How We Use Tennessee Transition to help us Play Fast

The core pillars of how we want to play the game are race, flow and attack. This means that we are looking to push the ball as quickly as we can and attack the opposition early. In order to support our pillars, we pay attention to these principles:

• pace and space
• advantage based
• shot selection

These basically come together to guide us to get into the right spacing, as early as possible and look to create advantages before looking at our shots.

After all, space comes before advantage and advantage comes before the shot.

Our goal in transition is to create a scoring opportunity in the first eight seconds. This is regardless of make or miss. Since this is a core pillar of ours, we tend to spend a lot of our practice time in transition situations allowing our players to get repetitions at situations they will experience in the game.

Here’s a look at how we use Tennessee Transition to script the situation we want.

Four offensive players start on the baseline opposite from the basket they are scoring in. The fifth offensive player is on the free-throw line extended. This is also where the five defensive players start the drill. Each defensive player is given a number, one through five.

The Coach is on the sideline and passes the ball to any offensive player. As the coach passes the ball, they shout out a number. The defensive player whose number is called sprints and touches the baseline as the game is played 5/4 on the opposite side.

The offense has an even bigger advantage because we have allowed one offensive player to start on the free-throw line extended. The goal in this segment is to get a high percentage shot within eight seconds.

We are currently reviewing our scoring systems and may make some adjustments here. However, at the moment, points are only awarded if we score an uncontested lay-up or an uncontested, rhythm three within eight seconds.

Depending on whether it is a Teaching, Learning or Competitive segment, we will make some small adjustments in how we set up and run the drill. This may include time of stoppages to correct or it could be initial line-ups. Check out our post on Duplicating Game Intensity in practice to see how Tennessee Transition fits in within our practices.