Shooting Drills

I received these shooting drills from Dennis Hutter, Head Women’s Basketball Coach at Mayville State University. His website, www.coachhutter.com . The website has more shooting, individual development workout, and leadership videos.

“Duck” Shooting Drill

Coach Hutter’s comments on the drill:

We picked this drill up from the coaches at the University of Oregon Women’s Basketball Program. This is a great shooting and competition drill for your players.

The shooter will shoot for 5:00 straight from seven different spots. Corner, Wing, Pro Spot, Top of Key, Opposite Pro Spot, Opposite Wing, Opposite Corner. Shooter starts in the corner. The goal is for the shooter to make two shots in a row, once they make two shots in a row, they advance to the next spot.

They keep working around the arc, advancing every time they make two three’s in a row. Spots “7” & “8” are both located in opposite corner and spots “14” & “15” are back at starting corner spot, and spots “21” & “22” are back in opposite corner and so on. Your score is the spot you finish up on when the 5:00 is up.

26-30 – Excellent Shooter
21-25 – Above Average Shooter
16-20 – Average Shooter

“W” Shooting Drill

Because we are a transition team, we like to use drills that involve a lot of sprinting and shooting off of the sprint, like we would in transition. With “W” shooting, we use the same seven spots as we use in “Duck Shooting” (Corner, Wing, Pro Spot, Top of Key, Opposite Pro Spot, Opposite Wing, Opposite Corner). The shooter will start in the corner. Shooter will shoot and then run and touch the half line and then advance to the next spot. Shooter will shoot a total of seven shots. Goal is for shooter to make five or more shots in 40 seconds or less.

10 in 75 Drill

Shooting Technique Thoughts & Ideas from Coach Hutter

-Quality of the jump shot comes from the feet:
-Quality = how open you are, low quality = high contested shot attempt
-“Shot first” mentality on all catches – Be an offensive threat with the ball
-Great balance on all catches, before the shot
-Balance starts with a great base of support with the feet and low center of gravity
-2 biggest keys in shooting for us is: “Get the ball up” & “Get the ball straight”
-Analyze your misses – don’t miss two shots in a row – THE SAME WAY
-NSM = Next Shot Mentality
-4 Points in the shooting technique need to start and finish in a straight line
-Shooting foot
-Shooting knee
-Elbow
-Hand/Follow Thru

-Proper consistent technique will bring about consistent results
-We want consistent shooters and that starts with having consistent technique
-Proper shooting technique starts with the feet and builds up from there
-NO FEET = NO SHOT
-You are the most open you will be when you first catch the ball
-so get ALL of your work done before you receive the ball
-Catch and shoot the ball in rhythm
-Shooting is a rhythm skill – like swinging a baseball bat – no hitches, no pauses – JUST FLUID
-Shooting the ball is one upward FLUID motion – Rhythm
-Hold a high one second follow thru on every shot
-We want quiet/quick feet on all catches – Stay light on your feet
-Make your workouts like games, so your games can be like your workouts – DEVELOP GOOD HABITS
-Every pass should hit the shooter in the hands and lead to a rhythm jump shot for us

Shooting Workout Thoughts & Ideas from Coach Hutter

-Never miss two shots in a row the same way
-Clean makes to end a drill
-makes the shooter concentrate more when they are most fatigued to complete the drill
-Use drills that involve making 2 and 3 in row – makes shooters have to focus on consistent technique
-Chart shots in individual workouts – allows players to see improvement
-also creates motivation to improve when they see improvement
-also creates competitiveness within players to achieve higher score than previous workout
-Chart shots as a team during practice and team shooting workouts – makes players focus on team more
-every shot from every player within every drill COUNTS towards team’s success
-Make shooting drills competitive during practice – Have team compete against the game as one team
-add time and score to drills to have team compete against the game
-will also make you a better passing team
-Have individual shot charts for players during practice and games, instead of team shot charts
-Categorize your shots so you can see who and how your players are getting shots

1. Lay Up
2. Post Shot/Block
3. Post Shot w/ Dribble
4. Lane Shot
5. Lane shot Off Dribble
6. Mid-Range Shot
7. Mid-Range Shot Off Dribble
8. “3”

-Inside/Out “3” is the best “3 to shoot in rhythm
-Shooter is already squared up and facing the rim – shooter does not have to fight w/ their feet
We want players to shoot 60% or better from behind the arc in drills that involve no defense

These two shooting drills are among the thousands of resources for both coaches and player available from basketballhq. They have several more videos as well as basketball coaching resource articles.

The drills are coached by Ryan Panone.

I encourage you to think about the best way to tweak the drills before you implement them so that they offer the most benefit for your players. Even as you are first implementing them, you may need to continue the process of making some adjustments so that they are contributing to the improvement of your players.

You can change the number of shots, the percentages, the spots of the shots (distance), the amount of time they have to shoot, types of shots, etc… so that the drill helps to contribute to your objectives.

If you have multiple baskets, you can make the drills into team drills by having 4 or 6 players shoot at a time.

Make sure that your speakers are on to hear the narration and that you can access You Tube to see the videos.

Click the play arrow to begin the videos.

Field Goal Percentage Shooting Drill

In my opinion, any time you keep some type of a score, it helps players to focus and also helps both you and them measure improvement.

You could let the players decide what level they will shoot for and talk to individuals about adjusting if you feel that they are not challenging themselves enough.

Stephen Curry Warmup Floater Drill

You might not want your players shooting all these shots, and you might not want all of your players shooting the same types of floaters, but his point about making sure that players who shoot floaters in games need to practice them in an equal ratio to the other shots that they practice and shoot in games, whatever you feel that ratio is.

