HP Practice

We did not get off to an auspicious start with our HP practice today. At 9:00 we had half a team. Now granted at 9:02 4 players came in, but not the promptness I would have liked. I did start on time though so all those players were marked as late. Gavin came in just as I was finishing my practice introduction. Jack A? A complete no show.

We started off with doing our defensive continuous motion. They sort of dogged it in the middle but finished strong. They went just a tad over 6 minutes before I switched them into the relay race. Following this we practice our shell drill. I’m running a fairly conventional man to man scheme with HP whereas with GL, I am running more of a scheme. We’ll see how each works. Basically the HP team showed that they don’t have the basketball IQ that GL has and I don’t think it’s just because they are a year younger.

Next we did Animal Rebounding for the first time with the group. They were mostly getting a sense of the drill. What was interesting was that in both groups the first person to get 4 points, Jacob with the post players and Jack B with the guards, finished in 4th place. Ben and Danny won. Considering Danny was on the board of going between the guards and forwards I’m glad he won.

Following Animal Rebounding we did Triangle Passing where the 3 offensive players form a triangle and the defenders try and stop them from completing passes. Henry was the star of this drill, stealing the ball 3 out of the 4 times he was on defense. We then went back into the shell drill.

Finally we concluded with 3 on 2, 2 on 3. There was not as much figuring out as there was with the 5th graders but it was still a good drill. For instance, for the first time I saw why Josh made the team (he’s a pretty good shot). It was interesting seeing who played tough defense and who didn’t. In the didn’t category was Adam. I told him as much after practice. I had tentatively considered him a starter, but if he doesn’t play defense that won’t happen. Also dropping in my eyes was Jacob. He played hard the whole time, but his skills were weaker than many. In the good category, besides Henry, were the twins. Both played hard on defense and on offense.

Unfortunately I somehow forgot practice ended at 10:30 rather than 11 and so I had to end abruptly. Overall I’m pleased with how practices have been going. We simply don’t have enough of them. I can already tell that this once a week business is going to really hurt us between now and January when I get the team twice a week. So far the team seems to be enjoying themselves, and I think there’s learning going on, so those parts are good. Hopefully we’ll be able to compete when the season starts. We have two more practices before our first game to get there.