33 Shooting Drill

By Brian Williams on December 9, 2018

This drill is from Mike Neighbors, Arkansas Women’s Basketball Coach. The drill is available on the Arkansas Women’s Basketball You Tube Channel

This shooting drill is designed to create some chaos in practice to lead to calmness in games.

Like all drills that you see other programs use, you can either modify it or take parts of the drill for your use and your needs.

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

Click the play arrow so see the drill.

The drill is a You Tube video, so you will need to be on a server that allows you to access You Tube to see the drill.

Iowa State Zone Stack

By Brian Williams on December 5, 2018

This man to man ball screen action was posted to the FastModel Sports Basketball Plays and Drills Library by Dave Nedbalek from the University of Texas at Tyler Men’s Basketball Program

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

These were Coach Nedbalek’s comments on the play:

This is a great set to overload the defense.

We teach our guys daily to create triangles against the zone.

This set puts the defense in a bind of who to guard.

There is a short video after the diagrams.

Three Reasons Every Coach Needs a Mentor

By Brian Williams on November 29, 2018

Submitted by Dr. Cory Dobbs of The Academy for Sport Leadership. Dr. Dobbs is a regular contributor on coaching for leadership to The Coaching Toolbox.

Three Reasons Every Coach Needs a Mentor

Most coaches enter the profession with a vision on building a career. Simply stated, anyone who is building a career will need help along the way. Experienced coaches, current and former, can serve effectively as mentors. But a mentor needn’t be an ex-coach. Sometimes the ex-coach as mentor can undermine growth and development by spending too much time on “this is how I handled it.” All coaches can benefit from the wisdom and insight of others. The energy and growth from relevant learning interactions can be a career game-changer. Here are three important contributions that mentor relationships can provide:

REFLECTION
Learning from others further down the career road can be intimidating at first. Yet, what feels like a big deal initially, may not be a big deal in the larger scheme of things. It’s important to know what to sweat and what to forget–when it’s okay to let something roll off your back and when you should stop and reflect more deeply. Great mentors have a better view of the broad landscape. Effective mentors excel at asking questions, specifically the types of questions that lead you to reflect on your performance, behavior, and goals as well has how to learn from your mistakes and successes.
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PERSPECTIVE.
Mentors can help you make sense of your current situation; the small things as well as developing expertise from your experiences. They don’t tell you what to do. Instead they use questions to teach you how to think constructively on your own. In the process, they help you realign your perspective with the reality of the situation, to provide you the smoothest, most natural path forward in a way that is authentic to who you are.

ENCOURAGEMENT
There is an old saying that “nothing succeeds like success.” This means success bread success, that you have a better chance of being successful if you’re successful. This is only partly true. We may gain confidence from our successes, but it’s our failures that develop our leadership muscle and offer the most powerful insights. When you are expected to learn from your mistakes, it’s important to be able to view that process in a positive light–to see how valuable and rich hard-won lessons can be. Every coach needs positive energy to move forward in their career. An effective mentor will help you build self-confidence step-by-step, through victory and defeat, success and failure, and all the challenges that emerge along your coaching journey.

Dr. Cory Dobbs is an accomplished researcher of human performance–a relentless investigator of team building and leadership behavior. A skilled researcher, Cory actively engages the process of naturalistic inquiry seeking in-depth understanding of social phenomena such as leadership and team building in their natural setting. A “teamologist,” Dr. Dobbs is an author, speaker, teacher, trainer and a consultant.

Cory is the Founder & President of The Academy for Sport Leadership. A former basketball coach, Cory’s coaching background includes experience at the NCAA DII, NJCAA, and high school levels of competition. Cory has worked with collegiate athletic programs and high schools teaching leadership and team building as a part of the sports experience and education process.

“Tell me and I’ll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will care.” -Your Student-Athlete The world of coaching is changing. In Coaching for Leadership you’ll discover the foundations for designing, building, and sustaining a leadership focused culture for building a high-performance team. To find out more about and order Sport Leadership Books authored by Dr. Dobbs including Coaching for Leadership, click this link: The Academy for Sport Leadership Books

Gonzaga Floppy Circle Hit

By Brian Williams on November 27, 2018

This man to man ball screen action was posted to the FastModel Sports Basketball Plays and Drills Library by Dave Nedbalek from the University of Texas at Tyler Men’s Basketball Program

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

These were Coach Nedbalek’s comments on the play:

This is an incredibly hard set to guard.

Great action leading to an empty middle ball screen and if 1’s defender is tagging the pick and roll like he should be, 1 will either be open on the throwback or 5 will be wide open at the rim.

See the video below.

Highly recommend watching Coach Few’s teams play with scratch paper handy or FastDraw open!

5 and 4 set a stagger screen for 2 who cuts up to the slot.

1 dribbles to the wing.

4 cuts to the opposite corner.

1 passes to 2.

5 sprints into a ball screen and roll with 2.

2, 3, 4 3 Point Shooting Drills

By Brian Williams on November 26, 2018

Today’s post is a 3 point shooting drill.

The video of this drill is hosted on You Tube and features Coach Jeff Young of Walsh University.

You will need to be on a network that allows you to access You Tube.

Click the play arrow to view the video.

There is narration with the video, so please make sure that your sound is on.

