I am coaching a 7th and 8th grade boys basketball team. This is my first year with this team, and this school period. I was pleasantly surprised when practice started at the amount of talent on this team. But, at the same time was concerned that this same team just last year only won two games. Then our first scrimmage came and I quickly realized what the problem was. My team was not aggressive AT ALL!!! No fighting for the loose ball, no driving hard to the basket, no fighting for the rebound, nothing. It was like they felt bad for the other team so they might as well just hand them the ball if we get it. So, come next practice I make sure to take special note of the aggression. And once again I am stunned, they look like the meanest team to step foot on the court. So I pass it off as a bad night. But here we are four games in and every game it's the same thing, no aggression, but come to practice and you better not mess with us. I have tried everything I can think of to help with this problem and have always gotten perfect advice from this site, so I figured I would come back. Thanks in advance.

Some players just seem to have more aggression than others, it's almost part of their make-up. You're dealing with 7th/8th and they aren't quite there in terms of that aggression deal just yet. You can definitely do things to help them become more aggressive on the court. A lot of this comes when you start playing tougher stronger teams.

Instead of re-typing, I'll post a link to some answers I gave on aggression in an earlier thread:
https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com//forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=1701

I'll add a note here, when I was dealing with the aggression piece like you are now, I added some twists that made them deal with being more aggression to almost every drill we did. Usually that was the coaches because I didn't want the players thinking they could play sloppy defense and start whacking and hacking everyone.

For example: if they were doing a stationary dribbling drill (left, right, low, high, etc.,) we had coaches pushing them a bit and slapping their arms to get them used to dribbling with contact. Layups another great way to add contact. The football blocking pads came out or we were slapping some arms as they went up. They were EXPECTED to make the lay-up with the contact. Period. That was the standard.

When we started adding that physicality to the lay-up drills a lot of the kids would lean back at the last minute to avoid contact. We adjusted that also. You don't want kids coming in dipping their shoulder into the defender, but you definitely don't want them shying away from contact. "EXPECT CONTACT" was our mantra. Period. It shouldn't shock them when contact happens. It's going to happen and it's not an excuse to lose the ball or not make the shot.

One suggestion if you can pull it off. Get with another coach that's up a level from your team and scrimmage. Scrimmaging against a better team that understands the physical piece can work wonders. You don't want kids getting hurt in the scrimmages, but telling the other coach what you're trying to do can help. We used those scrimmages to work on specific things, so having the other team full court press you aggressively or tell the other coach you want them to play aggressive defense against your kids.

Last thought, celebrate it big time when one of your players makes an And1. I mean BIG time. Same with loose balls. Whatever it is you're trying to get them to do, when you see them doing it, get EXCITED about it and let them know.

Thank you for the advice. I agree with you though, I'm worried that they will start playing sloppy defense if I let them just go at each other. I will for sure start using the blocking pads and having myself and my assistant exposing them to contact. Thank you again. I will start using these to hopefully light a fire somewhere.