Stanley Johnson and Jerian Grant Workouts

Here are a couple of workouts that I've watched this morning.  Stanley Johnson of Arizona in a pre-draft workout:

Jerian Grant out out of Notre Dame:

What I've noticed about their workouts is the simplicity of it all and the number shots that they get up and make.  Two of the most important skills in basketball are (1) being able to get wherever you want tot get on the court and (2) being able to make shots when you get there.

Draymond Green | Every Team Needs A Guys Like Him

Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors is the type of selfless, tough, warrior that every coach wants on their team.  

This video, taken from ESPN's pregame telecast of their game 4 match-up against the Houston Rockets does a good job of telling what kind of player, and person, Green is.

Shaka Smart Comes to Texas

I know I’m as excited as anybody to have Shaka Smart as a basketball coach in Texas.  The energy and enthusiasm that he will bring to the program is going to be great for the sport across the state.  He will do a great job of recruiting and he has shown the ability to get the most out of his players.  Plus, the style that they are going to play will be very exciting!

The video below just gets me going.  He has a few teaching points that you can hear that are really good, a couple of statements that he makes about how they will play and the mentality that he is trying to build, and there are some good drills and ideas there as well.

Phil Jackson | Circle Of Love

Below are quotes are taking from the first chapter of Phil Jackson’s book, 11 Rings.  The first chapter is titled ‘Circle of Love’ and it talks a lot of the importance of getting your team to work together and form a real ‘brotherhood.’

He talks about the importance of ‘the ring’ in sports and how the ring symbolizes the quest of the self to find harmony, connection, and wholeness.  He also said that players understood intuitively the deeper meaning of the ring. 

The Ring

His 2001 - 2002 Championship Laker team took on the motto ‘The Ring.’  He said that it was not just a band of gold, but that it’s the circle that’s made a bond between all the players.  A great love for one another.  A Circle of Love.

The Most Important Ingredient

It takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and, of course, luck. But if a team doesn’t have the most essential ingredient—love—none of those other factors matter.

 The Culture

Building that kind of consciousness doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years of nurturing to get young athletes to step outside their egos and fully engage in a group experience. The NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.

Something Greater Than Themselves

Some coaches are obsessed with winning trophies; others like to see their faces on TV.  What moves me is watching young men bond together and tap into the magic that arises when they focus - with their whole heart and soul - on something greater than themselves.  Once you've experienced that, it's something you never forget.

The 5 Stages of Tribal Development (Tribal Leadership)

Stage 1 - General idea that 'life sucks.'  A general despair and hopelessness that is shared by street gangs.

Stage 2 - A general apathy for life.  Not so much 'life sucks' as it is that 'my life sucks.'

Stage 3 - Driven by individual pride - "I'm great and you aren't.'  'Lone warriors' will work hard to outwork their opponents, but it’s for individual gain and recognition.

Stage 4 – Driven by team pride - "We’re great and they aren't.'  

Stage 5 - —a rare stage characterized by a sense of innocent wonder and the strong belief that ‘life is great.’

Focusing on the ‘team’ more than the X’s and O’s

Most coaches I know spend a lot of time focusing on X ’s and O ’s. I must admit that at times I’ve fallen in that trap myself. But what fascinates most people about sports is not the endless chatter about strategy that fills the airwaves. It’s what I like to call the spiritual nature of the game. I can’t pretend to be an expert in leadership theory. But what I do know is that the art of transforming a group of young, ambitious individuals into an integrated championship team is not a mechanistic process. It’s a mysterious juggling act that requires not only a thorough knowledge of the time-honored laws of the game but also an open heart, a clear mind, and a deep curiosity about the ways of the human spirit.

What’s Your Paint Game?

Barkley talks about the importance of getting paint touches.

The following post was borrowed from Bob Starkey at HoopThoughts.Blogspot.com

For the large majority of us, we are well into the beginning of the off-season.  A major part of the off-season for the best of coaches is a thorough review of their system of play.  As I view the NBA plays-offs, my question to us is this: WHAT'S YOUR PAINT GAME?

I'm a strong believer that championships are won in the paint.  This speaks to both offensive and defensive philosophies.

