KC Mahomies screen and roll (Goaltimate Nationals analysis)
How Kansas City won the title
Ultiworld recently uploaded four games from USA Goaltimate Nationals to YouTube:
The first thing to know about these games is that it was WINDY. There's only so much analysis to be done of games played in conditions like this. Scores were higher the first day of the tournament, which matches a report from a friend that the weather was very different on day one (Saturday).
For me, the highlight of these four games was watching Kansas City (team nickname: Mahomies). Of the six teams showcased in these four games, they had the clearest "offensive philosophy".
Over and over again, when they got near the goal, they set up their offense with one player 'down' (from our perspective) below the apex of the goal area (aka the 'reverse brick'—see the diagram below).
Four of their five goals in the championship involved actions with a player near the reverse brick).
They did this again:
and again:
and again:
Making it hard to see person + disc
Setting up here makes things hard on the cutter's defender. One of my first blog posts was Walking before cutting (pt. 2): Make it hard for the defender to see you and the disc. In the article, I discuss how good cutters make it hard for their defender to maintain awareness of the rest of the field. Whether it's basketball, ultimate frisbee, goaltimate, or any other sport, this is a powerful technique for getting open.
Standing at the back of the goal area is an easy way to make it hard on the defender—you don't even have to be continually walking into their blind spot. With the disc in front of the goal, you're naturally in their blind spot any time they peek at the disc.
Look again at the images above, and you'll see exactly what I mean. In the first two, the defender is using the full extent of their peripheral vision to be able to see disc+person. In the third image, the disc is being passed out of the defender's peripheral vision—they can barely see the person they're guarding, and they can't see the disc at all.
Kansas City's third goal was an interesting example of this. In the images above, we see the defender from the side as they try to keep an eye on disc + person. But on their third goal, which you can see in the image below, the defender stands next to the cutter at the reverse brick. This makes it easier to keep an eye on the disc, but is worse positioning for cutting off angles of attack. Notice how this time around the camera sees their back instead of their side:
Give Texas credit for trying something new when they'd been burned for two goals by playing it the other way. But unfortunately, they were giving up too much space to the cutter—a sharp cut two steps forward and the defender was unable to stop the pass. Watch below (GIF followed by YouTube embed):
It's harder to play help defense
Another benefit of setting up a player behind the reverse brick is that it's much harder for that defender to play help defense in front of the goal. As a point of comparison, in the Seattle vs. Boston game, we often saw the defense set up something like this (Seattle in on defense wearing black):
With none of the Boston offense deep in the goal area, the Seattle defenders play a switchy, sagging D protecting the front of the goal area. In contrast, the Kansas City setup allows three players to play a (less cramped) 3v3 game in front of the goal, with the extra option of getting the fourth player involved when opportunity or necessity calls for it.
KC's setup makes it hard for the fourth defender to get involved in plays in front of the goal. This happens in two specific ways:
First, since the reverse brick cutter is so close to the goal area, the defense can't step too far away from them without risking giving up an easy goal.
Second, the defense can't sag off because the place they'd like to sag off towards is the goal area—but they can't sag off there because it's goaltending. (A bit like how the 3 seconds call in basketball keeps help defenders from sagging off as much as they'd like to)
Other sports have also seen offensive strategies trend towards forcing the defense to guard the entire field (five-out in basketball, the spread offense in football, etc). Setting up a cutter behind the goal seems like the goaltimate version of spread offense. Setting up on the side of the goal doesn't have the same effect—if you set up to the side, the defense can sag to within 2 feet of the goal post. But if you set up behind the reverse brick, the defense can't get within multiple yards of the front of the goal.
Of course, stationing a cutter below the goal area means it's harder for KC's other cutters to directly attack the very back of the goal area for over-the-top passes. It's more than worth in the windy conditions we saw in this game. It remains to be seen if this is still such an effective strategy in low-wind conditions.
The screen and roll
The last aspect of what made KC's "reverse brick cutter" setup so successful is they ran the screen-and-roll like a well-practiced basketball team.
Their first goal started with a screen at the back of the goal area. Both defenders guarded the moving cutter and the "screener" rolled into a wide open goal:
Their fourth goal was a near step-for-step replay of their first:
Their second goal was scored after another screen (to be honest, probably a moving screen with the benefit of replay). Both defenders this time went with the screener, and no one ever quite recovered the whole way back to the motioning cutter:
The defense wasn’t quite ready for this level of screen and role skill, and KC did a great job taking advantage of that weakness.
What's next?
To be honest, these were relatively simple plays from the perspective of an experienced basketball player (though again, to be fair to KC, they were ran to perfection). As players play more goalti and start to take it more seriously, they'll get better at defending the screen and roll. When teams get better at handling Kansas City's screens, what comes next?
The obvious answer is to take more concepts from the screening actions we see in basketball. One example is "slipping" a screen. If the screener sees the two defenders over-anticipating a screen, they can pretend they're about to set the screen before aborting into a quick cut at the last moment. This short video shows how it looks in basketball:
Thinking Basketball has a great video on the evolution of the pick and roll in basketball. He highlights a slightly modified version of this that he calls a "ghost screen":
Here's what "slipping the screen" could have looked like for KC's offense:
Remember this suggestion relies on reading the defense: KC made the right play because the defense couldn't stop their actual screen. I'm not saying they should have done slipped screens in this game, they won easily without it. Slipping will work when defenses start to overplay the screen.
Another basketball-inspired option is for the cutter to "reject" the screen. Say someone comes up to set a screen on your right. You can see that your defender is getting ready to switch onto the screener, and the screener's defender wants to switch on to you as you run right past the screen. If the defense overplays this, you can catch them off-guard by ignoring the screen entirely and going to your left instead. Here's an example from Thinking Basketball—both defenders try to keep Steve Nash from going right (where the screener is), so he fakes towards the screen and goes left instead:
A final variant we could steal from basketball is switching the side of the screen at the last moment:
I think I've spammed enough Thinking Basketball content for one blog post, so if you want more inspiration, watch the full video. There are some good “screen the screener” plays, but they may be hard to run in goalti, where we have only four players on the field and a 5-second stall count.
Congrats to KC Mahomies for defending their goaltimate national title! According to the announcers, they've now won three in a row. Not surprising they’ve been so successful given their offensive precision.