A Coach's Diary

The following was a write up from a Facebook post regarding Wilt Chamberlain. Wow.. where to begin? Here is something I posted on another thread: My dad ref’d a few of Wilt’s Globetrotter games. He played point guard to show off his ball handling, shooting, & passing skills - never before or since seen by a guy over 7’ tall. Th ey would get a ladder & place a quarter on top of the backboard. Wilt would take one step, jump up & get the quarter. With a 9’6” standing reach, he would have to have at least a 45” vertical to get the quarter. It’s listed many places as 48” which seems very possible. The blocked shot in the photo came off a one step jump. Wilt averaged 8.1 blocks per game in the 112 games in which there are multiple credible sources of verification, video being the best - like the nationally televised Christmas Day 1968 game against Phoenix where he blocked 23 shots. Blocks didn’t become an official NBA stat until the ‘73-‘74 season, and the ‘official’ single...

In season, we work on guarding the ball 1 on 1 everyday.  We do it from different spots, angles and positions.  We switch up between guarding the ball in full court, half-court and in the post.   We mix up between starting from a closeout position, from a girls coming downhill at us, and from a check-ball situation. Over time, our athletes get better both offensively and defensively in 1 on 1 situations this way.  Basketball is a team game with full of individual battles.  Players have to be able to win their 1 on 1 battles for the team to have success. The video above is how we teach 1 on 1.  Active hands and active feet, stay square to your defender to prevent blow-bus,  contest the shoot and rebound. UConn Defensive Keys - Arms length away to provide pressure and to keep the 5 second count going - Low stance and square to his body - force baseline, but don't open up and give free driving lanes to the baske...

The game is supposed to be played a certain way, and its impossible to play that way, at the highest level, every second of everyday of every practice and game.  But, the pursuit of finding out how long you can sustain playing at the highest level is the difference maker. Just when it starts to fall, I tell the girls that this is about the time that a normal team starts to fall, and we aren't a normal team ... so let's go. - Geno Auriemma When your team experiences playing at a higher level, you have raised the bar for your team and the challenge is to consistently sustain that level of play and to never drop below that new bar that you have set for yourself.  The challenge, the purpose, the pursuit of excellence is about identifying what excellence looks like, experiencing it by performing on a level of excellence, and challenging yourself to sustain it as often and for as long as you can. 

The picture above is called the 'Game Within the Game Chart' used by Bob Starkey at Texas A&M.  He was asked on a Facebook group to explain to young coaches the chart.  Below is his response: “Game Within The Game” stat sheet was something we come up in the 80’s while I was a men’s assistant at WV State College. We wanted to develop a stat (because kids are driven by stats) that would help give attention to a few areas of the gam e. We made each situation simply a win or loss situation. SCORE FIRST EACH HALF: If we scored first we got the W…if we didn’t, our team did.  FIRST TEAM TO SCORE OUT OF A TIMEOUT: Again, whoever scored first got the win. INBOUNDS: If we scored or got the stop it was our W. For followup, we shared the stat sheet with our players the next day and at times would show video if these areas. This would total around 20 possession each game. So while one in-bounds may not seem important to a team, we felt by making it a win-loss situation would ...

My end of season thought is that I am better understanding what a program needs from basketball players to have success.  Each player that will be a varsity basketball player will need these 2 characteristics: Heart - Heart is loving and caring about the game enough to sacrifice for it and to give it everything that you have. Commitment - Commitment means being willing to do whatever it takes to achieve success.

March 1 – 29 – Contact Period - During a contact period a college coach may have face-to-face contact with college-bound student-athletes or their parents, watch student-athletes compete and visit their high schools, and write or telephone student-athletes or their parents. March 30 – April 12 – Dead Period - During a dead period a college coach may not have face-to-face contact with college-bound student-athletes or their parents, and may not watch student-athletes compete or visit their high schools. Coaches may write and telephone student-athletes or their parents during a dead period. April 6 – 8 – Quiet Period - During a quiet period, a college coach may only have face-to-face contact with college-bound student-athletes or their parents on the college’s campus.  A coach may not watch student-athletes compete (unless a competition occurs on the college’s campus) or visit their high schools. Coaches may write or telephone college-bound student-athletes or their pa...

1. Practice and games, should be fun! With fun comes excitement. 2. Make everything competition, grades, weight room, free throws. 3. Reward max effort with max praise! 4. Kids need to learn how to play basketball. Show them fundamentals, skill build, and have them do it over until they get it right. You must crawl before walking, walk before running, etc. 5. You must not be afraid to cut your BEST PLAYER! 6. Some players need an Atta boy, some need a challenge, some need extra TLC. As coaches becoming a “reader” of your players attitudes is super important. 7. Ask players to become stewards of effort. The locker room and team is the best when your best players are your hardest workers. 8. Ask Parents to trust you with playing decisions. Give them examples of player/teams work ethic and how these are life skills that reach far beyond the hardwood. Played 10 players one year and it really helped us reach our potential. 9. I treat every player the same, yet everyone is different...

Youth sports is about fun, creating an active life-style, and teaching lessons through games. It is important to teach competition and to teach early on that there is a winner and a loser, but its important to do that within context.  Teach winning and losing in terms of strengths and weaknesses, in terms of work ethic and commitment, and in terms of how to humbly deal with success and how to appropriately bounce back from defeat. As long as a kid keeps playing, as long as a kid keeps improving, and most importantly, as long as a kid keeps having fun, then good things will happen.

