Thoughts.

Ultimate, like most sports, appears relatively simple at a glance–you look at your elite, championship-caliber squads, and you see lots of absolutely baller ultimate players–of COURSE they’re an elite team; they’re more talented.

In practice though, talent alone is not enough. Strategy is huge, especially on defense–given the largely offensive-advantaged nature of the sport, generating turns is the name of the game. High-level defense relies not only on good, athletic, experienced players, but also on making strategic adjustments to keep the pressure on.

The amount of nuance involved with making adjustments makes it a continual learning process to execute, though the big-picture ideas behind these adjustments tend to be relatively simple.

Keep in mind that while I’m talking about adjustments as a team-level strategy, you can and should be thinking about similar changes within your own matchup in a given point/game/season.

Adjustments have two main thrusts: Changing strategy completely or Tweaking the strategy you already have.

Changing involves a shift from, for instance, man to zone D, or from one zone set to another.

Usually you do this to take away an opponent’s strength–for example, if you’re finding their downfield cutters relentless against your man, a zone D that forces them to slow down and make more/riskier passes might throw them off their rhythm. Changes are also made to prey on an opponents weakness–if a team’s handlers prove fallable, a zone designed to force lots of handler motion might prove effective.

Tweaking is where the real meat of making adjustments comes;usually when I talk about defensive adjustments this is what I’m talking about. In any D this has two components:

• The Mark
• Downfield

These two are very closely related, such that altering one will impact the other.

Adjusting on the mark means a conscious decision to take something away that you weren’t before–with an accompanying concession of something you were previously contesting.

For instance, if a team is routinely using its IO breaks for quick, effective strikes, you might make an adjustment on the mark to consciously cheat more to the open side (or perhaps commit to not biting as hard on pivots to the break side), or otherwise adjust the mark’s positioning to stop the break from going off. This has the tradeoff of making the around break easier; generally you make this concession hoping that a team that loves the IO will struggle to adjust and use the OI, or at the very least you’ll have a better idea of what to expect now that you’re dictating.

Adjusting downfield, you change up your positioning and what space you’re actively trying to take away–in the previous example, instead of adjusting with the mark, you can also adjust downfield by instructing your defenders–particularly those close to the disc, who are prime candidates to receive the IO–to play more closely to their man (more even with the mark rather than flared out into the lane), and to respect the break side cut a bit more since it’s been established as viable. In this example that’s not necessarily a good adjustment to make, as it makes the open side more vulnerable…however, it may still prove more effective than simply staying the course.

I’ll be making a few more posts going in more depth on these sorts of adjustments, and try to get at some of the “why” behind it as well, which is the real meat of the strategy. Keep in mind that as defensive adjustments get more complex, you need a correspondingly more capable defensive squad to carry them out effectively. Even minor adjustments like mark positioning require a certain amount of experience; if you’re going to mess around with straight-up transition marks or other fanciness you likely will need to practice and coordinate these adjustments before you get into tournament situations; otherwise you risk a poor defensive set and, worse still, putting your players in a position where they have to think too much in the flow of a game, hindering performance.

Conventional defense generally insists upon “dictating” your man with your body positioning–you want him to go in one direction, so you give yourself a head start and/or position yourself physically in the way of the other. This presumably will force your man to either work very hard to take what you don’t want them to, or to go where you do–in which case, you’re ready and waiting to spring into action and pressure that way too.

However, there are times when your positioning should take a backseat, and you should leverage your response to make a cutter play into your hands. (This applies to marking too–check my notes on Ben Wiggins’ ’06 UCPC presentation) This can be as simple as not biting on a deep fake that isn’t viable–if you know the throw won’t be coming (or will be difficult), you don’t have to respect it. This can apply if, for example, you are playing behind your man for help D reasons–perhaps he’s running deep to set up an under cut (and you, having a view of the field, recognize the guy with the disc is not a thrower); if you ignore the deep cut, you’ll be better primed to take away the ensuing under threat.

