Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast The 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast

TeachHoops.com The most common problem in the first month is a player who does not know their role. Coach Collins walks through the conversation that fixes it, and why it has to happen early. In this episode: Why timing turns a defense into a plan Be specific about the role and how to earn more Ask what they think, then listen Your stars need a role too Part of The First Thirty Days series with Coach Collins. For more practice plans, drills, and coaching systems, visit TeachHoops.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TeachHoops.com Your first three practices teach your players more about your standards than anything you say all year. Coach Collins explains how to set them and hold them. In this episode: Players learn standards from what you allow Pick three or four things you enforce without exception Enforce without drama and catch them doing it right Write your three sentences for February Part of The First Thirty Days series with Coach Collins. For more practice plans, drills, and coaching systems, visit TeachHoops.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TeachHoops.com The season has started and it already feels like too much. Coach Collins opens The First Thirty Days series with the one question that should guide every decision this month. In this episode: Why doing more is the wrong answer in the first month The question to ask: what must your team be by February? Picturing your team walking out for the game that decides your season Part of The First Thirty Days series with Coach Collins. For more practice plans, drills, and coaching systems, visit TeachHoops.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The problem with line sprints. Suicides build fatigue, but not basketball fitness. Basketball is a game of short bursts, changes of direction, and decisions made while tired. Coach Collins explains why straight line running misses most of that. Running as punishment backfires. When conditioning is used as a consequence, players learn to dread the very thing that makes them better. Separate accountability from fitness. Conditioning through competition. Continuous full court drills like three on two into two on one, eleven man fast break, and timed transition games build game shape while teaching skills. Keep score, and the effort takes care of itself. Match the work to the game. Design drills around game like work and rest, with intense bursts of thirty to forty five seconds followed by short recovery, so players train the way they will actually play. Decisions while tired. The real test of conditioning is making the right pass or the right defensive rotation late in a game. Put shooting and decision making at the end of hard reps. Measure it. Use one simple timed full court test early and repeat it in a few weeks so players can see their improvement. This week's homework. Replace one block of line sprints with a scored, continuous full court drill and track how many minutes your team stays at game speed. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today I want to ask you a question that might ruffle a few feathers. Why are your players still running suicides? I understand where it comes from. A lot of us ran them. We remember the burning legs and the coach with the whistle, and we think, that's how you get tough. But let's be honest about what line sprints actually build. Tired legs. A fear of the baseline. And a lot of kids who dread the end of practice. Basketball isn't a track meet. It's short bursts. Changes of direction. Sliding, cutting, jumping, and then making a decision while you're exhausted. Straight line sprints miss most of that. So let's talk about how to get your team in real game shape. First, stop using running as punishment. When conditioning becomes the consequence for a turnover or a late arrival, players learn to hate the very thing that makes them better. Keep accountability and fitness separate. If you need a consequence, find one that isn't the thing you want them to love. Second, condition through competition. Put a ball in their hands. Three on two continuous into two on one. Eleven man fast break. Full court one on one with a time limit. Transition games where the team that scores sprints back on defense. Keep score in every one of them. When there's a winner and a loser, you won't have to yell about effort. The competition does it for you. Third, match the work to the game. A possession in basketball is short and intense. So build drills with bursts of thirty to forty five seconds of all out work, followed by a short recovery, then go again. Train the way they play. Your players will be in shape for the fourth quarter, not just for the last sprint of practice. Fourth, and this is the one I love, train decisions while tired. Anybody can make the right pass when they're fresh. Put a shooting drill right after your hardest full court rep. Run your defensive shell after a conditioning block. Late game execution is a conditioning skill. If you never practice thinking while tired, you'll see it on the scoreboard in the final two minutes. Now, I'm not saying you never run without a ball. Early in the season, one simple timed test can be valuable. Run it the first week. Run it again three or four weeks later. Let the players see the improvement. That builds confidence, and it shows them the work is paying