OT - A High School Coach

[81South]

Things have been tough around here so I wanted to throw out a new topic.

My daughter plays varsity basketball in Section 3 (map below). Every day when my daughter gets home I ask her what they worked on that day. Here is the normal response:

"We only practiced our plays" (note they only have like 5 plays). Is it normal to spend your entire practice, every day, to work on a few plays?

Last week I got two new responses which were unreal to me. "Dad, today we did conditioning for the first time all season". I think to myself, how is this possible? They are over half way into their season. And then lastly, on another day last week my daughter says "Dad, coach said we earned the right to practice shooting." I almost fainted on this one. How in the world do you earn the right to practice one of the most basic fundamentals?

Is this normal for a varsity program? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

 

[Deano]

Just curious but what is your daughter's team record?

 

[Ozcuse]

Is this guy her coach?

 

[Roger N]

Things have been tough around here so I wanted to throw out a new topic.

My daughter plays varsity basketball in Section 3 (map below). Every day when my daughter gets home I ask her what they worked on that day. Here is the normal response:

"We only practiced our plays" (note they only have like 5 plays). Is it normal to spend your entire practice, every day, to work on a few plays?

Last week I got two new responses which were unreal to me. "Dad, today we did conditioning for the first time all season". I think to myself, how is this possible? They are over half way into their season. And then lastly, on another day last week my daughter says "Dad, coach said we earned the right to practice shooting." I almost fainted on this one. How in the world do you earn the right to practice one of the most basic fundamentals?

Is this normal for a varsity program? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

Is Norman Dale the coach?

 

[Jasoncuse]

But do they practice Free Throws?

 

[RF2044]

Things have been tough around here so I wanted to throw out a new topic.

My daughter plays varsity basketball in Section 3 (map below). Every day when my daughter gets home I ask her what they worked on that day. Here is the normal response:

"We only practiced our plays" (note they only have like 5 plays). Is it normal to spend your entire practice, every day, to work on a few plays?

Last week I got two new responses which were unreal to me. "Dad, today we did conditioning for the first time all season". I think to myself, how is this possible? They are over half way into their season. And then lastly, on another day last week my daughter says "Dad, coach said we earned the right to practice shooting." I almost fainted on this one. How in the world do you earn the right to practice one of the most basic fundamentals?

Is this normal for a varsity program? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

Very abnormal for a varsity program.

Sounds like her coach has been watching too much Coach Carter.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

More evidence of a lack of teaching fundamentals these days.

My son actually had the chance over the summer to work with the middle school and high school players twice a week doing conditioning and practicing shooting. The HS team is bad right now, but I like the direction the team is going. Much prefer this coach over the local Catholic school guy who wins all the titles bringing in kids who clearly aren't interested in school (or have the ability to pay the 10k a year it costs to go to that school.)

 

[81South]

Just curious but what is your daughter's team record?

6-4

 

[UnderHisOwnPower]

Last week I got two new responses which were unreal to me. "Dad, today we did conditioning for the first time all season". I think to myself, how is this possible? They are over half way into their season. And then lastly, on another day last week my daughter says "Dad, coach said we earned the right to practice shooting." I almost fainted on this one. How in the world do you earn the right to practice one of the most basic fundamentals?

Is this normal for a varsity program? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

I can understand honing your core offensive play book, that is critical to success, but the other parts you mention are strange. Conditioning should be done everyday, and incorporated into the drills. Has she ever heard of a 3 person weave?
And shooting is not just another basketball fundamental, it is THE most important basketball skill, and should be worked on every practice.
Do they ever practice Defense?

 

[81South]

Is Norman Dale the coach?

No

 

[81South]

I can understand honing your core offensive play book, that is critical to success, but the other parts you mention are strange. Conditioning should be done everyday, and incorporated into the drills. Has she ever heard of a 3 person weave?
And shooting is not just another basketball fundamental, it is THE most important basketball skill, and should be worked on every practice.
Do they ever practice Defense?

I agree 100%. Everyone plays zone these days...if you can't make jump shots you can't win consistently.

 

[sabach]

I coach a varsity girls team right now. I have them work on dribbling drills and shooting drills EVERY practice. We do passing drills and fast break drills (three woman weave and 3 on 2 back to 2 on 1) EVERY practice. We run plays EVERY practice and rotate defense and press offense/defense every other practice. I play zone exclusively and only play 7 players each game in the close ones.

