So I started typing this post up on Tuesday December 19th. Then I got sick and never got around to finishing it. Until now. I will make a note where I started writing so far after the fact, just so you know where my memory might be a little hazier.
Last night was our exhibition game against JCC team 1. When I got to the gym I knew we were going to have a much closer game than I had anticipated. Their whole team was already there and they were a big team. Even more worrisome I saw a player on their team who I knew, Luke, and I knew him to be an exceptional athlete. For whatever reason we were slower than normal in arriving. Eventually we get all of the players I was expecting. Or rather we get the 8 players we’re going to have for the night. Noah, it had been decided, would miss the game due to injury. Scott, who I’d decided to give the nod to start to over either David or Jack M, was sick. I really hate going to the game and finding out there that a player will be missing. Someone needs to let me know ahead of time.
Anyway we do our warmup. All the while they are blaring music into the gym. It was pretty annoying, honestly, and a couple of my players moaned about it. It did create a funny situation where I was giving our pregame talk and I was having to scream and then all of a sudden the music went off and so in midsentence I switched to a normal volume. It gave us all a good laugh. With Scott not being there my plans to go with a large lineup were somewhat foiled. I had decided it was a good situation to not start David, and so on a spur of the moment I decided to go with Gordie as our fifth starter, along with Dante, Lucas, Jack P (playing point), and Tom. Gordie was actually playing the three here.
Dante did a nice job with the tip, something he hasn’t shown any particular ability to do before this. We did get off to an early 2-0 lead. However, that was when their star basically took control. After the first possession I had Jack P guard him, though Jack P was clearly outmatched in this case. When the first quarter ends it’s 8-6 and it’s a good ball game.
The second quarter was the difference maker. They came out in a 1-3-1 defense and absolutely destroyed us. They had been playing a 2-3 with a little man in the first quarter. We could get nothing going on offense. It didn’t matter rather we ran our zone breaker or our motion, they were shutting us down and not letting us find good shots. Matters hadn’t been helped in the first quarter that David, seeing that the other team was good, decided to try and be the hero and on his first two possessions down launched two ill advised shots. I gave him a quick pull, but I knew if we were going to compete in this game that we’d need his skills so I had him back in there in the second quarter. However, the combination of the good team, plus having their star player beat him a couple times on offense, threw David out of sorts.
However, the whole first half, really even through the second quarter, about the only foul the refs would call would be on our team doing something to their star. Now I’m not saying that they weren’t fouls, because they were, but at the same time we weren’t getting any where near the calls that they were getting. Talking to the refs in a situation like this is something that is currently beyond my comfort zone. I don’t ever complain, whether it’s baseball or basketball about the officiating. And there were things that they weren’t calling, such as Dante’s repeated 3 second violations, that benefited us. However, the home team advantage with the fouls was a bit much to swallow. Anyhow, the second quarter was a disaster for us and we go down by 8 into half. David guarded 3 for most of the second quarter, and was clearly frustrated on both offense and defense. Things just weren’t happening the way David was used to them happening. It didn’t help that since #3 was such a good ball handler even our full court man-to-man proved ineffective as even David simply couldn’t keep up with him the full length of the court. And let’s not forget David is VERY fast.
At half our team is shell shocked. I start to talk about some things we need to do differently, but it’s clear that our team is somewhat tuned out. I ask for someone to tell a joke to try and loosen the mood and get them to relax. The problem is that David comes up with “the refs”. This gets everyone to smile but isn’t quite as productive as I’d have liked. I do manage to get a couple of actual jokes out of them I then tell the team how this is our first real basketball game. We all know we’re still in this game, but the spark that the team normally has just isn’t there.
The third quarter doesn’t go particularly well for us. We are actually shutout, the first time we’ve failed to score at least one basket in a game all season. Even worse is that a couple minutes into the quarter David goes down hard and gets injured. He landed hard on his elbow. Honestly I think it was as much a frustration injury as anything. The good news is that we finally being to contain #3. #3, like oh so many players, has a tendency to go right every time and so we begin to play some better help defense knowing this.
We enter the 4th quarter down by 10. In the 4th quarter David says he’s ready to go back in. The good news is that we start to play our basketball game. We actually get the lead down to 6 at one point. However, we’re never able to get it closer than that. Our fast break offense had clicked, for the first time all game, and we were finding good shots on offense, partly thanks to some coaching on my part. But the baskets just don’t go in. And in the end we go down 26-16. To be honest while the margin of defeat doesn’t surprise me a whole lot, I am surprised we only managed 16 points. Our transition offense is normally just so good that we can score practically 16 points on that alone.
[Note: This is me typing far after the fact.] Funny thing happened in the 4th as well. Somehow after a time out we got 6 players in the game. I realized this, and not right away I’d add, when I only had two player sitting next to me on the bench. My first reaction was to get mad at the missing player for leaving the bench without my permission. That was when I looked at the court and realized we had six players in the game. I got the refs attention who let us score a basket as he tried to count our players. I kept point it out to him and he finally whistled the game to a stop. A player was pulled out and we got to keep our basket. I’m not quite sure how we got 6 players in the game in the first place but it had to have been my fault somehow.
After the game I pull the team together. We do a longer than normal post-game talk since there will be no practice again until after Winter Break. I really attempt to emphasize the importance of staying in shape over Winter Break and even hand out a log for them to record physical activities that they do. I don’t honestly expect more than 2 or 3, if that, to keep the log in any serious fashion, but it was just another way for me to emphasize the importance of staying in shape.
Taking a look at our players from the game:
Brian: Actually had the second most minutes on the team. He’d have had more until he started with the “you hate me” stuff again during the game and so I put him on the bench for a bad attitude. I really have to have a talk with about it since I don’t hate him, though clearly we need to work on some things between us.
Dante: Dante is just playing bad basketball. Now granted he was up against some really big guys but I don’t quite know what to do with him. He’s clearly trying hard out there and just coming up short. It’s times like this that I wish we had video so I could really take the time to analyze what he’s doing.
David: The other team’s assistant coach and I were talking after the game and one of things we talked about was what a talent David is. It’s hard not to recognize what a gifted player he is and I feel very fortunate to have him on the team. I think we’d still be a pretty good team with-out him, as our dismantling of HP, who appears to be above average, shows. However, I’m VERY happy that we do have him on the team.
Gordie: I let him have some crunch time minutes, as I feel players should get to experience all aspects of the game and will always try to have one of our end of the bench players in at crunch time so they get that kind of development. That said the kid needs to work on his shot selection and turnovers. He was 2 for 8 from the field, not actually a terrible shooting percentage at this age, but the real killer is the 7 turnovers he had. I set-up my stats spreadsheet to shoow stats/28 minutes (meaning if they played a full game) and Gordie has 11 turnovers/28 more twice as many as the next highest person.
Jack M: Jack also sat on the bench more than he might have otherwise due to some negative comments he made (about our ability to come back). As I have mentioned before he has a delicate psyche and so the music before the game really bothered him as did the poor reffing. I would go so far as to suggest it had an impact on his game play. Hopefully when he starts our next game some of the confidence will return.
Jack P: Did a good job of attempting to guard #3 despite being out matched. Gained some valuable experience as a PG. Jack had moved from Massachusetts over the summer and I learned before the game that there he played almost exclusively guard, which is obviously different from the forward/center positions I am asking of him. After giving him some time as guard I like him better in those other spots, which is nice considering that there are more minutes available there as well.
Lucas: He turned in another solid performance. He is clearly more comfortable the more chances he gets in our offense and at playing help defense. The stats that have been kept have really helped tune me into the little things he does much faster than if I just had to go off of observation.
Tom: Tom had a pretty good game. And he didn’t make any self-depreciating comments which was good.
Overall I’m glad we lost. It should hold off our getting too cocky which had been a concern of mine. And like I said after the MP2 game, we were never out of the game and it’s possible we could defeat this team were we to play them again.
My big concern is how in shape we come back from winter break. We have a BRUTAL schedule coming up. Our first practice back is January 8th. We have another practice on Friday. We then play MP, our competition for best in the league, on Saturday and WK, a team which is 1-3 thanks to its victory against one of the NF teams, on Sunday. Then we have no practice due to Martin Luther King Day and then we have at least three games in the tourney that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And then it looks like we might not be able to reschedule our Sunday game so we’d have a game then too. I still haven’t received word whether or not we got accepted into the A bracket, but I hope we did. So in some ways, with so much basketball, it’s good to be rested. But if we’re out of shape, oh am I dreading the game against MP. However, all this basketball is very exciting and I’m looking forward to what should be a fun couple of weeks.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Spartans vs. NF1
Another day, another victory. There were a few hiccups. Like the fact that Northfield had a 1:45 start time. We ended up starting closer to 1:30 and it all worked out. When I announced that Scott would be playing the 3, he freaked. I guess he didn’t feel capable of playing a wing in our offense. It got to the point where I said “You can play the three, but if you really insist you can’t then I have to start someone else.” And so Jack P got the nod. So we go out with a starting five of David, Dante, Lucas, Jack P, and Gordie.
It’s clear from the start that we’re a substantially better team. The other coach used 3 of his 5 timeouts in the first quarter, and I hardly had my killer’s row out there. The group did well. I sub in Noah and Jack P with about 2 and a half minutes left in the first quarter and it soon becomes clear that Noah is playing injured. Noah had his game time limited accordingly, though I probably still over played him relative to his injury. At the end of the first quarter it’s 8-0. We quickly come out on a tear in the early second quarter and are soon up 12-0. NF didn’t come out with a press until about 3 minutes in the second quarter which unfortunately for them was about the same time that I put David back in. They try and run their press once, except David simply dribbles through it like swiss cheese. It’s certainly not the press break method I recommend but we never did see the press again. We have a commanding lead at half time and a ref, who we hadn’t had before, gives me the “we’re going to put them down softly” speech. OK.
The second half is not noteworthy except NF comes out in a zone towards the middle of the 3rd quarter. And let me tell you they looked hapless in it. So I basically do a line change we go with Indiana, our name for our zone breaker. And we can’t run it. We run the initial progression just fine, but when it comes time to get the ball back to the other side of the court the offense just falls apart, which is roughly the same time it falls apart in practice. At least it’s clear what we need to work on. We continue to run Indiana and some ineffectual practice with it, but I do gain a pretty good understanding of what some players need to work on. At one point Tom was in at the 3 and was completely not running it right and so I pulled him and was diagramming the play when he made some disparaging comments about himself. While I disagreed with David’s overall assessment on Friday I could not disagree with the idea that Tom does say an awful lot of negative things about himself. I told Tom I wanted to talk with him after the game.
The game ends and we’ve achieved another easy 37-12 victory. The second quarter seems to be our bugaboo as we allowed 6 points in it, 4 in the 3rd, and only 2 in the 4th. Though we did get sloppy in the fourth giving them better looks than I would have liked. On a personal note, except for Noah, I did an exceptional job of distributing playing time today. Everyone else had between 12 and 16 minutes of playing time. Considering if things were perfectly equal everyone would have 14 minutes, I think that’s pretty damn good.
Let’s look our individual players:
Brian – Played fairly well in his time. He had a great second quarter, which he played all of, but cooled off in the second half. In particular I think he was cheating too much on defense which allowed his man some easy shots.
Dante – Dante has been in a slump. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow before the game and tell him I want him to go hard on the boards. He had a few open shots he couldn’t quite convert, but more importantly his rebounds are way down.
David – He had an amazing 11 points in only 12 minutes and 9 shots. At this level getting 50% shooting is incredible, but that’s David. I told him at half that he wouldn’t be seeing much second half playing time, which of course he understood, and actually had him in as the 4 in Indiana in the 3rd quarter which he did a nice job with. I did get annoyed with him when after he had an early foul he was playing slack defense against their point guard. This was a kid who was practically dribbling at his shoulder. I actually subbed in Jack M at one point just to get some tighter pressure in the first quarter, but unfortunately they subbed the kid out at the same time. I called my only timeout in the second quarter to give David a mild scolding and tell him that this kid is nowhere nearly as impressive as the kid he was guarding last week, though this kid went with the “head full of steam” method of getting across half-court which proved to be effective. This wasn’t even a case of treating David differently as I think I’d have been equally upset if either of the Jacks, for instance, had played defense like that.
Gordie – He felt proud at how he did. He talked about how he took better shots and I agreed. He only took two shots and made one of them. He did have 5 turnovers so that part of his game still needs work, but this was his best game to date. Of course on the Win Score measure I use for productivity he still had a negative number, but it was less of a negative number. If we can cut down on his turnovers he could find some more playing time, though I’m not quite sure what role I would have for him, since we don’t exactly need a short kid who can’t guard all that well on either offense or defense. Nevertheless, I was happy for Gordie and how he played and the better shot selection was a huge first step.
Jack M – Clearly he was disappointed at not starting, though to his credit he didn’t say a thing. He did get very annoyed, however, that NF kept running their play “Brady Quinn”. I am not quite sure why they had an offensive set named after a QB. It was basically just a motion offense. But Jack did not like it. He was a pretty much non-factor until the 4th quarter when he exploded for six easy points.
Jack P – Jack actually led our team in minutes but didn’t do anything exceptional or poor. His defense wasn’t quite up to its normal stuff, so perhaps he was still feeling the after effects of his sickness. On the good side he only had two fouls so that part was good. Of course I’d rather have another foul or two and get some better defense.
