My 7th grade season came to a crashing end as I've already discussed, but we had a solid season. 3rd place in our season opening tournament and county tournament. We won our regional and section (which were the 1st we've won with me coaching) and we had a state appearance. Short lived, however.
Either way, our season is finished.. which means a time for reflection. What did we do well? Where did we struggle? What can we change to improve our players? It's a little bit more difficult for me to do this because I don't get these same kids again. I will be able to assist them, but they won't be my team, which stinks. It's not like I'm a varsity coach and can have the freshman, jv and my own soph/jr varsity players to work with. Instead, I have to my reflect myself to see what drills worked and hammer away again even though my team might have a completely different feel to it.
The first thing we did well surprised me; we boxed out very well. We were slightly undersized and had moments where we got pushed under the hoop, but size factor included: we were solid. We did FT box-outs, 3, 4 and 5 man shell box-outs and a "game" called 4 corner box out. 2 guys to the elbows, 2 to lane/baseline to form a square. The guys inside the square had to boxout the guy outside the square for 3 seconds; if no "offensive" player touched the ball then great. If one did, whoever allowed him to touch it had to do 10 victory push-ups. There was also one key rule: no ticky-tack fouls.
I think that really improved our boxing out and making contact. I also think it helped our toughness because earlier in the year we whined. A LOT. We got a lot better in drills and games as the year went along; we weren't constantly looking for a whistle and hesitating. We got a board and went back up, and back up and back up until we finished or they got the board. No arms out looking for a call.
We were also very good at getting to the lane. We worked a lot on individual drills, at least 5 minutes daily doing commandos. We also added in 10+ minutes of positional split each day. A lot of our guys got better at dropping the shoulder and getting to the lane where we worked on passing, floaters and other ways to shoot/finish. We were really good at shooting the floater, okay at making them but brutal at jump stops in the lane where so many good things can happen. The guards also improved at shooting off the dribble, including pull-ups which we hit a few pull up 3's in the playoffs.
We also ran some set plays very well, and I put in motion for the 1st time. We kept ball handlers in front of us and got better with our weak side D (but a loooooooooong ways to go). We also added in blitzing ball screens for the first time and that is something we will surely keep in our program. That being said there are plenty of areas where I need to improve our team for 7th and 8th grade and into high school. I'll be able to assist the guys I had this year and hopefully get them ready for high school.. and my new crop of 7th graders? Back to square 1. Here are some things I need to focus on getting better with:
1. Break after makes/misses. We always stress it early in the year, and then I get away from it when we get into games against teams that we see every year. I want to force the tempo, and I need to get that into the team from Day 1. It starts with the first drill and ends with the last drill. I have to remember to build it into drills; it can even be in our 3 on 3 shell drills!
2. Shooting form, plays for shooters and shooting off screens: Form is hit or miss, but we don't spend a lot of time on it because we don't have a ton of time! We have to work on getting elbows tight and shooting in their range instead of hip bombing from 3, which makes me sick. I also have to get better at finding plays for our shooters and making sure they can stroke it coming off a screen.
3. Using their body on offense/defense. Beating the offensive player to a spot and being physical. There are certain plays we have that focus on patterns and movement, and it drives me insane when somebody is near where our offensive guy needs to be and he avoids the spot or goes elsewhere. I cannot stand it; kids are afraid of contact. We have to get them better at using their body to get that position on both ends of the floor.
4. Utilize backdoor cuts. I love them; we don't use them. There is a reason I want to study some of the Princeton offense this summer!
5. Post Work: Offensively, we need more than a drop step to score. Have to have a counter move.. at least one, preferably more. Defensively, work on keeping the offense off the block and then full, 3/4 front with weakside help. Our playoff game we got ate up playing behind and couldn't get around to front (didn't practice it). That won't happen again.
6. Recover off blitz and rotate: I already said that we're going to stay with the blitz, so we have to get better at rotating out and finding somebody to defend. The weakside guy has to get over and take away the cutter.
Princeton, "50" and "41" motion offense. Such a thing of beauty.
8. Rotate our defenses to slow hot teams. Man, 1-3-1 in quarter or half. 1-2-1-1 in the full court.
9. An effective sideline OOB play for the bucket.
No comments:
Post a Comment