GoOskie said:
Unfortunately, I've only had the opportunity to watch a couple games. What specifically is the criticism of Cal's defense and do you think they are repairable as the season progresses or are they glaring and something to be concerned about?
oskidunker said:GoOskie said:
Unfortunately, I've only had the opportunity to watch a couple games. What specifically is the criticism of Cal's defense and do you think they are repairable as the season progresses or are they glaring and something to be concerned about?
When our center drops down teams get wide open 15 footers and they are making them and beating us. Not happy that we have seen no zone, though ai expect we will against Arizona.
Definitely Fardaws has been exposed in one on one defense - and the issue is if He is instructed to close out quicker on a post player (who has the ability to hit the outside/3 pt shot) He often is beat off the dribble due to his fairly slow reactions/footwork. The team is defending a bit better with Keonte on the floor for sure, but still does have holes to improve on. Regarding zone defense, the team has used two different zones thus far 1) a 1-2-2 soft full court defense after a score, merely to slow down the ball getting into the front court and thus give the team less time to run a set offense. And 2) they have very sporadically used a 1-3-1 half court zone. Agree that the team should go to their zone defense more often.oskidunker said:GoOskie said:
Unfortunately, I've only had the opportunity to watch a couple games. What specifically is the criticism of Cal's defense and do you think they are repairable as the season progresses or are they glaring and something to be concerned about?
When our center drops down teams get wide open 15 footers and they are making them and beating us. Not happy that we have seen no zone, though ai expect we will against Arizona.
Defense takes a lot longer to teach, especially at the college level, because the coach and his staff are trying to teach it to kids who have not concentrated on defense while growing up. Their practice time when young is entirely on shooting and dribbling. A kid can't practice defense by himself. He needs a partner to practice it. Most kids are very impressionable, skulls of mush, so to speak, and the thing that impresses them when watching college or NBA games is offense, shooting, scoring, and slick moves on the dribble. The other thing they don't practice is passing on offense, because they can not practice that alone, they need a partner. And then there is rebounding. You can't practice rebounding alone. You need two partners to practice that, one to take a shot, and one to try and keep you from boxing out. You also need at least two partners to learn how to set a screen. Other than shooting and dribbling, that was the only skill I ever learned before high school, and that was from a retired former professional player who was my coach at the SF Boy's Club. And even he did not teach us any defensive skills.bearsandgiants said:
Either they're not d1-level defenders, or Madsen doesn't know how to coach defense. I think it's clear Madsen can recruit and coach up an offense, though.
I should have been more clear. When wrote about kids "growing up", I was referring to the years prior to high school, from 1st grade through 8th grade. When I played those years, in the 1950s, there was some organized basketball for the Catholic kids with school teams and CYO teams (which also included some non-Catholics). The City Parks and Recreation Dept had playground summer leagues for kids. The Boys' Clubs had 4 branches, and a league for kids. The public junior high schools all had teams, and they played in a league for them. All these teams had "coaches" (probably a parent who volunteered), and junior high school league was probably the only place where a kid might get some coaching. Except for the Catholic players, we all arrived in high school with out knowing much of anything about playing defense, or team play on offense. The Catholic kids, by virtue of playing 8 years of organized ball, under some form of coaching, some better than others, arrived in high school already knowing some defensive fundamentals, and they shared the ball on offense more readily than the rest of us.bearister said:
"….. the coach and his staff are trying to teach it to kids who have not concentrated on defense while growing up."
SFCB, the next thing you are going to tell me is that the AAU system doesn't fine tune fundamentals like defense and passing. Have you no common decency, Sir?
Under the Allocco Regime at DLS, he focused so much on defense that they kept opposing teams under 50 points frequently (and yes, playing the Princeton Offense was part of it).
The kids in the program spent so much time in the defensive position under his tutelage (including as boys in his summer Greenline program) that many came out of the system with blown up hips and knees (think Theo Robertson and Beau Levesque).
