Coaching the Matchup Press: Aggressive Defensive Principles for Winning Basketball

Principles, concepts, and coaching pointers for executing a full-court, trapping match-up press. Covers why we press, the general alignment of the matchup press, the box theory, responsibilities by position, rotations and drops versus a variety of alignments, effective trapping, drills for individual pressing defense, how to vary the pressure points, and much, much more.

Huggins’ accomplishments rank him with the nation’s top major university coaches. His 542-191 record (.739) amassed during his 23 seasons as a head coach ranks him fifth in winning percentage and 13th in victories among active Division I mentors. His string of 13 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances is the third-longest active streak.

His teams have won 20 or more games in all but four of his 23 campaigns and he has averaged 23.5 victories a season, 26.0 wins per campaign over the past eight years.

Huggins, 50, has compiled a 374-119 record (.759) in his 15 years at Cincinnati, making him the winningest coach in terms of victories and percentage in the school’s rich basketball history.

Huggins has directed Cincinnati to 10 conference regular season titles and eight league tournament titles. The Bearcats have been to postseason play in each of Huggins’ 15 seasons at UC, advancing to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament three times and in 1991-92, appearing in the Final Four.

Huggins, who has earned the Ray Meyer Award as the Conference USA Coach of the Year in three of the past five seasons (1997-98, 1998-99 and 1999-00), was selected national coach of the year by ESPN.com in 2001-02. He was named co-national coach of the year by The Sporting News in 1999-00 and was Basketball Times’ national coach of the year in 1997-98. He earned national coach of the year recognition from Hoop Scoop in 1991-92 and Playboy in 1992-93.