After Friday’s practice I realized that we simply were not going to be ready for our first game. Or at least not as ready I would like. While if I had to do it over again there would some things I would change, I would not change the overall idea of what we’ve done at practice. I think what I’ve done will benefit us for the long term. However, we’re going to be a bit of a mess for our first game.

Going into Monday’s practice I realized we had three practices left before our first game. Our practice on Friday was going to be canceled since there was a school fun fair and it seemed like the team should be able to enjoy that. That left just that Monday practice and two practices we have this week. And here are the things that are very important that hadn’t been fully, or in most cases even partially, taught:
• Transition offense
• Starting routines for the motion offense – we’d done some work, but not really enough
• Press break
• Full court press
• Inbounds play
• Tip-off play

And that’s just the important stuff. While thinking this over I decide that there simply is no way to teach a full-court press in the time we have left. This will leave us in the uncomfortable position of trying to learn a press break against a theoretical full court press. Teaching a press break and press is going to be further complicated by our only having nine players. These are some of the few activities where 10 players is a must. I do feel better about our lack of a god press break because of how good we are at dribbling. I would feel even better about it if the H’s were going to be at our first game. I mentioned this a while back, but we’re going to be at 7 players for the first game. After Friday’s practice I had effectively decided on a starting lineup of those who showed up Friday, who also happen to be our best remaining five:
Tom
Gordie
Dante
Jack P
Noah

What do they have in common? SHORT. And its not like Jack M off the bench is going to help matters much, being the shortest member of the team. I knew it was going to be an issue, but the issue is HUGELY aggravated when 2 of your 3 biggest players, Brian and David, aren’t there and only 2 of your 5 tallest, Dante and Lucas, are there. But we will make do.

I decide to roughly break-up the skills we need to have at least talked about into the following:
• Transition offense (Monday 11/6)
• Starting routines for the motion offense – we’d done some work, but not really enough (Wednesday 11/15)
• Press break (Wednesday 11/15)
• Inbounds play (Friday 11/17)
• Tip-off play (Friday 11/17)

So Monday was transition offense day. I admit I get more than a little nervous when at 6:55 we only have 4 players. But everyone shows up just on time, except for Jack P who shows up about 15 minutes late. I start off practice by telling them that we only have three practices left and so it’s crunch time.

We start off by teaching them a new continuous motion drill, which I dubbed Princeton, that also reinforces the ideas of a transition offense. Players are strategically placed throughout the court, going up and down, and they make a quick pass and follow the pass to a new spot. It becomes continuous motion, in effect, when you add a second ball despite the fact that only 6/7 players are ever really on the court at one time. Anyhow I teach this and we play “how many shots can you make in two minutes” with one ball. I then completely mess up, THREE TIMES, how to do this drill with two balls before figuring it out. Grrr to coach. Anyhow we finally do get it going with two balls and I just let it run continuously for a bit.

It is then time to teach the transition offense off a made basket. The idea being we’re going to simply beat the other team down the court. We run it a couple of times with no defense. The performance was OK. An interesting note is that Jack M basically would only pass the ball to David as an outlet, even after I told him to pass to the other option and even if David wasn’t ready. These two are best friends, so it’s understandable, but it’s definitely a problem. It means that Jack M will likely play only a little when David is in, which considering David will be playing a lot, will limit his playing time until I see that he’s broken himself of this habit. The team started to get a little goofy here and I didn’t clamp down on it as I should have. Part of the goofiness carried over from Friday’s practice where with the small group it wasn’t nearly as much of a problem.

We then moved to playing a 5 on 5 half court game, where I was the 5th player on offense. The offense would make a shot and the defense would then do transition. Things got more and more ridiculous. Finally I had enough. I had them get on the baseline and I announced a suicide. I heard someone blame someone else, not sure who the identities of either of these players really were, so I said that this wasn’t any individuals fault, but instead was a team problem. And so we’d run a second suicide. They did the first suicide no problem with-in the time frame I’d given. The second one, I let the first person to do half of it and three quarters of it drop out. However, people took to jogging and so the team didn’t finish in the prescribed time. So it was off for a third one. We did the third one fine. I then gave them a water break.

When they got back they were much more focused with the drill, as one would hope. Following this I introduced another transition drill. In this one we have a set number of players on the court. I started with 6, three on defense and 3 on offense. I simultaneously pass the ball to a player on offense and call the name of a player on defense. The player whose name I called has to run form the free throw line extended (which is where they are lined up) to underneath the hoop. The other players go right into offense and defense. Basically it’s teaching them how to run the fast break. I decided to go for this drill rather than the more conventional teaching approach since we’re short on time and I want them to have some semblance of how it works. We will likely back up and teach it from a more theoretical standpoint sometime in the not too distant future. I start the drill with effectively 3 on 3, before increasing it to 4 on 3, 4 on 4 and finally 5 on 4. Overall I’m pleased with how it runs.

I then decide we’ll play a game of Golf. We end up playing two, with the first one being a demonstration game and the second one “for real”. Each time won one of the games, so it’s unfortunate that only one of them had to run. But such are the breaks. Several things became apparent here. First Jack M is terrible at following up his shot. His team lost the first game almost purely because of him and nearly lost the second game as well. Shooting a free throw basically seems to be FAR outside his range as well, but I already kind of knew that. David and Dante are our best shooters from that distance, with Jack P and Tom a step below that. But I pretty much already knew that. Scott has trouble judging the angle of shots.

Earlier as we were running Princeton, Emily came in with the uniforms. To end practice I decide we’ll do a little 4 on 4 full court as I layout and get ready the uniforms. I divide them into two teams with Jack P being the odd man out. I rotate him in but we really don’t have much time for the game. However, what we do have time for, isn’t pretty. It’s clear we have a lot of work to do. When Lucas’s mother comes in, as we’re right up against the time and comments “They’re looking good” I’m not sure what to say. In my heart of hearts I know we’re just not ready yet and I fear greatly we’re not going to be there before next Sunday. I responded with a “We’ll see how we are at our first game” which is downbeat for the picture I normally try to instill.

We then hand out uniforms, always fun, and go home. The clock is ticking. Hopefully HP, which I hear from some kids on the team isn’t as good as us, will be even more unready. But who knows? Only time will tell.