In 2011, the Miami Heat lost in six games to the Dallas Mavericks.  The Mavs dominated the paint and the Heat settled for jump shots far too many times.  In that off-season, LeBron James called up Hakeem Olajuwon and asked him if he would work with him that summer on his paint game.  You have to give great credit to LJ for first recognizing what he need to work on to improve his game and then for not hesitating to ask for help -- those are the two marks of a great player.

Too many coaches think that a "Paint Game" means isolating a  big post on the block and working the ball inside.  And if you have a big that certainly is a good thing to do.  But just because you don't have a big doesn't mean you don't have a paint game.  Here are some  ways to get the ball to the paint:

1. Low Post Play: develop your post players -- regardless of size -- to post, seal, move without the ball and to finish.

2. Transition Offense: beat the defense to the paint before they get there.

3. Dribble Penetration: being able to put the ball on the floor and drive it to the paint has become increasingly popular with so many teams utilizing the Dribble Drive Offense.

4. Flash Game: flash players into the paint for a touch...this can be post players or perimeter players.

5. Post Up Guards: you may not have a big but if your posts can step away and shoot you can post up your guards inside.

6. Offensive Rebounding: working and emphasizing offensive rebounding above and beyond what other teams might do is another way to create a paint game.

We are not suggesting that you abandon your offensive system but having a paint game allows you a chance to score and draw fouls on the opposition when the mid-range or 3-point shooting has gone cold.  Some people point to the fact that Duke and Mike Kryzewski has become great proponents of the 3-point shot.  Watch how many of them come off of a paint touch -- either dribble penetration or post feed to a fan pass.  The "Paint Touch 3" is a great way of setting up a good three point shooter while still pressuring the defense to play interior defense.

Part of having a solid paint game on offense is understanding defenses and how they are played today.  We all know the Chuck Daly mantra of "Spacing if offense and offense is spacing."  Well, the same can be true of defense.  While offense is looking to spread the defense, defenses are now looking to shrink the floor -- getting and sitting in gaps.

Even the best low post players have a difficult time of getting a good look off of the same side entry pass in offensive play.  Two keys that will be beneficial include:

1. Reversing the basketball.  While at LSU, with Sylvia Fowles dominating the inside, we would tell her to start opposite the ball in our motion offense and reverse the ball to her side forcing the defense to go from help to ball and ball to help.

2. Occupy the helpside.  Movement away from where you want to enter the paint with the ball is critical.  Making defenders guard two things at once will help you to get the ball to the paint more efficiently.  Another one of our basic concepts is for players to "cut to create help."  If we are cutting hard and correctly, we have a chance to draw a helpside defender which creates more space for drives or post feeds.

Kerr To Curry | "Stop Trying To Do It By Yourself"

In an article posted at at Yahoo by Adrian Wojnarowski, head coach Steve Kerr talks about Steph Curry's need to allow the game to come to him.  He said that Curry sometimes wants to win so bad that he tries to do too much.

The desire to win sometimes conflicts with knowing how to win, especially for our best players.  They want to win so bad, that they think that they need to 'take over.'  It can be a challenge getting them to understand the need to and understand how to allow the game to come to them.

Below are some quotes from the article:

"I never worry about his confidence," Kerr told Yahoo Sports late Monday. "I don't worry about anything with him. I just feel like there are times that he wants so badly to win, he tries to do too much.

"He's still learning. That sounds crazy, because he's the MVP of the league. But he's still learning how to develop that rhythm, how to be patient and just move the ball, makes the easy pass – instead of trying to do it himself. That way, he's much more likely to get hot in the game."

"He has as much self-belief as anybody I've ever seen," Kerr told Yahoo Sports. "He's still learning about the rhythm it takes. It's not an easy concept for a guy who is so talented and relied upon so heavily. That's all part of the growth, the process and tonight he got that, stayed with it and executed it."

You can find the entire article here:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/steve-kerr-delivered-steph-curry-a-message-before-game-4--stop-trying-to-do-it-yourself-082519339.html

Wisconsin Coach Bo Ryan Builds Successful Teams with Fundamentals

Below is an article from The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel on Bo Ryan and how he has built his program based on discipline and fundamentals.

