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PostPosted: 01 Apr 2014, 14:53 

Posts: 10
Hi,

I was wondering if anyone is splitting up their practice focus. Meaning, having one practice defense fundamentals focused and the other offense fundamentals focused. I have two 1.5 hour per week. This is my first time coaching these guys, with a mixture of grade levels . We are playing in an AAU league that has teams who have been together for a long time. We've been together for 3 weeks. We got spanked in our first game. I mean spanked.

My focus for the season:
1)Tough Pack Line Defense
2) Rebounding
3) Running our motion offense

I want us to compete every game and improve fundamentally every practice.

Thanks for your thoughts in advance.
Coach V


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PostPosted: 02 Apr 2014, 06:04 
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In most cases we mix things up and try to cover each key area in practice. This helps avoid boredom and their attention spans are short. So if you stick on something too long, you lose their attention.

However I do occasionally have practice where we emphasize just a couple things... maybe we'll have a day where we focus on shooting form or defense or offense. Sometimes you just need more time to teach a certain subject so we might allocate an entire practice to that subject. It can be helpful at times. However I have found you almost always have at least one person missing that missed all the important info and lessons. So I try not to do that too often.

And I've had practice where I was intending to focus on something like team defense, but I realize that two players are missing that need it more than anyone... so I abort that plan and do something completely different.

I always have to remind myself... coaching youth basketball is a marathon, not a sprint. You try to make just a little bit of progress each day and continue building. It's a long term process.

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PostPosted: 02 Apr 2014, 06:23 
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My thoughts in building a practice plan was to have X amount of time on offensive & defensive fundamentals... then team offense and defense. Depending on our team, we might spend some time on passing and ball handline. We spent at lleast 30 minutes on shooting, this would include free throws.. We spend 10 minutes every day on our Press Offense. I wasn't going to get beat by some Mickey Mouse press.

Each day you might add or subract time off an area for whatever reason..... and we finished EVERY PRACTICE with a couple of situations. The kids loved doing them and they learned how to deal with things and hopefully get to understand what the coach wanted, JMO


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PostPosted: 02 Apr 2014, 11:45 

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I definitely use chunks of practices to shore up weak areas. Once you identify a few major weak areas, I see no problem spending a little extra time on those. If my kids are giving up points by not getting back or by a full court press, I'll get those down next practice.

The challenge is you only have 90 minutes once per week. Sometimes you have to pick your poison and do the best you can. I'd suggest trying to snag another practice each week if possible. Even if it's just 60 minutes and every other week. That takes the pressure off of you having to try and squeeze everything in one practice.

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PostPosted: 02 Apr 2014, 23:44 

Posts: 10
Thanks Coaches for your input! I am sorry if I was not clear but I have TWO 1.5 hour practices per week.

However, I feel a lot of pressure to get everything in at practice. I will set the time for a drill to take 5 minutes and it takes 10. I rarely get to cover all that I plan to cover.

Am I trying to cover too much in one day? I want the guys to improve, but also now feel the pressure to win and not get blown out again. I want to be somewhat functional when we play.

Coach Sar, regarding spending 30 minutes on shooting alone, I have no idea how to do that and feel that there is so much to do. I have drills that cover different bases at one time but the boys are not getting enough shooting touches. But, how do you suggest I spend that much time on just shooting?

Is this what you would suggest:
30 minutes offensive individual skills
30 minutes defensive individual skills
30 minutes team skills

Thanks again for your input.


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PostPosted: 03 Apr 2014, 05:22 
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I think we all feel your pain. All coaches feel that same problem. As far as I know, there are only two things you can do...

1) Prioritize
2) Multi-task

It's very important to prioritize. There are things you'll have little to no time to work on. For example, with out third grade girls there's a huge list of things we skipped.... footwork when one pass away on D, screening on offense, direct step footwork on the perimeter, shooting, etc, etc.

But I had a list of things that I believed were most important and in the players best interests. I found time to work on those things and I accepted that we were going to suck at the things I didn't have time to work on.

I heard a quote from the owner of Dell once that resonates with me and I think applies to basketball and just about everything...
" Focus on the critical few, versus the trivial many."

I think that's something you have to do in basketball.

I also try to multitask when I can. At first you have to focus when first introducing a new skill. But once everyone understands we can multi task by using multi purpose drills that allow us to practice several things at the same time.

