With the long weekend, and my feeling guilty over not doing work I should have for school, I actually spent a lot of time preparing for Monday’s practice. I always go into practice with a game plan, but I was super prepared.
And of course I step into practice and am dealt my first surprise. Who is sitting there lacing up, but Brian. A pleasant surprise. He tells me that David was not feeling well and so would not be at practice. One of the things I had planned was that at the end of practice instead of doing an open ended complement of somebody, each player would have one person to watch and that way everyone would get a complement at the end of practice. Having Brian there, but not David, meant I simply did a switch on those things, as well as some premade teams I’d made.
We start practice talking about all of the good things that went on during our commanding victory. I let them do most of the talking and they hit on all of the major points behind our victory. It was good. I then talk about how we didn’t do a few things so well and that’s what we’d be spending our time doing at practice this week. That included, most importantly, our offense against the zone.
We then did our continuous motion drill with the dribbling. I explained that we would be running “Princeton” our team continuous motion, on Friday. I think that several of the players on the team might have had a little too much turkey. Brian was winded after about 2 minutes. He explained that he’d never had to run so much in his life, which made me laugh. This second ankle injury seems to have really caused some changes to his style. Where as before he was one of the quickest and fastest players on the team, he is now much slower than many of the other players. I had talked to him before practice started about how I didn’t expect him to be full speed all at once and I understood it would take some time for him to catch up to some of the things we’d done. I really hope that he didn’t rush back too quickly. Noah also seemed to have been particularly slow. He won’t be at Sunday’s game so he’ll have a few practices to get back into shape.
I then dismissed them to a quick water break. Brian asked if I would watch his free throw shooting. And it was then that I remembered how I want everyone to be doing free throw shooting after running. DOH! All my preparation and I still forgot that I’d been wanting to do that.
After our water break, where I reminded them that one of the reasons we won was because they got tired in the second half and we didn’t, we did a screen drill. The only time we’d practiced it before was at our 5 man practice. For the drill we practiced going from a low post to screening high. We talked about the options that can come from a screen based on what the defender does. Overall the drill worked fairly well. Most of the team had trouble defending off the screen, in fact Scott was the only player to do well, so next time we run this drill, either on Friday or next Monday, we will talk about how to defend it some, rather than just focusing on the offensive side of it.
We then went into our fast break drill where they line up on the free throw line extended, I pass the ball to a player, and yell out the name of a defensive player. The defensive player then touches the baseline before going back to defense. I really need to start naming the drills, such as this, that we’re going to be returning to from time to time. Suggestions would be welcome. A big focus here was how to defend short handed. We talked about creating a “high-low”. Overall the offenses got better as we ran this more, which is a good thing. We are such a fast team that it’s hard to get too much of a fast break on us as we get back quickly. There will always be some opportunities but hopefully the player will “hear footsteps” and miss the shot. Brian actually directed the fast break well when it was his turn. Jack M, however, did not do such a good job. He had an open wingman but instead decided to try and drive, which considering he was tightly guarded by Gordie, didn’t work so well. This was but one example of his being slightly clueless. I don’t get how a player can perform so poorly in practice, even in gamesque situations such as this, and then do so well in a game. Perhaps he just played the game of his career? I guess I’ll find out.
Following this we spent some time on our in bounds drill. And it was AWFUL. This was something we did poorly at during the game and we got the ball in bounds more through luck than any sort of coordinated play. This is our one fixed play. I worked hard at making sure players only really focused on one position so they’d remember what to do, and still, it was bad. I’m not sure I can find a much simpler inbounds play, though I will look for one for next week as maybe we need to make a switch. I dunno.
Finally, we worked on our zone offense play. This, not surprisingly, caused some confusion, but that’s what I expected. I don’t think the play will be ready for Sunday, so hopefully Northfield doesn’t run too much of a zone.
We ended practice with a quick game of golf and then we ran our suicides. Since there were a couple of house league teams who were wanting to get on the court, rather than talk inside the gym, I took the team outside and we did our end of practice wrap-up in our half-time huddle area. Jack M, as seems to be typical of him, couldn’t find something nice to say about his player to watch, Brian, so I ended up supplying the positive there. This format didn’t work as well as I expected. I’ll give it another go at some point, but if we’re going to do positives, I think we’ll likely go to the more wide open format, even if that excludes some people some of the time. I reminded them about the game time, and informed them of a possible change in times. Gordie let me know that he’s playing on a house league team and didn’t want the game time to change so he could play in that game as well. Evidently his father is coaching the house league team none-the-less. I then asked how many other players were playing on a house league team and learned that exactly zero other players were. In some ways I think that’s too bad, as having the range of abilities is something I like about house league baseball as I really think it can often help the mediocre players see how to step it up some.
Overall, this was a bit of a “blah” practice. Nothing went too well, nothing too poorly. I was all pumped up coming in to it, and as mentioned had planned it more, so I’m a little surprised about it. Perhaps there wasn’t enough competition in it? Too much learning? I don’t think there was much more standing around time than normal, so I don’t think that was it. I dunno. I do know that I am glad that Brian had been gone for the first six weeks. The kid likes to challenge my authority. I am going to have to put the smack down on that mighty soon, as I will not let the atmosphere which has been built suffer at his hands.
For Friday, I think we’re going to focus on the zone offense again. I will work on finding some sort of competition to play in the middle of practice, and we will work on a full court press. In many ways breaking the press is more important to us now than doing the press, but I know that learning the press will take time and so it’s best to introduce it now and keep working on it for a while until they’re ready to actually run it in a game. I’m trying not to look past our next game, against NF1, but to a certain extent I am doing just that as I think getting them ready for our game in two weeks against MP1.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
The standings for the league have been updated. Not to diminish our accomplishment, but we have an eight team division and the four winning teams all won by 20 points or more. Further, based on the tie breakers we'd be in 4th place because our 12 points allowed was the 4th most allowed on Sunday. In other words, after 1 game it seems like it will be a league of haves and have nots. We play another one of the have nots on December 3rd, and then the following week get our first away game and against one of the two teams from the largest suburb in our division.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Reader nfg22 writes:
Reader Izulde writes
4 whole points in the second half? Thats unnaceptable...oh wait that was defense..J/k...Great game...honestly that is smothering defense. If you can keep the other team to an average of 4 points a quarter you should go undefeated...I would agree that 4 points in the second half was terrific, though part of that was luck, as they had several open layups that they missed. I agree that if we can play defense like that it means we should be a contender in any game we play.
Reader Izulde writes
Lucas, as I believe I noted in Friday's practice report, will see limited playing time for the moment and, as mentioned, saw the least playing time. I have already made one adjustment keeping him at one position. I hope he'll learn that one position, where to start on offense, how to move with it, what kind of tricks to do guarding a man, etc. He's really the best fit to play center when Dante is out, but I had Jack playing there this game to try and simplify things for Lucas. I mean it's hard not to like the kid, since he finds me after every practice, and did so after the game, and said thanks. I'm sure his parents have him do it, but it sort of exemplifies the nice kid that he is, so hopefully he'll pick things up and be able to contribute fully to the team.
Fantastic first game! That kind of victory has to make you feel good, and I think it really showed off the importance of your conditioning them early on in the season. Now you can focus on the finer points.
Maybe try switching Lucas to a sub role if you get more guys in? Maybe if he's only in as a reserve, he'll gradually get more acclimated to the system and whatnot.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Game 1 - Spartans vs HP
I get to the gym before 2 o’clock. Already the HP coach (HP being our opponents) and one of the HP players is there. It’s actually one of the HP players I know and I chat with the father a little. By the time 2 rolls around about half the HP team is there. At 2:05 Tom shows up. That’s just fine with me. I purposely only told our players to get there 15 minutes early. These kids are 9 and I figured the longer they were at the gym, the more likely they were to get nervous. 15 minutes, if they were on time, was more than enough time to get loose, have me talk to them and get ready for the game. Sure enough by 2:15 our whole team is there. I’m having them do lay-up lines since I haven’t taught them anything better to do. Finding a pre-game ritual was something I wanted to do, and haven’t done. There certainly hasn’t been enough time to teach one so I don’t feel too awful about that.
A few minutes before the game starts they ask me for “Coaches and Captains”. And I’m like Captain? I don’t have a Captain. I grab Tom. Poor Tom looks like he’s going to pee in his pants he’s so nervous. The kid from HP seems to be equally as nervous. Ref goes over several rules including one about “team control” that frankly seems to go over both my head and that of the opposing coach. After the meeting, I call the team in. I have Tom recap the important points (good sportsmanship, tuck in your shirts) and then go over our three focuses:
On offense we need to pick away
On defense we need to hustle back
On the bench we need to be cheering on our teammates.
