Keys to Success Clinic: Gibson High School 2012

Here is a great set of clinic notes from the Keys to Success Clinic at Gibson High School.  Lason Perkins, who always does a great job of sharing resources and helping coaches improve, was one of the clinic presenters. 

Keys to Success Clinic: Gibson High School 2012

The Don Meyer Way

Here are some more notes that I took during one of the modules in the Don Meyer class I took a few years back.  No matter how many times I hear Coach Meyer or read any of his material, I always seem to catch a new teaching point that I can apply or alter to fit my coaching philosophy.

The Don Meyer Way

Rick Majerus: Beating Teams That Switch

Here are some ideas from Rick Majerus on how to attack teams that switch screens.

1. Continue to pass and cut
2. Get a big on little switch and then post up the big
3. Tight curls, slips, back cuts and drives off of flares

John Beilein Coaching Thoughts

Here are some great thoughts from John Beilein who has really done great things at Michigan.

John Beilein Quips

Coaching Quote #9: Bad Passing

"You cannot allow bad passing in practice.  If there is a bad pass, do it again"
"Most important thing about passing is don't pass it to the other color."

--- Bob Knight

Don Meyer: Player's Camp Notebook

Years ago when I was the head coach of a girl's team, I had 12 girls go attend Coach Meyer's positional camp.  One of my girl's had typed up her notes and given me a copy.  I thought I would share the teaching points that she recorded.

Don Meyer Position Camp Player's Notebook

Coaching Quote #8: Effort

"If your best player is not your hardest worker it will be a miserable year even if you win it all."

--- Don Meyer

Larry Brown Practice Breakdown

Here is a portion of some Larry Brown clinic notes.  Below, Coach Brown is discussing his approach to practice organization. 

The daily practice schedule is designed to simulate the flow of a game, from the pregame meeting through overtime (total time – 2 hours)


Playing hard is the top priority – Intensity development is built into the daily practice schedule by making all drills competitive against the clock or an opponent

Warm up (:20)

– Focuses on ball-handling and shooting

Defense (:40)

– Defense is taught in a “part” fashion, utilizing three- and four-man breakdown drills to reinforce concepts

“Halftime” (:10)

– A series of shooting drills is utilized to give the players an active rest period

Offense (:40)

– Offense is taught in a “whole” fashion, utilizing 5-on-0 and 5-on-5 drills to develop spacing and seamless teamwork

“Overtime” (:10)

– Special situations (baseline out-of-bounds, sideline out-of-bounds, end-of quarter, and delay games that often make the difference between victory and defeat are rehearsed in situational scrimmages

Coaching Quote #6: Great Playerss

"Even the greatest players accept coaching and value the need for discipline and the order it brings to the team."

--- Dr. Jack Ramsey

3 Ball Baseline Drive

Here is a great shooting drill to teach players proper rotations on baseline driving actions.  I got the drill from a Don Meyer clinic.  Hope it helps you in with your practices.

3 Ball Baseline Drive

Anatomy of a Timeout: Tip #3

In Tip #2, we talked about things to cover when you are trailing in a game with only a few minutes left in a game. Today, we are going to flip the perspective for the same situation. When you have a lead in a game, what items do you need to go over with your team during that timeout situation? Here are some questions and items to consider and discuss with your staff.

Offensive


1. At what point do you go into your delay game offense, if you have one? Motion coaches will probably say that they will continue to stay in their motion set, but will just be more disciplined in their shot selection. How about continuity coaches? Do you stay in your continuity or do you go into some sort of delay offense? I have seen coaches go into a delay to soon and their teams become stagnant, thus turning the ball over and losing momentum. When you are in your delay offense, whatever it is, what are the points of emphasis you need to relay to your players? We emphasize the following items.

2. First, we need to keep high and wide spacing. The defense is going to be in a gambling and aggressive mentality. Therefore, we need to have good driving lanes and cutting lanes on defensive overplay.

3. Second, shorten the pass by meeting the pass. In other words, we want to close the gap when passes are being made to prevent the defense from shooting the passing lane.

4. Third, catch, rip, and triple threat. Again, the defense is going to be in our comfort zone so we have got to be tough with the ball. We tell our kids that we have got to be confident with the ball and if they can take their man to the rim, DO IT. We are happy to get to the free throw line during this part of the game.

5. Fourth, if you are denied, it is an automatic back cut and fill out. Absolutely no standing.

6. Fifth, our best players always need to be 1 pass away. The reason for this is because we our best players to get the most touches and we want them to get to the free throw line.

