I am coaching a team of 13 & 14 year old girls in Europe, and facing a few obstacles I can't seem to overcome.

The first is practice intensity. There is always something to giggle at, or something going on that distracts them. I should be happy that they get along, but the competitive drills don't create the intensity I wish for, and since I'm in a small town, reduced playing time threats & punishments don't work as I don't have many players to work with.

The second problem is during games. We always fall behind at the beginning of games, and have to fight our way back. We always manage to get within striking distance (4-6 points) with 7-8 mins to go, but a few missed buckets or a few bad calls from the referee and the effort looses steam, and we end up loosing by 10-15 points. Rotations and starting 5's have been changed, but the result is the same.

When I look over the game, defensive intensity and dumb Turnovers lead to early deficits, and the psychological mindset at the end of games is killing us. i can't expect to fight back from the big deficits every game, what really concerns me is the early holes we dig for ourselves.

Bringing me back to my original problem, intensity and discipline in practice. Solving that should give us the ability to play hard for 40 mins, and be in a position to win at the end of games.

Any suggestions, help, advice would be very helpful!

Thank you

I'm not going to chime in with advice on this one, other than to say I have had teams like this too. I'm interested in hearing what people have to say. I think that sometimes this has to do with the make-up of the kids. I had a team a few years ago (7th and 8th grade boys) that had the same issues.

So just to let you know you're not alone and I'm eager to hear the replies.

Best advice I can give here is make your practices more competitive. Incorporate more competitive drills with two or three teams and have consequences for the losers. Up to you on the consequences, but if you make them somewhat unpleasant, I'm betting you'll see a bit more focus and competitiveness.

EDIT: Re-read your initial comment about the competitive drills not being effective in practice. What happens if a team loses in one of your competitive drills?

Any of these ideas here help?
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/mental/motivate-players.html