We talk about having fun. And it’s time to start our game. I lead us in a cheer of Spartans (our team name) and it’s time to go out. Except I forgot to name our starters. Whoops. I name our starting five of Jack M, who will bring the ball up, Gordie, Tom, who will be our in bounder, Jack P, and Dante.
It takes a while for them to match up, but they eventually match up. HP is bigger than we are but more in terms of weight than height. HP gets the tip-off and we’re underway. The first quarter is ugly. HP comes out in a 2-3 and our team is lost on offense. We haven’t really practiced against the zone so I’m not surprised. On the good side our defense is DOMINATING. There are a lot of travel calls on both sides, though more on HP than on us. HP is also committing a lot of fouls. I’m happy. And do you know who is looking like the best player on the court? Jack M. He’s doing lots of the little things that make a difference. For instance, he’s not afraid to double up when the opportunity presents himself. He’s also doing a good job of keeping the floor balanced.
The quarter ends and I just know, from how they’ve been playing, and more importantly how their coach has been acting, that HP is going to come out with a press. Have we practiced how to break a press? Not so much. I explain how I want Lucas, who is in, to be back setting screens for Gordie and Noah. Jack M is going to try and get open deep. The good news is these kids are 9. So when the press comes, we’re able to break it. As the quarter goes on, we start to be able to break it with more regularity and start to find some open baskets. Our defense continues to play well. My one big coaching decision, which pays huge dividends for us, is to have Tom simply guard the point guard the full length of the court. I tell him not to worry about stealing it, but just pressure him. This leads to NUMEROUS turnovers. In fact I believe they only got 2 or 3 shots off once we started doing this . Their point guard was dribbling right into the corner or throwing the ball away or whatever. We go into half up 14-8, but we’re in control of this game.
At half I stay up beat. I talk about how it’s a close game but we’re in control. Our team doesn’t really appear to be tired at all which is also a good thing. The buzzer goes off and we go back in. As there is no press allowed in the 3rd quarter I take the trailer off, but do have Jack meet the point guard at half court. Again they don’t look so good.
As the game goes on the tempo seems to be increasing. The 3rd is a low scoring quarter, but we manage to extend our lead to 22-10. This means we’re not even allowed to press, being up by more than 10.
And in the 4th quarter, we basically run them ragged. Our defense creates turnovers and we transition these turnovers into points. Despite the fact that we have 7 players and they have 12, they’re tired and we’re not. HP never stops with its full court press, which means that we continue to blow by them and we end up winning, with ease 34-12. I try to slow them down at the end of the game, but basically with HP playing full court press, I can only slow down the game so much.
What a relief. We won and we won easily, though honestly HP missed a lot of lay-ups and we made quite a few jumpers. I think to a certain extent their coach’s commitment to an up tempo game was a mistake. They could have out muscled us but didn’t. We won because of our ability to create transition baskets and because our defense was smothering.
If we had a game ball to give, it’d go to Jack M. He did so much right. One thing we need to work on is that when he’s bringing up the ball he always makes his first pass to his left.
Jack P frustrated me. He was great at creating transition opportunities, both as a defender and as an outlet on offense, but when we were in our “set” offense he took too many shots. In fact he took nearly twice as many shots as our next highest shooter (14 shots to 8). Of course we also led the team in steals with five. So I will take the good with the bad.
Lucas looked basically lost out there. On numerous occasions he had trouble finding and defending our man. On a couple of set plays on in bounds his man got ridiculously open, but fortunately they missed the shots. He did moderately well on the boards, with 4 rebounds, but he lost a couple of others that should have been his.
Dante was a beast underneath getting 9 rebounds. He scored three 4th quarter baskets when he essentially had easy lay-ups thanks to our beating them down the court. In other words he did exactly what we needed him to do. He didn’t play tight enough defense at times, and the HP coach wanted more plays where their Center just backed Dante down. Of course our guards were so smothering it made it hard to get those inside post passes.
Gordie played some good D, but his shot selection is poor. He’s a good shooter, but I am going to rapidly lose patience for shooting shots when guarded by 3 players.
Noah was, perhaps, our worst player out there (actually according to Win Score, a measurement of productivity that I use, it was Gordie, followed by Noah). He looked confused on defense and didn’t really do much of anything on offense. Starting Jack over Noah provided to be the right call, in fact it wasn’t even close.
Tom did about as I anticipated. When the H’s are back and he can play more guard, I think he’ll do better. I don’t feel like I’m taking best advantage of Tom at the moment but I think as we settle more into our motion offense, Tom will see more touches and get shots as he understands what needs to be done.
On the whole, playing time was pretty evenly distributed. Lucas had 15 minutes of playing time, still more than half the game, and he had the fewest minutes of anyone on the team. Dante, Tom, and Jack M all had about 23 minutes to lead the team. Distributing minutes with 7 players is, obviously, easier than with 9 or 10, but I’m glad that everyone got quality play time.
We have no practice this coming week and no game either next weekend so my next update will not be for a little more than a week. I’m glad we won. I don’t know if I can claim too much credit for it, as they did things well that we hadn’t really practiced outright though several of the things we did in practice, such as following shots, did seem to pay-off. However, this victory belongs to them. And let me say what a relief it is not to be looking at a season as rough as baseball was. I just couldn’t take it.
In the post game speech, I talked about how it was a long season. We should be pleased with our effort today, and named our defense (obviously) as something we’d done well. But we have things to work on as well. But a 20 point victory never hurt anyone, especially without our best player.
A few minutes before the game starts they ask me for “Coaches and Captains”. And I’m like Captain? I don’t have a Captain. I grab Tom. Poor Tom looks like he’s going to pee in his pants he’s so nervous. The kid from HP seems to be equally as nervous. Ref goes over several rules including one about “team control” that frankly seems to go over both my head and that of the opposing coach. After the meeting, I call the team in. I have Tom recap the important points (good sportsmanship, tuck in your shirts) and then go over our three focuses:
On offense we need to pick away
On defense we need to hustle back
On the bench we need to be cheering on our teammates.
We talk about having fun. And it’s time to start our game. I lead us in a cheer of Spartans (our team name) and it’s time to go out. Except I forgot to name our starters. Whoops. I name our starting five of Jack M, who will bring the ball up, Gordie, Tom, who will be our in bounder, Jack P, and Dante.
It takes a while for them to match up, but they eventually match up. HP is bigger than we are but more in terms of weight than height. HP gets the tip-off and we’re underway. The first quarter is ugly. HP comes out in a 2-3 and our team is lost on offense. We haven’t really practiced against the zone so I’m not surprised. On the good side our defense is DOMINATING. There are a lot of travel calls on both sides, though more on HP than on us. HP is also committing a lot of fouls. I’m happy. And do you know who is looking like the best player on the court? Jack M. He’s doing lots of the little things that make a difference. For instance, he’s not afraid to double up when the opportunity presents himself. He’s also doing a good job of keeping the floor balanced.
The quarter ends and I just know, from how they’ve been playing, and more importantly how their coach has been acting, that HP is going to come out with a press. Have we practiced how to break a press? Not so much. I explain how I want Lucas, who is in, to be back setting screens for Gordie and Noah. Jack M is going to try and get open deep. The good news is these kids are 9. So when the press comes, we’re able to break it. As the quarter goes on, we start to be able to break it with more regularity and start to find some open baskets. Our defense continues to play well. My one big coaching decision, which pays huge dividends for us, is to have Tom simply guard the point guard the full length of the court. I tell him not to worry about stealing it, but just pressure him. This leads to NUMEROUS turnovers. In fact I believe they only got 2 or 3 shots off once we started doing this . Their point guard was dribbling right into the corner or throwing the ball away or whatever. We go into half up 14-8, but we’re in control of this game.
At half I stay up beat. I talk about how it’s a close game but we’re in control. Our team doesn’t really appear to be tired at all which is also a good thing. The buzzer goes off and we go back in. As there is no press allowed in the 3rd quarter I take the trailer off, but do have Jack meet the point guard at half court. Again they don’t look so good.
As the game goes on the tempo seems to be increasing. The 3rd is a low scoring quarter, but we manage to extend our lead to 22-10. This means we’re not even allowed to press, being up by more than 10.