Lucas – I’m going to make Lucas our MVP. He came up with the second highest win score for the game, and is actually third on the team for the season (behind Scott and David). He played some really nice help defense, mostly to make up for Brian’s lackings. And he had a HUGE stuff, where he came out of nowhere to prevent an easy basket on a sidelines play. Good enough for a game MVP and it gives me a chance to remind the team how important role players are. The just scoring baskets doesn’t make you a great player.
Noah – As discussed above was injured. He will not be playing in our exhibition game to give his ankle some time to rest.
Scott – Led our team in rebounds with only 5. We had a lot fewer rebounds this game than previous games and I’m not quite sure if it’s because we just allowed fewer shots or were getting out rebounded. I think it’s the latter and not the former, however.
Tom – Played pretty well in his time in the game. After the game I told him in no uncertain terms that he belonged on the team, was an important member of the team, and I was not going to tolerate him being so negative about himself.
For tomorrow’s game I think we’ll go with a starting lineup of Dante, Lucas, Tom, Jack P, and either David or Jack M. I think we’re in a good place heading into winter break and hope we’re in as equally a good place when we come back January 8, so essentially 3 weeks of no basketball, which is a long time. And then we have a killer schedule: MP1, our only competition for best in the league, some other shlubs, and then the HP tourney. I talked about this some at practice on Friday and will be doing so again tomorrow, but we need to stay in shape over break, otherwise we could be in some real trouble when we come back.
It’s clear from the start that we’re a substantially better team. The other coach used 3 of his 5 timeouts in the first quarter, and I hardly had my killer’s row out there. The group did well. I sub in Noah and Jack P with about 2 and a half minutes left in the first quarter and it soon becomes clear that Noah is playing injured. Noah had his game time limited accordingly, though I probably still over played him relative to his injury. At the end of the first quarter it’s 8-0. We quickly come out on a tear in the early second quarter and are soon up 12-0. NF didn’t come out with a press until about 3 minutes in the second quarter which unfortunately for them was about the same time that I put David back in. They try and run their press once, except David simply dribbles through it like swiss cheese. It’s certainly not the press break method I recommend but we never did see the press again. We have a commanding lead at half time and a ref, who we hadn’t had before, gives me the “we’re going to put them down softly” speech. OK.
The second half is not noteworthy except NF comes out in a zone towards the middle of the 3rd quarter. And let me tell you they looked hapless in it. So I basically do a line change we go with Indiana, our name for our zone breaker. And we can’t run it. We run the initial progression just fine, but when it comes time to get the ball back to the other side of the court the offense just falls apart, which is roughly the same time it falls apart in practice. At least it’s clear what we need to work on. We continue to run Indiana and some ineffectual practice with it, but I do gain a pretty good understanding of what some players need to work on. At one point Tom was in at the 3 and was completely not running it right and so I pulled him and was diagramming the play when he made some disparaging comments about himself. While I disagreed with David’s overall assessment on Friday I could not disagree with the idea that Tom does say an awful lot of negative things about himself. I told Tom I wanted to talk with him after the game.
The game ends and we’ve achieved another easy 37-12 victory. The second quarter seems to be our bugaboo as we allowed 6 points in it, 4 in the 3rd, and only 2 in the 4th. Though we did get sloppy in the fourth giving them better looks than I would have liked. On a personal note, except for Noah, I did an exceptional job of distributing playing time today. Everyone else had between 12 and 16 minutes of playing time. Considering if things were perfectly equal everyone would have 14 minutes, I think that’s pretty damn good.
Let’s look our individual players:
Brian – Played fairly well in his time. He had a great second quarter, which he played all of, but cooled off in the second half. In particular I think he was cheating too much on defense which allowed his man some easy shots.
Dante – Dante has been in a slump. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow before the game and tell him I want him to go hard on the boards. He had a few open shots he couldn’t quite convert, but more importantly his rebounds are way down.
David – He had an amazing 11 points in only 12 minutes and 9 shots. At this level getting 50% shooting is incredible, but that’s David. I told him at half that he wouldn’t be seeing much second half playing time, which of course he understood, and actually had him in as the 4 in Indiana in the 3rd quarter which he did a nice job with. I did get annoyed with him when after he had an early foul he was playing slack defense against their point guard. This was a kid who was practically dribbling at his shoulder. I actually subbed in Jack M at one point just to get some tighter pressure in the first quarter, but unfortunately they subbed the kid out at the same time. I called my only timeout in the second quarter to give David a mild scolding and tell him that this kid is nowhere nearly as impressive as the kid he was guarding last week, though this kid went with the “head full of steam” method of getting across half-court which proved to be effective. This wasn’t even a case of treating David differently as I think I’d have been equally upset if either of the Jacks, for instance, had played defense like that.
Gordie – He felt proud at how he did. He talked about how he took better shots and I agreed. He only took two shots and made one of them. He did have 5 turnovers so that part of his game still needs work, but this was his best game to date. Of course on the Win Score measure I use for productivity he still had a negative number, but it was less of a negative number. If we can cut down on his turnovers he could find some more playing time, though I’m not quite sure what role I would have for him, since we don’t exactly need a short kid who can’t guard all that well on either offense or defense. Nevertheless, I was happy for Gordie and how he played and the better shot selection was a huge first step.
Jack M – Clearly he was disappointed at not starting, though to his credit he didn’t say a thing. He did get very annoyed, however, that NF kept running their play “Brady Quinn”. I am not quite sure why they had an offensive set named after a QB. It was basically just a motion offense. But Jack did not like it. He was a pretty much non-factor until the 4th quarter when he exploded for six easy points.
Jack P – Jack actually led our team in minutes but didn’t do anything exceptional or poor. His defense wasn’t quite up to its normal stuff, so perhaps he was still feeling the after effects of his sickness. On the good side he only had two fouls so that part was good. Of course I’d rather have another foul or two and get some better defense.
Lucas – I’m going to make Lucas our MVP. He came up with the second highest win score for the game, and is actually third on the team for the season (behind Scott and David). He played some really nice help defense, mostly to make up for Brian’s lackings. And he had a HUGE stuff, where he came out of nowhere to prevent an easy basket on a sidelines play. Good enough for a game MVP and it gives me a chance to remind the team how important role players are. The just scoring baskets doesn’t make you a great player.
Noah – As discussed above was injured. He will not be playing in our exhibition game to give his ankle some time to rest.
Scott – Led our team in rebounds with only 5. We had a lot fewer rebounds this game than previous games and I’m not quite sure if it’s because we just allowed fewer shots or were getting out rebounded. I think it’s the latter and not the former, however.
Tom – Played pretty well in his time in the game. After the game I told him in no uncertain terms that he belonged on the team, was an important member of the team, and I was not going to tolerate him being so negative about himself.
For tomorrow’s game I think we’ll go with a starting lineup of Dante, Lucas, Tom, Jack P, and either David or Jack M. I think we’re in a good place heading into winter break and hope we’re in as equally a good place when we come back January 8, so essentially 3 weeks of no basketball, which is a long time. And then we have a killer schedule: MP1, our only competition for best in the league, some other shlubs, and then the HP tourney. I talked about this some at practice on Friday and will be doing so again tomorrow, but we need to stay in shape over break, otherwise we could be in some real trouble when we come back.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
December 15th Practice Report
So going into practice I knew it was going to be a smaller group than usual. Last week Lucas’s father had told me that they had unbelievable seats for the Bulls game and would be unable to make it. I also got an email during the day letting me know that Jack P would not be making it since he had the stomach flu.
When I get to practice first I find that the H’s are already there. And I soon see that Jack M has been drafted by the house league team and is in there doing some drill with the team. I also find out that the kid who so wow’ed me last week is actually in 6th grade and has a younger brother who is actually on Gordie’s team. Kind of disappointing as if I were coaching the 4th grade next year I don’t have this uber-stud to look forward to. But it does explain how he could come and start for my team.
Their practice comes to an end. For maybe 3 possessions in a row the game looked something like this: Gordie gets the ball and blows by all the defenders and scores a basket. Jack then gets the ball and does the same. This was better, however, than the 6th grader who decided to repeatedly steal the ball from 4th graders, and he wasn’t even doing it from Jack and Gordie, who at least deserved that kind of treatment. The range of skills on a house league team is so great. And it’s not quite like in baseball where the damage one start player is limited to the 2 innings of strikes or homerun he hits every 9 or 10 batters. A star player can be a huge difference every single moment on the court. It’s why basketball is so much more a team game than baseball.
Our practice starts a little late since I have to not only raise the baskets from their 8 feet, or even 7.5 feet, to 10 feet, but there’s also a rope wall that is hanging so low as to be an impediment. I manage to jury-rig a solution to that problem. We start practice at 6:05 and Dante is still not there. I give a quick introduction to our practice and right as we are about to start our continuous motion Dante arrives. The return of our doggie bags was ABYSMAL. I’m thinking if that keeps up we’ll do an early practice suicide for those who don’t bring the card to just reinforce the causation.
As we’re doing our continuous motion, Jack M is clearly lagging. I think he played a bit too hard in the scrimmage before. I give him a break as it’s understandable. However, he gets credit this once. Just as we’re about to start the continuous motion drill, Brian tells me that he “pulled his groin” during gym. Let’s just say that this injury will prove to effect him at irregular times during practice. I do tell him he can take the drill “slowly”. Basically he doesn’t like this drill. Noah, who also always struggles with the drill, is at least clever enough to ask, nay plead, for Princeton, since that doesn’t require quite as much running. One change we did was at the end of continuous motion I let them show me “cool” passes. Saw things like no look behind the back, jump and through the legs, and some other neat things. The players enjoyed that variation. It’ll come back as an occasional treat.
I forget to have them do their two free throws after I call a water break. We then go into our screening drill. The second time through I modify it to a game of 2-on-2. Tom continues to be a model of paying attention when out. Dante and Lucas also do good job here. Scott’s, Gordie’s, and Jack P’s performances are mixed. In that not so good category are Noah, Brian, David, and Jack M. The focus of this practice, I stated, was fakes. So I would often ask one of the players who was out how many fakes there were.
Next we did our transition drill, where they line up on the free throw line extended. We started with 3 on 3 and Jack P and Brian were the two I chose to sit out. They decided to take this opportunity to go to sleep. Brian complained for the millionth time how tired he was. He’d been complaining the whole practice and I started to lose my patience. During this drill David was far less on top of things than he normally is. I reminded the team how we’d been doing a good job of spacing the court on a fast break, and discussed a little more how to defend the fast break. The drill went well and at the end of it I had the team shoot two free throws.
We then came back in and played a game of golf and again we shot two free throws. There can be no doubt at this point that they have learned pretty well how to shoot from the elbows as a much higher percentage of shots go in than before and the games are taking longer to play since a high percentage of missed shots are rebounded. I think it might be time to play a new shooting game. After golf we did two more free throws. It seemed like an awful lot of our free throws were made during practice. I didn’t monitor this closely enough to see if there was any cheating going on, whether in the shooting or in the recording of how many made shots they had.
We then did our 3 on 3 “no excuses” drill where you play 3 on 3 and if your man scores on you than you sit out. Of particular note from this: Jack M has a deadly drive. It seemed like his man was constantly being the one who was sitting out after Jack drove right by him. At one point there was a long time without anyone scoring. Scott decided to let his man have a ridiculously open lay-up so someone would sit out. I then had him skip his turn to go back in the first time to emphasize we play defense 100% of the time. We’re also going to have to watch to make sure that our offense doesn’t become the Jack/David show. David made an observation of how Tom is so happy go lucky (he used slightly different words but not by much) in the classroom and he’s so depressing at practice. This after Tom admitted that it was really his fault that someone else’s man scored and so he came out of the game. I think of Tom as a pretty easy going guy so it’s interesting to have heard David’s observations, as the 4th grade view of the world is always interesting.
We then ran our suicides. I ended the 3 on 3 game a little earlier than I probably had to and rather than do the “what did you notice that everyone did well” bit, because I didn’t think about it, I just ended practice 5 minutes early. As practice ends I pull Brian to the side. His nonstop griping continued throughout practice and his effort in everything was not 100%. I explained to him that I had planned on starting him, but after his practice and complaining I would not be. In retrospect I am not sure if the better idea wouldn’t have been to state “you’re pretty close to earning a start, however practices like this don’t help.” Still gets the message across, but isn’t quite as in your face. Brian didn’t take the news well, which was expected. If looks could kill, I’d have been dead thanks to all the daggers his eyes shot at me. His caretaker asked me what happened, but there were lots of kids around and so I just said that she could ask him. A minute or two later I had a chance to get her by herself and explained what had happened. She was not exactly surprised. She was glad to hear it though, which even if it wasn’t a parent it was nice to have had the support.
I think Scott will be getting the nod in Brian’s place so we’ll go out with a lineup of David, Gordie, Scott, Lucas, Dante. Hopefully it’ll be another easy victory and everyone can get some quality playing time.
When I get to practice first I find that the H’s are already there. And I soon see that Jack M has been drafted by the house league team and is in there doing some drill with the team. I also find out that the kid who so wow’ed me last week is actually in 6th grade and has a younger brother who is actually on Gordie’s team. Kind of disappointing as if I were coaching the 4th grade next year I don’t have this uber-stud to look forward to. But it does explain how he could come and start for my team.
