The Stanford solution

[colhenrylives]

Did anyone out there happen to notice how the Cardinal managed to handle Oregon last weekend?

That's right. Team Tara decided not to run and press full-court with the Ducks who had been averaging 90 points per game (hello, AAU "coaches" who have no idea what that means).

Instead, Stanford cut the court in half, slowed the circus down, reduced possessions and turnovers, emphasized reasonable shot selection, carefully used the shot clock, rebounded with all on board and, lo and behold, emerged triumphant.

In truth, the result could have gone the other way had the Ducks made an extra shot or two or three at critical points in the Pac-12 tourney finale.

Still, even a close loss would have validated The Farm's conservative approach, considering how badly Oregon routed Stanford in Palo Alto in their prior encounter.

At least they gave themselves a chance to compete on fairly even terms. And, in the end, it worked out for them. Does anyone see a possible lesson here?

One hopes.

 

[WivitBear]

Same thing happened when St. Mary's mens team beat Gonzaga.

 

[colhenrylives]

Same thing happened when St. Mary's mens team beat Gonzaga.

Do we see a trend here?

 

[Norcal_Fan]

Same thing happened when St. Mary's mens team beat Gonzaga.

Gonzaga never presses....

It's a lot easier to teach a stupid 2-2-1 press than spend 20 minutes a day working on good half court shell drills. It's a lot easier to teach that press with good athletes too..makes anyone look like a friggen genius. THEN they drop back in a zone with all that athleticism. SMDH

That's what my problem with AAU is. A lot of these guys have no clue yet claim they develop because their kids are winning and college coaches salivating at the athleticism.

 

[ankleassassin]

Do we see a trend here?

to be fair... there is no shot clock in aau and the talent level isnt even close... maybe 1 girl per tournament would be able to play at stanford or oregon on most aau tournaments.

 

[WivitBear]

As a watcher ow college women's ball, it is amazing how many good athletes can't play man to man when they get here. It takes awhile to learn. And you don't have to go to Stanford to figure that out.

 

[anon_kkfyqmvklu2v4]

Let's not forget Stanford's defensive game plan vs Cal. Everytime Anigwe touched the ball three defenders (mostly bigs) defended the post and dared Cal to shoot the 3.
Great game plan and execution!

 

[personalogic]

Gonzaga never presses....

It's a lot easier to teach a stupid 2-2-1 press than spend 20 minutes a day working on good half court shell drills. It's a lot easier to teach that press with good athletes too..makes anyone look like a friggen genius. THEN they drop back in a zone with all that athleticism. SMDH

That's what my problem with AAU is. A lot of these guys have no clue yet claim they develop because their kids are winning and college coaches salivating at the athleticism.

Most AAU coaches get their girls 3-4 hours per week, with maybe a 75% attendance rate, for 3-4 months per year. The best coaches are remarkably efficient with the access they are given.

The reality is that very few girls learn to shoot or play man to man defense very well until they are in high school. The real question is why, after 4 high school seasons playing 6 days per week, there are still so few girls who can shoot or play man to man.

 

[keepitreal.32]

Maybe because few girls get to high school willing to listen to HS coach. How many kids and parents are coming from AAU thinking a scholarship is a sure thing?

 

[colhenrylives]

Most AAU coaches get their girls 3-4 hours per week, with maybe a 75% attendance rate, for 3-4 months per year. The best coaches are remarkably efficient with the access they are given.

The reality is that very few girls learn to shoot or play man to man defense very well until they are in high school. The real question is why, after 4 high school seasons playing 6 days per week, there are still so few girls who can shoot or play man to man.

You might be ignoring a gaggle of select coaches (few in number to be sure) who teach half-court zone relentlessly. It's their calling card, their foundation, their rock when the shots aren't falling and things seem precarious.

 

[Norcal_Fan]

Most AAU coaches get their girls 3-4 hours per week, with maybe a 75% attendance rate, for 3-4 months per year. The best coaches are remarkably efficient with the access they are given.

The reality is that very few girls learn to shoot or play man to man defense very well until they are in high school. The real question is why, after 4 high school seasons playing 6 days per week, there are still so few girls who can shoot or play man to man.

