Strategies For A Small Gym

I am the coach of a middle school boys basketball team. We have some regular opponents on our schedule who have tiny gyms. To picture it in your minds eye, think about the 3-point arc essentially disappearing across the sideline out-of-bounds a foot or so below the FT line extended. This gives us very little room to run an offense. To make matters worse, we do not have any defensive restrictions in our league. In general, these teams play 1-2-1 or 2-3 zones.

Our gym has a full size court with plenty of space all around. We generally run a 4-Out, 1-In offense. What strategies have been effective for you in a smaller gyms?

Is this an 8th grade team? I would pressure the other team m2m and try to get some points off of steals or getting into your offense early before their D is set.

Playing tougher D in a smaller area should work well for you.

Can you enclose the court that you practice on with cones to simulate a smaller court? This way you can run your offense and have your players get used to confined areas prior to the actual game.

Coach A

We are a 7th Grade team this year. Our programs keep a coach with the team through middle school so I will be the 8th Grade team next year. I am primarily asking for next year. It seems this problem has gotten harder and harder to solve as the kids get bigger.

We just started m2m pressure this year so that is something that I can definately emphasize. We also have an Elementary School gym to practice at if we want which is small in itself. I have avoided practicing there because it is easier in the big gym. But maybe tailoring our practice schedule to using the small gym before these games would work well.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

Practicing in a smaller gym for those games is a great idea - Its been a long time since I practiced in a small gym... never even gave that a thought when I coached that age group. But then I was a rookie coach, what did I know.