In looking at the box scores for Nebraska's 8 games played to date, I don't see Mi'Cole Cayton's name listed in any of them.

What a luxury it would be if she had decided to play here one more year. Oh well.

ClayK said:

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Maybe I'm just not a very good coach but I've never been able to draw up plays that create shots for specific players on bad teams -- at least against other coaches who have a clue.

Let's talk about plays out of timeouts a bit ...

First, it's very difficult, even at the college and pro level, to successfully execute plays you haven't practiced. Most college teams have about four or five sideline plays, and baseline plays (many have fewer). These are the ones they run, and they are scouted. You can change one or two during practice, but experienced players and coaches are going to adjust to screen-the-screener and other typical tactics pretty much on the fly.

So to imagine a coach sitting down, with an inexperienced team, and drawing up a play the players have never seen or practiced before, and expecting it to be run properly -- it's really not going to happen. (I had a really good high school team, a veteran team, and we had one basic play we would never run right. We finally just started laughing about it.)

Also note that a couple of the plays you practice are get-the-ball-in plays rather than scoring plays because really, getting the ball in is the first priority.

What that means is that during a timeout you can call one of the plays you've practiced, and go over it -- maybe with a single tweak -- and emphasize certain options. But remember, the coach on the other side is saying "Look, 24 and 12 are the only kids who can score, so make sure we stick with them. The others aren't going to hurt us, and if they do, we can live with it."

Now if I have a team with multiple scorers -- or even multiple three-point shooters -- the equation changes. The defense now can be distorted by the various threats who are on the floor. And of course, scorers can score even when guarded reasonably well, so that "good-looking play" is just my quick, fast, talented player making a strong cut to leave the defender a half-step behind and then burying a 12-footer.

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thanks for sharing your experience. to clarify...

I'm not saying we should be designing scoring plays during timeouts.

if you are saying that a lot of fans think that teams are constantly running plays, which isn't the reality? then I would agree with you.

if you are saying it's difficult to get an inexperienced team to run plays/sets well, especially such an unbalanced team, then I would agree with you (see my other posts)

What I am talking about is practicing plays and sets that are designed to get certain players open looks, and then trying to run that offense in certain circumstances (instructing them to run a play or set after at TO).

isn't that what coaches spend the majority of their offense practice time doing (practicing plays/sets)?

On Friday night, Cal attempted to defend ASU's three point shooter with Dalayah Daniels & Evelien Lutje-Schipholt. Then, Charli Turner-Thorne countered with double-screens to get her open from deep. This is an example, correct, HoopDreams?

Also, as an update to the roster summary above, Sela Heide, one of the three 4 star posts, has now missed three consecutive games.

HoopDreams said:

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stu said:

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4thGenCal said:

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goodHoop Dreams - I enjoy your perspective on the Men's Board - this i my first post/questions regarding the women's team. A honest/pull no punches assessment for me would be appreciated. Questions: 1) I remember we had recruited two 5 star players (are they playing? if so an assessment) 2) The scores I have followed are showing an an outclassed (and often crushing losses) team with no wins, why? The HC is in her 2nd year and thus far no growth/progress has been shown - I ask because when the Men's team has been struggling, strong criticism was voiced. Note - I have not seen any games this season, but I was an former girls AAU coach and support our teams.thanks.

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I'm not HoopDreams but I'll chime in anyway...

Previous recruiting misses and the coaching change left us last season with 4 seniors, 1 junior, and 0 sophs. We recruited 4 freshies, had the expected rough start, and finished the season beating some good teams.

This season's freshies include 1 five-star, 3 four-stars, and 2 international players. Last year's junior left so we have 4 sophs and 6 freshies (plus 2 former walk-ons). It looked like it would be another rebuilding year but we lost 2 soph guards for the season with injuries before the first game. Then we lost 1 freshie guard (the better one) for the season with an injury in her first game. So we're down to 2 scholarship guards, 1 soph and 1 freshie.