off. And here's the bonus. When your conditioning has a ball in it, you're getting skill reps at the same time. Every minute of a suicide is a minute without a ball. Every minute of a scored transition drill is passing, finishing, communicating, and getting in shape all at once. In a season where practice time is precious, that's a huge win. Let me give you a sample conditioning block that keeps the ball in their hands. Start with three on two continuous for four minutes, scored. Then one minute of rest and free throws. Then the eleven man fast break for four minutes, with a goal of a certain number of layups made. One more minute of rest and free throws. Finish with a full court shell where every stop leads to a sprint the other way. That's about twelve minutes, and your players get as tired as any set of line sprints, but they're getting better at basketball the whole time. Now, a mistake to avoid. Don't confuse exhaustion with improvement. A team lying on the floor at the end of practice looks tough, but if your players are too tired to execute, you're building bad habits. Push them hard, but keep the quality high. When technique breaks down completely, back off for a minute and reset. And think about recovery. Teenagers need sleep, food, and water to get in shape. Talk to your players about it. Encourage them to hydrate during the day, not just at practice. Remind them that getting in shape happens on the court, but the recovery happens at home. Coaches who teach the whole picture get healthier, fresher teams in February, when it matters most. And make it fun. Let the winners pick the next drill. Keep a running conditioning leaderboard. When kids enjoy competing, they'll push themselves harder than any whistle ever could. So here's your homework. This week, replace one block of line sprints with a scored, continuous full court drill. Track how long your team can stay at game speed. Then watch what happens to your fourth quarters. That's today's episode. For conditioning drills, full court competitive games, and complete practice plans, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Get in game shape, with the ball. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

⁠WintheSeason.com⁠⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The overload trap. Coaches walk into the first practice with a full playbook and walk into the first game with a confused team. Coach Collins explains why the order you teach things matters as much as what you teach. Defense first. Stance, ball pressure, and help principles come first because they travel to every game and every opponent. Defense also sets the competitive tone for the whole season. Transition defense next. Getting back and building a wall stops easy baskets, which are the fastest way to lose early season games. Offensive principles before plays. Teach spacing, cutting, and passing rules before installing sets. Players who understand principles can run anything you add later. The game one checklist. By opening night, you need your man defense, transition defense, one primary offense, one press break, one baseline out of bounds play, one sideline out of bounds play, and your end of game situations. Everything else can wait. Whole, part, whole teaching. Show the full concept, break it into pieces, then put it back together in live play. This keeps practices game like and keeps players engaged. This week's homework. Map your first ten practices on one page, with the game one checklist at the top, and cut anything that is not on it. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question is all about planning. What should you teach in your first ten practices? Here's a trap I see every year. A coach walks into practice one with a full playbook. Three offenses. Two presses. A dozen out of bounds plays. And by the first game, the team knows a little bit of everything and can't execute any of it under pressure. The order you teach things matters as much as what you teach. So let me give you an install order that works. Start with defense. Stance. Ball pressure. Closeouts. Help side principles. Why defense first? Because it travels. It works against every opponent, in every gym, on nights when your shots don't fall. And defense sets the competitive tone. When your first week is about guarding, your players learn right away that effort is the price of admission. Next, transition defense. Sprinting back. Stopping the ball. Building a wall. Early in the season, easy baskets in transition are the fastest way to lose games. If you can make teams score against your set defense every trip, you're already ahead of most programs in November. Then, offensive principles before plays. Spacing. Cutting. Passing rules. What we do when a teammate drives. What we do when we're denied. Players who understand principles can run anything you add later. Players who only memorize plays fall apart the moment the defense takes something away. Now here's the most important part. Build a game one checklist. Write it at the top of every practice plan. By opening night, you need seven things. Your man to man defense. Your transition defense. One primary offense. One press break. One baseline out of bounds play. One sideline out of bounds play. And your end of game situations, like protecting a lead and getting a quick score. That's it. Seven things. Everything else can wait until December. When something isn't on the checklist, ask yourself, does this need to be in