SFCB, the side step drill you described is something I would have positively hated (although there was no Grizzley Peak to run up to down here in the flat Central Valley), and I might not have survived it. On the other hand, I never learned anything in the years I played in high school in the late '60's and I was never in shape. Coincidentally, perhaps, our coach my senior year played at Cal in the early '50's, but prior to Pete Newell. I'm sure he was a devotee, however, as we played man-to-man and zone was forbidden. He did bring discipline to the team, which was lacking in previous coaches, and we had a very successful season (my contribution was keeping the bench warm). Our star player got a scholarship to Cal and played on the early '70's Jackie Ridgle, Phil Chenier, Charlie Johnson, etc. teams. In the meantime, in all the intramural, city league, church league, pick up games I played in the following decades the zone defense ruled. No one had the will, and in later years the strength, to play man-to-man. But we had fun.SFCityBear said:I should have been more clear. When wrote about kids "growing up", I was referring to the years prior to high school, from 1st grade through 8th grade. When I played those years, in the 1950s, there was some organized basketball for the Catholic kids with school teams and CYO teams (which also included some non-Catholics). The City Parks and Recreation Dept had playground summer leagues for kids. The Boys' Clubs had 4 branches, and a league for kids. The public junior high schools all had teams, and they played in a league for them. All these teams had "coaches" (probably a parent who volunteered), and junior high school league was probably the only place where a kid might get some coaching. Except for the Catholic players, we all arrived in high school with out knowing much of anything about playing defense, or team play on offense. The Catholic kids, by virtue of playing 8 years of organized ball, under some form of coaching, some better than others, arrived in high school already knowing some defensive fundamentals, and they shared the ball on offense more readily than the rest of us.bearister said:
"….. the coach and his staff are trying to teach it to kids who have not concentrated on defense while growing up."
SFCB, the next thing you are going to tell me is that the AAU system doesn't fine tune fundamentals like defense and passing. Have you no common decency, Sir?
Under the Allocco Regime at DLS, he focused so much on defense that they kept opposing teams under 50 points frequently (and yes, playing the Princeton Offense was part of it).
The kids in the program spent so much time in the defensive position under his tutelage (including as boys in his summer Greenline program) that many came out of the system with blown up hips and knees (think Theo Robertson and Beau Levesque).
Today, there is theoretically, at least, better coaching at the grade school level than when I was learning to play. You know much more about AAU than I do, I'm sure, but it comes with a price tag. I have cousins whose children participated in soccer and track and field, and were very good athletes. They traveled to many other states to play games or have track meets. They all had coaches, whose profession was to teach kids to play sports. They were on a track to become good enough to have a chance to be offered a scholarship to play in college. This required making recruiting videos, and often a professional was hired to do this. All of this came with a hefty price tag, which was paid by parents. This means the kids from affluent families had an edge over the poorer kids. Are there scholarships available to the poorer families for their kids to play AAU ball?
As I said, I don't know much about these leagues for young kids. I've never been to a game. The first time I see a Cal recruit is when he plays in a game at Cal. I've said this many times before, but I see lots of recruits who don't play with discipline, who don't have some basic fundamental skills, so something must be lacking, if they are getting all this experience and coaching prior to arriving in college. I played in high school, and we had good defensive teams when we had a good coach, and not very good defensive teams when we had a lousy coach. The good coach drilled us continually on defense. When I used to watch the Bears at practices in 1959, every practice contained a slide step drill. Players formed two or three rows, and had an assistant coach, who was like a drill instructor. The defensive stance was a crouch, weight on the balls of your feet, back straight, head up looking straight ahead, arms away from the body, one hand up, the other hand down. Then players were told to take slide steps to the right as a group. Then the coach called out to take slide steps to the left, as they moved left, they were told to switch arms, with left hand up, and right hand down. Then he said to take steps forward, then take steps backward. Then they repeated the whole sequence. The coach would call out any player who was raising up out of the crouch, or any player who lowered either of his hands. If a player made many repeated mistakes, he might be sent off to run up to Grizzly Peak and back. The whole drill would last 20 minutes, and sometimes 40 minutes. The players were exhausted after these drills. They hated them. They played man-to-man defense, never zone. They were the best defensive team in the country.