You can make adjustments to the drill to fit your needs.

For example, you might want to adjust the number of makes required to move to the next spot to one that fits your coaching level and still challenges your players.

You can find out more about the Championship Productions video that this clip is from at this link:
Jeff Young: Improving Your Team’s 3-Point Shooting

4 Reminders to Increase Your Mental Toughness

By Brian Williams on November 17, 2018

Submitted By Dr. Rob Bell

Dr. Bell is a Mental Toughness Coach and Certified Consultant of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. He consults with hundreds of athletes, coaches, and teams and has served as the mental coach for PGA tour winners, USTA Champion, and Olympic Medalists. He is also the author of several mental toughness books. For more information about Dr. Bell and his services visit Dr.Rob Bell

Dr. Bell has developed “Play on Training” to improve the mental toughness for your players. You can find out information about the program by clicking here.

We have more knowledge today literally at our fingertips than ever before. We do not need to search our minds for an answer, or even ask our friends, it’s right there on our phone.

Knowledge is not the problem.

We know how and what to eat to be healthy, but we still have an obesity epidemic.

We know the benefits of exercise and movement, but heart disease is still at an all-time high.

It’s not for a lack of knowledge.

We just choose the easier route. It’s easier to have the milkshake than it is to be in the salad bar line. It’s easier to NOT workout than it is to hit up that spin class.

In our own performance, we know what we NEED to do to become our best. We can’t claim that we don’t know what we don’t know.

Knowledge won’t increase your mental toughness.

Wisdom is what increases our mental toughness and the only way to get wisdom is through experience. That’s why mental toughness is caught more than it is taught.
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Experience is built upon action, living, taking part, and being in the game. Once we experience overcoming adversity, we can rely on our life reminders.

If we don’t hold up mental toughness and continuous improvement as a priority and to be the BEST at getting BETTER than it doesn’t happen. It’s not a priority.

Here are 4 reminders to increase your mental toughness
1. Gratitude
2. Just one more
3. Faith
4. Be in the moment

Gratitude
I don’t believe in an attitude of gratitude, it’s an action of gratitude.

Gratitude is a muscle.

We need to take certain steps to exercise our gratitude! I once fell off an 80-foot cliff and I am thankful every day that I am still able-bodied!

It’s tough to be hateful and grateful at the same time.

Once we start counting all that we are thankful for, it gets tough to stop. We all have tough patches in life and we all go through slumps. That’s life.

Then, we see a child who has to receive weekly cancer treatments or someone who just had a life altering injury and can no longer walk.

When we are in that space of thankfulness, perspective, and positivity, we share it with others.

Just One More
When people look for “the secret” or the magic bullet, there really isn’t one. But, there is one technique that comes close to build your grit.

It’s called just one more.

Here’s how it works:

Whatever we are doing, we all reach that finish point. This strategy plays when we reach the end of our day, the finish of our workout, or even the completion of a task.

When we reach that point where we are “done”, then we need to push ourselves to just do one more. Write one more paragraph, make one more call, do one more rep, or one more sprint.

It will increase your mental toughness because “just one more” is how we push ourselves past our current limits and it guarantees that we finish every task strong!

Faith
There is an illusion of control in all of our lives. We think we have more control than we actually do.

The individuals on earth who actually have a precise idea about our own lack of control are in fact institutionalized. The illusion of control provides us an elixir that enables us to operate. If we thought about how little control we actually had, it would consume us, much like those souls in institutions.

Ahh, and that is what happens. We focus on things that are out of our control.

We think about other people who drag us down and we get sad. We think about our current circumstance or issue and get upset. Or we get bogged down in all of the things that we need to do.

We are the actor in our own play, but we are not the director. There are too many external variables in life and our performance that we have absolutely no control over.

Faith is what we need to overcome the temporary setbacks and defeats and negativity. Faith is the belief that “it” will work out. I can’t overextend my energy or force myself to make “it” happen, I just have to have faith and believe.

Besides, we don’t need to work harder, we just need to believe more!

Faith = Flow

When we have faith that we will be successful, we relax. When we know and have trust that our needs will be met, we relax. And when we are at ease and relaxed, we only focus on what’s in our control. Faith gets into the state of flow.

Lastly, I believe that there is a God and I know that I’m not it.

It makes no difference to me what your higher power is, because the example we set is louder than the words we speak. My own faith rests in Christianity and the grace that God and Jesus Christ promises us. That’s my faith.

And faith isn’t really faith until it’s all you’ve got.

Be in the moment
The sexy term is “mindfulness” which is just the buzzword for being in the moment.

Question for you: When you are truly in the moment, how miserable can you actually be?

All of our fear and anxiety is because we are thinking about the future or we are still rooted in the past. That which we fear is next month, next week, tomorrow, or even later today, it is NOT right now!

When we remind ourselves to focus on this moment, this breath, and just for today, we are being mindful.

In order to increase your mental toughness, we need to focus on the now. That’s it, this breath!

We can’t read the directions and expect a cake to appear.

These four reminders to boost your grit are action items. They must be exercised before adversity strikes during times of struggle and after coming out of hardships. Return to the simple tasks and exercise these four reminders…

Dr. Bell has developed “Play on Training” to improve the mental toughness for your players. You can find out information about the program by clicking here.