by game one? If the answer is no, park it. Write it on a list for week four. You'll be amazed how much calmer your practices get. A quick word on how to teach. Use whole, part, whole. Show the full concept first so players see the picture. Break it into pieces and drill the pieces. Then put it back together in live play. That keeps practice game like, and it keeps players from getting bored in endless breakdown drills. And build in review. Every new install should get touched again two or three days later. Teaching once is not the same as learning. Repetition across days is what makes things stick. One last thought. Your first ten practices also teach habits. How you start practice. How you transition between drills. How fast players move from station to station. Those habits matter just as much as your schemes. Let me show you what a practice in that first week could look like. Ten minutes of dynamic warmup and form shooting. Fifteen minutes of defensive footwork and stance. Fifteen minutes of shell drill. Ten minutes of transition defense. Fifteen minutes of offensive spacing and passing rules in a two on two and three on three setting. Ten minutes of live competition, scored. Five minutes of free throws while tired. Then end with one special situation. That's ninety minutes, almost all of it building the foundation, with competition built in. Now, a mistake to avoid. Don't let your first scrimmage drive your install. A lot of coaches see their team struggle against a press in the first scrimmage and panic, and suddenly they're installing three new things in a week. Stay with your plan. A rough scrimmage in November usually means you need more reps of what you already teach, not more stuff. And involve your players in the teaching. After you teach a concept, have a player explain it back to the group. If they can teach it, they know it. If they can't, you just found a gap before game one, instead of in the fourth quarter of a close game. Players remember far more of what they say than what they hear. Finally, keep a running list of what you've installed and how many reps each item has had. It sounds simple, but it keeps you honest about what your team is really ready to run. So here's your homework. Take one sheet of paper. Write your game one checklist at the top. Then map out your first ten practices underneath it. If something isn't on the list, cut it. That's today's episode. For practice plans, install guides, and drills for every one of those seven items, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Teach less, master more. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Confusion is the real problem. When players do not know their role, they invent one, and it rarely matches yours. Coach Collins explains why role clarity prevents most of the frustration that shows up in December. The three part role meeting. Meet one on one with every player before the first game. Cover what they do great, what the team needs from them right now, and what they must improve to grow their role. Write it down. Give each player a short written summary of the conversation. A written role is harder to misremember and easier to revisit. Roles are not permanent. Make it clear that roles can grow through practice performance. A role is where a player starts, not where they must stay. Celebrate role players publicly. Praise the screen setter, the charge taker, and the energy guy off the bench in front of the team. What gets recognized gets repeated. Revisit at midseason. Schedule a second round of role meetings in January to update expectations and keep players engaged. This week's homework. Put fifteen minute role meetings on your calendar for every player before your first game, and draft the three points for each one. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question. Does every player on your roster know their role before the first game? Here's something I've learned over a lot of seasons. Most playing time complaints aren't really about playing time. They're about confusion. When a player doesn't know their role, they invent one. And the role they invent is almost never the one you have in mind. Then the first game comes, the minutes don't match the story they told themselves, and now you've got a frustrated kid and maybe a frustrated parent. The fix is simple, but it takes time. Before your first game, meet one on one with every single player. Fifteen minutes each. Not in a hallway. Sit down somewhere quiet. And cover three things. One. What do you do great? Start here, and be specific. You are the best on ball defender on this team. You set the best screens we have. You bring energy every single day. Kids need to hear what they already bring. Two. What does the team need from you right now? This is the role. Be honest and clear. Right now, we need you to come off the bench, guard their best scorer, and rebound. Or, right now you're our seventh or eighth man, and your job is to win every practice rep so you're ready when your number gets called. Clarity is kindness. Vague answers create more frustration than honest ones. Three. What do you need to improve to grow your role? Give them one or two things. Your left hand. Your free throw percentage. Your communication on defense. This is the most important part, because it gives the player control. They now know exactly what the path looks like. After the meeting, write it down. A short summary. Three lines. What you do great. What we