All that may not be applicable today, where all defense is help defense, and it has to be, because of rule changes now favoring the offensive players, trying to stimulate scoring. But when I see kids arriving at Cal, who look like they have never heard of proper defensive stance, or slide steps, and many of them have had the opportunity to get coaching at grade school level and high school, I wonder why that is.
You know more about today's youth basketball programs, so why do you think they don't seem to have or use basic skills?
I think Madsen was able to get the best talent he could given the terrible position the program is in. However, this is not a "high D1" talent level team. Better than what Fox put together, sure, but not enough to compete in the Pac-12. The Ole Miss game was our first Power 5 opponent and we certainly did not have the talent (or coaching) to compete. Tyson is a solid D1 level talent, but I don't see any of these players earning all-conference honors.HoopDreams said:
One thing I can say this early is Coach Madsen is a great talent evaluator
Every player he brought is a high D1 player, with all-conference potential
I think Cone has a shot at all conference HMHKBear97! said:I think Madsen was able to get the best talent he could given the terrible position the program is in. However, this is not a "high D1" talent level team. Better than what Fox put together, sure, but not enough to compete in the Pac-12. The Ole Miss game was our first Power 5 opponent and we certainly did not have the talent (or coaching) to compete. Tyson is a solid D1 level talent, but I don't see any of these players earning all-conference honors.HoopDreams said:
One thing I can say this early is Coach Madsen is a great talent evaluator
Every player he brought is a high D1 player, with all-conference potential
eastcoastcal said:
credit @marchmadsen for putting this on another thread but next practice should not have the players touch a single ball. Conditioning & defense the entire time. If you can't impose 100% physical defense then you don't play. Simple.
The Bulldogs couldn't hang with the Delta Kings...lol...good to hear from you again Larno....Larno said:SFCB, the side step drill you described is something I would have positively hated (although there was no Grizzley Peak to run up to down here in the flat Central Valley), and I might not have survived it. On the other hand, I never learned anything in the years I played in high school in the late '60's and I was never in shape. Coincidentally, perhaps, our coach my senior year played at Cal in the early '50's, but prior to Pete Newell. I'm sure he was a devotee, however, as we played man-to-man and zone was forbidden. He did bring discipline to the team, which was lacking in previous coaches, and we had a very successful season (my contribution was keeping the bench warm). Our star player got a scholarship to Cal and played on the early '70's Jackie Ridgle, Phil Chenier, Charlie Johnson, etc. teams. In the meantime, in all the intramural, city league, church league, pick up games I played in the following decades the zone defense ruled. No one had the will, and in later years the strength, to play man-to-man. But we had fun.SFCityBear said:I should have been more clear. When wrote about kids "growing up", I was referring to the years prior to high school, from 1st grade through 8th grade. When I played those years, in the 1950s, there was some organized basketball for the Catholic kids with school teams and CYO teams (which also included some non-Catholics). The City Parks and Recreation Dept had playground summer leagues for kids. The Boys' Clubs had 4 branches, and a league for kids. The public junior high schools all had teams, and they played in a league for them. All these teams had "coaches" (probably a parent who volunteered), and junior high school league was probably the only place where a kid might get some coaching. Except for the Catholic players, we all arrived in high school with out knowing much of anything about playing defense, or team play on offense. The Catholic kids, by virtue of playing 8 years of organized ball, under some form of coaching, some better than others, arrived in high school already knowing some defensive fundamentals, and they shared the ball on offense more readily than the rest of us.bearister said:
"….. the coach and his staff are trying to teach it to kids who have not concentrated on defense while growing up."
SFCB, the next thing you are going to tell me is that the AAU system doesn't fine tune fundamentals like defense and passing. Have you no common decency, Sir?
Under the Allocco Regime at DLS, he focused so much on defense that they kept opposing teams under 50 points frequently (and yes, playing the Princeton Offense was part of it).
The kids in the program spent so much time in the defensive position under his tutelage (including as boys in his summer Greenline program) that many came out of the system with blown up hips and knees (think Theo Robertson and Beau Levesque).