 

[81South]

I coach a varsity girls team right now. I have them work on dribbling drills and shooting drills EVERY practice. We do passing drills and fast break drills (three woman weave and 3 on 2 back to 2 on 1) EVERY practice. We run plays EVERY practice and rotate defense and press offense/defense every other practice. I play zone exclusively and only play 7 players each game in the close ones.

Questions

1) Why no man defense at all?
2) How often do you work on rebounding?
3) How often do you do positional work...for example, how often do post players work on their post moves?
4) How often do you work on end game situations?

 

[RF2044]

1) Why no man defense at all?
I'll let Coach Sabach [above] answer this!


2) How often do you work on rebounding?
Rebounding is generally worked on in positional drills, and usually emphasized in scrimmage portion of practice. Obviously, how much depends on how much emphasis the coach places on rebounding as something to focus upon. Just for comparison, SU probably spends 10 minutes or so in practices working on this. I've seen video clips of Michigan State and Pitt, both of whom emphasize the hell out of rebounding [at the exclusionary expense of other things they could be working on]. Depends on philosophy.


3) How often do you do positional work...for example, how often do post players work on their post moves?
If a typical practice is 2 - 2.5 hours, it isn't uncommon to spend around 30 minutes of that time doing positional work, with the different groups working on position-related skills separately from other groups. Sometimes a bit more. Also depends on the time of season. There's going to be a lot different focus on how time is allocated in the preseason portion of practice rather than when you get into games, when you have to prepare for opponents. Just as an example.


4) How often do you work on end game situations?
Situationally, this would be covered every week--but generally included in the scrimmage portion of the practice, where you might run specific sets, or work on inbounding concepts. Point being, you want to drill the execution into the players beforehand, so that they don't have to "think" as much in a clutch, end-of-game situation, because they already know what to do.

 

[Brooky03]

The Camden varsity baskeball team won like 6 games in my 4 high school years, usually when they played down a class or two. I would walk by the practices a lot and it was a crap show haha. Your daughter's coach couldn't be worse than what I saw from the various coaches at my school.

 

[rrlbees]

6-4

Which Class? AA?

 

[81South]

Which Class? AA?

A

 

[81South]

1) Why no man defense at all?
I'll let Coach Sabach [above] answer this!


2) How often do you work on rebounding?
Rebounding is generally worked on in positional drills, and usually emphasized in scrimmage portion of practice. Obviously, how much depends on how much emphasis the coach places on rebounding as something to focus upon. Just for comparison, SU probably spends 10 minutes or so in practices working on this. I've seen video clips of Michigan State and Pitt, both of whom emphasize the hell out of rebounding [at the exclusionary expense of other things they could be working on]. Depends on philosophy.


3) How often do you do positional work...for example, how often do post players work on their post moves?
If a typical practice is 2 - 2.5 hours, it isn't uncommon to spend around 30 minutes of that time doing positional work, with the different groups working on position-related skills separately from other groups. Sometimes a bit more. Also depends on the time of season. There's going to be a lot different focus on how time is allocated in the preseason portion of practice rather than when you get into games, when you have to prepare for opponents. Just as an example.


4) How often do you work on end game situations?
Situationally, this would be covered every week--but generally included in the scrimmage portion of the practice, where you might run specific sets, or work on inbounding concepts. Point being, you want to drill the execution into the players beforehand, so that they don't have to "think" as much in a clutch, end-of-game situation, because they already know what to do.

Our coach complains about rebounding but does not emphasize it at all in practice. I guess it's just magically going to improve. Frankly I would spend a lot of time on it because the shooting is just not very good and generally the team that rebounds the best wins at this level.

As long as were talking...what do you guys think about screening the middle defender of the zone (2-3 zone). Obviously if you can open up the middle of the zone you have a greater opportunity to score in close to the basket. It seems to me if you use the combination of a skip pass and a screen you could potentially really hurt a zone. It would be nice to see some outside the box strategies when attacking a zone vs the old strategy of passing around looking to the short corner or looking for hi/lo action or just jacking up 3 balls.

 

[Marsh01]

Im so glad my son switched to year round golf. No coach making bad decisions and you play for yourself

 

[Ghost]

Is this guy her coach?