need. What to work on. Give the player a copy. Keep one for yourself. A written role is harder to misremember, and it gives you something to come back to. Now, make sure every player hears this. Roles are not permanent. A role is where you start, not where you have to stay. Players earn bigger roles in practice, every day. When kids believe that, they compete. And here's where culture gets built. Celebrate your role players out loud. In front of the team. The kid who took a charge. The kid who set the screen that freed your shooter. The kid off the bench who changed the energy. Stop film and point it out. What gets recognized gets repeated, and pretty soon players start wanting those roles because they see they matter. One more thing. Put a second round of role meetings on the calendar for January. Things change. Players grow. Injuries happen. A midseason check in keeps everyone engaged and keeps small frustrations from turning into big ones. Let me give you an example of how that meeting can sound. Marcus, here's what you do great. You are the best defender we have on the perimeter, and your energy changes practice. Right now, here's what we need from you. Come off the bench, guard their best guard, and rebound. You might play twelve to fifteen minutes a night. To grow that role, I need you to become a reliable shooter from the corner. If you can make that shot, you're going to be very hard to take off the floor. Ninety seconds, and that player knows exactly where he stands. Now, a mistake to avoid. Don't sugarcoat a small role into something it isn't. If a player is our eleventh man, don't tell him he's going to play a lot. That feels kind in October and feels like a lie in December. Be honest, and then give that kid a real job. Scout team leader. Best practice player award. The energy guy on the bench. Every role on a team can matter if the coach makes it matter. And involve the player. End the meeting with a question. What do you need from me to grow into that role? You'll get great answers. More reps. Extra shooting time. More feedback after games. When a player helps shape the plan, he owns it. And when a parent asks about playing time, your player can explain his role in his own words, because he actually understands it. So here's your homework. Put fifteen minute role meetings on your calendar for every player before your first game. Draft your three points for each kid ahead of time. And write them down. That's today's episode. For more on player communication and building a team that buys in, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Clear roles, happy players, better teams. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why rules break down. A twenty item rule sheet turns coaches into referees and players into lawyers. Every rule invites the question of what counts and what doesn't. Coach Collins explains the difference between compliance and commitment. What a standard is. Rules tell players what not to do. Standards describe who we are and what we do every day. A standard like we are early, always, covers far more ground than a rule about tardiness. Keep it to three to five. Fewer standards are easier to remember, easier to model, and easier to enforce consistently. Coach Collins shares sample standards around time, effort, respect, teammates, and the classroom. Let players help write them. When players help shape the language, they own it. Coaches set the non negotiables, and players put them into their own words. Consequences still matter. Standards do not mean no accountability. Decide in advance how you will respond when the standard is missed, and apply it the same way to the star and the twelfth man. Make them visible. Post the standards in the locker room, review them weekly, and praise players publicly when they live them. This week's homework. Cut your rule list down to three to five standards and schedule a team session to put them into your players' words. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question might change the way you start your season. Do you need team rules, or team standards? Let me paint a picture. A lot of us hand out a rule sheet on day one. Twenty rules. Be on time. No phones. No hats in the gym. Shirts tucked in. And the season hasn't even started before a kid asks, does five minutes late count if my ride was late? Now you're a referee and he's a lawyer. Here's the difference I want you to think about. Rules tell kids what not to do. Standards tell kids who to be. A rule says don't be late. A standard says we are early, always. One is about avoiding punishment. The other is about identity. And identity is what holds up in February, when you're not in the room. So here's what I recommend. Cut your list down to three to five standards. That's it. Fewer standards are easier to remember, easier to model, and much easier to enforce the same way for everybody. Let me give you some examples. We are early, always. We give full effort on every possession, including the ones nobody notices. We respect everyone in the building, teachers, custodians, officials, and opponents. We pick each other up. And we take care of business in the classroom. Five standards. They cover just about everything your twenty rules were trying to cover, and then some. Now, here's the key. Let your players help write them. You set the non negotiables. Time, effort, respect, teammates, school. Then put the players in a room and let them put it into their own