Inside Florida Basketball’s Playbook: BLOB Defense

By
Eric Fawcett
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During his time at Florida head coach Mike White has been known in basketball circles and Gator Twitter alike for his talent at a particular offense set–the baseline out of bounds play.

 

Often written in shorthand as “BLOB,” baseline out of bounds plays are an opportunity for teams to run meticulously set offensive plays where detail is everything and a split second difference in timing between a screen and a cut can either mean a bucket or a turnover.

 

White’s success at BLOB plays offensively has also been interesting because early in his time at Florida he wasn’t known as a particularly potent offensive coach. The Gators struggled to score in early years, largely due to their inability to convert in the half court. However, even though they struggled to score in the flow of a regular half court game, they always had success with BLOBs. 

 

This year, success on BLOB plays has continued for the Gators. They’re one of the best high major teams in the country in efficiency on these plays (118th nationally) and they have used them to get scores when their regular offense has occasionally gone soft. 

 

While Mike White’s offensive BLOB plays are something that has gotten attention in the past, that’s not actually why we’re here today.

 

This time, we’re talking BLOB defense.

 

For the first eleven games of the season the Gators guarded BLOBs in a rather vanilla fashion, a time honored strategy, if you will. They’d have someone guarding the inbounder, doing jumping jacks as they tried to make the first pass as difficult as possible. The number one goal of the four remaining players would be to protect any easy layups off an initial pass, and that often meant switching screens liberally to prevent any one player from getting too open. 

 

Manning up and switching nearly everything is how most teams guard BLOBs these days, and like most teams in the country, the Gators had adequate success. They weren’t locking teams down, but they weren’t giving up a bunch of easy buckets. Which, in fairness, is a totally reasonable return on your BLOB defense. 

 

This is how the Gators have defended BLOBs for years now, so it’s something you would come to expect. For that reason, when I saw something different against Georgia, it immediately stuck out.

 

For starters, the Gators completely stopped guarding the inbounder. Like, seriously stopped guarding him. No one goes anywhere near him, and often the nearest defender has their back turned to him. 

 

Some teams employ this strategy and use the player that would be guarding the inbounder to double the opposing team’s most dangerous offensive threat. However, that wasn’t what Florida was doing. They lined up four players along the baseline in a funky matchup zone that confused opponents as the alignment was entirely something they were unprepared for. 

 

The fifth player would almost be playing free safety over the top of the defense, ready to sprint to any player that might be freaking free to get open. They generally stayed somewhat close to the rim, in case they needed to collapse there to protect an easy layup.

 

Take a look at it here:

This is an entirely different way of guarding BLOBs for the Gators but not one that’s totally unfamiliar to me.

 

Mississippi State has guarded BLOBs in a similar way the last couple of years, and they have had a ton of success guarding Florida’s actions with this style of defense. It also should be noted that the Gators made the change to this style of defense only two games after playing Mississippi State, a game where their BLOB playbook was rendered useless by the Bulldog defense.

 

As you can see in the clips, Florida did have some success. Aligning in a completely atypical formation is a good way to confuse opponents who often have plays designed for tighter man defense. Florida’s matchup zone in the four across alignment was a serious curveball that caught the other team off guard–at least for a bit.

 

Not everyone was surprised by it, however. South Carolina is one of the best-coached teams in the league and their scouting over the last few seasons has been at a different level than some other programs in the SEC. They were completely prepared for Florida’s style of defense, and they punished it. West Virginia, another team that always has great scouts and comes prepared for whatever the other team throws at them, also had some good play designs to counteract Florida’s BLOB strategy. Here are some examples:

Ultimately, the early returns on this style of BLOB defense haven’t been particularly good. The Gators are giving up 0.97 points per possession on these plays, which is good for 275th in the country over the last four games. As you can see from those examples, this style of defense can make it difficult to communicate who guards the inbounder once the ball is thrown in and it made for some catastrophic errors. 

 

Will Florida be able to commit to this style of BLOB defense? Likely not. Teams that are well-prepared with good scouts will likely be able to punish it when they know it’s coming, as we saw with West Virginia and South Carolina. However, that doesn’t mean it should be completely abandoned. Mixing it in occasionally to throw an opponent off balance would be a great strategy, and if opposing teams always need to be guessing what defense Florida is in on BLOBs it will be a huge advantage to the Gators.

 

Additionally, it should be noted that the Gators just made the change to this style of defense after multiple seasons of guarding BLOBs the same way. They could still be ironing out the wrinkles and figuring out exactly the rotations they want to make, and players could still be learning how to best execute the technique. 

 

Whenever the Gators are able to next take the floor, watch for how they guard BLOB plays. Now you know a little bit more about their playbook. 

 

Eric Fawcett
Eric Fawcett
Eric is a basketball coach and writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His work has been found at NBA international properties, ESPN, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Lindy's and others. He loves zone defenses, the extra pass, and a 30 second shot clock. Growing up in Canada, an American channel showing SEC basketball games was his first exposure to Gator hoops, and he has been hooked ever since. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericfawcett_.