Working With Underdeveloped Players.

I've got a group of 4/5 Grade Girls. Just a city rec league. We get 2 hours of practice time a week. They use the full size women's ball shooting at 10 foot rims.
Maybe two of the 5th graders are at what you might call average development for that grade. The rest are all a year or two behind where they should be.
Size ranges from 4' tall 50 pounds to 5'5" 135 or so.
The 5'5" girl we do have is timid and her parents say she plays rough with her older brother, but don't know why she is so timid on the court. Her Dad is one of our coaches.
Half of them have not played before. Some can't make a decent pass when it's just the two of them playing catch.
I can't get most of them to even understand what it means to "stay between your girl and the basket".
About half of them have the foot speed the keep up with the other team. The others seem to try but just don't have that "urgency" I guess is the word. It takes them a few seconds to understand they need to get back on defense. By that time, layup for the other team.

We only played one game so far. Unfortunately it was against the best team in the league. Those girls look like they have been playing together for awhile. Probably play some during the summer. Almost all of them were bigger and stronger than my girls. We lost about 55 to 0. Didn't score a basket and probably only got off 4 or 5 shots.

They seemed to forget everything we have been working on. I tried the simple 5-out offense. Pass then cut to the basket. They seemed to understand in practice, but in the game, they didn't even line up properly.

I constantly ask, "does that make sense" "do you understand" during practice. I don't know if they are all so timid they don't want to answer or what. Because it was pretty obvious they didn't understand much of anything.

What do you do when you have only 3 or 4 girls out of 10 who even understand what's going on?

I've been doing the basics, dribbling, passing, etc.

If they can't make proper passes to each other, how do you even get to the next steps of understanding where to position your self, how to move on offense, or even how to properly bring the ball up the court.

I see everywhere posts about "make it fun" and people telling me before we even started "remember they are just girls".

We have been. They want to do dribble knockout every practice. They said the 5-out pass and cut drill was fun.

I think I've almost let them have too much fun and not enough of how to actually play and understand the game at all.

There is definitely a balance of making it fun and working to get better and demanding focus/discipline. Every situation and this is that challenge of coaching.

Remember, coaching youth basketball is a marathon, not a sprint. Those players have a LONG ways to go and it will take quite a while to make progress. Pick a couple things to focus on. Figure out how to make progress in those areas. Then move to the next thing.

Generally with beginners I like to focus on dribbling, passing, footwork and defense. You should also be able to work on motion offense at the same time you practice passing and footwork.

You may not win any games this season. But if you can make progress in a few areas, then it can be a success. Be sure to celebrate the improvement to keep players engaged.

If you have more questions, let us know.

Thanks. I've read pretty much your entire website here and your blog. Love both of them. So I kind of already guessed what you were going to say anyway. :)

I was never worried about winning of course, but never thought we'd get embarrassed like that. It wasn't me who was worried about the score, but the girls.

I do ball handling, dribbling, and passing at the beginning of every practice.

I find it hard to work with them, when half can pick up the basics of a pass/cut motion offense, but the other half can't barely catch the ball.

It also seems that when I do one of the string motion offense drills you've explained, they don't seem to understand that is something they can do in the actual game. I don't know how to get them to correlate the two, you know. To understand, yes this is something we can do in a game. This is an actual play you can do in the game.

Every girl has to play half the game. 10 players total, 8 minute quarters, they stop the game at 4 mins, so it's pretty easy to follow the rule. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to put the 5 5th graders who have some ability together, then the 5 4th graders who almost have none together. There are three girls in that 4th grade group who can sort of dribble. They may not have anyone who can catch it in that group, but at least we'll be able to get the ball across half court.

I tried to mix them together, expecting the 5th graders to sort of take over I guess. To help the 4th graders move and such. Yeah, that didn't happen.

The other part is with the 5th graders I do have, who played last year. Didn't get much instruction at all. Not much ball handling, dribbling, or passing drills, if any.

The offense was pretty much dribble down and move around where you wanted. Most of scoring was done by one girl. And that was when she got the rebound, then started a one person fast break.

They hardly handled the ball at all.

Ahhhh Coach: I do feel your pain but to quote Denzel Washington, practice is like Novocaine, if you keep taking it, eventually it is going to work. , I am living proof coach that if you stick to the fundamentals of passing catching dribbling and shooting, work hard on defense and rebounding things will turn around for you. Your team may not be skilled in the area of pass making and scoring, however, everyone can play defense and everyone can rebound if taught correctly. The problem with today's game is these skills get forgotten in our haste to teach scoring. Don't get frustrated Coach just pick the game apart, drill the individual parts and eventually they will make up the whole. give your girls a chance to surprise you. Good Luck Coach Mac ,

CoachMac, I did read your China thread. Sounded very familiar.

