There is a link at the end of this post if you are interested in downloading the complete newsletter.

I hope this gives you a thought or two to add a drill for the upcoming season, or to find a way to improve your versions of these drills.

Practice Drills of the Month

Wildcat Money Ball — 2 players 1 ball

• Goals are 11 in 1 minute, 22 in 2 minutes, 33 in 3 minutes
• Start with a drive and kick worth 3 pts
• Same shooter takes 4 shots in a row
• Shots 2-4 are worth 1 pt each
• Last shot is from 15 ft.
• Switch shooters and repeat

Close-out 3 man weave

• 2 passes with the 3 pass a skip across with
• a close-out coming from middle defender
• Man who skipped it becomes help side defender
• Live 1 on 2 after the skip pass
• Drill going live at both ends

Olympic Shooting — 4 min (5 balls)

• 3 players on court with two passers on each baseline
• Start with pass to wing, back to middle,opposite wing for lay-up
• No dribble before the lay-up
• Two players left shoot jump shots, receiving passes from baseline
• Wing Shooters become baseline passers and lay-up man continues in drill with the original baseline passers
• Drill counts 2’s and 3’s

Green Bay Transition

• 3 on 3 full court with two outlets out of bounds on each side
• Whoever gets the defensive rebound outlets and runs in transition with the two outlet guys
• Continuous drill with two teams
• Red vs. Blue (keep score)

3 on 2

• Wings run wide, point runs down middle (w/ball)
• Wings cut toward basket at hash mark
• Point passes to a cutter (best shooter)
• Shooter has 3 options
  Shoot off of 1,2 step
  Shot fake, 1 dribble pull up
  Pass back to cutting guard through the middle
• Wing who does not receive 1 pass boxes out top defender right away (slice)
• No wing to wing passes!

Here is a link to download the entire July Newsletter:  Arizona Newsletter

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coaching including basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

This article is from Bob Starkey.  Bob is the associate head coach for the LSU women’s program.  You can check out his blog at http://hoopthoughts.blogspot.com

We really like the use of restrictions to both emphasize and correct in terms of our offensive play.  Your team is not getting the ball inside enough: “No perimeter shots until we have two low post touches.”

Your team doesn’t look to set re-screens after setting back screens: “We can only score off of a back screen with a re-screen.”

Your team is not reversing the basketball: “Two ball reversals before a jump shot.”

Again, what you do with your restrictions is limited only to your imagination. We usually apply a restriction daily to our offense for at least one drill and it is usually derived either from something that we didn’t do well in our last practice or game, or it is something that we want to emphasize for our next opponent.

A great example of this is playing 3/3, 4/4, or 5/5 against a switching defense while using the restriction that you can only pass the ball to a screener. This is a great way to “adjust your player’s vision” against this type of defense. How many times do you see a team come out and pass the ball in the waiting hands of a defender who switched a screen and didn’t have to move?

We teach our team that against the switch, the screener has a better chance of being open than the cutter. Now it is easy to tell your team this – it is quite another to prepare them for it. If you are use to passing to cutters it is not necessarily all that natural to switch and pass to the screener. That’s why this drill is so effective and important.

Not only do you put the emphasis of the passer to look for the screener but also you now have put pressure on the screener to make a good second cut toget open for a pass.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coaching including basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

Basketball is situation specific and how a teams handles those situations often makes the difference between winning and losing.

Coach Hawkins uses a “special teams” concept much like a football team and looks to find the players who are best for each situation.

He finds that it has been a confidence builder for his substitutes because he feel that he can find situations in which most of them can be successful.

He allocates time in each weekly practice for offense, defense, and special teams.

His Specialty areas are:

1)  Sideline inbounds (“pecking order” of players to inbound the ball, plays for end of game or period, defending sideline inbounds)

2)  Underneath inbounds (“pecking order” of players to inbound the ball, plays for end of game or period, defending sideline inbounds)

3)  Jump Ball (hold, rotate, defend) This is an area that makes a difference to start an overtime

4)  Delay (purpose, pattern, defense)

5)  1-10 seconds left in game (full court, back court, half court, front court, baseline–all of these offensively and defensively

6)  End of period both offense and defense

7)  Free Throws (ahead and behind by one, two, and three)

8)  Time Situations (60 seconds, 90 seconds, two minutes)

Early in the season he covers when and what they will do in each situation and what the roles needed for success in each one are.

Weekly practice breakdown:

Monday:  (10 minutes of practice time) End of game situations ahead and behind by one, two, and three points.   Involves as many players as he can.  After two or three weeks will settle on the best players in each situation and then work those players as units.