A couple weekends ago I was covering a half-decent handler for a Japanese college team, positioned to take away the upline cut (sideline force, near their endzone). He made a fake upline early in the count, which I responded to, aggressively, turning my hips a second early even (strong upwind/downwind dynamic–going upwind, the last thing we wanted was for them to get a power position huck, whether successful or no). Figuring he would try the same tack to get me turning early and then bust back when the time came for his next dump cut, I responded to the upline cut by not responding, merely holding my ground with my hips uncommitted; flustered at the failure of his (planned, mechanical) cut, he danced back and forth for a second before scrambling backwards for the dump–expecting him to cut back, I was poised to intercept the dump pass. (I wound up being an inch or two from the Callahan; instead the disc bounced off my hand, carrying far enough for a sliding save by my man). This speaks a bit to the psychological game and winning the Sicilian reasoning battle of wits*; it also speaks to how two identical positions can lead to decidedly different outcomes based simply on how you choose to respond.

Don’t think purely in terms of what you’re taking away with your positioning. Think also of what expectations you communicate with your response to that first (and ensuing) cut and how you can leverage it in tandem with your body to get the results you’re looking for. Sometimes you can lose the battle to win the war.

*An example of Sicilian reasoning, courtesy of the Princess Bride (my all-time favorite film):

But check this article about RPS for a bit on the limitations of such thinking; ultimate is more complex in many ways than RPS, but the options are nonetheless limited and inclined to some circularity in reasoning. How do you discern a pattern in your opponent’s behavior without getting caught up in overanalysis? Can’t do too much thinking in the moment–you need to develop your expectations and anticipations efficiently, if not instinctively.

• The Huddle’s latest issue gets at a question (defensive matchups) I’d considered a while back; Seth Wiggins rephrases my thoughts far better than I ever could. The answer absolutely depends on a whole host of other factors, which only makes the question itself more important.

  It’s especially relevant in the context of teams with very lopsided talent pools (your generic 1- or 2-stud college team); you probably want that stud in the backfield to help deep/with poaching regardless of what the other team’s assets are, for instance.

  I also think all the authors neglect one other point in determining defensive matchups: what about on the turn? If your best defender is your best cutter/handler on the turn, and their best cutter/handler turns out to be their best defender, do you really want to hamstring the D’s offense by turning around the matchups like that? There’s also a lot to be said for rotating fresh legs on the other team’s stud and then running that stud into the ground on the turn. Ultimate is always played both ways.

• Open Ultimate. You might remember Dan Cogan-Drew as the guy behind the videopapers on ultimate skills–this appears to be a large outgrowth of that.

  I haven’t taken the time to investigate fully yet but the idea–creating a space for online “courses” in ultimate–seems worthwhile. I’m a little skeptical of getting a full team to use resources I’d post there, were I a captain or coach, but it might be a nice tool to have in the box, especially if the site has longevity (enhancing institutional memory is, I think, a key to creating an ultimate program instead of the occasional one-hit wonder).

• Via Fireworks, a nice bit from Dr. Goldberg about dealing with cheaters. Dr. G gave the keynote at the inaugural Ultimate Coaches and Players Conference, and his lessons then have largely inspired what I believe about performance psychology now–his post alludes very succinctly to these beliefs.
• More writing about elite performance, luck, and deliberate practice. My friend Mr. Crew (who is single and has a huge…flick) makes the excellent suggestion that perhaps it’s not so much the inherent advantage of prior experience that lets players with HS experience thrive in college, but simply that their extra background gets them more attention and mentoring from earlier when they get to college, enabling faster/greater progress.

  Read, and think about how you might inspire, mentor, and motivate your players/peers to strive for more and work harder.

  Relatedly: this is on my to-read list for the near future.

• More on how effort trumps talent. I love Gladwell’s stuff–if you haven’t already, I still very heartily endorse Outliers (as well as Blink–I must confess I haven’t read The Tipping Point yet, though I am familiar with the premise).

