We all know practice time is short and you don't always get a chance to cover everything you want before a game or play day.

With that being said, should you introduce new concepts, skills, plays, etc. DURING a game?

For example, during a time out, you draw a Pick & Roll action up on a whiteboard and tell them to go out and run it - even though you've never practiced Pick & Roll during practice.

I would avoid introducing new concepts and actions during games - in most situations. You should only do that during games when you have gone over it multiple times in practice.

Because most times, it'll backfire. Coaches are even hesitant to do that with high school and college players.

Last thing you want to do is confuse the kids at the game and cause stress. Just start covering that skill at your next practice and implement it during game time once the kids have a good grasp on it.

Less is More - Scale Back and Focus on Important Concepts

On a related note, at the youth level, make sure not to do too much. By scaling down what you teach and just focusing on important offensive and defensive concepts, you won't feel the need to throw new things in during game time.

I say that from experience - I once coached an 8th grade team.

And I wanted to implement basket cuts, backdoor cuts, down screens, and ball screens... primary motion actions by the first game. I think we had 6 to 8 practices. It was a complete disaster! We weren't cutting well. We weren't screening well. We weren't doing anything well.

Then it happened again a few weeks later at our next tournament.

At that point, I stopped everything and just focused on spacing and cutting. We would basket cut after a pass and cut backdoor when overplayed.

(Note: I watched a high school team solely run a pass and cut offense and win a state championship. So it's perfectly fine if that's all you run at the youth level.)

Immediately our offense improved.

After 3 or 4 weeks, I implemented a 2nd action. Pass and screen away.

However, I ran each one independently. 1 was the pass and cut offense. 2 was the pass and screen away offense.

Towards the end of the season, I opened it up to the "3 Offense". This is where they got to choose whether to cut or screen.

Based on what I saw during the games, we would fluctuate between 1, 2, and 3.

We played poorly in our first two tournaments. Then at the end of the season, I think we won our last 3 or 4 tournaments.

The Bottom Line...

1 - Focus on fewer, more important concepts that allow your players to become high IQ decision makers and players of the game.

2 - Only introduce new plays and concepts during a game that you've already covered multiple times at practice.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• An article on my experience that I wrote about above:
  
  How To Teach Offense To Youth and Middle School Teams - "Coach Joe's Offense Sucks"
  
  
• Youth Offensive Products to teach the important universal offensive concepts that will carry over into any offensive system:
  
  Simplified Motion Offense with Don Kelbick
  
  Tim Schuring's Complete Offensive System
  
  
• Youth Man to Man Defense - takes you step by step from Day 1 of practice and can be used year to year:
  
  Jim Huber's Man to Man Defense

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