And in the 4th quarter, we basically run them ragged. Our defense creates turnovers and we transition these turnovers into points. Despite the fact that we have 7 players and they have 12, they’re tired and we’re not. HP never stops with its full court press, which means that we continue to blow by them and we end up winning, with ease 34-12. I try to slow them down at the end of the game, but basically with HP playing full court press, I can only slow down the game so much.
What a relief. We won and we won easily, though honestly HP missed a lot of lay-ups and we made quite a few jumpers. I think to a certain extent their coach’s commitment to an up tempo game was a mistake. They could have out muscled us but didn’t. We won because of our ability to create transition baskets and because our defense was smothering.
If we had a game ball to give, it’d go to Jack M. He did so much right. One thing we need to work on is that when he’s bringing up the ball he always makes his first pass to his left.
Jack P frustrated me. He was great at creating transition opportunities, both as a defender and as an outlet on offense, but when we were in our “set” offense he took too many shots. In fact he took nearly twice as many shots as our next highest shooter (14 shots to 8). Of course we also led the team in steals with five. So I will take the good with the bad.
Lucas looked basically lost out there. On numerous occasions he had trouble finding and defending our man. On a couple of set plays on in bounds his man got ridiculously open, but fortunately they missed the shots. He did moderately well on the boards, with 4 rebounds, but he lost a couple of others that should have been his.
Dante was a beast underneath getting 9 rebounds. He scored three 4th quarter baskets when he essentially had easy lay-ups thanks to our beating them down the court. In other words he did exactly what we needed him to do. He didn’t play tight enough defense at times, and the HP coach wanted more plays where their Center just backed Dante down. Of course our guards were so smothering it made it hard to get those inside post passes.
Gordie played some good D, but his shot selection is poor. He’s a good shooter, but I am going to rapidly lose patience for shooting shots when guarded by 3 players.
Noah was, perhaps, our worst player out there (actually according to Win Score, a measurement of productivity that I use, it was Gordie, followed by Noah). He looked confused on defense and didn’t really do much of anything on offense. Starting Jack over Noah provided to be the right call, in fact it wasn’t even close.
Tom did about as I anticipated. When the H’s are back and he can play more guard, I think he’ll do better. I don’t feel like I’m taking best advantage of Tom at the moment but I think as we settle more into our motion offense, Tom will see more touches and get shots as he understands what needs to be done.
On the whole, playing time was pretty evenly distributed. Lucas had 15 minutes of playing time, still more than half the game, and he had the fewest minutes of anyone on the team. Dante, Tom, and Jack M all had about 23 minutes to lead the team. Distributing minutes with 7 players is, obviously, easier than with 9 or 10, but I’m glad that everyone got quality play time.
We have no practice this coming week and no game either next weekend so my next update will not be for a little more than a week. I’m glad we won. I don’t know if I can claim too much credit for it, as they did things well that we hadn’t really practiced outright though several of the things we did in practice, such as following shots, did seem to pay-off. However, this victory belongs to them. And let me say what a relief it is not to be looking at a season as rough as baseball was. I just couldn’t take it.
In the post game speech, I talked about how it was a long season. We should be pleased with our effort today, and named our defense (obviously) as something we’d done well. But we have things to work on as well. But a 20 point victory never hurt anyone, especially without our best player.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Reader Izulde writes
Yes Dante will be at Center. But as we're running a motion offense, his being at Center matters more on defense and on set plays, such as inbounds or press breaks (which we didn't get to and is one of my main sources of anxiety) than on our normal offense.
His quickness is fine. We're a pretty quick team overall and I'd say he's in the middle of the pack. He does most things well, which is why I'm pretty high on him overall as a basketball player.
I assume you're thinking of putting Dante at C? His slow foot speed would be minimized there and his endurance an asset, as he'd be able to take the banging on the boards he's likely to get down there, especially against larger teams. His rebounding and inside shot would be most helpful there, too.
Also, I'm just curious. He's slow, but how's his quickness?
Yes Dante will be at Center. But as we're running a motion offense, his being at Center matters more on defense and on set plays, such as inbounds or press breaks (which we didn't get to and is one of my main sources of anxiety) than on our normal offense.
His quickness is fine. We're a pretty quick team overall and I'd say he's in the middle of the pack. He does most things well, which is why I'm pretty high on him overall as a basketball player.
11-17 Practice Report
Welcome back to the further travails of my efforts to coach a successful youth basketball team.
As you recall, we had no practice last Friday because of a school event. And practice on Monday was rescheduled for Wednesday. The problem arises with the rescheduling when I get an email Tuesday. Lucas’s mother is asking about our practice on Wednesday since her six year old is scheduled to practice at the same time. I email Emily at the Park District. Turns out I asked to reschedule on Wednesday and she had no gym on Wednesday so gave me Tuesday’s date. I didn’t pay close attention to this and so I blew it. By the time I’ve figured out what has happened it’s 5:00 Tuesday. So there goes that practice.
So that brings us to Friday’s practice. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it. But that’s going to have to be OK. We do a short stretching session and then go into our offense. I show them a few things that they can do with the offense. And well, it goes OK. I think with a another practice worth of trying it, it would go more than OK. However, I think that in many ways they’re going to play an ugly game of basketball come Sunday.
After our offensive practice, which we do for about a half hour, we practice our inbounds play. There is a lot of teaching involved, but people seem to pick it up well enough. It’s a simple stack. We line up and then on the signal from the in bounder the players all do something different. All in all the play seems to work well enough, especially considering that the defenders knew what the offensive players were going to do. So that is good. Now the problem is that this play won’t likely work as well against a zone.
In fact that’s my big fear is that they will be playing a zone. If so it’s going to be an early time out. I know they’ll be able to adjust to playing against a zone, but we haven’t really practiced it. Hopefully the HP coach feels the way I do about man-to-man, and I think he will, and so we will see that kind of defense.
Lastly we practiced our tip-offs. Overall that worked fine too. We concluded practice with my reminding them about some of the nuts and bolts of the games. Things like checking in at the scorer’s table and telling who you were guarding when subbing in.
The thing is that overall we’re still not playing well as a team. I feel good about where their individual skills are at. However, we’re not really playing as a basketball team and that concerns me. I am hoping that our opponents will be just as lost as we are.
One other note from practice. Gordie and Jack M were seriously not getting along. There was pushing, grabbing, etc. I took them aside after practice. It seems that there has been ill feelings before, then things had gotten better, and now things are not going as well again. We talked about how we’re on the same team and that this sort of behavior wouldn’t be accepted. They both got the message, in theory, but we’ll see how this translates to reality.
My original plan for Sunday had been to start Noah, Gordie, Dante, Jack P, and Tom. However, in my talk with Gordie and Jack I talked about how on Sunday there would be times when they’d have to play together and if we were going to do well as a team they’d have to play well together. I am thinking, to reinforce this point, have Jack start in the place of Noah. It would certainly get the message across, I think. Dante, Jack P, and Tom are regular starters for the time being, though I will be mixing things up from time to time to get everybody their promised start, with Scott and David, who are off on a jaunt to LA being our other two starters.
I don’t see that I’ve done a complete run down of the team in a while so it seems like before our first game would be a good time to do that.
Brian –
Good: Remember him? Well word through the grapevine is that he could be rejoining our team as early as December 4th from his ankle injury. I had originally heard more like January, or even February so this is good.
Bad: Who knows how quickly he’ll be able to catch up. The one good point of our being behind where I want to be team wise is that it should be easier for him to catch up. However, he’ll have missed out on some of the conditioning. So he likely won’t return at the same caliber as when he left us. I think we’ve had better chemistry without him. Hopefully we’ll be solid here when he comes back.
Dante –
Good: Good endurance. He gets how to rebound. He has a nice shot so some of the kids have taken to calling him Yao since he is our tallest player and can shoot from the outside.
Bad: He is S L O W. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I honestly don’t know how well his slow will play out. There’s not too much I can do it about it, all things considered, but hope for the best.
David –
Good: Good basketball intelligence and ability. For instance when we were running our in bounds play and his defender was guarding the play more than him, he did something slightly different and broke free for an easy inbounds pass and basket. I’ve talked about his ability before. He’s the only player I really feel good about taking long distance shots.
Bad: As one of the taller members of the team he’s going to have play against bigger guys and in the post more than he’s used to.
Gordie:
Good – A fun kid and helps keep things light. A fairly good defender.
Bad – Takes shots he shouldn’t take. Can get trapped fairly easily on defense.
Jack M –
Good: Has good court vision, he rarely makes a bad pass. Also has a quick first step on his dribble. He will likely bring the ball up for us often.
