I Thought I\'d Seen It All

Hi guys. My 11 yr old joined his 1st travel team this year and is taking some lumps from the step up in competition. It has been good for him because it made him work harder. Last night we play this team (all the teams in this league full court press and trap and play zone d). This coach decides trapping with two defenders isn't good enough, he needs to use four to exploit our weaker guards. He has a 13 point lead with two minutes left in the game and what do you think he does. Presses and traps. The most disturbing thing was they kept stealing the ball and the parents on the other team are cheering like its the NBA finals. I just cannot believe what goes on in youth sports. That kind of nonsense should have coaches thrown out of games.

I think that because it is a travel league you are going to see a lot of that. I don't think its right but it is what it is!

Those coaches are living sports thru their kids... IF you take the time to go thru some of the subjects in here... you will find what some of the other coaches think about coaches like this.

Check out the threads here;

youth players shooting at a 10ft rim
There are some excellent comments from very knowledgeable people here.

Most coaches in travel will have their players "stand down" with a double digit lead late in the game. MOST coaches.....unfortunately some coaches want to make a statement and bury or even embarrass other teams. Sad.

Those are the people who are not very professional Coach A! They have no business working with young kids.

This Saturday, we will face the best team in the league and they press all over the court. I am trying to emphasize a quick pass to the wing and then to the middle to quickly get around the press. There always has to be someone open and hopefully that player will come to the action and not sit under the basket waiting. If it works, they won't be the best team.

I don't know how much practice time you get ... but we practiced our Press Offense 10-15 mionutes every day. Our kids were very confident when someone pressed us.
I hope you have some time to devote to that.

tjw: If you go back through some of the posts on this sight, you will find excellent advice from all of these fine coaches on pressure and how to beat it so im not going to beat that horse again. However, I will agree with the rule a double digit league with this age means back up and leave the opposing team that is losing with some dignity and respect. If parents applaud this type of tactic, they are either inexperienced in the game of basketball, inexperienced in the games of life or just totally classless. Coach Mac

I would go with Door #3 Mac

We played the pressing team and lost. We do not normally press and do not work on it much. Our court is only 50 ft long, a little more than half court and it is narrow one one side.
We had a lot of passes intercepted and the boys always wanted to pass ahead through the press instead of getting the ball back and then to the other side.
We also had problems on defense because it seem our feet stuck to the floor. We had won all of games utill today and I think the boys thought they could run with this team too. We needed to slow down and execute. We didn't
The team we played has played together for 3 years. And they played in another league before our league started in violation of our leagues, "No practice before..." rule.
Yet we have another shot at them next week in the tournament. Tuesday we will skrimmage against our schools 7th-8th grade team and work on our press offense and defense

rgast wrote:We played the pressing team and lost. We do not normally press and do not work on it much.

It's mentioned in some of the drills on this site, but overloading in practice works well for games. When facing a press it almost seems like you're trying to get the ball past an army of players, so why not create that scenario in practice? Last practice we had 3 players trying to beat the press against 6. We also go with no dribbling allowed during a reg scrimmage 5 vs. 5 to get the kids used to moving, helping and making good choices.

Great advice from all. Hope I can add to it. I too have seen scores run up in favour of coaches style or parents in the stands. Regardless, I take a personal and professional approach and wont do it. I do what ever I can to not run past 15-20 point mark by making my team work on specifics. As stated in another forum, we will run one specific play, we will not dribble before half court, we will run a spread offence to kill time off shot clock to try for a last second shot clock shot. We will dribble with weak hand only.

Regarding press breaks, we have been hurt by one teams press (2-2-1 half court) almost everytime we have played them. They are awesome. We are now awesome at breaking it with two options. How did we do it. We'll practice 4 offence against 5 or 6 defence. We institue a no dribble rule until after half court by offence. (creates better faster cuts back to the ball to get open)