Tuesday (10 minutes of practice time) Two minute situations.  ahead and behind by different point spreads.  If the first unit that starts out ahead and loses, they must repeat the process.  I would add to this to  make sure to define the number of fouls for both teams and individuals, possession arrow, and time outs remaining.  This is a good time to practice how to foul by taking the ball away and possibly being called for a foul to stop the clock as opposed to getting called for an intentional foul.  You can also practice fouls to give in this situation.

Wednesday (10 minutes) End of period.  Delay game to get the last shot of the period and transition into the last shot.  You can execute this at the end of a game without having to call timeout if it is practiced. Again, work both sides of the ball. I like to start our play at 12 seconds and shoot at 5 seconds in the first three quarters. I like to shoot with 3 seconds at the end of the game and have found that if you expect that to happen and practice it, players will execute it in a game.

Thursday (15 minutes of practice time) Specialty review.  Reviews all of his specialty items and emphasizes the ones he feels will be significant in their next game.

Coach Hawkins usually uses 8 to 10 players each game and looks for where each one can be successful.  The special teams approach encourages player participation.   Having practiced the areas that come up in a game he can tell his players that “we have a plan and have been here before,” which is a confidence builder.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coaching including basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

Consider telling your team at the beginning of some of the competitive drills that you run that at the end they will need to “validate” it.  For example, if you split your team into two groups and do a competitive shooting drill, the team that wins the drill must then make a free throw (coach chooses the player to shoot so that all players have a chance to shoot the free throw eventually) to validate their win.

If the player makes the free throw, the team that lost the drill must run.  If the player misses the free throw, then the team that won the drill must run.

It is a good way to shoot some pressure free throws and to teach that for most of the games you win, you have to close them by making free throws.

We have posted the audio recording of the webinar for those of you who couldn’t make it or would like to hear it again.

Bob Hurley Webinar

April McDivitt Foster lived that dream during the 1998-99 season as she was selected “Miss Basketball”  .She then headed to Knoxville to play for the Lady Vols before finishing her playing career in the WNBA.  All of the lessons she learned and hours and hours of practice, both practicing basketball skills individually, and practicing basketball drills with her teams, have made her a great resource for ideas to improve the individual aspects of any player’s game, of any gender, and any level of competition.

HoopClinics has scheduled an interactive webinar with her for Monday January 26 at 9:00 EST.  For more information on the event, check out this link:

Basketball Skills and Basketball Drills

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coaching including basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

That is what makes his new DVD, “Mandatory Moves” one of the top training DVDs on the market for coaches and players of all age and ability levels.

If you are watching the DVD as a player, it is just like you are in the gym with Coach Schilling. If you are a coach, you will pick up several teaching points and some terminology that can help you to teach your players to make plays in a much more effective way:

To see a small segment of the DVD, click here: Ed Schilling Short Corner Moves

For more information about the DVD, click here: Ed Schilling Mandatory Moves

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching including basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

For coaches, Coach Schilling breaks down the “Mandatory Moves,” how to teach them, when to apply them, and it shows Coach Schilling re-teaching and emphasizing the specific teaching points that allow these players to show some improvement during the drills.

I believe that better players and not just better plays is what leads to offensive success in basketball. If you are in agreement with that, then you should take a look at Coach Schilling’s DVD “Mandatory Moves.”

Here is a link to a segment from the Video:  Ed Schilling Mandatory Moves

Here is a link to more information about the DVD:  Ed Schilling Mandatory Moves

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of resources for basketball coaching including basketball practice, basketball plays, basketball drills, basketball quotes, basketball workouts, basketball poems, and more!

Even during the years where we have had “everyone back” I still felt that the were not the same players that they were last year. At least I hoped that they weren’t because I wanted to improve on last year’s record not repeat it. So, I spent some time learning where they had grown and where they still needed to get better.

When I pick up new drills during the off-season or improvements to our offensive and defense systems, I like to put them in early season practices to see if they do fit with our personnel. I certainly believe in constantly working to improve as a coach, but regardless of how well something works for another program, it might not work for you, so I think it is good to put something in and work on it a few times before deciding if it is for us. It is possible that I did not get the whole story of how something works if I saw it at a clinic or on a DVD.

