The signs did not portend for a good game yesterday. It wasn’t because of Friday’s practice. Friday’s practice was a good practice. We had 7 players suited up, Alex was out of town, Grant was injured (more about this shortly), and Michael was not going to be there. We did our shooting continuous motion and frankly there shooting? Not so hot. We also did a concentration drill, where they had sheets with numbers randomly displayed from 1-100. I would announce a number and they would then have to find the next number, cross it off, and so on for 45 seconds. The catch was the second time we did it, they had a partner who was allowed to distract them as they were doing the sheet. Fun was had. I think there is also value in this sort of activity so we’ll likely come back to it. We also did some 3 person work on the fundamentals of our offense. The biggest focus was on rebounding. We did a couple drills working on jumping for the ball as well as judging the angle of the shot. Unlike some previous Friday practices the energy was there.
The first bad sign was that Alex was not going to be there. Along with Seth Alex is one of two kids that has been rebounding. He is also one of our better scorers. The second bad sign was Grant’s injury. He suffers from a condition (whose name I forget) which basically causes pain due to bones growing faster than the muscles. He was having a flare up and this was still inflamed so no Grant yesterday. This was somewhat expected, at least after Friday. The third bad sign was when Matthew’s mom calls to let me know that he had a minor procedure done and would be unable to play. So now I’m down to 7. Seven is still workable. And to their credit both Matthew and Grant attended the game. The last bad sign was when we only had five players to start the game. Leo and Quentin were not there. I figured they got lost. But that put us at 5 players.
Last year I would have been upset at this. This year I’m trying to feel the Zen. And I tried to impart this on the team.
And the good news is that I needn’t have worried. The other team came out in man to man. Only they had no help defense. They also completely overplayed their person, not staying between them and the basket. And so we had an obscene number of easy lay-ups. They also didn’t understand the idea of stopping the ball on a fast break so we had a bunch more of those. By the time Leo and Quentin finally arrived in the second quarter, after I’d given up all hope of seeing them, we were up by a lot. We even held them to just 1 point in the second quarter. I had to hold the team back in the second half. We coasted to an easy 37-20 victory. It was nice because every player there got to score a basket. Michael destroy them in the second half with 8 points, almost all off fast breaks. Josh also showed an ability to drive past them nearly at will.
We play them again Saturday. More than anything I feel bad for the other team. I wonder how much practice time they’d had. Their basic man to man was SO off that I have to think not much. They also never even attempted to press us (for obvious reasons we didn’t attempt to press them). Everyone feels good after a big win. The goal will be to working hard this week at practice as we play this same team again and also play KW. KW is notable because it is the team which upset this group of kids in the first round of the playoffs. I know they’ll be excited about that game.
Showing posts with label grant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grant. Show all posts
Monday, November 17, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Sunday should have been our first game. Because of a work commitment I was getting to the game exactly at the time I had asked the team to be there by (I generally try and be the first person there). I find out that there is no one at the school to lower the baskets or turn on the lights. The coach of the team we were playing at attempted to find another place to play or a way to get someone to set-up this gym, but it was to no avail. Our parents were very nice about the whole thing. The good news for me was that I used the half hour while the other coach was trying to figure stuff out to hold an impromptu practice. We did some good work running our offense. It still looks very chaotic. But there was far more purpose in their movement. I still worry about our defense, as it has continued to not receive the attention it deserves.
We didn’t do any explicit man to man work at yesterday’s practice either. However, it was a good practice. With the beginning of the season a lot of the practice had been slower paced than I would have liked. This was still somewhat true yesterday as we spent about 25 minutes doing goal setting, after our Fundamental Five on the triple threat position. However, after that it was a very active practice. We did our shooting continuous motion. It was quite revealing to see just how poor some of their forms are. Grant in particular does a lot of chest shooting. I purposefully ran the continuous motion before having done any real shooting work, because I wanted to see where they were as a baseline. The good news was that a few were able to make some minor adjustments as they went on, both on their own and from my suggestions, and were able to end better than they started.
Following a water break we, we did Champs and Chumps with the Mikan drill. Champs and Chumps is basically where there is some sort of 1 on 1 contest and after a round, the winner moves up to a “higher” court while the loser moves down. Seth and Alec both excelled here, while Leo, someone who based on his size I need playing at least defense against bigger guys, did not.
