Here’s what we did with our 5th grade girls’ team this year. It’s surprisingly similar to how we coached our 10th grade boys team and our 3rd grade boys team this year.
Basketball is basketball. No matter the gender or age level… you shoot, dribble, pass and pivot.
I keep things pretty simple and focus on player development. So I end up coaching all levels pretty much the same way.
Overview Of Our Team
Our team consisted of 12 girls with varying levels of skill and experience. We utilized a hybrid approach in regards to scheduling games and choosing rosters.
12 is too many to have there for every game (too much sitting on the bench). And since the ability level varied with the players, we wanted to have a mix of tough tournaments and middle level tournaments… so we matched players up against the appropriate level of competition.
I think it’s important to challenge players, yet not challenge them so much where they eventually lose interest and confidence.
Due to my time limitations and a couple tournaments getting cancelled or changed… things didn’t work out exactly like I had hoped. But we made the best of it.
Tournaments and Results
We ended up playing in 8 tournaments. We tried to limit our roster size to 8-9. But with cancelled tournaments and messed up schedules, we had to make exceptions in several tournaments and ended up with rosters as large as 11. Again, we made it work. Just wasn’t ideal and we’re making adjustments so we keep our roster size at 8 or less next season.
We played up a little bit against 6th graders and also played in a couple really tough tournaments. Good experience for us.
We ended up with a nice balance from a win/loss standpoint… won 16 games and lost 12.
I think this is a good balance meaning we’re getting challenged but not getting challenged too much and seeing some success. They ended up with several second place medals and managed to get first place in one tournament.
Dealing with Every Gimmick and Defense Imaginable
This year we saw almost every defense you can imagine…
- 2-3 zone
- 2-3 zone that extends into passing lanes and traps
- 1-2-2 zone
- 1-2-1-1 full court press
- 2-2-1 full court press
- 1-2-2 full and 3/4 court zone presses
- full and half court man to man
- switching defenses… changing from man to zone
I think the only defense we did not see yet is the 1-3-1 zone.
It is ludicrous that 5th grade teams play all these different defenses trying to get the advantage. At one tournament we literally faced 4 different presses and 4 different half court defenses!
I sit there watching and thinking how many bad habits these kids (on other teams) are picking up and how fundamentally unsound they are. They are trying to win so bad and neglecting to teach the fundamentals.
It really hurts them more than it hurts us.
We spend lots of time on ballhandling fundamentals and we have a motion offense that works against anything. We also have a simple press breaker. So we don’t have to waste much time preparing for that stuff. For the most part, we just play.
But I feel sorry for some of those coaches that are trying to run plays and different strategies for all those different defenses.
Transition Offense
Here’s a link to the transition offense we ran. Really simple. Takes about 5 minutes to teach.
Half Court Motion Offense
We ran a simple motion offense that was based on developing fundamentals…
Primary Requirements:
Spacing and ball movement until you get a good shot. Get all rebounds.
General guidelines:
You can deviate from the guidelines below at any time as long as you have spacing, ball movement, take good shots, and go after all the rebounds.
- Space to the 3pt line (perimeter spots – 15-17ft apart)
- If the ball is dribbled at you on perimeter, back cut. Otherwise if ball is dribbled, move to space and open passing lanes.
- 3 options when you pass – go left, forward, or right. (In other words: go toward the ball for a ball screen, or to the basket for a basket cut, or away from the ball to set an away screen).
- 3 options when cutting toward the basket (off a screen or basket cut) – post up, clear to perimeter, or backscreen for perimeter player.
- When the ball goes to post, laker cut and fill opposite.
- Always fill to the ball on the perimeter (replace open spots).
- Get open when one pass away (pop out, back cut, screen away, or ball screen). Read the defense (ex: if defense sags… pop out).
- Use weakside flash cuts when defenders cheat up or turn head (lose vision of you).
- Look to reverse the ball when you catch at the top.
The offense is both effective from a scoring standpoint and also very effective in regards to player development. Everyone touches the ball… equal opportunity. Bigs play inside and outside. Same with smaller players.
We focus on teaching fundamental aspects of cutting, spacing, and using screens. In that context we practice fundamental skills too… lay ups, passing, footwork, and shooting.
