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My only epxerience coaching 4 on 5 was not nearly as dramatic, but surprised me at the time. We had 5 players for a game, our center got in foul trouble, and wound up fouling out with 4+ minutes to play. We had outplayed this team early, had tired late and they had cut the lead to 3 when we lost our player. We had two timeouts left because I had used one per quarter to rest the team, and we used one immediately to set up our strategy. So the last 4+ we played with 4 players and one TO. We proceeded to finish on a 10-2 run, mainly on fast break baskets and some good off the ball cuts, and we didn't use the last TO.
Three keys to our success were our extra effort knowing we were shorthanded, the opponent's overconfidence once they got the man advantage, and a complete change in our offense and defense as a result of us going down a man (and losing our most dominant player). We had been banging it inside, and we went to a more open attack with lots of cuts. We had played man on defense and had to zone. both of these changes temporarily confused the opposing team and we not only survived, but actually outplayed them.
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