Two Sides to Every Basketball Blowout

Two Sides to Every Basketball Blowout

One of the best feelings in sports is being on the right side of a blowout. The team is on cruise control, smiles abound from ear to ear, and all seems to be right with the world. But one of the worst feelings is being on the wrong side of a basketball blowout.

Basketball Blowout

Perhaps what makes being on the right side of a basketball blowout feel so powerful is the remembrance of how equally powerful the opposite feelings can be on the other bench. Hence, one of the worst feelings in sports is being on the wrong side of a blowout. The mind tries to assess the damage, and quickly produce a potential comeback strategy.

Meanwhile, with every passing second, the body takes a little longer to engage in the action because win probability has decreased so drastically. Motivation becomes increasingly harder to muster, and as the clock ticks away, the thoughts of most every player and coach turn from salvaging the present, to future revenge.

There’s far more to be played for in a blowout than just the final outcome. Seeds planted for future strategy and motivation. It teaches valuable lessons in professionalism that can often be the difference between winning and losing long-term.

The best teams are not only the teams that know how to win, but know how to win best.

Composure and Discipline

It’s very important for every successful team to be memorable. The key remains being memorable for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. Your opponent should only remember you for general things, like tough defense, team speed, or overall intensity. This will always be in their thoughts and preparation, but not likely to be an emotional focal point.

However, when your opponent remembers specific disrespectful moments, they will be much more likely to keep those memories fresh in their minds, and make them an emotional focal point for all future matchups against you.

This means that by consistently being unprofessional and disrespectful, especially in blowouts, your team could very well be freely providing enough motivation to inferior teams you’ve already beaten to one day turn the tables and finally beat you. Every season, teams with terrible records some how pull off a major upset against elite teams. Many of these scenarios occur because the inferior team had circled that particular game “Super Bowl” so to speak, based on a sour taste in their mouth from a past matchup.

4th Quarter and Finishing Respectfully

The best way for good teams and great teams to avoid this type of revenge situation each year is to finish every game respectfully, especially blowouts! Whenever the outcome of a game has long been decided. Take a page from football and run the ball until the clock runs out. All but abandoning the air attack, in order to finish a blowout respectfully. Of course, the basketball equivalent would be to walk the ball instead of run it, and eventually take the air out of the 3-point attack. Late 3-pointers can often be a source of great contentment amongst teams that are being blown out. It’s always best to simply finish the game quietly and respectfully, shake hands, and be on your way.

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Basketball Triple Overtime (Part 1)

Basketball Triple Overtime (Part 1)

It’s late in the 4th quarter, the shot clock is turned off, the game is tied, and your team has the ball. We’ve all been there before, as either a coach, player, or both. Standard operating procedure is usually to call an immediate time out if available. This can happen after a rebound or a turnover. This is usually the moment when many coaches exhale with the comfort that overtime is the worst possible outcome, barring any disastrous miscues. Unfortunately, this standard operating procedure that so many coaches lean on. This quite often leads to the same standard operating results that so many coaches regretfully look back on.

Triple Overtime

This misplaced trust in the safety of overtime can usually be traced back to three crucial parts of the end of regulation. The final minute, the final possession, and the final play. The team that consistently makes the most of these 3 parts will always have the best opportunity to win in regulation and avoid overtime (and especially triple overtime). First, it’s important to ignore the general notion that a tie game in the final minute is a time to be conservative. In actuality, it’s the perfect time to be aggressive. Because it comes with the guarantee that any failed offensive possession. At worst, it can only result in a 3 point maximum deficit on the other end. That’s excluding the rare exception of giving up a 4 point play.

With this in mind, the smartest way to apply aggression in the final minute, is to attack the basket. This eliminates the pressure of having to connect from outside in such a hostile shooting environment. It also potentially places your opponent in serious foul trouble and provide the opportunity for making the possible game winning free-throws. Bottom line, the final minute of any tie game is a time to be aggressive an. Avoid overtime at all costs. In fact, the final minute of regulation should always be approached as if overtime is not an option.

Motivation

If a win or a tie were the only two possible outcomes, then most teams would be much more aggressive in the final minute of regulation. Especially at the end of the regular season, when many teams are fighting for every possible victory to make the playoffs. Ironically, most of those teams would not be in that position if they played that aggressive in the final minute of every game. It’s all about having the proper perspective for the current moment. Because many coaches and players instead have the “next” mentality. They’ll say things like this. “We’ll get it next play,” “next quarter”, or “next game.” Although attempting to be positive, this way of thinking doesn’t put enough emphasis on the current moment. In basketball and in life, that’s the only moment that should ever matter.

