Sometimes The Name on the Jersey Scares Players More Than the Players in the Jersey

On Friday my freshmen played City Conference power St. Paul Johnson at home. Johnson is a well coached and pretty talented team. I knew we would struggle. I told my guys this may be our toughest game all year but we could beat them, and my guys believed me, maybe a little too much. We came out of the gate firing on all guns and got out to a 13-4 lead early on. Then, during a timeout, one of my guys looked around the huddle and said "I can't believe we are actually beating Johnson", and everyone else looked at him with the same look of disbelief. Right then it sank into the kids just WHO we were playing. After that, my guys started to play scared. They didn't realize that they were out playing these kids and were actually as good as them, they instead focused on the fronts of the jerseys instead of the players in those jerseys. So next time we play them, I'm going to make sure to be much more low key about the whole thing and just quietly assure them we can do the job. I am not sure how to get rid of the sticker shock yet, but I will think of something. Maybe have our guys go against the sophomore team wearing Johnson jerseys?! I don't know! But the nice thing is we get a rematch against them in a few weeks, we will see where we go from there.

A Funny Story....At Least Now

Saturday the freshmen team I coach played White Bear Lake. I LOVE my freshmen to death, they are great kids, work hard, but are not supremely talented this year. We spend a TON of practice time learning the game and working on fundamentals, and it is starting to pay off. We had some tough games in the beginning, but have been closing the gap as the season has went on, which is a big positive.

So in this game against White Bear Lake (WBL from now on), we were playing our tails off. Getting on the floor for balls, playing together, working hard on defense, everything we've talked about doing. WBL was a pretty solid team, but we were hanging with them and actually had the game tied right at the end. So they scored with a minute left to go up 2 points, and we brought the ball down. I could tell we were not sure what to run - I had just checked with the book and was told I had 1 timeout remaining - so I decided this would be as good a time as any to take it. When I asked the official for a timeout, he turned to me and said "Coach, you don't have any timeouts left". I looked at him like he was crazy and informed him I had a timeout and I wanted to use it! He again said I didn't have a timeout and wasn't going to give it to me. I started jumping up and down DEMANDING I have my timeout and he refused to blow his whistle. As this is happening my guys proceed to lose the ball, the other team goes down, scores and gets fouled.

At this point I am border line nuts about the no timeout call. The official goes to the scorers table and asks (as the other team is shooting the FT), they inform him that I do in fact have that timeout I wanted. The official looks at me and gives me some baloney excuse about how it was the books fault. I contended he should have blown the whistle when the timeout was requested and if was not one left, should have given the T for calling to many. He gave me more baloney...but I wasn't making any sandwiches with it.

Great story to underline the idea that we are all human and we all make mistakes. Things happen that are just crazy sometimes and you have to be able to smile about them, even if not getting the timeout may have cost us the win in this situation. It was a good learning experience for my guys in terms of not always having the cards fall on the table as you may want them to. Sometimes in life you get stiffed. And further more, if we hadn't given up 10+ points in second chance baskets to WBL, we wouldn't be in this situation anyway. Great way to highlight the fact that every single play in a game is important.

A Great Time to Make a Defensive Change

I was watching the Timberwolves Shootout in the Target Center yesterday, and something that happened in the game between Henry Sibley HS and Madison Memorial HS I thought was worth writing about.

Later into the second half, the game had been bouncing between a tie and a one basket Memorial lead. But after a Sibley made basket to tie it up, Coach Dasovich from Sibley called a time out. I assumed he was changing defenses and he came out in a 2-3 zone. It was a great move at the time because up until that point they had played straight man to man. The 2-3 totally threw Memorial off their game for a few posessions and allowed Henry Sibley to take the lead.

I am a fan of changing defenses from time to time (but having a great base in something), and thought it was a great move to use the defensive change to break that stalemate of being 2 down, tied, and 2 down again. I think when you change defenses like that there are some things to consider however:

1. What are the strengths of the team we are changing defenses against? If they are great passers, it wouldn't be wise to run a zone trap. If they are having an amazing night shooting, running a pack it in 2-3 zone isn't the greatest idea (unless you have the athletes and/or length to close out). Change to a defense that your opponent may struggle with a little and plays away from their strengths. Madison Memorial wasn't shooting all that well and was scoring a lot of points on the inside. So with Sibley's length and size, going 2-3 made it hard to get the ball inside on the drive or the pass.

2. Has your oppojnent seen you run this defense a lot? If you run a lot of man to man and 2-3 zone, changing to your 2-3 is an fine thing to do, but may not be as effective if your opponent knows you and has spent time preparing for the 2-3. I think Madison was shocked that Sibley actually went 2-3 for that period of time and it really took them out of their game.

