Bob Starkey Game Within The Game Chart

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 game. 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 give it a sense of urgency. Hard to improve upon things if you don’t measure it.

We knew were making strides early when we heard a kid coming out of our huddle tell his teammates “Let’s win this timeout!”

Thanks for asking Herb – and for all you do to make us better.