7. Have you practice a full court, ¾ court, and ½ court special designed to get the ball in when the other team is trying to get a steal or foul?

Defensive items

1. How are you going to handle late game screening situations? Are you going to switch?

2. How are you going to defend drive and kick situations? The offense is going to be aggressive to the rim.

3. Do you know who the weakest player(s) is on the other team? Are you going “dork” defend him in order to help shade towards the other team’s best player who will most likely get the most touches?

4. If you are up 3 with a few seconds left, do you foul to put them in a bonus free throw situation in order for them not to get a 3 point shot off? Do your players know how to properly foul and WHEN?

5. On a made basket, do you want the in-bounder to get the ball in quickly or do you want your team to take their time and get set up in your press break?

6. On a made basket, does your in-bounder know whether he can run the baseline or not?

The answers to a lot of these questions are determined by your philosophy as a coach. As always, it is vital that you work on these situations during practice. It is hard to cover them all, but the more you practice them, the more prepared you are for those situations when they com

Shooting Drills eBook

Here is a variety of shooting drills for you to incorporate into your practices.  A number of coaches were nice enough to share them with me, so I am just passing along the resources.

Shooting eBook

Anatamony of a Timeout: Tip #2

There are times during a game where you are going to be down X number of points, with little time left and you will be in a timeout situation and your players are going to be looking to you for guidance as to how they can come back and win the game. What topics do you cover in those 30-90 seconds. Hopefully, you have practice these situations a number of times throughout the season so your players have some prior knowledge to go off of, but here are some questions to think about that you will probably need to cover in a timeout situation.


1. How much time is left on the clock and at what point do you need to start shooting 3’s to get back in the game? Obviously, this is going to depend on the current score, but if you are down 8-10 points and there is 2 minutes left, do your players clearly understand your offensive expectations of getting a quick 2 or at what point do they need to be looking for a 3?

2. When you are down 3-4 points with a couple of seconds left on the clock, do your players understand how to miss the second free throw, and what everyone’s responsibilities are on the miss in order to get the offensive rebound and another FG attempt to win or tie the game?

3. Do your players know at what point they need to start fouling in order to extend the game? Do your players know how to properly foul? Do you have a verbal and nonverbal signal?

4. Do your players clearly know your defensive objectives on defending delay game offenses? Do they know who the best free throw shooter is in order to deny him/her and who the worse free throw shooter is in order to foul him/her?

5. If you are able to get back in the game, do your players know whether they should push the ball in the final seconds and try and score before the defense gets set, or should they call a timeout?

Again, the true success of these situations is preparation in practice. This not only prepares your players for these situations, but also helps you as the coach in those situations as well. A few years ago, I took an Advanced Basketball Theory class with Don Meyer. One of the things that he did frequently was work on a special situation at a random time during practice. For example, after or during a drill, you as the coach could call “timeout,” have half of your players go to one coach, and the rest go to another coach where you work on a time and score situation. You can make it a 30 second timeout or a 60 second timeout. The 2 teams would then go and execute the discussed game plan. This simulates stress and spontaneity to your players. This does require some planning with the coaching staff in order for all the coaches to be clear as to what the situation is and what the expectations are.

Coaching Quote #2: All Stars

“You can no longer beat great teams with just a group of all-stars.”

--- Jerry Colangelo

Developing a Strong Feeder Program

I really believe that developing strong feeder programs is vital to the long term success of a basketball program. As with anything, there are a number of different philosophies and methodologies to successfully implementing a successful feed program. Today, I am simply going to discuss my philosophy to a successful feeder program. I won’t be talking about X’s and O’s as much as much as the philosophical elements of the program.


To me, the purpose of a feeder program is to provide an opportunity for youth players to develop program specific individual fundamental skills, program specific team skills, and to have competitive fun. Too often when I watch youth basketball games or go to youth basketball practices, I see an overwhelming emphasis on the end product, winning, rather than proper process of developing fundamental skills.

As a coach, I am not concerned with the number of games that the feeder programs win. Instead, it is more important that kids develop proper footwork, on the ball defense, help defense, spacing, cutting, ball sureness and so on. The development of these types of skills will actually provide more long term success down the road. Granted, both of these, the product and the process, can be achieved, but too often coaches lose sight of what they are there to do, which is improve fundamental skills and prepare the players for the next level of play. For example, I attended a youth basketball tournament a few weeks ago. A team I went to watch started out playing man defense, which I was pleased to see. However, it was not long until they began to have problems defending the cutting actions of the other team. Therefore, the coaches had the team sit in a pack 2-3 zone in order to defend the cutting actions. The really frustrating part, as a coach, was that the high school coaching staff had clearly explained the philosophy that they wanted taught, and nowhere in that discussion was zone defense talked about. Instead, winning became the primary goal. Granted, they ended up winning the game, but I feel that the process suffered along the way.