3. Does this opponent play against this defense normally? If you are playing a team with 2 6-10 centers and poor shooters, they likely see a ton of 2-3 and have ways built into their offense to work through it (on the other hand maybe they are horrible at it, but in that case you play 2-3 lots of the game then...). They may not be as phased by a 2-3 as they would some other defense like a 1-2-2 trap. Also, if the team itself plays a lot of this defense it is going to be harder to run it because they likely practice it in their practice using their zone offense, so they get extra reps against the defense you are running on a daily basis. Madison's confusion may have come more from the fact that they were not expecting Sibley to go 2-3 in this situation.


So overall, I think switching defenses for a short while from time to time is a great thing. It's like a pitcher that has a great fastball, but also has a nasty changeup that can make people look silly if they are not ready. You can be great at one defense, but sometimes you need to throw some change ups to people in order to be successful.

When You Are Not as Talented as Your Opponent on a Nightly Basis...

Sometimes as coaches we are not going to be blessed with all the race horses. Sometimes we are going to get some pigs, and some years we may even end up with all donkeys. It's the way life goes. But I think you can still be relatively successful with less talent if you can control the tempo.

I personally feel a good way to have success is to control the tempo one of two ways: speed it to crazy or slow it to a crawl. Either way you have to do something to get the other team out of their comfort zone. Grinnell College in Iowa is a prime example of this. They play so fast and out of their minds that the other team doesn't know how to react to the tempo and it often results in the opponent being thrown off. Loyola Marymount back in the 80s was another good example. On the other hand some teams take the opponent out of their game by slowing the game down. I always thought that Coach Vix from Rushford did a nice job of slowing the tempo down when it needed to be. This is how his teams often beat oppoents with more talent then they had.

This will not always work, but I think from time to time can catch someone off guard.

The Five Minute Game

When your team is struggling a lot, I have found this strategy to be effective for keeping your players focused and working hard. It also works in a big game when you feel you may be over matched by an opponent. I got this from Coach Bowen at Bemidji State and I think it's a neat idea.

Before the game starts, tell your team that you are going to call a timeout every five minutes throughout the entire game. Your team's ONLY job is to try and win that five minute segment. They shouldn't worry about the last five minutes or the next five, just the current five. Then after each segment, you call timeout, and talk about what happened in that five minutes. I like to go over what we did we did right (and want to keep doing right) and what did we do wrong (and what to change). It's great to really teach a struggling team about basketball on the fly. And when I use this, I see less dropped heads and disappointed faces because they are too busy getting ready to win that next five minutes. It gives them a goal and a focus so they are not thinking about a lopsided score.

With my Bagley team last year, I started this after the first few games (when we were getting beat hard) and slowly weaned them off it as the season went. I think it was part of the reason that after an 0-13 start we finished 6-2 in our last 8 games. They started to play in the moment and worry about what was going on presently instead of what happened or was going to happen.

Good and Fun Games to Work on Ballhandling

I did this drill the other day with my guys, they seemed to like it and I will do it again. While raiding the PE closet at Como Park I found some small dodge balls. I had my players play dodge ball while they were dribbling with their weak hands. The kids really enjoyed it and they had to move around and maneuver with their weak hands. Anytime you can get kids to work on their weak hands and still have fun, it's a good thing! If you get eliminated you owe 5-10 pushups, so that increases the competitive element to the game as well.

The other game we play (and why I was in the PE closet in the first place) is playing catch while dribbling a basketball. I have my players play catch with a tennis ball, baseball, or softball while dribbling. They stand on opposite lane lines and play catch. I have them do it with their right hand, left hand, and then have them cross over and catch. We compete for who can play catch the longest. I like it because the players are doing two things at once, it's competitive, and works on their dribbling with their eyes up.

Dealing with Tough Losses

Well...we had our first freshmen game yesterday against the Forest Lake sophomores and it didn't go so well. We ended up losing by fifty!!! OUCH! Truthfully, they were much bigger, faster, and more physical than we were and it showed. My guys were scared and played like that in the first half as we were down 35 by halftime. In warm ups, most of their shots were air balls or hit the backboard hard, I had to giggle a little bit. But in the second half, they calmed down and played slightly better.

I think in a hard loss like this, you have to keep things in perspective and use this situatiion as a learning experience for your guys. Freshmen seem to listen much better once they have gotten a beatdown laid upon them! What could we have done better? What did we do right? I make sure ina loss like this to not beat up the guys, and to find some positives because they already know they didn't play as well as they should have. So my plan is to come back to practice positive, full of energy, and ready to correct what went wrong. It also reinforces my ideas that freshmen basketball is all about player development and not about winning and losing. THat is the message I delivered to my tom after the game and the message I will continue to go with!