Coaching Basketball: Increasing Focus and Motivation

By Brian Williams on August 12, 2015

These are some of the notes presented at a PGC/Glazier Basketball coaching Clinic.

Secrets to Getting Your Players Minds Right and Motivation

Speaker Scott Savor (Owner/President Secrets in Sports)

Don’t separate the mind from the body
What is going on in your mind is a big deal.
Play present: Where are you? (I’m here) What time is it? (It’s now)

Challenge yourself every day not to be boring to your players!
A coach must be an introvert and an extrovert and know when each is required
When a player or coach doubles their volume, they double their value
“How dare you not change when the environment demands it.” Nelson Mandela

In 2009, the average teenage attention span was 12 seconds, not it is 8 seconds
Catch a players’ eye and command their ears

When a coach or a player messes up:

1) Forget fears and feeling and redirect energy
2) Focus on what is in front of your face
3) Do the next best thing

Demand that players with their eyes and toes (10 toes to the speaker), as well as their ears
We teach what we do, but we reproduce who we are

In 2014 the number one lack of motivation for players was lack of interest or boredom

Consider providing some autonomy at times (not all the time) such as “What drill do you want to do next?”

At the end of practice, ask for requests for a drill or two for tomorrow’s practice

Find ways to measure mastery so that players can see their improvement.

Help players understand the purpose in what you are doing.

Use countdowns such as “30 seconds left in the drill!” or counting backwards on a set number of executions in a drill (example: defense needs to get 7 rebounds to complete the drill, “6 more” after the first rebound). It helps maintain focus. Can’t use this all the time, but use it once or twice a practice. Come up with other ways to use counting backwards in your drills.

Use the Edison rule: “Make all plans and problems public.”

Give reminders to each other of what cannot be forgotten or overlooked. It’s not always what you don’t know yet, but the important things you have forgotten that holds you back.

Here are some more of Scott’s thoughts on coaching

Look at your program, at your practice, your games from both the balcony and the floor at once.

Helping players play present: Where are we? “Here” What time is it? “Now”

When a mistake is made, forget feelings and fears and redirect your energy. Focus on what is in front of your face and do the next best thing.

Basketball Plays: Box and 1 “Gut”

By Brian Williams on August 10, 2015

These ideas for a quick hitter and a counter to run against a Box and 1 Combination Defense came from the FastModel Sports Basketball Plays and Drills Library.

You can also find out more about FastModel Play Diagramming software by clicking this link: FastDraw

“Gut” looks to get the ball inside against a box and 1 defense.

Contributed by Rory Hamilton, Norman North High School

Gut Box and 1 Quick Hitter

The play starts by the point guard passing a guard on the right-wing. The guarded player then goes to opposite elbow area while a pass to the corner is designed to bring the bottom player of the zone out away from the block.

After passing to the corner the guard cuts hard looking for a quick give and go and one the point guards catch screens the weak side of the zone bringing the 4 man right into the gut of the zone for a quick pass. After setting a screen the guard will then receive a screen by the post player creating some misdirection and difficulty for the defense.

Gut is designed to take advantage of the bottom two players in a box and one.

It is initiated with a pass to the wing player.

Offensive player #3 is the player being guarded man to man.

The guarded player then cuts to the opposite elbow while the ball side guard passes to corner/Short corner area.

2 man immediately cuts to the hoop looking for a quick give & go and 1 man fills across.

2 player finishes cut and screens weakside box defender bringing 4 player to “gut” of the zone while 1 man takes a misdirection dribble towards top of zone.

5 man then screens in bottom zone defender and 2 comes off baseline screen.

Gut “Again” Counter

The counter off of “gut” is “gut again” where we use the same action as before but we are now trying to screen the bottom two defenders in the box allowing our 5 man to catch again in the gut of the zone.

Coaching Basketball: Mike Neighbors Team Building Notes

By Brian Williams on August 5, 2015

Mike Neighbors, Women’s Coach at Arkansas, is one of the best coaches around to learn from. He sends out a weekly basketball coaching newsletter. If you are interested in being added to his list, let me know and I will pass along your email address

These are some notes on team building from a presentation he made entitled “The Top 25 Things I have Stolen.”

I have included a link to a pdf of his entire list at the bottom of this post if you are interested.

Probably most of these concepts you already know, but if you’re like me, it helps to continually read, revisit, and review the things I believe to keep me focused on them as opposed to focusing on the urgent items that come across our desk every day. I also think that they are worth considering sharing with your team.

ATTITUDE IS THE DIFFERENCE MAKER Janet Wood, John C. Maxwell

ATTITUDE is NOT everything. A great ATTITUDE does NOT mean we will be successful at whatever we dream.

There are things our ATTITUDE can do and things it can not do.

<br />

CANNOT DO:
1) Your attitude cannot substitute for competence
2) Your attitude cannot substitute for experience
3) Your attitude cannot change the facts
4) Your attitude cannot substitute for personal growth
5) Your attitude will not stay good automatically

CAN DO:
1) Your attitude can make a difference in your approach to life
2) Your attitude can make a difference in your relationships with people
3) Your attitude can make a difference in how you face challenges
4) Your attitude can make a difference

THE BIG 5 ATTITUDE OBSTACLES:
1. Discouragement: Are you a splatter or a bouncer?
2. Change: AM/FM, cassette deck, cd player, IPOD jack
3. Problems: flee it, forget it, fight it, face it
4. Fear: breeds fear, causes inaction, weakens us, wastes energy, inhibits potential
5. Failure: wills/won’ts/cants

85% Rule –Ronnie Tollet, Jeff Jannsen

Jeff Janssen is widely considered the world’s top expert on sports leadership. He helps coaches and athletes become world class leaders in athletics, academics, and life. He is the chief architect and lead instructor for cutting edge Leadership Academies at North Carolina, Stanford, Yale, and PITT. As the founder of Janssen Sports Leadership Center, Janssen associates are highly sought after speakers at many of the nation’s top athletic departments including UCLA, Michigan,Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Florida State, LSU, Arizona, and Xavier.