To put that in perspective consider how our men's team would look with only Brown and Klonaras at guard. No Bradley. No Foreman. No Hyder. No Betley. With Alters and and Thorpe and Kelly bringing the ball up against the press. I don't think many coaches would win a lot of games under those circumstances.

What I (and I presume most Cal WBB fans) are looking for this season is player development and progress through he season. Next season we should have enough perimeter players with 2 coming in and hopefully 3 recovered from their injuries. With a year of experience the current freshies should be playing up to their star ratings.

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Stu, good write up. I'll only add:

current team:
- 6 scholie players: 2 guards (1 soph, 1 fresh), 4 forwards (1 soph, 3 fresh)
- 2 walkon guards

currently out for season:
- 2 sophs (including best player according to pac12 coaches)
- 1 fresh ('most college ready according to coach)
(soph guard also missed two games due to concussion)
- all the above are guards

Considering the:
- 1 five star, 3 four star (but all freshmen)
- extreme youth (2 sophs, 4 fresh, 0 juniors/seniors)
- extreme lack of depth (6 scholie players, giving the coach almost no flexibility, and too many minutes for 3 of the players)
- unbalanced roster (2 guards, forcing coach to play two players out of position for extended periods of time)
- maybe only one legit 3 point threat

I'd say it's tough to run any type of offense, especially against a pressure defense

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Thanks to both Stu and Hoop Dreams for objective color and explanation to a fan who just constantly has seen blow out losses without the backdrop. Question though - how many scholarships does the women's team receive? Men's has 13, I was told (possibly incorrectly that the women's team due to title 9 regulations has 14 or 15? Regardless - though curious, how many were used this season? Since earlier posts stated 3 were hurt and out for year and currently 6 scholarships are playing, plus 2 walk on guards (assuming they were given scholies?) either way that adds up to just 11 schollies. Thanks for correcting/informing me. I guess I am also saying did the coach use her full allotment before the season started?

We started off with a 12-player roster this year.

I think the only time that you can handle a 15 player roster is when you are starting out and want to have a "survival of the fittest" contest to be followed by some expected transfers. No good players are going to want to sit on the bench waiting for someone else to get injured. You might as well just have some walk-ons with low expectations for that role. And that is exactly where we are this year. Having three of your four best guards get injured at the same time is something for which you simply can't compensate.

When we went to the Final Four in 2013, we had a seven player rotation in the tournament after using eight players during the regular season.

wvitbear said:

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No team in the Pac 12 has given out all 15 scholarships. Most have 13. And we don't really have seniors so we need to keep a few for class balance.

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Thanks to all for the background and circumstances that contributed to the current difficult season. Hindsight is 20/20, but surprised that the staff did not recruit/have 13 scholarships in place. Understand the potential issue with "good players" sitting more than optimal, and the class balance strategy being issues to deal with, burt still keeps 2 extra for later use. The flip side is that practice time is when players get better - when they are challenged by competing players for their playing time. Thus effort,increases and players become better prepared for the games due to the game like challenges presented in practices. Speaking with the former Men's coach Wyking, he had an exceptionally hard 2nd year when he was also down to 8 players available on Scholarship (2 very late transfers, and 2 injuries) and he said the walk on's were not able to sufficiently challenge the starters and that hampered the team's ability to match the ball pressure during the games. Additionally the lack of depth flat out wore the team down later in the games.
Hopefully the team unity weathers this stretch, and the staff is able to develop their skills for the program's future growth!

The women's teams now use male practice players to sharpen their games. A bigger roster would just be looking on at those practices.

one issue on the number of schollie players we have this season:

we had a transfer guard that would have played this year, but something happened, and she transferred out before the season started. I heard she's doing well at her new team.

HoopDreams said:

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one issue on the number of schollie players we have this season:

we had a transfer guard that would have played this year, but something happened, and she transferred out before the season started. I heard she's doing well at her new team.

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Has moved into the starting line-up at Texas Tech and is hitting 37% on three's and has a positive Assist/TO ratio. I believe Muca was our replacement for her.

