Team Free Throw Shooting Game

Mike Neighbors, Women’s Coach at Arkansas (Previously at Washington) is one of the best coaches around to learn from.  Hopefully you were able to see his 2016 Women’s Final Four team play, or see him at a clinic, or both.

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. His newsletter is on hold at this time while he is transitioning jobs.

The name of this Free Throw Shooting Game/Drill is “What’s Up?”

What’s Up Team Free Throw Shooting Game

Editor’s Note from Brian: The object of the game is, like golf, for the shooters to accumulate as few “Up Points” as possible.

This description was provided by Coach Neighbors

As a result of having a larger team than we have had the last few years, we have had to become a little more creative in our use of space/goals/time.

This seems to be most true in how we use our time with free throw practice. This is one we came up with this week. It’s a morph of several other shooting drills we have utilized in the past.

All six goals. Each goal being scored individually.

Shooter will attempt two shots then rotate to the next goal.

If the shot is made…it puts 1 point up.

If the second shot is made… that would increase the UP total to 2. The score at that goal continues to rise every made shot as the various players are rotating through.

When a shot is missed, the player who misses GETS THE NUMBER THAT is UP added to their score.

You have scores building at each goal as the players rotate through. We rotate rebounder to shooter, shooter to next goal so that the UP count can be relayed.

As you do this a few times you will see that your “smart’ kids will learn NOT to follow the best FT shooters, so it will be up to you to place shooters accordingly.

We keep a running total score for the week/year so that we can strategically order the shooters to best keep it competitive for all!!

The first time we did it, we did for 10:00 total. Once the time expired, we kept each goal going until there was a miss at all of them and all the total UP points went to someone. That keeps all players rotating around one goal until there is a miss. Creates one last chance to hang a big number on someone.

So far this drill has been able to create some pressure situations and also give us best possible use of our free throw time. We also use this as water break and a catch breath time before we head into most physically and/or mentally challenging part of practice.