I coach a middle school girl’s team and we are having a problem with the girls seeing the court and anticipating what is going to happen. Any advice or drills that will help them anticipate instead of just waiting and reacting.

Ages are 10-14 and only one has played competitive ball before.

Thanks
Dave

Is this in regards to your defense or offense?

Jeff,

Both, they get so fixated on the ball they don't what is happening around them.

My goal for this year is to make sure that the girls have a good foundation and build from there for next year. Unfortunately, three of them age out and have to move up to JV and I want to make sure that they have the tools they need to succeed.

Any guidance would be most appreciated

Dave

What type of offense do you use? What defense (man to man)?

We are using a man to man defense. We tried to use a motion offense, but they were having trouble undertanding the concept so we went to a couple of set plays. That has helped them move to certain positions, but they get fixated on that.

We have a month left in this season and most of the girls will be back next season. During the early summer we will have some open gyms and then move into weekly skills sessions in late summer.

Dave

On defense that is just a big part of "building your m2m defense". Anticipation and positioning is what it's all about. That's true for rebounding too. You have to choose what you want to emphasize. You won't get everything done. But if anticipation is something you want to emphasize, then you have a chance at getting decent at it. We emphasize defensive anticipation from day 1. Most coaches say you should move on the flight of the ball (as the ball is leaving the passers fingertips). Move on the pass, not the catch!! We even go a step further and try to get our guys moving before the pass even leaves the fingertips. Hardly anyone uses pass fakes these days and you can see which direction the passer is looking or stepping towards and move as they are stepping.

Almost all of our defensive drills are based on anticipation and positioning. It's something you have to commit to because it takes a lot of practice. I don't know if you have any of our ebooks, but this ebook explain how to build a man to man defense step by step. Really the whole things is about anticipation and keeping the offense from getting the ball anywhere near the basket and contesting all the outside shots they do happen to get.
http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/pr/mandefense.html

On offense, I'm not sure you really want to anticipate what they are going to do. You run your stuff (attack and dictate) and then counter if you need to. Who cares what they do. Good teams dictate what happens (that's true for your defense too). This might be a little advanced for this age level, but eventually that's what you try to get to. Never let the defense decide what you are doing to do, where you go, or who shoots. Make them react to you.

In my opinion, motion offense is best for developing players for the long term. It takes patience, just like anything worth while in life. Start with a simple motion. Use spots on the floor if they can't figure out where to go.

Put tape on the floor, tell them to pass cut to the basket, then find an open spot. Does it get any simpler than that? Then you build from there, teach them how to screen away and read the screen. Teach the how to post up and seal their defender. Teach them how to set up their basket cut and get the defender on their hip. If spacing continues to be a problem let us know and we can give you spacing drills. But usually the tape solves the problem.

If your players can understand spacing and know how to use their legs to move, then they can run motion. You just have to keep working on the basics and fundamentals as long and as much as you possibly can. That will help them in the future. If you run set plays, you'll spend endless hours repeating those plays and trying to learn them instead of spending time on fundamentals. Been there and done that. Personally I will never go back to that. With motion, you can work on your motion offense and fundamentals at the same time.

Hope this helps.

I forgot to mention, for "seeing the court", I really like no dribble drills. Some of this came from Coach Sar. You can do 3 on 3 no dribble half court and full court. We do a lot of full court. You can also do 4onr or 5on5 no dribble full court.

This really gets players to learn how to get open, meet their pass, face the basket, look, and improves passing. Since we had a turn over prone group at the beginning of this year, we constantly do the full court 3on3 and 5on5 no dribble and say "meet your pass, face the basket in triple threat, and LOOK". With time I think this drill will help you a lot. Helps with motion too.

Jeff,

Thank you I got frustrated, doubted what I was doing, and defaulted to set plays. Fortunately we have at least one pracitce between games for the next several weeks, which gives us plenty of time to work on stuff. I have several of your e-books and use them all the time. I guess it is time for me to go back re-read the m2m defense and motion books.

Your second post is very timeley, we played last night and did very well in the first half against a team that killed us last week.....until we started turnig the ball over with bad passes and not looking. Thursdays practice will have a lot of 3v3 and 5v5 no dribble.

Dave