>isn't that what coaches spend the majority of their offense practice time doing (practicing plays/sets)?

This is an interesting point.

At the high school level, your time needs to be spent on skill development and repetition. If you look at the points you score in games, how many come off of set plays? In general, if you get five baskets off of set plays you've done pretty well -- and presumably those sets are ones you've practice enough so that you don't have to go over them that much.

A good team might make 25 baskets a game, so those 5 baskets are 20% of your offense (the other baskets are follow shots, transition, etc. -- I'm not counting a simple pick-and-roll as a play or a set, and note that many plays break down because the defense has scouted them). If I spend half my time on offense in practice, then that means 10% of my time on sets. (You can adjust depending on how many baskets result from set plays you think a team scores on in each game.)

At the college level, you actually have less practice time than you potentially do in high school, and you have to spend time on defense, both individual and team. You also need time on skill development -- dribble, pass, shoot -- because if you want players to improve, you have to work with them on basic skills. And most P5 college players arrive with work needed on fundamentals since they dominate with athleticism at the lower levels.

But I would guess more time is spent on sets at the college level, but still, what percentage of your points are going to come from a set play, which realistically is going to work twice in a single game (the defense will adjust -- that's what all those assistant coaches are for)?

At my level, I can easily spend a two-hour practice, never work on a set play, and still have drills and scrimmage time I didn't get to. College coaches are better, but there's always stuff to practice (rebounding drills, say, or putbacks under pressure, and other things that come up much more often than set plays).

Finally, after boring you to death on this topic, there is this feeling among fans that coaching is about plays and Xs and Os -- but coaching is teaching and group dynamics and preparing players to play a game that is not predictable (in the sense that football is). Sure, there are moments set plays are crucial, but rebounding, say, is crucial for 40 minutes. I'd rather rebound and defend well for 40 minutes than run sets well.

good stuff, thanks clay

When people refer to "set plays" here are they thinking set as in "four steps to the right and then spin and....." or is the reference to an understanding and execution of an offensive scheme, such as flex or passing game, pass screen away and the like? The Arthur Murray Dance Studio "set plays" are not going to be as effective as the players understanding and executing the "offensive scheme". The latter requires real basketball understanding.

ClayK said:

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>isn't that what coaches spend the majority of their offense practice time doing (practicing plays/sets)?

This is an interesting point.

At the high school level, your time needs to be spent on skill development and repetition. If you look at the points you score in games, how many come off of set plays? In general, if you get five baskets off of set plays you've done pretty well -- and presumably those sets are ones you've practice enough so that you don't have to go over them that much.

A good team might make 25 baskets a game, so those 5 baskets are 20% of your offense (the other baskets are follow shots, transition, etc. -- I'm not counting a simple pick-and-roll as a play or a set, and note that many plays break down because the defense has scouted them). If I spend half my time on offense in practice, then that means 10% of my time on sets. (You can adjust depending on how many baskets result from set plays you think a team scores on in each game.)

At the college level, you actually have less practice time than you potentially do in high school, and you have to spend time on defense, both individual and team. You also need time on skill development -- dribble, pass, shoot -- because if you want players to improve, you have to work with them on basic skills. And most P5 college players arrive with work needed on fundamentals since they dominate with athleticism at the lower levels.

But I would guess more time is spent on sets at the college level, but still, what percentage of your points are going to come from a set play, which realistically is going to work twice in a single game (the defense will adjust -- that's what all those assistant coaches are for)?

At my level, I can easily spend a two-hour practice, never work on a set play, and still have drills and scrimmage time I didn't get to. College coaches are better, but there's always stuff to practice (rebounding drills, say, or putbacks under pressure, and other things that come up much more often than set plays).

Finally, after boring you to death on this topic, there is this feeling among fans that coaching is about plays and Xs and Os -- but coaching is teaching and group dynamics and preparing players to play a game that is not predictable (in the sense that football is). Sure, there are moments set plays are crucial, but rebounding, say, is crucial for 40 minutes. I'd rather rebound and defend well for 40 minutes than run sets well.

