"I
like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides
homework."
--Lily Tomlin
What's
keeping you from creating fresh practices?
As
my financial advisor always tells me, diversification is the key to a long,
prosperous, and healthy retirement. The same could be said for
diversifying your practice plans. Instead of a healthy retirement
portfolio, you get happier, healthier and more adaptable players over the
course of a long season.
I
know a lot of coaches who have Practice Plan A and Practice Plan B. Every
other day, they print out the same thing they did yesterday or the day before.
Diversifying your plans doesn't mean you can't stick to a system and have
continuity. In reality, the more different ways to teach means the more
different ways your players are learning to learn. That can't be bad.
I
had a conversation the other day with a good friend of mine who I think is one
of the top college coaches in Division III. He was explaining to me his
conference's recent discussions to allow media time-outs at all games whether
the game is being sponsored or broadcast or not. As long as the game is
being streamed over the internet, that school may insist on media time-outs.
He
and I both agreed that media time-outs at the DIII level greatly hurts a
coach's ability to control the tempo of the game. However, I explained to
him that I had a team 10 years ago who went the entire regular season without
ever having to deal with media time-outs. Sure enough, we advance to the
National Tournament that year, and we have to deal with media time-outs.
I had no idea how much those built-in breaks in the action hurt our
fast-breaking, heavy rotation system. Normally, we just ran teams off the
floor because most teams didn't play 12-15 players deep like we did.
Those built-in media breaks gave our opponent's starters all the rest they
needed, and unfortunately, it took this young knucklehead coach an entire half
to make the necessary adjustments.
So,
in short, I told my friend that the media time-outs might be a blessing in
disguise in preparing his team for the realities of the National Tournament.
What
does this have to do with diversifying your practice plans?
Everything. I love talking to DI coaches because they do not leave a
stone unturned. They prepare for every defense known to man, every
possible offensive structure and movement, every possible end-of-the-game
situation, and are constantly putting their players in a position to deal with
the stresses and complexities of playing in front of a huge crowd every
day of practice. There's no way to get all of that in two or three different
practice plans.
As
I stated above, you can have continuity in your practices and accomplish all of
this, but you must keep an open mind about your opponent, time-allotment, and
team strategy and fundamental needs. Build a weekly plan around your priority
needs and work to accomplish those priorities through different drills each
day. By simply making a list of all of the things you want your team to
learn over the course of the season, you can begin building practical
continuities into your daily practices. Once I have my list, I begin to
prioritize the most important aspects to the least important. I then try
and highlight the top 5 things I want to get done on a daily basis. Those
things become my foundation of my practice. In no particular order, these
are usually my 5 priorities:
1.
Defensive Shell Drill - I can manipulate a shell drill 50 different ways
to focus my teams energy and needs.
2.
Rebounding - I cannot preach to my kids every day the importance of
defense and rebounding if we don't do both. I have about 20
rebounding drills that we use in stations each day. 4-5 kids with a coach
at a basket working on different rebounding components/competitions.
Every 3-4 minutes rotate the groups to work with another coach.
3.
Ball-handling and passing - I make it imperative that we start every day
handling the ball and working on moving the ball up the floor with balance and
strength.
4.
Shooting - It may not seem like a lot, but I want each of my kids to get at
least 50 jumpers up within the practice drills (not counting scrimmage
shots). We use individual workouts to get a lot more up each week.
5.
Press Work - Whether my teams are pressing 40-minutes per game or only pressing
when necessary, I always like to work trapping and pressure in every day to
build up patience and composure. You can never give your kids enough
of either. I often will work end-of-game situations into our press work
to kill two birds with one stone.
You
might be wondering why offensive strategy and scrimmages are not foundation
points of my practices. In the first two months of a season, I really
only care about our ability to become better individual basketball players who
learn how to play fundamentally sound. I have a tendency to stop
scrimmages way too much to fix little things, so when we do scrimmage, I try my
darnedest to get out of the way. If my kids can dribble, pass, catch,
cut, shoot, rebound, and defend, I know we have a chance to win every
game. As the season progresses, those two hour practices laced with
fundamentals and breakdowns become hour and half practices laced with
scrimmages and situational development.
One
way or another, I want to have fun. I know the kids want to have
fun. Why not keep the practice moving and keep the practices fresh and
new?
Matt
Rogers
Twitter:
@madcoachdiary
Email:
coachrogers12@gmail.com
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