The One-Step Cut as a Setup for the Setup
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Loading ...At Dartmouth we’ve been advocating strongly for our cutters to work hard to set up their cuts: “Seven Hard Steps” is an oft-repeated mantra, a reminder of the time and effort needed to really set up your defender and, equally important, to create space to attack when one plants and makes a real cut.
But I still see bunches of guys who, when forced under, do what I’ll call the one-step cut–one hard step in one direction (usually right at the defender) and then a turn and commit cut in the other direction.
Oldest cut in the book, right? Can work for cutters like myself with a quick first step and good acceleration, but good defenders can keep up with this move–it’s a quick fake setting up a footrace.
The cut may be fundamentally lacking, but at Kaimana (and previously, but only now have I begun thinking about it) I found it actually makes a great decoy.
Given that probably 90% of the time when a cutter makes the one-step cut their movement in the other direction is a committed cut, I’ve gotten in the habit of using the one-step cut to sell the notion that my next move is my real cut to my defender–only to plant and run them the other way those critical 5-7 steps later. Good defenders typically anticipate some kind of fake or setup, and the one-step cut can fulfill that condition for a defender and lull them into a false sense of confidence at having “read your move”.
Of course, the fundamentals of cutting–footwork, cutting hard enough that the defender has to respect it, finding space–all come in to play too, but it’s a quick and easy move to throw in, not as the basis for your cutting, but as a tool you can whip out and throw in for a change of pace. (The same applies for jukes as well–use them to keep your defender honest).
I really like this strategy when I have been burning a team deep time and again. When they think you are going to go deep…. you set up your in-cut, with a big step fake then fake deep-cut. Good post!