Jeff has lots of great thoughts, ideas, and exercises on developing leadership. In his travels he gets to visit face-to-face with the winningest coaches in sports. He is afforded the opportunity to pick the brains of the coaches and the players. His research is cutting edge. His access to these programs has produced some of the most useable data in existence.

His COMMITMENT CONTINUUM is the one that struck home the hardest with me because of an exercise he did with all of our programs. He asked each coach to list their team roster. Beside each player we were asked to label each player in one of the following categories:

Resistant: complain about coaches, teammates, workouts, conditioning team rules, pull against the goals of team
Reluctant: half effort, wait and see attitude, skeptical, hesitantly do what is asked, not bought in totally
Existent: are there in body but not in mind or spirit, show up but give little, apathetic toward team, go through motions
Compliant: will do what is asked by coaches and leaders, do just enough to get by, have to be pushed to start
Committed: go the extra mile, self motivated, take initiative, will do right even when you aren’t watching
Compelled: higher standard people, no matter the adversity they are there 100%, prepare, train and compete at highest level

<br />

After we labeled each player, we were asked to determine what % of our team were on the proper side of the continuum. He then walked around the room looking at the results and correctly predicted every team’s season results. He could tell so many things from this one exercise. But the main thing that stuck with me was that in all of his research NO TEAM HAS EVER WON A CHAMPIONSHIP WITHOUT 85% of the players being Compliant, Committed or Compelled.

Never!!! That’s some useable stuff. His book, The Team Captain’s Leadership Manual
speaks of how to move players from level to level and strategies for dealing with situations that really effect your team and your efforts.

Download the entire Mike Neighbors “Top 25 Things I Have Stolen“

Basketball Drills 3 in a Row Toughness Shooting

By Brian Williams on August 4, 2015

This toughness shooting drill called “3 in a Row” is among the resources for both coaches and player available from basketballhq. They have several more videos as well as basketball coaching resource articles.

The drill can be modified to fit your needs and used during your fall skill development workouts or can be used in practices this coming season as well.

Please make sure your sound is on to see the video.

Click the play arrow to see the drill. The drill is a YouTube video, so you will need to be able to access YouTube to see the drill.

The Coach in the video is Russ Willemsen from the South Alabama men’s staff. Coach Willemsen saw Vanderbilt Men’s Coach Kevin Stallings use the drill.

To score a point in the drill, the player must make 3 in a row from one spot. The goal of the drill is to score as many points as possible in 5 minutes. Since the video is a demonstration, the shooter only shoots for 2 minutes.

The player is allowed to select the spots where they shoot from. You can decide whether you want to allow them to shoot more than once from a spot where they have already scored a point from.

If you run the drill for 5 minutes, there certainly is an aspect of mental toughness as players need to fight through consecutive misses or missing on the 3rd shot.

3 In a Row Shooting Drill

Under Triangle and Two Attack

By Brian Williams on August 3, 2015

This idea for a quick hitter came from the FastModel Sports Basketball Plays and Drills Library.

You can also find out more about FastModel Play Diagramming software by clicking this link: FastDraw

“Under” looks to give you several different scoring options out of one play against a triangle and 2 defense.

The initial alignment is a 1-4 high with one of your guarded players at the point and the other at either the left or right-wing.

Contributed by Rory Hamilton, Norman North High School

Under Triangle and Two Attack

1-4 High Alignment with point and wing player guarded man to man.

The play starts with a pass to the high post player on the same side as the other player being guarded man to man.

The post catches and faces while strong side elbow and wing player set a double flare screen for the point guard for a potential quick shot.

After setting the screen the 3 man dives to block for a potential post pass if X5 defender helps on the flare screen.

On the weak side the 2 and 4 are getting ready to set a baseline double screen.

After 3 cuts to the block, the 5 man sets PNR with the 1 man and looks to short roll.

The point looks to hit 3 man coming off the weak side double screen.

After setting the double screen, the 4 man steps up to mid-post area and 2 man continues to screen low defender of the triangle to bring 5 man right “under” the basket for a score.

Basketball Drills: 3 Defensive Drills

By Brian Williams on July 31, 2015

These 3 defensive drills are from Matt Monroe’s Hoops Roundtable site.

He posts a new article daily and has a lot of really good articles that he has written as well as contributions from several other coaches.

Use these drills as ideas for improving the drills you use to teach and reinforce your defensive concepts and principles.

Diagrams created with FastDraw

Defensive Drift Drill

#1 passes the ball to #2 and closes out

#2 passes the ball to #3

#1 sprints to the denial area

#3 passes the ball to #4 #1 sprints to help

#4 drives and #1 sprints to take a charge

3 on 3 Sprint to Help Closeouts

In my opinion, anything you can use to teach “Sprint to Help.” “Run when the pass is in the air,” and “Get there before the ball does” is a great drill for your defense.