This fall our team decided to "play-up" in a league that is primarily made up of travel teams. We're not a travel team, but figured it would be a good boot camp of sorts to get ready for winter. Had a few close games, won last week, but face some incredibly tough teams this weekend. One of the teams made it to the finals in a recent regional tourney.

Our team starts out great, but once these more experienced teams get aggressive and put some pressure on, it turns into a fast break run away type deal. We just can't match their skill on a run and gun type of deal. I know if we could slow the game down and be patient at least we could keep the score lower. Looking for a way to slow things down on offense and eat up the clock a bit. Am I thinking correctly here?

You could always run an Open Post Offense, if they over play, you will have back door opportunities or takes.

Play to your strengths and try to keep them away from theirs. ( I know, easy task right! ) Look at the things they do well and keep them from doing that - kind of like Pick Your Poison.

OR you can use these games as a learning experience, showing your kids what they need to work on for their winter season.

IF this was me, I would eat some clock, they cant full court press you IF you have the ball in the front court. Good luck and let us know how this goes.

Coach: Lets remember what you wrote at the beginning of your post: "We as a team, decided to play up. You had a specific objective in mind when that decision was made and I believe it was to play tougher competition in order to get tougher and better yourselves. Now that that decision has been made, you will get schooled, you will get out studded on occasion and you will take your lumps. Now, learn from it. Take notes on what gave you problems during certain games and use those notes to devise your practices around. Work on the fundamentals that gave you problems, perhaps you got out rebounded by a bigger team, .if that was the case, work on box outs for your next practice. Continue to remind your kids why you moved up, Don't let them get discouraged and finally, dont ever let them accept their fate the opponents may be bigger stronger more experienced and perhaps quicker, but if you keep hammering home the fundamentals and work on things that you were weak at during past games, You and your kids will see the improvement and your reasons for moving up will bare fruit. Good Luck Coach Mac

Coach Mac - glad to see you back.... GREAT ADVICE!

Coach Mac -

Solid advice, thanks! I've definitely been taking notes and working our practices around those. Guess I was looking for a "magic bullet" to help stop the bleeding against really good teams. You reminded me why we're doing this in the first place and it was to play against better teams.

Appreciate it.

My pleasure Coach, the only magic bullet I can see is work work and more hard work.. I coach a pro women's team here in Hong Kong...last year we went 34-8 and lost four games to the same team. We closed the gap every game we played losing the first game by 31 to the championship game losing by 4. If its possible, its achievable...Coach Mac

Rob -

Here is something we used to do after every game..... we went out for a "pop" and something to eat. While we were waiting for the food we would hash over the game and I would write down any area/situation that we didn't handle well. Then I would put them in the next few days practice plans.

If it as a certain situation, ( and we loved to run situations at the end of every practice, they are fun and a great way to teach your kids how to handle certain things ) We would run those situations at the end of practice. The kids would look at me and smile.... some would say, so you didn't like what we did then? And then we would laugh a bit and get on with it. I let them run it again without me saying anything... and if they still messed it up, I would tell them what I would like them to do and we would run it again. Just some thought, hopefully they will help you a bit.

I think this is a lot better than ragging your kids about something regardless of the W or L. I know they appreciated that... and heck, they don't listen much after games anyway, they are feeling bad and want to get out of there. All I can say is, this worked for me.

Quick update: Ended up playing a club team that beat us last year (pretty bad) in the finals of a tournament. This time around, we were able to beat their 1/2 and full court presses and ended up winning by 20 pts. Played another team in the qtr finals of a recent fall tourney that smoked us pretty good in the summer. We were actually up at half-time, ended up losing by 10 pts. They went on to win the tourney. Also played a few teams at the level we played at last year and smoked them pretty good.

Guess I'm writing this as a reminder to myself that playing up was a good choice. Tough in the beginning, very tough mentally with some of the losses, but in the end, we were able to see measured results.

Playing at the highest level for our winter seasons. We'll see how it goes.

Another update: Coming down the final stretch on our winter seasons. I have to say, the kids have grown tremendously from playing at the highest level. We've definitely improved on our "under pressure" part of the game, breaking presses is a lot easier than it was this summer.

I've had to play with 5-6 players for probably 10+ games at this point. One of my 8 was injured early on and out for season, from there we've had minor injuries or kids out sick. All things considered, these kids have gained invaluable experience as I've had to depend on each one to play multiple roles. Don't have to worry about playing time. ;) Last game I had one kid in foul trouble and another tweak his knee in the 4th. Put foul trouble player back in and within a minute, he fouled out. Had to finish the game with 4 players.

Playing at a higher competitive level was definitely the best move for our team, no doubt. Their mental toughness alone is off the chart from getting blown out by 30 pts to playing with only 5 players and beating a good team.

Coach: Dont you just love it when things begin to come together....well done...you have grown as a coach...Coach Mac