The NEDA program leaves tomorrow afternoon to go on a trip to Paris and Brussels to compete against France and Belgium's centralized training groups. It is doubtful that I will have the time to update the site before we get back on the 26th of April. Hopefully I will have a million new ideas come out of our competition.
Look for more postings in early May before my time here is done (May13th)
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Easter Vacation
Sorry, too busy around here to get a post in today or yesterday.
We are going on a little break until Tuesday of next week, so there will be no new posts until then.
Tyler
We are going on a little break until Tuesday of next week, so there will be no new posts until then.
Tyler
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Zone Attack
Three things came out of today that I really enjoyed.
#1.
The warm up that we do every day called movement prep (which I assume Mike has sent that out to most people) is so valuable for us. The movements are designed to warm up your nervous system as well as your core, while working on balance and flexibility. How's that for killing a few birds with one stone? It is undoubtedly something I'm going to take with me wherever I end up coaching.
The great part about it that I didn't mention is the chance it gives the coaching staff to mentally prep the athletes.
Today practice focus was zone attack. Just about every drill that we did today led up to attacking a zone, it doesn't really matter what form of a zone, but it was a 2-3. So as the kids are doinig movement prep, the assistant coaches go around and give a completely individualized mini coaching clinic.
A typical conversation goes like this:
Coach: "What is your plan of atack today?" or "what are you going to try to improve on today?"
Athlete: "Uhhhhhhhh, I'm want to penetrate & pitch against the zone ." or "dribble attack"
Coach: "Ok, what ways are there to dribble against a zone?"
Athlete: "Well... you can penetrate... you can..."
Coach makes the athlete think about it, then guides the learning.
Coach: "Ok good, that's called spliting. Now what if we have a little two on one with a defender on the top. What can I do to get my teammate an open shot?"
Athlete: "You can dribble right at the defender and make them guard you?"
Coach: "Right, that's called a freeze dribble. Now there is one more way. Sometimes I want to try to get a defender to move out of position, so what I can do is laterally dribble out of their area while they guard me. That's called a dribble push or dribble pull, then my teammate can move into the space that the defender vacated."
Total time, 3 minutes. The player just reviewed the three types of effective dribbling against a zone defense, including the vocabulary necessary to be able to talk about it with their coaches and teammates. Powerfull.
I know I've talked about this subject before, but I really believe that this is a great way to improve your players performance. It lets you connect individually with each player before practice begins and gives you a chance to assess how they are doing that day. Some days an athlete's focus might just be that they want to focus on keeping their concentration and giving energy to the group because they are so tired that day from doing homework all night. So when a player starts to fatigue and makes a mental mistake, instead of jumping down their throat, you know the background information and can remind them to push through the fatigue.
#2.
We did some 5 on 5 attacking a zone out of a basic set. We had about two minutes to teach 5 girls a little set to attack a 2-3 zone. The overall theme on offense was to attack using the short corner. These are two different ways of getting there. The first group got this little set to attack out of.
First Set
O1 dribbles right at the top defender (X1) using a freeze dribble to get that player to guard her.
The situation has been created where a pass to O3 on the wing will have to be guarded by a bottom defender (X3).
At the same time, O4 screens in X3 to allow O3 to get a closeout as well as to keep the middle bottom defender player from cheating to either side before the pass is made.
After the pass, O1 will space out, trying to make X1 guard air, and O2 will be pushed to the baseline by the movement of O1.
Once X3 gets around O4 to closeout, O4 has a decision to make.
If O4 thinks that they can go seal X5 in good position to catch the ball and score, she will run in and seal X5 under the rim, we will get her the ball and she will score.
If X5 is playing outside the key on the ball side (in good position), O4 will slide to the short corner to try to draw X5 even further away from the front of the rim and out of position.
You can see that a catch by O4 in the short corner can lead to easy scores.
X5 basically must get out and guard O4. That leaves a gaping hole in the bottom of the zone.
O5 could now crash to the hoop and seal X4 for an easy post to post score. If the defense tries to take that away by having X4 jump in front of the cut, then a few more passes will be required before we find an open look.