Their practice comes to an end. For maybe 3 possessions in a row the game looked something like this: Gordie gets the ball and blows by all the defenders and scores a basket. Jack then gets the ball and does the same. This was better, however, than the 6th grader who decided to repeatedly steal the ball from 4th graders, and he wasn’t even doing it from Jack and Gordie, who at least deserved that kind of treatment. The range of skills on a house league team is so great. And it’s not quite like in baseball where the damage one start player is limited to the 2 innings of strikes or homerun he hits every 9 or 10 batters. A star player can be a huge difference every single moment on the court. It’s why basketball is so much more a team game than baseball.
Our practice starts a little late since I have to not only raise the baskets from their 8 feet, or even 7.5 feet, to 10 feet, but there’s also a rope wall that is hanging so low as to be an impediment. I manage to jury-rig a solution to that problem. We start practice at 6:05 and Dante is still not there. I give a quick introduction to our practice and right as we are about to start our continuous motion Dante arrives. The return of our doggie bags was ABYSMAL. I’m thinking if that keeps up we’ll do an early practice suicide for those who don’t bring the card to just reinforce the causation.
As we’re doing our continuous motion, Jack M is clearly lagging. I think he played a bit too hard in the scrimmage before. I give him a break as it’s understandable. However, he gets credit this once. Just as we’re about to start the continuous motion drill, Brian tells me that he “pulled his groin” during gym. Let’s just say that this injury will prove to effect him at irregular times during practice. I do tell him he can take the drill “slowly”. Basically he doesn’t like this drill. Noah, who also always struggles with the drill, is at least clever enough to ask, nay plead, for Princeton, since that doesn’t require quite as much running. One change we did was at the end of continuous motion I let them show me “cool” passes. Saw things like no look behind the back, jump and through the legs, and some other neat things. The players enjoyed that variation. It’ll come back as an occasional treat.
I forget to have them do their two free throws after I call a water break. We then go into our screening drill. The second time through I modify it to a game of 2-on-2. Tom continues to be a model of paying attention when out. Dante and Lucas also do good job here. Scott’s, Gordie’s, and Jack P’s performances are mixed. In that not so good category are Noah, Brian, David, and Jack M. The focus of this practice, I stated, was fakes. So I would often ask one of the players who was out how many fakes there were.
Next we did our transition drill, where they line up on the free throw line extended. We started with 3 on 3 and Jack P and Brian were the two I chose to sit out. They decided to take this opportunity to go to sleep. Brian complained for the millionth time how tired he was. He’d been complaining the whole practice and I started to lose my patience. During this drill David was far less on top of things than he normally is. I reminded the team how we’d been doing a good job of spacing the court on a fast break, and discussed a little more how to defend the fast break. The drill went well and at the end of it I had the team shoot two free throws.
We then came back in and played a game of golf and again we shot two free throws. There can be no doubt at this point that they have learned pretty well how to shoot from the elbows as a much higher percentage of shots go in than before and the games are taking longer to play since a high percentage of missed shots are rebounded. I think it might be time to play a new shooting game. After golf we did two more free throws. It seemed like an awful lot of our free throws were made during practice. I didn’t monitor this closely enough to see if there was any cheating going on, whether in the shooting or in the recording of how many made shots they had.
We then did our 3 on 3 “no excuses” drill where you play 3 on 3 and if your man scores on you than you sit out. Of particular note from this: Jack M has a deadly drive. It seemed like his man was constantly being the one who was sitting out after Jack drove right by him. At one point there was a long time without anyone scoring. Scott decided to let his man have a ridiculously open lay-up so someone would sit out. I then had him skip his turn to go back in the first time to emphasize we play defense 100% of the time. We’re also going to have to watch to make sure that our offense doesn’t become the Jack/David show. David made an observation of how Tom is so happy go lucky (he used slightly different words but not by much) in the classroom and he’s so depressing at practice. This after Tom admitted that it was really his fault that someone else’s man scored and so he came out of the game. I think of Tom as a pretty easy going guy so it’s interesting to have heard David’s observations, as the 4th grade view of the world is always interesting.
We then ran our suicides. I ended the 3 on 3 game a little earlier than I probably had to and rather than do the “what did you notice that everyone did well” bit, because I didn’t think about it, I just ended practice 5 minutes early. As practice ends I pull Brian to the side. His nonstop griping continued throughout practice and his effort in everything was not 100%. I explained to him that I had planned on starting him, but after his practice and complaining I would not be. In retrospect I am not sure if the better idea wouldn’t have been to state “you’re pretty close to earning a start, however practices like this don’t help.” Still gets the message across, but isn’t quite as in your face. Brian didn’t take the news well, which was expected. If looks could kill, I’d have been dead thanks to all the daggers his eyes shot at me. His caretaker asked me what happened, but there were lots of kids around and so I just said that she could ask him. A minute or two later I had a chance to get her by herself and explained what had happened. She was not exactly surprised. She was glad to hear it though, which even if it wasn’t a parent it was nice to have had the support.
I think Scott will be getting the nod in Brian’s place so we’ll go out with a lineup of David, Gordie, Scott, Lucas, Dante. Hopefully it’ll be another easy victory and everyone can get some quality playing time.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
December 11 Practice Report
It took me FOREVER to get out school yesterday. I do most of my work in the morning, before school starts and so my administrators have no problems that 5 minutes after the bell rings I’m normally out of there. Today however for various reasons it takes me an extra half hour to get out of there. That’s normally a half hour I spend to use getting ready for practice. I grab some McDonalds as I drive home which saves me some time I normally spend eating. And fortunately I had a good idea of what I wanted to do and everything sort of clicks together.
I haven’t spent a lot of time discussing how I get ready for practice, so this seems like a good opportunity to do so. When I got this job I went and purchased about a half dozen of the best books I could find on coaching basketball, and in particular youth basketball. A couple of them are more drills/game guides while the rest take a more general overview of the game. There are also a couple of websites I will consult from time to time on specific matters. So I generally think of what I want to do in a practice and then look in the various books or books to see if they have any suggestions on either a drill/activity or a methodology. So, for instance, I wished to do a “feed the ball into the post” activity since we had times where a post player was open and we didn’t feed it in there. I look through all of the materials, and come up empty. On the other hand, I also wanted to work on layups. For any sort of fundamentals work, I always turn to The Basketball Coach’s Bible by Sidney Goldstein as he’s better than anyone else I’ve read at really breaking down everything, from shooting, to dribbling, to holding the ball even, into its basics. I jotted down a few reminders to myself on what Goldstein suggests are the steps to make sure I teach it the same way he does.
I also knew that as part of the practice we’d talk about the last game, with a couple of points I wanted to make sure were made, so those want on my practice notes, and that I wanted to practice our Zone Buster. If we needed something to fill time I had our screening drill in reserve. I also try to include one or two games a practice and this time I went with the 3 on 3 (or was considering doing 4 on 4) “no excuses” drill where if your guy scores on you then you come out and a new player goes in, so you have complete mismatches on the court.
The last part was getting the doggie bag ready. At some point I need to give them the zone break we’re going to use, but I haven’t diagrammed that yet so I decided that they could practice their lay-ups, as what we were going to be doing involved no shooting, and be expected to know their positions in our zone breaker.
And we were ready to go, and with time to spare. This was one of the easier practices to put together, and so that was good. As I’m driving over, I realize that I always start the last game’s MVP, that’d be David. Lucas really played well as a starter and deserves another chance, so that’s another. I don’t want to bench Dante as a starter two games in a row and to give him a chance to revert to form, I had decided to start Gordie as a makeup for giving him only six minutes last game. Brian also played well in his minutes. So that’s our stating five, assuming none of them does anything to really mess that up.
Get to practice and get to see a teacher who I used to work with who I really liked, that was good. Right as we’re about to begin practice Gordie comes up to me and asks how he could get more playing time. I tell him it’s an excellent question and we should talk about it after practice.
I had planned on doing our continuous motion drill first, to tire them up just a bit before we did our post-game analysis, but there was a junior high game in the gym before us and they were still unsetting up the gym from that when practice began, so we sat down and did our post game talk. The kids, as usual, did a good job of pointing out the things we did well. They weren’t quite as astute, however, as normal on the areas where we needed to improve. The main thing we talked about there was looking into the post. A demonstration was given on how to do this and how to swing the ball quickly to find open people on the perimeter.
We then did our continuous motion. Following continuous motion we did a simple pass into the post drill. It was done more to reinforce the importance of looking into the post than anything. It went fairly well. A great moment was when Gordie was defending Dante and completely stuffed him.
We then went into our Zone Breaker offense. This went terribly. First of all whowever was on defense cheated since they knew where the passes were going to be going. Second of all, our team doesn’t really understand how to play zone defense so they kind of fall into man to man. This made it hard to practice our zone breaker. Even when I told the defense to do nothing it only went so-so. I think it’s a good play and we’re going to keep at it, but I’m at a bit of a loss how to make the defense part better. I don’t really want to teach them how to play zone and I have no idea how to stop them from cheating.
The zone breaker took MUCH longer than anticipated because of all the problems we had. Also we ran a suicide in the middle because when I blew the whistle people were not stopping play. So rather than running the 3 on 3 drill as planned we played a game of golf. Which went on FOREVER. Our team was shooting the lights out. It was pretty cool. Anyhow we finally finished. We ran our suicides and practice was over.
So Gordie comes up to me and we start discussing what he could do to get more playing time. I talk to him about shot selection and not letting men by him on defense. But I didn’t really talk to him about the biggest problem: he’s small and panics when he gets double teamed. I’m going to follow up with him on Friday. As Gordie and I were talking the coach of the team coming into practice tells me how Gordie must have scored “40 or 50” against him on Sunday. This is hardly surprising to me. Lucas’s father told me how Lucas, who I hadn’t realized was also on a house league team, accomplished something similar.
And so that was our practice. It was a pretty good practice, though the frustration with the zone breaker is puzzling me.
I haven’t spent a lot of time discussing how I get ready for practice, so this seems like a good opportunity to do so. When I got this job I went and purchased about a half dozen of the best books I could find on coaching basketball, and in particular youth basketball. A couple of them are more drills/game guides while the rest take a more general overview of the game. There are also a couple of websites I will consult from time to time on specific matters. So I generally think of what I want to do in a practice and then look in the various books or books to see if they have any suggestions on either a drill/activity or a methodology. So, for instance, I wished to do a “feed the ball into the post” activity since we had times where a post player was open and we didn’t feed it in there. I look through all of the materials, and come up empty. On the other hand, I also wanted to work on layups. For any sort of fundamentals work, I always turn to The Basketball Coach’s Bible by Sidney Goldstein as he’s better than anyone else I’ve read at really breaking down everything, from shooting, to dribbling, to holding the ball even, into its basics. I jotted down a few reminders to myself on what Goldstein suggests are the steps to make sure I teach it the same way he does.
I also knew that as part of the practice we’d talk about the last game, with a couple of points I wanted to make sure were made, so those want on my practice notes, and that I wanted to practice our Zone Buster. If we needed something to fill time I had our screening drill in reserve. I also try to include one or two games a practice and this time I went with the 3 on 3 (or was considering doing 4 on 4) “no excuses” drill where if your guy scores on you then you come out and a new player goes in, so you have complete mismatches on the court.
The last part was getting the doggie bag ready. At some point I need to give them the zone break we’re going to use, but I haven’t diagrammed that yet so I decided that they could practice their lay-ups, as what we were going to be doing involved no shooting, and be expected to know their positions in our zone breaker.
And we were ready to go, and with time to spare. This was one of the easier practices to put together, and so that was good. As I’m driving over, I realize that I always start the last game’s MVP, that’d be David. Lucas really played well as a starter and deserves another chance, so that’s another. I don’t want to bench Dante as a starter two games in a row and to give him a chance to revert to form, I had decided to start Gordie as a makeup for giving him only six minutes last game. Brian also played well in his minutes. So that’s our stating five, assuming none of them does anything to really mess that up.
Get to practice and get to see a teacher who I used to work with who I really liked, that was good. Right as we’re about to begin practice Gordie comes up to me and asks how he could get more playing time. I tell him it’s an excellent question and we should talk about it after practice.
I had planned on doing our continuous motion drill first, to tire them up just a bit before we did our post-game analysis, but there was a junior high game in the gym before us and they were still unsetting up the gym from that when practice began, so we sat down and did our post game talk. The kids, as usual, did a good job of pointing out the things we did well. They weren’t quite as astute, however, as normal on the areas where we needed to improve. The main thing we talked about there was looking into the post. A demonstration was given on how to do this and how to swing the ball quickly to find open people on the perimeter.
We then did our continuous motion. Following continuous motion we did a simple pass into the post drill. It was done more to reinforce the importance of looking into the post than anything. It went fairly well. A great moment was when Gordie was defending Dante and completely stuffed him.
We then went into our Zone Breaker offense. This went terribly. First of all whowever was on defense cheated since they knew where the passes were going to be going. Second of all, our team doesn’t really understand how to play zone defense so they kind of fall into man to man. This made it hard to practice our zone breaker. Even when I told the defense to do nothing it only went so-so. I think it’s a good play and we’re going to keep at it, but I’m at a bit of a loss how to make the defense part better. I don’t really want to teach them how to play zone and I have no idea how to stop them from cheating.