Oh, to be so lucky.

 

[rhcuse]

81 I will comment on my parent experience of a JV girl.

Same answer for two months, "All we did was run the same play for 2 hours. Its so boring no one pays attention." Conditioning seemed to be just running lines and primarily for the tryout days. A little in warm ups, etc. and the obligatory non-effective run a lap (as in 1) if someone really keeps screwing up the same thing. Just this week they finally had a practice devoted strictly to quick catch/square/shoot.

Fundamentals are clearly lacking due to lack of skills coaching from grades 5 - 8. Coach doesn't seem to be able to spend time on it and favors scheme/play scrimmage time over individual and positional drills. I'd like about 20 hours with them to rebuild all their mechanics.

I imagine its the same everywhere, but they leave 20 points a game on the floor missing bunnies and all but a couple of girls are almost scared to shoot outside. Always defer to the alpha female. Very telling when 8 frustrated parents are yelling "shoot it" even before the shy girls catch it.

Our team plays 90% 2-3 zone, but the guards have a bad habit of dropping below the free throw line extended and not recovering so we give up a lot of open 3s. Rotations get all messed up and unbalanced. The other night they acutally went m2m coming out of a late time out and I exclaimed to my wife "Holy crap, they're in man" to which she had no idea I meant.

Our varsity team is more advanced, of course.

 

[Dmcnabbrules]

I don't know about girls but I coached boys jv for ten years and every practice had the same basic set up. Never ran a practive over 1.5 hours.

20 minutes full court drills to start. Lay ups, 3 on 2 - 2 on 1 drill, five ball drill, practice secondary break. This was basically the majority of our conditioning, I don't believe in conditioning without a ball.

Free throws

1o minutes of going over previous practice/game.

20 minutes of breaking into guards/forwards.

15 minutes of half court offense/defense work.

Free throws

Scrimmage varsity for 10 minutes.

Free throws.

 

[AlaskaSU]

I coached an adult women's basketball team that was really good, one loss. Never-the-less, most of them, with the exception of our point guard, had far less experience than any man would have. although sometimes we ran drills, often times it was best to scrimmage where you could stop the play to point something out like blocking out. I would guess that given how far the girls are behind the men that there is not much time for conditioning during practice hours in HS and that the girls are thus expected to do cardio on their own time.

 

[rhcuse]

Scrimmage varsity for 10 minutes.

I like this part. I've been told modified is to get them ready for the basic team concepts that JV wants its players to know and JV exists only to get them ready for varsity. Yet they never even practice with varsity, let alone scrimmage or have any instruction from varsity coaches. I'm sure the JV coach has been told what to teach them for varsity, but there is a limit to what they can execute in scheme with underdeveloped fundamentals.

 

[007]

Things have been tough around here so I wanted to throw out a new topic.

My daughter plays varsity basketball in Section 3 (map below). Every day when my daughter gets home I ask her what they worked on that day. Here is the normal response:

"We only practiced our plays" (note they only have like 5 plays). Is it normal to spend your entire practice, every day, to work on a few plays?

Last week I got two new responses which were unreal to me. "Dad, today we did conditioning for the first time all season". I think to myself, how is this possible? They are over half way into their season. And then lastly, on another day last week my daughter says "Dad, coach said we earned the right to practice shooting." I almost fainted on this one. How in the world do you earn the right to practice one of the most basic fundamentals?

Is this normal for a varsity program? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

Have you ever witnessed the entire practice? I am not trying to be critical of your daughter in any respect. Just wanted to point out that sometimes, in my experience anyway, what some of the kids think they did, and what actually happened at a full practice, didn't always jive. I coached at the HS level for 17 years. I can tell you we always had a detailed practice plan (in writing) right down to the exact number of minutes we wanted to devote to each drill within each section of the practice. Most coaches I know worked this way. We almost always conditioned the way Dmcnabb described - full court drills with all out running, shooting, passing and dribbling (there are literally 1000s of different drills and variations). The kids rarely thought of that as "conditioning" they looked at it as running and "playing."

Using Dmcnabb's practice above - if you asked his players what they did at that practice, it wouldn't be unusual to get something like: we shot lay ups, ran fast breaks, shot free throws, talked about some game stuff and then we got to scrimmage the varsity.