Today, there is theoretically, at least, better coaching at the grade school level than when I was learning to play. You know much more about AAU than I do, I'm sure, but it comes with a price tag. I have cousins whose children participated in soccer and track and field, and were very good athletes. They traveled to many other states to play games or have track meets. They all had coaches, whose profession was to teach kids to play sports. They were on a track to become good enough to have a chance to be offered a scholarship to play in college. This required making recruiting videos, and often a professional was hired to do this. All of this came with a hefty price tag, which was paid by parents. This means the kids from affluent families had an edge over the poorer kids. Are there scholarships available to the poorer families for their kids to play AAU ball?
As I said, I don't know much about these leagues for young kids. I've never been to a game. The first time I see a Cal recruit is when he plays in a game at Cal. I've said this many times before, but I see lots of recruits who don't play with discipline, who don't have some basic fundamental skills, so something must be lacking, if they are getting all this experience and coaching prior to arriving in college. I played in high school, and we had good defensive teams when we had a good coach, and not very good defensive teams when we had a lousy coach. The good coach drilled us continually on defense. When I used to watch the Bears at practices in 1959, every practice contained a slide step drill. Players formed two or three rows, and had an assistant coach, who was like a drill instructor. The defensive stance was a crouch, weight on the balls of your feet, back straight, head up looking straight ahead, arms away from the body, one hand up, the other hand down. Then players were told to take slide steps to the right as a group. Then the coach called out to take slide steps to the left, as they moved left, they were told to switch arms, with left hand up, and right hand down. Then he said to take steps forward, then take steps backward. Then they repeated the whole sequence. The coach would call out any player who was raising up out of the crouch, or any player who lowered either of his hands. If a player made many repeated mistakes, he might be sent off to run up to Grizzly Peak and back. The whole drill would last 20 minutes, and sometimes 40 minutes. The players were exhausted after these drills. They hated them. They played man-to-man defense, never zone. They were the best defensive team in the country.
All that may not be applicable today, where all defense is help defense, and it has to be, because of rule changes now favoring the offensive players, trying to stimulate scoring. But when I see kids arriving at Cal, who look like they have never heard of proper defensive stance, or slide steps, and many of them have had the opportunity to get coaching at grade school level and high school, I wonder why that is.
You know more about today's youth basketball programs, so why do you think they don't seem to have or use basic skills?
I like it. We could start with running up that mountain due East of the campus. Often.eastcoastcal said:
credit @marchmadsen for putting this on another thread but next practice should not have the players touch a single ball. Conditioning & defense the entire time. If you can't impose 100% physical defense then you don't play. Simple.
HKBear97! said:I think Madsen was able to get the best talent he could given the terrible position the program is in. However, this is not a "high D1" talent level team. Better than what Fox put together, sure, but not enough to compete in the Pac-12. The Ole Miss game was our first Power 5 opponent and we certainly did not have the talent (or coaching) to compete. Tyson is a solid D1 level talent, but I don't see any of these players earning all-conference honors.HoopDreams said:
One thing I can say this early is Coach Madsen is a great talent evaluator
Every player he brought is a high D1 player, with all-conference potential
We meet again! Check your messages.bearmanpg said:The Bulldogs couldn't hang with the Delta Kings...lol...good to hear from you again Larno....Larno said:SFCB, the side step drill you described is something I would have positively hated (although there was no Grizzley Peak to run up to down here in the flat Central Valley), and I might not have survived it. On the other hand, I never learned anything in the years I played in high school in the late '60's and I was never in shape. Coincidentally, perhaps, our coach my senior year played at Cal in the early '50's, but prior to Pete Newell. I'm sure he was a devotee, however, as we played man-to-man and zone was forbidden. He did bring discipline to the team, which was lacking in previous coaches, and we had a very successful season (my contribution was keeping the bench warm). Our star player got a scholarship to Cal and played on the early '70's Jackie Ridgle, Phil Chenier, Charlie Johnson, etc. teams. In the meantime, in all the intramural, city league, church league, pick up games I played in the following decades the zone defense ruled. No one had the will, and in later years the strength, to play man-to-man. But we had fun.SFCityBear said:I should have been more clear. When wrote about kids "growing up", I was referring to the years prior to high school, from 1st grade through 8th grade. When I played those years, in the 1950s, there was some organized basketball for the Catholic kids with school teams and CYO teams (which also included some non-Catholics). The City Parks and Recreation Dept had playground summer leagues for kids. The Boys' Clubs had 4 branches, and a league for kids. The public junior high schools all had teams, and they played in a league for them. All these teams had "coaches" (probably a parent who volunteered), and junior high school league was probably the only place where a kid might get some coaching. Except for the Catholic players, we all arrived in high school with out knowing much of anything about playing defense, or team play on offense. The Catholic kids, by virtue of playing 8 years of organized ball, under some form of coaching, some better than others, arrived in high school already knowing some defensive fundamentals, and they shared the ball on offense more readily than the rest of us.bearister said:
"….. the coach and his staff are trying to teach it to kids who have not concentrated on defense while growing up."