Another element that I think gets over looked is playing time and how teams are divided. I was talking with a good friend of mine and great coach from a rival school district. He was explaining to me how he was going to use a different approach to splitting up his teams. Traditionally, most teams will be divided by an A Team, which is made up of the top 10-12 players and then a B Team, which will be made up of the remaining players. However, he is taking his top 10-12 players, and is going to split them evenly between 3 teams. The same thing will be done for the other 3 teams. I thought that this was a great idea. If those top 12 players were all on the same team, how much development would players 7-12 get? Instead, these players will get more minutes in a totally different capacity when they are split up from the other top players. They will now have more responsibility in leadership. Furthermore, this will now open up more development opportunities for kids who don’t typically get a chance to start or be one of the top reserves off of the bench.

These are just a few of my thoughts regarding feeder programs. There is so much more that goes into a successful feeder program than what was touched on here, and there is more than one way successful way to run a feeder program. I like to win more than anybody, and it is something that we strive for extensively at the high school level. I just strongly believe that in feeder programs, the proper learning process, which might mean you lose some games, is more important than the number of games you win and ultimately, that process will get you more wins in the long run.

I highly recommend the following websites if you want to research some great ideas for youth basketball development.

1. Brian McCormick Basketball
2. Mike MacKay

Keys to Effective Practices

One of my favorite things about coaching is designing practice plans. I love the attention to detail involved in designing a practice, the competitive atmosphere that a well design practice creates and the environment that it creates for players to improve a particular skill. Here are some key factors that make a practice effective.


1. All drills must serve a purpose and must match the philosophy of your program. There are thousands of great drills out there. However, when selecting a drill, it should be designed to teach a concept that is important to your philosophy as a coach. If you simply use the drill because it is a good drill, but it does not fit with your system, is it really helping your players for game success?

2. Length of drills: In our practices, we like to have short drills that are usually 5-10 minutes long. In these drills, we focus on high intensity, competitiveness, and lots of reps. We really try to minimize the amount of stopping the drill to talk to a player. Instead, we try to pull that player aside when he is out of the drill so that we don’t stop the flow of the drill for the rest of the players.

3. Player Reps: One of my biggest pet peeves in practice is players standing on the side watching other players do drill work. We really make an emphasis when designing practices to get as many reps for our players as possible. If players don’t get the reps, the skill does not become a part of muscle memory and they end up thinking too much which will slow the reaction time.

4. Competitive atmosphere: There are many ways that drills can become competitive. You can keep score on specific items during a drill. For example, during a shell drill, keep score on items that need to be improved (effective ball pressure = +1, strong box out = +1, poor closeout = -1…….). When we work on defensive closeouts, we will put 3-4 basketballs on the ball rack. For every poor closeout or lack of proper verbals, we take off a ball from the rack. When the rack has no balls left, we do a form of conditioning to get our focus back. We keep score on our shooting drills, free throws and anything else that we do to create a competitive atmosphere. There are drills where we will put a team at a disadvantage. For example, we might be working on a transition shooting drill for our sideline break. We will have 3 teams (Varsity, JV and Freshman). We will start the Freshman at +12, the JV at +6 and the Varsity at 0. We will put 2 minutes on the clock and the winner does not have to do conditioning. This improves the player’s effort and serves as our conditioning as well.

5. Assigning names to drills: This is such a detailed item to practice planning, but it is so important. Mike Dunlap stresses this a lot. He talks about giving a meaningful name that will trigger an automatic reaction and having the players echo call out the drill (coach tells one player the name of drill and the player yells the drill out to the rest of the team).

6. Don’t become a slave to a drill or to time: There are times where a drill just is not working. As coaches, we need to be able make practice adjustments just like we need to be able to make game adjustments. There are times where a drill becomes counterproductive. When that time comes, it is time to move to the next element.

7. Setting the tone in practice: How you start your practice can determine the success of your practice. It is vital that your players get engaged physically and mentally right away. Using a competitive shooting drill or defensive drill is a great way to get your players invested in that particular practice.

There many other factors that can determine the effectiveness of a great practice. I highly recommend that you research Mike Dunlap and Don Meyer. These are just 2 of the great practice coaches out there.