  Where are the inefficiencies in ultimate? DoG seemed to hit on one in the ’90s when they started emphasizing possession, but today’s game seems to have evolved beyond that somewhat. Perhaps we’ll just keep laughing at Frank’s motion offense until, finally, an underdog team embraces it an dominates. But perhaps its glory will be fleeting, written off as a fluke or too much work, and remain as well-used as the full-court press in basketball.

An anonymous commenter calls me out on a lack of drillable/practice-able recommendations. Thanks for catching me, anon–I value actionable info a lot and have been remiss.

To preface: zone, being inherently team-based, is hard to drill and train. It’s not like man D or throwing skills where all you need is a few more people, and I’d even go so far as to say that practicing zone O and D is only useful inasmuch as you’re practicing with the same group you’ll play with–familiarity is a foundation to dependable D and O.

That said, skills like reading a disc and boxing out, marking, and being heads-up as a defender are things you can practice with limited personnel/outside of the context of pure “zone” training, and these are useful for zone situations too.

In terms of drills…there’s something of a “standard” zone drill of running 3 guys in the cup around a circle, forcing the throwers in the circle to repeatedly break through or around the cup in a big convoluted game of monkey in the middle. While this is perhaps useful for the bare basics of how to not get hosed, I think it serves best as a stepping stone to higher-level/more realistic drills–in other words, game situations.

Things like set start and finish points for a scrimmage are perhaps one of the best options for game situation practice. E.g.: start with an offensive line vs. a defensive line in a trap, stop as soon as the trap is broken (or allow a few extra passes for more realism); start with the disc just past the cup, as if on a break through/over it; stop when the defense recovers or is scored on. Reset if the D generates a turnover.

You can impose unique restrictions on this to emphasize certain facets for O or D: for example, you can add/subtract a receiver or defender to work on finding receivers in open space/covering multiple receivers in the backfield or flooding areas to overwhelm a single defender, respectively. I’ve also seen variations where the deeps are removed from the equation, on both O and D, to emphasize side-to-side and short motion to beat the zone.

One thing I haven’t seen, but would love to, is changing the field size–narrowing the field to favor the defense more, or widening it to favor the offense. Creativity is encouraged through restriction, and I’d like to see what kinds of adjustments are made in such situations.

With all of these other adjustments though, the essential thing is to keep getting reps. If you want to, you can scrimmage with limitations, but you’ll keep focus and get more bang for your buck if you emphasize one situation at a time. It’s great that Dorner can bomb a forehand to Sam streaking deep off the turn, but probably a waste of time when you want to quickly reset for the O to try again.

If you want your team to execute on a given strategy repeatedly, give them lots of reps to help recognize situations in which to apply it and experience so they can adjust to what works and what doesn’t. This takes a bit more critical thought on the part of a practice planner, which is why I don’t have too much in the way of specific recommendations.

You might look to ultitalk for some discussion, and I’d also point you to the huddle for some more espousal on the matter of teaching team D (you might also peruse what they have on zone D to inspire your thinking as far as what to focus on).

Any commenters out there have more to add with regards to teaching and drilling zone?

Flow in zone situations, at its finest, is so beautiful and potent as to completely crush the will of the defensive team, making them completely shift away from zone as a defensive strategy. It is an offense’s best friend and a defense’s worst nightmare.

How does it happen? And how can it be stopped(or perhaps you can only hope to contain it)?

Flow starts when the disc moves past the cup. It may end there if no continuation options are available, but simply breaching the cup puts the defense, well, on the defensive.

Continuing flow takes coordinated movement. If all the downfield receivers rush towards the disc, it’s likely that only one more pass (with perhaps a second quick dish for minimal yards) will go off before crowding prevents further motion. This is still better than no flow, but the best teams will work in turn such that 3-4+ passes are made, quickly moving the disc downfield.

On offense, flow in a zone situation is essentially a series of opportunity cuts.