Indianapolis — What's Bo Ryan's secret? Barry Alvarez, the University of Wisconsin athletic director, gets asked that a lot. People want to know how Ryan does it, how he wins and wins with players some big-time college basketball programs wouldn't touch, how his teams consistently display toughness and character.

Since Wisconsin hired him in 2001, Ryan has won 357 games and has made 14 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances despite having successfully recruited exactly one McDonald's All-American.

Over that span, Duke, the team Wisconsin faces in the national championship game Monday night, has put more than 30 high school All-Americans on the court.

Going back further, Ryan has had one losing season as a college head coach — his first at UW-Platteville (1984-'85). His career winning percentage is .765. He's averaged 25.5 victories per year at Wisconsin, and this year's team has won 36.

How has Ryan done it? How has he fashioned such an exceptional record with class after class of gritty, lightly recruited Midwestern try-hards, with the occasional Devin Harris or Sam Dekker thrown in to sweeten the mix?

His secret, Alvarez said, was on display when the Badgers practiced last week at Lucas Oil Stadium.

"I watched his practice and they started out doing basic dribbling drills," Alvarez said. "I love his consistency. There's no compromise. He's a teacher, and he's going to teach the fundamentals."

That's it, really. Ryan is a teacher first and an X's and O's guy second. The court, baseline to baseline, is his classroom. The 101 lessons are "Basics of Offensive Efficiency," "Fundamentals of Foul Avoidance," "Art of Sharing the Ball" and "Science of End-Game Principles: Why Making Free Throws Matters."

"There's no magic wand or pixie dust we sprinkle over guys," said Badgers associate head coach Greg Gard. "We show them the process and what the plan is and here's how we do things day by day, year by year — how we practice, how we prepare, how we work in the off-season, what we do in the weight room, how we handle our preseason conditioning.

"It's the culture and the philosophy and the understanding of the program."

Ryan didn't happen to stumble upon this recipe. He formulated it as he climbed through the coaching ranks, including stops at a junior high school and high school in Pennsylvania, eight years as an assistant under Bill Cofield at UW, a dominant era at UW-Platteville and two years at UW-Milwaukee before then-Wisconsin athletic director Pat Richter hired him.

Ryan paid his dues, and then some. But he never stopped learning. And he never stopped teaching.

Jack Bennett, then a high school coach, remembers sitting transfixed at a coaching clinic in the 1980s as Ryan conducted an hours-long seminar on the finer points of passing the basketball, subject matter some coaches might have covered in a matter of minutes. With Ryan, the minutiae mattered: You bounce-pass the ball at this angle, not that one.

By the time Bennett became the head coach at UW-Stevens Point in the mid-1990s, Ryan had established Platteville as a Division III powerhouse, winning four national titles in a nine-year span and compiling a 138-8 record over his last five seasons.

"When I took the job, we wanted to pattern our philosophy after the way Platteville had done it," Bennett said.

Bennett went on to win back-to-back Division III titles before retiring.

But when Ryan was hired at Wisconsin to replace Jack's brother, Dick Bennett, who had suddenly retired a few games into the 2000-'01 season (and had been replaced by Brad Soderberg on an interim basis), the players initially weren't sure what to make of the my-way-or-the-highway native of Chester, Pa.

"It was kind of a shock when Dick left," said Charlie Wills, a member of the Badgers' 2000 Final Four team. "We weren't sure what was going to happen and what the future of the program would be.

"But when we got to know coach Ryan, we knew we were going to stay on the right track."

Call Ryan stubborn or call him smart, but he stuck to his principles at Wisconsin. They worked at every level. Why wouldn't they work at the highest level, against the best teams in the land?

"The game doesn't change," said Gard, who grew up on a hog farm in Cobb, Wis. (pop. 456) — can you say blue-collar? — and has been with Ryan for more than two decades. "The stage gets bigger and brighter and all those type of things when you go levels up. But the game is still the same.

"We're using the same terminology we used in Platteville all those years. Our preparation is the same. Our guys are a little bigger than what they were at that stage, but how they handle it as young men and young adults is still the same. It's still 18- to 23-year-old kids and we're trying to get them better every day."

Gard calls Wisconsin "one of the best developmental programs in the nation," and that's probably being modest. Hardly anyone heard of Frank Kaminsky two years ago and now he's the college player of the year.

"If they buy in and they're willing to listen and work hard with their teammates, then you have a chance to have good things happen," Gard said. "As Bo always says, if you have more questions than answers, we can show you the way."

If there's a down side to Ryan's system, it's that his teams have sometimes been criticized for being too methodical, for sticking to a grinding halfcourt offense in an era of blow-up-the-scoreboard. They've been called, ahem, disciplined, a code word for a team that lacks athleticism.

Before the Elite Eight, UW players were asked how Arizona's players might describe them.

"White guys," Kaminsky deadpanned, expressing in a joking manner how many college basketball fans — if we're going to be honest — would describe the Badgers.

"We're not a flashy run-and-gun type team," Wills said. "It's not that we don't have athletes. You can't say that Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky aren't athletes. To me, it's pure basketball. It's running an offense, being patient, having determination and knowing how to stay calm in tough moments."

On Sunday, Ryan was asked whether his team finally was changing the perception of UW basketball.

"I don't know, because I don't hang around people that never say anything other than, 'Man, your guys are pretty good. They're pretty efficient,'" he said. "I only hear that these guys are pretty good and that they can score, they can defend, they can play.

"So when people tell me about perception, I don't know what you're referring to other than it must not be that these guys are good. Is it? I don't know. Somebody would have to explain to me that a team that averages 1.2-something points per possession isn't a pretty good team."

But Ryan is having fun, too. He's even learned — there's that word again — to tolerate his players' goofiness, which surfaces daily in some form or other and has been chronicled throughout the NCAA Tournament.

In describing the difference between Platteville's first national title in 1991 and this NCAA Tournament final, the 67-year-old Ryan said, "Training table meal was hot dogs. The morning of the game, I had a cream doughnut and a diet pop. Now we have the best — French toast, pancakes, omelets. We have people cooking omelets. What else do we have? Bacon, turkey, all the fruit you could possibly think of eating."

Ryan gestured at the roomful of reporters.

"I think there was a stringer, one stringer from the Madison paper, that actually showed up and covered the (1991) game," he said. "So you ask me what it was like. It wasn't like this."

If nothing else, the Badgers' march to the championship game has helped many fans understand what the coaching fraternity and people in Wisconsin have known for years: Ryan can flat-out coach.

"Bo is just now finally getting the credit he deserves," Richter said. "I think in the coaching ranks he's had it all along. People are saying this could be the best four coaches in the Final Four ever, and Bo is right there with them."

Still, for all he has accomplished, Ryan reportedly did not get enough votes to be elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The inductees, expected to be announced Monday, include Kentucky's John Calipari.

It's the same John Calipari, who, in the closing seconds of his team's loss to Wisconsin Saturday night, turned to his assistants and frantically shouted, over the din in Lucas Oil Stadium, "What do we do?"

Imagine if the roles had been reversed. Imagine Ryan, sweating and panicking, with a roster full of McDonald's All-Americans and without a plan.

It would never happen. Not in a million years.

Defining Aggression

Below is a post I borrowed from Gary Colson about getting guys to play with more aggression.  Coach Colson had a great career as the head coach of several division 1 basketball programs and even worked with the Memphis Grizzlies alongside Jerry West.  He has a great blog here that I highly recommend to any coach.  It hasn't been updated in a while, but it still has great content.

You can see read the post in full here.

Situation: A tennis ball is being served at you at 150 MPH. What thoughts do you have in trying to return the ball? Read on and find out how you can return the serve.

A few years ago I picked up the book “The Inner Game of Tennis” by Tim Gallwey. I loved the book so I wrote the author and told him his thoughts in the book were outstanding. In two weeks after reading my note Tim called me and said he lived in Malibu where I coached basketball at Pepperdine University. We had lunch that very day. I told him about a young man named Ray Ellis (7 foot center that weighed 290 lbs) but had an aggression level at a low 3 on a 10 scale. I asked Tim if he thought I could change him and he suggested doing two things.

First of all try and define AGGRESSION for your staff and players. Second, get them to rate one another and themselves. We did this and totaled every ones score up and Ray came up with a “3” from staff and peers.

