A Coach's Diary

This is 10 of the best minutes you can spend on the internet today, as former Indiana and Marquette head basketball coach Tom Crean gives life advice through basketball. - To have success, you have to love to compete and love to get better. - Everything you do is going to impact your future, so work hard and eliminate what doesn't matter so you can spend your time focusing on what does matter for your goals. - Kids really do want to learn, but we have to figure out how to give it to them in a way that they will accept and buy-into. - Always show up and bring your best and don't let the distractions get you away from what's really important - making guys better, bringing value, and building life-lasting relationships.

It is important to learn how to play at different speeds as a basketball player.  Even if you are one of the fastest players on the court, players and teams can adjust to you if you just play ‘fast’ the entire game.  They can figure out how much space that they need to give you and adjust on how they anticipate and beat you to a spot. When you can play at different speeds, you are much less predictable and you can get by your defenders more effectively.  Below is a really good change of speed and change of direction drill by current Indiana coach and former Marquette coach Tom Crean.  Here he is working on changing speeds and different finishes, including pull-ups and layups. This is a great ball-handling drill, as it works on different dribble moves, a great shooting drill, and a great drill to teach finishing moves.  Instead of just doing full-court crossovers, this is a good alternative through which you can get ga...

Sub schedules are something I am always thinking about.  This blog is borrowed from HoopThoughts  and its Tom Crean talking about how he utilizes subs during the season. Turns out that Indiana and Coach Tom Crean took a page from baseball's Tony La Russa in utilizing your bench to prepare them for the post season. “I learned something from Tony La Russa a long time ago.  He said he tried to get his back-ups, his subs, a game a week, whether an inning here on Monday or an inning on Tuesday. You know what? The same thing applies to basketball. You know when you get guys minutes, quality minutes in the duration of the season, when they get in pressure situations, it doesn’t feel like pressure."