We have a lot of options in the offense so we can teach them all kinds of fundamentals. But the offense is very simple. It all goes back to spacing and ball movement until we get a good shot. That’s all we truly want and we keep it simple.
Zone Offense
We just run our motion with a couple adjustments….
1) Cut into gaps
When you pass the ball, we want them to cut and stop in the middle of the zone. Stop for a 2-3 count and then clear out.
Players can also cut from the weakside and find gaps.
2) Create good passing angles
This is the key to making the zone offense work. At first players don’t understand. We walk them through three simple examples and then the lightbulb starts to turn on…
- When you pass and cut to the middle… you need to find a good passing angle. By showing players good and bad passing angles in the middle, they start understanding. And often times they just need to take a step toward the ball so they are close enough to receive the ball.
- When you fill (replace) open spots to the ball… you need to find good passing angles. Too often players either don’t fill quickly and then they hide behind the zone defender. By showing players good and bad passing angles when they fill, they start understanding.
- When you flash cut from the weakside, you need to find good passing angles. Again, walk them through a couple examples where they can get the ball and where they can’t get the ball.
Very simple and works for us. The only hard part is getting players to remember to STOP in the middle when cutting. And get perimeter players to quickly fill to the ball giving you good passing angles. That takes a little practice and emphasis.
We also emphasize ball movement (reversals) but that is no different than our man to man offense. So it’s not really an adjustment. We do, however, emphasize more pass fakes when we see zone.
Set Plays
We just had one play called low. Barely spent any time practicing. The play was used in end of quarter / end of game situations.
I also put in this super simple play we called red for our last tournament. We only ran it once toward the end of a game and we did get a lay up from it.
I spend very little time on plays because I don’t want the kids wasting time memorizing “my system”. I want to spend time on fundamentals and teaching them “how to play”.
Inbounds Plays
We used three plays from the box set…
- One – screen the screener
- Two – they just get in a box and get open (screen or do whatever you want)
- Three – scatter and cut for lay up
We used the same plays against both man and zone.
We did not execute our plays very good because I hate spending much time on them. How is spending time memorizing my plays going to help these kids when they get older? I’d much rather spend time on player development and fundamentals. So I chose to spend minimal time on our plays. As a result, we didn’t execute the greatest. I was ok with that.
With that said, we did score quite a few lay ups off the plays. If I spent more time on the plays we definitely could have scored more lay ups.
For SLOB situations, we ran the traditional stack play.
Press Breaker
For breaking the zone and man to man presses, we ran this 1 up press breaker.
What I like most about this press breaker is that it works both against man and zone. And that it makes it easy for the inbounder to make good passing decisions. Sometimes when you have 2, 3, or 4 up… it’s harder for the inbounder to make good passing decisions and requires more practice time.
If a team denied full court and we had trouble getting the ball in, we used this Indian play a couple times.
Defense
We ran half court man to man defense about 90% of the time.
We emphasized constant ball pressure (starting at half court), aggressiveness (dictate what happens), and keep the ball out of the paint (no lay ups). We doubled down any time a player had the ball in the post area.
We also ran a full court man to man on a few occasions… usually in end of game situations, when we faced really good teams, or when a team is pressing us constantly and we wanted to return the favor.
If we faced a mediocre team, we did not press. Could we have won more and blown up a few scores? Probably. But I usually tried to keep games competitive and close. I’m interested in development… not winning or blowing up scores to make myself feel better.
With our full court man to man, we had defenders behind the offense (no face guarding). If they could steal the inbounds that was fine, but we did not face guard. I did NOT want to give up lay ups!! Then once the ball was in, we pressured intensely on the ball. And made sure off ball players were always “above the ball” in good defensive position. If the opportunity arose, they could double sidelines, corners, poor spacing situations, and when players turned their head.
Again, we only pressed at the end of game if we were down or if we were facing a good team that had good ballhandlers.
Defensive Fundamentals
When we pressed, we focused on doing things fundamentally correct. If there was a good trapping opportunity, we’d allow that. But it had to be situationally the right thing to do. We let players interpret what was happening and figure out if/when to trap.
It was 100% man to man. We never ran zone defense once.
Beyond that, we focused on good fundamental sound defense. We followed the same progressions and teaching concepts in the Jim Huber man to man defense DVDs.
Emphasizing Core Values
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our core values. This is a really important aspect of what we do. With our 5th graders, we chose to emphasize…
- Character & Integrity
- Sportsmanship
- Leadership
We then took the 10 following traits and showed them how these traits made for great character, leadership, and sportsmanship.
- Attentive
- Proactive
- Disciplined
- Passionate
- Resilient
- Selfless
- Ethical
- Honest
- Thoughtful
- Positive
I have not shared this with the players yet, but I plan to give players this mini-poster for reference. It shows how those 10 traits flow into character, sportsmanship, and leadership.
If we can have a positive impact on our players’ character, integrity, sportsmanship, and leadership… then I feel I have truly succeeded as a coach. Only time will tell.
Drills We Used
Here are the drills we used most frequently:
Ballhandling warm ups – a variety of stationary dribbling, on the move dribbling, etc
Combo full court ballhandling and lay up drill
Platter / form shooting
Form shooting with weak hand and/or block lay ups
3 and 4 player shooting (off the catch… high reps). Each player shoots and gets the rebound. As soon as Player A shoots, Player B shoots and repeats the process. Player A passes to B, B passes to C, C passes to A. Players get an average of 14 shots per minute.
Post footwork. To get lots of reps, everyone had a ball and we usually did spin outs. I taught same footwork shown in the Attack & Counter DVDs.
1v1 advancement with random traps
1v1 full court
1v2 advancement
Beatem to the left. Set up cones where dribbler has to speed dribble (race) with weak hand and turn the corner to beat the defender.
Half court scrimmage – no dribble, 1 dribble, and 2 dribble limit
Pass and replace lay ups – we’d move players to corners and have them dribble toward the receiver — so they’re working on passing, dribbling, ball pick up, and lay ups
4 corner passing with the dribble – working on passing, dribbling, and ball pick up
Keep away passing – 20 in a row
Screen away shooting. Just taking a piece of our offense and turning into skill building drill. Also ran a ball screen shooting drill.
2v2, 3v3, 4v4 with various rules and emphasis — ball screen attacks, screen away, post ups, full court rugby, no dribble, etc, etc. Many of these drills can be found here.
Defensive shell drill. Details of shell drill and teaching progressions can be found here.
Basic close out drills.
1 pass away denial drills.
Cut throat 1v1 close outs. Split into groups of 3-5 based on ability. Roll or pass to player near free throw or 3pt line. Close out and play 1v1. Make it take it. Next player in on D. Loser goes to end of line.
Thank you for the summary. I coach a 6th grade girls team that has been together since third grade. After teaching the motion offense and fundamentals for four years, the movement started happening mid-way through the season. We finished 14-7 and second in our developmental league regular season and playoffs. We’re a relatively short team, 5’2″ is our tallest, so we played Five Out. We have one star and 2-3 other good players out of 11. The only teams that beat us badly had several players 5’5″-5’10” and filled with AAU players. We mostly faced 2-3 zones which we got better at attacking with the hook and look and working on post moves. If the 2-3 collapsed, we struggled because most of the girls are limited to 5-9′ shooting range at 15%. So we work on form shooting a lot.
We also struggled if the ball was pressured on the wings. We did a lot of ball tough drills, but several of our players still froze. While the players move better off the pass, they’re still not able to read defenses yet. While we work on screens, they rarely happen after the first pass.
We only play “girl-to-girl” defense as my players call it. They switch well on screens but we don’t box out well, especially with our lack of height. Since most teams in our league play zone, our M2M challenges them.
Next year, we move up to a 7th-8th grade division with even taller players and full game press. Our focus next year will be ball handling, screening, boxing out and improving our shooting.
But I want to thank you for providing direction to this Dad turned coach.
Love the core values assessment and integrating this into your coaching – inspired!! Thanks, Bren
I see the link to the motion offense ebook. I don’t have that resource yet. Are your general guidelines listed above part of that resource or are they deviations from what is in that ebook? I’d love to implement a simple motion offense this year with my 3rd grade boys travel team so we don’t get bogged down in learning plays and can focus on development.
The specific motion offense we run it NOT outlined in that book. The offense we run is our own and there’s not a product outlining the specifics of it. With that said… it’s just motion with our own set of rules and guidelines.
The link to the motion ebook is what got me started on motion offense. It explains what it is and gets you in the right frame of mind. I do recommend that as a starting point but it may not give you all the answers you are looking for. I would suggest reading the ebook and then revisit this post with our guidelines. If it wasn’t help or what you wanted, ask Breakthrough for a refund. Until you read the book, it’s hard to explain what exactly you get out of it.. other than a better understanding of offense and motion.
Thanks, Jeff! Just being a cheapskate basically. I bought some of Rick Torbett’s Read and React stuff last year so the wife will kill me if i keep buying more resources.
It’s truly disgusting that you say “12 is too many” players.
You should be developing as many 5th grade girls as you can.
Use hockey shifts. Play five girls every 2-3 minutes. You could play 15 girls every quarter of every game.
So what if you lose. It’s 5th grade! It’s a mighty sick coach who gets his ego stroked for winning a 5th grade game.
You are the WORST kind of coach. Kids need basketball. Kids need their coach to care about them.
All you care about is winning. You are truly disgusting… exactly the kind of coach kids DO NOT NEED.
Wow. You are obviously misunderstanding. With 12 players divided by 160 (32×5) minutes in a game, that is only 13 minutes for each kid to play and they are sitting on the bench for the majority of the game. These young kids want to play, not sit on the bench.
12 is WAY too many for a game. There are only 5 kids that can play at a time. Sitting on the bench is boring, discouraging for kids, and they don’t get better sitting on the bench.
8 is the perfect number for games and gives the players “meaningful” minutes. With 12 on the bench it is very difficult to give them enough playing time for them to develop. I am all about player development and am a strong believer that right around 8 is the perfect number. 10 is manageable but still a little much. These kids want to play not sit on the bench.
Not to mention that is a lot of kids in practice and tough to give them attention. You either need a lot of assistants or need to slit into a second team so these kids can get attention.
You really need to think twice before you go off the deep end with insults. It has nothing to do with losing and everything to do with player development. I feel sorry for kids that play with 15 on a roster. It’s much better for 15 players to get split up into two different teams.
No, I did not misunderstand a thing. I speak with the voice of experience. I’ve been there, I’ve done that many moons. I’ve seen your kind of coach all over in three states. You simply only want to play the best players, and not have the worst players around to improve your chances of winning. It’s all about lookin’ good winning, and that’s really sad coming from a guy who claims to be a character builder. You’re throwing away the future of the bottom half. It’s 5th GRADE! Winning and losing matters little — admission is free (I surely hope). It’s the experience, A WORTHWHILE EXPERIENCE WORTH REPEATING year after year, that matters. Coach ’em all. Care about ’em all. Don’t discourage anyone. Don’t dictate their future. Don’t let the best player feel they’re the best… the best 5th grader “aint nuthin yet”; she can get soo much better but not if she thinks she’s already got it made in the 5th grade because the coach favors her and got rid of the other girls or never lets them start.
You are the one that does not understand the concept of “meaningful minutes.” Hockey shifts work. Go play super hard for 2 minutes. If you’re group is doing well, we’ll give you another minute, maybe two more if you clobber ’em. Really get after ’em — ideal for a pressure man-to-man team. Trust me, the kids on the bench are paying attention because they know they’re going to be in there in a few minutes. They’re cheering for their teammates. We’re all in this together; everyone is fully invested. On the other hand, there are zero meaningful minutes for the ordinary kid that has been trashed by the coach w/the big ego. Showing up w/just 8 players means you’re running up the score on weak teams because you don’t have a bench to back off. I’ve seen your type before, and it’s totally disgusting. Don’t throw 5th graders away like trash. What’s more, taking turns sitting on the bench is GOOD for kids, especially the best player… it keeps them a bit more grounded and in tune with their teammates because they need their teammates now.
Any decent coach should be able to coach the same 15 kids at one basket (3 sets of 5/6) and get results. In fact, it’s better to carry 17-18 kids so there will be 15 showing up each day. Keep ’em in the same group of six — give that group a nickname (we used automobile names) — for a couple of weeks and they’ll round into shape quickly working in the same group of six. After a couple of weeks, switch a few kids from this group to that group. Let the smart, athletic kid play multiple positions and the not-as-smart kid play one position. Every kid in the 5th grade needs basketball, so keep as many as possible.