If you’re deep, the defense is usually flipping out about preventing a quick deep strike–meaning at least one and perhaps two or three defenders are good bets to be behind their men deep. This usually means the cutters who were in the deep/wing positions on offense are perfectly positioned to get a big gainer on a cut back to the disc; 15-20 yards is not too unreasonable an expectation.

Poppers or those close to the disc should look to do one of two things off of the initial move past the cup:

1. Get a quick dish to keep the disc moving (if the popper in question is immediately open and the thrower is being marked or otherwise has few options)
2. Haul ass upfield and look for an opportunity to get the disc further down the pass chain–you never know when that deep might get pulled too far to one side, etc.

Above all else, flow demands that you keep the disc moving. It’s almost always a better call to dish it to somebody nearby and keep pushing upfield than to hold the disc waiting for the perfect look. The longer you hold the disc, the more time the defense has to catch up and get comfortable; a constantly moving disc forces the D to constantly adjust, and it can be very demoralizing for a cup to constantly be left behind the action.

If you’re on defense, goal #1 when the disc gets past the cup is to slow disc motion.

A backfield defender‘s main priorities are,

1. To stop the quick huck for a goal, and
2. Stall (disc motion) for time while the cup catches up.

Sometimes this means taking your one guy and sticking to him, but more often than not this means letting a small fish go to keep the big fish at bay–you can let them get off those little 3-5 yard squirts for a time if it means the disc remains generally in the same area for your cup to catch.

Again, being able to read space and motion is key–recognizing what spaces are viable for the offense in flow and where the biggest threats are, and then responding to limit them, is the crux of zone D.

If you’re in the cup and the disc gets past you…bust ass to catch up and get in the way again. In much the same way that you don’t want to just blindly sprint from station to station when the disc is swung, though, you have to be cautious to make sure you’re not rushing to your ‘position’ only to let the disc slip right by you and start the chasing cycle all over again. A cup needs to expand and become dynamic as the disc moves to limit threats in flow, much the same way the backfield does.

Again, a feel for space and motion is a huge help.

I feel like zone defense is much more prone to specialization than offense, so I’ll try and break it down by role.

Cup/wall/chase

• Legs. A tired cup is a beaten one.
• Bids. While the backfield is more a question of height, the front is much more about width–you don’t need to bid all over the place, but being able to *threaten* it is often enough (this usually means showing that you can do it so the other team will respect it enough not to test). Alternatively, you can practice baiting the layout D.
• Reading the thrower. This is something of an art–knowing when a thrower might try and test you with a pass through the cup (or over), when he’s committed to his dump and you can be a little more aggressive trying to shut it down, etc. If you can recognize the “locked in” look, you can cause a lot of trouble.
• Anticipation/reaction time. This is closely tied to the above. Anticipating a throw means you’ll respond that much quicker, and having a short trigger from on your toes to laying out/reaching for the D is always a plus.

Backfield (short)

• Legs. Not as much running as the cup, usually, but you need to be there too.
• Range. You’re responsible for covering space, and need to be able to make a play on passes into it. It’s also necessary for a zone set that baits a cross-field pass to D–if you can’t cover ground quickly you’re likely not going to get the D.
• Knowing one’s range. Perhaps more important than having range is knowing what your range is. It’s one thing to take a rask on a throw that’s right on the edge of your range (really, this is what baiting means), it’s another to think you have somebody covered only to see them get the disc with ease and shred the zone. Knowing your range means recognizing the conditions and the thrower, and falls under that catch-all umbrella of “field sense.”
• Communication. A cup can get pretty far without too much talking (short of trap and change to man calls), but dealing with dynamic threats in the backfield means the more you can coordinate with your teammates, the better.

