Good Day

I thought we had a very good drill today in practice. The NEDA wing players were grouped together today for about 30 minutes to work on some common weaknesses that the group possesses. Coach Greg Francis and I talked a little bit after a recent game about some of the shortcomings our wing players have, and we turned that into a drill for today.

We had six players and after doing some work on throwing and catching some hard passes, we went into a 3 on 3 drill.


Our observations from the game were that our girls were taking a lot of shots over help defense. We would have no trouble getting by our own player, but when the next level defenders would come to help, we would try to take some tough contested shots. Usually the correct read when you draw help is to kick the ball to the open player (with a few notable exceptions, such as late game/shot clock situations, against a player in foul trouble, etc.)

So the emphasis in the drill was that as soon as a help defender took a step to come help, you had to kick the ball out. We made the girls play pure pass & cut offense so that we could get more opportunities to work on reading help defenders on penetration.


The second observation that we worked into the drill was that any time our perimeter players caught the ball, they would go into the classic stand-up-straight-with-the-ball-over-your-head-and-watch-people-stand-there stance. As soon as one player holds the ball like that in motion offense, half of the floor grinds to a halt.

The addition to the drill was that a player who caught the ball had to either shoot, pass, or attack the rim with the dribble or it was a turnover.


The post drill debrief showed that the girls had taken away a few important lessons from the drill. Their feedback was that they had the most success when:


1. They had good spacing.

We had to address this point a few times in the drill, especially after a penetration. If the penetrator doesn't sprint out to the 3 point line after kicking the ball out, the other two players only have the option to shoot or pass.


2. They kicked the ball before the help got to them.

If they waited for the defense to get to them and then picked the ball up to try to make a pass, it was too late. When they made the pass on the help defender's first step towards the help, it gave open shots and closeouts to their teammates.


3. They caught the ball like scorers.

This one is critical, and something I'm going to make a point of watching from now on. If you don't catch the ball like a shooter, no one is going to play you. You don't have to shoot it, you don't have to drive the ball, but the difference in making your defender play you like a scorer and play you like a passer is a significant one.


These were good learning points for the girls, and I think with more emphasis, they can become habits.

I'm going to have another large layoff inbetween posts, our March break starts tomorrow