I'm always looking for actions and a system for the 'play after the play.'  The play after the play is what your team does when the play called breaks down.  What is their default offense? Some coaches run motion, some run Dribble Drive, some run flex, and some run side ball-screens.  I would love to be a motion coach whose athletes knew how to read and react the defense without some set and predictable pattern.   'Pappy' is an offensive system and philosophy that I received from the Twin Rivers girls basketball team.  Its based on driving the ball and how the athletes can read and react to the defense off the drive.  I like it a lot because its simple and practical and just basketball.  Its a natural way to create consistency in your team's reaction to how to move together. Read about PAPPY by clicking the link below: PAPPY - What to do on the drive

1 – Have Fun The number 1 goal for a youth league should be that the kids have so much fun that they want to play again next year.  The league, the referees, each coach, and each parent should understand their role in making sure that their kid has a great experience.  While keeping score is important, and understanding early that there is a winner and a loser is important, the most important thing is just having fun playing the game and learning to love the game, learning to love being active, and learning how to play with their friends.  A big part of that is helping them learn how to handle both success and failure.  We have to teach the kids how to accept success in a way that is gracious and humble and in a way that encourages continued hard work to continue to have that success.  We have to teach and model for them how to accept failure and adversity as teaching tools for life, and to use setbacks to teach them the importance of working hard in practice ...

"Be so good that people will pay so much money to come watch you play.    And not just win, but play at such a way that everybody who was at the game goes back and says, “You’re not going to believe this.    You have to go watch these women play." Geno Auriemma talks about: - How he got into coaching - Lying in the interview process at UCONN - The lack of resources at UCONN when they got there - Selling the kids on trust and the fact that they will build something - Getting Rebecca Lobo - 6 high school Americans by the 3 rd year - The frenzy behind UCONN - The level of awareness it placed on women’s basketball and women’s sports - $1 million budget to over $23 million dollar budget - Be so good that people will pay so much money to come watch you play.  And not just win, but play at such a way that everybody who was at the game goes back and says, “You’re not going to believe this.  You have to go watch these women play.

"Do you want to choose winning over standing out? It's a choice every player on every championship team has to do" - Doc Rivers

No one is bigger than the team. You're going to be on time, you're going play hard, you're going to know your job and you're going to know when to pass and shoot. If you can't do those four things you're not getting time here and we don't care who you are. – Hubie Brown

The following is an excerpt on the importance of discipline from Dean Smith and his book, A Coach’s Life. If a head coach has conviction, the most naturally disciplined group on any campus will be his athletic team because team members are used to sacrificing a certain amount of peer acceptance in seeking excellence.  I’m convinced that our work habits and tough practices instilled a certain mind-set and mental toughness in our players, and that why we avoided problems.  From 1967 to 1969 we had so many close games – and generally won them in the last minute – that our players developed a deep pride in the program.  They were committed, they worked awfully hard, and they had high expectations.  I think it prevented a lot of dissension. “The really free person in society is the one who is disciplined,” I told our players.  What I meant was, true freedom results from having choices.” The person who is more disciplined is the person who creates optio...

“If I’m asking my players to improve, I have to be improving” - Mike Neighbors Even us coaches, especially us coaches, have to find ways to get better every day and every year for our players.   It’s important to take a step back at the end of each season to self-assess your performance.   It’s important to assess your strengths and your weaknesses.   It’s important to have a plan on how to grow your strengths to a level of mastery, while growing your weaknesses.   Each off-season find at least one area that you want to grow in as a coach - set plays, zone defense, a new press, new 1 on 1 drills etc.  Master something new this off-season, learn something new this off-season, and bring something new because your kids and your teams need you to. We ask our kids to improve, and each NBA great talks about how they come back with something new each year; so should we as coaches.  Invest in yourself and in your craft.

Offense Some notes on what we want to accomplish this off-season from an offensive standpoint.  I want our philosophy for the spring to be that nobody can guard you 1 on 1.  You have to be able to get to the paint off the catch or the dribble, or use screens to create and advantage to get to the basket. Beat Your Man 1 on 1 - You can’t let one person guard you - Beat your man to get in the paint to score - If you get in the paint and can’t get a clean shot, jump stop, pivot, and find cutters and shooters - If you can’t get in the paint, drive to make somebody have to help to get a teammate an open shot One on One Moves Triple Threat - Rip - Jab - Shot fake Off The Dribble - In and out - Hesitation - Stutter step - Counters Get Your Teammates Open - Help your teammates create an advantage - Set a screen for them to get them open - Drive at their man to make her help to get them open Use Your Teammates to Get Open -  Know how to turn the corner ...

Geno Auriemma was asked why players don't do what coaches ask.  Here was his response: I had a conversation with the parent of an incoming 9 th grade student last week, and it was centered around him coming to meet his new teachers and his lack of wanting to speak with them.  He is a shy and quiet kid who just does not like casual conversation.  I told him that communication is an important skill to grow and learn for so many ways. Communication is the key to everything as a coach and a leader.  Nobody knows what is going on in your head – you have to communicate in a way that they understand fully what you expect and in a way that they can do fully what you expect.  A lack of clear communication of expectations is one of the quickest and biggest ways to create a disconnect between player and coach.  I heard Geno Auriemma once say that a kid either can’t do what you want her to do or just won’t do what you want her to do.  I think tha...

As a leader, you will see in your kids what they don't see in themselves.  You have the privilege to speak into s young persons life and call out their destiny.  That is greater than any championship trophy.  The greatest trophy that you can ever have is to pull out of someone WHAT THEY WERE MEANT TO BE.  Your why has to be the person.   The part that hit me the most was the last part - the ones who are messed up the most may have the deepest treasure. We all have that one player who is tough to deal with; or that one student who just wont do what we need him to do.  That person is the one who needs us the most.  That is the person who we need the most.  That is the person who we need to speak success, hardwork, confidence and prosperity into the most.  They struggle because they need us.  We struggle because we need them.   Find the treasure in all people and help them find the treasure within the...