I’ve coached in a gymnasium where one coach was hired for each basket at the middle school. That was six coaches for six baskets. The AD and trainer stood in the middle to help deal w/injuries and boot out screw offs and disruptors. We accepted college kids to come in as volunteers and help coach. There’d be 80-100 kids in the gym at once doing drills split up at each of the six baskets. It was loud. Don’t stand there wasting time sounding like a genius talking for five minutes here and three minutes there with a detailed explanation showing off encyclopedic knowledge, stopping and starting and stopping again to sound like a brainiac coach, a know it all. DWW. Get to the point in 10 seconds and get the kids moving. Tell ’em what to do and then do it! Coach on the fly. Just stay at your basket, take your turn, and go to the end of the line. Keep the line moving. Usually two basket groups would get off the floor and go to the exercise room (balcony, stairs, cafeteria, even the locker room if necessary for PT exercises) and work out for a bit, rotating on and off the floor and get a drink. Fitness matters. Certainly not ideal, but we kept it KISS and we DID NOT THROW AWAY ANY KIDS. Egotistical wise guy coaches cannot predict the future. They have no idea which superstar will get pregnant, addicted to meth, choose to specialize in volleyball (or worse… cheerleading), flunk out or move out of the district.
Stop picking out the best 5th graders and treat them all the same… as feeder school potential. It does not matter if you win or lose. Who cares! There’s zero ego coaching 5th graders. Be a role model, a teacher and teach them all. Kids don’t need much instruction on the playground; they’ll have fun if the adults will let them have fun. Basketball is no different. Going undefeated in the 5th grade just means that particular team had the best players (perhaps more mature) and that came from mom and dad’s coaching at home, not the ball coach who slaps himself on the back. Don’t sell kids short. Give them the opportunity. Practice all, encourage all, play all.
For the record, I have rarely played less than 10 players in a quarter below the varsity level, boys or girls. That’s 10 players, every quarter of every game all season long, and it would have been 15 had I had my way on matters. Kids need basketball. Involve as many as possible because it’s the right thing to do!! We don’t get to discard kids in education. They all matter.
As an example, legendary coach Jon Murphy of Seymour, WI has taken numerous teams to the state tournament year after year after year. He does not hesitate to suit up 15-20 kids at state; they’ve earned it. They’ve all practiced. They all have the fundamentals. They’re all hungry. They’re always ballin’ in the off-season to keep up. He does not sell any of his kids short. Everyone has an opportunity. He simply reloads. What’s more, he does not run up the score w/his starters. Those who show up w/8 are still playing starters at the end of a blowout.
I currently work at a school that had 80 boys out for the middle school team five years back. By order of the head varsity coach, they kept only the best players and cut all the rest. They cut some fantastic athletes who didn’t have rides to come to summer basketball camp. It’s easier that way. A few kids get a lot of attention instead of a lot of kids getting a little bit of attention. That’s your way of thinking, right? A few of those best players played varsity as freshmen and started as sophomores. The head varsity coach is an egotistical maniac — he thinks it’s all about him being in charge and getting the glory. He pushed hard and took credit for the wins. Those talented young players decided to commit to other sports and activities instead — including the leading scorer on the team as a sophomore. Yes, they rose to the varsity level, played, started and then quit the varsity level. Now the Head Coach does not have any seniors on the team because he ordered most of them cut as middle schoolers and favored his selected stars who abandoned his sorry self. Had he cared enough to have his lower level coaches keep ’em all and coach ’em all, he’d be loaded for bear this season w/a powerful senior class which happened to win the state championship in football. Instead, he’s got no seniors on the basketball team. HIS team won 8 games. He’s never coached a team to the state tournament. The second-best shooter in the school does not play basketball on the team — he was cut in the 8th grade and took up baseball. The Head Coach tried to play God predicting the future, anointing some, trashing all the rest, and he got burned for doing the Devil’s work.
So perhaps now you understand why I stand up for kids, all kids. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Coach ’em all, care about ’em all, play ’em all. More is better. They don’t need high level instruction from a know-it-all coach. They learn by watching and emulating others, trying for themselves and overcoming mistakes, repeating what works. Just demonstrate and offer brief feedback, lots of encouragement and nature will take its course. If given the opportunity, kids will do the rest. Nobody can talk their way to victory. Do what’s best for ALL the kids, not some.