This shooting drill is from Arkanas Women’s Coach Mike Neighbors Newsletter.

Might give you some thoughts on some ways to offer some variety in your practices.

This post was created when Coach Neighbors was at Washington.

Softball Plus One Shooting Drill

This series is more about the application than the actions. You need to make the actions fit your offense.

I will give you one example that we use in each round, but the magic is in making them breakdown your offensive actions and simulate your games.

Diagrams created with FastDraw

The first round is called SINGLES…. Thus the softball/baseball reference…

SINGLES refers to single made shot. We will set the number at how many players we have. So, everybody makes ONE shot in this round before we move to the next INNING.

In the above example, we break down our Dribble Drive Motion.

Our 1 player will ‘rack it lane’ for a game speed, game finish basket. After our 1’s get their SINGLE. The 1 will ‘drop 4’ to our post players for a game speed/game finish basket for their single. When all 11 players have a SINGLE, we move to the next inning.

Over the course of the year, we will change the actions to simulate the game we have ahead of us, work on areas we have been deficient in, or even introduce new concepts to our of-fense. We do inbounds actions, sidleline actions, and other special situations as well.

The second inning progresses to DOUBLES… now we introduce a second shot. The players must each make a game speed/game finish shot to complete the DOUBLE.

You can vary the number of DOUBLES needed to advance to the next inning as you see fit but we usually do 5-10.

This round brings in the element of timing and spacing and passing so that the two shots don’t interfere with each other around the rim.

Keeping with our Dribble Drive stuff, we would have the 1 rack it and finish and the 4 player fill behind to “make 2” get the rebound of a made shot to simulate an offensive rebound.

We would also have the 1 “drop 4” for the first make, then the 1 would fill to arc for a kick out pass and a 3 point shot to complete the double. We could easily run drags or open windows as well to simulate other dribble drive actions. Can also use this in a guard forward breakdown and just do actions for each position.

We will also had a penalty in this round. Any action that ends with ZERO makes is a Strikeout and takes one away from our total toward our goal. So, if our goal is 10 doubles and we have 5 at this point. The group goes and misses both shots, we are back to 4.

We also progress as the year goes on to have the players pass rather than the coaches so we can work on that skill as well.

We move to the third inning… now we need TRIPLES!!

Obviously adding shot attempts make it more difficult so you can vary the number necessary to advance as you see fit for your team and your situation…

This is also where you can begin to use your players to make the “extra” passes so that they can work on passing as well as understanding the timing so that balls aren’t all hitting basket at once. Learned this one from experience… they will understand timing/spacing better if you let them “figure it out” and “fix it”.

In our Dribble Drive example above. 1 would “rack it” and drop 4… 4 finishes. 3 rises to open window and receives pass from extra passer for 2nd shot. 1 continues to her fill spot and gets third shot from a pass from 4 player who has rebounded her own make.

Just like in softball/baseball TRIPLES are a little harder.

At this stage you begin to add a little bit of pressure on that last make. We always like this shot to be a three pointer or a hard drive pull up jumper. Keep mixing it up on people. I begin charting this in my head too. You’d be surprised how many years your teams BEST shooter isn’t your most CLUTCH shooter!!!

It gets real in the fourth inning… now you need HOMERUNs aka… Four makes in the breakdown sequence. The last shot adds some pressure and you can also begin to point out after the last person makes a few when earlier shots have missed, that ALL the shots are big and you NEVER no which one is the game winner… Shot value same in first quarter as it is in the 4th quarter…

Dribble Drive is easy to continue adding actions and is main reason I love this offense so much. It’s able to be broken down into simple actions that repeat and are hard to guard.

All the actions above are the same but we add the 2 player “locked” in the corner. We might also have the 3 player one dribble drive for a floater or mid range J rather than catch and shoot a three. You could also make your layup in the sequence be a Drop 2 back door cut and have the 1 player FILL to that corner for her shot.

The options really are boundless.

We usually try to get 5-7 Home Runs before getting to final stage!!!

This Plus One is the BALLGAME stage… since basketball uses five players on the court, we had to abandon our softball/baseball analogy… the PLUS ONE shot is the BALLGAME.

You will find your players yelling Dubs, Trips, HOMERUN after the earlier stages are completed… after this one they yell BALLGAME.

The last shot on this one truly will have GAME WINNER feel.

Five shots…five makes!!!
We usually only do ONE of these…

In above diagram, we simply add the 5 “drag(on)” screen for a 3.

You can also do this drill for a timed period. Sometimes we will put 10:00 on the clock and see how many innings we can complete. This puts some focus on operating under time but staying within yourself.

If you come up with ways to tweak this other than simply changing the shot sequence, let me know. We are always looking for ways to improve it.

This drill is with North Florida Coach Men’s Coach Matthew Driscoll.

The drill is to work on side dribble 3 point shots.

You can run it with a group of shooters or an individual workout.

The shooters shoot from 5 spots.

If you miss 2 in a row, you have to start over.

There is sound with these videos, so please make sure that your sound is on.

The videos are You Tube videos, so you will need to be able to access that site.

Click the play arrow to play the video with the drill.

Coach Driscoll’s Teaching Points are:

1) Use a hard pound dribble to take you into the shot
2) Use 1-2 footwork rather than hop into the shot
3) Use 5 spots, but shooters can dribble either direction.

Give players solutions to the problems they encounter in games.

If you are interested in learning more about the Coaching DVD that this drill came from, you can click the following link: Competitive Shooting Drills for Basketball Practice