Sorry that I’m a day late on this. I simply didn’t have time yesterday to write this up.
The notable event from warm-up is a warm-up drill that WM did. They had their players stand in an arc around the basket. Two players would have the ball. One would shoot. If he missed whoever the ball bounced to kept it. If he made it the coach passed it to another person. The other person would then shoot. It was a nice, low activity, warm-up drill.
WM comes out fouling. It is their first game, and it shows. They get into bonus, and double bonus, before the first period is over. Unfortunately the free throws all go to Jack A who is one of our worst free throw shooters and he only makes 1 of 6. Equally unfortunately, Josh gets into early foul trouble, which is a shame because he scored 6 points in the first. We go into the second up 8-6. In the second we extend our lead, with a variety of kids scoring. Josh basically sits the whole quarter out as he picks up a quick 3rd foul. With about 90 seconds left Jack A gets hurt and I put Josh back in. I tell him if he gets a 4th foul I’ll need to sit him the whole 3rd so he needs to be super careful. Right away there is one play that the ref rules a block but could have gone either way. Later on there is a play where Josh backs away. His dad, who is standing on our sideline, rather than sitting with the parents, yells at him. When there is a stop I explain to him that because Josh had so many fouls he was under instructions to be super careful. His dad apologizes to me and then as we are going out to meet at half, apologizes to Josh.
Since we’re only playing with 8 players, as Ben and Jon are in Arizona and Gavin’s at a hockey tournament, my big message is to just rest. We’re playing alright. Not terribly well, as our man defense is looking poor at times, but not terribly either. The good news is that we do a much better job of breaking the press than we had in previous games. The third quarter is basically a wash. In the 4th quarter they switch to a zone, and we struggle. We never lose our lead, but it gets mighty close. Part of this is due to the fact that we have two kids, Jack A and Danny, foul out and commit 14 fouls in the half, and so we are forced to finish with 6 very tired players. That’s just absurd and we’re going to have to improve on that as many of them were of the kind of fouls that aren’t great. With 30 seconds left we’re up by 4. They manage to get a quick steal and basket. They manage to get another quick steal but miss the shot, get the rebound, but Zach rips it out of their hands. He starts to dribble it up, gets the ball stolen from him. WM drives in, and in my opinion gets fouled, but there’s no call. We pull out the victory, but it was not a pretty win. The kids seems as despondent as I’ve ever seen them at the end of the game.
We have some clear areas to work on. The good news is that the effort we put into beat a press seems to have worked. The bad news is that we have a whole bunch of other areas to work on.
Taking a look at the players who were there:
Jacob – Without Gavin, and the twins, we counted on his inside presence more than ever. And while he showed a good court sense, he didn’t have the athletic ability to back it up. He got numerous balls stolen from him, in that he’d get the rebound and then they’d force a jump ball. His dribbling isn’t as good as everyone elses so that means when he’s open deep on a fast break he can’t convert. He was the only kid not to score.
Zach -- He struggled the most when they switched to a zone. His ability to drive was effectively neutralized and he had trouble, despite instruction, in making the switch in strategy. He did do a good job, however of basically locking down their best player during the 4th quarter.
Jack A – He continues to be a work in progress. I’m not sure we made any progress this week though. He needs more reinforcement about how to play man to man. His drives also weren’t as effective as normal, though I’m not quite sure the reason.
Henry – Played point for us a lot of the time he was in. Not a great point guard, but I think he’s got the most there so I’m going to be putting in the continued effort to try and grow his skills. He made two crucial free throws late in the 4th to put us up by 4 after they’d cut the lead to 2. He’s not a great free throw shooter so I give him lots of credit in coming through in the clutch.
Josh – Scored 12 of our 30 points. Would have had more if I hadn’t had to sit him so much due to the fouls in the first half. Like I said he’s a good shooter, though many of his other skills, such as hustle, dribbling, or defense, could be better. Does seem to understand, better than the rest, the key to breaking presses which is good. I gave him some time at point and we might try that some more to see how it works.