Finally we played 3 on 2/2 on 3. In this drill 3 of the players from a team are on one half of a court, the other 2 on the other half. The 3 players are on the offensive side, so when they have the ball it’s 3 on 2, with a 15 second shot clock. When the 2 have the ball, their goal is to get it past half court, with each of the 2 people having to touch the ball in bounds. It’s a good drill to teach some skills of what not to do when getting pressed, while also teaching how to trap and take advantage of a 3 on 2. Mason got killed in this drill, while Alec, Austin, and Michael showed some good stuff.
It was then time to go. It was good practice, because I feel I was much better about giving instruction and making sure they knew what they were learning. We debriefed, for instance, after 3 on 2/2 on 3 to talk about some of the things they had learned. I will then take the lessons they talked about and explain to them how the press break they’re going to learn (next Monday probably) applies those principles.
I feel better about our game Wednesday in terms of where we are at after our practice yesterday and our session on Sunday. We’re playing a team which is physically big, so it should be interesting.
We didn’t do any explicit man to man work at yesterday’s practice either. However, it was a good practice. With the beginning of the season a lot of the practice had been slower paced than I would have liked. This was still somewhat true yesterday as we spent about 25 minutes doing goal setting, after our Fundamental Five on the triple threat position. However, after that it was a very active practice. We did our shooting continuous motion. It was quite revealing to see just how poor some of their forms are. Grant in particular does a lot of chest shooting. I purposefully ran the continuous motion before having done any real shooting work, because I wanted to see where they were as a baseline. The good news was that a few were able to make some minor adjustments as they went on, both on their own and from my suggestions, and were able to end better than they started.
Following a water break we, we did Champs and Chumps with the Mikan drill. Champs and Chumps is basically where there is some sort of 1 on 1 contest and after a round, the winner moves up to a “higher” court while the loser moves down. Seth and Alec both excelled here, while Leo, someone who based on his size I need playing at least defense against bigger guys, did not.
Finally we played 3 on 2/2 on 3. In this drill 3 of the players from a team are on one half of a court, the other 2 on the other half. The 3 players are on the offensive side, so when they have the ball it’s 3 on 2, with a 15 second shot clock. When the 2 have the ball, their goal is to get it past half court, with each of the 2 people having to touch the ball in bounds. It’s a good drill to teach some skills of what not to do when getting pressed, while also teaching how to trap and take advantage of a 3 on 2. Mason got killed in this drill, while Alec, Austin, and Michael showed some good stuff.
It was then time to go. It was good practice, because I feel I was much better about giving instruction and making sure they knew what they were learning. We debriefed, for instance, after 3 on 2/2 on 3 to talk about some of the things they had learned. I will then take the lessons they talked about and explain to them how the press break they’re going to learn (next Monday probably) applies those principles.
I feel better about our game Wednesday in terms of where we are at after our practice yesterday and our session on Sunday. We’re playing a team which is physically big, so it should be interesting.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tryouts Day 2
Day 2 of tryouts is in the books. Sammy and Brandon, the two likely cuts from yesterday, weren’t there, leaving us with 11 players. We started off with dribble suicides, which didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. I have a pretty good feel for who can dribble, Josh foremost among them, and who can’t, pretty much everyone else. After this we did Animal Rebounding, my absolute favorite drill. It’s my favorite because it teaches aggression, it teaches rebounding, it teaches how to get a shot off with three guys in your face. In Animal Rebounding you want points. You get a point every time you get a rebound, make a shot, steal the ball, block a shot, or cause two jump balls. Normally we play to 5, but to expedite things during tryouts we played to three. At three there is some definite luck involved, but upon watching the video the winners of our three groups, Josh, Seth, and Michael, were all worthy winners. We’re going to do this again tonight, and due to a football game I’m only expecting 8 or so, and we’ll play up to 5. Between the two games, I should have a good feel for their abilities in this game. I was encouraged that I heard a couple of players say they felt the game was fun. That’s a good thing.
After Animal Rebounding we did full court lay-ups. Basically everyone got the same range of scores, of 5-7, making it worthless. We did it for 45 seconds and it tells me that 45 seconds just isn’t long enough it seems to get a range. Though the drill was useful, since when I watched it on video I was able to get a sense of the kids’ layup form, most of which was poor.
I’ve ragged a little on their fundamentals, which in some ways is unfair. They are a B-level team and B-level team are going to have problems with fundamentals. And while I intellectually know the importance of teaching good fundamentals, I haven’t done the greatest job in the world of actually doing so. I have some structure changes to my practices that I think will encourage them to be used better, but I still recognize this as an area where I can coach better.
