GL Practice

After the tumultuous nature of the practice on Wednesday I was pleased to have a practice run without a hitch last night. I get to practice super early as I wanted to have a chance to just shoot around myself. And to my amazement, waiting in the gym 25 minutes early is Tom. We both just shoot around for a bit and I ask him who he thinks will be next person to come. He takes Cameron. I take the triplets. I was right, though Cameron did arrive fairly early.

Promptly at 7:30 we start practice and it is time for the Quiz part 2. It’s basically the same quiz as before except I changed the vocabulary section (and made it easier) and changed the Yes/No questions for the offense. I grade as they do continuous motion. I go through grading and I had already decided to give them a 1 question leeway. I also decide one question isn’t fair, so I don’t count that. In the end the team has earned 10 suicides (or rather 20 half suicides). Dante, in our free throw practicing, has made all of his practice free throws and he had told me at the first practice he worked over the summer to get up to 90%. After he shot his two free throws following continuous motion, I asked if he could do it under pressure. He said he didn’t know, so I decided to put him to the test. I tell the team that Dante will shoot 2 free throws and can knock-off 2 suicides for each one he makes. Dante goes ahead and makes both. It was beautiful. We run the first three suicides there.

After a water break we go into our shell drill. This time I let the offense move around, at half speed, but they cannot dribble. Brian, thinking he’s found a flaw, points out after one correction that there’s no point in guarding his man when he’s far beyond the 3 point line. I agree. We do a fairly good job with this, maintaining the right distance for on ball, 1 pass, and 2 passes even with the men in motion. One interesting moment: I had blown the whistle to make a coaching point. I make the point, and David quickly goes over to the team and whispers something quietly. I have them reset, give somebody the ball, and all of a sudden there’s a pass to a wide open Lucas for a shot, thanks to a screen David had set. I remind them that they need to call out screens. It was a nice thought by David.

After this, we go into Animal rebounding. I had divided them up into roughly centers/forwards and guards. In our first group, Scott came out on top, god bless his aggressive heart, with Justin finishing in last. In the second group it was Jack M who finished first, with Cameron finishing a strong second, and Andrew who finished in last. Someone, I forgot who, said that he thinks it was unfair since the two new players both finished last. I pointed out that Cameron finished second in his grouping, though I have to admit that the new comers are at a disadvantage there. Justin in particular looked like a deer in the headlights during the drill. I expect he’ll figure out a way to do better. More disconcerting to me was Brian who simply decided he wasn’t going to try. When it got down to 3 he put forth some effort and avoided finishing last, but his lack of effort there cost him a starting spot. I haven’t decided if we’ll do this again Thursday to have a chance to redeem himself, but giving up on a drill because it’s tough is simply not OK. Since I have a lot of kids who could make a case for themselves as starters, and more importantly finishers, a player doing something like this helps me focus. I think at this point we’re looking at a starting five of David, Scott, Lucas, Justin, and either Dante or Jack P.

Following Animal Rebounding, I introduced our new out of bounds play. I had each player run through the play once at each position they might be at. We’ll be spending a fair chunk of time at our next practice perfecting this. It was interesting that most of the team, when I said we’d have a new out of bounds play, were happy about this. David, however, liked the old play saying he got a lot of good shots (he did this privately, so I was happy to discuss it with him). This was, to a certain extent, true. However, I think any out of bounds play is going to work for David. My response was that I needed a play that could be understood and executed by the team, and which would result in a few direct scores.

Finally we concluded with some 2 on 3, 3 on 2. The 2 players did a MUCH better job of getting the ball across half court. Cameron, in particular, showed improvement at not picking up his ball. At tryouts he made a strong case for himself, but had been unimpressive at our first few practices. This practice was a reminder that I picked him to be on the team for a reason. If he’s inconsistent, hopefully as we move through the season he’ll develop some consistency.

We then concluded with our other half of suicides from the quiz. Justin failed to finish one of them on time so they had to re-run one. When someone who was standing on the opposite side of Justin and didn’t see this, asked who didn’t finished, I was glad that my immediate response was “the team”. I gave Brian a chance to give them some added time for the first two by making a sink or swim free throw and he missed. I then offered someone the chance to try and make two free throws to give them a minute for the last suicide, which would basically let them jog. Andrew took up the challenge and missed. I can’t decide if this kid thinks he’s better than he really is, or if he’s struggling to make the adjustment from the shorter hoops they use in Small Fry, what he played last season, to the 10 foot hoops we use. It’s probably a little bit of both.

After that it was time to go home. Except that I didn’t get to head straight home. Tom’s father forgot to come pick him up so Tom and I got to spend 15 minutes hanging out together. He’s a very serious young man. We started talking about shows we Tivo and he mentioned the Simpsons, Family Guy, “and of course the News”. We then talked a little bit about the wild fires in California. Wednesday when we were heading out of practice he mentioned how he barely ever had to run a suicide last year because he got a lot of permissions. I had agreed that this was true, and added it’s the reason he made the team this year because he’s such a hard worker. Thinking about it later, I realized that this was the wrong message to send to him. So when we were shooting around tonight before practice I told him that I wanted to change what I said last night. I told him that he made the team not only because he is a hard worker, but also because he is a good basketball player and in fact that Coach Jon had him as one of the top ten players out there. This is a kid that needs to hear that he’s got the basketball skills to keep up with everyone else.

I had announced, while giving them a chance to rest after a suicide that there would be no practice next Wednesday (Halloween). That gives us 1 practice before our first game. I have to admit to being a little nervous about this since our first game is against MP1, a team who we can beat, but who could also beat us. If we’re going to have a winning season, we’ll need to win games like this. Hopefully with David back in full force, and with the addition of our new players we’ll have a winning effort.