SFCB, the next thing you are going to tell me is that the AAU system doesn't fine tune fundamentals like defense and passing. Have you no common decency, Sir?
Under the Allocco Regime at DLS, he focused so much on defense that they kept opposing teams under 50 points frequently (and yes, playing the Princeton Offense was part of it).
The kids in the program spent so much time in the defensive position under his tutelage (including as boys in his summer Greenline program) that many came out of the system with blown up hips and knees (think Theo Robertson and Beau Levesque).
Today, there is theoretically, at least, better coaching at the grade school level than when I was learning to play. You know much more about AAU than I do, I'm sure, but it comes with a price tag. I have cousins whose children participated in soccer and track and field, and were very good athletes. They traveled to many other states to play games or have track meets. They all had coaches, whose profession was to teach kids to play sports. They were on a track to become good enough to have a chance to be offered a scholarship to play in college. This required making recruiting videos, and often a professional was hired to do this. All of this came with a hefty price tag, which was paid by parents. This means the kids from affluent families had an edge over the poorer kids. Are there scholarships available to the poorer families for their kids to play AAU ball?
As I said, I don't know much about these leagues for young kids. I've never been to a game. The first time I see a Cal recruit is when he plays in a game at Cal. I've said this many times before, but I see lots of recruits who don't play with discipline, who don't have some basic fundamental skills, so something must be lacking, if they are getting all this experience and coaching prior to arriving in college. I played in high school, and we had good defensive teams when we had a good coach, and not very good defensive teams when we had a lousy coach. The good coach drilled us continually on defense. When I used to watch the Bears at practices in 1959, every practice contained a slide step drill. Players formed two or three rows, and had an assistant coach, who was like a drill instructor. The defensive stance was a crouch, weight on the balls of your feet, back straight, head up looking straight ahead, arms away from the body, one hand up, the other hand down. Then players were told to take slide steps to the right as a group. Then the coach called out to take slide steps to the left, as they moved left, they were told to switch arms, with left hand up, and right hand down. Then he said to take steps forward, then take steps backward. Then they repeated the whole sequence. The coach would call out any player who was raising up out of the crouch, or any player who lowered either of his hands. If a player made many repeated mistakes, he might be sent off to run up to Grizzly Peak and back. The whole drill would last 20 minutes, and sometimes 40 minutes. The players were exhausted after these drills. They hated them. They played man-to-man defense, never zone. They were the best defensive team in the country.
All that may not be applicable today, where all defense is help defense, and it has to be, because of rule changes now favoring the offensive players, trying to stimulate scoring. But when I see kids arriving at Cal, who look like they have never heard of proper defensive stance, or slide steps, and many of them have had the opportunity to get coaching at grade school level and high school, I wonder why that is.
You know more about today's youth basketball programs, so why do you think they don't seem to have or use basic skills?