The zone breaker took MUCH longer than anticipated because of all the problems we had. Also we ran a suicide in the middle because when I blew the whistle people were not stopping play. So rather than running the 3 on 3 drill as planned we played a game of golf. Which went on FOREVER. Our team was shooting the lights out. It was pretty cool. Anyhow we finally finished. We ran our suicides and practice was over.
So Gordie comes up to me and we start discussing what he could do to get more playing time. I talk to him about shot selection and not letting men by him on defense. But I didn’t really talk to him about the biggest problem: he’s small and panics when he gets double teamed. I’m going to follow up with him on Friday. As Gordie and I were talking the coach of the team coming into practice tells me how Gordie must have scored “40 or 50” against him on Sunday. This is hardly surprising to me. Lucas’s father told me how Lucas, who I hadn’t realized was also on a house league team, accomplished something similar.
And so that was our practice. It was a pretty good practice, though the frustration with the zone breaker is puzzling me.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Spartans vs. MP2
Well yesterday was going to be where the rubber met the road. We were going to face MP2. Their park district facility was HUGE and was very nice. We were playing on one of their gyms. When I got there some kids soccer team was finishing their practice. They were supposed to be done by 11:30, but didn’t end up finishing until 11:50, which was fine. The first thing we did once we got the court was to run through our inbounds place, with no defense, once with everybody (so in two groups). They ran the play well so that was good.
As we did our lay-up lines I realized just what awful form we have while shooting lay-ups. It’s no surprise we can’t make them in a game when we can’t really shoot them. And thinking back on it, I realized that we never did spend time on them in practice. I think it’s going to be layup boot camp this week at practice. Our poor layups continued in the game with Dante missing three easy layups and Jack M missing many an easy layup. In fact Jack M took 9 shots during the game and made ZERO of them.
MP2 is a big team compared to us. In fact their center is HUGE for a 4th grader. With Dante not starting I worry about his ability to just absolutely dominate us. Fortunately, he turns out to be a bit of an oaf and is pretty much a non-factor while in the game.
The game begins. I decided to give Lucas the start so we had a starting lineup of Lucas at 5, Scott at the 4, Jack P at 3, David at 2, Jack M at 1. As is usual we get off to a slow start. We also have trouble matching up. This would be a problem that would plague us throughout the game. I think that one of the reasons for this is that the numbers on the front of their jerseys were small and on the shoulder. This made it harder when I told some players to switch, which I did more than in other games, and when they subbed as such. It wasn’t a huge problem, but it was certainly an issue.
Anyhow, right off the bat it becomes clear from their first possession that they have a PG, #3, who is UNBELIEVABLY fast. He is also short. In fact he might have been shorter than all of the players on our team, and let’s not forget we’re a short team. After that first possession, which resulted in a lay-up, I quickly assign David to guard him. Our first possession down, we, without running our zone breaker, quickly destroy their 2-3. Unfortunately, we take 3 good, open, shots, and fail to convert any of them before they get a rebound.
At first, it looks like we’re going to be in real trouble. They have guys who can make outside shots. They have this killer point guard. They run a good play, with a couple of variations. However, as the first quarter goes on we slowly pull ahead. And there is one reason for it: David. When I told my dad after our last game that he was our best player, my Dad was somewhat dumb founded. And I don’t blame him. In the NF2 game David didn’t really do much of anything. This game, however, he just took over. Besides shutting down #3, he also created numerous fast break opportunities. He ended the game with 17 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 steals in 22 minutes of play.
When the second quarter starts David is exhausted and so I take him out for a breather. I assign Jack P to guard #3 and he does a nice job. Because of the speed of their team, I decide we will not try and press them at all. They do come out with a press. We struggle at first with it, almost to the point where I was going to call a time-out, but then things start to click for us and we are able to break it. Also, I’m proud that we forced them to switch to man to man during this quarter as we’d been getting so many good shots against their zone.
When the half comes we are comfortably ahead, by about 7, but the intensity of a game would suggest a much closer score (remembering that 7 is a lot of points for 4th graders). At half I diagram the play that they have been running. The play is quite simply a series of picks. Something must have clicked because in the 3rd quarter we held them to only 2 points. It was our best defensive effort of the season. We go up by about 14. Their best shooter, #12, was clearly frustrated by our defense. So frustrated he started crying. Why the coaches kept a player in the game who was crying is beyond me. Sub out the kid, let him compose himself and then send him back out on the court. His frustration almost caused an injury when he stupidly crashed into Brian chasing a ball at the end of the 3rd quarter.
When the 4th quarter comes we are on the verge of being able to dominate the game. I send out a slightly weaker unit to start the 4th quarter. However, their press, which was pretty good in the second, is now very good. It also doesn’t help that we can’t make any of our lay-ups. The momentum seems to be swinging back in their favor. However, we are able to reassert ourselves and though it gets to with-in 9 that is as close as it gets. We end the game with a solid victory. I wish I could tell you the final score, but I forgot that since it was an away game our book wasn’t being used and I needed to write down the final score. We won by about 11.
Overall, it was a good performance. The final score, whatever it may be, does not indicate how close a game it felt. Gordie’s step dad said as much as we left the gym, so I clearly was not the only person who felt that way. However, the fact that we won by as we did, against what is clearly one of the better teams in the conference, does give me concern that our cockiness will only become more of a problem. I also feel a little bad for MP2. They just lost two games in a row, both by good margins, and so they are going to be sitting at 1-2 despite being one of the best teams in the conference.
Taking a look at our players:
Brian – He played very well. Well enough to most likely earn a start in our next game. He found good shots, made a good percentage of them. He also played pretty good defense.
Dante – Dante had an off game. He was a non-presence. He played 19.5 minutes and only had 2 rebounds. Now granted he was playing against some big guys, but against NF2 he was rebounding against a kid bigger than him and he still came up with the boards.
David – As discussed above he was our game MVP. It’s been nice how we’ve had a different player be our MVP for each game, without it even being forced. I’d really like each of the players to be named game MVP at least once during the course of the season, though clearly, as in baseball, some of them are going to be more stretches than others. David will likely sit a lot against NF, our next opponent, as a way of making sure other kids get their chances.
Gordie – Gordie only saw 6 minutes of playing time. I do feel bad as I knew he hadn’t played a whole bunch but I thought he’d played more than that. I think I’m going to start him as well in our next game as a sort of “make-up”.
Jack M – Jack M kept finding good shots, as discussed, he just couldn’t make them. In fact at the end of the game, he kept getting fouled and actually went to the free throw line 10 times. He shot 4 of 10 from the line, which given his size and age, is a pretty good performance. These refs didn’t call lane violations so Jack got lucky there as he had quite a few of them.
Jack P – This was also not Jack’s best game. I believe I’ve mentioned before how I use something called Win Score to measure a player’s efficiency. The goal is to get above .100/minute. Jack, in the two games we’ve kept stats, has had a negative score. I feel like this doesn’t capture the good stuff he does on the court, but does temper some of my enthusiasm for him. He did limit his playing time in this game by getting into repeated foul trouble.
Lucas – Lucas played well. He was actually open quite a bit. However, many times when he was open he wasn’t ready for the ball, even if he was on the strong side. We’re going to work on remembering that feeding the ball into the post is one of our offensive rules. If Lucas continues to play well, and Dante does not, it will lead to an unexpected change of playing times.
Noah – Noah made his first basket of the season, meaning all of our players have now scored, which is nice. He looked particularly lost in breaking the press, which considering we haven’t really practiced breaking the press isn’t his fault.
Scott – Had a solid performance again. It’s great that he can guard guys so much bigger than he. I thought he’d played a lot and was surprised to see he had “only” played about 18 minutes (I’d have thought it was in the 20s).
Tom – In the 3rd and 4th quarter he was WIDE open repeatedly and Jack M and Brian just didn’t get the ball to him. It was frustrating for me, and no doubt frustrating for Tom.
So this game left little doubt that we’re a good team. I am going to be emailing Emily shortly letting her know we wish to play in the A bracket of the HP tourney. It is exciting and nerve wracking to think that the biggest challenge we have right now is over confidence.
As we did our lay-up lines I realized just what awful form we have while shooting lay-ups. It’s no surprise we can’t make them in a game when we can’t really shoot them. And thinking back on it, I realized that we never did spend time on them in practice. I think it’s going to be layup boot camp this week at practice. Our poor layups continued in the game with Dante missing three easy layups and Jack M missing many an easy layup. In fact Jack M took 9 shots during the game and made ZERO of them.
MP2 is a big team compared to us. In fact their center is HUGE for a 4th grader. With Dante not starting I worry about his ability to just absolutely dominate us. Fortunately, he turns out to be a bit of an oaf and is pretty much a non-factor while in the game.
The game begins. I decided to give Lucas the start so we had a starting lineup of Lucas at 5, Scott at the 4, Jack P at 3, David at 2, Jack M at 1. As is usual we get off to a slow start. We also have trouble matching up. This would be a problem that would plague us throughout the game. I think that one of the reasons for this is that the numbers on the front of their jerseys were small and on the shoulder. This made it harder when I told some players to switch, which I did more than in other games, and when they subbed as such. It wasn’t a huge problem, but it was certainly an issue.
Anyhow, right off the bat it becomes clear from their first possession that they have a PG, #3, who is UNBELIEVABLY fast. He is also short. In fact he might have been shorter than all of the players on our team, and let’s not forget we’re a short team. After that first possession, which resulted in a lay-up, I quickly assign David to guard him. Our first possession down, we, without running our zone breaker, quickly destroy their 2-3. Unfortunately, we take 3 good, open, shots, and fail to convert any of them before they get a rebound.
At first, it looks like we’re going to be in real trouble. They have guys who can make outside shots. They have this killer point guard. They run a good play, with a couple of variations. However, as the first quarter goes on we slowly pull ahead. And there is one reason for it: David. When I told my dad after our last game that he was our best player, my Dad was somewhat dumb founded. And I don’t blame him. In the NF2 game David didn’t really do much of anything. This game, however, he just took over. Besides shutting down #3, he also created numerous fast break opportunities. He ended the game with 17 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 steals in 22 minutes of play.
When the second quarter starts David is exhausted and so I take him out for a breather. I assign Jack P to guard #3 and he does a nice job. Because of the speed of their team, I decide we will not try and press them at all. They do come out with a press. We struggle at first with it, almost to the point where I was going to call a time-out, but then things start to click for us and we are able to break it. Also, I’m proud that we forced them to switch to man to man during this quarter as we’d been getting so many good shots against their zone.
When the half comes we are comfortably ahead, by about 7, but the intensity of a game would suggest a much closer score (remembering that 7 is a lot of points for 4th graders). At half I diagram the play that they have been running. The play is quite simply a series of picks. Something must have clicked because in the 3rd quarter we held them to only 2 points. It was our best defensive effort of the season. We go up by about 14. Their best shooter, #12, was clearly frustrated by our defense. So frustrated he started crying. Why the coaches kept a player in the game who was crying is beyond me. Sub out the kid, let him compose himself and then send him back out on the court. His frustration almost caused an injury when he stupidly crashed into Brian chasing a ball at the end of the 3rd quarter.
When the 4th quarter comes we are on the verge of being able to dominate the game. I send out a slightly weaker unit to start the 4th quarter. However, their press, which was pretty good in the second, is now very good. It also doesn’t help that we can’t make any of our lay-ups. The momentum seems to be swinging back in their favor. However, we are able to reassert ourselves and though it gets to with-in 9 that is as close as it gets. We end the game with a solid victory. I wish I could tell you the final score, but I forgot that since it was an away game our book wasn’t being used and I needed to write down the final score. We won by about 11.
Overall, it was a good performance. The final score, whatever it may be, does not indicate how close a game it felt. Gordie’s step dad said as much as we left the gym, so I clearly was not the only person who felt that way. However, the fact that we won by as we did, against what is clearly one of the better teams in the conference, does give me concern that our cockiness will only become more of a problem. I also feel a little bad for MP2. They just lost two games in a row, both by good margins, and so they are going to be sitting at 1-2 despite being one of the best teams in the conference.
Taking a look at our players:
Brian – He played very well. Well enough to most likely earn a start in our next game. He found good shots, made a good percentage of them. He also played pretty good defense.
Dante – Dante had an off game. He was a non-presence. He played 19.5 minutes and only had 2 rebounds. Now granted he was playing against some big guys, but against NF2 he was rebounding against a kid bigger than him and he still came up with the boards.
David – As discussed above he was our game MVP. It’s been nice how we’ve had a different player be our MVP for each game, without it even being forced. I’d really like each of the players to be named game MVP at least once during the course of the season, though clearly, as in baseball, some of them are going to be more stretches than others. David will likely sit a lot against NF, our next opponent, as a way of making sure other kids get their chances.
Gordie – Gordie only saw 6 minutes of playing time. I do feel bad as I knew he hadn’t played a whole bunch but I thought he’d played more than that. I think I’m going to start him as well in our next game as a sort of “make-up”.
