Basketball Coach Unplugged (A Basketball Coaching Podcast)

Do you have three defenses or one really good one?

https://teachhoops.com/

Why most preseason defensive installs
try to cover everything and end up covering nothing.

SHOW NOTES

Somewhere in your league there
is a team with almost no defensive scheme at all that is going to beat somebody
good this winter, because they guard the ball. Meanwhile most of us are
carrying three or four defenses and are not actually good at any of them. Steve
walks through the order of operations for installing defense in preseason,
starting with the only question that matters before any scheme decision: can we
guard the ball?

What we cover:

•
Why ball pressure and stance have to get real practice
time before anything else

•
Help, recovery, and why the second closeout is where
most threes come from

•
Teaching one ball screen coverage instead of three your
kids will forget

•
Why a press is a reward a team earns and never a
starting point

•
Identical vocabulary October through February, guarding
without fouling, and the honest test of whether your defense is really
installed

This week's challenge: Drop your weakest defense and
give those minutes to guarding the ball.

Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, and on court
clinics at https://teachhoops.com/

Recorded at the Fifth Quarter
Studios in Madison, Wisconsin.

EPISODE DETAILS

Runtime: 11 minutes 47
seconds

Audio file: 05_defense_install.mp3

LINKS

https://teachhoops.com/

https://coachingyouthhoops.com/

https://heysammi.com/

Do You Have
Three Defenses, or One Really Good One?

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Making Practice Better

https://teachhoops.com/ · https://coachingyouthhoops.com/ · https://heysammi.com/

TITLE
How Many Reps Did Your Players Actually Get Yesterday?

SUBTITLE
Practice quality is a number you can count, and most coaches have never once counted it.

SHOW NOTES

Coaches judge practice on how it felt. Felt sharp, felt flat. Coach Collins makes the case for judging it on something harder and more honest: how many real repetitions each player got, how much of the gym was moving at any moment, and how much of your two hours went to things that were not basketball. Small structural changes here are worth more than any new drill.

What we cover:

Counting touches instead of trusting how practice felt

Where the minutes actually go, and the parts nobody notices losing

Running two things at once instead of everybody watching one

Adding a score to a drill and what it does to effort

Ending practice on something that tells you whether it worked

This week's challenge: Pick one player and count his actual repetitions for a twenty minute stretch of your next practice.

Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, and on court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/

https://teachhoops.com/ · https://coachingyouthhoops.com/ · https://heysammi.com/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/

Why the team vote usually crowns the
most popular kid, and what to ask of a captain once you have actually named the
job.

SHOW NOTES

The best captain Coach Steve
Collins ever had averaged three points a game and never started. In this three
part episode, Steve gets into how he stopped letting the team vote, why your
leading scorer is often the wrong choice, and the three specific things he asks
a captain to do. He also handles the part nobody plans for, which is what you
do in November when the kid with the title is not leading.

What we cover:

•
Why a team vote is a popularity contest, and what to
hand out instead

•
Why your best player is frequently your worst captain

•
Naming the job out loud so a captain knows what the
role requires

•
The three asks: the first five minutes, the truth,
praise loud and correct quiet

•
Handling a captain who is not leading without
humiliating him

This week's challenge: Before your first game, sit your
captains down alone and say out loud the three things you need from them.

Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, and on
court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/

Recorded at the Fifth Quarter
Studios in Madison, Wisconsin.

EPISODE DETAILS

Runtime: 10 minutes 38
seconds

Audio file: 04_captains.mp3

LINKS

https://teachhoops.com/

https://coachingyouthhoops.com/

https://heysammi.com/

Are You Picking
Captains or Just Holding an Election?

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Teach Hoops One-on-One Call

https://teachhoops.com/ · https://coachingyouthhoops.com/ · https://heysammi.com/

TITLE
What Happens When One Coach Gets an Hour on His Own Program?

SUBTITLE
A Teach Hoops one on one call, where a single coach brings his actual situation and we work through it out loud.

SHOW NOTES

This is a recording of a Teach Hoops one on one call. Different from the group member calls: one coach, one program, and enough time to get past the surface of the problem to whatever is actually causing it. Names and details are shared with permission, and the value for you is that the underlying issue is almost never unique to him.

What we cover:

One coach's real situation, described in his own words

Getting underneath the stated problem to the actual one

Working the solution in real time instead of offering general advice

Where his instincts were right and where they were leading him wrong

What a coach can act on the very next day

This week's challenge: Write down the problem in your program you have been avoiding, in one sentence, and notice how much clearer it gets on paper.

Resources: One on one calls, member calls, practice plans, drills, and courses at https://teachhoops.com/

https://teachhoops.com/ · https://coachingyouthhoops.com/ · https://heysammi.com/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/

⁠https://coachingyouthhoops.com/⁠

⁠https://heysammi.com/⁠

What Should You Actually Be Watching in Your First Scrimmage?

The score is the least useful number in the gym, so here are the three you should write on your card instead. SHOW NOTESYour first scrimmage is the best information you will get all preseason, and most coaches throw it away by watching the ball and worrying about the score. Coach Steve Collins walks through how to decide what you are hunting for before tip, why you should let your team drown through a bad stretch instead of bailing them out, and how one quarter of complete silence can teach you more than a month of practice. What we cover: - Why a preseason score is built out of things that will not exist in January- Picking three things before the ball goes up and writing them on your card- Watching habits instead of results, starting with who sprints back without being told- The bench and the huddle are half your information and they are sitting right next to you- Fix, do not add: turning scrimmage notes into one twelve minute Monday segment This week's challenge: Write your three things on your card before tip, then coach one full quarter with your mouth closed. Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, and on court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Runtime: 5 minutes 32 secondsAudio file: 09_first_scrimmage.mp3 LINKS

https://teachhoops.com/

https://coachingyouthhoops.com/

https://heysammi.com/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices