Best Laid Plans

Earlier this week I wrote about my plans to have a couple intense practices and an exhibition game this weekend. Well, things do not always go as planned. The exhibition game has been cancelled due to lack of opposition players, which works out okay as my injuries continue to have an dampening effect on the team. And the practice while they have been intense, I was not able to go five on five due to lack of regular players and shortage of extras. Nonetheless we were able to get two really good practices in with five regular players and continue to do shooting, running and even some competitive three on three and four on four. The biggest challenge has been to keep the ladies interested and still focused on the task at hand. I am disappointed that I was unable to fulfill my original plans but very happy with what we accomplished with our time.

Our current injury status is as follows, 1 ankle, 1 concussion, 1 lower back and 1 cold/flu. Unfortunately, our concussion has been forced to retire early this season as per medical advice but the great news is that she continues to come out to practice and support the team. The ankle and lower back have been out to practice to provide moral support but unable to accomplish much on the physical side. The cold/flu has been in attendance as rest is the prescribed treatment for her. The ankle and lower back provide me with a slight dilemma as a coach. Where does the priority lie, for the individual or for the team? Do I allow them to play with knowledge that they are not 100% or do I sit them because they are not 100%? In my mind the answer is two-fold 1) will they make the team stronger 2) will playing them risk long-term injury? If the answer is yes to first and no for second, then they will see time on the court. To be frank, we are playing for a very unique opportunity, a chance for provincial championship. If it was for the top spot in the province, then my reasoning would be vastly different. This is a case where the goal of the team outweighs a lot.

Are we ready? I think we are. Not as prepared as I had hoped but still we should be ready and I still have one more week to get them ready. The key is going to be getting all the players healthy physically and in the right mindset to be successful. 

The Final Countdown

The homestretch … the final days….the end is near ….. the final countdown.

No matter how you state it, the season is drawing to a near. Only two weeks left before the provincial championships. It is shaping up to be an intense final two weeks as I am trying to fit in a couple extra activities to get us ready for the championship weekend. In addition to our regular 4 remaining practices I have scheduled an exhibition game, a visit to a university and a performance consultant session.

The exhibition game is against a team playing an age group up but the coach has stated that we should be competitive with his team. The exhibition game will serve dual purposes for both myself and the players. The ladies need the competition to keep their competitive vibes going as we have been going through a lot of practices lately and they need to play against someone else. It will also help to keep their confidence up heading into the final weekend and hopefully it will allow some of my injured players an opportunity to ease back into game mode without the pressure of the championship weekend. From a coaching perspective it will allow us to gauge the effectiveness of our newly implemented defensive schemes and offensive adjustments. The game will also help to keep the ladies motivated as with most athletes they strive on competition and the hope is to fuel their hunger as the season winds down.

It is fair to say that I look forward to practices and this upcoming week is not exception. I have continued to be in contact with some of my basketball associates and should have at least 2-3 practice players at both our practices this week.  This will hopefully allow us to get some competitive practices in this week, I say hopefully because we have attempted to do so in the past but haven’t been so successful. My goal is to work the ladies extremely hard this week, try some new things in the exhibition game, work them hard during the university visit, then have two easier practices the final week. My motto has been “practice hard, game easy”, meaning the harder we work in practice the easier things will be in games. We were fortunate to have a guest coach in last week and she mentioned that her team uses the phrase “compete and appreciate” to describe their practices. She described it as, the players compete extremely hard in practice and then they appreciate each other for pushing them to their limits and beyond. One of the knocks against our team is that they are too nice, both in game and practices. They tend to take it easy on each other in practice and lack the killer instinct in games to completely destroy any team they play. If I could change one thing it would be that they were more competitive in practice and view it as the sanctuary that I often refer to it as. Now don’t get me wrong, they are extremely hard working in practice and give me every thing they have. That is probably the main reason I like to bring outsiders into our practice so that the ladies have someone else to compete against.