Jack M – Jack M kept finding good shots, as discussed, he just couldn’t make them. In fact at the end of the game, he kept getting fouled and actually went to the free throw line 10 times. He shot 4 of 10 from the line, which given his size and age, is a pretty good performance. These refs didn’t call lane violations so Jack got lucky there as he had quite a few of them.
Jack P – This was also not Jack’s best game. I believe I’ve mentioned before how I use something called Win Score to measure a player’s efficiency. The goal is to get above .100/minute. Jack, in the two games we’ve kept stats, has had a negative score. I feel like this doesn’t capture the good stuff he does on the court, but does temper some of my enthusiasm for him. He did limit his playing time in this game by getting into repeated foul trouble.
Lucas – Lucas played well. He was actually open quite a bit. However, many times when he was open he wasn’t ready for the ball, even if he was on the strong side. We’re going to work on remembering that feeding the ball into the post is one of our offensive rules. If Lucas continues to play well, and Dante does not, it will lead to an unexpected change of playing times.
Noah – Noah made his first basket of the season, meaning all of our players have now scored, which is nice. He looked particularly lost in breaking the press, which considering we haven’t really practiced breaking the press isn’t his fault.
Scott – Had a solid performance again. It’s great that he can guard guys so much bigger than he. I thought he’d played a lot and was surprised to see he had “only” played about 18 minutes (I’d have thought it was in the 20s).
Tom – In the 3rd and 4th quarter he was WIDE open repeatedly and Jack M and Brian just didn’t get the ball to him. It was frustrating for me, and no doubt frustrating for Tom.
So this game left little doubt that we’re a good team. I am going to be emailing Emily shortly letting her know we wish to play in the A bracket of the HP tourney. It is exciting and nerve wracking to think that the biggest challenge we have right now is over confidence.
Saturday, December 9, 2006
Reader Wade Moore recently reminded me of some of the troubles I’d had during baseball. My baseball co-coach, Steve, and I were at a movie on Tuesday and I was reminded of some of the incidents I’d completely forgotten. Like the time they completely forgot to unlock the equipment for us.
This is in complete contrast to the professional way my park district boss, Emily, handles things. She has been wonderful to work for and with. In fact, this week I received a couple of emails from her. The first was a message stating that the local JCC team wished to scrimmage with us. I called up the number and it turns out that they normally practice on Mondays as well, so it was no problem setting up a couple of scrimmages. We are going to be doing one on the 18th and another in February. There’s going to be a ref there, so perhaps rather than scrimmage, exhibition game is a better term. While I don’t really know the quality of their teams, from what I know in general about JCC sports I feel like we should be a better team. Regardless I am excited about two more games, since we play so few games relative to practices in basketball. Not that I don’t love practices, but some things are best taught by experiencing them at a game, or at least through a game the need to practice certain areas is reinforced.
She also gave me the dates for this year’s HP Basketball Tourney, and asked if I wanted our team to participate. This is traditionally a tourney that our travel teams participate in and I am excited about participating in it this year. More importantly, based on how we do against MP2, I’m seriously thinking of entering us in the “A” bracket. I’m worried about the fact that we’ll become complacent. If we keep winning games by 20 points, motivation becomes harder and it would be a shame not to reach our full potential because our competition wasn’t up to snuff. So, if we do well against MP I think I’ll enter us in the A bracket. I think struggling, even losing by a lot against some better teams, could be a far more valuable experience for us come mid to end of January. Of course if MP2 hands us our rears tomorrow, I think it’ll bring us back down in a hurry.
Yesterday’s practice in basketball terms was actually quite good. They understand the rotation of the zone buster offense pretty well. We need to work on improvising when there’s an actual defense (for instance making sure the ball goes into the high post), but they are mostly understanding the rotations necessary. Interestingly, Scott had the biggest problem and as a post player he’s got the easiest job of anyone. The 4 and the 5 in the offense basically just go to either the elbow (high post) or the low post. When the ball switches sides of the court they switch from the high to the low post (or vice versa). Scott simply didn’t know when to switch. Otherwise, they ran it fairly well. In particular Jack M did a nice job with doing what he needed to do. I hadn’t thought we’d be quite ready to run this offense in the game on Sunday, but I think it might be worth a shot, if they play some zone.
Speaking of zone I was asked, again, if we were going to play any zone. I then explained my philosophy of why man to man for 4th graders is the right thing for them in the long run. I used the word philosophy in my explanation and then had to explain what philosophy meant. It was a good moment for their intellectual growth, as human beings, let alone basketball players since I bet almost all of them remember what philosophy will mean.
We also did a substantially better job in setting our screens. A quick tangent, that will relate back to this. Before our practices now on Fridays, Gordie’s house league team is going to be practicing. As I was peeking in, there was one player who was amazing. He was, first of all, bigger than perhaps 2/3 of our team. And he just moved like a basketball player, shot like a basketball player. I saw him for about 3 minutes and it was clear that he could easily contend for a starting position on our team. So I turn to Jack M, who is waiting with me at that point, and ask him what grade this kid is in. Actually, I think I asked something more along the lines of “Is he in 4th grade?” Because if that kid was in 4th grade and not on the team, I was going to be very sad. However, it turns out that he was in 3rd grade. That kid could be real special next year. Anyhow, they were doing some drill and this kid was setting PERFECT screens and his teammates, because they didn’t know what to do with the ball (one kid, for instance would always forget to dribble before he shot), were actually using the screens. So, before we started our screen practice I stated how I saw the Gordie’s house league team do a better job of setting screens, because the person receiving the screen didn’t move too soon, than we had done. This seemed to get them motivated and we did a much better job of setting and taking the screen. What we should do after the screen? A work in progress. But again I was happy with what I saw.
The last basketball thing we did was practice a half-court 3-2 drill. The way it works is offensive and defensive players alternate on the baseline. The player in the center has the ball. They offensive and the defense runs out to half court and then plays 3 on 2. Our offense did well, as usual. If anything they did better than when we normally run this in practice. It seemed like a good chance to start to talk about defending the fast break, which we hadn’t spent much time on. So I thought that went well.
But that’s all we did. At minimum we should have been able to have had time to practice our in bounds drill. I had planned 15 minutes of 3 on 3 at the end of practice. However, they were OFF THE WALL. Our beginning of practice talk, which ought to have taken 2 or 3 minutes tops (all that it was, was a quick reminder that MP2 was a good team, win or lose we keep our heads held high if we gave our all and displayed good sportsmanship, to wear their blue jerseys, and to announce our two exhibition games) took forever. Finally I lost patience and we ran a suicide. After that they were too tired to say much of anything. I finished quickly with what I needed to say and we went into our continuous motion drill. And the suicide before the continuous motion drill? A killer. Noah and Brian continued their inability to jog for 10 minutes, even slowly. However, at times Jack M and Scott needed to be prodded as well, which isn’t typical. Lucas, Jack M, Dante, and David all did well, which wasn’t too surprising as I’d have pegged them as having had the most endurance.
The talking didn’t improve much. I don’t want to go to the suicide well too often, as it could just lose some of its effectiveness. I think the talking was partly because it was Friday. But again, as I alluded to earlier, I think a sense of confidence is prevalent throughout the team. Confidence I like. However, I am concerned that it could turn into over confidence. So if we have another practice were a good chunk of instruction time is wasted, I’m going to have to rethink some things. I let the team know I was disappointed in how we’d practiced, and by the end of practice they mostly had pulled it together, so that was good. However, it was a shame to have so much good basketball be overshadowed by so much other stuff.
As for starters for tomorrow’s game, I’m torn. The thing is that I don’t want to always start Jack M. I would, for instance, like to use David as our starting point guard. I’ve discussed Jack M’s limitations at other positions before so I won’t repeat them again. However, to balance his ego I need to show that starters will not be fixed before I sit him, so he realizes it’s just part of the team and not a criticism of him. So he’s starting. Our best player should start most of our games, so David is going to start. Scott was our MVP last game, and I think the previous game MVP should always start, so he’s starting.
So the question is who else do I want to start? Do I choose one other from the remaining three of our best six of Tom, Dante, and Jack P and one from the remaining four? Or do I rotate in two players?
I’m really unsure what I want to do with the starting lineup for tomorrow, beyond the three already mentioned. I think I want to start Jack P, as he’s kind of gotten the short shift, to a certain extent, in playing time in the first two games.
Looking at our remaining four players we have Brian, Lucas, Noah and Gordie.
Brian is catching up to speed quickly, but I don’t think he has several of the concepts down simply because we haven’t, for instance, run our set offense with him. In fact we haven’t practiced our set offense in a while so it’s likely time to do some review and refinement on that. Anyway, I’m not quite ready to start Brian. Especially after he tells me that he’s one of the slowest members of the team when we were running our suicide and should get the Dante +5 seconds. Perhaps he is one of the slowest members at the moment, but when I selected the team he was not one of the slowest members. In fact he was one of the quickest. No doubt his injury has slowed him down, but I don’t feel particularly inclined to cut him a break here as coddling him won’t, get him back into condition. Of course there is the fear that he rushed back before he was fully healed and is playing hurt. However, he hasn’t shown many signs of tentativeness or whatever so I don’t think that is it. So no coddling for Brian, but also no start at the moment.
Lucas is a great kid. He actually had a really good practice too and so it seems like it might be time to reward him with a start. With him being exclusively the 4 that makes it hard to get everyone into a good slot on offense. For instance, with this five only David (and Jack M) have practiced any time at 2. So David would have to go there. Scott could be a 3, but since he too has spent more time at 4, and struggled in our zone buster at that, I’m weary of making him the 3. Jack P is actually perhaps our best 3, or just slightly worse than David, however he’d need to be center in this grouping since there would be no Dante. Alternatively, I could start Lucas at center. That allows Jack to play 3 and Scott to play 4, both their best positions. But Lucas would be a little lost as center since I’ve been focusing him so heavily on the 4, for both offense and defense. Seems silly to reward a kid for hard work, only to put him in a position where you don’t think you’re giving him particularly good chances of success.
So an argument could be made for Noah. He’d fit perfectly in as a 2, which would allow David to be the 5, Scott the 4, and Jack P the 3, which I feel is a good grouping. He hasn’t started a game yet. The problem is that he was one of the most distracted kids at practice. So I definitely don’t want to even tacitly reward bad behavior.
Finally there is Gordie. Gordie can play the 2, no doubt. His effort was OK, not great not terrible, though his actual skills were good. However, I’d really rather start Lucas, considering his effort was good, he displayed some of the best basketball I’d seen, and Gordie’s already started where as Lucas has not.
As often happens what was a jumble in my mind has become clearer as I write out this blog. It seems as though we have a two way race between Lucas and Gordie.
Last game I was confident. I am now almost as nervous as I was before our game against HP. I really think there are 3 teams, us and the two MPs, who are a cut above everyone else. The question is where do we fall with-in that 3 way race? I hope the answer is at the top, and after tomorrow I will be one step closer to knowing the answer.
This is in complete contrast to the professional way my park district boss, Emily, handles things. She has been wonderful to work for and with. In fact, this week I received a couple of emails from her. The first was a message stating that the local JCC team wished to scrimmage with us. I called up the number and it turns out that they normally practice on Mondays as well, so it was no problem setting up a couple of scrimmages. We are going to be doing one on the 18th and another in February. There’s going to be a ref there, so perhaps rather than scrimmage, exhibition game is a better term. While I don’t really know the quality of their teams, from what I know in general about JCC sports I feel like we should be a better team. Regardless I am excited about two more games, since we play so few games relative to practices in basketball. Not that I don’t love practices, but some things are best taught by experiencing them at a game, or at least through a game the need to practice certain areas is reinforced.
She also gave me the dates for this year’s HP Basketball Tourney, and asked if I wanted our team to participate. This is traditionally a tourney that our travel teams participate in and I am excited about participating in it this year. More importantly, based on how we do against MP2, I’m seriously thinking of entering us in the “A” bracket. I’m worried about the fact that we’ll become complacent. If we keep winning games by 20 points, motivation becomes harder and it would be a shame not to reach our full potential because our competition wasn’t up to snuff. So, if we do well against MP I think I’ll enter us in the A bracket. I think struggling, even losing by a lot against some better teams, could be a far more valuable experience for us come mid to end of January. Of course if MP2 hands us our rears tomorrow, I think it’ll bring us back down in a hurry.
Yesterday’s practice in basketball terms was actually quite good. They understand the rotation of the zone buster offense pretty well. We need to work on improvising when there’s an actual defense (for instance making sure the ball goes into the high post), but they are mostly understanding the rotations necessary. Interestingly, Scott had the biggest problem and as a post player he’s got the easiest job of anyone. The 4 and the 5 in the offense basically just go to either the elbow (high post) or the low post. When the ball switches sides of the court they switch from the high to the low post (or vice versa). Scott simply didn’t know when to switch. Otherwise, they ran it fairly well. In particular Jack M did a nice job with doing what he needed to do. I hadn’t thought we’d be quite ready to run this offense in the game on Sunday, but I think it might be worth a shot, if they play some zone.
Speaking of zone I was asked, again, if we were going to play any zone. I then explained my philosophy of why man to man for 4th graders is the right thing for them in the long run. I used the word philosophy in my explanation and then had to explain what philosophy meant. It was a good moment for their intellectual growth, as human beings, let alone basketball players since I bet almost all of them remember what philosophy will mean.
