OT - A High School Coach

[81South]

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.

I have not witnessed a practice but when I casually ask some of the other kids on the team they all say the same thing. But there is probably some truth in what you say. Thanks for the response.

 

[upperdeck]

most HS teams.
80% of the kids are not really in shape, regardless of the conditioning,
90% cant dribble nearly well enough to make plays off the dribble.
Kids want to jack up threes all day
shocked at how bad the hands are with most kids todays and simply catching the ball

coaches dont work near enough on rebound positioning so kids only get what ever balls fall near them
Most kids dont want to work to get better, they just work to stay on the team.

Out local team has been to the states several times the last 10 years so we are a decent team and still i am amazed at the fundamentals these kids dont learn or get taught at all, but the other schools are far worse so it makes us look even better.

In my experience coaches think AAU and open gym are where kids learn to get better so they dont do much at all in practices.

 

[MGP]

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.

Right on the money. I've been a Varsity baseball coach for 10 years. I know high school kids, and its not to be critical of the daughter, but its just like asking them what they did in school that day. 90% are going to give the patented teenage answer, "nothin'". How they view what they did, and what they actually did are sometimes two different things

 

[sabach]

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?

I started three years ago with a very young team with very little talent and athletic ability. Figured we did not have the ability to man up (or woman up) another team. As Rafftery would say, I do use "Man to Man" principles in the 2-3. Another thing is that most teams cannot shoot very well from outside. Our team is better suited to pack in the zone and rebound the missed shots.
We work on rebounding at least every other practice, especially on positioning and catching the ball. Some of my girls would make Jeremy McNeil look like OBJ.
We also work on positional work (post players) about once per week. The guards work on catch/set/shoot at the same time. We have limited time as we only practice 2 times per week once games start.
End game situations are usually practiced as part of a scrimmage at the end where I will give the team the score and time and see what we can do. Oddly enough, we have only had one game in three years that came down to the very end, (this year at Binghamton) and my player shot at the wrong basket after our inbounds play broke down as we were trying to inbound to go the length of the court for a game tying 3. I now secretly call that girl Paul Harris.
I hope in this post that I have not come across as too crtiical of my team. I love the girls and I guess it is just the coach that tries to see where they can improve at every stage.

 

[benjams77]

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.

I coach have coached Boys JV and varsity HS basketball for the last 5 years...I do know conditioning is a large part of our preseason work around any dead periods. But we run throughout every practice all season to keep players in shape

Alot depends on the coaches own philosophy...For us During the season we topically start with practices of 2 to 2 hr 15 min practices.
About 1/3 of time is spent on defensive foundation - we work Pack line m2m - breaking it down from 2 on 2 to running our 4 shell drill every day to 5 v 5 live.
We'll add zone and pressing principles throughout the year
Another 1/3 is spent on Offensive continuity which we break down for players...and then add sets
We use another 1/3 on skill development, fundamentals and shooting - THIS IS ALWAYS NEEDED - make sure your kids at any age are always doing dribbling, passing , and shooting drills.

As the season goes and games are happening, our practices go 1 and half tops with mostly shooting, skill development and competitive drills, with our 4 shell and offense continuity drill mixed in