words. When a kid helps write the standard, he defends it. You'll hear players start correcting each other with their own language. That's when you know it's working. Does this mean no consequences? Absolutely not. Standards still need accountability. Decide ahead of time how you'll respond when the standard is missed, and apply it the same way to your best player and your twelfth man. The fastest way to destroy a standard is to enforce it for the bench and ignore it for the star. Players notice everything. Then make the standards visible. Post them in the locker room. Put them at the top of your practice plan next to your identity sentence. Review one every week. And catch players living them. When a kid picks a teammate up off the floor, stop practice for five seconds and say, that's our standard. What you praise, you get more of. Here's the payoff. When standards are owned by the players, the culture starts to police itself. Your seniors handle things before they ever reach you. And you get to spend your energy coaching basketball instead of enforcing a handbook. Let me walk you through how that team session can go. Get your players in a classroom. Write the five areas on the board. Time, effort, respect, teammates, school. Split the team into small groups and give each group one area. Ask them, what does this look like at its best on our team? Give them ten minutes. Then each group shares, and as a team you shape one sentence for each area. When you're done, have every player sign the sheet. That signature matters. It turns a coach's list into a team promise. Here's a mistake I see. Coaches build great standards and then they only talk about them when somebody misses one. If the only time a player hears the standard is when he's in trouble, it starts to feel like a rule again. Talk about the standards ten times more when kids are living them than when they're not. And model them yourself. If the standard is we are early, always, you'd better be in the gym before the players. If the standard is respect everyone in the building, the way you talk to officials matters. Kids watch what we do far more than they listen to what we say. Your staff is the first group that has to live the standard, every day. When players see coaches holding themselves to it, the standard becomes real. So here's your homework. Look at your rule sheet. Cut it down to three to five standards. Then schedule a short team session this month and let your players put those standards into their own words. That's today's episode. For culture building resources and practice plans, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Stop managing rules. Start building standards. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The problem with a straight vote. Team votes often reward the best player or the most popular kid, not the best leader. Coach Collins explains why a vote alone can put the wrong players in charge of your culture. Define the job first. Before anyone is chosen, write down what a captain does in your program: sets the tone in warmups, holds teammates to the standard, communicates with coaches, and leads when no adult is watching. Watch October behavior. Leadership shows up in open gyms, conditioning, and tryouts. Track who encourages teammates, who arrives early, and who handles mistakes with maturity. Use player input, not a player vote. Collect private nominations where players explain why, then let the staff make the final call. Players feel heard and coaches keep responsibility. Consider a leadership council. A small group of three to five players spreads responsibility, includes quiet leaders and underclassmen, and avoids putting all the pressure on one or two kids. Train them every week. A captain title without training is just a word on a jersey. Hold a short weekly leadership meeting and give captains real tasks. This week's homework. Write a one paragraph job description for your captains and share it with your team before any selection happens. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question gets debated in every coaching office in America. Should your players vote for captains? I get the appeal. A vote feels fair. It gives players ownership. And sometimes it works. But here's what I've seen happen too many times. The team votes for the best player, or the most popular kid, or the senior who's fun to be around. And three weeks into the season, you realize you handed your culture to someone who never wanted the job and doesn't know how to do it. So let me offer a better way. It has four steps. Step one. Define the job before you fill it. Sit down and write what a captain actually does in your program. Here's an example. Sets the tone in warmups. Holds teammates to our standard, even friends. Communicates between players and coaches. Leads the same way when no adult is in the gym. Share that description with your team before anyone gets chosen. Now everyone knows what the job is. Step two. Watch October. Leadership is visible right now. Open gyms. Conditioning. Tryouts. Who's encouraging the freshman who's struggling? Who shows up early? Who handles a bad day without pouting? Have your staff keep notes. By the time you choose, you'll have evidence, not just impressions. Step three. Use player input, not a player vote. Hand every player a card. Ask them to name two teammates who live our standard, and to write one sentence about why. Read those cards carefully. They'll tell you a