We also did a substantially better job in setting our screens. A quick tangent, that will relate back to this. Before our practices now on Fridays, Gordie’s house league team is going to be practicing. As I was peeking in, there was one player who was amazing. He was, first of all, bigger than perhaps 2/3 of our team. And he just moved like a basketball player, shot like a basketball player. I saw him for about 3 minutes and it was clear that he could easily contend for a starting position on our team. So I turn to Jack M, who is waiting with me at that point, and ask him what grade this kid is in. Actually, I think I asked something more along the lines of “Is he in 4th grade?” Because if that kid was in 4th grade and not on the team, I was going to be very sad. However, it turns out that he was in 3rd grade. That kid could be real special next year. Anyhow, they were doing some drill and this kid was setting PERFECT screens and his teammates, because they didn’t know what to do with the ball (one kid, for instance would always forget to dribble before he shot), were actually using the screens. So, before we started our screen practice I stated how I saw the Gordie’s house league team do a better job of setting screens, because the person receiving the screen didn’t move too soon, than we had done. This seemed to get them motivated and we did a much better job of setting and taking the screen. What we should do after the screen? A work in progress. But again I was happy with what I saw.
The last basketball thing we did was practice a half-court 3-2 drill. The way it works is offensive and defensive players alternate on the baseline. The player in the center has the ball. They offensive and the defense runs out to half court and then plays 3 on 2. Our offense did well, as usual. If anything they did better than when we normally run this in practice. It seemed like a good chance to start to talk about defending the fast break, which we hadn’t spent much time on. So I thought that went well.
But that’s all we did. At minimum we should have been able to have had time to practice our in bounds drill. I had planned 15 minutes of 3 on 3 at the end of practice. However, they were OFF THE WALL. Our beginning of practice talk, which ought to have taken 2 or 3 minutes tops (all that it was, was a quick reminder that MP2 was a good team, win or lose we keep our heads held high if we gave our all and displayed good sportsmanship, to wear their blue jerseys, and to announce our two exhibition games) took forever. Finally I lost patience and we ran a suicide. After that they were too tired to say much of anything. I finished quickly with what I needed to say and we went into our continuous motion drill. And the suicide before the continuous motion drill? A killer. Noah and Brian continued their inability to jog for 10 minutes, even slowly. However, at times Jack M and Scott needed to be prodded as well, which isn’t typical. Lucas, Jack M, Dante, and David all did well, which wasn’t too surprising as I’d have pegged them as having had the most endurance.
The talking didn’t improve much. I don’t want to go to the suicide well too often, as it could just lose some of its effectiveness. I think the talking was partly because it was Friday. But again, as I alluded to earlier, I think a sense of confidence is prevalent throughout the team. Confidence I like. However, I am concerned that it could turn into over confidence. So if we have another practice were a good chunk of instruction time is wasted, I’m going to have to rethink some things. I let the team know I was disappointed in how we’d practiced, and by the end of practice they mostly had pulled it together, so that was good. However, it was a shame to have so much good basketball be overshadowed by so much other stuff.
As for starters for tomorrow’s game, I’m torn. The thing is that I don’t want to always start Jack M. I would, for instance, like to use David as our starting point guard. I’ve discussed Jack M’s limitations at other positions before so I won’t repeat them again. However, to balance his ego I need to show that starters will not be fixed before I sit him, so he realizes it’s just part of the team and not a criticism of him. So he’s starting. Our best player should start most of our games, so David is going to start. Scott was our MVP last game, and I think the previous game MVP should always start, so he’s starting.
So the question is who else do I want to start? Do I choose one other from the remaining three of our best six of Tom, Dante, and Jack P and one from the remaining four? Or do I rotate in two players?
I’m really unsure what I want to do with the starting lineup for tomorrow, beyond the three already mentioned. I think I want to start Jack P, as he’s kind of gotten the short shift, to a certain extent, in playing time in the first two games.
Looking at our remaining four players we have Brian, Lucas, Noah and Gordie.
Brian is catching up to speed quickly, but I don’t think he has several of the concepts down simply because we haven’t, for instance, run our set offense with him. In fact we haven’t practiced our set offense in a while so it’s likely time to do some review and refinement on that. Anyway, I’m not quite ready to start Brian. Especially after he tells me that he’s one of the slowest members of the team when we were running our suicide and should get the Dante +5 seconds. Perhaps he is one of the slowest members at the moment, but when I selected the team he was not one of the slowest members. In fact he was one of the quickest. No doubt his injury has slowed him down, but I don’t feel particularly inclined to cut him a break here as coddling him won’t, get him back into condition. Of course there is the fear that he rushed back before he was fully healed and is playing hurt. However, he hasn’t shown many signs of tentativeness or whatever so I don’t think that is it. So no coddling for Brian, but also no start at the moment.
Lucas is a great kid. He actually had a really good practice too and so it seems like it might be time to reward him with a start. With him being exclusively the 4 that makes it hard to get everyone into a good slot on offense. For instance, with this five only David (and Jack M) have practiced any time at 2. So David would have to go there. Scott could be a 3, but since he too has spent more time at 4, and struggled in our zone buster at that, I’m weary of making him the 3. Jack P is actually perhaps our best 3, or just slightly worse than David, however he’d need to be center in this grouping since there would be no Dante. Alternatively, I could start Lucas at center. That allows Jack to play 3 and Scott to play 4, both their best positions. But Lucas would be a little lost as center since I’ve been focusing him so heavily on the 4, for both offense and defense. Seems silly to reward a kid for hard work, only to put him in a position where you don’t think you’re giving him particularly good chances of success.
So an argument could be made for Noah. He’d fit perfectly in as a 2, which would allow David to be the 5, Scott the 4, and Jack P the 3, which I feel is a good grouping. He hasn’t started a game yet. The problem is that he was one of the most distracted kids at practice. So I definitely don’t want to even tacitly reward bad behavior.
Finally there is Gordie. Gordie can play the 2, no doubt. His effort was OK, not great not terrible, though his actual skills were good. However, I’d really rather start Lucas, considering his effort was good, he displayed some of the best basketball I’d seen, and Gordie’s already started where as Lucas has not.
As often happens what was a jumble in my mind has become clearer as I write out this blog. It seems as though we have a two way race between Lucas and Gordie.
Last game I was confident. I am now almost as nervous as I was before our game against HP. I really think there are 3 teams, us and the two MPs, who are a cut above everyone else. The question is where do we fall with-in that 3 way race? I hope the answer is at the top, and after tomorrow I will be one step closer to knowing the answer.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Looking Back and Ahead
As I setup this blog it was interesting to see how my impressions have stayed the same or changed since the tryouts.
For instance, I successfully nailed Brian (who I had spelled Bryan) as a kid with a bit of an attitude after the first tryouts. So far this seems accurate. I also predicted I would need to use Tom as a guard/forward simultaneously and this too has proven correct, however I proved to be overly pessimistic about how successful this would be . I thought more highly of Noah during tryouts than I do now. I also foresaw some of the problems with Gordie that have cropped up (as I’d completely forgotten how borderline he was in making the team). Fortunately, I made the right call there as Gordie has not really been a problem even if there have been problems (if that makes any sense).
I so foresaw the idea we’d only have 7 players at some game. Of course I thought it would be in February. Does that mean in February we’re going to end up with 5 or 6? Please let that not be true.
I had an opinion of Jack M that more closely resembles how I feel he plays during games than how he practices. Seems like he’s a kid who really needs stress to play as well as he can.
I did not work on zone busting as early as I had originally planned to.
I completely conflated Gordie and Noah in my mind at the time, though reading back on it I was able to put the right name to the right kid.
I haven’t done as good of a job of reinforcing some of the skills we did that first week through-out the season. Working on the proper grip, for instance, or doing the jumps, or wrist flexes, are all activities I should do for 30 seconds here or there. That’s one reason for the scavenger hunt, which was a successful solution to this problem.
I also now know the results of all of the weekend’s games. First, HP won two games on Sunday, including one against a team that had won the previous week. I thought they were a fairly good team, and they showed it, as playing two games on one day is not an easy feat. MP1 defeated MP2. MP2 is our next opponent and has scored more points then our previous two opponents. I really anticipate it should be a good game. If we can win that by a decisive margin of victory I am going to start to believe we have something special. In particular, I’m looking forward to seeing how our defense does. It was “easy” to defend against NF2 and HP, neither of whom have shown that they score points (HP won its game 19-18 and 19-13, while NF2 had only scored 8 points the previous game). If we can limit MP2’s points, as they have scored 40 and 24 in their first two games, I will grow very encouraged about our prospects.
For instance, I successfully nailed Brian (who I had spelled Bryan) as a kid with a bit of an attitude after the first tryouts. So far this seems accurate. I also predicted I would need to use Tom as a guard/forward simultaneously and this too has proven correct, however I proved to be overly pessimistic about how successful this would be . I thought more highly of Noah during tryouts than I do now. I also foresaw some of the problems with Gordie that have cropped up (as I’d completely forgotten how borderline he was in making the team). Fortunately, I made the right call there as Gordie has not really been a problem even if there have been problems (if that makes any sense).
I so foresaw the idea we’d only have 7 players at some game. Of course I thought it would be in February. Does that mean in February we’re going to end up with 5 or 6? Please let that not be true.
I had an opinion of Jack M that more closely resembles how I feel he plays during games than how he practices. Seems like he’s a kid who really needs stress to play as well as he can.
I did not work on zone busting as early as I had originally planned to.
I completely conflated Gordie and Noah in my mind at the time, though reading back on it I was able to put the right name to the right kid.
I haven’t done as good of a job of reinforcing some of the skills we did that first week through-out the season. Working on the proper grip, for instance, or doing the jumps, or wrist flexes, are all activities I should do for 30 seconds here or there. That’s one reason for the scavenger hunt, which was a successful solution to this problem.
I also now know the results of all of the weekend’s games. First, HP won two games on Sunday, including one against a team that had won the previous week. I thought they were a fairly good team, and they showed it, as playing two games on one day is not an easy feat. MP1 defeated MP2. MP2 is our next opponent and has scored more points then our previous two opponents. I really anticipate it should be a good game. If we can win that by a decisive margin of victory I am going to start to believe we have something special. In particular, I’m looking forward to seeing how our defense does. It was “easy” to defend against NF2 and HP, neither of whom have shown that they score points (HP won its game 19-18 and 19-13, while NF2 had only scored 8 points the previous game). If we can limit MP2’s points, as they have scored 40 and 24 in their first two games, I will grow very encouraged about our prospects.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
December 4th Practice Report
Before practice started yesterday, I call Tom over. He had expressed some unhappiness over how he played yesterday. I ask him what he felt frustrated with, so we could “problem solve”. He assures me he was just joking. OK, fine.
We start off practice discussing our last game. I let the team do the talking as much as possible. They hit all of the major points focusing more on offense, which is fine. They talk about what a good job we did spreading the ball around and finding good shots. Also, how we kept the floor well spaced. All true. As we start this post game ritual, Tom is once again playing the “I sucked” card. I was not so happy that when I tried to talk to him privately he claimed nothing was wrong and then with the whole team, it was understood that Tom was going to say this. I talked to him after practice about it and he once again denies that it was anything. My read of his body language and tone state that he really was upset with himself, but clearly he doesn’t want to talk to me about it.
When we get to the “things to improve on” part of our game discussion they come up blank, so I have to fill it in. We do a little demonstration of how not to foul someone when they’re shooting. The one area that they had talked about, and I completely agreed with, was that we didn’t do such a good job of playing help defense. We’ll practice that more on Friday as I think our defensive focus for Sunday’s game will be communication.
Last night, after practice, I even thought of a way to involve our bench more along with this theme. We’ll have a “contest”. Every time a player communicates on defense, they will get a point, when a player on the bench “hears” the communication. Players on the bench who hear the communication will get a “listen point”. Goal is to get as many listen and communication points as possible.
After we finished talking about the game, I go over a couple of administrative issues. First, I let them know that I’ve decided we won’t learn a full court press. I explain that running a good full court press is hard and since we’re having enough problems with our in bounds play, learning a full court press just isn’t worth the time. I point out that we’ll continue to do our trailer “loose press” and our full court man to man as both have been working. Basically we’ll have three set plays, for the time being: an inbounds, our “zone buster”, and a press break. I haven’t introduced the press break yet. I can’t decide if I should introduce it Friday, in case MP2 runs a good press, as that way they’d have some idea of what to do, or just concede that it’s unlikely any 4th grade team is going to run a good press and continue to wing it, while starting to teach it next week.
The last area I wanted to touch on was playing time. I start off by reminding the players that since this is a travel team they are promised zero minutes of playing time. Faces fall. Jack M pipes in, “It even said that in bold on the sheet” (it didn’t, but that’s ok). Jack was one of the prime reasons I was giving this speech. However, I think his attitude had changed quite a bit from yesterday’s game until last night. A big reason for this is that he had a cousin on the other team. When I has asked him, earlier during the game discussion, which one was his cousin he said, “The short one that was benched almost the whole time.” We all laughed, but I actually knew who he meant right away. I think that seeing how the grass isn’t greener on the side was a good reminder for him.
