Steve Lutz Is Methodical When It Comes to Game Film Sessions

STILLWATER – When Steve Lutz was hired, he talked at length on playing selfless basketball and hard-nosed defense. He did the same thing throughout the summer and on into the fall, as well as up in Kansas City at Big 12 Media Day head of the season. Steve Lutz is a defensive-minded coach, who loves selfless basketball. 

While the Cowboys are 2-0 to start the season, the first thing he’s talked about in each of his postgame press conferences was how he was happy the team won, but not happy about how players throughout the game started to play selfish basketball once the Pokes took a decent lead, allowing both Green Bay and St. Thomas back into the games.

The old saying goes ‘practice makes perfect,’ and while that’s true, one thing that helps set that apart is watching game film, and lots of it.

Pokes Report publisher Robert Allen asked the trio of players at the Tuesday availability, Brandon Newman, Robert Jennings II and Connor Dow, about Lutz’ film-watching sessions.

“The theme the past couple of games has been defense,” said Dow. “We’re going through it, and he’ll pick apart everybody, he’ll let you know if you did good, he’ll let you know if you did bad. But really the film sessions just been focusing on where we could’ve communicated better, where we could’ve rotated better, guard the ball right here. So, it’s just been a big emphasis on the defense the whole time.”

“Piggybacking off of Conner, another thing coach Lutz has emphasized in our video is discipline,” said Jennings. “Like Connor said, there’s possessions where we could get six or seven stops in a row, and then give up four or five, and it’s just a matter of us being disciplined and doing the same thing for 40 minutes. If we could string together a 40-minute game on the defensive end and offensive end, that’s when we’ll know we’re getting closer to where we need to be. So, discipline has been a big emphasis.” 

Relatively long answers from players, especially on watching film. But it was spot on with what coach Lutz said film sessions have been like.

“At least once, probably twice before I watch it with the team the next day,” Lutz said of watching game tape. “Our normal pattern is that after the game, the staff will grade the film, and when I say grade the film, you’re going through every possession and saying ‘Arturo made a good defensive play here, he made a bad defensive play here. Bryce made a good defensive play here, he didn’t box out,’ and you just collect information so that at the end of the film grading, each kid has somewhere between probably five to 50 clips. Then they’ll come in and they’ll watch film with the offensive and defensive coaches. So, now you’ll watch yourself on film and you’ll be able to understand ‘hey, this is what coach was yelling at me about.’ Hopefully, you’re learning through listening, you’re learning through seeing, and then you’re learning through repetition in practice because we’re trying to fix those mistakes. 

“Then the next morning, we’ll sit down with the guys, and we’ll have teaching clips, we’ll have good offense, bad offense, we’ll have good defense, we’ll have bad defense. Then I always talk with the team about runs. Runs within the game are maybe we hit a great defensive stop, and we get a score on this end and that puts us up by 10 [points], but then the next possession down here we give up a three, then we shoot a bad shot and then we give up a layup or we foul them. Then we shoot another bad shot, and we turn the ball over. Well, that swing there is gonna range anywhere from probably 11 to 15-16 points. Those swings within a game, if you have too many of those bad ones, you can’t recover.”

The Cowboys have been really good in the first two games of the season forcing turnovers with 39. 23 of those turnovers have come from steals. So, in that aspect, the defense has been good. But on the other end, shooting hasn’t been the best and discipline has been an issue, especially from the first half to the second half. 

The Pokes will have their chance to see if there’s been any improvement from the second game to the third game on Thursday evening. We’ll see what coach Lutz has to say following the game.