Team gotchas

Sometimes you lose because you didn't get around to something. This is a short list of team gotchas I've encountered over the years. And yes, we lost some games because of them.

1. You are doomed to lose some games if you can't beat the press. Beat it and not just get it up the floor. I now have a press as part of our arsenal, as it's the only way we ever got good at beating the press. We try and break out hard but use a basic structured press break with someone in the middle if the fast break isn't there. I learned the hard way that a structured break only works most of the time. Keeping some ball handlers in the back court and telling them to dribble to the middle if they don't see a pass has to be part of the break.

2. Denying the pass is more often effective early in a possession. I think therefore that lots of structured options have to be built in to the start of any offense. It doesn't matter what the offense is but there have to be at least three options. Chris Annett at Colonel Gray does a great job with this. Kathy Shields, the great UVic coach ran a version of the UCLA high post offense that was impossible to stop. I was an assistant to Kathy for a year and learned a lot as she put in her offense. We got lots of points from set plays but scored even more as the defense got distorted trying to stop the offense.

3. Zone defenses cause lots of problems if you aren't ready. Again, I play some zone defense because that's the only way I was able to have a defense good enough to practice against. I'll try and write a series of posts about zone offense some time but suffice to say that reversal and attacking the middle are key points for me. Another interesting thing is that most teams don't run inbounds plays from the sideline against a zone defense. I have some plays that work against both man and zone for that very reason.

4. Inbounds plays in the corners of the front court are a problem. It's hard to run a scoring play and can be hard to get the ball in if the defense makes a determined effort when the clock is an issue. I make sure I practice these on a regular basis but haven't put specific plays in.

5. Not guarding the right player after a sub is easy to avoid but I've seen too many games lost this way. Including some with my teams. I found this surprisingly hard to fix. Players didn't catch on to the fact that it can cost a game until too late. The only thing that I can suggest is to put in consequences during drills and scrimmages. One push-up doesn't take much time and can be just annoying enough to make players see the importance. I tell them that they have to be playing defense way before the other team makes a play. I call out "numbers" if I think we might have a problem. The players call out their check starting with the 1.

Rebounding: blockers and crashers

I was talking with my old friend Bob Butler yesterday about rebounding. For the last few seasons I've ignored box outs almost completely, with the exception of after a foul shot. Instead, I've put tremendous emphasis on going to the boards every time. This means during all drills and game situations. There were several reasons. For starters, through a series of circumstances I didn't have the same team two years in a row. I chose to spend more time on shooting and I found more time by cutting box out drills. The other part was that I wasn't satisfied with how things had been working out and I wanted to try something else.

The first team I tried this with was the Quebec High School junior girls. To my surprise, things worked out. We shot a lot better and we got more rebounds. I compensated for the lack of drill time by insisting even more than usual that we go to the boards on every shot. On offense I sent everyone but the 1, unless she shot, in which case the 2 stayed back. On defense I sent everyone to the boards.

I did the same thing when I coached the senior girls at the International School of Brussels. They were older and tougher and could take the sprints that were imposed if someone didn't go to the boards. My philosophy was that everyone who wasn't stopping the fast break had to be moving to the basket when the shot went up. Eventually, we became a very good rebounding team. I continued with this philosophy when I ended up back on Prince Edward Island.

I never got the chance to see what would happen a second year as work got in the way. Bob and I were talking and I asked us both the question what would we choose if our players could only crash the boards or box out. I admit my thought was that he would say that going to the boards would pay off more. The truth is, at the university level there are some players that have to be boxed out. I had a flash, thinking back to an article I read about how Bill Belichick assigns roles. For example, Lawrence Taylor was a pass rusher and Henry Carson had the role of run stopper.

How about if players were designated as either crashers or boxers. For example, most posts would be boxers. This would have the advantage of building in some box outs while having the smalls crashing the boards. Part of my idea is that it is easier to get after players when they know their roles. I wonder......