Backfield (deep)

• Range. Wings/deeps cover even more space. This is compensated for somewhat by the extra time on throws deep, but don’t forget about blades/quick-breaking hammers.
• Knowing one’s range.  The consequences for getting burned deep are severe.
• Ups/height. Much moreso than other positions, the deep NEEDS to be able to establish air dominance. Whether that’s being tall enough to make handlers think twice, having jaw-dropping ups, or simply showing, time and again, consistent superiority of positioning on deep throws, all zones hinge on the fact that deep throws are hard, and a good deep has to make this so.
• Communication. A deep-deep in any zone is a de facto field general, directing the D’s response to threats and managing deep coverage (again, a dominant deep presence helps with this). Wing types have less of a burden to shoulder here, and generally only need to coordinate coverage handoffs with the rest of the backfield.

So, how do you work on these things?

The athletic components are a simple matter of hard work and conditioning.

For sensing space & time / field sense, I refer you to my recommendations in the last post. Naturally, observe the defense more than the offense, but understanding what one side of the disc wants to do will give you a good sense of what the other should want to stop.

Communication and knowing your limits comes with experience. The wider the breadth of situations you get involved with, the better prepared you’ll be, and the more you push your limits and fail, the better you’ll get to know them.

Reading the thrower and anticipation come with experience too, but to some extent you can cultivate both by watching. The “I’m about to huck” gaze down the field is a particularly strong tell in most players.

I can’t think of a whole lot else to say here. Feel free to chime in with your own views/experiences.

I’ll wrap up my overview of zone defenses with another unorthodox zone set you’ll encounter every so often.

I’ve heard it referred to as box and one, but regardless of name, this is a zone set that runs normally save for one–it places a mark on one player on the field, typically a team’s stud handler, with the goal of forcing a team to rely on its (presumably weaker) others.
 
This one doesn’t really need a full fleshing out–generally speaking, you’re taking one of your wings in a standard or 3-2-2 arrangement (or one of the 4-p cup/wall in a 1-3-3) to fill this role.

Generally your remaining wings/deeps will need to pick up the slack–again, you’re banking on the fact that the secondary handler(s) don’t have the throws to punish that hole.

It can really throw for a loop any team that really needs a single player to succeed to thrive–every team has its pillars, so this can be a nice extra piece in your toolbox to throw out there when you’re looking for breaks.

Any of you run into zones I haven’t mentioned here? At one point at Dartmouth we toyed around with a 2-3-2 D…and not with the “3″ containing a middle in the cup. 2 points, 3 upfields, 2 deeps; it succeeded (and failed) largely on chaos and the strength of communication in front to control space, but was never exceptional enough to be a feature defense–like many of your unorthodox looks, they succeed because they’re novel and make a good change-of-pace.

This more or less wraps up all I wanted to cover on zone D (turns out March was just zone D month, rather than zone month)–planning to do a bit on zone O, and then I’ll try to tackle the matter from an (individual) development standpoint.

Legend goes that the original junk D was run by DoG or perhaps one of its predecessors with one Mr. Parinella and a skeleton crew numbering in the single digits–in order to conserve energy, they shirked away from man D (too much running) and zone D (too much running for the cup), opting for something a little more efficient–akin to a man D with well-coordinated switches. A little research shows that you can credit them for popularizing the D, but perhaps not the creation.

Above all else, it’s important to remember that any junk defense is NOT a true zone, and that players should almost never be just covering an area. Find a (wo)man and stick to ‘em until you find a new (bigger) threat to switch on to.

This is true to some extent of all zones (you want to avoid defensive tunnel vision), but it’s particularly important here (especially if you plan to run the junk set persistently rather than for only a few throws).

I’ll disclaim all of this by saying that this set is meant to be run against a straight stack; I’ll try to touch upon ways to do this with a ho-stack (Dartmouth developed one for natties last year and ran it with good success against Arizona for a couple points), but I don’t have a ton of insight to offer there–it’s harder to coordinate switches against spread defenses.