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Thanks for this level of detail, and it is not boring to me. Your estimate on the number of set plays resulting in a score is interesting. The double screen that opened up ASU's repeated 3 point shot from the top of the key seemed to produce numerous scores, but I think that was a unique situation. If a play is working, I assume you keep running it until your opponent can stop it, and we never did stop it. Gitting off a quick and acurate shot, regardless of the play, is probably an equally important factor.

In general, if my defense isn't good enough to figure out a set play (double screen, say), then I haven't done a good job preparing my players. So I'm going to spend more time on defense in the next practice (there are numerous ways to switch/fight through that double screen, not to mention making it more difficult for the proposed shooter to get to that spot on the floor).

Motion offenses are popular because they have built-in options that defenses must adjust to, but over time, motion offenses grow stale, just as the Wishbone did in football. Flex was used a lot at one point, but after defenders got used to it, it was less effective. The Triangle had a little buzz for a while, and now it's Dribble Drive Motion. But, for example, I've been watching DDM for four years in practice now, and I have a pretty good idea how to defend it -- assuming my team is as athletic, or close to, as the other team. If they can consistently break us down off the dribble and punish us with threes if we help, there's not much we can do but hope they miss.

In the end, if I have better players, my offense will work better than your defense -- and vice versa. When two teams are evenly matched, then schemes and sets become more important.

My bottom line: I don't want players who run plays; I want players who make plays.

ClayK said:

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In general, if my defense isn't good enough to figure out a set play (double screen, say), then I haven't done a good job preparing my players. So I'm going to spend more time on defense in the next practice (there are numerous ways to switch/fight through that double screen, not to mention making it more difficult for the proposed shooter to get to that spot on the floor).

Motion offenses are popular because they have built-in options that defenses must adjust to, but over time, motion offenses grow stale, just as the Wishbone did in football. Flex was used a lot at one point, but after defenders got used to it, it was less effective. The Triangle had a little buzz for a while, and now it's Dribble Drive Motion. But, for example, I've been watching DDM for four years in practice now, and I have a pretty good idea how to defend it -- assuming my team is as athletic, or close to, as the other team. If they can consistently break us down off the dribble and punish us with threes if we help, there's not much we can do but hope they miss.

In the end, if I have better players, my offense will work better than your defense -- and vice versa. When two teams are evenly matched, then schemes and sets become more important.

My bottom line: I don't want players who run plays; I want players who make plays.

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4thGenCal said:

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ClayK said:

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In general, if my defense isn't good enough to figure out a set play (double screen, say), then I haven't done a good job preparing my players. So I'm going to spend more time on defense in the next practice (there are numerous ways to switch/fight through that double screen, not to mention making it more difficult for the proposed shooter to get to that spot on the floor).

Motion offenses are popular because they have built-in options that defenses must adjust to, but over time, motion offenses grow stale, just as the Wishbone did in football. Flex was used a lot at one point, but after defenders got used to it, it was less effective. The Triangle had a little buzz for a while, and now it's Dribble Drive Motion. But, for example, I've been watching DDM for four years in practice now, and I have a pretty good idea how to defend it -- assuming my team is as athletic, or close to, as the other team. If they can consistently break us down off the dribble and punish us with threes if we help, there's not much we can do but hope they miss.

In the end, if I have better players, my offense will work better than your defense -- and vice versa. When two teams are evenly matched, then schemes and sets become more important.

My bottom line: I don't want players who run plays; I want players who make plays.

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Thanks for the accurate and detailed explanation. Doc Sheppler at Pinewood has had fantastic success with the DDM you mentioned and he has produced many women D! collegiate players. Several of the girls I coached via AAU went on to play for him and currently the Stanford roster includes Hannah Jump from his program.
His team's essentially took just three kinds of shots: 3 pointer, floater and a layup. They beat Mitty with Haley Jones and consistently competed extremely well in the open division despite their very small school (100+- girls total for the 4 classes). You have to have multiple players who can handle the ball well and hit the outside shot.

bearchamp said:

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When people refer to "set plays" here are they thinking set as in "four steps to the right and then spin and....." or is the reference to an understanding and execution of an offensive scheme, such as flex or passing game, pass screen away and the like? The Arthur Murray Dance Studio "set plays" are not going to be as effective as the players understanding and executing the "offensive scheme". The latter requires real basketball understanding.

