May 14th, 2008

Yesterday the players had a Summer League game at 7:00 p.m. so I gave them the day off because the times would conflict and I didn't them to be tired for their game. I let them know that this day will be made up on Saturday and we will scrimmage on Sunday.

Today, the kids bounced back from the day a little sluggish. This is normal the day after a game because the body can only take so much. Today's focus for the guards was passing. There are 3 different kinds of passes to throw in different situations. Any pass in the lane should be a bounce pass. To drill this into their mind, we ran drills that put them in situations where they would get into the lane and be forced to ball fake and then throw a bounce pass. However, if the defense came up all the way and stopped them outside of the lane, they would throw a chest pass because all passes outside the lane should be chest passes. With all passes, it is always better to fake a pass the other way first so that it comes harder to read where you are passing to. To help the kids remember that, I shared with them a phrase that would help them to remember it. This phrase is "fake it to make it". This helped me so much because it always stuck in my head. Hopefully, it will have the same affect on these players. The last pass is an over the head pass which is done when you want to skip the ball from wing to wing or get it down the court.

The big men worked on boxing out and rebounding today. Big men who box their men out and attack the glass to get the rebound is going to be valuable even if they have no other skill. Boxing out is not stressed enough in today's game because people just want to out jump their opponent for the rebound. But, rebounding is all about positioning and desire for the ball. The drills we did worked on the proper box out form and then jumping to the ball rather than have it come to you. I was impressed with how much progress they made by the end of the session. They really took to the concept and I expect to see them grab a lot more rebounds and play stronger down low.