This has been my axe to grind, a noble cause. I’ve seen far too many kids that want to play basketball — a lifetime sport, but were forbidden by some well meaning adult who need to win it all now before they even reach puberty or tried to predict the future for the kid as a mutt loser. I thank God my coaches did not trash me back in the day. Being undersized, I went on to earn 13 varsity letters in 4 sports. Baseball and track came easy; my basketball skills took the longest time to develop, yet I practiced it the most because I loved ballin’ at the park. Basketball is a tremendous do-it-yourself solo sport. The court can be a place of solitude. “A boy, a ball, and a basket” as Dick Vitale says. Why sell kids short at an early age? The game will do that for them at a later age if they don’t have the passion. Let the game weed them out; know-it-all adults don’t need to.
You have a good website. You have done much to help other coaches. Let’s hope others learn from this.
You know you probably have a few good points to consider. But when you throw out insults, you say things like “You are truly disgusting” and you think you know what type of coach I am based on reading pieces of an article…. you totally lost me and you have lost all credibility. Is this how you teach your players to communicate with people? I would hope not.
Too bad because you might have some good ideas.
Normally I am very nice and accepting of critiques. But I do not tolerate cyber-bullying and insults. You are just being a bully behind your keyboard. Please think about how the things you are writing to another person.
It doesn’t hurt me at all because I’m a confident person. But I sure hope you think twice about how you comment on articles and you are more respectful with others on the internet than you have been with me.
I don’t know how you have all that figured out as to the type of coach I am. Just reading a few of your comments and the conclusions you draw about how I coach, it is clear you have absolutely no clue. And you have not read many of the articles I have written. Funny how you can draw so many conclusions about me. Could I improve? Yes. Absolutely. Everyone could. Always learning and improving.
But DO NOT think for one second you know me, how I coach, or anyone else for that matter. Don’t be so quick to judge.
I’m not going to say anything bad about your coaching because I don’t know you and have no seen you coach. All I know is that you lost me as soon as you started throwing out insults and drawing conclusions about the type of coach I am based on an article. Have you seen my practices? Do you know how many volunteer hours I have put in over the years? Have you ever thought maybe my situation is different that yours? Do you know how many scores I have run up? The list goes on and on.
I could address many of your comments and tell you that some I agree with and some I don’t… maybe it’s not always as simple as you think. But I don’t feel like we can have a productive discussion at this point.
I might delete this post because it’s a childish exchange of comments. But I do want you to see it so you think twice about how you treat others. It’s too bad and I hope you learn from it.
Wow, just finding this comment 8 years later and this ww guy is friggin nuts! You handled it well, Coach.
Jeff, what is the best way to explain/teach good passing angles?
I walk through situations in 5v5 half court. I put defense where I want them (maybe in 2-3 zone). Then I put ball on wing and might show where a player can cut in the middle to have both good and bad passing angles. Just basically joy-sticking players through a couple situations. Might show them 2-3 different passing angle situations.
Then we play 5v5 half court. When I see a teaching opportunity, I yell “freeze”. Then I recreate the situation and show players how they are hiding and what they can do different to create a better passing angle. The we start playing again and repeat if needed.
I don’t know if that’s the best way but that’s how I do it.
Well it’s that time. Signed up my daughter for city rec basketball and signed up myself to be the head coach. Most all of what I have been planning over the past 9 months or so has come from your blog here and the Breakthrough site. Thanks again for all the information you share with us.
Jeff, I love how you emphasize get all of the rebounds. I know from reading some of your other posts or forum posts, you don’t do a lot of rebound drilling, only within context of your other drills. I have an aggressive 3rd grade boys travel team, but they are way short compared to all the teams we are playing. even when we box out, we are losing the rebounding battle. Any ideas on how to rememdy that? We do ok on offensive boards, just not defensive.
About the only thing you can do is get taller players. It’s tough at this age.
With our 3rd grade girls, we had similar issue… we were super short! We used speed and anticipation to negate some of the height issue. Just really emphasized how hard they needed to work to rebound. But we still often lost the battle (nothing you can do) and would make up for it by immediately double teaming the big and digging the ball out. Most bigs could not handle that and turned it over. So it would be a lot of offensive rebounds for our opponent and then turnovers or jump balls when we doubled and grabbed the ball. Had to be quick tho to dig out the ball.
Thanks for the help. That makes sense.
Last question (for today). I’m getting a lot of standing around in my 5 out motion, even with dribble at cuts and Blackfoot cuts when overplayed. How can I fix that? Mostly it’s PGs who dribble around too much or hold the ball. Time limits when we scrimmage? No dribble drive?
Biggest thing is to emphasize in all kinds of situations. We emphasize three offensive things above all else: spacing, ball movement, good shots. It is top priority and players pick up on that. Beyond that you can implement rules in games and practices. Practices can be half court of full court. Different rules you can implement include:
– no dribbling allowed
– must make 5 passes before you can shoot
– lay ups only until you make 5 passes
– lay ups only until you get 2 ball reversals
– 1 pt for every ball reversal (plus normal rules getting points for baskets). first team to 10 points wins.
Under your defense you mentioned, “…And made sure off ball players were always “above the ball” in good defensive position.” What do you mean by above the ball in this situation?
I’ll give you an example and hopefully that will make sense.
Let’s say you are pressing full court — all 5 players are matched up. The inbounder makes a pass to the PG at the free throw line. So in this case, after the ball is caught, the person guarding the inbounder will be “below the ball”. So I want this defender sprinting on the flight of the ball to at least get even with or “above the ball”. Where you are positioned depends on the situation but as a general rule I never want a player “below the ball” because I never want to give up lay ups.
This concept is similar to half court defense where you want players “sinking to the level of the ball”… as explained years ago by Dick Bennet from Wisconsin.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Coach,
I really enjoyed reading your article and will probably implement your motion offense as I have been looking for one that would be relatively easy to use with younger teams. I have been coaching for a number of years at various levels from 3rd grade to HS and I’ve always had the philosophy with my younger teams, that they need to learn as much as possible to develop their basketball I.Q.’s. Therefor I have always taught both man and Zone defense as well as Man and Zone offense’s, Pressing both man and zone, etc. there to read this statement from you kind of bothered me:
“It is ludicrous that 5th grade teams play all these different defenses trying to get the advantage. At one tournament we literally faced 4 different presses and 4 different half court defenses!
I sit there watching and thinking how many bad habits these kids (on other teams) are picking up and how fundamentally unsound they are. They are trying to win so bad and neglecting to teach the fundamentals.
It really hurts them more than it hurts us.”
If you are actually teaching these different offenses, defences, etc. how is that hurting the kids?
Hey Coach,
I can see where you are coming from… teaching them a lot of different things to develop their IQ. I think some very disciplined and experienced coaches (at the high school or higher level) can pull that off. But most coaches can’t or just don’t.
Sitting and watching thousands of games, here’s what I see from well intentioned coaches….
I see kids playing zones and presses and they learn really bad habits. Bad positioning, bad technique, etc.
It all works when they are young, and actually can work well because their opponents are strong enough or skilled enough yet to deal with it.
So the bad habits continue and are even encouraged. But the reality is that later on those techniques and habits engrained over and over, do not work at the high school level.
When I coached high school basketball, I inherited numerous kids with a lot of bad defensive habits that they picked up at the youth level. Coaches did it because it works. But in the long run it hurts the players once they get to high school. Those players really struggled to break those habits because they were so engrained at the youth level for many years.
In addition, Don Kelbick once told me, don’t spend time teaching kids your “system”, spend time teaching them “how to play” in any system.
There’s never enough practice time. And you always have to prioritize what you need to be working on.
So I have always asked myself, are the things we’re practicing right now going to translate and help this child in 2-6 years from now? It’s really easy to get myself pulled into teaching things that are specific to my defense, my offense, or my system. I try to avoid that and teach UNIVERSAL CONCEPTS AND FUNDAMENTALS that will translate into any coach’s system.
I think man to man defense concepts can translate into any other system.
With that said, I agree with you. IQ does translate. But IQ is difficult to teach, especially for the typical youth coach. I generally try to give advice that works for the typical youth coach, that usually has zero experience coaching at the high school or college level.
This is all just my opinion based on what I have seen. Hopefully this sheds a little light on why I think 5th graders should be focusing on the fundamentals and not so many different defenses.
One last tidbit as food for thought. Steve Nash didn’t play basketball until I believe 12 or 13 years old. Which is much later than the typical kids in the US. And he turned into one of the highest IQ players in the NBA!