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COACHING HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL

by BILL KUCHAR (McGraw-Hill, 2005)

* The most important aspect to teach is fundamentals. Not to downplay any other part of the game, but this is where a coach has to keep his players sharp....There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and your job as a coach is to instruct your players how to do things the right way.

* There is no greater glory than when you have five players on the court at the same time who are fundamentally sound. Only good things will happen. You will need those fundamentals when the game is on the line.

* Fundamentals are not easy to maintain. In fact, they are the first to fall by the wayside when a player starts thinking he is bigger than the game.

* The only way they learn is through repetition, drilling these techniques into players' minds every day of practice for the entire season.

* Before the start of every season, there were some fundamentals I wanted to stress and made sure I covered:

(1) Cutting backdoor; (2) Working off picks and screens; (3) Free Yourself; (4) Defensive Flick; (5) Fronting; (6) Boxing Out; (7) Avoiding the Box-Out; (8)Always meet the ball; (9) Pick up all out-of-bounds balls (when the ball goes out of bounds, it is purely a way to confuse officials who have to make a quick decision but are unsure); (10) Always stop the ball from advancing; (11) Using your elbow on drives to the lane (we teach our guards/forwards to penetrate and to drive the opposite elbow up to draw a foul on the defense); (12) Setting a pick. There are more than 30 other key fundamentals but the above are the most important.

* There is no question that good shooting, when executed correctly, is the most important fundamental of the game...we should realize one simple fact: shooters aren't born with "dead-on" jump shots. They develop them.

* I stressed the fundamentals of shooting. I split the team into two groups and sent them to the six baskets in our gym. While each pair was shooting a set number of foul shots and jump shots, I rotated from one basket to the next and pointed out the correct techniques of shooting. This is what I call my collaborative learning process in practice--the player who isn't shooting coaches the other player on the techniques I taught while he was taking his shots.

* Many teams suffer from what I consider to be my "Murphy's Law" in shooting-- forcing shots. I established a rule against forced shots, taking any player who threw up a ridiculous, or very low percentage, shot--except at the end of the half--out of the game for a couple of minutes.

My ten golden rules of shooting:
   (1) Position the ball
   (2) Position the elbow (under the ball and close to the body)
   (3) Wrist and fingertip control (wrist cocked & parallel to the ground)
      (4) Follow-through (I taught my players to hang the shooting hand extended for two seconds)
      (5) Arch the ball (you want your arm to rise upward on the shot)
      (6) Radar eyes (always keep eyes on rim)
    (7) Proper spin
      (8) Aim for the back part of the rim
      (9) Stay square to the basket (squaring your shoulders and facing the basket before you shoot the ball is imperative).
    (10) Develop the art of the jump shot (I always had my players shoot free throws before jump shots because the two are similar).

* The best drill to practice the preceding fundamentals is to stand three feet from the rim, the ball in the palm of your shooting hand and your elbow under the ball and next to your body. Your oposite arm is at your side. You hand should be cocked. Flip your wrist with proper spin and arch....When you make the three-footer, step back to six feet and shoot with one hand. If you make the shot, then move again, to nine feet, then twelve feet, until you reach the foul line. The drill ends when you make two shots in a row with one hand from the foul line.

* Hustle is the one facet of basketball that can bring you the greatest success as a coach. You win possessions on hustle, you win games on hustle, you win championships on hustle, and you build a reputation for your program on hustle.

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