The 2007-2008 season was the most fun I’ve ever had coaching a basketball team. Even though this was the most losses I’ve experienced in seven seasons of coaching, I’ve never had more fun. That is a credit to the character and personalities of the individuals who were on the team. I’ve honestly never coached a more outstanding group of young women. They played so hard. They never gave up –not once- no matter what the score was. With the lone exception of a 10 minute stretch in one game, they didn’t argue with each other. Two players had a problem with how physical each played against the other in practice, but with a suggestion from me they were able to deal with it. Daily practice was a beautiful place to be, it was fun, and enthusiasm was high. We had the occasional low energy practice, but that sometimes happens. I can’t wait for next season to arrive. I know we will have another outstanding group of student athletes, and I know we will win more games. Winning more will make it even more fun.
This was going to be a challenging season for JV from the start, and anyone who has been paying attention knew that. Varsity had pulled up freshmen the last two years in a row. Potentially one of our best players didn’t make grades and never got to play. Our team was comprised of a junior who speciously had been cut twice in middle school and once in High School, four sophomores, and nine freshmen. Of that group, only five of them were serious basketball players who spent time in a gym working on their skills in the off season; and only two of those five were starters all season. Nine of our players didn’t do anything to get better between last season and this one. Three of those nine were starters. Finally, we lost our starting point guard to injury just as the league part of our schedule was beginning. Under these circumstances, it was going to be very difficult to have a winning season, and we had to make our goals for the season based on this. Without skilled players, there’s only so much a coach can do. Coaches can make a difference, but the teams with the best players should win the most games. Good coaching can help make good players play well together. Good coaching can help secure a last second win in a tight game, but no coach can make a consistent winner out of players with skills inferior to the opponents. It takes good players to win, and not winning when you have the best players in the league is a coaching failure. But that wasn’t the case with the JV team. We had goals, but winning the league would not have been a realistic goal.
We had three essential goals for the season. We wanted to have fun, because practicing and playing a game in High School should be fun. In 10 years nobody will remember the score of any of the games, but they will remember if they had fun or not, and they will know how to keep it fun if they ever coach a team. We also wanted to show deliberate and steady improvement over the season. During the league portion of our schedule, I received so many compliments from fans and parents who watched every game on how much the players and team improved from the start of the season. Finally, it’s always my goal for any team I coach to be very good at something. I want my team to be known for something; when teams play us, I want them to be very aware of something we are good at. This goal is dependent on the talent and experience of the players. Our biggest team weakness was offensive skills; and while we worked hard to improve that, I knew offense wasn’t something we were going to build a reputation on. To be competitive, and to have a chance to win games, we had to limit our opponents to one shot, and we had to challenge every shot they took. We had to rebound, and we had to play excellent defense. That was what I wanted our team to be known for. Win or lose, I wanted our opponents to know that, We Play Hard! Rebounding and defense require skill and knowledge, but they are primarily about effort. Effort is something the players can control no matter their skill level.
I feel like we accomplished all three of our team’s goals and on that basis we had a successful season. I’ve never been more proud of a team. I challenged the team to improve, and I challenged individuals to improve, and in every instance they improved. Some of the improvement was directly linked to playing time. This is after all High School basketball, and if a player turns the ball over to the opponent practically every time they touch it, they are not going to get to play much until they improve that. Some players I wanted them to play harder and hustle more, they did it. Some players, I wanted them to make better decisions, to be more careful with the ball, to make better passes and to protect the ball better when they were holding it; they accomplished that. Some players who showed certain abilities, I wanted them to use those abilities more, and they did. We needed the players to do a better job of helping each other on defense, despite some lapses, they did it.
The JV team’s improvement was dramatic. Early in the season, we experienced some losses that were honestly embarrassing to see the final score. In mid season we went away from playing pressure man to man defense in favor of zones because we just didn’t have enough players who understood the concepts and strategies of pressure man to man defense, so we had to simplify and continue to practice our full court disruption defense. But by the time we got to the league games at the end of our schedule, we were playing fantastic disruptive full court man to man defense. We still had mistakes sometimes, but at times we played defense so well that it actually looked as if we had an extra player on the court. We were able to disrupt some of our opponents so completely that they were unable to run their offense against us. Toward the end of the season we were able to keep scores close against teams who had beaten us by large margins earlier in the season.
