Services like Hudl have given basketball coaches access to hours and hours of game film of their opponents. That is good news and bad news. In the “old days” maybe a coach had 2-3 films to watch of an opponents. Today vs the best opponents, it is not unusual to have 8-10 game to watch, and even more later in the year. As a coach, you feel you need to watch the tape if you have them. My thought always was that maybe I would find just 1-2 things in a game that might save us 2 points when we played them.
I would argue that all the tapes on opposing teams may prevent us from doing something much important than scouting our opponents- scouting ourselves. I was often guilty of this- I watched much more tape of our opponents than of my own team.
Right after Xmas tourneys is a good time for self-scouting. Here are some suggestions that I would have for self-scouting:
Ask Someone Else to Scout Your Team
My last year, I asked Bob Anderson, a retired HOF boys coach to watch some of our game film. It is not easy to accept someone who will identify good and bad things your team is doing- but it is really, really valuable to get another set of eyes. You have to be willling not to be thin skinned. You may find out someone else disagrees with your evaluation of players, your offense, or your defense. For me, Bob’s advice was invaluable.
Deep Dive Into Players
With Hudl, there are lots of breakdowns of stats that you can get of players. One of the big things is looking at the plus/minus score when the player is on the floor. Do a stat comparison of your players to your past players.
Player Feedback
I always thought this was really important to do. How do your players feel about things you are doing? Some questions that I would ask them- What set is your best set? If we need a basket, what set should we run? Have I over/under-evaluated any players? Are there drills that you don’t feel are effective? Are there drills we need to do more? Sometimes it doesn’t matter if the player really is correct- it is just good for them to feel heard.
Evaluation of Sets
I would usually pick out our 5 toughest games in the first half of the season to use for analysis. I would set up a chart with all of our set plays, fast breaks, and steals. With each of these categories- score, miss a shot, draw foul, turn ball over. Sometimes it was amazing to find plays we hardly used were our best plays.
Evaluation of Defenses/Presses
I would list every half-court and full-court defense we used. Then I would break each into deadball where we could set up, and live balls situations. Break down the results- gave up 2, gave up 3, produced missed shot/got rebound, produced missed shot/gave up o-rebound, created turnover, (with press) nothing happened.
An example of the value in doing this…
In 1996, I had an undersized team but a very quick team. Because we were undersized, I was playing some 2-3 zone, and we were mainly pressuring 1-2-1-1. My mid-season analysis showed me that we were much more effective in our mm defense and we rebounded better out of mm. And although our 1-2-1-1 press was effective, our most effective press was when we switched from 1-2-1-1 to MM press. The first possession we switched from zone press to MM press was producing something crazy like turnovers 60% of the possessions. As a result of this “self-scouting”, we went strictly mm in the half-court and then we pressed zone on post makes and mm on guard makes. And the mm press was the difference maker.
My advice- Quit watching so much of your opponents and watch the most important team- your team!!
No comments:
Post a Comment