So I went to Ray and told him that I wanted him to play and think of only one thing – BEING AGGRESSIVE. We defined aggression as:

1. Run the floor as hard as you can every time there was a change of possession.
2. Take the charge on people driving to the basket.
3. Dive on the floor after every loose ball.
4. Hustle on every play..
5. Be the first at practice and the last to leave.
6. Do extra work with the jump rope program and work out a weight lifting maintenance program for yourself with the trainers.
7. Show some leadership.
8. Go after every rebound.

Ray agreed that he would just concentrate on one goal… increase his aggression by doing the above steps.

To make a long story short later in that week we had to play USF (University of San Francisco) and they had the best player in the league in seven footer Bill Cartwright. I told Ray to rate himself after the first half and I would too. Ray had 10 points and 10 rebounds at half and we met outside the locker room and I ask Ray to rate himself and he said, “Coach I had myself at a 7 and I said NO you were a 9, you were kicking his tail.”

Ray went on to lead the league in rebounding and became a very successful building contractor. He turned into a solid 9 on the aggression level and never looked back.

Bottom line … solve your goals by FOCUSING on one main thing and TRUST your body and mind to work it all out.

There is correlation between Aggression and Focus. If you focus on being AGGRESSIVE you will achieve your goal. Ray Ellis changed his whole outlook by concentrating on one goal..being aggressive.

To answer the original question about the tennis ball…Just focus on the ball and trust your body and mind to work it out. It is not easy but it will work. It has worked with many people on and off the court.

If I had to coach again I would rank all my people “not only” on Aggression but Loyalty, Passion, Work Ethics, Integrity etc.

Spurs Camaraderie

After elimination, the Spurs played paintball together.  It’s important to be a team and to have camaraderie both on and off the court.

Leaders ...

"I tell them that I don't inspire my teams to compete.  I inspire myself each and every day.  If I am motivated then my team feels my excitement and intensity and they mirror that in the way they play.  If you look at most successful programs at any level, they take on the characteristics of their coaches."

Coach Angela Beck
Cedar Ridge High School | Texas

Jimmy Butler Sacrificed Cable TV For NBA Success

Sports Illustrated ran an article last November about Jimmy Butler’s commitment to turning himself into an NBA superstar.  A big reason for his drastic improvement that led him to becoming the NBA’s 2014-2015 Most Improved Player was the decision to cut his cut his cable so he could focus strictly on the game of basketball.  Butler and his friends rented a house for the summer so that they could spend time together, but he says he purposefully chose not to furnish it or purchase cable:

“I wanted to be so good at the game that we didn’t have cable, we didn’t have the Internet. Whenever we got bored, all we would do is go to the gym. We’d eat, sleep and go to the gym. We’d go three times a day because we didn’t have anything else to do. We were sitting on the couch, looking at each other, saying, ‘What the hell are we going to do all day?’”

It was a well written article in which he talks about his life growing up, his college days, and goes more in-depth about some of the habits he has changed to allow himself to become the player he is today and where he wants to go in the future.  You can read the article in its entirety here.

Below are more quotes/takeaways from the article.

Getting The Repetitions

This summer, I put in hella work on ball-handling, finishing at the rim, mid-range shooting, post work, and threes. The more you see the ball go in, the higher your confidence is going to be.”

Workout Regimen

Butler embarked on a carefully structured workout regimen in Houston with the goal of filling out his game. His days generally began at 7 a.m. and ran until 8 p.m. – with breaks for meals and a mid-day nap -- and included individual skill work, weight training, running on the track, full-court scrimmages, yoga, and Pilates.

Change In Diet and Reading the Bible

Butler’s trainer, Chris Johnson, built on that base of physical exertion and dietary regulation by helping Butler review his offensive moves on tape and by encouraging him to read the Bible, which Butler said has helped with his focus and trust in his own abilities.

On His Approach To Film

Butler, who succeeds by crowding and shadowing his man, takes a purist’s approach to his craft. He studies tape of his opponents to understand what he’s up against, but he rejects the use of statistical tendency profiles. He doesn’t want to know which way a player prefers to drive, according to the numbers, or where a player’s hot spots are on the floor. He prefers to trust his instincts and technique rather than situation-based scouting reports.

