Caszy Kosciolek calls it his “4 to score” offense.
A spread-the-floor, patient, slow-down offensive set that makes for boring basketball, but one that can help an underdog hang with a heavy favorite.
The Tamaqua coach utilized the strategy in Friday’s Schuylkill League boys’ championship game against Pottsville at Martz Hall.
After a 27-point loss to Pottsville on the same floor 18 days ago, Kosciolek felt the strategy would give his Blue Raiders the best chance to knock off the unbeaten Crimson Tide.
It nearly worked.
Tamaqua held the ball for the nearly the entire first quarter, and stayed in the “4 to score” set the entire game. The result was a low-scoring, nail-biting, thrilling boys’ final that Pottsville pulled out 33-28 in overtime.
“Their defense is the toughest, probably on this side of the state,” Kosciolek said of Pottsville’s man-to-man, aggressive defense. “We figured if we could spread them out, be patient, take the very best shot.
“We want to try to score, but if we can’t, we want to keep the offense moving, keep people spread and try to make them vulnerable.
“You can’t stay enough how smart (his Blue Raiders) played and how selfless they are in order to play a game like this.”
Tamaqua slowed the tempo from the outset — running nearly four minutes off the clock on one possession — and the game was scoreless until Pottsville’s Travis Blankenhorn scored on a jumper with two seconds left in the first quarter.
The teams combined for just five shots in the first quarter, with Pottsville going 1-for-2 from the field and Tamaqua shooting 0-for-3.
The pace picked up somewhat in the second quarter, as the Crimson Tide outscored the Blue Raiders 8-7.
Instead of an up-and-down, high-scoring game that most people figured they would see, the slow-paced contest had Pottsville leading 10-7 at halftime.
“They got us out of our game a little bit,” Pottsville coach Dave Mullaney said. “They had a great game plan. Them slowing it down as much as they did got us out of what we wanted to do offensively.
“You want to minimize possessions,” Mullaney continued. “They did a great job of doing that.
“We haven’t seen a dribble spread in a long time. There are ways to defend it. We made some adjustments trying to keep it out of the middle of the floor. In the first half we allowed them to get it into the middle, and you can run that offense all day if you allow them to do that.”
While Tamaqua was slowing the game down offensively, the Blue Raiders were able to slow down Pottsville’s offense just as effectively on the defensive end of the floor.
Tamaqua played a tight 2-1-2/2-3 zone that sagged 6-foot-7 Brett Kosciolek deep into the lane, but also extended at times to prevent the Crimson Tide from making skip passes across the zone for open 3-point shots.
Pottsville was patient against it, running its motion offense in search of a good shot, but struggled to hit from the outside against it.
“Any zone defense, you have to shade their shooters, and that’s what we did,” Kosciolek said. “I thought we did a good job of finding where Blankenhorn was most of the time. It’s a game plan you use against the personnel that’s there. We shaded shooters, and we did a good job of man principles in that zone defense in knowing where their weapons were.
“We did a nice job when the ball went into the short corner and we defended the high post.”
The combination of Tamaqua’s patient offense and its tough defense forced the game into a crawl for three-plus quarters. Pottsville shot 0-for-4 from beyond the arc before sophomore Jordan Abdo came off the bench to hit a pair of 3-pointers late in the third quarter, and finished 2-for-9 from 3-point range.
“They had a good strategy defensively, and we have good shooters out there. But we needed to be more aggressive against it,” Mullaney said. “There’s other ways to score against a zone other than just hitting 3s. There are other things we could have gotten that we worked on, they just did a great job in it. We weren’t hitting from the perimeter, and they could tighten it up a little more.”
Tamaqua opened up its offensive attack in the fourth quarter after falling behind 20-13 with 4:41 left, and rallied to tie it and force overtime. Eli Nabholz tallied five of his nine points in the extra session to help Pottsville win it.
The victory gives Pottsville (24-0) the No. 1 seed in the upcoming District 11 Class AAA Tournament and sets up a quarterfinal contest between Tamaqua and North Schuylkill.
The Tamaqua-North Schuylkill winner could get Pottsville in the semifinals.
On a different floor, in a different environment, Tamaqua’s slow-down strategy may not have worked. It worked to near perfection Friday.
“(Pottsville) is very good,” Kosciolek said. “We’re not into moral victories, but no one has taken this team into overtime. I told our kids this is something for us to build on going into district play. We learned a lot about ourselves, too.”