Flex 101

A few weeks ago one of my readers asked about the Flex. It is BC’s base offense in basketball. There are many variations, but the overriding themes are ball movement, plenty of picks and screens, and high percentage shots. Skinner has used it exclusively while at BC. Yet he has tweaked it based on his current players. When Troy Bell was on the team, the movement tended to stretch to the perimeter. The past few years with Smith and Dudley, the movement has become much tighter to the point where it looks like all ten guys are in the paint. The key to BC running it remains patience and passing. Al has always had good passers who look for and often find the cutter or open man.

For further and better explanations, here are some diagrams from the web:

This is a good example of how our offense starts. As I said, we tend to keep the movement closer to the key when running the offense.

This is from ESPN. We play something close to the “Maryland Flex.”

Here is an example that shows various plays out of the Flex.