How He Guards
“I just guard. I guard everybody like they’re the best player in this league,” he explained. “The dude may go right every single time. But it’s going to happen, whenever I’m guarding him, the m----f---- is going to go left. I’ve just got to guard him. I hate when people say, ‘He’s not a shooter. Don’t play him as a shooter.’ As soon as I don’t play him as a shooter, he makes a three. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world.”

Steph Curry | Success Is Not By Accident

The video below is a great video about Steph Curry’s journey to greatness from the standpoint of trainer Alan Stein.  Stein stated that he first worked with Curry at the Kobe Bryant Nike Skills Academy.  The top high school and college shooting guards in the country were at the camp, and he knew immediately that Steph was the most impressive all because of his work habits.

The Skills Academy had to workouts a day for 3 straight days and 30 minutes before each workout while most other players were still in their flip-flops, Curry had already started shooting and by the time the workout started, he had already made 100-150 shots and was in a full sweat.

Throughout the workout, he made sure that he did everything perfect, and if it wasn’t, he would do it over.

Steph also would never leave the gym after a workout without swishing 5 free-throws in a row.  That’s the level of excellence that he holds himself to.

Success is not an accident.  Success is actually a choice.  Make the choice to create great habits.  Are the habits that you have today on par with the dreams that you have for tomorrow?  That’s something that you need to ask yourself every day because whatever you do on a regular basis today will determine where you will be tomorrow.

Hurry Up And Wait

This is a really neat article found on Grantland about a Division 2 basketball coach and program who has found success speeding up the game, not over-coaching, and letting their players 'play' and have some say in the decision making process.

Jim Crutchfield took over the West Liberty University Men's Basketball program in 2004 following a 4-23 season, and they haven't looked back since.  

The article is as much about the narrative of the decline in popularity of college basketball, in large part to the tempo of the game, as it is about Coach Crutchfield's basketball program.  They speak in-depth with several coaches, including former Sooner and TCU coach, Billy Tubbs about the slow down in pace of the game.

The article is a very interesting read in general about college basketball, and it has several good 'nuggets' of information.  I have highlighted some notes from the article below.  You can read it in its entirety here.

Being Able To Rationalize Why You Are Doing It

“You ask a coach, ‘Why are they doing that?'” he says. “And they say, ‘That’s what I do.’ There are a lot of other places I’d rather take the ball out of bounds than in front of my bench. If I were going to call timeout, I’d tell a guy to do it in a different place.”

Sometimes he’ll call a full timeout just so he can burn through the media break at an opportune time, and the referees will credit him with a 30-second timeout in order to save his full timeouts, and he’ll insist to the official that he doesn't want to do it that way, that he’d prefer to save his 30's for later in the game so he doesn't disrupt the flow. Which means he occasionally finds himself in the uncomfortable position of arguing with a referee who thinks he’s done him a favor.

“I've never read a basketball book in my life,” he says. “Maybe I should, but whatever we do is homegrown here. I used to teach a coaching class, and I’d always say, ‘Don’t do it unless you can rationalize why you’re doing it.'”

Coach Crutchfield’s Background
Crutchfield was born in Clarksburg and majored in math and chemical engineering at WVU. He coached a high school golf team and planned to go to law school before he got the job at Cameron High, in a small town near the Pennsylvania border; he became the winningest coach in the school’s history before moving on to West Liberty. “I was pretty aggressive,” he says. “I remember the last high school game I coached, we won 104-101. In a 32-minute game.”

Rick Pitino’s Influence | Pressure From Random Angles
The only direct influence he mentioned to me came when he watched a Providence game in the 1980s, and he noted that Rick Pitino’s pressure came from random angles and sped up the game in ways the diamond-and-one press he’d been playing couldn’t do. When he took over the West Liberty program, he played mostly matchup zone; in his first season, he went 21-10 and averaged 90.8 points per game (he also took Marshall to the wire in a 2005 exhibition, and has had trouble getting contests against D-I programs ever since). Incrementally, as his players adjusted to the system, he began to ratchet up the man-to-man pressure against teams with inferior talent (in one game, they forced 19 turnovers in the first half), and through each of the past four seasons his team has averaged over 100.