Yes, I believe in those things. And I do believe we're going to get better.

One other thing I'm finding very hard to understand why some of these girls can't seem to understand a simple thing like, "stay between your girl and the basket".

I tell them this, I show them this, yet they go right back to standing in front of their girl or to the side of them. It's enough to pull your hair out.

We'll keep trying. Next practice is Tuesday. I wrote the league and requested extra time. We usually only get one hour. I asked for an extra half hour.

And thanks for the support coaches. I'm not sure I'm qualified to be addressed as coach. I'm just a Dad trying to help his daughter and her friends.

Coach: I have coached for over forty years......every level including, high school, university, international and pro....and they have problems playing between the man they are defending and the basket. I have coached girls, and won four national championships with them...most fun I had coaching in all my forty years. but they too had the same problem. It takes drill after drill after drill and soon they will get it. With the middle school;; kids im coaching presently, I did a lot of zig zag drills, wave drills. In fact, this afternoon, I zig zagged cones, made the defender tuck his hands in the back of his shorts, told him to get his head on the basketball and keep it there, dont reach, and and do not lose sight of the ball, when you reach a cone touch it and prepare to go the other way...I have some more complex drills for defense coach if you wish I will be happy to share them with you. P.s..remember, the operative word is patience Coach Mac

Regarding staying between your player and the basket, we use 1v1 drill variations every day. I think those help the most. Tons of coaching and defensive corrections when we play 1v1.

Lots of good thoughts from all the coaches comments here.

Thanks for the support coaches. It helps just having somewhere like this to talk about things.

I did hear from the league this morning. They accepted my request for extra practice time considering the situation. Prior to our first game we had 6 1-hour practices, maybe only 5. So we'll have the gym for a full 2 hours on Tuesday's and Friday's for the remainder of December. These girls being so young thou, 9 and 10 years old, we'll probably just keep them for 1.5 hours. 2 hours and we'd finish at 9pm, too late for this age and on a school night. We can't start any earlier as other teams have the gym reserved in those time slots.

I'm just trying to fit everything in that we need to talk about. Between the other two coaches and myself, we've come up with this for our next practice:
Read the numbers like this: Min per Drill/Start Min/End Min
4 0 4 Warmup
2 4 6 Ball Handling/Maravich Drill
5 6 11 Figure 8 w/o Ball
5 11 16 Cone Dribbling
5 16 21 1 on 1 passing
5 21 26 Star Passing
5 26 31 Game of 21
5 31 36 Circle Box Out
5 36 41 Zig Zag: 1v1 Dribble/Defend
10 41 51 Shell Drill
5 51 56 Inbound Play (OFF/DEF)
10 56 66 Motion Offense / Shooting.
20 66 86 Scrimmage

I'm hoping some of those other drills don't take the full 5 minutes so we can spend more time on the Motion Offense Drill.

I'm not so sure about the Figure 8 drill, but the other coach who has done this before wants to try it, so we'll try it. He's coached on select teams before, so I'll take his word for it.

At the 56 minute mark I have up there, the Motion Offense/Shooting section. I'm going to take 5 girls and run the 5v0 Pass and Cut, while the other coaches take the other 5 girls for shooting drills. Then swap them out of course.

coachmac wrote: I zig zagged cones, made the defender tuck his hands in the back of his shorts, told him to get his head on the basketball and keep it there, dont reach, and and do not lose sight of the ball, when you reach a cone touch it and prepare to go the other way...I have some more complex drills for defense coach if you wish I will be happy to share them with you.

So I assume you have someone dribbling in front of them with this drill? We have done that a few times, not with the cones thou.

We'll try. Even this might be too complex for them, but we'll see.

I'm a new coach too but in a very similar situation: limited practice time and severe talent deficit, as well as a very timid group of third grade girls. It seemed like we barely had the ball the first few games because the other teams just kept taking it away from us. We are still struggling but have made vast improvements in the last few weeks. Here are a few things we've focused on in practice that I believe have helped:
- Full-court "no-dribble" scrimmaging. Our girls had no idea how to get open, pass and receive passes. No-dribble scrimmaging, with semi-frequent coach interruptions to explain how to cut, pass, hold off defenders when receiving a pass, box out, etc., has helped. We also have explained that all that our partner passing drill practice (chest passes, bounce passes and overhead passes) did not include any "lob the ball up and hope for the best" passes for a reason. We've also spent time working on fake passes and pivoting/ripping the ball through to avoid having the ball stolen by the on-ball defender.
- Ball-handling drills: We do dribble relays every practice, and this is another favorite: I bought soccer cones and put an odd number of them (11, 13, 15) at half court, split the girls into two even teams at each baseline, everyone has a ball. I blow the whistle and they dribble to half court, pick up a cone and bring it back to the baseline and stack them up, everyone keeping their dribble non-stop. Team w/ most cones stacked at the end wins. We'll do this 2 or 3 times, switching between dribbling w/ left or right hand.
- Similar drill with the cones except full-court or half-court layups. The girls will keep track of who wins more of these cone drills during practice and the losers have to sing Happy Birthday to the winners at the end of practice.