Bad: He doesn’t seem to like the fact that I don’t want him shooting long distance shots. He’s not the most likable kid which has already had an effect with one player and meant that during our inbounds drill complained about what the 1 and 2 players do, despite the fact that the 1 player is one of the most important as he does two different things to get open.
Jack P –
Good: This kid is a tenacious defender and one of the better shots on the team. He is so quiet it is easy to forget how good he is, but he could easily be the second best player on the team. He was our best in bounder of the five I tried (Lucas, Tom, David, Jack P, and Scott).
Bad: Not a whole lot to say except that since he’s a new kid some of the players on the team haven’t figured out how good he is yet and so he doesn’t get the passes he deserves on offense, despite my prodding, that he deserves.
Lucas –
Good: He’s a nice kid who never complains about anything and will always attempt to do what is asked of him.
Bad: He’s not the sharpest kid on the team. I had to walk through the inbounds play with him several times at each of the positions he did before he got it. He clearly doesn’t like the fact that he has to play post/center positions, but, well, tough. He could likely see a pickup in his minutes once he masters some of the things, like always screening away from the ball, but until then his action will likely be more limited as he kind of plays confused.
Noah –
Good: He picks up things quickly. He is solid all around on offense.
Bad: His defense could stand some improvement. He gets beat off the dribble too much.
Scott –
Good: Solid player who works hard. In particular I like how he seems to have a good sense of where to be on the court.
Bad: His skills are better suited to a forward position, but he’s not really big enough to be a forward. Not as big of a deal on offense, where we play a motion, but does matter on defense.
Tom –
Good: He is the heart of our team. He does most things well and is one of our better shots.
Bad: He hasn’t seemed happy at the last couple of practices, so I don’t know what’s going on there. He has a slow first step on defense.
So there you have it. I am just petrified that we are going to get blown out. I haven’t done as good of a job as I should have in getting them ready for this date. The first game is important and so despite the fact that I stress it’s a long season having a blowout first game is NOT what I want.
Hopefully when I write you tomorrow, my fears will have been misplaced and I will be writing to you about the 1 and 0 Spartans.
As you recall, we had no practice last Friday because of a school event. And practice on Monday was rescheduled for Wednesday. The problem arises with the rescheduling when I get an email Tuesday. Lucas’s mother is asking about our practice on Wednesday since her six year old is scheduled to practice at the same time. I email Emily at the Park District. Turns out I asked to reschedule on Wednesday and she had no gym on Wednesday so gave me Tuesday’s date. I didn’t pay close attention to this and so I blew it. By the time I’ve figured out what has happened it’s 5:00 Tuesday. So there goes that practice.
So that brings us to Friday’s practice. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it. But that’s going to have to be OK. We do a short stretching session and then go into our offense. I show them a few things that they can do with the offense. And well, it goes OK. I think with a another practice worth of trying it, it would go more than OK. However, I think that in many ways they’re going to play an ugly game of basketball come Sunday.
After our offensive practice, which we do for about a half hour, we practice our inbounds play. There is a lot of teaching involved, but people seem to pick it up well enough. It’s a simple stack. We line up and then on the signal from the in bounder the players all do something different. All in all the play seems to work well enough, especially considering that the defenders knew what the offensive players were going to do. So that is good. Now the problem is that this play won’t likely work as well against a zone.
In fact that’s my big fear is that they will be playing a zone. If so it’s going to be an early time out. I know they’ll be able to adjust to playing against a zone, but we haven’t really practiced it. Hopefully the HP coach feels the way I do about man-to-man, and I think he will, and so we will see that kind of defense.
Lastly we practiced our tip-offs. Overall that worked fine too. We concluded practice with my reminding them about some of the nuts and bolts of the games. Things like checking in at the scorer’s table and telling who you were guarding when subbing in.
The thing is that overall we’re still not playing well as a team. I feel good about where their individual skills are at. However, we’re not really playing as a basketball team and that concerns me. I am hoping that our opponents will be just as lost as we are.
One other note from practice. Gordie and Jack M were seriously not getting along. There was pushing, grabbing, etc. I took them aside after practice. It seems that there has been ill feelings before, then things had gotten better, and now things are not going as well again. We talked about how we’re on the same team and that this sort of behavior wouldn’t be accepted. They both got the message, in theory, but we’ll see how this translates to reality.
My original plan for Sunday had been to start Noah, Gordie, Dante, Jack P, and Tom. However, in my talk with Gordie and Jack I talked about how on Sunday there would be times when they’d have to play together and if we were going to do well as a team they’d have to play well together. I am thinking, to reinforce this point, have Jack start in the place of Noah. It would certainly get the message across, I think. Dante, Jack P, and Tom are regular starters for the time being, though I will be mixing things up from time to time to get everybody their promised start, with Scott and David, who are off on a jaunt to LA being our other two starters.
I don’t see that I’ve done a complete run down of the team in a while so it seems like before our first game would be a good time to do that.
Brian –
Good: Remember him? Well word through the grapevine is that he could be rejoining our team as early as December 4th from his ankle injury. I had originally heard more like January, or even February so this is good.
Bad: Who knows how quickly he’ll be able to catch up. The one good point of our being behind where I want to be team wise is that it should be easier for him to catch up. However, he’ll have missed out on some of the conditioning. So he likely won’t return at the same caliber as when he left us. I think we’ve had better chemistry without him. Hopefully we’ll be solid here when he comes back.
Dante –
Good: Good endurance. He gets how to rebound. He has a nice shot so some of the kids have taken to calling him Yao since he is our tallest player and can shoot from the outside.
Bad: He is S L O W. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I honestly don’t know how well his slow will play out. There’s not too much I can do it about it, all things considered, but hope for the best.
David –
Good: Good basketball intelligence and ability. For instance when we were running our in bounds play and his defender was guarding the play more than him, he did something slightly different and broke free for an easy inbounds pass and basket. I’ve talked about his ability before. He’s the only player I really feel good about taking long distance shots.
Bad: As one of the taller members of the team he’s going to have play against bigger guys and in the post more than he’s used to.
Gordie:
Good – A fun kid and helps keep things light. A fairly good defender.
Bad – Takes shots he shouldn’t take. Can get trapped fairly easily on defense.
Jack M –
Good: Has good court vision, he rarely makes a bad pass. Also has a quick first step on his dribble. He will likely bring the ball up for us often.
Bad: He doesn’t seem to like the fact that I don’t want him shooting long distance shots. He’s not the most likable kid which has already had an effect with one player and meant that during our inbounds drill complained about what the 1 and 2 players do, despite the fact that the 1 player is one of the most important as he does two different things to get open.
Jack P –
Good: This kid is a tenacious defender and one of the better shots on the team. He is so quiet it is easy to forget how good he is, but he could easily be the second best player on the team. He was our best in bounder of the five I tried (Lucas, Tom, David, Jack P, and Scott).
Bad: Not a whole lot to say except that since he’s a new kid some of the players on the team haven’t figured out how good he is yet and so he doesn’t get the passes he deserves on offense, despite my prodding, that he deserves.
Lucas –
Good: He’s a nice kid who never complains about anything and will always attempt to do what is asked of him.
Bad: He’s not the sharpest kid on the team. I had to walk through the inbounds play with him several times at each of the positions he did before he got it. He clearly doesn’t like the fact that he has to play post/center positions, but, well, tough. He could likely see a pickup in his minutes once he masters some of the things, like always screening away from the ball, but until then his action will likely be more limited as he kind of plays confused.
Noah –
Good: He picks up things quickly. He is solid all around on offense.
Bad: His defense could stand some improvement. He gets beat off the dribble too much.
Scott –
Good: Solid player who works hard. In particular I like how he seems to have a good sense of where to be on the court.
Bad: His skills are better suited to a forward position, but he’s not really big enough to be a forward. Not as big of a deal on offense, where we play a motion, but does matter on defense.
Tom –
Good: He is the heart of our team. He does most things well and is one of our better shots.
Bad: He hasn’t seemed happy at the last couple of practices, so I don’t know what’s going on there. He has a slow first step on defense.
So there you have it. I am just petrified that we are going to get blown out. I haven’t done as good of a job as I should have in getting them ready for this date. The first game is important and so despite the fact that I stress it’s a long season having a blowout first game is NOT what I want.
Hopefully when I write you tomorrow, my fears will have been misplaced and I will be writing to you about the 1 and 0 Spartans.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
After Friday’s practice I realized that we simply were not going to be ready for our first game. Or at least not as ready I would like. While if I had to do it over again there would some things I would change, I would not change the overall idea of what we’ve done at practice. I think what I’ve done will benefit us for the long term. However, we’re going to be a bit of a mess for our first game.
