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ARTICLE: Women’s college athletes don’t need another coddling parent. They need a coach.
This article touches on one of the real challenges in coaching. How can coaches demand respect and accountability, when that environment is not mirrored in the world around the athletes? How does a coach establish reality, without damaging feelings? Here are some interesting numbers from the article.
“According to a 2016 NCAA survey, 76 percent of all Division I female athletes said they would like to go home to their moms and dads more often, and 64 percent said they communicate with their parents at least once a day, a number that rises to 73 percent among women’s basketball players. And nearly a third reported feeling overwhelmed.”
“At the same time, accompanying this anxiety, iGens have unrealistic expectations and exaggerated opinions of themselves. Nearly 60 percent of high school students say they expect to get a graduate degree — when just 9 to 10 percent actually will. And 47 percent of Division I women’s basketball players think it’s at least “somewhat likely” they will play professional or Olympic ball, but the reality? The WNBA drafts just 36 players, 0.9 percent.”
This is a fantastic article, which references this Geno Auriemma video, and also how Pat Summit would fit into modern day coaching.
CLICK HERE for the full article
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Instantly Improve Your Offense
Every off-season, coaches spent countless hours researching and studying different ways to improve. Too often, this leads to coaches completely hitting the reset button on their program’s offensive plans. Here are a few simple ways to instantly improve your offense!
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Offense starts the moment your team gains possession. TEACH the game this way.
- When teaching our half court offense, we stress things like spacing, player movement, ball movement, and we provide structure to help players read the game. Why not teach transition the same way?
- SPACING | There two ways to stretch the defense. Vertically and horizontally. If we can get multiple bodies in front of the ball, we will stretch the defense vertically. If we can get our wings to run wide, we are now stretching the defense horizontally. This should be an instant reaction, the moment your team gains possession of the ball.
- PLAYER MOVEMENT | Win the first three steps! If your players will sprint the first three steps, you will get players in front of the ball. When you throw the ball ahead, have you taught your team how and where to space around the ball? Do wings run to the corner and spot up or bounce off of the baseline and lift to free throw line extended? Transition offense includes player movement and should be taught.
- BALL MOVEMENT | One of our favorite phrases is that we want “two early shares” in transition. If we can get two direct passes in transition, we are likely to have tremendous flow and rhythm on that offensive possession.
- PROVIDING STRUCTURE | We want to provide spacing rules, simple secondary actions, and then teach our kids to flow seamlessly into our half court offense.
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REMOVE “set it up” from your vocabulary
- One of the most under taught parts of an offensive attack is “FLOW.”
- Teaching FLOW requires a coach to get creative in practice, abandon static starting points, and requires teaching players HOW TO PLAY.
- The benefit is that the defense is unable to use the “setup time,” to also get themselves organized.
- One of the most under taught parts of an offensive attack is “FLOW.”
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Create an ATTACKING mentality, with an understanding of IF/THEN responses.
- The easiest way to create an attacking mentality in your players is to view mistakes in practice as teachable moments.
- The best teams are confidently attacking, as opposed to having “paralysis by analysis.” In simple terms, they are too busy playing basketball, to stop and think about what is next.
- If you can create aggressive basketball players, you will see improvements in your offense.
- To learn more about IF/THEN responses, check out THIS BLOG POST.
Lastly, what does this look like? Here is a video of our team putting these three simple concepts on display.
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ARTICLE: Basketball coaches are a society of borrowers
The article by Dan Shaughnessy, “Basketball coaches are a society of borrowers,” talks about how coaches are constantly sharing and borrowing to make each other better. Here are my two favorite quotes from Brad Stevens:
“And I’ve always thought — and I got this from my boss at Butler — there’s not a monopoly of great coaches at any one level. It’s all over the map. I think that’s one of our responsibilities in coaching is to open our doors if people are interested in watching and talking about any of that stuff.’’
“I spend my whole offseason going to clinics,’’ the Celtics coach added. “Even when we plan something as a family on vacation, I try to figure out where coaches are in that area and go and stop by and pick their brains on what they are doing.”
The last sentence of the article sums it up:
The good coaches are the ones who never think they have the whole thing figured out.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE