10-23 Practice Report

Well after two days of practices that I felt good about, Monday’s practice was not nearly of the same level of achievement. The truth of the matter was, that I felt how "Monday" it was. My teaching during the day wasn’t quite so hot. So it was likely I was not coming into practice at my best. However, I’m not quite ready to take full responsibility for my disappointment.

Anyhow, came into the building and found that only half the gym was opened. So rather than having a whole gym we had a huge dividing wall down the center. Eventually this wall is taken down, though only a minute before practice was schedule to begin so it was a close call. So, just for the record, this would be our third practice and our third time having some sort of facility issue. All of which have been resolved, and really it isn’t something that bothers me too much, since they have been resolved, but I still take note.

Practice starts and all are there except Dante. We do some of the basic warm up drills, including wrist flexes, various jumps, etc. Dante shows up about 3 minutes late.

It is now Saturday morning as I type this and my recollection of the practice has faded somewhat. So in the interest of time I am going to give a shorter summary of what I do recollect as opposed to a detailed description of everything we did.

The main thing we focused on was defensive skills. We did this in a variety of ways. We practiced one on one defense, and protective ball handling, with a drill that required a dribbler to remain in place (though he could turn in circles) while fending off an aggressive defender trying to knock the ball away. We worked on how to guard a man around the perimeter who is one, two, and three passes away. We also did a couple of rebounding drills.

Overall, as I mentioned, the practice didn’t go so well. In the end I think most of the blame lies with me. I simply wasn’t on top of my game in terms of explaining concepts and ideas. The new drills that I introduced were fine drills, if we had done them correctly, but we didn’t do them correctly and so they didn’t really do what they were supposed to do. I also was not on top of my game in explaining how to rotate coverage. At the same time, I was disappointed in the way the players hustled, or didn’t, during this practice. Emphasizing 100% hustle on defense is going to be something I am going to have to do time and time again it is clear as when players were more than 1 pass away on our rotation drill, they were often sloughing off.

On the individual player front, I realized that I had not been doing a particularly good job of connecting with Jack M. Jack M isn’t a particularly likable kid, in that he’s a bit immature and doesn’t have any endearing personality traits, which doesn’t excuse the fact that I hadn’t been doing a good job of connecting. He had been hearing far more negatives than positives from me, and I resolved to do better going forward with him.

On the opposite front, Tom has turned into that kid who does exactly what the coach wants, but in a way that is endearing to both me, as coach, and to his teammates. Having a kid like him, who is always going to give you 100% and be an example, whether conscious or not, to his teammates, is great.

Friday’s practice was both better and worse, but I will leave that for my next writeup which I am hoping to finish tomorrow.