YBCA

I am working on the same things with high school players. Amazing how poor movement skills, flexibility, mobility, strength, etc is in high school freshmen. 

Also, amazing that players do not catch and look at the basket. It's a process trying to develop better movement skills and trying to develop the habit of catching and squaring and passing and cutting. Slowly, but surely, If they build those habits at a young age, they have such an advantage. 

Post Script here, I really didn't want to do 2v0 pass and cut, but I think I'll do that next practice while doing layups to reinforce the concept, making it a little bit easier without having so much “contextual interference” of having 6+ players on the court at once.

For the 3v3, maybe the word “chaos” wasn't the correct choice. I know that a lot of the league games will be players getting steals and breakaways after breakaways (so the 3v3 will approximiate that), but I was wondering if 3v3 would not necessarily be efficient way for all players to work on skills. The stronger players will shine (just like in a game), but I was thinking that the 3v3 full court wouldn't be enough of a teaching tool to the weaker players. I'll try it just the same.

3v3 Hockey Rules or3v3 football? I was looking through Crossover and didn't find 3v3 hockey rules.

Just the same, here's the practice plan for Sat. (1 hour practice; we get half a court inside).

1. Dynamic warmups (front and side lunges; Squats; backpedal; ice sakter; carioca; hi knee walk; toy soldier; hi knee jog; mirror drill)
2. Utah line drills (emphasis on pivoting as players were turtling all over the place last practice)
3. Red-light/green light (with balls)
4. Some form of dribble tag (Adi/speed/partner)
5. 2v0 layups (emphasis on passing and cutting). Right & left side of basket.
6. 2v0 layups, w/ emphasis on making a move (crossover)
7. 3v3 half court (maybe 3v3 cutthroat)

Just had 2nd practice today. League game me choice to practice indoors, halfcourt, with one hoop. Said no thanks; we went outdoors for fullcourt, had 4 hoops all to ourselves.

We only have 6 players today. After dynamic warmups we did the cone workout/layups, red light/green light (while dribbling)  and then on to 2v0 (pass and cut) layups.

I didn't get a chance to do Utah line drills, so pivoting is still a bit ragged.

Moved on to about 20 minutes of full court, 3V3 and ended practice with free throws for about 10 minutes.

Kids are doing great with the movement drills; they are taking their time and not rushing through whatever series of dynamic warmups/movement skills we do.

They were definitely better with the ball today.

Looking forward to next practice. We'll have 3 more practices before our first game.

Thanks for posting.  I am looking at starting something with this aged group of kids at my school so your experiences let me feel out what I can expect and hopefully gain from insight. 

A quick question -  how long do you spend on the dynamic warm up and movement skills portion of you practice?

AT

It's amazing how poor the movement skills are at the high-school level. Players who are described as “good athletes” but they can't skip or do a full squat and learning new movements is a difficult process because of lack of coordination. I'll try to take a video of two drills that I do – a lateral skip and another track/boxing drill – that players really struggle to do. It's due to a poor movement background and poor coordination even though we expect them to perform admirably in sport-specific skills. I spend 10 minutes on these skills as a warm-up every day at the high school level nstead of warming up with ball handling or three-man weaves like the sophomores because the players need to move better to perform more advanced basketball skills. I finally got my “best athlete” (i.e. best leaper) to do a crossover step when he was beaten while on defense. That's nearly a month of working on lateral movement every day in one way or another and he's finally gaining the coordination to do a  crossover step and the perceptual ability to know when to do a crossover step. If you get 3rd graders to the same point, how much of an advantage do they have?

Primarily I'm concerned with coordination in terms of the ability to move, so I'm talking about skips, shuffles, crossover steps, lunges, crawls, squats, jumps, hops, etc. Tag games, mirror drills, etc. would be games to add. For coordination, there are some ball-handling drills that I do, like one high, one low; rolling one and bouncing one, etc. Things that force them to do things out of rhythm or perform two discrete movements at the same time (run your tummy, pat your head). Juggling is another activity that I suggest.

There is research out of San Diego that has shown that children skipping important development steps as a youth leads to all kinds of problems from lack of coordination to behavioral issues to academic issues because it retards brain development. They actually remedy the problems by working on things like creeping and crawling that some kids don't do as much anymore because parents put them in a crib all day or things like that. It's interesting research. 

I used a ball screen with that age. 

As for more 4v0 and 5v0, that's tough. I'm not convinced that it transfers to 5v5 anyway. Some might not hurt, but a lot probably won't help as much. I think you're better off playing 4v4 and stopping it when players run to the ball or crowd too much and show them the problem. 

I got an email that suggested an interesting game that may or may not help:

Football

Dribbling the ball across the baseline counts as a point. Passing across the line counts as two points, but it has to be completed within the lanelines. The idea was to spread out the players and encourage players who are not confident shooting the ball to attack with the dribble. You could even have a player shoot a free throw after a touchdown as the extra point (or a lay-up if that's more appropriate). 

My team has issues with running to the ball and only going to the right. I've stopped it often in recent practices to illustrate the lack of spacing. “Freeze!” We've had possessions with 5 players on the right side of the court! Lack of awareness. Our problem is getting the ball reversed and going left against defensive pressure. 5v0 won't fix that problem. 

But, for younger players, a game might be a race to get to different spots on the court. Race to the short corner. Race to the elbow. Could be used as a warm-up exercise. Could use questions to as they started to understand. If the ball is at the top of the key, what would a good position be for the other four players? If the ball is in the baseline corner, where should the other four players be? Something like that.

As for the 2v0 and wanting defense, do you want defense on the shot? so the cutter has to read a defender for the cut? on the passer?

Hey Brendan

Just a couple of random thoughts

When you mentioned setting a high screen for the ball handler could you spend more time working in a fosters drill situation where the ball handler needs to learn to beat the defender – would this develop their individual skill more?  I am thinking that setting a high screen will be effective in the short term but in the longer term would they become better ball handlers if you worked on beating their man.  Could you try the dribble at series were if some dribbles at you you cut to the hoop. 

As for teaching movement what if you modified the game where if players didn't pass and cut it is an automatic turn over – play this in the half court situation 3 on 3 or 4 on 4.  As for spacing what if you started playing 3 on 1 keep away for 20 sec and expand the boundaries and shrink the boundries even to the size of the jump circle and than have the offence pick the size that is an advantage to them and have the d pick the size they want to play in. Perhaps they would discover that more space is better and more space allows them to spread out (to a certain point) away from the defender.  Add defender and change up space and see if the offence spreads out more till you get to even numbers.  Modify the game where you must pass and cut through if not there is a turn over.  As more people are added congestion occurs see if they can solve the problem with how to stay spread out.  Just some thoughts.  In Brians games set a total number of passed, number of passes in a row – this could also lead to the best place to have the ball – how to hold it so you see your targets keeps things competitive and game like.  I really live Brian's Long Island passing as well as volleyball passing as keep away games.  Play your games in half court toward a basket or in the three point area.  Stack your team so one wins – why does that team win all the time – hopefully it because they pass and move to open space and the passer is always keeping their head up looking to move the ball. If you can involve yourself in the game and you could model how to move and pass.  You may not need to do it directly perhaps they will just pick it up by seeing someone better do it.

Just some thoughts – I'd like to know what you thing.

AT