Sunday, February 17, 2013

District Champions

Congratulations to the team for winning the district championship with a thrilling 50-40 win over perennial crosstown archrivals, the South County Stallions.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Tap Head

Put in a quick entry to 1-2-2 today as a way to get our team into 1-2-2 quicker in transition.  We will make the G to F pass and cut the Gs in front, the C will sprint up to the top of the key for the catch.  On the catch, the C will dribble down the F for a quick post up.  Trying lots of stuff to get our Fs posting up, this look fits in nicely with our Quick and Duck call.

Saturday, December 01, 2012

High Call to Relieve Pressure

Forwards are not great dribblers so going to allow the Fs to make a 'high' call which will take the Center and allow him to sprint up to top of key area.  If defender goes with him the F's can drive the opening, if the defenders man stays in the lane, then the Fs can easily pass to C while the Gs are cutting.

Monday, October 01, 2012

Guarding a Screen

The Keys to guarding screens are threefold: 

One if you are the defensive man whose man is setting the screen you must give room for the defender being screened to get through the screen.  We use to emphasize that the 'screenee' should always be the 3rd man through but as time has gone on we tell the man getting screened to 'not get screened', he can shoot the gap and get through or he can get on the hip and chase. 

Second, if you are being screened make sure that you make yourself small by turning sideways and not allowing a full body blow to be set.

Third, if the offensive player is coming off the screen toward the basket, i.e. getting a backscreen, then man guarding the screen will have to protect the lane or the basket for one second while the man being screened gets through.  The momentary switching might also occur if a man was receiving a down screened and subsequently curled the screen. 

Finally, a defensive player might have to switch if he sees a man come off wide open.  We'd prefer not to switch if possible.

Saturday, September 01, 2012

2 Guard Front with 'Crossing'

Sometimes PGs get a little disoriented when bring the ball up the court with another guard.  The fact that there are another two players off to his side as well as a defender in front of him creates a sense of crowdedness.  Good ball handlers should not be phased by this because they are pulling defenders up and away from the basket while setting up entry passes and pressure release action. 

We have all sort of ways in our offense to exploit this situation which have been described previously in other post but one thing that the guards can do is run a 'cross' where the ball handler just waves or pushes the non-ball handler to his side while dribbling the open or wide side of the court.  It is a simple action but effective to do every once in a while.  The non-ball handler can just loop to the ball handler's side of the court or he can run a blur cut right in front of the ball handler to make it look like more of a screening type of action.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Fast Break vs. Press Break

Heard a great way of looking at the fast break.  If the other team misses then your team runs like crazy trying to get a quick layup and/or shot in transition before the defense sets itself up.  If the other team scores then you have a secondary ball handler take it in to a primary ball handler and bring it up in a 'flow' type of action.  The coaching staff wants to run but the onus is on the defense to stop the opponent.  If the other team's offense can't be stopped then we really can't run and we will have to take our time b/c we are going to have to score repeatedly to stay in the game.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Helping Defensively

One thing that we have to analyze is how we want to help defensively.  With so many teams running dribble drive and looking to draw quick and immediate help, we need to make sure we don't come off the strong side at the first thrust. 

Once the dribble drive forces the defense to pinch, it allows the kick out for 3pter, it opens up the second drive behind the first drive and finally the it allows for the +1 pass to punish the defense for 'helping the helper'.

The help has to come off the strong or weakside post.  Going to be a hard defensive principle to teach but this allows the perimeter to stay locked in awhile longer.