lot, including who the quiet leaders are. Then the staff makes the final decision. Players feel heard, and coaches keep responsibility for a decision that shapes the whole season. Step four. Train them. This is the step almost everybody skips. A captain title without training is just a word on a jersey. Meet with your captains once a week for fifteen minutes. Talk about what you're seeing. Give them real jobs. Lead the stretch. Run a drill. Check on a teammate who's had a rough week. Teach them how to correct a friend without embarrassing him. Leadership is a skill, and skills get coached. Now, one more idea. Think about a leadership council instead of one or two captains. Three to five players. Maybe a senior, a junior, and a sophomore who's already showing it. That spreads the responsibility, includes the quiet kids who lead by example, and keeps all the pressure from landing on one teenager's shoulders. And remember, your best player doesn't have to be your captain. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a star is let them focus on playing, while someone else carries the voice of the team. Sometimes the best captain is the kid who plays six minutes a night and makes everyone around him better. Let me tell you what a weekly captains meeting can look like. Fifteen minutes, before practice on Monday. Question one. What did you see last week that we need to keep doing? Question two. What did you see that worries you? Question three. Who on the team needs a lift right now? Then give them one job for the week. Maybe it's making sure the freshmen sit with the team at lunch on game days. Maybe it's leading a film breakdown. Small jobs build big leaders. Now, a mistake to avoid. Don't make captains your enforcers. If their main job is reporting teammates to you, they'll lose the locker room fast. Their job is to model the standard, encourage, and handle small things peer to peer. The big discipline stays with the coaches. When you protect that line, captains keep their credibility with their teammates. And be honest when a captain isn't working. It happens. A kid struggles with the responsibility, or his own game falls off and he gets frustrated. Meet with him privately. Give him clear feedback and a chance to grow. Most of the time, the conversation alone fixes it. If it doesn't, adjust the role. Protecting your culture is more important than protecting a title. And the way you handle that moment teaches your whole team what leadership really means. One more thing. Recognize your captains' work publicly. When the team plays with great energy, credit your leaders. They'll feel it, and the rest of the team will see what leadership earns. So here's your homework. Write a one paragraph job description for your captains. Share it with your team this week, before any decision is made. Then start watching. That's today's episode. For leadership resources, team building ideas, and more, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Don't just name leaders. Build them. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why this meeting matters more than your first game. Parents who understand your program become allies. Parents who are surprised become critics. Coach Collins explains why thirty minutes in October saves dozens of hours in January. Start with who you are. Open with your team identity and what you are building. Parents support a vision they can understand. Explain how decisions get made. Be clear that coaches decide the roster, roles, and playing time, and explain what those decisions are based on. Transparency about the process is not the same as negotiating the outcome. The communication policy. Share a simple path: the player talks to the coach first, a parent meeting can follow, and nothing gets discussed right after a game. A twenty four hour cooling off rule protects everyone. What you expect, and what they can expect. Ask parents to be fans, not coaches, from the stands. Then tell them what you promise in return: honesty, safety, communication, and care for their child. The car ride home. Coach Collins closes with one request for parents: make the car ride home about support, not analysis. Five simple words can change a season: I love watching you play. This week's homework. Build a one page handout with your identity, communication policy, schedule, and contact information, and run your meeting in thirty minutes or less. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question. What should you say at your preseason parent meeting? Here's how I see it. Your parent meeting might be the most important thirty minutes of your season. Parents who understand your program become your biggest allies. Parents who get surprised become your loudest critics. So let's walk through an agenda that builds trust and draws clear lines. Start with who you are. Open with your team identity. Tell them what you're building and why. Parents will support a vision they understand. If you say, we're going to be the hardest working, most unselfish team in the conference, they now have a lens to watch every game through. Next, explain how decisions get made. Be clear and be calm. The coaching staff decides the roster, roles, and playing time. Then tell them what those decisions are based on. Practice performance. Effort. Attitude. Fit within the team. Being transparent about the process is not the same thing as negotiating the outcome. You're telling them how you think, not asking for a vote. Then