A lot of these kids even go to "trainers" that supposedly make them better offensive players. Most of the time it's a waste of 30-80 dollars an hour. Sure they get a good ball handling work out and a lot of shots up, but like you say, can't shoot. There are some really good HS coaches out there that do a good job of teaching and playing good man to man defense, but because they're not in an elite program, get overlooked a lot of times. Then there's some coaches, because of matchup problems (*maybe too small or too slow) run a constant zone. I've always been from the school of thought that the best way to teach a good zone is to know solid man principles.

To answer your questions, Col. I think a majority of AAU parents think their kids are going BCS D1 and are shocked with anything less is offered. I think Clay once said that there are thousands of scholarships that don't get used...why is that??

 

[ClayK]

It's more difficult to teach man-to-man fundamentals, and really, any fundamentals, than it is to run plays and plan strategy. (That said, really teaching and running an effective 2-2-1 press is no simple task. It's a complex system played out in a lot more space than halfcourt man, and requires both athleticism and discipline.)

You can out-athlete teams running any system, really -- that's why I don't like dribble drive motion that much. It starts with having at least two, and preferably four, kids who can break defenders down off the dribble. Well, if I have four kids who can break defenders down off the dribble, it doesn't matter what I run -- it's going to work.

Shooting is a different issue. I've always maintained that proper shooting form needs to be locked in during middle school years, if not before, because once the tournaments get serious, parents want to win much more than they want to watch their daughters learn how to make shots by missing a bunch of them. ("You have to miss it to make it" is one of my pet phrases.)

It's very difficult to change a girl's shot in high school, as finding the time 2,000 hours or so to erase the previous muscle memory and replace it with a new one is far from easy.

 

[Common Sense1]

The problem is not club ball. The problem is the perception of club ball is for.

Club ball pre-high school should be all about developing the player. If a parent is with a club to get wins and t-shirts/sweatshirts/trophies, they're already headed down the wrong path.

High school club ball is for getting players in front of college coaches and showcasing their talent. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Too many HS parents have way too many misconceptions. Some of my favorites:

1) "I'm paying for this! Sally should play more!" - Yeah, other than the top 5-7 kids in the club, so is everyone else. Sally needs to earn her minutes.

2) "Sally was a star on XYZ club!" - Is this XYZ club? No. Sally needs to prove herself here, on this club. If you're so enamored with XYZ club, why did you leave?

3) "They need to do more drills on fundamentals!" - Your kid just finished season. If their fundamentals are that poor, maybe they should be with a trainer working on fundamentals and not playing club. Or perhaps working on their game on their own outside of practice?

And my all time favorite...

4) "Why did Jill make (higher team in club)? Sally only made (lower level team)! Does the club director know that Sally goes to (powerhouse school) and Jill goes to (lower tiered school)?"

This is always a wow one, and it's been told to me more than once. The best is one I heard from an acquaintance. His daughter attended Corona Santiago and went to try out for West Coast Premier. His goal for his daughter was to make their Black team, with settling for being on their 15U team His kid didn't make it on either team, but a kid from Alta Loma who basically played the same spot as his kid made the 15U. My guy singled her out and lost it. He could accept all of the other kids (mainly because they were from a whose who of SoCal schools like Etiwanda, Troy, Mater Dei, Cajon, etc.) but couldn't get over the Alta Loma kid.

I had seen his kid play. Nothing special...5 pts and 7 boards a game on average. Per Maxpreps, the Alta Loma kid was getting about 13 points and 11 boards a game. I showed him stats. He said it didn't matter because "Alta Loma is a scrub school that plays no one. Anyone can put up numbers if they played that schedule". I tried to argue that the school didn't matter. No dice. I argued that the Alta Loma kid put up 16 and 14 against Troy and was told it was a one off game. I gave up and left him to his delusions and wasn't surprised when he rejected a spot for her on a lower team.

 

[Norcal_Fan]

The problem is not club ball. The problem is the perception of club ball is for.

Club ball pre-high school should be all about developing the player. If a parent is with a club to get wins and t-shirts/sweatshirts/trophies, they're already headed down the wrong path.

