Just from watching games you can see team play a couple of times and the defense intensity is not there all the time from game to game. How can you teach or assure that you have that intensity from game in and game out is there drills to focus on this or is it just the nature of the game some times you have it other times you don't. You see it at the college level all the time you watch them on big monday then same team on saturday and they look different.

Make it an emphasis in practice. Chart it and hold kids accountable when they don't do it. You can expect them to give their best effort all the time, but that does not mean it will happen. The one thing you can't do is let a player slide when they don't have the intensity you want. Do the drill again after explaining what you are looking for.

I am a firm believer that you play the way you practice.... we always made our practices harder than any games... everything we did was competitive..... this is what one of my X players said about our practices.

Bests Things:

· Playing against 6 defenders

· Defense footwork drills…….. these built endurance and desire to play D!

· Working on running our lanes.

· Help side defense. Learning how to play up the line.

· Having knowledge of what our opponent was going to do so we can prepare with repetition on how we will run our offense and sets in games. EX: the GNB game (they were #8 at the time) we executed that game plan perfectly both offense and defense. The way we practiced was how we played the game…… We were always more prepared than the other team.

· I think the way we practiced…ALWAYS HARD…. Made us have that same mentality in games, very important!


To be honest, everything we did in practice had a direct correlation to our games, we had no wasted time.

Great tips....

As a coach I also like to set defensive goals. I keep up with loose balls (50/50 balls), deflections, rebounds, and etc...Some stats are deceiving but not all. This helps me during games to see if we are being active during games.
I incorporate those things into my drills. I have one defensive drill where I score stops, deflections, and rebounds. Use as many competitive drills as possible.