After full court lay-ups we did a 3 man weave, which was our first passing sort of drill. This was where a few kids showed some good basketball IQ, or at least good previous instruction, as they knew some of the subtle things to do, like running wide, to do the drill well.
We then ended with some extended 5 on 5, with some no dribble 5 on 5 in the last few minutes. They did it without complaint and did it in many ways more effectively than my 5th grade team did it at the END of last year, so that was all good.
Basically I have a team at this point and a fairly good sense of their strengths and weaknesses. I know I said that I was going to go kid by kid, but I don’t think it would change much from where I’m at today, to tomorrow. So when the team is finalized I’ll start going over the players.
So I have 8 definite yeses. I have one almost definite yes, Kevin, who just rubs me the wrong way in some sense. Not sure why, but as I watched the video last night he went from a maybe to a yes. But something about him & Grant, who does well on all of the objective stuff we do and when I watch him does well subjectively, raise flags for me. And they’re both nice kids, or at least can appear so at tryouts, so it’s not an attitude thing.
That leaves basically 1 spot for two kids. The two kids on the bubble or Leonardo and Quintin. Right now I’m leaning pretty strongly towards Quintin. I watched everything these two did very carefully on video and they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall it seems like Quintin slightly outshines him. In particular I like two things about Quintin. One is he’s always trying to play defense. I’d say Leonardo has better defensive skills, but he’s also less likely to hustle back, and he’s more likely to leave his man to attempt to make a steal. The second is that Quintin seems to have a good sense of how to move on offense. He was always moving around doing something productive, whether it was a cut or a screen, or balancing the court. I would say the biggest plus for Leonardo is his passing. It would appear to be top 4 or 5 of the whole group. I haven’t done a lot of passing stuff, but this has seemed true from what we have done. Hopefully both will be there tonight so I can gain that much more information on them. But unlike in the past two years I don’t feel the same dilmena about the final players I’m going to choose.
After Animal Rebounding we did full court lay-ups. Basically everyone got the same range of scores, of 5-7, making it worthless. We did it for 45 seconds and it tells me that 45 seconds just isn’t long enough it seems to get a range. Though the drill was useful, since when I watched it on video I was able to get a sense of the kids’ layup form, most of which was poor.
I’ve ragged a little on their fundamentals, which in some ways is unfair. They are a B-level team and B-level team are going to have problems with fundamentals. And while I intellectually know the importance of teaching good fundamentals, I haven’t done the greatest job in the world of actually doing so. I have some structure changes to my practices that I think will encourage them to be used better, but I still recognize this as an area where I can coach better.
After full court lay-ups we did a 3 man weave, which was our first passing sort of drill. This was where a few kids showed some good basketball IQ, or at least good previous instruction, as they knew some of the subtle things to do, like running wide, to do the drill well.
We then ended with some extended 5 on 5, with some no dribble 5 on 5 in the last few minutes. They did it without complaint and did it in many ways more effectively than my 5th grade team did it at the END of last year, so that was all good.
Basically I have a team at this point and a fairly good sense of their strengths and weaknesses. I know I said that I was going to go kid by kid, but I don’t think it would change much from where I’m at today, to tomorrow. So when the team is finalized I’ll start going over the players.
So I have 8 definite yeses. I have one almost definite yes, Kevin, who just rubs me the wrong way in some sense. Not sure why, but as I watched the video last night he went from a maybe to a yes. But something about him & Grant, who does well on all of the objective stuff we do and when I watch him does well subjectively, raise flags for me. And they’re both nice kids, or at least can appear so at tryouts, so it’s not an attitude thing.
That leaves basically 1 spot for two kids. The two kids on the bubble or Leonardo and Quintin. Right now I’m leaning pretty strongly towards Quintin. I watched everything these two did very carefully on video and they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall it seems like Quintin slightly outshines him. In particular I like two things about Quintin. One is he’s always trying to play defense. I’d say Leonardo has better defensive skills, but he’s also less likely to hustle back, and he’s more likely to leave his man to attempt to make a steal. The second is that Quintin seems to have a good sense of how to move on offense. He was always moving around doing something productive, whether it was a cut or a screen, or balancing the court. I would say the biggest plus for Leonardo is his passing. It would appear to be top 4 or 5 of the whole group. I haven’t done a lot of passing stuff, but this has seemed true from what we have done. Hopefully both will be there tonight so I can gain that much more information on them. But unlike in the past two years I don’t feel the same dilmena about the final players I’m going to choose.
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