This is where the diagonal skip will break down a zone.
O4 sends the ball up to a properly spaced out O1, who can either nail the jump shot (if X2 doesn't closeout) or make the pass-pass complete by sending it to O2 in the corner (if X2 doesn't closeout).
This was just a simple way to get a look on the first side and then get into motion.
Second Set
The idea of this set is the same as the last.
O5 screens in the top of the zone, O1 freeze dribbles X1 (makes X1 guard her) then passes to O3. O3 can start low and blast up to the wing to further entice X3 into guarding her.
O5 now has the same decision as in the other set.
If I can seal X5 at the rim, I'll do it. If not, exit to short corner, and drag X5 out with me.
If O4 was smart enough to seal out X4 when the ball was on the weak side, she just has to hold her seal for O5 to dump it in.
There are a number of things to do here, including the skip for 3 that we looked at in the last set.
On the pass to O5, O3 can give and go hard to the basket.
O4 can cut to the high post to draw X4 away from the paint. O4 can also "seal out" on any of the defenders, creating a seam that O5 can pass or drive into.
The theme behind both sets is drawing defenders out of their natural areas. Using dribbles and cuts to distort the zone and cause confusion as to who will guard who.
#3.
The third thing that a few of the girls thought I should include in today's post was another little mental training moment that occured at the end of practice.
We had just finished a fairly competitive 5 on 5 scrimmage that went to overtime and the girls competed very hard in the second half of it. The next drill was a shooting drill, one where everyone is supposed to count as all twelve players take shots. Well, mabye because we had some players still sore about losing the scrimmage or maybe they were tired from a long hard practice, but the energy was not there.
So after the drill we call them in for a second and Coach MacKay makes the observation.
Mike: "How was our energy in that last drill?"
Girls: "Not that good really"
Mike: "How was our counting?"
Girls: "Not very consistent"
Mike: "I agree. I noticed that some people only would count when they made a shot. If they missed a few, they get down and frustrated and internal and not give energy to the group. I have also noticed that from you in games. If you aren't scoring, sometimes you get frustrated and the energy goes down with you. Being consistent with your energy is really important, because those emotional ups and downs will ruin your performance."
Another good example of using mental training in the gym.
Ok, that should be enough for today!
#1.
The warm up that we do every day called movement prep (which I assume Mike has sent that out to most people) is so valuable for us. The movements are designed to warm up your nervous system as well as your core, while working on balance and flexibility. How's that for killing a few birds with one stone? It is undoubtedly something I'm going to take with me wherever I end up coaching.
The great part about it that I didn't mention is the chance it gives the coaching staff to mentally prep the athletes.
Today practice focus was zone attack. Just about every drill that we did today led up to attacking a zone, it doesn't really matter what form of a zone, but it was a 2-3. So as the kids are doinig movement prep, the assistant coaches go around and give a completely individualized mini coaching clinic.
A typical conversation goes like this:
Coach: "What is your plan of atack today?" or "what are you going to try to improve on today?"
Athlete: "Uhhhhhhhh, I'm want to penetrate & pitch against the zone ." or "dribble attack"
Coach: "Ok, what ways are there to dribble against a zone?"
Athlete: "Well... you can penetrate... you can..."
Coach makes the athlete think about it, then guides the learning.
Coach: "Ok good, that's called spliting. Now what if we have a little two on one with a defender on the top. What can I do to get my teammate an open shot?"
Athlete: "You can dribble right at the defender and make them guard you?"
Coach: "Right, that's called a freeze dribble. Now there is one more way. Sometimes I want to try to get a defender to move out of position, so what I can do is laterally dribble out of their area while they guard me. That's called a dribble push or dribble pull, then my teammate can move into the space that the defender vacated."
Total time, 3 minutes. The player just reviewed the three types of effective dribbling against a zone defense, including the vocabulary necessary to be able to talk about it with their coaches and teammates. Powerfull.