Going into Monday’s practice I realized we had three practices left before our first game. Our practice on Friday was going to be canceled since there was a school fun fair and it seemed like the team should be able to enjoy that. That left just that Monday practice and two practices we have this week. And here are the things that are very important that hadn’t been fully, or in most cases even partially, taught:
• Transition offense
• Starting routines for the motion offense – we’d done some work, but not really enough
• Press break
• Full court press
• Inbounds play
• Tip-off play
And that’s just the important stuff. While thinking this over I decide that there simply is no way to teach a full-court press in the time we have left. This will leave us in the uncomfortable position of trying to learn a press break against a theoretical full court press. Teaching a press break and press is going to be further complicated by our only having nine players. These are some of the few activities where 10 players is a must. I do feel better about our lack of a god press break because of how good we are at dribbling. I would feel even better about it if the H’s were going to be at our first game. I mentioned this a while back, but we’re going to be at 7 players for the first game. After Friday’s practice I had effectively decided on a starting lineup of those who showed up Friday, who also happen to be our best remaining five:
Tom
Gordie
Dante
Jack P
Noah
What do they have in common? SHORT. And its not like Jack M off the bench is going to help matters much, being the shortest member of the team. I knew it was going to be an issue, but the issue is HUGELY aggravated when 2 of your 3 biggest players, Brian and David, aren’t there and only 2 of your 5 tallest, Dante and Lucas, are there. But we will make do.
I decide to roughly break-up the skills we need to have at least talked about into the following:
• Transition offense (Monday 11/6)
• Starting routines for the motion offense – we’d done some work, but not really enough (Wednesday 11/15)
• Press break (Wednesday 11/15)
• Inbounds play (Friday 11/17)
• Tip-off play (Friday 11/17)
So Monday was transition offense day. I admit I get more than a little nervous when at 6:55 we only have 4 players. But everyone shows up just on time, except for Jack P who shows up about 15 minutes late. I start off practice by telling them that we only have three practices left and so it’s crunch time.
We start off by teaching them a new continuous motion drill, which I dubbed Princeton, that also reinforces the ideas of a transition offense. Players are strategically placed throughout the court, going up and down, and they make a quick pass and follow the pass to a new spot. It becomes continuous motion, in effect, when you add a second ball despite the fact that only 6/7 players are ever really on the court at one time. Anyhow I teach this and we play “how many shots can you make in two minutes” with one ball. I then completely mess up, THREE TIMES, how to do this drill with two balls before figuring it out. Grrr to coach. Anyhow we finally do get it going with two balls and I just let it run continuously for a bit.
It is then time to teach the transition offense off a made basket. The idea being we’re going to simply beat the other team down the court. We run it a couple of times with no defense. The performance was OK. An interesting note is that Jack M basically would only pass the ball to David as an outlet, even after I told him to pass to the other option and even if David wasn’t ready. These two are best friends, so it’s understandable, but it’s definitely a problem. It means that Jack M will likely play only a little when David is in, which considering David will be playing a lot, will limit his playing time until I see that he’s broken himself of this habit. The team started to get a little goofy here and I didn’t clamp down on it as I should have. Part of the goofiness carried over from Friday’s practice where with the small group it wasn’t nearly as much of a problem.
We then moved to playing a 5 on 5 half court game, where I was the 5th player on offense. The offense would make a shot and the defense would then do transition. Things got more and more ridiculous. Finally I had enough. I had them get on the baseline and I announced a suicide. I heard someone blame someone else, not sure who the identities of either of these players really were, so I said that this wasn’t any individuals fault, but instead was a team problem. And so we’d run a second suicide. They did the first suicide no problem with-in the time frame I’d given. The second one, I let the first person to do half of it and three quarters of it drop out. However, people took to jogging and so the team didn’t finish in the prescribed time. So it was off for a third one. We did the third one fine. I then gave them a water break.
When they got back they were much more focused with the drill, as one would hope. Following this I introduced another transition drill. In this one we have a set number of players on the court. I started with 6, three on defense and 3 on offense. I simultaneously pass the ball to a player on offense and call the name of a player on defense. The player whose name I called has to run form the free throw line extended (which is where they are lined up) to underneath the hoop. The other players go right into offense and defense. Basically it’s teaching them how to run the fast break. I decided to go for this drill rather than the more conventional teaching approach since we’re short on time and I want them to have some semblance of how it works. We will likely back up and teach it from a more theoretical standpoint sometime in the not too distant future. I start the drill with effectively 3 on 3, before increasing it to 4 on 3, 4 on 4 and finally 5 on 4. Overall I’m pleased with how it runs.
I then decide we’ll play a game of Golf. We end up playing two, with the first one being a demonstration game and the second one “for real”. Each time won one of the games, so it’s unfortunate that only one of them had to run. But such are the breaks. Several things became apparent here. First Jack M is terrible at following up his shot. His team lost the first game almost purely because of him and nearly lost the second game as well. Shooting a free throw basically seems to be FAR outside his range as well, but I already kind of knew that. David and Dante are our best shooters from that distance, with Jack P and Tom a step below that. But I pretty much already knew that. Scott has trouble judging the angle of shots.
Earlier as we were running Princeton, Emily came in with the uniforms. To end practice I decide we’ll do a little 4 on 4 full court as I layout and get ready the uniforms. I divide them into two teams with Jack P being the odd man out. I rotate him in but we really don’t have much time for the game. However, what we do have time for, isn’t pretty. It’s clear we have a lot of work to do. When Lucas’s mother comes in, as we’re right up against the time and comments “They’re looking good” I’m not sure what to say. In my heart of hearts I know we’re just not ready yet and I fear greatly we’re not going to be there before next Sunday. I responded with a “We’ll see how we are at our first game” which is downbeat for the picture I normally try to instill.
We then hand out uniforms, always fun, and go home. The clock is ticking. Hopefully HP, which I hear from some kids on the team isn’t as good as us, will be even more unready. But who knows? Only time will tell.
Going into Monday’s practice I realized we had three practices left before our first game. Our practice on Friday was going to be canceled since there was a school fun fair and it seemed like the team should be able to enjoy that. That left just that Monday practice and two practices we have this week. And here are the things that are very important that hadn’t been fully, or in most cases even partially, taught:
• Transition offense
• Starting routines for the motion offense – we’d done some work, but not really enough
• Press break
• Full court press
• Inbounds play
• Tip-off play
And that’s just the important stuff. While thinking this over I decide that there simply is no way to teach a full-court press in the time we have left. This will leave us in the uncomfortable position of trying to learn a press break against a theoretical full court press. Teaching a press break and press is going to be further complicated by our only having nine players. These are some of the few activities where 10 players is a must. I do feel better about our lack of a god press break because of how good we are at dribbling. I would feel even better about it if the H’s were going to be at our first game. I mentioned this a while back, but we’re going to be at 7 players for the first game. After Friday’s practice I had effectively decided on a starting lineup of those who showed up Friday, who also happen to be our best remaining five:
Tom
Gordie
Dante
Jack P
Noah
What do they have in common? SHORT. And its not like Jack M off the bench is going to help matters much, being the shortest member of the team. I knew it was going to be an issue, but the issue is HUGELY aggravated when 2 of your 3 biggest players, Brian and David, aren’t there and only 2 of your 5 tallest, Dante and Lucas, are there. But we will make do.
I decide to roughly break-up the skills we need to have at least talked about into the following:
• Transition offense (Monday 11/6)
• Starting routines for the motion offense – we’d done some work, but not really enough (Wednesday 11/15)
• Press break (Wednesday 11/15)
• Inbounds play (Friday 11/17)
• Tip-off play (Friday 11/17)
So Monday was transition offense day. I admit I get more than a little nervous when at 6:55 we only have 4 players. But everyone shows up just on time, except for Jack P who shows up about 15 minutes late. I start off practice by telling them that we only have three practices left and so it’s crunch time.
We start off by teaching them a new continuous motion drill, which I dubbed Princeton, that also reinforces the ideas of a transition offense. Players are strategically placed throughout the court, going up and down, and they make a quick pass and follow the pass to a new spot. It becomes continuous motion, in effect, when you add a second ball despite the fact that only 6/7 players are ever really on the court at one time. Anyhow I teach this and we play “how many shots can you make in two minutes” with one ball. I then completely mess up, THREE TIMES, how to do this drill with two balls before figuring it out. Grrr to coach. Anyhow we finally do get it going with two balls and I just let it run continuously for a bit.