I quickly say that I do my best to get everyone at least seven minutes of game time, which is a full quarter. Dante, bless his upbeat heart, points out that is a lot of time. So, I continue, “If you’re on the bench and you ask me if you’re going back in, I will simply state, I don’t know. Ask me two or three times and the answer will be ‘no.’ “ I conclude the game time speech with a reminder that unless I tell you you’re coming out because of something you did on the court, just assume that it’s because I am keeping up our rotation. I point out how I sent a sub in for Jack P at one point right after he scored a great basket. Jack M, once again, said how he’d scored a basket and was taken out. So at least with Jack M it seems like my mission of reassuring him worked, though even if I hadn’t said anything it sounds like it would have worked.
While this was going on, which took about 5 minutes for the post game discussion, and 5 minutes for the foul discussion/press announcement/playing time comment, I was very strict about paying attention and talking as a team. Several of the players ended up doing push-ups when their attention wandered or they tried having a side conversation. We are facing what I expect to be a higher quality team than we’ve seen so far on Sunday and I had warned them yesterday practices this week would be no nonsense.
We then went into our Princeton continuous motion. We walked through it the first time since I knew they’d have forgotten how to do it. And sure enough they had. However, the whole thing was just a disaster whenever we tried to run it at game speed. The passes were errant people weren’t paying attention and it was bad news. So rather than continue with this, I decided we’d stop. I finally had remembered to write down on my practice plan to have them do free throws after our continuous motion, but no one was tired so I announced a quick game of golf, to tire them out. We then shot our free throws. And basically everyone committed a lane violation. I guess we’re going to have to practice that part on Friday. I had admittedly not practice free throws much, because the shot is outside the range of many of our players and really a free throw is more like a “free miss” at this point. However, whether or not they make the shot, shooter lane violations are stupid and so we can spend a little time on Friday working on that.
After a short water break we were ready to practice our in bounds play. Before we start, I announce that I’ve been very disappointed with how they’ve run the play. I tell them that in the first game we got lucky with the play, and last game the they didn’t even try and contest the in bounds (they just setup in their zone. I thought it was amazingly dumb, frankly and speaks to how that was not a well coached team. I am no coaching genius, but I’d like to think that if I’d had that group of players we’d have played a lot better than they played). I announce that starting with Friday’s game players who fail to properly execute the inbounds play WILL be removed from the game. I sincerely hope we don’t massively fail to run it, since having to sub out 4 or 5 players could lead to some combinations on the court I don’t really want. However, if they don’t run the play I will do it, since I feel we’ve practiced it enough that they should be able to somewhat run it.
Following the inbounds play we then practice our screens. I quickly setup the expectation that even when you weren’t running it you should be paying attention, so I didn’t have to keep correcting the same mistakes again and again. Of course, I did end up having to correct the same mistakes again and again, anyway, but when I would quiz the players who were out about what was going right and wrong they got much better about analyzing the play, which is good. They’re doing a better job of coming off the picks. However, we still have a lot of players leaving before the pick has been set, which is a no-no. Working on getting the timing down will continue to be a focus.
Following the screens, we did a new game, “Basketball Scavenger Hunt”. I gave them a list of 10 items which they needed to complete and divided them into two teams. The ten items on each list were
This went well. I will definitely be doing this activity again, though I will likely vary up the order of the lists since, despite my telling them they didn’t have to, both teams did the lists in order.
Our last activity was going over our zone break offense. This went about as well as I would expect for our second time going through it. It’s certainly not really ready for serious use in a game yet, but we’ll get there.
We ended with suicides. I had been quite liberal in handing out both suicides and permissions. Several players were saved from serious running since their teams won either Golf or the Scavenger Hunt, which earned them a permission.
I felt like I had a good practice plan going into practice and that overall it was a productive practice. Hopefully we can keep the good work up.
Look for a post tomorrow or Thursday with an update on how the other teams in the league are doing. Not to spoil the surprise, or anything, but the news is good.
We start off practice discussing our last game. I let the team do the talking as much as possible. They hit all of the major points focusing more on offense, which is fine. They talk about what a good job we did spreading the ball around and finding good shots. Also, how we kept the floor well spaced. All true. As we start this post game ritual, Tom is once again playing the “I sucked” card. I was not so happy that when I tried to talk to him privately he claimed nothing was wrong and then with the whole team, it was understood that Tom was going to say this. I talked to him after practice about it and he once again denies that it was anything. My read of his body language and tone state that he really was upset with himself, but clearly he doesn’t want to talk to me about it.
When we get to the “things to improve on” part of our game discussion they come up blank, so I have to fill it in. We do a little demonstration of how not to foul someone when they’re shooting. The one area that they had talked about, and I completely agreed with, was that we didn’t do such a good job of playing help defense. We’ll practice that more on Friday as I think our defensive focus for Sunday’s game will be communication.
Last night, after practice, I even thought of a way to involve our bench more along with this theme. We’ll have a “contest”. Every time a player communicates on defense, they will get a point, when a player on the bench “hears” the communication. Players on the bench who hear the communication will get a “listen point”. Goal is to get as many listen and communication points as possible.
After we finished talking about the game, I go over a couple of administrative issues. First, I let them know that I’ve decided we won’t learn a full court press. I explain that running a good full court press is hard and since we’re having enough problems with our in bounds play, learning a full court press just isn’t worth the time. I point out that we’ll continue to do our trailer “loose press” and our full court man to man as both have been working. Basically we’ll have three set plays, for the time being: an inbounds, our “zone buster”, and a press break. I haven’t introduced the press break yet. I can’t decide if I should introduce it Friday, in case MP2 runs a good press, as that way they’d have some idea of what to do, or just concede that it’s unlikely any 4th grade team is going to run a good press and continue to wing it, while starting to teach it next week.
The last area I wanted to touch on was playing time. I start off by reminding the players that since this is a travel team they are promised zero minutes of playing time. Faces fall. Jack M pipes in, “It even said that in bold on the sheet” (it didn’t, but that’s ok). Jack was one of the prime reasons I was giving this speech. However, I think his attitude had changed quite a bit from yesterday’s game until last night. A big reason for this is that he had a cousin on the other team. When I has asked him, earlier during the game discussion, which one was his cousin he said, “The short one that was benched almost the whole time.” We all laughed, but I actually knew who he meant right away. I think that seeing how the grass isn’t greener on the side was a good reminder for him.
I quickly say that I do my best to get everyone at least seven minutes of game time, which is a full quarter. Dante, bless his upbeat heart, points out that is a lot of time. So, I continue, “If you’re on the bench and you ask me if you’re going back in, I will simply state, I don’t know. Ask me two or three times and the answer will be ‘no.’ “ I conclude the game time speech with a reminder that unless I tell you you’re coming out because of something you did on the court, just assume that it’s because I am keeping up our rotation. I point out how I sent a sub in for Jack P at one point right after he scored a great basket. Jack M, once again, said how he’d scored a basket and was taken out. So at least with Jack M it seems like my mission of reassuring him worked, though even if I hadn’t said anything it sounds like it would have worked.
While this was going on, which took about 5 minutes for the post game discussion, and 5 minutes for the foul discussion/press announcement/playing time comment, I was very strict about paying attention and talking as a team. Several of the players ended up doing push-ups when their attention wandered or they tried having a side conversation. We are facing what I expect to be a higher quality team than we’ve seen so far on Sunday and I had warned them yesterday practices this week would be no nonsense.
We then went into our Princeton continuous motion. We walked through it the first time since I knew they’d have forgotten how to do it. And sure enough they had. However, the whole thing was just a disaster whenever we tried to run it at game speed. The passes were errant people weren’t paying attention and it was bad news. So rather than continue with this, I decided we’d stop. I finally had remembered to write down on my practice plan to have them do free throws after our continuous motion, but no one was tired so I announced a quick game of golf, to tire them out. We then shot our free throws. And basically everyone committed a lane violation. I guess we’re going to have to practice that part on Friday. I had admittedly not practice free throws much, because the shot is outside the range of many of our players and really a free throw is more like a “free miss” at this point. However, whether or not they make the shot, shooter lane violations are stupid and so we can spend a little time on Friday working on that.
After a short water break we were ready to practice our in bounds play. Before we start, I announce that I’ve been very disappointed with how they’ve run the play. I tell them that in the first game we got lucky with the play, and last game the they didn’t even try and contest the in bounds (they just setup in their zone. I thought it was amazingly dumb, frankly and speaks to how that was not a well coached team. I am no coaching genius, but I’d like to think that if I’d had that group of players we’d have played a lot better than they played). I announce that starting with Friday’s game players who fail to properly execute the inbounds play WILL be removed from the game. I sincerely hope we don’t massively fail to run it, since having to sub out 4 or 5 players could lead to some combinations on the court I don’t really want. However, if they don’t run the play I will do it, since I feel we’ve practiced it enough that they should be able to somewhat run it.
Following the inbounds play we then practice our screens. I quickly setup the expectation that even when you weren’t running it you should be paying attention, so I didn’t have to keep correcting the same mistakes again and again. Of course, I did end up having to correct the same mistakes again and again, anyway, but when I would quiz the players who were out about what was going right and wrong they got much better about analyzing the play, which is good. They’re doing a better job of coming off the picks. However, we still have a lot of players leaving before the pick has been set, which is a no-no. Working on getting the timing down will continue to be a focus.
Following the screens, we did a new game, “Basketball Scavenger Hunt”. I gave them a list of 10 items which they needed to complete and divided them into two teams. The ten items on each list were
1. Each member of the team shows coach an animal claw
2. Dribble around the court once with your right hand (must be out of bounds THE WHOLE TIME)
3. Each member of the team makes 2 free throws (each player may only shoot 2 free throws before going to the end of the line)
4. Each player of the team does 10 “high grabs” with 2 different people on the team
5. Have coach time you for 30 seconds of bunny hops
6. The team makes 10 1 foot shots (the team may only form 2 lines). Count out loud each made shot
7. Dribble around the court once with your left hand (must be out of bounds THE WHOLE TIME)
8. Each player must make a right handed and left handed lay-up (may only have one person shooting at a time)
9. Each player of the team shows coach a correct pivot left and pivot right
10. Have coach time you for 15 seconds each of side wrist flick, shooting wrist flick, and dribbling wrist flick
This went well. I will definitely be doing this activity again, though I will likely vary up the order of the lists since, despite my telling them they didn’t have to, both teams did the lists in order.
Our last activity was going over our zone break offense. This went about as well as I would expect for our second time going through it. It’s certainly not really ready for serious use in a game yet, but we’ll get there.
We ended with suicides. I had been quite liberal in handing out both suicides and permissions. Several players were saved from serious running since their teams won either Golf or the Scavenger Hunt, which earned them a permission.
I felt like I had a good practice plan going into practice and that overall it was a productive practice. Hopefully we can keep the good work up.
Look for a post tomorrow or Thursday with an update on how the other teams in the league are doing. Not to spoil the surprise, or anything, but the news is good.
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Spartans vs. NF2
Today we faced NF2. I had problems with my car (the doors don’t want to open) and was already running behind schedule. So I show up only 10 minutes before the start of the game. I’ve never cut it so close to a game, without having some sort of prior commitment. I am relieved to see my team in a nice lay-up line as I get there. I call them over and we talk about screening off the ball, getting back on defense, and being into the game on the bench. We start the Jacks, David, Scott, and Dante. They are a tall team. When I announce that Jack M is going to be our point guard, Brian does not approve. He tells me that I should be letting David bring up the ball. I tell him flat out that I appreciate the suggestion, but that I’m going to make the call about those sorts of things.
They come out in some sort of zone. In fact throughout the game they play zone. I think it was supposed to be a 2-1-2. I know at one point it was supposed to be, however, they never really execute it well. Anyway they’re playing some sort of zone. Having the H’s back for the game makes a huge difference. NF2 is a big team and they win the tip-off (David did the jump for us). However, with-in the first 90 seconds it becomes clear we are a substantially better team. We manage to miss several open and easy layups. However, they’re getting nothing. They had traveling or double dribble called on four of their first five possessions. It’s 8-0 at the end of the first quarter.
For whatever reason, the team had a hard time with the concept of “we’re going to let them in bounds it and then we’ll pressure them” but it doesn’t really matter. Shortly into the 2nd quarter we go up by 10. The game is a slaughter. We end up winning 40-12 but if I hadn’t held them back starting in the 3rd quarter it could have been a lot more than just 40 points we scored. Gordie astutely pointed out that they were tired in the second quarter. Once again their natural talent won the game, so I can take little credit for that. However, the fact that as the game goes on we get better against our opponents is something I will take some credit for.
The good:
We passed the ball well against their zone. There were lots of openings to be found and we found them and took the shots. I started forcing the team not to take those shots but they were there. We played well against a team that was bigger than we were. They had 3 players all taller than Dante (our tallest player) and a couple of others who were about he same size as Dante. Then they also had a couple of kids who were shorter than anyone on our team. It was kind of strange, actually.
We also did a great job of hustling back. They scored ZERO transition points. Which, considering how many points we scored and shots we took, is just strange. The whole hustling ethos did not seem to be widespread on their team, but our team sure did it.
