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PostPosted: 09 May 2014, 13:47 

Posts: 214
There's Swarm, Packline, Run and Jump and so many others. Can I provide a description of my philosophy and how my 4th grade girls travel team defense evolved this past season and anybody let me know if this is an existing "style" or just something that evolved and worked for us?

My initial teachings are to play a sagging, I guess packline defense. The focus is on not giving up anything in the paint. We run a lot of shell drills working on defensive positioning, jumping to the ball, being a great help defender. Initially I did not want defenders roaming above the 3pt line chasing steals and offensive players like dogs.

Then we'll focus on 1on1 defense, stance, beating the dribbler to a spot and not getting beat to the hoop. Including things like using the baseline as an extra defender. We do a lot of fullcourt zig-zag work to work on turning the dribbler, recovering when beat, etc.

At this point we were not switching on any screens. We helped/recovered and fought through the screen (usually under the ball screen).

As the season went on, we were able to discover which girls had the ability to begin playing more hard denial on the perimeter and we let them do this. They had good instincts and began to force a lot of turnovers. We also began switching screens as our defensive communication improved.

So at this point, we're switching almost everything, we've got some girls playing hard denial everywhere on the court and we've got some girls still playing packline, sagging to protect the paint. Each girl is playing a defensive style that suits her personality and ability, but as a team, we don't have one identifiable defense.

It worked out very well for us. We were top 3 in points allowed (usually #1) in every tournament we played in.

Is this an existing defensive system or did I just strike fool's gold in playing to each player's comfort and ability?


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PostPosted: 11 May 2014, 06:33 
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Most defenses are developed in college and then trickle down to high school, middle school, and youth. So none of them are really designed for youth teams.

I can't think of one defensive system that started at the youth level and was designed for that and then trickled up. So pretty much all the defenses you mention work great for high school but not necessarily for youth unless you tweak.

Not to mention there are so many different levels of youth based on age, skill, gender, experience, time constraints, etc. So I think out of necessity a lot of youth coaches tweak to make things work for them and their particular situation.

It sounds like what you're doing is working and players are developing athleticism, which is important. My only advice is...

- continue to make all players defend on different areas of the court to develop their foot coordination and athleticism
- teach as many "fundamental defensive" aspects as you can that they can use in other defenses as they get older

Regarding switching, you'll probably run into a good team eventually that has good guards and good post players that will exploit the switches. That might happen this year or it might take 3 years. But unless all your players are the same size and defensive ability, it will happen eventually.

Good luck and thanks for sharing!

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http://www.BreakthroughBasketball.com


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