It is then time to teach the transition offense off a made basket. The idea being we’re going to simply beat the other team down the court. We run it a couple of times with no defense. The performance was OK. An interesting note is that Jack M basically would only pass the ball to David as an outlet, even after I told him to pass to the other option and even if David wasn’t ready. These two are best friends, so it’s understandable, but it’s definitely a problem. It means that Jack M will likely play only a little when David is in, which considering David will be playing a lot, will limit his playing time until I see that he’s broken himself of this habit. The team started to get a little goofy here and I didn’t clamp down on it as I should have. Part of the goofiness carried over from Friday’s practice where with the small group it wasn’t nearly as much of a problem.
We then moved to playing a 5 on 5 half court game, where I was the 5th player on offense. The offense would make a shot and the defense would then do transition. Things got more and more ridiculous. Finally I had enough. I had them get on the baseline and I announced a suicide. I heard someone blame someone else, not sure who the identities of either of these players really were, so I said that this wasn’t any individuals fault, but instead was a team problem. And so we’d run a second suicide. They did the first suicide no problem with-in the time frame I’d given. The second one, I let the first person to do half of it and three quarters of it drop out. However, people took to jogging and so the team didn’t finish in the prescribed time. So it was off for a third one. We did the third one fine. I then gave them a water break.
When they got back they were much more focused with the drill, as one would hope. Following this I introduced another transition drill. In this one we have a set number of players on the court. I started with 6, three on defense and 3 on offense. I simultaneously pass the ball to a player on offense and call the name of a player on defense. The player whose name I called has to run form the free throw line extended (which is where they are lined up) to underneath the hoop. The other players go right into offense and defense. Basically it’s teaching them how to run the fast break. I decided to go for this drill rather than the more conventional teaching approach since we’re short on time and I want them to have some semblance of how it works. We will likely back up and teach it from a more theoretical standpoint sometime in the not too distant future. I start the drill with effectively 3 on 3, before increasing it to 4 on 3, 4 on 4 and finally 5 on 4. Overall I’m pleased with how it runs.
I then decide we’ll play a game of Golf. We end up playing two, with the first one being a demonstration game and the second one “for real”. Each time won one of the games, so it’s unfortunate that only one of them had to run. But such are the breaks. Several things became apparent here. First Jack M is terrible at following up his shot. His team lost the first game almost purely because of him and nearly lost the second game as well. Shooting a free throw basically seems to be FAR outside his range as well, but I already kind of knew that. David and Dante are our best shooters from that distance, with Jack P and Tom a step below that. But I pretty much already knew that. Scott has trouble judging the angle of shots.
Earlier as we were running Princeton, Emily came in with the uniforms. To end practice I decide we’ll do a little 4 on 4 full court as I layout and get ready the uniforms. I divide them into two teams with Jack P being the odd man out. I rotate him in but we really don’t have much time for the game. However, what we do have time for, isn’t pretty. It’s clear we have a lot of work to do. When Lucas’s mother comes in, as we’re right up against the time and comments “They’re looking good” I’m not sure what to say. In my heart of hearts I know we’re just not ready yet and I fear greatly we’re not going to be there before next Sunday. I responded with a “We’ll see how we are at our first game” which is downbeat for the picture I normally try to instill.
We then hand out uniforms, always fun, and go home. The clock is ticking. Hopefully HP, which I hear from some kids on the team isn’t as good as us, will be even more unready. But who knows? Only time will tell.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Reader Izulde comments
Thanks for bring this up since I hadn't really talked about it. To be honest I miss doing this with someone. There have also certainly been things we can't do because there's only one of me. For instance I found a great transition drill but it requires two coaches and I would love to do some station work. In fact we might still do some station work later on in the season and just bring in some parents for the end of practice. There is a reason, however, that parents are not the coach of the travel team and it's a good reason which is also why I haven't allowed parents at practice.
Overall, however, while I am quite pleased with my decision to do this solo venture. It was the right choice, not to have a co-coach. I will, if I do this again, try and find an assistant coach.
But I will love the time, I know, when baseball comes around and I get Steve back to do the whole experience with.
Overall I'd have to say that you're way ahead of the curve relative to where you were with baseball and I think that has to really boost your confidence about flying solo.Well we are ahead of where we were in baseball, I think. More on this topic in my next update.
Thanks for bring this up since I hadn't really talked about it. To be honest I miss doing this with someone. There have also certainly been things we can't do because there's only one of me. For instance I found a great transition drill but it requires two coaches and I would love to do some station work. In fact we might still do some station work later on in the season and just bring in some parents for the end of practice. There is a reason, however, that parents are not the coach of the travel team and it's a good reason which is also why I haven't allowed parents at practice.
Overall, however, while I am quite pleased with my decision to do this solo venture. It was the right choice, not to have a co-coach. I will, if I do this again, try and find an assistant coach.
But I will love the time, I know, when baseball comes around and I get Steve back to do the whole experience with.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Well it’s been a while since I last updated. My job situation is simply far more demanding now than it was for baseball and so finding the time and energy to write, as I’ve said a couple of times, is simply harder than it was before. I assure you I am very committed to this dynasty, however.
Last week I learned that the H’s would not be able to attend our Friday practice. No explanation given, just that they would not be there. Annoying, but what are you going to do? If it happens again I will say something but everyone is entitled to miss here and there, I feel.
I get to the gym and fortunately everything is ready to go. It seems like, finally, our kinks have been worked out in terms of the building. I arrive to the gym 10 minutes early and we have only 3 people there: Gordie, Jack P, and Noah. Dante arrives a couple minutes after I do. I don’t think much of it. But then others don’t show up. Basically I get them going into an extended game of lightening, using continuous rules to make it go longer. At 7:15 Tom shows up. When I call him on being late he cries and shuts down. It’s very strange. I eventually stop trying to figure out what is happening (after a couple minutes).
So I decide to start practice, such as it is, at 7:20. Basically everything I wanted to do? Out the window. Simply doesn’t make sense with only half the team there. I am careful not to be frustrated with the people who do show up. But frustrated I am.
Given the small group I scrap my initial plans. We do some practicing of screens. Since, with the exception of Dante, most of the players are small we work on some overhead passes. Several times we do drills designed to tire them out and then I have them shoot two free throws. The idea being that this is more game like than having them This is something I haven’t done enough of and also not something I did enough of on Monday. I really need to be incorporating free throws into every practice at this point. Shame on me for not doing so.
The big winner of the practice? A game I was going to call “Seven”, but was quickly rechristened “Golf” as you don’t want points. Basically it is a pressure shooting/follow your shot drill. Players shoot from the elbow. If the shot misses and hits the floor the team gets a point. If the player makes a shot and it hits the floor nothing happens. If a team makes three in a row they lose a point from their total. Players must pass the ball as soon as they rebound and only have two seconds to shoot (though in reality most take less time than this). Players are effectively at their outer limits of where they can shoot in this drill as well, which contrasts to what I’d been doing in most drills.
Anyhow this was wildly popular with the team. I’m not sure why as I found it one of the more boring games we’d done. But there you have it. We played a couple of games. Did some free throws took a water break and played a couple more games. I was pleased with how they were shooting, liked the pressure, thought why shouldn’t they have fun with so few of them, and so we ended up playing four games. We then did a 2 on 2 drill where after someone allowed a point they were replaced. This way they were forced to deal with mismatches on defense and to learn how to take advantage of them on offense. I have to say I wasn’t too happy with what I saw. The shot selection was good, for the most part. And there were passes. But, well, it was depressing. It just didn’t look like good basketball. Perhaps my expectations were simply out of whack. But it was kind of a depressing end to a depressing practice.
It turns out I knew way back that Lucas would not be there. But Jack M was an unexcused no show. With most others I’d have been far harsher about it at practice on Monday but with Jack I’m treading such a fine line I decided not to push the point too much.
Monday’s practice will be detailed either later tonight or tomorrow.
Last week I learned that the H’s would not be able to attend our Friday practice. No explanation given, just that they would not be there. Annoying, but what are you going to do? If it happens again I will say something but everyone is entitled to miss here and there, I feel.
I get to the gym and fortunately everything is ready to go. It seems like, finally, our kinks have been worked out in terms of the building. I arrive to the gym 10 minutes early and we have only 3 people there: Gordie, Jack P, and Noah. Dante arrives a couple minutes after I do. I don’t think much of it. But then others don’t show up. Basically I get them going into an extended game of lightening, using continuous rules to make it go longer. At 7:15 Tom shows up. When I call him on being late he cries and shuts down. It’s very strange. I eventually stop trying to figure out what is happening (after a couple minutes).
