PB Here

Coach 7 Just a suggestion but going an hour and a half before letting them have a little fun may be too much. Try working on drills for about 30 - 45 minutes then stop and play a game of Put Out or something. Then resume drills again stopping every so often to play some sort of game. Good Luck!

Wow. I didn't realize what I started. Let me just clarify a few things. My main concern is the well being of my players. I teach them the fundamentals of the game as best I can. I do not yell at them. Ever. The only time I actually "got on to" my girls was after the game a couple of them said the other team cheated. I told them "No, they just out hustled us and out coached us." I took them out for ice cream after the game and we were all smiles and having a great time. I told the girls how much they all mean to me and how proud I was of them. I told them that beating us today made that other team's season. I guess I probably should have made it clear in my original post that I was the one beating myself up over the game. The girls are champs!

We had our last game of the year this past Saturday. We played a team that we had beaten on two previous occasions. I felt if we could just get the rebounds and lose balls we would easily win this game. We we worked hard in practice on that main objective all week. Saturday, we were completely out hustled and out rebounded. Plus, our head coach (me) did a very poor job of managing the game. In our league (3&4th grade girls) you can only play defese once the ball has passed beyond the circle at half court. We put in a play where one gaurd would bring the ball up the court on the side then pass it over to the point gaurd in the middle. We did this for two reasons. One, I wanted to force a defender out there with her to create more space in the lane. The second reason was so that my pg could hold the ball and fake a pass before putting the ball on the floor hoping to give her an advatage on her defender. Well, I explained this to the officials before the game so that the defense would not be allowed to cut across and intercept the pass. Well my first big mistake was actually thinking the refs would enforce this rule. During the game they intercepted four passes in the "no defense allowed" zone and made 6 points off of them. I spoke with the officials again at halftime and they admitted that they made the mistakes and would do a better job in the second half. My second mistake was not allowing my daughter to continue her three point attempts. She made two in a row and when she missed her first one I told her no more, simply b/c I didn't want the other parents to think my daughter was a ball hog. I should have waited until she missed a couple more before stopping her. At the end of the game we were down by three with 2:19 left. In our league you are only allowed to press with 2:00 or less. Well the otehr team would not clear out of the back court, eventhough one official was telling them to. The other official was holding the ball and all the while the clock was running. The clock finally ran down to two minutes and they were allowed to press. We turned the ball over from the press and they scored again. They ended up beating us by five. This one will stick with me for a while. I think I worked too hard at keeping my composure this year and there were times during this game that I should have been out on the court letting a little steam out to get a message through.

Mavericks One of our other teams ran into the same situation this year. One of my fellow coaches in our church league had three girls leave the game due to injuries suffered from this one girl throwing elbows and poking eyes. She got her first foul called on her with just two minutes to go in the game. This coach was at a loss as to how he should have handled the situation. One fo the guys suggested to him to call a TO, call his girls to the bench and then inform the officials he would not be sending his girls back out onto the court unless the officials would put a stop to it.

Mavericks, We are allowed to press fullcourt in the last two minutes of the game if you are behind. I hate it and think it is bad idea for girls at this age. However since I don't make the rules I have to adjust to it. My team has been leading every game so far (7-0) so we've had some practice at handling it. I don't spend but 5 minutes of practice time on it but here is how we do it. First of all I make it clear that we only do this after a made basket. I put two girls at half court on opposite sides. The other two are stacked in front of the inbound passer. The first one in the stack breaks out of bounds about 15 feet from the inbound passer. She passes the ball over to her then breaks out in front of her. Most of the teams pressing do not have the discipline to stay put on the two girls at half court so our first option is to "baseball" over everyone's head and it will bounce to the one of the girls at half court. Our second option is to hit the original inbounder and she will then pass over the oncoming defenders heads. We've only had to do this a couple of times because we have had big enough leads in the other games that I just leave my weaker players out their and let them play. Even though they will usually turn it over, the other team will usually take too long to score to mount any serious comeback threat.

Mavericks, I had to laugh while reading your post because it reminds me so much of my own team. My girls do the same thing. Everything they practice goes out the window come game time. Like your team, they play incredible defense and that is the reason we are unbeaten also. The majority of our points come off of steals turned into layups. If you call running to the lower block, stopping and banking off the glass a layup. We would score a lot more points too if our girls would do that everytime. Half the time they just throw it up right after they pass the free throw line. I noticed the other day in a game one one steal the girl actually looked up and passed it ahead to another girl. Now that made me proud. We are allowed to play a zone in our league, which is what most of the other teams do. I have had most of these girls for three years now so they do better at keeping their spacing more than what you have described. Some of my new girls however have not figured it out yet. Good luck to you the rest of the way. What a blessing it is to coach these young girls.

I coach 3rd and 4th grade girls in a church league so maybe I can offer a little help. Here is the offense my girls ran last year. It's not complicated and but will usually get you a few open shots during the game. And at this age, at least in our league, it doesn't take too many points to win. Have your PG bring the ball up the court until she's just outside the 3pt line.(in our league you can't play defense until the offense brings the ball past an imaginary line at the 3 pt going all the way across the court.) Have a wing player on each side. I have them start outside the arch so they will keep good spacing. I have two post players stacked at the bottom right side of the lane. The Top PP moves to the bottom of the circle while the other simply crosses over to the other side of the lane. If the defender drops back to cover the post player my PG simply dribbles in a couple of steps and shoots. Otherwise, the PG passes to the post player in the middle. In our league the girls tend to gravitate to the ball so the PP will usually have somebody wide open. In most cases it's the PG. Whoever she passes to takes the open shot and everybody crashes for the rebound. If no one leaves their position the PP is to turn and shoot and again, everybody crash the board. Another play we discovered by accident last year was fake 3 pt play. My daughter was goofing off before one practice and hit a 3 pt shot. She came running over to me to tell me and I told her to try it again. She went on to hit 4 out of 6 from 3 pt land. She was in the third grade last year. Anyway, I told her I would let her try it in a game since she did so well. In the game she threw up an airball. Of course Well I had one of the PP set up right underneath the goal, the other PP would swing over to the side about four feet from the lane. My daughter would throw up the three and would air ball it and it would come straight to the PP underneath. She would immediately pass it to the other PP and she would nail the shot.