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I think that is one of the mis-understandings in this entire discussion, which I've tried to clarify without apparent success.

When I talk about running a 'play' (for example, the coach instructs the team to run a specific play during a timeout) I am talking about what you are referring to as a 'set play'.

For example, after scouting a team's defense we sometimes ran a simple ucla play. The play had 3 ways to enter the ball into the high post. IF SUCCESSFUL, the high post man would have 4 options. If we scored on a particular option, we ran it again and fake the option we scored on (hopefully defense would bite on it, allowing us to score on a different option).

The players understood the principles around the play and recognized when to abandon it.

At most we'd run that play twice during a game, and try not to use it at all until several games later to hopefully avoid the scout (probably not possible at college level). Was it worth the practice time devoted to it? I think so as sometimes you need a score, either due to a scoring drought, or due to time and score.


But I am also talking about 'sets' or 'actions' or 'motions'. Each set has general principles and patterns and have goals for certain outcomes. An example is the dribble drive motion, which is a series of slashing and passing with the intended outcome being a layup, kickout for jumper, or pass to the post.

ClayK said:

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>isn't that what coaches spend the majority of their offense practice time doing (practicing plays/sets)?

This is an interesting point.

At the high school level, your time needs to be spent on skill development and repetition. If you look at the points you score in games, how many come off of set plays? In general, if you get five baskets off of set plays you've done pretty well -- and presumably those sets are ones you've practice enough so that you don't have to go over them that much.

A good team might make 25 baskets a game, so those 5 baskets are 20% of your offense (the other baskets are follow shots, transition, etc. -- I'm not counting a simple pick-and-roll as a play or a set, and note that many plays break down because the defense has scouted them). If I spend half my time on offense in practice, then that means 10% of my time on sets. (You can adjust depending on how many baskets result from set plays you think a team scores on in each game.)

At the college level, you actually have less practice time than you potentially do in high school, and you have to spend time on defense, both individual and team. You also need time on skill development -- dribble, pass, shoot -- because if you want players to improve, you have to work with them on basic skills. And most P5 college players arrive with work needed on fundamentals since they dominate with athleticism at the lower levels.

But I would guess more time is spent on sets at the college level, but still, what percentage of your points are going to come from a set play, which realistically is going to work twice in a single game (the defense will adjust -- that's what all those assistant coaches are for)?

At my level, I can easily spend a two-hour practice, never work on a set play, and still have drills and scrimmage time I didn't get to. College coaches are better, but there's always stuff to practice (rebounding drills, say, or putbacks under pressure, and other things that come up much more often than set plays).

Finally, after boring you to death on this topic, there is this feeling among fans that coaching is about plays and Xs and Os -- but coaching is teaching and group dynamics and preparing players to play a game that is not predictable (in the sense that football is). Sure, there are moments set plays are crucial, but rebounding, say, is crucial for 40 minutes. I'd rather rebound and defend well for 40 minutes than run sets well.

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I could talk about basketball potentially... for ever

talking about basketball with knowledge posters is not boring. what is boring is endlessly talking about firing coaches and criticizing athletes.

Interesting how you allocate your practice time. I really like defense, but players don't. So we created a game where you only scored points on defense. You actually therefore WANTED TO STAY on defense.

But it's tough to have enough time for fundamentals. There are warm ups that practice fundamentals (e.g. weave), break out sessions for shooting, dribbling, rebounding, etc, but majority of time on offense is with sets.

I consider fast breaks a kinda set coaching running in certain lanes, going to certain spots, and practicing options.