Lastly, look for any opportunity you can to work on things. Here's one example.
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/articles/basketball-time-management.html

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PostPosted: 03 Apr 2014, 08:57 
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Coach -

Like Jeff said, multi task.
As for shooting - you can include, setting and reading screens.... curl if the D chases - fade if they go ball side - back door if they over play. This way you are teaching how to read screens, set your man up for a good screen, pass and catch etc


You might not be able to work on shooting for 30 minutes with your kids, I had boys varsity kids so we had 2 hour practices. You are right, there is so much to do and as coaches we feel that we never have enough time to get it all in.

There never seems to be enough practice time at your level. We had 2 hours a day unless we had a game. Work on the things that are the most important ** Prioritize **

After games my assistant and I would write down the things that we needed to work on in the next few practices and we would work on them until they could handle them.

Remember that at your level its more about fundamentals so they can learn the skills. If your players become fundamentally sound they will become successful.

Good luck


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PostPosted: 03 Apr 2014, 11:22 

Posts: 900
Coach VWR wrote:
Thanks Coaches for your input! I am sorry if I was not clear but I have TWO 1.5 hour practices per week.
You were clear, I apparently need new glasses.

Quote:
However, I feel a lot of pressure to get everything in at practice. I will set the time for a drill to take 5 minutes and it takes 10. I rarely get to cover all that I plan to cover.
Plan out the practice on paper and have it with you. Put times next to each drill. If your practice starts at 7:00 pm and you want to spend 10 minutes on the first drill, put 7:10 next to the 2nd drill so you know at 7:10 you should be starting the next drill and so on. This can provide a guideline letting you know where you should be at a certain point in practice.

I usually have a mixture of drills that are working on practical skills, a portion for technical teaching points (e.g. running inbounds plays, beating a press, pressing, situation drills - if A does this, B does that), and some fun mixed in there. It will take some planning and thought on your part though. Think through some of your drills. Are they really things that can be applied in games? Running the 3 man weave until they get it down probably isn't the most practical use of time.

Last thought is keeping things in perspective. Sounds like you have a bunch of kids with varying ages and skill levels playing against teams that have been together for a while. That's a challenging spot for a coach.

What are the 3 major reasons you feel your team was blown out?

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PostPosted: 03 Apr 2014, 12:20 
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I'l l take it one step further........ "]What are the 3 major reasons you feel your team was blown out?[/quote]

How are you going to correct those 3 things?


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PostPosted: 03 Apr 2014, 12:34 

Posts: 10
Jeff, that quote definitely frees me up mentally in terms of radically accepting that we will skip some things and not be great at everything. It's a big weight lifted. I want us to be good at everything. And now that this is my first experience with the more serious parents, I want to be 'perfect'.

Coaches, I am going to cut down even more my areas of focus. I have the main three priorities (Defense, Rebounding and Motion Offense), but I think that I am trying to do too much within each fraction. Even with the multi-tasking that I do, I still run out of time.

Coach Rob-I lay out my practice plan by the minute. That is why I was so frustrated with running out of time. It looks great on paper. I am also gonna use my assistants more. I am not taking advantage of their wisdom. So, we will begin using a station format for 30 minutes of practice for fundamentals as well. We only have 9 kids.

Why I think we got blown out? Besides the other team getting every loose ball and killing us on the boards...having 25 turnovers. We ran our pass and cut fluidly but were not hitting cutters. The other team denied when we filled the spots. Our rule is to go back door if they come outside of the 3-pt line. We stood there and danced. Our point would not hit the entry pass soon enough and turned it over a lot. So, we did not score on any options. The kids lost confidence in the system as a result. My son even asked me in the car ride home not to do motion anymore and run a set play. We only scored 13 minutes in a 40 minute running clock game.

All in all we got out played and played soft. I asked them after the game: "If the score at the end of the game were zero-zero, do you think that you gave your best effort?" They all said no.

To their credit, we only worked on the offense for 2 practices using 3v0 and 5v0 and running it through defensive shell drills. We also only allowed 8 shots in the paint defensively. To help with the passing TOs, we need to play more 'no dribble' scri

As a coach, I never coached with a running clock. And I am fresh out of 2 years as a rec coach. In rec, they stop the clock every 5 minutes to sub, we point to who we are guarding and everyone plays equally. So I struggled with subbing. I have no issue with our club (the league doesn't) requiring that a players play at least 10 minutes. But, I did not know how to manage that and function well as a team on the court. We have 2nd through 4th graders on our team. More than 1/2 of them coming from rec.

Longer post than I anticipated. Thanks everyone for your thoughts.


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