Hi

I've put this into the youth section although my team is actually mostly 13 and a few 14 year old girls but a significant portion of them have never played before and the remainder have only played 1 year. i thought it might be better to address the question to this age group category. Our challenge is we have nobody on the team that can dribble without staring at the ball the whole way up the court. And therefore bringing the ball up the court to get it into the offensive zone is almost impossible. it is difficult in the 1st 1/2 when no press is allowed but 2nd 1/2 when many teams will press us we just shut down as a team offensively. We had very little practice time before the season and only have access to a gym for 1 practice per week (and one game day in which we play 2 games). so realistically we are not going to be able to work on dribbling skills enough in our limited practice time to significantly impact the ability of the girls to dribble. we work on it but we only have 1hr 45 min and theres lots to work on. I thought of trying to come up with something that would allow us to pass our way into the offensive zone vs relying on an individual to dribble it in. wondering if anyone has ever tried something like this or if anyone has any other suggestions. I know it's a band aid approach rather than a cure but thought I'd throw it out there and see if anyone has some advice for me to salvage something of the few weeks we have left in our season.

thanks a lot.

Personally I have never tried something where you had to rely on all passing to advance the ball. You could maybe try something like this but with limited practice time they probably won't remember how to do it.
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/plays/linepressbreaker.html

If it were me, I would probably spend my entire practice working on ballahndling and do drills to teach players how to advance the ball against defenders. 1on1, etc.

Then I would give them workouts to do on their own since like you mentioned their isn't enough practice time to make progress.

Then I would consider it a win if by the end of the season a few of the players can dribble and advance the ball fairly consistently. And praise them for their progress. You have to start somewhere.

Jeff, thanks for the reply

you are probably right, well try to focus solely on that (dribbling) for the next practice and see how it goes.
or maybe a hybrid using part of the press break you show in the link to at least get them part way up. well give it a try and see how it goes.

thanks again.

How many players are on the team and how many basketballs do you have access to? In a perfect world these numbers will be the same.

Even when we aren't working directly on ballhandling, I try to make sure each player has a basketball and the drill involves dribbling. Could be defensive slides or zig-zags. One player working on dribbling while one works against them on defense. Switch and roles and come back the other way. Now you're taking one drill and making it two. Or layup lines. I put everybody on the right to start with a ball, they shoot their right handed layup and then dribble to the left side to start a line and do a left side layup. Repeat it back and forth. They are dribbling and moving for the entire drill. Even add in a coach, chair or cone as a defender and have them work on different moves (crossover, spin, retreat). Again, combining dribbling with something else you want to focus on.

You can still work on other things while working on dribbling and ballhandling at the same time.