Next: TRIPLE OVERTIME ( PART 2)

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Failing has never been so fun

Failing has never been so fun.

I pen these words while sitting in 92-degree weather, watching the worst soccer I have seen in my life. Players stand flat-footed, in packs, unmoving, with no position play, passing, cutting, or moving of any planned sort. Instead, kids smash the ball with their feet as hard and wild as they can kick, then run there to do the same thing. “Defense” is piling the team’s worst kids together en masse to stand in front of the goalie box. My wife made a brilliant comment to me (shared below). But, first, to basketball…

Is today’s cry for ‘fun’ in youth sports a cover for weak coaching, and low parental expectations? Is fun today’s Loser’s Limp? where we pretend we COULD have done better, but for the fact that winning doesnt matter? By “fun” do we really mean that we want no pressure placed upon us as parents and coaches, and a guarantee that, above all else, our kid will never lose?

It may come as a shock to some, but EVERY game ever invented has had as it’s very basic, core objective to win. Every board game, every table game, every card game, every video game, and yes, every sports game, is designed to be won. But, it seems, in today’s youth basketball.

AAU is going the way of Rec League. It used to be that “fun” was spoken of in Rec League, where kids do little and are praised for it. “Everyone is a winner,” the banner said. But in the past 5 years travel basketball has gone the way of Rec League, with its same emphasis on casualness, not keeping score, occasional practices, everybody playing, and so on. AAU is now following suit, such that only the so-called “Elite teams” is where the real sport of basketball is found. Many AAU clubs now hold so-called tournaments for their own teams. As a sport, it appears to me we are pushing “competitive” ball upward to only the highest, smallest top-most part the large pyramid of youth basketball.

But, why?

Back to my wife. As we both watched the horrific soccer together, we heard the coach keep yelling out banal cheerleader-esque cliches like, “Good Hustle!” “Keep Trying!” and “Go Hard!” It was silly, even to his own standing, untrained players (who got killed in the game). My wife looked at me, and said, “From now on our daughters will play competitive sports, or nothing. This is teaching them nothing. I dont want to watch this anymore.”

Of the 100s of things required of youth coaches today, let me be among the few to say, publicly, that “making the game fun” is not one of your requirements. It is not the judge’s job to make obeying the law fun; it is not the surgeon’s job to make triple bypass surgery fun, and; it is not my job to somehow make this sport fun for your child. To be sure, none of us want Hitler as our kids’ coach. So let us quit painting this false extreme as a rallying cry for demanding “fun” above all else.

Fun is subjective; one person cannot make something fun for someone else. Consider our teenagers, for example, who define “fun” as sitting in a room with friends, texting friends who are NOT in the room. I dont get it; that is definitely not fun for me. Fun is also fleeting, fickle and impossible to define. The purpose of life is not for others to somehow guarantee your level of fun. This is true of teachers, coaches, principals, officials, and of employers. Instead of seeking fun an end of sport, I believe as coaches we should teach that fun is IN the sport. For example, working hard is fun, mastering a skill of play is fun, trying is fun, learning is fun, being part of a team is fun, practicing is fun, sweating is fun, and, yes, being pushed, made, broken down–then rebuilt better–to WIN–this is really, really fun!

Bob Knight cared nothing about fun. Neither did John Wooden. Both won 13 national championships, and raised up incredibly mature, responsible men. Instead each push incredibly hard, in very different coaching styles, to get at player perfection, high standards, personal responsibility, and above all else, team. Today, what are we about as coaches in terms of our standards of expectations and excellence in youth ball?

I am tired of watching crappy play, allowed in the name of our kids supposedly having fun.

Coaches (parents!), we are fun-ning our sport to death.

Terry Boesch is a teacher in Martinsville, IN (home of John Wooden), and also coaches girls basketball. Feel free to email him at terryboesch@gmail.com, or call/text at 317-643-6042

How to Save High School Basketball (HSB)

How to Save High School Basketball (HSB)

All organizational failure begins, and ends, with leadership failure.

Some predict the death of high school basketball in 10-years; I believe this is definitely true in girls BB especially, and most likely true in boys hoops. To save HSB, the most important place to begin is at the top, the Athletic Director (AD). The AD must create and staff a new position, to report direct to AD, called a Development Program Director (DPD). The DPD is also matrixed to the respective girls and boys high school basketball head coaches.

