Back when I coached a Catholic high school of about 400 students, we had to play a lot of large public schools, and I quickly realized that we weren't going to hack it on defense.

We'd have to do something different. Because of my aggressive nature, I felt the answer lay in pressure. "We'll press them the whole game," I told the squad. "We'll overplay and bump them, and when a rebound goes up we'll do this and do that and..."

It didn't work because our 5-9 guy was bumping their 6-3 guy, and by the end of the 32-minute high school game that 6-3 guy was getting to our 5-9 guy. Plus the opponents always knew what we were doing.

And so we had to change our philosophy. The new approach would be a tough, carefully planned match-up zone. The match-up made a lot of sense and looked great on paper. But it didn't work either. The offense knew what we were going to do every time they came down the floor.

We didn't have to be Rhodes scholar to realize that we had to rethink our defense. We had to come up with something that would stymie the offense--blunt some of their talent and make them think, "What's going on around here?"

And that's when we came up with the "Freak" defense - a defense that combines the best of defensive worlds: man-to-man, straight zone, and the match-up or change-up. That, we thought, would really confuse the offense.

Actually, it was not earth-shattering. But it worked, and I think it is well-worth trying, especially by high school coaches looking for an equalizer against superior talent.

Launch Freak Defense