Shooting the ball and making layups was our weakness, and we worked on this in every practice session. We practiced layups with a defender chasing every day. We shot free throws and recorded results every day. We shot the ball with no pressure, we shot with a defender closing out, and we shot with the shooting machine. We did nothing but shoot on some Saturdays. I feel like we did improve our shooting, a few individuals dramatically. But we still missed far too many layups, and far too many shots within a few feet of the basket. Missing close shots really hurt us, and we would have won more games had we just made more “bunny” shots from very close to the basket. And that is not a criticism of our post players, because our guards missed too many layups, including many uncontested layups. The biggest improvement in shooting came from some of our least experienced players, and that’s to be expected, as it’s easiest to show fast improvement at the beginning of skill development. While I am happy for that improvement, and look forward to seeing that improvement on the court next season, it really hurt us that some of our most experienced and best players shot poorly all season and never really improved despite so much shooting practice.
The players were not the only ones learning and improving. I made mistakes, and I was learning too. In mid season I decided to abandon the offense I had installed. Looking back, it was not suitable to the skills on our players. That wasn’t the players fault. It’s up to the coach to recognize the situation and put in team offense that’s appropriate for the skill and experience of the players on the team. I should have recognized this sooner. Our original offense (“Regular”) was a very simple concept, and I thought that would be a good thing because we didn’t have a whole lot of basketball experience. But I didn’t fully realize that despite the simplicity of the concept, all five players on the floor had to have the ability to attack the basket to score or pass, and they had to be able to make perimeter shots. Those two skills were not our team’s strengths. So we changed in mid season. We put in two offensive sets (“13-O”, “23-O”) against zone defense, and three schemes for man to man; a pass & cut (“Spread”). a continuous screening (“Twist”), and a guard isolation (“Flat”), and we also started to work on a pick and roll. In all our sets we emphasized two primary objectives, getting the ball into the post when we had a height advantage, and getting our best shooters the most shots. Defensively, I probably should have trusted the players more and stayed with the full court pressure despite the problems we were having. Had I done that, they probably would have become proficient sooner, and likely would have gotten better at it by the end of the season than they were able to.
The objective of any offense no matter the scheme is to get your shooters good shots from areas where they can make the shots. Make or miss, if shooters are getting wide open shots from the same spots they make shots in practice, then the offense is doing what it’s supposed to do. By that standard, our offense was effective because we got a lot of good looks at the basket. We had enough different schemes to be able to make adjustments based on the defense, and game video shows we got a lot of open shots. We just needed to make more of them. The objective of pressure defense (the way I teach it) is to keep the ball out of the lane, to challenge every shot (no wide open shots), to disrupt the offense so they can’t easily run what they want to run, to force them to dribble by taking away passing lanes, to have one and preferably two bodies in the lane no matter where the ball is, to make them start their offense further from the basket than they are accustomed to, to limit them to one shot per possession, and to take away either there best scorer or what they do best. By the end of the season we were doing all of these things, some better than others.
I’d like to thank my Assistant Coach Keith Snyder. His dedication to the kids and Willits Basketball is inspiring to me, and he helps me to think things thru when I get a crazy idea. I’d like to thank our fans who supported us loudly all season. I’d like to thank our score keeper, Jennifer Nunez who put up with me all season. I’d like to thank the parents who volunteered their vehicles, time and money to drive the team to away games- Dorothy Dalske, Paula & Miguel Nunez, Dana & Phil Eads, and Tony & Melody Sorace. I’d like to thank our Home Scoreboard Operator, Carl; as well as the shot clock operators- Don Riggs and John Wagenet. I apologize for anyone deserving my thanks that I left out. Most of all, I’d like to thank the players who I look forward to watching graduate from WHS, become adults, go to college, invite me to their weddings, have their own families, and name their first born sons or daughters after me- Kyly, Ashanty, Megan, Rachel, Shelli, Kassy, Rebecca, Veronica, Rona, Jordan, Amanda, Joanna, Aleta, and Jennifer. Your presence in my life has meant more than you know. You’ve helped make me a better coach. I love you guys!
