Welcome to St Francis of Brooklyn
Nicknamed the Terriers, St. Francis Brooklyn is one of seven Division 1 teams in New York City and has the dishonorable distinction as 1 of 4 teams to not make the NCAA tournament despite being eligible for every one. The program was founded in 1896, making it the oldest collegiate program within New York City. They play in the Northeast Conference, last winning it in 2014-2015 (but losing in the Conference Final to Robert Morris). St. Francis has also won the 1951 Nation Catholic Invitational Tournament, and finished 4th in the 1956 NIT. But enough history, what about this new era under a new coach?
Strategy
When it comes to style of play my focus is on one of my favorite styles, run and gun….well run n’ gun -esq. We are going to play with a high tempo, get out and run in transition, crash the offensive boards, and play tight defense on the other end.
We’ll primarily run a lot of freelance plays as I don’t want the kids slowing down to run a set play. Not to say we won’t run any though, we still plan to run a bit of a half court offense, only maybe 30% of the time, but enough to not be a constant track meet and to give the kids a chance to rest a bit. When we are running sets, we’ll going to stick with a motion offense but throw in a bit of triangle now and then to mix things up. We tend to favor getting good looks inside and easy layups to jacking up threes.
On the defensive side I like to run the basic man to man defense, with a tiny bit of 2-3 zone thrown in when we need it. While I feel man to man is risky, especially at a smaller school where we aren’t expecting to bring in the best of the best at on or off ball defense, I like to use it as a selling point that we will prepare the kids for the pros. Sure, none of the kids we bring in will probably ever go pro unless it some small European country or maybe as G-League bench filler, but hey, nothing wrong with trying to sell a dream right?
Recruiting Strat/Overview
Now we’ve shared our strategy and how we want to play, the biggest question everyone has is, “Coach, what are your plans for recruiting?” Well I want to focus on being the communities team and part of that is I want to try to keep recruiting mostly local. I’d love to get players from Brooklyn or the surrounding boroughs, but even just the in state kids from New York will do. Given our proximity, we’ll also take trips down to New Jersey and Connecticut. We’ll also dip our toes at times overseas just to see if there are any diamonds in the rough, and look at Florida for kids who parents moved down south but still Heart NYC.
Position wise, starting with PG, we want guys who can bring the ball up, spot the open man, and make the pass. If they can shoot it is a bonus but not necessary for the way we want to play. Defense will always be a plus with out Man-to-Man D, and they need to have the stamina to maintain the pace.
At SG and SF we are looking for guys not afraid to take a shot, even if it means they take a few bad ones now and then. They need to be able to hit outside shots, with it being a plus if they have some sort of inside game as well. Like PG they need to be able to run up and down the court and ideally be decent defenders. We’d like decent size at the SF position, I don’t want to be starting 6’3 guys there! And SG though I’m willing to work with undersized players if they meet the rest of our needs. Oh, and we want both guys to be good ball handlers, and would love if they were at least decent passers as well. Obviously, as with everyone else, good defense is a plus too.
To the big guys now, these guys size is more important to us. We want a C that can tower over the smaller players we expect to see in conference, and if we can find a PF that is the same, then that is a bonus! We need these guys to be able to rebound, as we are going to place heavy trust in them getting defensive boards while our guards and SF look for easy fast break points. Shot blocking is the other key we want out of at least one of our bigs, if we can’t protect the paint than it doesn’t matter how much we score on the other end. After that I’d like them to be decent ball handlers and passers, and on-ball D doesn’t hurt. I’m willing to overlook athleticism here if need be, and don’t mind if they aren’t scorers. Though I do like having a big to dump the ball down to either in our Triangle sets or just when the offense isn’t working.
Next time around, we'll talk about the team, staff, scheduling, and get ready for the start of the season. My plans are to not put out a ton of updates, mainly doing them at preseason, start of the season, start of conference play, end of conference/conference tournament, maybe the NCAA tournament? And postseason.