The bad:
We didn’t seem to enjoy this victory. Maybe it was just because many of our best players spent so much time on the bench (yet another way we could have beaten them by more than we did). But while the H’s were overjoyed with our victory at the end, everyone else was kind blah. In some ways, I like that. Win low key, lose low key. And so while I preach it, I’m surprised that these 4th graders are actually doing that. I think part of it must have been how dominating we were all game. It’s hard to stay excited when you know the opponents are so inferior.
Beyond that we got into foul trouble. The non-shooting fouls didn’t bother me. What DID bother me was how many fouls we committed on shots that the other team had no right taking. They would chuck up shots, and let me tell you that’s what the team was doing, chucking up shots, from near the 3 point line and we would foul them. It was awful.
I am not taking advantage of my sitting in the middle of the players. The reason I do this, besides keeping proximity is so I can talk to them. Instead I’ve been way too focused on the game. I need to involve the bench players in the game more, watching what people on the court are doing and asking questions. Brian, in his third bit of challenging, got upset when I wouldn’t let him sit next to Jack M on the bench. Oh well. But the point remains that while it’s good on its own to keep everyone close to me, there is more that can be done.
Finally, our inbounds play is nonexistent. They’re just not doing it in the game.
Player Notes
Brian: He got some extensive playing time and looked much better than he did in practice. I’ll be curious to hear how he feels about it tomorrow.
Dante: Was much more of a non factor this game than last with far fewer boards.
David: My dad was amazed when I told him that he was the best player on the team. He was doing a lot of little things well today, but only had 2 points. I would hazard to suggest his men had 0 points against him. He did play some point later in the game and did a nice job with it, as expected. I do worry that I am not using him as well as I should be. If he has a couple more games like this then it will be time to take a deeper look at how we can be doing more to feature his skills.
Gordie: He got lots of playing time. He actually almost fouled out. He played better than he did last game. He threw up a bad shot in the fourth, when I was all set to leave him in for the rest of the game, so I pulled him. He said “I don’t know why I took that shot.” I replied, matter of factly, “I don’t know why either. If you hadn’t you’d still be in the game.” He got the message and when he went back in was good about distributing the ball.
Jack P: He made things happen. He was able to move well and get good shots, including some nice penetration. He had to guard a lot of different guys, including some who were much taller than he, and did a good job.
Jack M: He started off playing well. I think, however, when he was one of the first people subbed for he felt discouraged and didn’t play particularly well the rest of the game. Also was clearly annoyed at having his time limited in the second half.
Scott: Our game MVP. Just like Jack M made things happen last week, Scott made things happen this week. He missed an INSANE number of lay-ups however, he would come down with the board a high percentage of the time as well so it balanced out. He led our team with 10 points.
Tom: He seemed out of joint. He was quite discouraged and upset with himself after the game on how he’d played. I plan on processing this with him tomorrow at practice.
Lucas: He got a lot of playing time. My dad (who came to the game) thought he did very well. And I was like “huh”? He scored 5 points, all in the second half, and did play better as the game went-on, but his defensive wasn’t so good and he was still often confused on offense. I’m not quite sure what my dad saw in him.
Well there is a lot of stuff to work on. We could easily spend the whole hour and a half practice tomorrow just on our zone offense, man-to-man offense, in bounds, and press. However, we won’t, since that would be boring. I am going to try and find a new game to play.
Two and oh is nice, but three and oh will feel much better.
They come out in some sort of zone. In fact throughout the game they play zone. I think it was supposed to be a 2-1-2. I know at one point it was supposed to be, however, they never really execute it well. Anyway they’re playing some sort of zone. Having the H’s back for the game makes a huge difference. NF2 is a big team and they win the tip-off (David did the jump for us). However, with-in the first 90 seconds it becomes clear we are a substantially better team. We manage to miss several open and easy layups. However, they’re getting nothing. They had traveling or double dribble called on four of their first five possessions. It’s 8-0 at the end of the first quarter.
For whatever reason, the team had a hard time with the concept of “we’re going to let them in bounds it and then we’ll pressure them” but it doesn’t really matter. Shortly into the 2nd quarter we go up by 10. The game is a slaughter. We end up winning 40-12 but if I hadn’t held them back starting in the 3rd quarter it could have been a lot more than just 40 points we scored. Gordie astutely pointed out that they were tired in the second quarter. Once again their natural talent won the game, so I can take little credit for that. However, the fact that as the game goes on we get better against our opponents is something I will take some credit for.
The good:
We passed the ball well against their zone. There were lots of openings to be found and we found them and took the shots. I started forcing the team not to take those shots but they were there. We played well against a team that was bigger than we were. They had 3 players all taller than Dante (our tallest player) and a couple of others who were about he same size as Dante. Then they also had a couple of kids who were shorter than anyone on our team. It was kind of strange, actually.
We also did a great job of hustling back. They scored ZERO transition points. Which, considering how many points we scored and shots we took, is just strange. The whole hustling ethos did not seem to be widespread on their team, but our team sure did it.
The bad:
We didn’t seem to enjoy this victory. Maybe it was just because many of our best players spent so much time on the bench (yet another way we could have beaten them by more than we did). But while the H’s were overjoyed with our victory at the end, everyone else was kind blah. In some ways, I like that. Win low key, lose low key. And so while I preach it, I’m surprised that these 4th graders are actually doing that. I think part of it must have been how dominating we were all game. It’s hard to stay excited when you know the opponents are so inferior.
Beyond that we got into foul trouble. The non-shooting fouls didn’t bother me. What DID bother me was how many fouls we committed on shots that the other team had no right taking. They would chuck up shots, and let me tell you that’s what the team was doing, chucking up shots, from near the 3 point line and we would foul them. It was awful.
I am not taking advantage of my sitting in the middle of the players. The reason I do this, besides keeping proximity is so I can talk to them. Instead I’ve been way too focused on the game. I need to involve the bench players in the game more, watching what people on the court are doing and asking questions. Brian, in his third bit of challenging, got upset when I wouldn’t let him sit next to Jack M on the bench. Oh well. But the point remains that while it’s good on its own to keep everyone close to me, there is more that can be done.
Finally, our inbounds play is nonexistent. They’re just not doing it in the game.
Player Notes
Brian: He got some extensive playing time and looked much better than he did in practice. I’ll be curious to hear how he feels about it tomorrow.
Dante: Was much more of a non factor this game than last with far fewer boards.
David: My dad was amazed when I told him that he was the best player on the team. He was doing a lot of little things well today, but only had 2 points. I would hazard to suggest his men had 0 points against him. He did play some point later in the game and did a nice job with it, as expected. I do worry that I am not using him as well as I should be. If he has a couple more games like this then it will be time to take a deeper look at how we can be doing more to feature his skills.
Gordie: He got lots of playing time. He actually almost fouled out. He played better than he did last game. He threw up a bad shot in the fourth, when I was all set to leave him in for the rest of the game, so I pulled him. He said “I don’t know why I took that shot.” I replied, matter of factly, “I don’t know why either. If you hadn’t you’d still be in the game.” He got the message and when he went back in was good about distributing the ball.
Jack P: He made things happen. He was able to move well and get good shots, including some nice penetration. He had to guard a lot of different guys, including some who were much taller than he, and did a good job.
Jack M: He started off playing well. I think, however, when he was one of the first people subbed for he felt discouraged and didn’t play particularly well the rest of the game. Also was clearly annoyed at having his time limited in the second half.
Scott: Our game MVP. Just like Jack M made things happen last week, Scott made things happen this week. He missed an INSANE number of lay-ups however, he would come down with the board a high percentage of the time as well so it balanced out. He led our team with 10 points.
Tom: He seemed out of joint. He was quite discouraged and upset with himself after the game on how he’d played. I plan on processing this with him tomorrow at practice.
Lucas: He got a lot of playing time. My dad (who came to the game) thought he did very well. And I was like “huh”? He scored 5 points, all in the second half, and did play better as the game went-on, but his defensive wasn’t so good and he was still often confused on offense. I’m not quite sure what my dad saw in him.
Well there is a lot of stuff to work on. We could easily spend the whole hour and a half practice tomorrow just on our zone offense, man-to-man offense, in bounds, and press. However, we won’t, since that would be boring. I am going to try and find a new game to play.
Two and oh is nice, but three and oh will feel much better.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Snow Day
Well it’s a snow day here and that means no practice tonight. Love it as a teacher, hate it as a coach. So this means we are once again losing practice time. It really is adding up at this point and I grow very concerned about our longer term prospects.
The big question, then, is who to start, and what kind of rotation I want to do, for Sunday’s game. Jack M, Jack P, Scott, Tom, Dante, and David all can make a legitimate case for starting. Of that group, in some ways I want to bring Jack P off the bench, since he’s the most versatile of that group after David, who I am obviously going to start. But I still think Jack could be our third best overall player. How do you sit your third best overall player?
If, instead, I went based off of skill that would lead to Tom sitting. However, I don’t like how that leaves us for subs. Brian and Lucas are going to each see minimal playing time, most likely 3 or 4 minutes in each half. I basically want Lucas playing the 4 position, for reasons previously mentioned. Brian, is an unknown. Before his injury I’d had him penciled in as a starter. Now, besides not having a real feel for how I want things done (not the biggest minus considering we play just a step above organized chaos) , he’s still getting his feel for running, jumping, shooting, etc back. The kid has spent, essentially, the last 3 months with a broken ankle on one of his feet. It’s got to have an effect on his body if not his psyche.
With Noah not being there, that leaves Gordie and one other player as my main substitutes and Gordie is essentially only good in the guard positions. Despite the fact that the 3 spot is nearly a guard on our team, he doesn’t seem so comfortable with it. The problem is that at some point, Dante is going to need to rest. When he does I will need a center and that leaves me two choices, basically, Jack P and David. Both have their pluses and minuses. Jack P is serviceable there, but since he’s inside more he ends up with higher percentage shots (he took a whole lot of shots at our last game). David can man the position better, but then again he can do most things better and so limiting his touches of the ball seems counter productive. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole thing, as if they’re doing the offense right, which they won’t, even the center is on or near the perimeter a fair amount.
One could make an argument that having David, as point guard, Tom, as the other guard, some combination of Scott and Jack P as forwards, and Dante as center is our best unit. In fact, I would be willing to make that argument. However, I just can’t bring myself to not start Jack M. First, he earned it by how well he played last week. Second, considering how well he played last week, it would have an especially damaging effect on a player who is somewhat delicate to begin with. So Jack gets the start. Further, having Jack bring the ball up means Jack is less likely to take a silly shot when he gets the ball, so it makes sense for him to play point, rather than David who is our best point guard.
As I would like to use Tom more as a guard and less as a 3, I think Scott will get the start as the three, Jack as the 4, and Dante as the five. As I like to remind the team, it’s a long season so I will have time to play around with that. This is one of those times that writing things down has helped to clarify my thoughts. And while it’s perhaps not my favorite starting five, I do think it will be our best starting five.
The big question, then, is who to start, and what kind of rotation I want to do, for Sunday’s game. Jack M, Jack P, Scott, Tom, Dante, and David all can make a legitimate case for starting. Of that group, in some ways I want to bring Jack P off the bench, since he’s the most versatile of that group after David, who I am obviously going to start. But I still think Jack could be our third best overall player. How do you sit your third best overall player?
If, instead, I went based off of skill that would lead to Tom sitting. However, I don’t like how that leaves us for subs. Brian and Lucas are going to each see minimal playing time, most likely 3 or 4 minutes in each half. I basically want Lucas playing the 4 position, for reasons previously mentioned. Brian, is an unknown. Before his injury I’d had him penciled in as a starter. Now, besides not having a real feel for how I want things done (not the biggest minus considering we play just a step above organized chaos) , he’s still getting his feel for running, jumping, shooting, etc back. The kid has spent, essentially, the last 3 months with a broken ankle on one of his feet. It’s got to have an effect on his body if not his psyche.
With Noah not being there, that leaves Gordie and one other player as my main substitutes and Gordie is essentially only good in the guard positions. Despite the fact that the 3 spot is nearly a guard on our team, he doesn’t seem so comfortable with it. The problem is that at some point, Dante is going to need to rest. When he does I will need a center and that leaves me two choices, basically, Jack P and David. Both have their pluses and minuses. Jack P is serviceable there, but since he’s inside more he ends up with higher percentage shots (he took a whole lot of shots at our last game). David can man the position better, but then again he can do most things better and so limiting his touches of the ball seems counter productive. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole thing, as if they’re doing the offense right, which they won’t, even the center is on or near the perimeter a fair amount.
One could make an argument that having David, as point guard, Tom, as the other guard, some combination of Scott and Jack P as forwards, and Dante as center is our best unit. In fact, I would be willing to make that argument. However, I just can’t bring myself to not start Jack M. First, he earned it by how well he played last week. Second, considering how well he played last week, it would have an especially damaging effect on a player who is somewhat delicate to begin with. So Jack gets the start. Further, having Jack bring the ball up means Jack is less likely to take a silly shot when he gets the ball, so it makes sense for him to play point, rather than David who is our best point guard.
As I would like to use Tom more as a guard and less as a 3, I think Scott will get the start as the three, Jack as the 4, and Dante as the five. As I like to remind the team, it’s a long season so I will have time to play around with that. This is one of those times that writing things down has helped to clarify my thoughts. And while it’s perhaps not my favorite starting five, I do think it will be our best starting five.
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