Creating Opportunities and Flow

This is not the all-out freneticism of Grinnell; it is more about creating opportunities and flow and breeding trust among teammates. It is, Crutchfield says, about calculating risk versus reward, and in his mind, the rewards of an up-tempo system can effectively mitigate the risk if you employ it smartly: Because Charleston has one of the best point guards in West Liberty’s conference, they backed off the pressure when it didn’t work in the first half the other night.

Looking To Score In Transition

“I don’t think teams seriously look to score in transition enough,” he says. “You get 20 seconds of, ‘We’re kind of looking to score, we’re passing the ball but really not doing anything.’ And then, ‘OK, here we go, 12 seconds on the shot clock, here comes the high ball screen.’ That’s when I change the channel and look for a different game.”

Type of Kids He Recruits | Being Able To React Quickly

When Crutchfield recruits, he looks for kids who react quickly — “You can make up for a lot of quickness and speed if you react mentally,” he says — and play with high intensity: If they get beat on defense and they don’t D up even harder the next time down the floor, he starts to wonder if they might not fit into his system.  He redshirts most of his freshmen so they can acquaint themselves with his demands (one of the luxuries of Division II, I suppose). Hausfeld, his starting point guard, is 5-foot-7 and looks like Ollie from Hoosiers, if Ollie had conquered all of his insecurities: I saw him go 1-on-3 in the backcourt and break pressure without even thinking of burning a timeout, and I learned that he regularly shoots 3-pointers from 30 feet to extend the defense — with his coach’s blessing, because he made 45 percent from beyond the arc last season.

Empowering His Players

Sometimes in practice, Crutchfield will solicit suggestions for drills to run; even though he already knows what he’s going to do, it gives his players the impression that their opinion matters, and helps them realize that once they do get on the floor, the game is essentially in their hands.

“I’ve never had a coach who gives his players so much freedom,” says Chris Morrow, who at 6-6 is the team’s tallest starter. “There’s a bunch of risk in giving a lot of college guys freedom to make decisions. But as players, we completely buy into it. We don’t let people get away with slacking off.”

Coach Billy Tubbs
Tubbs brought up the shadow of “political correctness” with me several times, which seems like a bit of an oblique connection, but I think what he was trying to say is that the coaches who should be willing to gamble — coaches, like Tubbs, who are blessed with superior talent — simply don’t think it’s worth the risk anymore. And so they take command of everything that’s happening on the floor. They slow the game down to call offensive sets, and they play it safe on defense rather than risk giving up easy layups in transition. And the very notion of running wild like Tubbs’s teams did, or of throwing caution to the wind like Paul Westhead’s Loyola-Marymount teams did, or of raising hell like Nolan Richardson’s Arkansas teams did, becomes a concept too fraught with potential danger to even consider implementing. The favorites now play at the underdog’s pace. And this, one coach told me, is how a team like Kansas loses to an obvious inferior like TCU.

Coach Tubbs On Playing To Score
“When you’re watching games now, just watch how they catch the ball in scoring positions and don’t even think about shooting it because they’re trying to get it to another option,” Tubbs says. “When I coached, you put five players on the floor who could score, and you never played them out of position. Wayman Tisdale never caught the ball more than 15 feet from the basket.

Coaches Being Control Freaks | ‘Joystick Coaches’
“Coaches are a lot more control freaks than they’ve ever been,” says Baucom, which is not a complaint you hear very often from a coach at a school that claims to foster “punctuality, order, discipline, courtesy, and respect for authority.”

“I call ’em joystick coaches,” Baucom tells me. “They try to orchestrate every movement instead of letting ’em play. It becomes kind of like a wrestling match. There’s teams in our league that run 20 seconds of false motion to get the shot clock down, and then run a set. I watch some teams play and it looks like the kids are in jail.”

The Power of Positive Coaching

The following article was written by Jim Trotter at The MMQB.  It was posted right after Pete Carroll and the Seattle Seahawks beat the San Francisco 49ers enroute to their Super Bowl win over the Baltimore Ravens.