I agree with previous comment about choosing a couple key areas for improvement and focusing on those.

Above all, stay patient and positive! Goal No. 1 is for the kids to have fun, No. 2 is improvement. If they love playing they will keep playing and improve. Nothing matters more.

soren024,

Thanks for the comments.

I do have the no-dribble scrimmage on my list. Jeff's blog talks about those a lot. I think we'll do that for our next practice during scrimmage.

So can they dribble it up over half court, but once over half court, you have to pass. Or do you not even allow a dribble at all?

We do no dribble the whole way. Our league only allows man-to-man 1/2 court defense, which I think is great, and it never occurred to me to allow them to dribble at all when we do no-dribble scrimmage. I would recommend doing all or none as it could get confusing otherwise.

Note: when you first start, you might need to let them make some mistakes and get away with it. After doing no-driblbe scrimmage in a few practices, now we blow the whistle and change possession if they dribble.

I did wonder if this would negatively impact their ballhandling, but it's made them much more willing and able passers / pass catchers.

One other tip: I like to transition out of this and end practice w/ something a bit more light and fun as this can get a bit competitive. :)

Coach: Let me end this contribution with a last comment, explain to your kids, why you are doing a certain drill. Many new young coaches drill for the sake of drilling without explaining WHY. As Jeff suggested with the 1 on 1 defensive drills, why are we doing it? to keep our man from dribbling by us and getting an easy lay up. When I say break the game into individual parts and drill those parts again, with defense we take the whole of 5 on 5 break it down into individual drills of 1 on1 progressing to 2 on 2 but again explaining why we are doing this. Passing" balance, two hands on the ball, follow through in other words extend your arms on the pass pop your elbows, hands end up back to back after you release the ball, thumbs point to the floor and fingers point to your target. yes, sounds long involved but trust me necessary Jeff, Joe and Coach Rob, have been coaching kids for years, I got most of my info from them them used my past experience as a coach to develop the players Good Luck Coach Mac...p.s. here a lot of demonstrations with the kids, they speak Chinese, I speak very little, I really use my old posy board.

That's a good point coachmac.

The telling them why they are doing something. I actually do that with about half the drills we do. I think on some things I might even need to reinforce it with asking them "does anyone still not understand".

And the passing tip. Yep, did that as well. Exactly as you explained it because that's how I was taught almost 40 years ago now. But I still have those girls that refuse to do it. And I know it's not because they don't understand. It's not one of my 4' tall 50 pound girls. It's a couple of the 5th graders. One has played before, the other hasn't but does have athletic ability. She does some kind of martial arts thing. Those two I think just don't care enough. They make sloppy lazy passes when they are just doing the 1-on-1 passing.

I may come back to you on this one: "with defense we take the whole of 5 on 5 break it down into individual drills of 1 on1 progressing to 2 on 2". We've doing the zig zag drill. Both alone and with a partner dribbling. I haven't looked into anything past that yet as most of them have trouble on both sides when we add the dribbler.

A big problem, is the NBA, most of the advertisements here, are with Hardin, and Clay Thompson...they rarely speak about the fundamentals, they talk about being creative, putting on a show breaking ankles and postering someone, the kids see these ads and try to emulate those moves all that before they have actually learned the game. The other day, my big kid was out on the perimeter practicing his three point shot, but he has to dip his shoulder, and take his square up away from the basket because he is simply not strong enough to shoot from that distance.I told him to get inside, work on technique, rim flips,touch your elbow to your knee before to make sure your elbow is on the target..ok coach let me know how things work out for you Coach Mac

soren024,

No dribble. I believe I read that in one of Jeff's posts. Start with the no dribble at all, then eventually you can allow two dribbles only to get a better passing lane.

I'm just afraid if I tell them no dribble at all, that when they get into the game, they will think they can't dribble it up to half court.

I forgot this Coach, something I learned from Bob Knight many years ago, IF YOU CANT PASS, AND YOU CANT CATCH, YOU CANT PLAY THIS GAME MORE MISTAKES ARE MADE CATCHING AND PASSING THE BASKETBALL THAN ANY OTHER FUNDAMENTAL IN THE GAME. drill that fact Coach Mac