I know I've talked about this subject before, but I really believe that this is a great way to improve your players performance. It lets you connect individually with each player before practice begins and gives you a chance to assess how they are doing that day. Some days an athlete's focus might just be that they want to focus on keeping their concentration and giving energy to the group because they are so tired that day from doing homework all night. So when a player starts to fatigue and makes a mental mistake, instead of jumping down their throat, you know the background information and can remind them to push through the fatigue.
#2.
We did some 5 on 5 attacking a zone out of a basic set. We had about two minutes to teach 5 girls a little set to attack a 2-3 zone. The overall theme on offense was to attack using the short corner. These are two different ways of getting there. The first group got this little set to attack out of.
First Set
O1 dribbles right at the top defender (X1) using a freeze dribble to get that player to guard her.The situation has been created where a pass to O3 on the wing will have to be guarded by a bottom defender (X3).
At the same time, O4 screens in X3 to allow O3 to get a closeout as well as to keep the middle bottom defender player from cheating to either side before the pass is made.
After the pass, O1 will space out, trying to make X1 guard air, and O2 will be pushed to the baseline by the movement of O1.
Once X3 gets around O4 to closeout, O4 has a decision to make.
If O4 thinks that they can go seal X5 in good position to catch the ball and score, she will run in and seal X5 under the rim, we will get her the ball and she will score.
If X5 is playing outside the key on the ball side (in good position), O4 will slide to the short corner to try to draw X5 even further away from the front of the rim and out of position.
You can see that a catch by O4 in the short corner can lead to easy scores.
X5 basically must get out and guard O4. That leaves a gaping hole in the bottom of the zone.
O5 could now crash to the hoop and seal X4 for an easy post to post score. If the defense tries to take that away by having X4 jump in front of the cut, then a few more passes will be required before we find an open look.
This is where the diagonal skip will break down a zone.
O4 sends the ball up to a properly spaced out O1, who can either nail the jump shot (if X2 doesn't closeout) or make the pass-pass complete by sending it to O2 in the corner (if X2 doesn't closeout).
This was just a simple way to get a look on the first side and then get into motion.
Second Set
The idea of this set is the same as the last.
O5 screens in the top of the zone, O1 freeze dribbles X1 (makes X1 guard her) then passes to O3. O3 can start low and blast up to the wing to further entice X3 into guarding her.
O5 now has the same decision as in the other set.
If I can seal X5 at the rim, I'll do it. If not, exit to short corner, and drag X5 out with me.
If O4 was smart enough to seal out X4 when the ball was on the weak side, she just has to hold her seal for O5 to dump it in.
There are a number of things to do here, including the skip for 3 that we looked at in the last set.
On the pass to O5, O3 can give and go hard to the basket.
O4 can cut to the high post to draw X4 away from the paint. O4 can also "seal out" on any of the defenders, creating a seam that O5 can pass or drive into.
The theme behind both sets is drawing defenders out of their natural areas. Using dribbles and cuts to distort the zone and cause confusion as to who will guard who.
#3.
The third thing that a few of the girls thought I should include in today's post was another little mental training moment that occured at the end of practice.
We had just finished a fairly competitive 5 on 5 scrimmage that went to overtime and the girls competed very hard in the second half of it. The next drill was a shooting drill, one where everyone is supposed to count as all twelve players take shots. Well, mabye because we had some players still sore about losing the scrimmage or maybe they were tired from a long hard practice, but the energy was not there.
So after the drill we call them in for a second and Coach MacKay makes the observation.
Mike: "How was our energy in that last drill?"
Girls: "Not that good really"
Mike: "How was our counting?"
Girls: "Not very consistent"
Mike: "I agree. I noticed that some people only would count when they made a shot. If they missed a few, they get down and frustrated and internal and not give energy to the group. I have also noticed that from you in games. If you aren't scoring, sometimes you get frustrated and the energy goes down with you. Being consistent with your energy is really important, because those emotional ups and downs will ruin your performance."
Another good example of using mental training in the gym.
Ok, that should be enough for today!
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