Danny – I didn’t think he deserved to foul out. Not quite sure where the fouls came from, in other words, as I thought he was playing tough, but clean man for most of the game.
Adam – A tad slower and less athletic than many of the kids out there. He tries hard, but the results just aren’t there. I’ve found that I’m giving him a lot of negative feedback, so I’ve resolved to be far more positive with him, despite there being less to be positive about.
Jack B – A solid scrapper. Probably our best defender at man to man. If he were taller he’d be a dynamo. Played exactly the kind of game I’d hope for him to play.
With that we’re off for the rest of the week. I’m not sure when my next update will be. GL starts it’s new Monday for an hour, Wednesday for an hour and a half practice schedule so there might be a practice update or two. Otherwise HP plays two games Dec 2 so look for an update after those.
Showing posts with label josh w. Show all posts
Showing posts with label josh w. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Saturday, November 10, 2007
HP Update (With a little GL thrown in)
We had a practice on Wednesday with GL. It was uneventful; hence I have not posted about it. As I will be trying to keep up on both teams as the season moves forward, I will likely just not posting about certain practices in order to keep things reasonable. Especially come January I would guess I would only post about each team’s practice once a week. Information from practice will also find its way into game reports as appropriate. This has been a long way of saying, that this will be an HP focused entry.
HP House League Games
Thursday GL had no practice because the gym wasn’t available so I went to see the house league teams I hadn’t seen play yet. Where I was impressed with the level of play the previous week, this week’s play was thoroughly unimpressive. There was a lot of drive and shoot without much passing by my players. Not too much different from our game, frankly, and not the type of basketball that will win it for us in the long run. Worse is the fact that there are, in reality, two kids on our team who I think will be able to consistently drive past their men in travel, but in house all of our players have that ability. I’m guessing my players have fun, but it does not help them become the kind of players I’d want them to be. Part of the difference, a large part, is that last week it was Kevin officiating the game. This week it was some random high schooler. Kevin knew how to strike the balance between making the appropriate foul and travel calls, and ignoring calls. The kids who officiated Thursday made no travel calls in the 3 games I saw and were far too inconsistent with foul calls. Basically it was organized street ball, which is fine, but could be so much more.
Josh, was still battling whatever sickness he’d had on Sunday. His team played a double header, losing the first. His team then won the second game, against a team that had far superior talent, by 1. But they did it with-out Josh in the second half, as he initially sat himself owing to renewed coughing and general not feeling well. When he then appeared like he was going to go back in for the final 5 minutes, his mom and I conferred and I told Josh that he wasn’t going in. Josh told his coach.
There wasn’t nearly as much for me to cheer about as there had been before. I cheered every good pass that was made, as there were so few of them. The positive to come out of the game was my continued belief that Jack B knows basketball. It’s a shame that he’s by far the shortest kid out there. I’m going to start him anyway tomorrow.
HP Practice
Had a fairly good practice, with all 11 players practicing. Ben tells me the doctor has cleared him to play with-out his boot and Josh is mostly recovered from his illness though I do sit him during continuous motion and our scrimmage when I hear the cough. I had two goals (well maybe closer to three) for the practice: work on breaking the press, and work on dribbling with our heads up and making passes, besides doing our normal continuous motion conditioning.
For the first part we do a 2 on 4 get the ball across half court. Overall it was fairly successful. Hopefully that success will carry over to tomorrow if/when NF comes out pressing.
We also did a drill where they had a partner and attempted to pass a tennis ball back and forth while not dropping the tennis ball or losing control of the ball they were dribbling. This seemed to work well as when they started dribbling during our scrimmage later they mostly did it with their heads up.