High school club ball is for getting players in front of college coaches and showcasing their talent. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Too many HS parents have way too many misconceptions. Some of my favorites:

3) "They need to do more drills on fundamentals!" - Your kid just finished season. If their fundamentals are that poor, maybe they should be with a trainer working on fundamentals and not playing club. Or perhaps working on their game on their own outside of practice?

I agree that Pre-High School should be about fundamentals but I've never seen or heard of a club that does that. Why? It takes too much time away from learning how to press and run an offense which puts winning over development. If they're not getting it in lower/middle school, then where are they getting it from? Which is why we have a lot of kids that can't shoot, pass, pivot. But they can press and make layups great. I believe that the best rule that could help basketball at the lower (8th grade and under) levels is NO pressing and NO zone. I also think that (like in soccer) coaches should have continuing education in order to coach AAU. Coaches could learn something if they took classes or seminars.....

Trainers are the worst because they're not there to work on fundamentals. they're there to work with you on handles and shooting-that's it. How many training session have you ever seen or been to where they're working on right/left foot pivot, jump stop? It's pound the balls with two hands, shoot off this screen, drive off this move. Coaches (at all levels) teaching fundamentals is a lost art.

 

[CW Golden Eagles]

Not all clubs are the same, just as not all high schools are the same. The better high school teams year in, year out, spend an enormous amount of time on skill development and fundamentals. There are teams that are good for a year or two because exceptional talent rolls through. But the teams that are consistently winning games over the past decade aren't rolling the balls out and playing. As for pressing, not pressing, man, zone...guess what? They all can be successful. Just because you may not like a certain style of play doesn't mean it doesn't work. As Clay mentioned, if my kids are flat out better than your kids, whatever I run will be successful. But the top coaches I have seen are constantly teaching and constantly evolving. You might expect some commonalities in their program, but the best ones adapt to what personnel they have. This isn't college where you pick your players. You have to mold what comes through the door. How early is the coach molding them? I know for us, our season ended last Tuesday and this week we had our 2nd-8th graders in the gym for our AAU feeder program. That's what has allowed us to be relatively competitive the last decade even when the talent level wasn't the same.

As far as clubs go, go watch the elite tournaments and you will see there isn't just one style that wins. Some slow it down and pound it in. Some play up tempo. Some trap. Some man. I do agree all teams need to learn to be very good at man to man. We get categorized as a pressing team--but we spend far more time in practice every day on our man defense than our press. And any year we've been really successful, we've pressed, we've played man, we've even played some zone. But those aren't wrinkles we threw in during a time out. We had prepared all year for the "what if" moments when nothing else was working.

As far as skill work on the club circuit--again, each one is different. My daughter played 4 years with Cal Stars. They would have weekend training camps. Just using last season as an example, Coach Sopak brought in trainers to work with ball handling, finishing moves and footwork. He brought in Doc Scheppler to do shooting clinics. If they had 5 practice sessions in a weekend, 2-3 would be skill work with 1-2 usually being implementing their system and another 1 or 2 scrimmages to apply what they were working on and also allow the kids to build some chemistry on the floor.

So teaching does take place in club, for some clubs. I think you would find the same thing on the club side as the HS side---those that are successful year in, year out, DO spend a lot of time teaching and breaking down skills. In fairness to the clubs, they get the kids 2-3 days a week while HS coaches get them 6 days a week. And in the end, the first responsibility for skill development falls on the shoulders of the player themselves.

 

[ankleassassin]

Well there it is.....Parents that is from a horses mouth.

 

[ClayK]

In general, parents like to go to games that their kids win ... and if a good player is on a team that loses some games because of a greater focus on making kids better than the final score, you can bet other coaches and parents are right there suggesting this just isn't a good situation.

A coach can vow to work on fundamentals and develop kids, but most parents feel their money should result in wins -- so if that coach that doesn't win, she doesn't get players.

Of course, it's really hard, if not impossible, to expect parents of a 12-year-old to understand the game, player development and the way the system works so there's no simple answer.

It is very frustrating, though, to see a potentially good player top out in eighth grade after only having learned how to double-team lesser athletes and go to the rim.

 

[keepitreal.32]

So don’t be one of the parents at the other end of the horse!