I have a high school team that has struggled due to lack of players. I often have to teach players that have never played before competitively before. This year I have simplfied my offensive system and I am implementing alot of attack and counter drills for footwork and shooting.

One issues that I have is that 1-2 times a week, we are scheduled in a smaller gym that only has 1 basket that is 10 feet (there is another one that is 8.5) and can only shoot mid range jump shots because of the width of the gym and an airvent in the middle of the gym. We have been doing alot of ballhandling, strength and conditioning, small sided transition games (3v2, 2v1), and reviewing alot of our offense and defense 5v0.

Any ideas on how to fit some more skill work into a practice with a whole team and one basket? Concerned about getting enough reps in. I have tried to be creative like have two lines do cone dribbling on the sideline away from the 10 foot basket and then do the cone dribbling with layups coming back down the middle. Any other tips would be appreciated.

Before I address this a little bit, your outlook and attitude if pivotal to your tam's. You certainly have a really difficult situation. However, there are other people that have more difficult situations and would love to have what you have. So, don't hang your head. Smile, look forward to the challenge.

Enough of attitude preaching. Let's deal with reality.

There are a couple of things you can do.

First, obviously you have to plan for your facility. It actually might be an advantage because you have programed days and times when you can do skill work and when you can do scrimmage work. Makes practice planning a little easier.

There are multiple reasons I use chairs in the system, not the least of which is it creates an efficiency that you don't have if you are waiting for players to pass inside of the drills. You can set up multiple stations at the basket with chairs. Depending on how many players you have, you can determine how many chairs and how many players at each chair. they should all be doing the same things (easier to manage) and you can't have them finish at the basket and they might get hurt. I would save finishing for more traditional drills that will allow you to use the whole facility that you have.

I just returned from a camp overseas where we had 120 players with 6 baskets. This is what we did. We set up 4 stations at each basket and had two lines at each station, a ball placer line and a shooting line and a bunch of ball. the shooter would perform his skill, shoot, get his own rebound and get to the end of the ball placer line. The ball placer would place the ball on the chair and get to the end of the shooting line. We would continue to shoot for about 5 minutes per skill and go to the next progression. At each station we had 4-6 balls going and it worked very well and got a lot of reps. I was still able to teach and make necessary adjustments.

Does that help?