But is >10% practice time for offense the right allocation to maximize basketball ROI? Low to me, but I really can't say

4thGenCal said:

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4thGenCal said:

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ClayK said:

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In general, if my defense isn't good enough to figure out a set play (double screen, say), then I haven't done a good job preparing my players. So I'm going to spend more time on defense in the next practice (there are numerous ways to switch/fight through that double screen, not to mention making it more difficult for the proposed shooter to get to that spot on the floor).

Motion offenses are popular because they have built-in options that defenses must adjust to, but over time, motion offenses grow stale, just as the Wishbone did in football. Flex was used a lot at one point, but after defenders got used to it, it was less effective. The Triangle had a little buzz for a while, and now it's Dribble Drive Motion. But, for example, I've been watching DDM for four years in practice now, and I have a pretty good idea how to defend it -- assuming my team is as athletic, or close to, as the other team. If they can consistently break us down off the dribble and punish us with threes if we help, there's not much we can do but hope they miss.

In the end, if I have better players, my offense will work better than your defense -- and vice versa. When two teams are evenly matched, then schemes and sets become more important.

My bottom line: I don't want players who run plays; I want players who make plays.

---

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Thanks for the accurate and detailed explanation. Doc Sheppler at Pinewood has had fantastic success with the DDM you mentioned and he has produced many women D! collegiate players. Several of the girls I coached via AAU went on to play for him and currently the Stanford roster includes Hannah Jump from his program.
His team's essentially took just three kinds of shots: 3 pointer, floater and a layup. They beat Mitty with Haley Jones and consistently competed extremely well in the open division despite their very small school (100+- girls total for the 4 classes). You have to have multiple players who can handle the ball well and hit the outside shot.

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love the dribble drive ... if you've got the right players

To clarify, the 10% was just for set plays -- and what's interesting is that teams usually score 20% or more of their points from the free-throw line but seldom allocate even 5% of practice time to shooting free throws.

Obviously, some drills and all scrimmages work offense and defense simultaneously, but there's also the actual mechanics of coaching. If I stopped every drill to correct every mistake (in high school) we'd never get much done. (It's why it's hard for me to do film sessions -- I can spend 10 minutes on one play, and the players, who have spent all day in class, quickly lose interest in the project.)

DDM is very good offense, as long as you have multiple players who can break defenders down off the dribble -- and the same is true of most offenses. If I have better players than you (Hannah Jump, say), then almost all offenses will work if they are taught properly and focused on utilizing available talent.

Doc does a great job -- we split with him last year -- and he has a focused philosophy that his players buy into. He also has had really good players.

My overall philosophy, for what it's worth, is "organized street ball," which means pushing tempo on offense and aggressively attacking guards on defense. The idea is to not allow teams to run any sets, or get comfortable in any motion, and shift the game to and up-and-down contest in which simple fundamentals -- dribble, pass, shoot, screen on the ball -- take precedence. So we would spend almost all our practice time on developing skills and very little on sets, because we wanted the game to be about basketball and making plays, not running plays. Some teams get so locked into teaching plays and sets that the girls struggle when they're forced to just play on instinct and feel.

That system, like all systems, worked really well when I had better players than my opponents. It didn't work nearly as well when we had less talent.

But isn't the issue with Cal that we are likely to always have less talent than much of our opposition? I always thought the Princeton offense was designed to allow lesser athletes to compete with greater athletes. Is this wrong?

bearchamp said:

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But isn't the issue with Cal that we are likely to always have less talent than much of our opposition? I always thought the Princeton offense was designed to allow lesser athletes to compete with greater athletes. Is this wrong?

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You are right -- that's the goal of the Princeton offense, which is very complex, difficult to teach and difficult to learn. And it still takes talent to run.

And note that Pete Carril's upsets of quality Power 5 teams were celebrated because they were uncommon. And had Princeton played in a P5 conference, teams would have adjusted to that unusual style -- it's like P5 teams playing Army in football: They never see the Veer/Wishbone/whatever it is, and so there's an immediate advantage. But if they played against it every year, the gimmick offense wouldn't work nearly as well.