So I decide to start practice, such as it is, at 7:20. Basically everything I wanted to do? Out the window. Simply doesn’t make sense with only half the team there. I am careful not to be frustrated with the people who do show up. But frustrated I am.
Given the small group I scrap my initial plans. We do some practicing of screens. Since, with the exception of Dante, most of the players are small we work on some overhead passes. Several times we do drills designed to tire them out and then I have them shoot two free throws. The idea being that this is more game like than having them This is something I haven’t done enough of and also not something I did enough of on Monday. I really need to be incorporating free throws into every practice at this point. Shame on me for not doing so.
The big winner of the practice? A game I was going to call “Seven”, but was quickly rechristened “Golf” as you don’t want points. Basically it is a pressure shooting/follow your shot drill. Players shoot from the elbow. If the shot misses and hits the floor the team gets a point. If the player makes a shot and it hits the floor nothing happens. If a team makes three in a row they lose a point from their total. Players must pass the ball as soon as they rebound and only have two seconds to shoot (though in reality most take less time than this). Players are effectively at their outer limits of where they can shoot in this drill as well, which contrasts to what I’d been doing in most drills.
Anyhow this was wildly popular with the team. I’m not sure why as I found it one of the more boring games we’d done. But there you have it. We played a couple of games. Did some free throws took a water break and played a couple more games. I was pleased with how they were shooting, liked the pressure, thought why shouldn’t they have fun with so few of them, and so we ended up playing four games. We then did a 2 on 2 drill where after someone allowed a point they were replaced. This way they were forced to deal with mismatches on defense and to learn how to take advantage of them on offense. I have to say I wasn’t too happy with what I saw. The shot selection was good, for the most part. And there were passes. But, well, it was depressing. It just didn’t look like good basketball. Perhaps my expectations were simply out of whack. But it was kind of a depressing end to a depressing practice.
It turns out I knew way back that Lucas would not be there. But Jack M was an unexcused no show. With most others I’d have been far harsher about it at practice on Monday but with Jack I’m treading such a fine line I decided not to push the point too much.
Monday’s practice will be detailed either later tonight or tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
I get to practice on Monday, 10 minutes early like I want to be, and already 2/3 of the team is there. The gym is all setup correctly and so, for the first time, we don’t have a space issue of any type. It was wonderful.
As I get the doggie bags back, I see that everyone, except for Dante, is claiming to have learned all 5 of the first rules of the offense. I am skeptical. I had made this doggie bag a little different in that I had given them a way to rate themselves and list any of the rules that they didn’t understand or were having trouble remembering.
Without much introduction we go right into our continuous motion drill. Several of the players commented, and I agreed, that the 10 minutes seemed shorter than on Friday. I’m pretty sure I did 10 minutes both days, but perhaps I messed up on one of them. If I did I likely went too short on Monday. Tonight, for the partner parts of the run, my partner was David. When I had done this with my other partners I let them set the pace. With David, I set the pace. I don’t think I’ve talked about this before, but I do treat David differently than the other players. It’s not that I am harder or easier on him, but I have found ways to express different expectations for him, higher expectations, than for others. There’s really no one there that can tire him out running except for me (Dante might be able to out endure him but since Dante is S L O W that is only so useful) so it was good to really push him there. About half way through, I asked if he was tired, he said no, so I really picked up the pace for the last half. David might have thought the time was shorter but he was more tired than he’d been before. Yes, it’s good that a healthy guy in his 20s can outrun a 9 year old. Anyhow, I will continue to look for ways to push David as I want him to grow as much as others, but since he’s starting at a higher mark, that can be hard at times. Just as a further example, he was shooting 3s before practice, something I don’t normally allow (they should be practicing shots they can make) but David made 6 out of 10. In the long run his shooting percentage would be lower, but still…
Defense was the focus of our practice. I randomly had paired them up during continuous motion. We then went into a “help defense” drill. I stood at the top of the three point arc, with a player on each wing. We had two defenders who guarded the two players on offense. As the ball was swung to a side the players needed to shift accordingly. This was a fairly simple drill, though it was made harder when we added a skip pass (meaning the two players could pass it directly to each other without passing it to me first, giving less time to recover and get into position). Lucas and Jack M struggled the most. Let’s do a quick tangent here about Jack M. I had noted previously that I wanted to really focus on the positives with Jack. And for the most part I have been doing this. At the same time I don’t fake achievement, so when he was out of place in the help drill, I’m going to, in a respectful way, remind him of where he should be and then give him a chance to demonstrate success. But overall I’ve been trying to find reasons to say good things. But Jack is the sort of kid who dwells on the negative. So despite having heard 10 complements it’s the one criticism that’ll stick with him. And then there’s the sulking. I am glad, however, that we have a long season as it does give more opportunity to really show him that I’m on his side. Hopefully, I will see better things as he realizes that basketball is a supportive place.
Then we did a couple of one on one drills. A reason for this was to give me time to divide them into groups of three for our last major drill, though we did end up spending a fair amount of time on them.
In this last drill teams of three are playing basketball. Except the offense can’t score. The goal is for the defense to force three turnovers. I turned it into a competition, as the offense needed to hold onto the ball the longest, while the defense was trying to force the mistakes as quickly as possible. I called fouls (which added or subtracted 10 seconds depending on which side you were on). However, I let a lot of ticky-tacky fouls go as I really want to encourage an in your face defense. I explained to the team that it’s easier in a game to back off then to suddenly get aggressive. I did the best I could in balancing the teams, and ended up with these groupings:
A – Dante, Jack M, Tom
B – David, Gordie, Jack P
C – Scott, Noah, and Lucas
The drill worked out even better than I had been hoping. First it forced the players to play some help defense. Forced them to take some risks with double teams, but then also learn how to react. And while I was doing it as a defensive drill it might have been even more helpful on offense. In order to do well on offense you had to really use many of the offensive rules I laid out. For instance the teams that did well kept the floor spaced, making it harder for the defense to cover. Players were forced to move with-out the ball. Teams that had players moving without the ball for a purpose did the best. Dribbling for no reason was a sure fire way to get in trouble, but dribbling for a reason was successful. And on and on. In the end if Scott hadn’t completely blown the first run through for his team (he stepped out of bounds twice) it’d have been fairly even. Team A actually won on offense. And since, as I was about to learn, Tom had really nailed the offensive rules, and Dante had given it real thought, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Team B came close on offensive, and absolutely dominated on defense, though part of that was helped by Scott’s mental mistakes. The players seemed to enjoy this drill as well, so we’ll likely be making a repeat of it. One thing I was SO happy about: All of our pivoting practice paid off. Almost all the players were pivoting out of problems in order to get free to make the pass. While we had practiced that some before, I had not given the offense any instructions, limiting myself to defensive reminders. So to see so many of the players do this was just wonderful. It really did help me feel justified for spending the time we have on “the basics” as I doubt pivoting like this had really been widely taught before now.
After all the teams had gone three times on offensive and defense I sat everyone down. And I talked about how the teams that did well on offense used many of the offensive rules. Tom was all over this. Dante also saw the connection (despite having admittedly not learned all the rules). Others? Well not quite as much. The Jacks were completely clueless, as were the H’s and Gordie. Lucas had a foggy notion, as did Noah. At this point I complemented them on a great practice. I said if we can have an equally good practice for the first hour on Friday we’ll scrimmage for about 20 minutes. Many seemed excited about this.
We ran our suicides next. Only a few players owed a suicide. I gave them 35 seconds (which was really 40, but shhh) to complete it. Last Friday I had given Dante a break on the time requirement. He was concerned about the fact, thinking that I thought poorly of him. After thinking over the interaction, I realized I hadn’t really addressed his concerns so I made sure to do so at the start of practice. I told him I knew he was slower, but that he didn’t tire, which was a good thing and so not to worry as much about the slow. Honestly, the slow will be a problem somewhat, as if a team is good at getting down the court I won’t be able to play Dante as he’d never make it down the court in time, but I think it will be workable. Anyway, so Dante decided to run the suicide, despite not having to. And he was SO proud when he did it under the allotted time. It was a great moment as it was entirely a self motivated thing, even a little bit of “I’ll show Coach that I can do it” and it was a genuine accomplishment. I loved it.
