Now, was this group a terrible team? Not at all! I have coached teams that had less talent and finished in better standing at Nationals. The way the National tournament is set up is by rankings based on the prior summer. We were ranked 8th and therefore put in a pool with Ontario (gold medal winner), Alberta (finished 4th) and Newfoundland (finished 8th- we very much should have beaten those guys.....). We lost to Alberta in our first game so that dropped us to a top finish in our pool of 3ed but only if we beat NFLD. We lost to them and that dropped us to 4th in our pool and out of the main bracket. Two games.....that's it.
Did this group work as hard as they could have? Not at all! I don't know how many times we told the guys to get in the gym and shoot the ball during their open gyms back in their hometown. Not play 5 on 5 but actually get some shots up. Then play 5 on 5. Based on feedback from their high school coaches, most of our guys did not get this done.
Did we have the best training possible? Not at all! And this last point is what I want to talk about.
For me, a team's success is based on 5 things:
1- Does the team have skill (can they shoot the ball, pass the ball and dribble the ball at the appropriate pace)?
*Our team could shoot the ball at a reasonable clip. However, we really had a hard time knocking down the open three. We had issues taking care of the ball at the start of our summer but the boys did a good job of being more aware when dealing with pressure situations. Of course, we had the best available players (with the exception of maybe two that chose not to play this summer) with the needed skills for this team.*
2- Can your team practice regularly?
*This is a major problem with summer provincial teams. The way NB is set up, teams are chosen then they practice every weekend and go two a-days. Our team would practice on Saturday mornings for two hours and go again later in the afternoon. The same would be done on Sundays. Once in a while, there might be a video session or a nutritional session inbetween the Saturday practices but for the most part, that is what a typical summer would look like. From Monday to Friday, players would get no repetitions of what was covered over the weekend. Therefore, Saturday's first practice session would be a review of things covered from the prior weekend. There is absolutely no way a team can be as sharp as it needs to be under this condition. I would rather have the guys come in two weeks before going off to Nationals and practice everyday. Exhibition games can be scheduled for the weekends or a tournament. Yes the downside is the team will not have many games but I will cover that issue later. Games can only help a team get better if the practices have achieved what they were supposed to.*
3- Does your team have a plan on offense
*I always like looking at teams and trying to figure out what they are trying to do. A very good team makes it obvious. Not only that, they are consistent about it. Now you might be thinking that is crazy. I am telling you, all the championship teams that I have seen (and been a part of) do something very well on offense. And it is predictable. Thing is, these teams have counters to when other teams try to stop them from doing what they like to do. What happens here is your team develops multiple ways to beat an opponent. Our summer team this year did not have a very solid offensive plan. That is surely not because we haven't tried to implement it. Rather, it is because we could not be consistent enough. At Nationals this year, our NB team outshot everyone we played. Problem was, we did not hit the threes that were open for us and we had a hard time executing on the defensive side of things. Which is my next point.*
4- Can your team eat-up other teams?
Defense without a question has been our main focus this past summer. Like offense, a championship team will be able to do a multitude of things in order to beat you but only if it does what it wants to do to you first. We would spent at least 60 to 70 minutes per practice on defense. From our man to man, to zone, to closeouts, to rebounding, to full court pressure and half court pressure. Of course, our number one priority was to get that quarter court man to man defense tight. The way we were wording it was: "when things get tough for us on offense, we will lean on our defense and it will save us everytime". I wanted to put a sense of desperation to our players with respect to getting them to be sharp with our No Chase man to man defense (I might talk about that in a future post). Now here is the major reason why our teams at Nationals seem to struggle to stop other teams. WE LACK THE GAME EXPERIENCE THAT WILL FORCE US TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IT TAKES TO PLAY DEFENSE AGAINST THE SIZE, LENGTH, SPEED AND ATHLETICISM WE SEE AT NATIONALS MORE OFTEN DURING OUR TRAINING PHASE. Our NB teams need more games against structured, skilled and athletic teams. Teams that get out and guard you full court for 40 minute, teams that will zone you one second and man to man you the next. Teams that have skilled shooters (Alberta had 7 different players hit a three against us this year- we have never seen anything like that all summer). I know, if we play Alberta again, we would close that gap very quickly. But we do not have that chance at Nationals. It's one and done. Another example of this is Team Nova Scotia. Now here you have a team that plays the style we are going to get from just about everyone at Nationals. We played them early in the summer and they smashed us. We had large issues playing at the pace they were making us play. It's not that we couldn't, it was a simple matter of getting used to it. We played them again later in the summer and lost by 4. We did nothing different tactically (although we did not execute the game plan very well- pound it inside!!!) but closed the gap significantly. At Nationals, if we could have avoided the terrible game against Newfoundland, we would have faced Nova Scotia in the quarter finals. Our guys were not looking past Newfoundland but were very excited for the opportunity to play NS again. I was very confident that our defense would have been on time much better than the first two games we played those guys and we would have gotten the ball inside much more as well. Mind you, NS would have shortened their bench against us and were playing extremely well that week. Conditions were a bit different than the first two times we played them. Nonetheless, we didn't beat NFLD and Nova Scotia won the silver medal at Nationals...........
Our players need more experience in the "style of play" (as Paul Vaughan put it- U15 Head Coach) that we see at Nationals. For that to happen, we need to get our players playing out of province. We simply do not have the amount of players NS have (that play that style BTW) or Ontario, Quebec, etc. It's not that our players do not know what they are doing on defense (although at times, we have that problem), it is that our players lack the experience necessary to succeed against teams that play and have a type of player that we see at Nationals.*
5- Does your team have size and length?
* We had a couple of guys that had good size to them this year. Length not so much. We had a 6'8 player (that will be back with us next year- if I am to coach this team again.......) and another 6'6 player. The rest ranged from 5'9 to 6'4 which is pretty average at the U17 age. Our 6'8 player had some length to him as did the 6'6 player and they both shoot it well. Our 6'6 player shoots it probably better at this point in his development but is a little awkward which makes his length a bit all over the place. When we played Alberta, the shortest player that was among their starting 5 was 6'2. That was the point guard and he was the only one that did not have length. Our guys played the entire game dealing with finger tips on passes they were trying to make to tip-backs on offensive rebounding. Size and length matter immensely at Nationals. Again, team Nova Scotia were two players of 6'6 or higher away from beating Ontario. You can try and box-out all you want, but if the size and length is not there, it's a 40 minutes uphill battle.*
This blog is a rather lengthy one (see what I did there- see point number 5). However, since blogging is now my new way to have journal entries, this is pretty much what will happen when I talk about stuff on this. Instead of typing on a word document and hitting save......I am blogging and hoping for some comments on the things I think about. All I want to do is get better :)
Interesting read. It'll always be a challenge when our entire pop is roughly the equiv of the # of people who ride the subway each day in a single city (Toronto) of a competing Prov. Thanks for the time &effort you put into these young men!
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