Week Two Thoughts

MONDAY...

Ten guys made it to practice today, seven from the A squad and three from the B. We are really starting to understand our defensive concepts and our one offensive set. While we wait to see if our 6'2" center will be cleared to play, we have to work with our other post options. Our best post player stands at 5'9"ish and has good enough ball handling skills that I would like to use him as our point guard when our center returns, but in the meanwhile he is our 4/5. Our other closest post player - from what I gather - has probably never played on a basketball team before. He is really raw and can really jump- if he figures out how to listen and learn he can probably really help us and get some good minutes.

We had two B guys tonight who were really working hard at every drill. We will have to find a way to reward their effort, which will probably be tricky because it looks like not enough guys will stay eligible to have a full B squad and their ability level is not high enough to warrant a lot of minutes in our A games. We'll figure that out later.

Overall tonight I was pleased with our attitude and effort once we got into practice. On our way there was a different story. Guys are still struggling to take us serious when we tell them we expect them to be focused on Academics, Behavior and Character. 5 guys had GPA's lower than 2.0 and/or one or more F's on their report cards. Other guys still have attitudes that need adjusting if they are going to be on this team past Thanksgiving. Ultimately, I feel that we have enough guys who want to play and play our way that we should have no problem getting this group down to the core that want to be a part of our program.

WEDNESDAY...

Finished our short week of school with probably our best practice yet. We had nine of the A guys present and everyone brought the attitude and effort that we need to move forward as a team. Offensively, we appear to have our base set ready to go- enough so that we were able to introduce our two other base sets. Defensively, we are right where we need to be in our man-to-man.

We have a scrimmage this coming week against a pretty good 8th grade AAU team, so that will give us another chance to see what we really have and what needs work before our first game Nov 13. We get back one more contributing player this week and will get an update on our center from his doctor this week also. I am really glad that we started as early as we did, because it looks to be paying off after three short weeks of practice. This team is ahead of other teams I have coached in the past for where they are at the start of November. Here's to hoping we build off of that.