The article talks a lot about Pete Carroll's philosophy and how he runs his program.  Here are some notes from the article.  You can read it in it's entirety here.

Doing Things The Best/Only Way You Know How:

 “Pete told me once, ‘They already killed me once—they got me in New York and they got me in Boston—so I’m going to be me. They can’t hurt me now.’ For Pete that was a very humble way of saying, ‘I’ve been through a lot, and if I go to Seattle I’m going to do it the way that I’ve laid it out, exactly to my personality and to my philosophical approach.”

Affirming His Coaching Tenets:

For Carroll, Sunday wasn’t about proving anyone wrong. It was about proving himself right. It was about affirming that his coaching tenets—the relentless competitiveness, the constant quest to identify and maximize the uniqueness of every player and coach, the commitment to a nurturing environment that allows people to be themselves while still being accountable to the team—could work on any level, including the NFL.

Helping People Reach Their Full Potential:

“It’s something I came in hoping we could really demonstrate, because I really do believe this is a different way of dealing with people,” Carroll says. “It’s a way that you can help people find heights that they might not have found otherwise. There’s a lot that goes into that statement, but I believe it because I’ve watched it, I’ve seen it.

Soul-Searching:

During his year out of football the following year, Carroll did some serious self-scouting. He asked himself what he could do better, and he reflected on the words of his mother, who often told him to treat each day as if something positive were about to happen. That mentality is contrary to the ways of the NFL, where people tend to focus on things that could go wrong. Carroll would no longer allow himself to be one of those individuals.

Impact of Coach Wooden and Others:

He also read Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court, the powerful memoir by the former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. It resonated with Carroll not only because Wooden needed 17 years before winning his first national championship, but also because he believed in being positive and nurturing. Carroll also pulled nuggets from successful coaches whom he had worked under, like Bill Walsh, Bud Grant and George Seifert. 

His Own Blueprint - Take Advantage of the Uniqueness of Each Individual:

Ultimately he formulated a blueprint that was heavy on fun and competition and taking advantage of the uniqueness of each individual. He would have themes for each day of the week—Tell the Truth Monday, Competition Wednesday, Turnover Thursday. He would have the first-string offense and defense face off in brief unscripted scrimmages so they would be ready for things they hadn’t prepared for. He would blare music throughout practice to raise the energy level and force his players to focus and refocus amid distractions.

It basically comes down to taking care of the people in your program and making them the best they can be—not giving up on them and never failing to be there for them. They don’t even totally know that’s how we are with them, because we do it so completely.” 

Thoughts From His Players

“This lets the rest of the National Football League and the rest of the coaching world know that his philosophy works,” says fullback Michael Robinson. “You can love a guy up and [still] create an environment that’s conducive to winning. He’s the first coach to do it that way, to have a college-type atmosphere in the pros.”

“I don’t think anybody thought his system could work,” says All-Pro corner back Richard Sherman. “It shows you can win with positivity, with having a great mindset. They say you have to be a hard coach to win in this league, but that’s not who he is. We love it.”

Its About Everybody Growing/Including Other Coaches:

For instance, one of his first questions for potential hires is: Can you explain your coaching philosophy in 25 words or less? He spends a week every off-season on staff development and requires each person to make the case for why he should climb the next rung on the coaching ladder.

“He works through those details with them, and it really comes from a good-hearted place,” Roth says. “He wants to get the best out of them because then there’s a sense of ownership.”

Knowing Who You Are And Getting the Most Out Of Others:

“This means everything to him,” he said. “He’s a man who really knows who he is. He understands how to let people be themselves, and he understands how to bring staffs together. You see the way he built this team in four years—fantastic leader, great mentor. To see him work day after day, his exuberance, his excitement, his energy, he never has a bad day. I think he really learned from his previous stops.”

Always Compete:

Which begs the question, could he have accepted not having a third shot at the NFL?

“No, not at all,” Norton says. “He always wanted to get back. Competition for him is not a word, it’s a way of life. He just lives it, breathes it, every day. I don’t know if he ever said, ‘This is my chance to show people,’ but he showed it. It was his actions. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew exactly if he ever had the opportunity to do it again that he was going to do it his way—and he has.”