Personnel

Generally speaking (there are many variations–remember, this set’s strength is its flexibility):

• Three handler defenders (“0,1,2″–that’s “zero,” “one,” and “two.”). These guys basically wind up playing man defense on the three players closest to the disc (this likely will include whomever is first in the stack in a 2-handler set), but they don’t chase them terribly far downfield.

• Two open-side defenders (“3,4″). A clam set typically forces in one direction. Depending on the set, They’ll either be open-side ins, with one taking a wide cut to the sideline and one taking more of the “gut” cut straight to the disc, or one taking ins and one taking deeps.
• One “hammer stop” or break side guard (“5″). Again, pretty self explanatory. Generally this position looks to stop over the tops, but if you have a breakside deep this position can play in more and look to stop flat breaks to the front of the stack too.
• One deep/breakside deep (“6″). Pretty self-explanatory; either works with the open-side deep or is the deep with highest priority to stop deep shots (ie, plays deeper than the open-side deep).

Setup

The two most common clam variations I’ve seen run either a box or a diamond shape.

It’s worth noting that the shape is simply a guideline of where people are looking to cover–a clam set, at its finest, looks exactly like a man up until a player moves*. The 0-6 distinction refers to the fact that the clam set is a man D first, adds a bit of deception if any opposing sidelines are listening (sometimes we’ve loudly counted for a clam, hoping the receiving team would take the bait), and designates where players should ‘default’ to in a man-like setup, especially off of a stopped disc (OB pull or turnover or the like), with the 0-2 taking the first three and the 6 playing last back. It’s also good to have this guideline in case the O is running a set you don’t want to clam against–for instance, if they run a horizontal stack and you only run a clam against a straight stack.

That said, here are a couple diagrams for a ‘box’ style clam (also note the Ultimate Handbook has a [more] useful clam explanation with diagrams, too):

The first image shows a general clam setup off of a dead disc–the first three are more or less playing honest man D to start, while the back four have the directions they’re looking to pick up a switch in marked with arrows.

Note that the break-side defender is already cheating to the break side. Also note that she, more than any other position (except perhaps the deep), is playing more of a “zone” role, always on the lookout for passes into her area and feeling a little more freedom to pinch off to ensure the break side is well-covered.

Once players start to move you might see the clam respond like this. Players cutting in on the open side from deep will get picked up by the 3 or 4–having been poached off of, her cutter will likely head deep–where the 6 is waiting for her (or perhaps the 5, given the cut is on the break side). This is the clam in a…clamshell.

Should you choose to persist with the clam after the first throw/cuts, you might see the 2 switching onto the cutter in the lane if she moves for the dump, the 3 move to pressure a quick break up the middle…myriad adjustments can and must be made to accommodate cutter movement. A quick, dynamic offense can be hard to contain, but teams that are very systematic are easy pickings.

Other things to note:

Alternative setups I’ve seen involve using the third handler guard as a sort of cup-like upfield on the disc, or otherwise leveraging the flexibility of the three–perhaps man D in mid-field but cup-trapping on the sideline, etc. There is a TON of room for creativity with these sorts of sets (Harvard seemingly had a new junk or zone-ish look for us every time we met), so don’t be afraid to experiment and take some time thinking through how you might structure a junk set.

It’s not uncommon (at least, amongst my classmates during classwars–perhaps you won’t see it at nationals) to throw a junk set with no specifications–”do what feels right” in my circle, but I’ve heard the terms “zen zone” (where you are is where you should be) and “junkyard” used too. Relying on player savvy can be a powerful thing in the right situations–chaos, in appropriate quantity, will topple rigid order.

