I always love spring because it’s basketball clinic time.
If you’re like I am, your mailbox is always filled with written notification of all the basketball coaching clinics available across the country. Want to know where else you can attend a coaching clinic? If you answer ‘yes’ to that question, then read on.
The best place to catch a clinic is on your TV right in front of you during the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tourney.
What, you’re thinking? Right before your very eyes there are fellow coaches…right in front of you.
Get a notepad and a pencil – you might need to erase something – because you’ll be writing that fast. Keep track of the following:
1. Out-of-bounds plays under your basket
2. Sideline out-of-bounds plays.
3. Press breakers versus man and zone defenses.
4. Half-court press breakers.
5. Wrinkles in variations of different offenses you may run.
6. Ideas at the end of games, which you may have overlooked
7. Substitution patterns you may have not tried. These D-I coaches do know what they’re doing.
8. Time out usage that you’ve never tried.
9. End-game plays you’ve never seen (We won a title one year from a play I saw the North Carolina women run in the tourney. See play at the end of blog).
10. And finally, by simply watching games as a coach and not as a fan, you pick up a wealth of material, which you were not even expecting to learn.
Let’s talk about clinics themselves. When I was a head coach, I always liked to get my entire staff together once a year to attend a regional or a national basketball-coaching clinic.
Here’s why: a lot can happen at a clinic. First of all, you get to travel together as a group, and the camaraderie, which develops away from work, is great. Seeing your staff together at a restaurant is a variable you can’t replicate in the gym.
Secondly, it’s always important to see and hear what other coaches have to say. No one has a corner market on what is true basketball. Absorbing ideas and concepts from others can only improve your program.
Most school districts gladly pick up the tab for professional improvement activities. Never fail to capitalize on what a school will do for you and your staff. Never. You cheat your program when you don’t utilize what is at your fingertips.
Also, I encouraged my coaches to run clinics with the junior high and elementary school coaches. Preach unity, and by following some of the aforementioned hints, you go a long way in improving the entire system. Good luck with it.
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Here’s the play I mentioned earlier. The first diagram shows the movement you use all game as 2 screens for 5 and 1 passes to 5 for the layup. Once the defense becomes accustomed to this out-of-bounds play, have 2 move to behind the three-point line after setting the screen for a pass from 1 for an open shot as shown in the second diagram.
