Volleyball and school program Offensive Systems: Different Ways to Run the BIC

Offensive Systems: Different Ways to Run the BIC
By Bill Ferguson, Head Men’s Volleyball Coach, University of Southern California
4Coaching Volleyball 2.0
In the mid-1990s, UCLA’s venerable head coach, Al Scates, had the idea to run something that had
never been done in the United States on the men’s volleyball court – a fast back one. He had the
personnel to make it happen: Stein Metzger at setter and Jeff Nygaard at the middle blocker
position. (Nygaard played for UCLA in 1992, ’93, ’94 and ’95, and Metzger was there from ’93 to ’96.)
Three-time Olympian Nygaard tells www.volleyball1on1.com how this “fast back one,” eventually to
become known as the “BIC,” materialized.
“I was with the [U.S.] national team at this time in between col- lege seasons and we were doing a
hybrid system where I was the op- posite – but I wasn’t the true oppo- site because I had Bryan Ivie
and Tom Sorensen [on either side], who were great out of the back row. I was working on hitting out
of the back row, but I was really an opposite who hit mid- dle. Then I would rotate to block middle. A
lot of teams had no idea what to do against us. I went back to UCLA and Al came up with the idea,
‘Why don’t we run a back-row quick set?’ Stein (Metzger) and I had just re- cently watched the movie
The Sting with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, and [we wanted a secret sign] liked the touch of
the nose in the movie to use to signify our new at- tack. Eventually, we scrapped the touch of the
nose, howev- er, because Stein would wipe sweat from his nose, and I didn’t know if we were do- ing
[the back-row quick set] or not! Eventually, Stein came up with the thumbs-up sign, and I asked what
we were going to call it so I could audible it. Stein said, ‘Just call it a BIC.’” And the rest, they say, is
history. Nygaard goes on to explain, “I can’t take credit and I can’t say definitively that I ‘in- vented’
[the BIC] or I started it in the world, but I know for a fact, in the NCAA, I was the first one to do it. Al
[came up with] the idea and Stein and I worked on it, and eventually the BIC [was born].”
Bill Ferguson, head men’s vol- leyball coach at the University of Southern California, pre- sented a
session at the 2012 AVCA Annual Convention in Louisville, Ky., on the BIC and different ways to run it,
depending on your team’s per- sonnel. Following are some of his thoughts on this very innovative
back-row attack.
When I got to USC about eight years ago, we were the second-to-last team in the conference, but we
were winning the party. We didn’t have the types of players we really wanted, so we had to be a bit
creative. At the time, Brazil had come to the forefront with the BIC and was running it right over the
top of the middle blocker. We decid- ed to follow suit at USC, staying within the confines of our
program’s principles. At the University of Southern California, we have four principles we live by –
our “Constitution,” if you will.

1 Serve tough. We don’t talk about going for aces all of the time, but we do talk about getting an
opposing team in trouble or lim- iting its offense based on the pass.

2 Ball control. At USC, we want to control every aspect of every rally. We want to re- ceive serve
well. It follows all the way down to where we put the free ball

3 Gameplan offense. I was always a huge New England Patriots fan – specifically a Bill Belichick fan. I
was an aficionado of his ideology. (Bill Belichick, head Patriots coach, recently told ESPNBoston.com’s
Mike Reiss [Oct. 12, 2012] of his “game plan offense approach,” “I guess I’ve always had [the]
philosophy – you try to do what you think works best against [a] particular opponent, within the
framework of what you are comfortable doing.”) The BIC al- lows us to do this.