For example, a few years ago, I saw a very successful coach who always produced great shooters say at a clinic that they did their shooting drills at the end of practice so that they could shoot when they were tired. That made a lot of sense to me. We tried it in our early practices and our players did not like it. They liked our shooting progression early in the practice and felt that it helped them to “groove” their shots for the rest of the practice. So, we tweaked it and did our shooting fundamentals early and did some game pace drills late to try and get the best of both worlds. That team ended up being the highest field goal percentage team that I have coached, so I am glad that I experimented with it, told them what and why I was giving it a test run, and then listened to their input.

Early in the season, I think it is important to do some experimenting with what spots you put players in against presses and traps, who inbounds the ball, who inbounds the ball for a game winning shot, who takes the shots at the end of quarters, what shots each player can make in a scrimmage, and any other crucial personnel decisions that we need to make. Usually, I don’t change my mind as to who needs to fill each role and what they can do, but there are times when I have made some decisions that I feel have made us better by putting players in different positions. Many times it is not the new role that you put someone in, but it becomes how that trickles down to filling their previous spot and what role changes would take place for the rest of our players that is the deciding factor in to change or not to change.

We have always been a motion program with a handful of set plays that we feel fit our players for that year. Early in the year we experiment with our plays to see what works for this group and what doesn’t so that we can pare down the number that we will use. As the season wears on, we also tweak what we run as we see how we are being defended and if our personnel changes do to injuries or adjustments in our lineup.

Since basketball is a long season, I like to look for new drills that drill the same concepts as the season moves into January and February. Not major complex changes, but something that can be explained quickly and doesn’t eat up a lot of practice time. I think it helps maintain the attention of the players as they have something new to think about rather than going through the same things in the same way time after time.

I will conclude by saying that I do not believe in taking major portions of the practice to experiment. Ten minutes max every day the first couple weeks of practice and then ten minutes once or twice a week after that. I don’t want change for change sake, but I also want to always be looking for new ideas and new ways to do things better that will improve our program.

As practice starts, if you haven’t seen the first twelve ideas from our e-book “130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice, you can see them by clicking here:

Winning Way Practice e-book

I know it has been way too long between posts and I guess as the saying goes, “excuses are like noses, everyone has one, and they smell.” Maybe I should add that to our basketball quotes section! We have been working on a couple of projects, and took a few days off too. Hey, everyone needs a vacation, even coaches!

We are very appreciative to all of you who have purchased our e-book–130 Great Ideas to Get a Lot More Accomplished in Practice. We sincerely hope it will make a difference in your basketball practice next season.  We have had some problems with the shopping cart which we have spent a lot of time working to correct. We think that we are close to having it worked out. And as luck would have it, we have not been having as many problems with our purchases the last few days. I guess that’s the way things work.

We have been working on some new basketball drills videos to put on the site and those should be posted within the coming weeks.

We have spent a lot of time working with coach Josh Stinson of Perfect Practice on a project that we think is really going to be some good content for our visitors. Coach Stinson and I are both excited about this project. If you haven’t been to his site, it is definitely worth the visit. He has a lot of great basketball coaching content for basketball coaches of all levels. He has a newsletter that you can sign up for and receive a free 36 page pdf e-book on his version of the 2-2-1 full court press. You will find the newsletter that you will then begin receiving to be a very valuable basketball coaching tool as well.  Click on this link to see his site:  Perfect Practice

Josh has put together 25 minute video about the flex offense. You can watch it here: Josh Stinson Flex. It is one of the best put together coaching resources I have seen. Even if you don’t run the flex offense, it is worth taking a look at. I hate to admit it, but it is a lot better presentation than our animated basketball plays version of flex. It has definitely given us some ideas on improving the animated basketball plays section of our site.

I promise that it won’t be so long next time between postings. Our next one will be our June wrap up.  Thanks for your patience!

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.

Our Teleseminar Guest for Friday June 13 is University of Illinois Men’s Coach Bruce Weber–his topic is making basketball practices competitive and he has some great ideas to offer. It is not wonder that his teams have always competed hard. From his days as an assistant to Gene Keady at Purdue, then has head coach at Southern Illinois, and now with all of the success he has enjoyed at Illinois, one thing has remained constant–his teams compete! Current Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter was Coach Weber’s assistant at Southern Illinois and I thought that the 07-08 Purdue team was one of the hardest playing teams that I have seen.

His 04-05 Illinois team did have talent, but you don’t make it to the last game of the regular season without losing unless you can compete. You will definitely want to be prepared to take notes and listen to this interview a couple of times. Thanks Coach Weber for taking some time for our visitors!

In order to listen, all you need to do is to register for the Tool of the Day and you can do that with this link: Teleseminar Access.

The Coaching Toolbox has hundreds of free resources for basketball coaching and for basketball players.