Well Wednesday’s practice was not a good one. Some of this was my fault, as while I had a list of things that I wanted to accomplish at the practice, I didn’t have a detailed practice plan laid out to give structure. And I definitely didn’t bring my A-Game in terms of handling them. However, some of it was definitely them. Scott, for instance, was absolutely off the wall. And the fact that only two kids had taken time to watch the video of how our zone break actually worked in action, meant that several of them felt emboldened to whine about how this play didn’t work last year. And it didn’t, but that’s exactly why I decided to take a new teaching approach to it.
Besides work on the zone offense, I also wanted to work on blocking out. And they simply aren’t doing a very good job of it. And that has to be my teaching right there. That part is frustrating to me, because I know that the teaching of fundamentals is a weakness for me. So being able to recognize the problem, work hard to put together the teaching points, and then still not be able to teach it? Ugh.
That leads us to last night. When I get to the gym, I arrive to find us locked out and basically the school is dark. The team arrives, but parents don’t leave as we struggle to find out if we can get in. Finally, I try to send the team home, but they won’t go. Just as they start to straggle off, Jack M sees a janitor through a window. And suddenly we have a practice.
I made sure to come into practice with a strong plan. I really struggled putting together the practice. On the one hand we had a lot of fundamentals that I wanted to go over. On the other hand after yesterday’s poor practice I wanted to make sure we had some fun. We started practice a few minutes late as I had to raise the baskets from 7 feet to 10. I word hard to be in a better mood, and in control, than I was yesterday. And overall it’s a better practice. We worked first on setting screens. During the game I played with them, they went a little overboard in terms of setting screens, but they certainly had the idea down, which was good to see. Following this we did some press break work. After showing them the principles I want to see (set screens off the ball, stay away from the corners, pass the ball, and come to the ball to receive a pass) we did a 3 on 5 press. Towards the end of the drill the offense started doing better. I like this 3 on 5 setup more than the 2 on 3 I’d done with HP last Saturday. I think we’ll do the 3 on 5 with HP this weekend as well. David really wants to just dribble his way out of trouble. Well it wasn’t working. I reminded them how they can literally pass the ball far up the court. Scott, being a baseball person, is likely our one who will do that more than most.
To conclude practice I let them scrimmage as a reward for persevering about practice where I was ready to send them home. To pick teams I had them randomly line up and shoot a free throw. The first six to make it were on Team A, the five others on Team B. David was on the team which missed and moaned about how I picked unfair teams again. I pointed out that I didn’t pick the teams. He still moaned. Anyhow, the scrimmage went fairly well. After initially doing well, we started to bunch up on the court, but I reminded them not to do it and it stopped. Overall fun was had.
I’m really glad we had practice yesterday. I feel like some learning was done and put everyone, or at least me, in better spirits after Wednesday. Saturday we play PL at home. I’ve decided if the team won’t follow through with watching the videos I made at home, I’ll make them watch it before the game, as Tom and Dante, who’d watched the videos, were rattling off my teaching points and really seemed to “get” how the pattern might work. Of course they’re two of the sharper kids to begin with, so that might be why they got it. We’ll see, either way on Sunday, I suppose.
Showing posts with label zone buster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zone buster. Show all posts
Friday, November 16, 2007
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.
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.
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.
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