Happy Friday Coaches!! June is a great month for High School Team Development. Hope yours is rolling along! Focus on the process. Wins and losses aren’t as important as player and team development. Establish roles both on the floor and off. It’s a great time of year!! Good luck Coaches!!
This week’s shout out goes to one of my all time favorite biographies, DRIVE by Larry Bird! Growing up a Laker fan, hating all Celtics, and rooting for Showtime and Pat Riley is where I come from. Reading this book made me a Larry Bird fan!! It’s great summer reading, and gives some insight into the “Hick from French Lick!” I loved it!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
-Larry Bird
This week’s basketball share includes thoughts on vocabulary for your system, a great drill for summer camp or beginning/end of practice conditioning, and a look at our 2025-26 SLOB series.
Let’s Go!!
Vocabulary!! As I move year 32 on the bench, it becomes more and more evident that the words/vocabulary you employ as a coach are VITAL to team success. Examples include vocabulary for your offense, defense, and any special teams. For most of my career I’ve used a numbered system of pressing and defense, a directional system on offense (up-down-in-out), a colored system of fouling (red-yellow-green), names of states for BLOB’s, names of cities for SLOB’s, and one syllable words for sets, actions, and any special situations including press break and end of game actions. We love terms like FIRE, ICE, FREEZE or THUMB UP, OUT, IN, or DOWN. HOT, COLD, NORTH, or SOUTH! All are examples of themes or word series you could utilize to clean up a disjointed playbook. Early in my career I would either pick random names for something, thinking it would “stick” for our players. Now, I’m much more intentional in creating vocabulary easily understandable by our players.
As you and your team move forward this summer, I would encourage you and your staff to analyze your system and the vocabulary within it and make tweaks based on the following:
Is there a logical method applied to your vocabulary? It may be unconventional but as long as your players and your staff are on the same page, all is good!
Can players easily understand the call and how it applies to the game situation? Similar to the old jokes we used in HS: Roscoe = right turn Louie = Left turn—does your vocabulary make sense to your players?
Do you have a plan to employ these terms in practice so players can easily recognize the time-score situation and make the proper decision when it comes to game time?
Not every call has to fit a category, sometimes a fun name for something, or naming it after where you got the action creates “stickiness” for your players. I would encourage you to put most call into families or series to maximize the learning/understanding.
Sooner Layins is a passing, conditioning, communication drill we did every day in High School for 2 to 4 minutes every day. The drill has 4 lines at the FT line extended all around the court. 4 players start with a ball under each basket and at half court. Players pass to an outside line then get the ball back and pass to the next line or finish with a layin. 2 minutes going right, 2 minutes going left. With 13-15 players this is a great conditioner and communication drill. Less than 13 players, remove 1 ball and go with 3. A good number of makes for 4 minutes is 100. With 16 plus players you can add a 5th basketball.
Here’s practice video of the drill:
In the collegiate game the sideline game is a key to end of game success. The ability to advance the ball in the last minute adds another level. There are also multiple opportunities each game to attack an opponent early in the game from the sideline OB!
In the last 5 years I’ve started utilizing a “starter” alignment for our SLOB plays. This year we utilized an X action with a PINDOWN-SLIP to initiate the entry pass. My goal was to create a safe and easy entry that allowed us to flow into a set play, dribble drive offense, or zone offense.
A secondary benefit of the “BASE” alignment action is it expands your sideline playsheet to include all your specials and actions you might normally only use ATO or off a deadball. We’ve used box alignments, diamond alignments, and zipper alignments based on our personnel and how we can best utilize their strengths.
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Runner Up NWAC 2025-26: 32-1
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GOOD LUCK COACHES!!
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