Friday, April 2, 2010

Introduction




Welcome to "The Coaching Corner"

My name is Coach Mike Draper. I just finished my first season of coaching basketball for the Cougars of Logan County High School in Russellville, Kentucky. During the 2009-2010 season I served as an assistant coach for the boys' varsity team under Head Coach Harold Tackett and also served as the head coach of the junior varsity squad. Our JV squad finished the season with a record of 6 wins and 7 losses. We started the year out strong getting out to a 5-3 record but could not find offensive consistancy towards the end of the season. Our varsity team finished the season with a record of 11 wins and 15 losses, losing in the first round of the District 13 Tournament to our cross-town rival the Russellville Panthers. This season was just the second time in a decade that a Logan County team had won double-digit games and we improved the season win total by 7 games from the previous season (2008-2009). This was an exciting year that had its ups and downs but I had a blast coaching these kids and definitely learned a lot about the game of basketball. Once the season ended I began preparations for coaching two more spring/summer teams. These teams would consist of 12-15 players from the 4th-7th grades. Here in Logan County we have 5 elementary schools, all of which feed up to the one county high school. During the season these teams compete against each other and now we are trying to get some of their best players together to play what is basically AAU ball against competition from around south-central Kentucky. I have really enjoyed coaching these kids so far. We have played two games so far and lost them both but they have been against probably some of our toughest competition. Not to mention the players on the team we faced have been in their system for about 3 years and have been practicing for about 2 months now, 3 days a week. Our team had only had three practices period before our games, plus we are teaching these kids a whole new system so that by the time they get up to the high school they will be fully prepared as to what we run both in practice and in games.

So, with all of that said, that kind of leads me up to the purpose of this blog. Coaching and teaching these young kids has really opened up my eyes to all of the fundamental work that goes into preparing and developing basketball players. As much as I want to spend a majority of practice working on offensive and defensive sets, I know that by simply going through drills that develop the fundamentals of the game, we will continue to get better and better as a team. I am hoping that this blog will serve as a way for me to put out ideas of drills and schemes to those that might too be in this great profession and likewise I would love feedback from any fellow coaches out there about how you would handle situations, what sets work for you, which ones don't, etc. So I will start this inaugural blog with this question: Should I stay away from running zone defenses at such an early age (4th-7th grade)? Unfortunately we don't have the athletes to matchup with most teams we play and while I ABSOLUTELY LOVE a great, in-your-face, pressure, man-to-man defense, our guys simply are not fully prepared to execute one yet. During our varsity season we used several different zone defenses (2/3, 3/2, 1/3/1) and that is what I am planning on doing with these kids. I figured, if they can't man up the opposition I can still help them learn the game by implementing several different zone defenses. Thoughts?

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