"WELL COACHED"

This blog was inspired by a hand out emailed to me by University Of Washington in Michael Neighbors Basketball New Letter.

IS YOUR TEAM "WELL COACHED"??

No doubt about it, when someone makes the statement "Her team is well coached", there is no better compliment to go with the passion and drive that fuels us to coach young people. This is my ultimate compliment. I stress on coaching a program, not just a team. When Im coaching my program, I am coaching them to be fundamentally sound and difficult to beat. Every coach wants that compliment, not only for themselves but for their players as well. Every player NEEDS to be "WELL COACHED". Every player DESERVES to be well coached.

Well Coached teams have players who surrender to the culture of their program.

Well Coached teams have identifiable standards of excellence on the court.

What I think goes with a well coached team:

1) every shot must be closed out on.

2) you protect the paint/your shell with every ounce of heart and effort you have.

3) taking strengths away from opponents through scouting and preparation.

4) well developed fundamentals.

5) athletic approaches to drives/shots/put backs. "make an athletic approach to life"

6) under control emotionally.

7) withstand early momentum swings.

8) don't beat themselves with excessive turnovers or silly fouls. (I HATE STUPID FOULS).

9) motivation.

10) enthusiasm and energy.

Winning Streaks

Our 16 game winning streak was broken right before the County Tournament. We were one of the few, if not the only team in Bergen County left to be undefeated. I try to stay as realistic as possible, I know we were not going to go the entire season undefeated. "WE GOT HOT EARLY". I was anticipating a loss, just not the way we ended up losing. Down by 2 points at half, we were still in it! You hear coaches say this all the time, "We didn't have enough energy/enthusiasm to withstand the loss" and this was exactly the case for #EMERSON. My kids were flat but everyone is entitled to a bad game. I always thought I was lucky because we had 5 kids in the scoring rotation, really anyone could pick us up at any given time, like they had the last 16 games. Unfortunately this was not the case for game #17 verse one of our biggest rivals, Cresskill.

We ended up losing the game by 12 points but 14 in the books (another story). I spent most of the second half pulling some "remember the titans" crap instead of sticking to the game plan and being patient with the offense. It's hard to get over something like that, Passion obviously or hopefully drives a lot of coaches. When your kids don't feed off that its not easy. I was blessed that this was the one time out of 30 games this year my kids didn't bring the passion/motivation. We had a great talk the next day at practices, "I WILL BRING THE X's and O's, you bring the ENERGY" Lesson well learned.