The DPD is a heavy part-time job, set forth on the ECA schedule as is the case with most sports positions within a school corporation. The role of DPD is to be fully funded by the school board. The work of the DPD is 4-fold: First, to bring new kids into the sport, beginning in 3rd grade. Second, to recruit and train volunteer parent-coaches. Third, to create an area league of teams in which student-athletes play competitive, organized team ball. And, fourth, to align the sports teams generally to the style of play of the sitting head coaches. I note “generally” because the key is player development, not running systems or memorized plays. Kids need to be trained as athletes, not programmed as robots.

The greatest weakness of AAU basketball can become the greatest strength of school-based basketball—the development of player skills, which are essential to improvement and advancement in higher levels of competition in this sport. This AAU does not do, or at least, does not do well. Sadly, many school systems are failing also in this crucial piece of basketball. Yet with simple adjustments, schools can reclaim this high ground.

The challenge is to bring players into the sport, then to train them in creative ways to get them to know how to play each position on the court, in defense, in offense, in transition, in full court press situations, and on the free throw line. This starts with the philosophy to build each kid from the court-up, on how to stand, how to pivot, how to dribble, how to screen, how to play helpside defense, etc.

Schools must reclaim the mantle of being basketball development experts. If we in schools do this, we will save our school teams (and jobs). If not, we will soon lose this entire sport to private clubs, and private trainers.

The basketball DPD must continually cast his/her net broad to find, then develop, volunteer parent-coaches. I suggest USA Basketball youth coaching licensure program as a place to start, though the customer service of USAB is among the very worst. Joining Positive Coaching Alliance and National Association of Youth Sports are good ideas, as is joining solid basketball coaching websites like teachhoops.com.

The state of Indiana boasts the largest girls travel basketball program in the country. Called Indy Girls Hoops League, it may serve as an excellent model for forming a similar league in your area of the country. Teams run from 3rd-8th grades, with three levels of competition (A (best), B, C(weakest)) in each grade. All girls on an IGHL team must be from the same school corporation (to keep from recruiting players to your team from outside your school district). Games are officiated by real referees. Teams play every other Sunday, and there is a Fall League, Winter League, and Spring League (a team can play in 1, 2 or all 3 of these if they wish). Almost all teams are coached by parents.

With IGHL there are generally 2 models followed by school systems. Either the school system “owns” its IGHL teams and appoints subordinate coaches, while dishing out gym times at area schools. Or, parents do their own thing, while wearing the name of that school corporation on the kids’ jerseys. Each model has its strengths and weaknesses.

The second major requirement to save HSB is to professionalize and broaden the skill sets of subordinate middle school coaches, many of whom have been coaching the same school grade teams for many, many years. Schools must eliminate family members of coaches from becoming assistant coaches, as this is leading to a death spiral of poor quality in middle school basketball. The DPD can create a basketball curriculum across grades, based on LTAD in Canada or the work of USA Basketball. Practice plans can then be organized from the curriculum. Also, player development and mastery of skills can be recorded each year in a simple, digital format. Statistics can be kept, and videos taken of practice and/or games.

The DPD must also use all means permitted within your state’s high school athletic association, to make basketball fun again, particularly outside traditional “basketball season.” This includes 3-v-3 tournaments, particularized clinics taught inside area elementary schools, basketball sleepovers with high school players inside a high school gym, field trips to area places of basketball interest, and special guest speaker events hosted with other school systems of current players at the collegiate and professional levels. I also advocate aggressive use of college tours, and behind the scenes player meetings with college players in your area.

Other local efforts of the DPD include branding and merchandising your school program, hosting special tournaments for other teams to come to your facilities, and creating buzz for your school system’s combined basketball programs through social media. I suggest the DPD not be a coach, but instead someone whose skills sets range from project manager on one side, to marketing and sales guru on the other. Coaches, I find, are too limited by ancient thought forms, and narrow, crabbed definitions of team, player and program.

The point is to make HSB (and MSB and ESB—i.e., middle school & elementary schools) the greatest developer of basketball players in the world. If we do this, we will save high school ball. I frankly do not care if our players wish to play AAU after us; I just want them to be able to, should they so decide.

Terry Boesch is a teacher in Martinsville, IN (home of John Wooden), and also coaches girls basketball. Feel free to email him at terryboesch@gmail.com, or call/text at 317.643-6042