One of my long-time players said last week, “coach how long have you been trying to get a team that all get along and now you complain that we are too social! “The interesting fact is that she is completely correct. I have spent years and tried multiple ways to get a team that connects and this team seems to be connecting on an even greater basis than they did last year. So I guess I should be thankful and to remember the old saying “be careful what you wish for”. In reality, I am very appreciative of how connected these ladies are as it makes the season that much more special.

Oh, and by the way, the final rankings heading into the championship weekend came out and we are officially ranked #2 heading into the weekend. 

A great weekend

I usually don't write the same night as an event. It is usually a day or
so later but this is an exception. 

I am one very proud coach at this moment. The ladies came through and played
really well this weekend to capture the gold medal in our home tournament.
Operationally everything went off without a hitch and on the court the girls
came through. 

Was is the most beautiful display of basketball I have ever seen? NO! We still
need to work on our consistency for a full game but luckily we were able to
recover from slow starts in some of our games. 

This weekend our patience really paid dividends as at no time did panic
enter into our game and we kept fighting till the end. A couple of games our
quick tempo and strong defense was able to wear teams down and make the
difference in the game.  

Someone asked me what are strengths are beside the obvious awesome ball
movement and tenacious defense. I would have to respond that it is our balance
and our chemistry. They all play for each other and at any given day we can someone
different step up and makes difference on offence. Also we are lucky to have
multiple shut down defenders who take extreme pride in shutting down an
opponent. It is comforting to know that we do not need to rely on only one or
two main scorers to put points on the board. To me that is balance, as a team
may put a top defender on one person but they will need top defenders on all
players as we have so many weapons and unselfish players.  

As Hannibal from the A-Team used to say "I love it when a plan comes
together". 

Preparation Eases the Nerves

It is said that solid preparation will ease the nerves of any performance. Well I have to admit I am a little nervous going into this weekend. You see we have not had a complete roster at practice for over a month and thus have not been able to devote the needed time to go over offensive and defensive scheme adjustments. To top it off our final practice scheduled for tonight was cancelled due to a miscommunication between our administration and the facility. 

The plan was to go through a walk through our schemes but unfortunately that did not take place. Oh well, that is the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. A mentor of mine, Coach Bet from Queens College in New York, told me when I started coaching to just trust that you have prepared the team enough to play. I just hope that we have done enough preparation throughout the year to be successful this weekend.

Only time will tell. 

It is how you finish that is remembered

With the NCAA march Madness drawing to an end, the NBA playoffs around the corner and this first of the OBA provincial championships taking place it is very hard to ignore the fact that finishing strong is of the utmost importance. A season is often remembered for how it finishes rather than how it started and it is the memories both good and bad of the final weekend that lingers in your mind. I can still recall vividly the season we lost a bronze medal game to close rival and how bitter it was for both for me and the players. I can also recall with great details the OBA championship games that our team has won. Our season to date has been very successful and I believe we are right on track for where we need to be at this point in time.

We have been very active with our practices for the past month or so but have not had any games in just over a month. We finish the season in just over a month from now and we have three tournaments during this timespan. We are hosting one this coming weekend, a big one in Hamilton near the end of the month and culminate with the provincials at the beginning of next month. While some teams choose to overload the front end of their schedule with games I prefer to back end our schedule with an emphasis on being strong at the end of season.

Even though we are one track, we are faced with a couple challenges that we must overcome to ensure a proper finish to the year. The first challenge has been being able to keep the practices fresh and productive with the lack of games and game preparation. I have tried to accomplish this by going back to working on fundamentals and individual skills with the ladies while introducing some new skills to their toolbox. The second biggest challenge we are facing is the overcoming of injuries and illness during this past month. We have not had a full compliment of players to a practice since prior to our last tournament. This has made it difficult to work on any team systems in depth but we been able to incorporate some new concepts in a practice setting but are lacking seeing it in a competitive setting. Hopefully we can work on some of these concepts this upcoming week as despite knowing we will be short players again I am having some guest players come out to practice. This measure should allow us to put our concepts into place in a more competitive environment.

Championships are won during practice before the game even begins.