Winter League - First Games

Another great weekend of games just finished up. My first impression is that all of the boys are going to have to get used to the extra playing time. 25 or 30 minutes doesn't seem like a lot, but when you are shuffling in and out of the game quickly there isn't a lot of rest. Throw in the fact that the motion offense requires you to be constantly moving and thinking and you can understand where the fatigue sets in.

The progress being made is really great. We're looking forward as coaches to one more week of practices and games before taking a break for the holidays. Here's my thoughts on each division.

YELLOW DIVISION
Other than the fact that I didn't do the best job of forming the teams this week, there were some nice games on Saturday morning. We'll have to move a couple of guys around to make up for my error to even things out a bit, but individually we're seeing guys start to recognize how to react to the defense and take advantage of opportunities. I think the guys are ready to start using more back door cuts against defense that overplaying the pass so we'll make that a focus this week in practice. There are a few guys who are still a little lost on the court in the motion so we'll need to make sure we get guys up to speed.

ORANGE DIVISION
We really saw guys hit the wall a the 15 minute mark of the second game on Saturday. It was a testament to how hard they are playing. The matchups are really competitive though and its great to see the guys working together. Spacing improved a lot this weekend and we saw a lot of guys taking advantage by making a curl cut to the hoop off the cross screen. As we work with the defense to take away those cuts, the screener will start to see some opportunities to score as well. This group is ready to start focusing a little more on individual skill development so we'll start to get into some smaller groups for fundamental training either this week or the first practice of the new year.

WHITE DIVISION
The boys played awesome tonight in my estimation. You can see a few guys starting to recognize scoring opportunities. There were a lot of great give and gos and drives to the basket off screens. As guys got tired, we had a handful of guys get away from the offense and tried to do things themselves. It's a testament to the defensive effort that individual drives to the basket (those that aren't coming off screens or cuts) are not that successful. There are also a couple of guys who aren't exactly sure where they are supposed to be all the time, so it's up to the coaches to do a better job this week making sure everyone is working together. We'll also spend a little time this week on getting back on defense to see if we can eliminate some of the breakaway layins.

Overall we've got a great group of guys to work with this winter, so we hope to go into the break with a lot of momentum. By the way, if you are looking to stay busy over the Holiday Break or want to have some great chances to improve shooting or ball handling skill check out www.homecourtnw.com/holidaybreak.html.