Program Developments and Talent Assessment As A Coaching Staff

By Brett Ayers (mikeness71@hotmail.com)

As I look over the landscape of both college and high school hoops I see a myriad of problems that come to the surface immediately.  One of the biggest problems I see is the lack of attention to program detail via the vehicle of actual thought out talent assessment from staff's around the country.  I swear I see more teams running things they have either no right running or things that greatly hinder the talent they do possess. 

Two classics examples of this can be seen last year in the ACC.  Gary Williams running an offense like Flex with the talent he had and Coach K trying to play nothing but man to man all year round with the poor man to man defensive team he had.   Now, both of these guys are very respected coaches, as they should be, but even the best of the best can at times get caught up in either a sense of "Program" and I have always done it this way and always will do it this way and often it can have dire consequences in the win loss columns.  Maryland of course won the national title but with their talent level last year comparatively speaking they better have won the title. The 35 second shot clock also plays into the hands of more talented teams because it makes it harder for less talented teams to control the tempo knowing they have a set amount of time to shoot the ball.  I think if the NCAA was smart they would add at least 5 seconds, preferably 10 seconds back. But that is a whole separate discussion.  The clock makes it very hard for teams with the talent and experience of Williams Terps to lose most games. 

Here are some steps I feel are vital in determining what you should run tactically and how best to get your team where you want it to be over the course of the year.

1. The first thing you need to do as a head coach is sit down with your assistants and critique and discuss your team's overall personality and each players personality within the team concept.  Especially at the college level the assistants who have the most contact with the kids and who recruited them and know their family backgrounds the best are invaluable sources in respects to this.  There are simply some teams who do not have the make-up chemistry wise to be run and gun teams or to be pressing teams and some honest discussion on this from the staff will cure any misconceptions about trying put in something or run something that they simply will not either relate to and or grasp. Another thing to remember here is also critiquing and discussing your team's over-all intelligence level intrinsically and in terms of basketball smarts.   This goes a long ways in determining what you can and can not run.

2.  The next thing the staff needs to determine is what are the over-all skill levels on an individual basis of each player both returning and coming in.   What kind of background do the new kids have and what kind of things have all of the players done over the course of the summer to improve their games?

3.  I think this step is one that is often overlooked and often not done because of the time requirement but offers some statistical insight into your team.  Take all of the kids returning and chart out where they shoot from and what their percentages are from those spots.  In this way it will be easier to determine what kind of offense you should and could run along with any entry plays you might want to use.  Tailoring these things to fit where the kids shoot best from and where you would like them to get their shots will help take some of the guess work out of things for the kids and allow them to gain a comfort level and some confidence knowing where the shots will come for them.

A second statistical category to chart out is fouls and where they are committed.  Looking at where your kids tend to foul and what kind of defense you were running when they did foul can give you a sense statistically speaking of some of the defenses that have worked and some that have not worked in the past year.

A final statistical category to look at is a combo stat.  First look at what you ran offensively the past year and what percentage of success you had with which entry play and or continuity offense, fast break etc.  The next thing to look at is where and when your turnovers occurred.  In looking at these things you can glean a sense of what things added to the turnover ratios of your players and also where on the court you might want to keep your kids out of when designing all aspects of your offense.

3.  After sitting down with your staff and getting these things all determined, the next step is writing down, starting with pre-season conditioning through offensive and defensive schemes all the up to over-all practice indicatives how you want to go about accomplishing these things.   Some coaches like to outline it on note cards, or on a computer. Write it down on a Roll of Charmin if you have to and unroll it as the season goes on and re-asses where you are in terms of where you would like to be with the team every week or so.

Determine what you want to run and when you want to have it in by, roughly and every week or every two or three practices re-evaluate where you are along that timeline you had set down at the start of the year.  To get a team where they need to be and have them be successful there are certainly foundational things you would like to run from year to year but sometimes you have to revamp things on a larger scale and tinker with them as the year goes on.  Especially with young teams.

Above all things it really helps for a coach and his staff to be honest with each other and about their players.  One of the biggest problems I see out there is coaches and staff's thinking they can run something with their kids when they simply do not know how to teach it.  The facts are this, not every coach does everything well.  That is also something that comes into play, well should come into pay when determining what it is you will run with your team.  Not all coaches can teach all things.  Just a fact.