Youth basketball coaching

[jay santos]

How to dominate youth basketball.

1. In your draft, try to get the best point guard as the highest priority. Big man that can defend and possibly score in the paint, second priority. Third priority is athleticism, favoring speed over height everytime.

2. Scoring in the half court set is difficult no matter how good you are. Especially when jerk coaches run a zone and pack it in. You have to score on fast breaks. So spend nearly all your time in practice on how to generate fast breaks and scoring on your fast breaks, see #3.

3. Defense: attacking defense. Best athlete point guard is on their point guard. Stop the dribble, and everyone is aggressively cutting off passing lanes. Wait until they get to half court to jump on them. Practice this over and over.

4. Half court D. If they get past you and into their offense, front their post players, harass the perimeter players, and force them to make perfect pass over the top to get it to their post man.

5. Rebounding. Spend almost half your practice time on rebounding drills and boxing out (and firing it out to the outlet point guard to run the fast break).

6. Half court offense. Depending on the age, you can get more complicated, but simpler the better and fewer passes the better. High screen pick and roll is about all you need through 6th grade. If you have to pass more than twice, good chance you'll turn it over and never get a shot. You need quick hitting plays and shoot the ball quickly--at least you get a shot in and a chance for offensive rebound, plus you're quicker into your real scoring opportunities which are on D.


Teach fundamentals and all that and try to develop basketball players, but the way to win games is this strategy.

[MikeWaters]

The big men not getting the ball out on the break is my biggest pet peeve in my pickup games at work.

Ok, yes, we notice you got the rebound. We congratulate you. We love you. You worked hard, you did a good job. You're taller than everyone else. NOW GIVE ME THE DAMN BALL!!!!

[Indy Coug]

You have a draft?

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

You have a draft?

We have a draft for every city league sport starting with third grade. Younger than that, they assign you random. Serious business.

[Jeff Lebowski]

That is all excellent advice, Jay. Good post.

What is your theory on full-court press? Seems to me that a well-designed zone press can be very effective against poor to average youth teams. But against good teams it just take too much energy and should be used sparingly.

What basic principles do you stress on the fast break? In addition to the quick outlet pass, of course.

[cougjunkie]

Thats true, unless of course you have a huge big man. For example I went to Champions Athletic Academy a few years ago and it was Paysons 7th grade vs Timpviews 7th grade, and Matt Reynolds was playing for Timpview. He was so much bigger than everyone else that he dominated. It looked like Darby O'Gill and the little people.

[Jeff Lebowski]

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems with youth ball is kids standing around on offense watching the dribbler. And poor passing. To work on this, I like to do the "3 on 2 - 2 on 1" drill. You put two defenders on one basket (south for example) and have three players come up the court, the middle player with the ball. The offense has numbers and they need to pass the ball to get a good shot. I tell them that once they get near the basket, I don't want to see any dribbling, just quick passes and movement without the ball to fill in gaps in the defense. Then once there is a turnover, basket, or rebound, the last offense player to touch the ball runs back on defense to the north basket and the two defenders are now on offense. The two remaining player of the original three wait under the south basket to play defense. Once there is a basket or turnover under the north basket, a new set of three players take the ball and attack the two players under the south basket. It sounds a little complicated, but they pick it right up. My girls love this drill.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by cougjunkie

Thats true, unless of course you have a huge big man. For example I went to Champions Athletic Academy a few years ago and it was Paysons 7th grade vs Timpviews 7th grade, and Matt Reynolds was playing for Timpview. He was so much bigger than everyone else that he dominated. It looked like Darby O'Gill and the little people.

LOL. My son played with Matt Reynolds when they were in 6th grade in the Jr. Jazz league. Matt was 6' and weighed 200 lbs. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the parents of the other team when they would walk in the gym and see Matt warming up.

Of course, it didn't hurt that the Reynolds family "redshirts" all of their kids in kindergarten. In addition to being huge, Matt was a year older than everyone else.

It was also fun to watch the Reynolds family work the refs. As if Matt needed any help. That's a competitive family.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

That is all excellent advice, Jay. Good post.

What is your theory on full-court press? Seems to me that a well-designed zone press can be very effective against poor to average youth teams. But against good teams it just take too much energy and should be used sparingly.

What basic principles do you stress on the fast break? In addition to the quick outlet pass, of course.

A lot of it is personal preference and I'm sure full court zone press can be effective, and I've seen some deadly ones.

1) I don't like zone anything just because I want to teach my kids fundamentals of one on one defense.

2) depends on the level, if it's competitive league you can teach it, if it's city league you won't be able to teach it to young kids because they'll forget where they're supposed to be and what they're supposed to do--stick with something easy.

3) full court, yes it tires you out, plus exposes yourself to fast break buckets which I try to eliminate at all costs. The other thing I teach is to get your a$$ back fast when they get the ball to stop their fast break. Then you can turn around at half court or further back and cut off dribble and get into passing lanes for steal.

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

What basic principles do you stress on the fast break? In addition to the quick outlet pass, of course.

On the fast break, I get the ball immediately to the point guard I don't care who steals the ball or gets the rebound first pass is to point guard because he can get the ball up the court the fastest without a TO. You see a kid get a steal and then travel with the ball all the time because he's not used to running up the ball with the court. So I get it to my point guard as fast as possible and then tell everyone else if you want to score you get up the court first and pg will get you the ball. Nothing too complicated. Then you also look for early scoring opportunities even if they get back fast and cut off the break if you might have a mismatch to drive or post up.