We did in fact spend the last half hour with one of my rare scrimmages. Now granted the first fifteen minutes was spent with no dribble. They actually adjusted fairly well to this conditioning, and, on the whole, spread out far more than my GL team has while running the same drill. Of course matters were helped slightly by the fact that Gavin and Jack A, playing on the same team, were defending other people’s men as much as their own. Gavin’s man, in particular, was often open due to Gavin not playing defense. After a period of complete no dribble, I allowed them to dribble in the back court, and press, and then allowed them to have one dribble in the area of the lane, which was never really used. For the last 7-8 minutes I let them dribble as much as they wanted, but they needed to have at least 5 passes to 3 different people. They also couldn’t dribble with their heads down. They didn’t struggle too much with this requirement, but it still cut way down on the number of shots created simply though penetration, which was my goal. They also couldn’t dribble with their heads down, something that happened surprisingly infrequently considering how they’d played in house league and at our first game. I hope that the tennis ball drill’s effectiveness carries over to tomorrow.
Next week we must do some man to man defense work. But overall, I was happy with the practice today.
Tomorrow’s Games
GL plays LN. LN who did very well in their first game, winning 44-27. I expect a tough game, but again a winnable game for us. LN has never seen David play before, so I think that’s a plus for us. And rumor has it that they’ve added a good new player, but so have we in Justin, so that should cancel each other out. I was going to give Andrew a start, in recognition of his being the only player to ask to sub out last game, but he’s out of town this weekend so that rules that plan out. So I think we’ll go with a starting lineup of Jack M (in recognition of his hard work during practice), David, Jack P, Lucas, and Justin. This is an aggressive group who will penetrate well. If we can set the pace as up tempo, I’m confident we’ll be able to out run them in the long run. At least that’s what we did last year.
HP plays NF. This is the same NF team that gave us a tough go in the play-offs though I didn’t remember until I read my game write-up for it that we’d gone with equal playing time for the game, which hindered us. More troubling from that write-up? The fact that our lack of point guard really killed us in the game. Uh oh. We could be in trouble. I will be going with a starting 5 of Zach, Jack B, Ben, Jon, and Gavin. I think they match-up well and give us a fairly versatile group to start.
I think both games are winnable for us and am cautiously optimistic I will be the coach of two 2-0 teams at this time tomorrow.
HP House League Games
Thursday GL had no practice because the gym wasn’t available so I went to see the house league teams I hadn’t seen play yet. Where I was impressed with the level of play the previous week, this week’s play was thoroughly unimpressive. There was a lot of drive and shoot without much passing by my players. Not too much different from our game, frankly, and not the type of basketball that will win it for us in the long run. Worse is the fact that there are, in reality, two kids on our team who I think will be able to consistently drive past their men in travel, but in house all of our players have that ability. I’m guessing my players have fun, but it does not help them become the kind of players I’d want them to be. Part of the difference, a large part, is that last week it was Kevin officiating the game. This week it was some random high schooler. Kevin knew how to strike the balance between making the appropriate foul and travel calls, and ignoring calls. The kids who officiated Thursday made no travel calls in the 3 games I saw and were far too inconsistent with foul calls. Basically it was organized street ball, which is fine, but could be so much more.
Josh, was still battling whatever sickness he’d had on Sunday. His team played a double header, losing the first. His team then won the second game, against a team that had far superior talent, by 1. But they did it with-out Josh in the second half, as he initially sat himself owing to renewed coughing and general not feeling well. When he then appeared like he was going to go back in for the final 5 minutes, his mom and I conferred and I told Josh that he wasn’t going in. Josh told his coach.
There wasn’t nearly as much for me to cheer about as there had been before. I cheered every good pass that was made, as there were so few of them. The positive to come out of the game was my continued belief that Jack B knows basketball. It’s a shame that he’s by far the shortest kid out there. I’m going to start him anyway tomorrow.
HP Practice
Had a fairly good practice, with all 11 players practicing. Ben tells me the doctor has cleared him to play with-out his boot and Josh is mostly recovered from his illness though I do sit him during continuous motion and our scrimmage when I hear the cough. I had two goals (well maybe closer to three) for the practice: work on breaking the press, and work on dribbling with our heads up and making passes, besides doing our normal continuous motion conditioning.
For the first part we do a 2 on 4 get the ball across half court. Overall it was fairly successful. Hopefully that success will carry over to tomorrow if/when NF comes out pressing.
We also did a drill where they had a partner and attempted to pass a tennis ball back and forth while not dropping the tennis ball or losing control of the ball they were dribbling. This seemed to work well as when they started dribbling during our scrimmage later they mostly did it with their heads up.
We did in fact spend the last half hour with one of my rare scrimmages. Now granted the first fifteen minutes was spent with no dribble. They actually adjusted fairly well to this conditioning, and, on the whole, spread out far more than my GL team has while running the same drill. Of course matters were helped slightly by the fact that Gavin and Jack A, playing on the same team, were defending other people’s men as much as their own. Gavin’s man, in particular, was often open due to Gavin not playing defense. After a period of complete no dribble, I allowed them to dribble in the back court, and press, and then allowed them to have one dribble in the area of the lane, which was never really used. For the last 7-8 minutes I let them dribble as much as they wanted, but they needed to have at least 5 passes to 3 different people. They also couldn’t dribble with their heads down. They didn’t struggle too much with this requirement, but it still cut way down on the number of shots created simply though penetration, which was my goal. They also couldn’t dribble with their heads down, something that happened surprisingly infrequently considering how they’d played in house league and at our first game. I hope that the tennis ball drill’s effectiveness carries over to tomorrow.
Next week we must do some man to man defense work. But overall, I was happy with the practice today.
Tomorrow’s Games
GL plays LN. LN who did very well in their first game, winning 44-27. I expect a tough game, but again a winnable game for us. LN has never seen David play before, so I think that’s a plus for us. And rumor has it that they’ve added a good new player, but so have we in Justin, so that should cancel each other out. I was going to give Andrew a start, in recognition of his being the only player to ask to sub out last game, but he’s out of town this weekend so that rules that plan out. So I think we’ll go with a starting lineup of Jack M (in recognition of his hard work during practice), David, Jack P, Lucas, and Justin. This is an aggressive group who will penetrate well. If we can set the pace as up tempo, I’m confident we’ll be able to out run them in the long run. At least that’s what we did last year.
HP plays NF. This is the same NF team that gave us a tough go in the play-offs though I didn’t remember until I read my game write-up for it that we’d gone with equal playing time for the game, which hindered us. More troubling from that write-up? The fact that our lack of point guard really killed us in the game. Uh oh. We could be in trouble. I will be going with a starting 5 of Zach, Jack B, Ben, Jon, and Gavin. I think they match-up well and give us a fairly versatile group to start.
I think both games are winnable for us and am cautiously optimistic I will be the coach of two 2-0 teams at this time tomorrow.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
HP Clinic 1
My post about my GL tryouts will be going up tomorrow, but today is a special bonus post since it was the first of 3 clinics for HP basketball. Today was my first chance to start to put together what my team was going to be like. These clinics are option so of the 11 players on my team I think 8 of my 11 players were there. The clinics were divided into 4th/5th and 6th grade clinics. Today’s (and next Sunday’s, I believe) was focused on defense. With the younger age group this meant a lot of footwork drills, while the older group did a bunch of work with man to man defense, something I’m sorry my kids didn’t get.
I think my team has definite potential from what I saw, though they don’t know yet that they’re my team as it’s a secret until Tuesday (dumb if you ask me). Things sort of started off perfectly as one of the first kids to arrive was Adam, a short quick player who will be a guard. So he was shooting and being 9 was doing what many 9 year olds do in using their upper body, rather than lower body in shooting. After he’d missed a couple of shots outside his range I suggested he try using his legs to get more power. Fortunately he made his next couple of shots.
The twins Ben and Jon (they’re not identical so I THINK I can tell them apart) both look like they’ll be good players and are likely to be my post stalwarts. At the end of the clinic their father was waiting in the gym as the players were attempting to make 70 full court layups, with four balls, in 4 minutes. Their father made a “suggestion” to one of them that was not well received by the son, not to mention was not a suggestion I’d have made.
