The fascinating history behind Wichita State basketball’s favorite alley-oop play
If you walk into Scott Drew’s office, you’ll find binders full of basketball plays that the Baylor head coach has collected during his life in the sport.
In one of those binders is a hand-drawn play, probably scribbled by Drew decades ago, that has been a gift that keeps on giving to the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
If Harlond Beverly’s alley-oop dunk just before halftime of the Shockers’ 89-69 win over Montana State looked familiar, it’s because the play has been a staple in Paul Mills’ playbook at WSU. The Shockers executed the exact same play, all ending in alley-oop dunks against zone defenses, in five games last season.
While it may be a new way for the Shockers to steal two points and create a highlight in the process, Mills has been running the same play since he was a first-year head coach at Oral Roberts during the 2017-18 season.
And, you guessed it, it’s the same play Baylor executed countless times for easy lob dunks during Mills’ 14-year run on Drew’s staff.
“Scott Drew has more plays than Broadway,” Mills quipped. “And I’ve stole a few of them.”
The play itself is fairly simple: Two guards are out front against the zone, while the target man stands unsuspectingly in the corner and the other two players dot the blocks. Because the bottom zone defenders tend to face forward and follow the ball with their eyes, they are susceptible to what happens behind them.
When the guard is in position out front, the two players on the blocks criss-cross to set back-screens on the bottom zone defenders and the corner man has a free runway to launch for an alley-oop dunk.
Mills has found an ideal target man in Beverly, who has the hops to make the play look easy and is inconspicuous in the corner because he routinely lines up there as a wing player. WSU connected with Beverly on four alley-oop dunks against American Athletic Conference teams last season.
“There’s so many things that have to take place on the execution of something that looks so simple,” Mills said. “That pass has to be on target. It has to be caught. The screening angles have to be right. The timing has to be right. All of those things play a part.”
WSU assistant coach Quincy Acy laughed when asked about the origin of the play that has become a go-to for the Shockers against zone defenses. He still remembers how fun it was being on the receiving end of the play during his standout career at Baylor.
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” Acy said with a smile. “Basketball is a copycat game, the more you realize it. It’s like a big game of chess.”
The play wouldn’t have made its 2024-25 debut against Montana State this past weekend without the input of Beverly, who asked the coaches to run it on the road in the season-opener when Western Kentucky switched to zone. But Mills hadn’t installed the play in practice yet, so he decided against it.
When Beverly asked again during the week, Mills finally agreed and WSU practiced the play for the first time last Friday, the day before the game.
Sure enough, the play came in handy for the final possession of the first half when Montana State switched to a 2-3 zone defense — the only possession of zone defense it played the entire game — to try to confuse WSU following a timeout. But senior point guard Justin Hill was on it, as he looked back to the bench when he saw the Bobcats in zone.
“We had two plays called,” Hill said. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“I really appreciate the fact that he was going to find out what the right thing was to do,” Mills added. “And then he delivered a dime there to Harlond.”
Mills isn’t the only former Drew assistant who has taken the play with them. A film study by The Eagle found instances of Jerome Tang (Kansas State), Grant McCasland (North Texas) and Matt Driscoll (North Florida) all running a carbon copy or a close variation of the back-door screen play for an alley-oop against a zone defense.
Mills stole the play from Drew, who stole the play from another coach, who likely stole the play from another coach.
Regardless of the true origin, it’s a play that keeps on working for Wichita State all these years later.
“I’ll write a book one day called, ‘Plays I’ve stolen from other thieves,’” Mills said. “We all do it. We all steal. That’s basketball.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2024 at 12:12 PM.
.jpg)