I remember the side-step or "slide" drill. After a very few minutes, your quads would be screaming. RE: you anecdote about your cousin's kids. "Traveling" club teams are a big racket. I had a co-worker whose daughter was on a traveling volleyball team and they paid $3000/season plus traveling expenses. When high school started, the coach pressured her to go to a larger, more competitive high school where she lasted two weeks. She announced she was going back to be with her friends at the local high school and she quit volleyball.SFCityBear said:I should have been more clear. When wrote about kids "growing up", I was referring to the years prior to high school, from 1st grade through 8th grade. When I played those years, in the 1950s, there was some organized basketball for the Catholic kids with school teams and CYO teams (which also included some non-Catholics). The City Parks and Recreation Dept had playground summer leagues for kids. The Boys' Clubs had 4 branches, and a league for kids. The public junior high schools all had teams, and they played in a league for them. All these teams had "coaches" (probably a parent who volunteered), and junior high school league was probably the only place where a kid might get some coaching. Except for the Catholic players, we all arrived in high school with out knowing much of anything about playing defense, or team play on offense. The Catholic kids, by virtue of playing 8 years of organized ball, under some form of coaching, some better than others, arrived in high school already knowing some defensive fundamentals, and they shared the ball on offense more readily than the rest of us.bearister said:
"….. the coach and his staff are trying to teach it to kids who have not concentrated on defense while growing up."
SFCB, the next thing you are going to tell me is that the AAU system doesn't fine tune fundamentals like defense and passing. Have you no common decency, Sir?
Under the Allocco Regime at DLS, he focused so much on defense that they kept opposing teams under 50 points frequently (and yes, playing the Princeton Offense was part of it).
The kids in the program spent so much time in the defensive position under his tutelage (including as boys in his summer Greenline program) that many came out of the system with blown up hips and knees (think Theo Robertson and Beau Levesque).
Today, there is theoretically, at least, better coaching at the grade school level than when I was learning to play. You know much more about AAU than I do, I'm sure, but it comes with a price tag. I have cousins whose children participated in soccer and track and field, and were very good athletes. They traveled to many other states to play games or have track meets. They all had coaches, whose profession was to teach kids to play sports. They were on a track to become good enough to have a chance to be offered a scholarship to play in college. This required making recruiting videos, and often a professional was hired to do this. All of this came with a hefty price tag, which was paid by parents. This means the kids from affluent families had an edge over the poorer kids. Are there scholarships available to the poorer families for their kids to play AAU ball?
As I said, I don't know much about these leagues for young kids. I've never been to a game. The first time I see a Cal recruit is when he plays in a game at Cal. I've said this many times before, but I see lots of recruits who don't play with discipline, who don't have some basic fundamental skills, so something must be lacking, if they are getting all this experience and coaching prior to arriving in college. I played in high school, and we had good defensive teams when we had a good coach, and not very good defensive teams when we had a lousy coach. The good coach drilled us continually on defense. When I used to watch the Bears at practices in 1959, every practice contained a slide step drill. Players formed two or three rows, and had an assistant coach, who was like a drill instructor. The defensive stance was a crouch, weight on the balls of your feet, back straight, head up looking straight ahead, arms away from the body, one hand up, the other hand down. Then players were told to take slide steps to the right as a group. Then the coach called out to take slide steps to the left, as they moved left, they were told to switch arms, with left hand up, and right hand down. Then he said to take steps forward, then take steps backward. Then they repeated the whole sequence. The coach would call out any player who was raising up out of the crouch, or any player who lowered either of his hands. If a player made many repeated mistakes, he might be sent off to run up to Grizzly Peak and back. The whole drill would last 20 minutes, and sometimes 40 minutes. The players were exhausted after these drills. They hated them. They played man-to-man defense, never zone. They were the best defensive team in the country.
All that may not be applicable today, where all defense is help defense, and it has to be, because of rule changes now favoring the offensive players, trying to stimulate scoring. But when I see kids arriving at Cal, who look like they have never heard of proper defensive stance, or slide steps, and many of them have had the opportunity to get coaching at grade school level and high school, I wonder why that is.
You know more about today's youth basketball programs, so why do you think they don't seem to have or use basic skills?
eastcoastcal said:
credit @marchmadsen for putting this on another thread but next practice should not have the players touch a single ball. Conditioning & defense the entire time. If you can't impose 100% physical defense then you don't play. Simple.