We ended practice with everyone giving a positive about someone from their 3 on 3 team. In this way far more kids got a positive stated about them. I’ve said it before, but I will say it again: this is a nice group. The supportive atmosphere Steve and I had to work so hard at creating on our baseball team is almost completely there already with this group. I claim very little for this good vibe, considering it was there to begin with. Hopefully as we start to play games, and a pecking order is established, as who I think the better players are becomes apparent, the good vibrations and supportive atmosphere will continue. If that happens I will take some credit for making sure a good foundation was there. I handed out the doggie bag, which had the rest of our 9 offensive rules. They are:
• You move every time you make a pass
• You move to get open for a shot, to receive a pass, set a screen to get a teammate open
• Be patient and make simple passes
• Dribble should be used to: advance the ball out of the backcourt, make a drive to the basket, or open a passing lane
• All players are responsible for rebounding and defense.
• The ball should be swung quickly to make the defense shift
• One in every three passes should go to the post
• All players are responsible for keeping spacing and floor balance
• At least four passes before a shot (unless a player is open in the post)
I don’t actually expect them to know the rules yet, but by our first game they better, especially as they will have seen how we’re putting the rules together. It’s nice to know, though, that a couple of kids, such as Tom, will likely come with all 9 rules down pat like the back of their hands.
All in all, it was perhaps our best practice which after a couple of downers, was good all around.
As I get the doggie bags back, I see that everyone, except for Dante, is claiming to have learned all 5 of the first rules of the offense. I am skeptical. I had made this doggie bag a little different in that I had given them a way to rate themselves and list any of the rules that they didn’t understand or were having trouble remembering.
Without much introduction we go right into our continuous motion drill. Several of the players commented, and I agreed, that the 10 minutes seemed shorter than on Friday. I’m pretty sure I did 10 minutes both days, but perhaps I messed up on one of them. If I did I likely went too short on Monday. Tonight, for the partner parts of the run, my partner was David. When I had done this with my other partners I let them set the pace. With David, I set the pace. I don’t think I’ve talked about this before, but I do treat David differently than the other players. It’s not that I am harder or easier on him, but I have found ways to express different expectations for him, higher expectations, than for others. There’s really no one there that can tire him out running except for me (Dante might be able to out endure him but since Dante is S L O W that is only so useful) so it was good to really push him there. About half way through, I asked if he was tired, he said no, so I really picked up the pace for the last half. David might have thought the time was shorter but he was more tired than he’d been before. Yes, it’s good that a healthy guy in his 20s can outrun a 9 year old. Anyhow, I will continue to look for ways to push David as I want him to grow as much as others, but since he’s starting at a higher mark, that can be hard at times. Just as a further example, he was shooting 3s before practice, something I don’t normally allow (they should be practicing shots they can make) but David made 6 out of 10. In the long run his shooting percentage would be lower, but still…
Defense was the focus of our practice. I randomly had paired them up during continuous motion. We then went into a “help defense” drill. I stood at the top of the three point arc, with a player on each wing. We had two defenders who guarded the two players on offense. As the ball was swung to a side the players needed to shift accordingly. This was a fairly simple drill, though it was made harder when we added a skip pass (meaning the two players could pass it directly to each other without passing it to me first, giving less time to recover and get into position). Lucas and Jack M struggled the most. Let’s do a quick tangent here about Jack M. I had noted previously that I wanted to really focus on the positives with Jack. And for the most part I have been doing this. At the same time I don’t fake achievement, so when he was out of place in the help drill, I’m going to, in a respectful way, remind him of where he should be and then give him a chance to demonstrate success. But overall I’ve been trying to find reasons to say good things. But Jack is the sort of kid who dwells on the negative. So despite having heard 10 complements it’s the one criticism that’ll stick with him. And then there’s the sulking. I am glad, however, that we have a long season as it does give more opportunity to really show him that I’m on his side. Hopefully, I will see better things as he realizes that basketball is a supportive place.
Then we did a couple of one on one drills. A reason for this was to give me time to divide them into groups of three for our last major drill, though we did end up spending a fair amount of time on them.
In this last drill teams of three are playing basketball. Except the offense can’t score. The goal is for the defense to force three turnovers. I turned it into a competition, as the offense needed to hold onto the ball the longest, while the defense was trying to force the mistakes as quickly as possible. I called fouls (which added or subtracted 10 seconds depending on which side you were on). However, I let a lot of ticky-tacky fouls go as I really want to encourage an in your face defense. I explained to the team that it’s easier in a game to back off then to suddenly get aggressive. I did the best I could in balancing the teams, and ended up with these groupings:
A – Dante, Jack M, Tom
B – David, Gordie, Jack P
C – Scott, Noah, and Lucas
The drill worked out even better than I had been hoping. First it forced the players to play some help defense. Forced them to take some risks with double teams, but then also learn how to react. And while I was doing it as a defensive drill it might have been even more helpful on offense. In order to do well on offense you had to really use many of the offensive rules I laid out. For instance the teams that did well kept the floor spaced, making it harder for the defense to cover. Players were forced to move with-out the ball. Teams that had players moving without the ball for a purpose did the best. Dribbling for no reason was a sure fire way to get in trouble, but dribbling for a reason was successful. And on and on. In the end if Scott hadn’t completely blown the first run through for his team (he stepped out of bounds twice) it’d have been fairly even. Team A actually won on offense. And since, as I was about to learn, Tom had really nailed the offensive rules, and Dante had given it real thought, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Team B came close on offensive, and absolutely dominated on defense, though part of that was helped by Scott’s mental mistakes. The players seemed to enjoy this drill as well, so we’ll likely be making a repeat of it. One thing I was SO happy about: All of our pivoting practice paid off. Almost all the players were pivoting out of problems in order to get free to make the pass. While we had practiced that some before, I had not given the offense any instructions, limiting myself to defensive reminders. So to see so many of the players do this was just wonderful. It really did help me feel justified for spending the time we have on “the basics” as I doubt pivoting like this had really been widely taught before now.
After all the teams had gone three times on offensive and defense I sat everyone down. And I talked about how the teams that did well on offense used many of the offensive rules. Tom was all over this. Dante also saw the connection (despite having admittedly not learned all the rules). Others? Well not quite as much. The Jacks were completely clueless, as were the H’s and Gordie. Lucas had a foggy notion, as did Noah. At this point I complemented them on a great practice. I said if we can have an equally good practice for the first hour on Friday we’ll scrimmage for about 20 minutes. Many seemed excited about this.
We ran our suicides next. Only a few players owed a suicide. I gave them 35 seconds (which was really 40, but shhh) to complete it. Last Friday I had given Dante a break on the time requirement. He was concerned about the fact, thinking that I thought poorly of him. After thinking over the interaction, I realized I hadn’t really addressed his concerns so I made sure to do so at the start of practice. I told him I knew he was slower, but that he didn’t tire, which was a good thing and so not to worry as much about the slow. Honestly, the slow will be a problem somewhat, as if a team is good at getting down the court I won’t be able to play Dante as he’d never make it down the court in time, but I think it will be workable. Anyway, so Dante decided to run the suicide, despite not having to. And he was SO proud when he did it under the allotted time. It was a great moment as it was entirely a self motivated thing, even a little bit of “I’ll show Coach that I can do it” and it was a genuine accomplishment. I loved it.
We ended practice with everyone giving a positive about someone from their 3 on 3 team. In this way far more kids got a positive stated about them. I’ve said it before, but I will say it again: this is a nice group. The supportive atmosphere Steve and I had to work so hard at creating on our baseball team is almost completely there already with this group. I claim very little for this good vibe, considering it was there to begin with. Hopefully as we start to play games, and a pecking order is established, as who I think the better players are becomes apparent, the good vibrations and supportive atmosphere will continue. If that happens I will take some credit for making sure a good foundation was there. I handed out the doggie bag, which had the rest of our 9 offensive rules. They are:
• You move every time you make a pass
• You move to get open for a shot, to receive a pass, set a screen to get a teammate open
• Be patient and make simple passes
• Dribble should be used to: advance the ball out of the backcourt, make a drive to the basket, or open a passing lane
• All players are responsible for rebounding and defense.
• The ball should be swung quickly to make the defense shift
• One in every three passes should go to the post
• All players are responsible for keeping spacing and floor balance
• At least four passes before a shot (unless a player is open in the post)
I don’t actually expect them to know the rules yet, but by our first game they better, especially as they will have seen how we’re putting the rules together. It’s nice to know, though, that a couple of kids, such as Tom, will likely come with all 9 rules down pat like the back of their hands.
All in all, it was perhaps our best practice which after a couple of downers, was good all around.
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