GL Practices

A week of practices has gone by with GL and I’m pretty pleased overall with both practices.

Monday saw the start of our one hour practices. The sixth grade team practices before us. I would like to scrimmage them at some point, though admittedly I have a lot less to lose than does Jon (coach of the 6th grade team).

With only an hour on Mondays we’re not going to waste anytime and I tried to convey that urgency to the team, successfully I think. I said since we’d only done open gym two times we were going to try it two more times if the team wanted. Overwhelmingly they did. However, while this open gym was better than the last one, in that more people choose to just shoot around, I think with the missing half hour that after next week open gym will just fall by the wayside for the time being (it doesn’t make sense to do at our Thursday practice space because it only has 2 10 foot baskets).

After that we did our Princeton continuous motion drill. They always clamor for this drill, I think because it hadn’t been as physically demanding. When we got to three balls suddenly they weren’t standing around as much (the reason I think they liked it), but they got very sloppy. It was disappointing. However, when I gave them a goal for how many baskets to make in 2 minutes they made it. I emphasized that is how they should be running the drill the whole time.

After free throws and a water break we went into our shell drill. We did some pretty good work with that, but the work also told me we need to be doing this more regularly. I know how important the shell drill is and so I need to make sure I continue to use it as a change of pace drill, despite it being one they don’t like and which has players sitting out.

Next with them in two groups, we did some work on making full speed layups. We again met our goal, which was nice. We then concluded practice with “bubble” in two different groups. One player is on the free throw line with the rest in blocks. If a player misses and the next player makes it they’re out. David and Jack P were out champions. We did a championship round with David winning. Since the drill was popular we’ll use it again. It was time to go home.

Yesterday we had our second practice. I get there early and find that there is girls house league practicing in the space. I was very impressed with how upbeat and positive the coaches were. I felt bad for one of the teams since there was only one father/coach and it was clear he didn’t really know what he was doing (for instance they were scrimmaging and he was basically encouraging them to all be close to the ball to get a pass. While that’s fine for 3 on 3, it’s bad news in 5 on 5). One of the teams doesn’t quite end practice on time so we start a few minutes late.

I start us off with our defensive slide continuous motion. After they go for about 6 minutes, with better quality than before, I set a team goal: Using two lines going one at a time if everyone finishes in 2:20 we’ll go for a minute more. Otherwise we’ll go for 3. We finish with 10 seconds to spare.

After free throws and a water break we work on our zone breaker. I made the mistake of not running it through without a defense first so Justin and Andrew have forgotten what they’re supposed to do and Lucas is also confused about what he does, even though he was doing the same thing as what he did last year and there was some confusion from Jack P, though that’s understandable as he’s in a somewhat new role this year. While overall the defense stopped our groups, the players were doing a better job of improvising and starting to figure out how it worked. I was also particularly pleased with my teaching in that there was a lot of good whole group and 1 on 1 instruction. I really do think the play can work this year, but we’re going to need to do a lot more work so that’s what we’ll do.

Next we did some 1 on 1 work. It was a simple, stay in defensive position while your partner zig zag dribbles up the court. It’s become apparent that my team needs work, and sure enough this is true. I matched them up roughly according to speed and quite a few players had trouble keeping up. I might even do this as a continuous motion, as that’s what it essentially turned into, though when we have 11 players (Cameron was sick) it gets trickier. Defensive stance and sliding is one of the few fundamentals I feel that I taught well last year and most of the players, when reminded, will do them. So it’s a matter of getting them to execute at a higher level.

After a water break, we did the last drill of the evening. They were in two teams doing our 3 on 5 press break drill. Brian got very whiney during this drill when he didn’t like one of my calls and Jack M got a little whiney. In general I think I’ve let things get lack with that area and am going to pull it back in a little before it gets out of control. The offense did a better job early on at breaking the press but the victories became much harder won by the end. One of the big problems had been David dribbling out of trouble. He did a better job of not doing this by having him be the in bounder so he would frequently be the one to receive a pass back. In general it didn’t tangle him up as much and kept others back to help.

And it was then time to go home. I feel like there was some good learning this week, especially considering we didn’t have a game over the weekend to focus us. If we can sustain this level of practice next week, when we play WK, if we look bad I won’t feel like it’s because of lack of preparation. A big focus next week will be us installing our own press, in addition to continued emphasis on our man to man defense, a little work on the zone offense, and the return of the Mikan drill.