I coach a girls youth basketball team that are 3rd and 4th graders. We played a team over the weekend that did something that I need your opinons as coaches on. Our team was playing a zone defense the other teams guard brought the ball down the floor crossed half court and her coach told her not to move until we did. So needless to say we didn't move and she didn't move. What as coaches would you all have done in that situation?
Thanks in advance,

It's kind of a cheesy move by the other coach, but to be honest, I did that a few times. Basically, the coach was telling you he/she didn't think it was cool you were playing a zone. So, it looks goofy to have both teams just sitting there. I probably would have pulled out a zone and starting playing M2M.

The reason we have to do a zone is because our girls can't keep up physically with some of the teams. We have a lot of girls that are new to the game and just aren't able to keep up. I thought about just pulling them out of the zone but thought that he was being a jerk by doing that so I just went along with it. I guess it was a learning experience all the way around. I just didn't know as a new coach what I should have done in that situation. I heard he likes to intimidate and I think that is what he was trying to do.

Don't let that coach intimidate you from doing what you think is best for your team. That guy is a douche for doing that move. I would just let them do what they want to do and stay in the zone. If they don't do anything they would lose anyway.

If you're players have trouble keeping up that's all the more reason to play man to man. They are not getting any faster or improving foot speed or foot coordination by standing back in a zone. Check out this article for more thoughts on the subject:
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/defense/age.html

I think the biggest priority for a youth coach is to develop players, foster a love for the game, and teach life lessons. Winning should not be the focus and should only be a by-product of those three things.

At the very least, play 50-75% man to man and 25-50% zone. At least players are learning some good principles and developing some agility by playing good man to man defense.

As far as standing there waiting for you to come out. Not a good situation for either team. These kids should be playing. Live and learn. :)

Also, if you are severely outgunned and it's just not productive for your kids, find other games/leagues that are closer to your players ability. And play man to man defense and motion offense with interchangeable positions where everyone touches the ball fairly equally. That is best for their development.

Jeff's suggestions are spot on, can't add to those.

I get wanting to play a zone at the 3rd/4th level as it can help hide the weakness of newer players and bring some parity against stronger teams. If you plan on keeping the zone for a while as you work on M2M, just tell the other coach before starting the game. Explain why you're playing zone and that you're transitioning into M2M. Most coaches should be cool with it, even Mr. Intimidation Coach.

On a side note: I should clarify that when I told my kids to wait against a zone, it only happened a few times against a team whose coach was ALL about winning (6th grade). He played the same tall kids, never rotated players off the bench and never played M2M. I just didn't have an offense against a zone at that point, so I tried to pull him out of the zone by waiting. It didn't work, it was awkward and I was just being immature at the time.

Eventually, I came up with a couple of offensive sets against zones, learned how to get the ball down the court quickly and made teams pay for playing a zone. They ended up in a M2M anyway because we learned how to beat zones.

I'm not Mr. Anti-Zone man, but having gone through the full spectrum from rec ball through high school, the kids that learn good M2M skills at younger ages are always the better players when they get older.

I really appreciate all of your responses . Im a new coach so any tips that you all can give me I greatly appreciate. I may like someone suggested switch our defense around its just so hard because we have one practice a week that are an hour long. That's not much time to teach anything. This is a league in the county where I live the girls are in 3rd and 4th grade. Some teams have all 4th graders and some have all 3rd graders. They can press until they are up by 10 so basically in the beginning the girls are running around not even knowing what's going on. We are learning and are getting better each game so that's a plus!
Thanks again so much and keep your ideas coming. :)

Courtney,

I am one of the few coaches around the internet that will publicly say that I'm playing zone D with my 5th grade boys. Having said that - we do not sit back in a passive zone and wait for the play to come to us. Our zone D looks a lot more like a M2M shell drill than it does a zone D. I do TEACH M2M defensive fundamentals in practice and my players understand "between man and basket", "pistols at the ball and my man", 1 pass away position, 2 pass away position, etc. but we play with those fundamentals regardless of the D we are playing. Quite honestly, I've been blessed with great athletes already and in our league we would crush everyone by 30-40 points if we played M2M because the other team wouldn't get the ball past the free throw line. That's not fun for the other team and it gets very boring for the better players. We play 1-3-1, 3-2, 2-3, and 2-1-2 zones and a very little bit of M2M. The one thing we always do is aggressively defend once the ball crosses half-court. By playing zone, my players are learning how to box out to rebound, how to play help side D, how to run a team fast break (instead of a steal and going coast-to-coast every time), and how to "hand off" the offensive player off a ball screen. What I'm trying to say is don't feel bad about playing a zone defense. 3rd grade basketball is a lot like 5 year old soccer - everyone just goes to the ball because they don't know any better. At least in a zone, you are teaching them the concept of spacing - which can become valuable on the offensive end of the floor. If you are in a league that has not adjusted the height of the rim or the size of the court for younger players, then there's very little you can do in terms of practicing to score because they just aren't strong enough to make a basket on a 10-foot hoop for anything further than 2 feet away.

But what you CAN do is work on ball handling for everyone. You can also work on spacing and movement on offense. We do a drill called "5-out" where we put markers on the court at the wings, at the top of the key, and not quite into the corners. The coach begins the drill from under the basket and passing out to a player. That player dribbles in as fast as they can and passes off to a teammate. Once the drill starts, all players are required to go find an open spot and to never leave the top spot open. If you see a player stay in one spot for more than two passes, stop the drill and explain the movement part. What the players do away from the ball on offense has a much bigger impact on team success than anything the player with the ball does. The players learn to dribble towards the basket no matter where they are on offense and this drill really reinforces the idea that moving without the ball is critical and it is essentially a simulation of how Oakland University (a small college in Michigan) plays their dribble-drive offense. It also requires the players to talk to each other to help each other identify open spots and get to the top to protect against a fast break if you lose the ball.

A little late to the party, but I thought I'd comment anyway.

I coached my son and daughter in rec from 2nd grade through 6th grade and dealt with a vast array of skill sets and basketball IQ's. As time passed I got better at teaching the kids how to just play the game. Early on I relied on trying a set play and things just never worked well. Eventually I got better at structuring my practices so we could develop better players.

In a one hour practice we would work:
10 minutes pure ballhandling (stationary and on the move things like crossovers, inside out, relay races, jump stops, spins, retreats)

15-20 minutes on team offensive principals that tied directly into the individual fundamentals. Pass and Cut, Dribble Drive and kick out or Dribble handoff, V cuts and Back cuts. This is where we would also get our layups and shooting work done within the team offense teaching. It was usually 2v0 working on an action and finishing with the shot.

I'd spend another 10-15 minutes on shell drill defensively. First starting with our players just passing and holding the ball so the defense could get used to basic rotations and jumping to the ball. Later we'd add pass and cut and just maintain good spacing. I'd usually use cones as spacing suggestion markers. We did this without allowing the players to dribble. Really made the offense and defense have to work on cutting and defending cutters. Lastly we'd allow the dribble and all the sudden it's a nice halfcourt scrimmage.

I would also do a lot of 1v1 work in the halfcourt so kids got used to defending the drive and also trying to drive and score. I also love fullcourt one on one, I call it zig-zags, where the defender is trying to get the ballhandler to change directions as many times as possible (or zig-zag up the floor).

The other thing I loved to do was full court advantage/disadvantage drills like 3v2, 2v1. Good for conditioning and for kids to begin recognizing certain things on the court.

There are other ways to speed up the development of young players, but this method worked best for me.

Good luck!