Then there is Gavin. Gavin is going to be a show boat. We were doing a free throw drill and he bragged to me how he made 5 shots (a legitimately good amount in that drill) and then repeated it 2 more times as I talked to some other player. I finally said “that’s pretty good but I did hear you the first time”. Not really pleased at my lack of awe he proceeded to try and tell another coach, at which point I pointed out that his individual accomplishment didn’t mean as much considering it was a team oriented drill. Fortunately, Gavin’s mother thinks I walk on water so at least I’ll have parent support to start with.
Besides this my players are a kind of mush in my head though again I was overall pleased with them. The exception to this is Josh. Josh is a shorter pudgy kid who did not impress me with anything today and very much looked like B team material. From what I saw today he wouldn’t have made my GL team last year so for him to be on the A team is remarkable and I will be paying pretty close attention to him next week in the hope that he just had an off day.
I did talk to Brian about the switch asking him “Should I be worried about the change”. His answer was no, but really the answer is yes. He went “we want you to be successful” and then explained how there is a lot of potential BS with the 6B team and they didn’t want me, as new to the program, to be caught up in that. He also commented how well the players responded to me, especially during a drill that I was able to lead.
I still think that the 6th graders would have been fun to coach. And I know I could have handled them, as one player said to a friend after I had just asked him not to sit down “He scares me but he seems awesome” which I like as an initial impression. I feel more excited about the team now that I’ve seen some of the talent, as I hadn’t paid too much attention to the talent during tryouts (why would I bother?). Interestingly enough, the one kid who I had pegged as a good player is on the B team. Hopefully that’s a good sign.
I think my team has definite potential from what I saw, though they don’t know yet that they’re my team as it’s a secret until Tuesday (dumb if you ask me). Things sort of started off perfectly as one of the first kids to arrive was Adam, a short quick player who will be a guard. So he was shooting and being 9 was doing what many 9 year olds do in using their upper body, rather than lower body in shooting. After he’d missed a couple of shots outside his range I suggested he try using his legs to get more power. Fortunately he made his next couple of shots.
The twins Ben and Jon (they’re not identical so I THINK I can tell them apart) both look like they’ll be good players and are likely to be my post stalwarts. At the end of the clinic their father was waiting in the gym as the players were attempting to make 70 full court layups, with four balls, in 4 minutes. Their father made a “suggestion” to one of them that was not well received by the son, not to mention was not a suggestion I’d have made.
Then there is Gavin. Gavin is going to be a show boat. We were doing a free throw drill and he bragged to me how he made 5 shots (a legitimately good amount in that drill) and then repeated it 2 more times as I talked to some other player. I finally said “that’s pretty good but I did hear you the first time”. Not really pleased at my lack of awe he proceeded to try and tell another coach, at which point I pointed out that his individual accomplishment didn’t mean as much considering it was a team oriented drill. Fortunately, Gavin’s mother thinks I walk on water so at least I’ll have parent support to start with.
Besides this my players are a kind of mush in my head though again I was overall pleased with them. The exception to this is Josh. Josh is a shorter pudgy kid who did not impress me with anything today and very much looked like B team material. From what I saw today he wouldn’t have made my GL team last year so for him to be on the A team is remarkable and I will be paying pretty close attention to him next week in the hope that he just had an off day.
I did talk to Brian about the switch asking him “Should I be worried about the change”. His answer was no, but really the answer is yes. He went “we want you to be successful” and then explained how there is a lot of potential BS with the 6B team and they didn’t want me, as new to the program, to be caught up in that. He also commented how well the players responded to me, especially during a drill that I was able to lead.
I still think that the 6th graders would have been fun to coach. And I know I could have handled them, as one player said to a friend after I had just asked him not to sit down “He scares me but he seems awesome” which I like as an initial impression. I feel more excited about the team now that I’ve seen some of the talent, as I hadn’t paid too much attention to the talent during tryouts (why would I bother?). Interestingly enough, the one kid who I had pegged as a good player is on the B team. Hopefully that’s a good sign.
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