Preparing for coach Dip Metress's coaches clinic with this film session

At coach Dip Metress's (Augusta University) coaches clinic tomorrow, he will isolate these final minutes of the 2011 NCAA championship game. As he has done for years at his annual "classroom clinic," he'll give coaches in attendance the chance to talk about what they see in these and other clips, and what they might do if there team were in similar situations. These are my thoughts after re-watching these clips from this great game:

Coach Lennie Carlson (Augusta U) said the goal of a good offense is to put your best players in position to be successful. I think coach Stevens wishes the Bulldogs could have gotten Gordon Hayward the ball in scoring position at least 2-3 more times in the last 2 minutes of this game.

Shelvin Mack and Ronald Norad both look off Hayward multiple times and Hayward only touches the ball in situations where the first looks don't work.

On the final possession before Zubeck knocks Mack's pass out of bounds with :13 left, Butler players looked off Heyward at least 4 times. Jim Nantz even said "Heyward hasn't touched it" at the :20 mark as Mack pounded the ball near halfcourt. Even after the timeout Heyward was the inbound passer in the corner baseline spot with :13 remaining. Maybe the play was for him to get the ball back, but even if that were so, I doubt they would have executed that from that spot with that much time left.

The possessions when Heyward touched the ball (both instances were improvisations after the first try didn't work!) in a good spot were the possessions when Butler got the best shots. Even despite Singler's tough defense on the "real" final possession, Heyward still got as good a shot as that team could hope for in that instance. And heck, he even almost made the half courter at the buzzer.