Goals

1. Confusion. Especially if this set goes off of a stopped disc (I’ve known teams to pull OB on purpose to ensure this), a sudden break from what looks like a normal man D to something that clearly is NOT a man D can create a window of confusion for enterprising defenders to capitalize on, especially against a team accustomed to you throwing man already (clam/junk sets are a GREAT halftime adjustment).
2. Dictating the offense’s pace. Again, with the confusion that a junk D creates, you’re almost guaranteed to stifle, if not stop entirely, the opponent’s set play. Zones dictate an offense’s pace as well, but they are more readable and quickly adjusted to–at its best, junk D is much harder to read the holes in and really makes THEM play to YOU.
3. Quick turns. As the clam’s primary strength is the element of surprise, this set is most likely to get the disc quickly. It’s very common to see a junk or clam set run for the first few throws to stop a set play and hopefully get a D, then returning to an honest man D before the offense can figure out how to beat it.
4. Sideline punishment. The clam is at its best on the (force) sideline, where the open-side defenders have an easier time denying their side of the field. Throwing this set starting on the sideline (off a turn mid-point for example) can be devastating, as the lack of space combines with confusion (#1) to force a tough decision (and hopefully #3).

Risks

All of the main risks associated with the typical clam revolve around the disc moving quickly from one side of the field to another:

1. Disc on the non-force sideline. Conversely to #4 in the goals, a disc all the way on the far side is very tough to defend–the open side becomes so expansive as to make effective coordination of switching a challenge at best. Typically if the disc gets this far over the offense is soon to find an upfield cutter, setting the wheels in motion for this set’s demise.

Control by: There are a couple ways to control for this. The first and easiest is to simply transition to man D. You might also consider switching the force at this juncture–it might backfire, however, if downfield (especially deep) defenders are far out of position. You could switch the force and maintain the clam if your players are versatile enough, but that takes a lot of practice and communication and might not be worth it in the big picture of this set’s purpose.

2. Quick breaks to midfield. Similar to the disc on the far side, this opens up a lot of space and renders several defenders out of position–a formula for quick shredding.
3. Long breaks to the far side. This enables #1.
4. Big break throws (cross-field hammers/blades for yards). These throws can kill your generic clam, for the same reasons as above.

Control by: Being diligent with your 3, 5, and third handler defender to take away the quick IO up the middle for #2, and with your 5 and potentially 6 for #3 and #4. You can also leverage the mark–shading to take away the quick inside break/long around, putting up a hand(s) against the hammer, etc.

As for the Horizontal Stack Clam…

…It’s a bit more difficult to run a good clam against a ho-stack simply because the cutters use more space and are more likely to be moving simultaneously–generally speaking I think we only ran this set for the first handful of passes, rather than persistently, as continued switching became too taxing (note, we had only practiced the set for about a week before using it).

The same general ideas apply vs. a ho as against a vert–switching to cover the open side threats, one to cover the open-side deep, one guy breakside hammer stop.

I think the real difference in running against a ho-stack, though, is how you leverage your handler defense.

Generally speaking, ho-stacks suck on the sideline, and generally speaking, clams become much more effective in the same position.

The idea, then, is to leverage your handler D–have them poach into the lane and encourage disc movement to the sideline–before applying an aggressive clam look. From the sideline the extra spacing of the cutters becomes less relevant, as the viable throwing lanes narrow, making it far easier to leverage the switching that a clam requires.

If a team refuses to make passes to the sideline, then you can maintain an extra upfield defender who can make open-side passes difficult, and (depending on how you choose to use the break-side handler defender) an upfield defender to discourage easy (around) break passes. Have your mark shade to take away inside-out passes and you can frustrate a horizontal stack.

You can leverage your handler guards in similar manner against a horizontal stack regardless of defensive set, by the way–if you’re not already doing so in man D, you’re putting yourself at the mercy of the other team’s O.

A clam is little more than coordinated poaching. This sort of action doesn’t have to happen purely within the confines of a junk “set,” but can (and should) occur naturally mid-point as the situation dictates. Strategically, think of the clam as a tool to free your players’ mindsets and encourage more awareness–develop their field sense, and encourage creative use in other situations.

*this is the sort of thing I’d love to rig up in a flash animation–hoping to get around to that over the next two weeks during my spring break.

UPDATE: You might also check out this thread on ultitalk for some regional differences in what a “clam” is. I’m talking about the American version.