how is the team doing boss?
have fun coaching bball and remind them to have their fun.
'tis all fun.
of course W is a W is a W but at cadets level teaching comes first.
So these kids have a great coach.
Have fear Amerikkah, the Canadians started their secret best-coach-of-the-world build-up and he has Balkanic basketball genius in his veins!
I'll give a brief summary right before I jump in bed:
Last weekend was our season-opening tournament; a nearby school hosted 8 schools (I think), and placed them on a bracket. If you won the first game, you went to semi-finals; win again, you're in the gold-medal match. If you lose the first game, you enter the consolation tournament semi-final; if you win that semi-final, then you play one more game for the consolation final.
Our teams first games were gonna be in this tournament-- and we had only gone over defense, shooting, rebounding, dribbling (the basics)-- without any sort of sophisticated offense-incorporation. I figured we'd just take what the defense gave us, and use guard-play to exploit mismatches-- as I wanted the focus early in the season to be fundamental-focused.
It showed in our first game. We (unfortunately) got matched up with the best team of the tournament (that ended up winning Gold). We were down 20, but we actually mustered a pretty impressive 4th quarter comeback to bring things within 5 before we fizzed out and lost by 8. Their team was running offense, pressing, and pretty much had all 12 players with some previous basketball experience-- meanwhile I had 5 players who had never played a second of competitive basketball.
While we ended up winning the next two games (and winning the consolation tournament), and ALL of our players showed TREMENDOUS growth over the 3 games (something which I could spend hours talking about, but for the sake of my sleep I'll ignore that), I just want to comment on one thing I learned as a coach.
I was watching the semi-final that would send the winner to the final (it was right before our last game). One of the teams had an ultra-competitive coach, who was hollering at his players constantly, pacing up and down the court, and was pretty much stressed the entire time. And it showed in the play of his players. His team was up 4 in the waning minutes, but they ended up losing the game. The kids were all hyper-talented, had great fundamentals, but they body-language greatly mimicked their coaches. They honestly exhibited almost no confidence in their decision-making, as there was a 35 year old dude berating their every decision.
And that's where it occurred to me that one of my main duties as a coach, is going to be to instill confidence in my players. Of course, correct (and bench them) when they make mistakes-- but I want all of my players on that court to play with supreme confidence, and to step up to the moment when the game gets tight.
I spent most of the pre-game speech talking about this-- we then had a few kids missing wide-open looks as the game got started. I kept urging them to shoot, and to genuinely believe that the next one is going them, and that I believed in them (sappy bs I know).
TL;DR We were up 3 with thirty seconds left, shot-clock winding down, and our starting PG (who hadn't nailed a single jumpshot all tournament long) decided to take one off a screen, and drained it. Total dagger. You shoulda seen the smile on his face-- he looked right at me after he nailed it (I had begged him all weekend log to keep shooting). To me, that is what coaching at the jr high level is all about. Instilling confidence in these players, and hope that it transfers to their life outside of basketball.