film on a team. His kids might watch 30 minutes, also, but never at once. His whole goal is to simplify the game as much as possible for his players. That means concentrating on what the Red Devils do, not what their opponent does.

Swan is careful about not making his players watch too much film because of short attention spans.

But he is absolutely fastidious about handing out a detailed scouting chart to his players that goes over the tendencies of the top players on opposing teams. He’ll even do a shooting chart for individuals on the other team, based on what he gets off film.

He realizes that not everyone on his team will utilize the information in the same way, but it’s there if they want it.

“It’s my job to get them up to speed,” Swan said of his game preparation. “Every coach has to find out what works for them. Each coach has their own philosophy.”

Some players are more intuitive, anyway. They can pick up on plays and get a feel for how an opponent plays after a couple trips down the floor.

Others, such as Crown Point center Evan Langbehn, an honors student, love the richly detailed scouting reports that Swan dishes out midweek.

“The big thing is knowing where guys like to shoot and where they don’t like to shoot,” he said. “I also can work on stuff for myself based on the report.”

Swan once had a point guard at Frankfort, where he coached, who had a photographic memory. He’d shown him the opponent’s play on film and his guard would call it out as soon as the opponent started running it.

Lake Central coach Dave Milausnic, whose staff has scouted Crown Point multiple times (because they run so many sets, according to Milausnic) is more fluid about his approach from week-to-week. He has notes from prior years on teams and he’ll go in waves in which he’ll watch lots of film, sometimes getting to school at 5:30 a.m. to break down film.

Milausnic is judicious about how much film his team watches.

“I try to sprinkle some in over the course of a week,” he said. “If you play three games in a week, it’s hard to watch film.”

His two young kids get in the way of going overboard on the after hour film study.

“There is only so much you can do,” he said.

Punter was a big-picture guy in terms of knowing the opponent. He talked about individual tendencies of the other players and teams but only in a general way.

“They’re high school kids,” he said. “You can’t memorize all 200 plays a team has. They could hardly remember our plays sometimes.”

Winston Garland, the West Side coach, got his fill of film while playing in the NBA. He uses it nominally with his team and for himself.

“I show them what the other team loves to do, not just what they like to do,” he said. “You need some balance. They are just kids.”

In terms of preparation, Punter said the hardest teams to get ready for were the ones that had no apparent offense or defense.

“Sometimes, you’d see teams play what looked like a zone but it wasn’t,” he said. “You didn’t know if they were relying on their abilities or running plays.”

Even the simplest plays to scout can be the hardest to defend.

Chesterton had an inbounds play under its basket that the Trojans used almost all the time when Zack Novak played, according to Swan. A player would come down to the post and screen for Novak, and he’d curl around the screen and get the ball and score.

Or, they’d overplay him and he’d fake the curl and come back for a layup on the other side. Swan could see it coming almost every time. Almost every time, the Bulldogs would get burned. That’s a case where knowing the play didn’t matter, which happens frequently in basketball.

No matter how much time is put in, if the other team is better, it doesn’t matter.

“Thats when you wonder if it’s all worth it,” he said.