As I've said too often, a college coach's job is recruiting, recruiting, recruiting and more recruiting. And if she gets tired of that, she should go out and recruit.

ClayK said:

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To clarify, the 10% was just for set plays -- and what's interesting is that teams usually score 20% or more of their points from the free-throw line but seldom allocate even 5% of practice time to shooting free throws.

Obviously, some drills and all scrimmages work offense and defense simultaneously, but there's also the actual mechanics of coaching. If I stopped every drill to correct every mistake (in high school) we'd never get much done. (It's why it's hard for me to do film sessions -- I can spend 10 minutes on one play, and the players, who have spent all day in class, quickly lose interest in the project.)

DDM is very good offense, as long as you have multiple players who can break defenders down off the dribble -- and the same is true of most offenses. If I have better players than you (Hannah Jump, say), then almost all offenses will work if they are taught properly and focused on utilizing available talent.

Doc does a great job -- we split with him last year -- and he has a focused philosophy that his players buy into. He also has had really good players.

My overall philosophy, for what it's worth, is "organized street ball," which means pushing tempo on offense and aggressively attacking guards on defense. The idea is to not allow teams to run any sets, or get comfortable in any motion, and shift the game to and up-and-down contest in which simple fundamentals -- dribble, pass, shoot, screen on the ball -- take precedence. So we would spend almost all our practice time on developing skills and very little on sets, because we wanted the game to be about basketball and making plays, not running plays. Some teams get so locked into teaching plays and sets that the girls struggle when they're forced to just play on instinct and feel.

That system, like all systems, worked really well when I had better players than my opponents. It didn't work nearly as well when we had less talent.

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if 10% is just the practice time allocation for set plays, I think that's about right. I do think Cal spends more time practicing sets/motions.

as for practicing FTs during practice, it's always a good thing, but I think it's best to do it during scrimmages (when they are tired) or to simulate pressure situations as much as possible. It's really tough to allocate more than 10 minutes during practice and that's not enough to improve shooting percentages much. That's why I say that to improve shooting players really need to put up shots outside of practice, hopefully with a shooting coach.

I also advocate pressuring guards to force teams out of their offense (or making them uncomfortable). I hate defenses that sit back, allow opponent to dictate the action, and just react.

Given the restrictions on practice time -- though I don't know if access to facilities outside of practice time is controlled -- I don't think a Cal shooting coach can work with a player. Presumably players could shoot free throws (or whatever) on their own time, but they need somewhere to do so.

And as shooting FTs during scrimmages, etc., for me the biggest part of it is locking in the shooting form and the pre-shot process (I call it a "ritual"), and that can be accomplished with repetition. One thing that can be a problem, though, is shooting a bunch of free throws in a row, because you never get that kind of rhythm in a game. I like to have my players go two to a basket and shoot two, three or five before switching.

Clay,
your response sounds like Princeton is too hard to master. Wow. Are you sure that is what you mean?

The Princeton offense is very complex, and to install it, you have to devote enormous amounts of practice time to it, and then, if I understand it properly, if people zone you, it doesn't apply as much unless you can shoot threes well.

It also requires that you (the coach) understand it thoroughly and Pete Carill would never teach it to anyone else, which meant you couldn't go to clinics and such and really grasp it.

Now after a couple years, your players will be able to help you teach it, but those first two seasons are going to be a struggle as you and everyone else figures out what works and what doesn't -- and again, note the limit on college practice time is an issue. It would actually be easier to install in high school (though no one does that I know of) because you'd have more with the kids.

If Charmin were to decide to go with the Princeton offense, presumably she could start putting it in now and stumble through it next season and be ready to go in 2022-23, but I don't know if she can wait that long. And remember that Carril, just like John Wooden, had no real pressure to win for his first several years on the job, which makes that kind of system easier to install.

(On the defensive side, matchup zones are much the same. They're really effective, but you have to spend a ton of practice time on them to be able to play them well -- and there's never enough practice time.)

Thank you for your explanation.