share your communication policy. Keep it simple. Step one, the player talks to the coach. We want our kids learning to advocate for themselves. Step two, if a parent still has a concern, we'll set up a meeting. And here's the big one. Nothing gets discussed right after a game. We use a twenty four hour rule. Emotions are high after games, for parents, for players, and honestly, for coaches too. A day of space protects everybody. Now, what do you expect from them? I ask parents to be fans, not coaches. Cheer for every player, not just your own. Leave the officials alone. And please, don't give your child different instructions than we gave them in the huddle. A kid who hears two voices freezes. And then, what can they expect from you? This is the part coaches forget. Tell them what you promise. I will be honest with your child. I will keep them safe. I will communicate the schedule clearly. And I will care about who they are, not just how they play. When parents hear your promises, they're much more willing to accept your boundaries. I like to finish with one request. The car ride home. That ride can make or break a kid's season. Ask parents to make it about support, not analysis. No breakdown of every turnover. No commentary on the coach's decisions. Just five words. I love watching you play. That's it. You'd be amazed how much that changes a kid's experience. A couple of practical tips. Keep the meeting to thirty minutes. Hand out a one page sheet with your identity, your communication policy, the schedule, and how to reach you. Have your assistants there so parents know the whole staff. And leave a few minutes for questions, but steer individual player conversations to a separate time. Let me share a few things not to do at the parent meeting. Don't talk about individual players. Don't make promises about playing time, starting spots, or college recruiting. And don't spend twenty minutes on your offense. Parents don't need to know your sets. They need to know your values, your process, and how to talk to you. Here's another idea that's worked for a lot of coaches. Invite your captains or a couple of seniors to speak for two minutes. Let them tell parents what this team means to them and what they're working toward. Parents hear things differently when they come from players. It also shows them the culture you're building is real, not just a speech from the coach. And think about the parents who can't make it. Some work nights. Some have other kids with games. Record a short video of the key points, or send the one page handout home with every player, and ask families to sign and return it. That way no one can say they didn't know the communication policy. When the first tough conversation comes in December, you can point back to the page they signed in October. It changes the tone completely. Last, follow up. Send a thank you email the next day with the handout attached and the season calendar. Small touches like that tell parents you're organized and that you value them. Trust is built in the little things. So here's your homework. Build your one page handout this week. Practice your thirty minute agenda out loud. And go into that room confident, because a clear coach is a trusted coach. That's today's episode. For parent meeting templates and more program building resources, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Win the parents in October, and you'll coach in peace in February. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why the list on the door has to go. Posting names on a gym door or a website is efficient for the coach and brutal for the player. Coach Collins explains why every cut deserves a face to face conversation, even when there are dozens of them. Set expectations before tryouts begin. Tell players and parents on day one how decisions will be communicated, when, and by whom. A clear process removes surprise and cuts down on angry emails. The three part conversation. Every cut meeting covers two things the player did well, one or two honest reasons they did not make the roster, and a specific path forward. Keep it to three to five minutes and keep an assistant in the room. Words that help and words that hurt. Avoid vague phrases like it was close or numbers game. Be specific and kind. Do not make promises you cannot keep about next year. Seniors and the last cut. Seniors who are cut deserve extra care, and the last player cut is the hardest decision on the roster. Coach Collins shares how to handle both with honesty. Keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting, a summer workout plan, or a role such as manager or practice player when it fits. Many kids come back better because of how they were cut. This week's homework. Write your cut meeting script, choose the assistant who will sit in, and tell your players exactly how the process will work. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today we're talking about the hardest part of October. How do you cut a player without breaking them? Let me start with something I believe deeply. The way you cut a kid will be remembered longer than any game you win this season. That player will tell their parents about it. They'll tell their friends. Someday they might tell their own kids. So let's do it right. First, never post the list. I know it's efficient. I know you might have fifty kids trying out. But a list on a gym door means a fifteen year old finds out the worst news of their year in front of a crowd. Every kid who gave you three days of effort deserves a few minutes of your time, face to face. Second, set the expectations before tryouts even start. On day one, tell players and parents exactly how decisions will be shared, when, and by whom. Something like this. On Thursday after practice, every player will meet with me individually for a few minutes. When the process is clear, there are fewer surprises and a lot fewer angry emails. Third, use a simple structure for the conversation. I use three parts. One, tell them two things they did well, and be specific. You communicated on defense better than anyone in your group. Two, give them one or two honest reasons they didn't make the roster. Right now your ball handling under pressure isn't where it needs to be at this level. Three, give them a path forward. Here's what I'd work on, and here's who can help you. Keep it short. Three to five minutes. And always have an assistant in the room. That protects you, it protects the player, and it gives you a witness to what was actually said. Now, a word about language. Avoid the vague stuff. It was really close. It's just a numbers game. Kids hear that as, there's nothing I could have done. Be specific and be kind. And never make promises about next year that you can't keep. Don't say you'll definitely make it next season. Say, if you do this work, you'll give yourself a real chance. Seniors deserve extra care. A senior who gets cut is losing their last chance to wear the jersey. Meet with them first, give them more time, and when it fits, offer them a real role. A manager. A practice player. Somebody who's still part of the family. And the last cut. That's the one that keeps you up at night. Be honest with yourself about why. Go back to your rubric. Go back to your identity. When you can explain the decision in those terms, you can look that kid in the eye. Finally, keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting in a week, when emotions have settled. Give them a workout plan. Invite them to open gym in the spring. Some of the best players I've seen were cut once, and came back hungrier because a coach treated them with respect. Let me give you an example of how that conversation can sound. Jordan, thanks for sitting down with me. First, I want you to know two things you did really well. You competed on every rep in the shell drill, and you were one of the best communicators in the gym. Here's where you're not there yet. At this level, we need guards who can handle pressure, and right now that's still a work in progress for you. So this year, you're not on the roster. Here's what I'd do. Work on your ball handling against pressure every day. Come to our spring open gym. And come see me in a month so we can talk about your plan. That's about ninety seconds. Honest, specific, and respectful. Now, prepare yourself for emotion. Some kids will cry. Some will go silent. Some will get angry. All of that is normal. Don't rush to fill the silence, and don't argue. Just say, I understand this is hard, and I respect how hard you worked. Let them have their reaction. You're not there to win the conversation. You're there to deliver hard news with care. And think about the parents. Send a short email that night to every family of a player who was cut. Thank them for their child's effort, and repeat that you're available for a follow up meeting once everyone has had a day to process. That one email heads off a lot of angry phone calls, and it shows families that the way you treat their kid doesn't end when the roster is set. So here's your homework. Write your three part cut script. Pick the assistant who will sit in with you. And tell your players on day one exactly how the process will work. That's today's episode. For more on tryouts, roster decisions, and building culture, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Cut with dignity, and you'll never lose a kid's respect. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The problem with traditional tryouts. Layup lines and shooting stations show you skill, but skill is the easiest thing to see and the least predictive of who helps you win in February. Coach Collins explains why tryouts should be built to reveal the things you cannot see in a box score. The coachability rep. Give a player one specific correction, then watch the very next rep. Did they try to apply it? That single moment tells you more about a player's growth curve than ten made jumpers. Talk and transition. Run live defensive drills where the only thing an evaluator tracks is talk. Then run transition drills and watch who sprints back when the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Response to mistakes. Put players in competitive situations where they will fail. Watch what happens next. Do they hang their head, blame a teammate, or get back on defense? Watch the kids who are not playing. Water breaks, sideline time, and the end of the line are evaluation moments. Who picks up a teammate? Who is on their phone? A simple scoring system. Use multiple evaluators, a short rubric scored one to five, and a handful of categories tied to your identity. Tell the players in advance exactly what you will be watching. This week's homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan, and give every evaluator the same rubric. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Tryouts are coming, and today I want to ask you a hard question. Are your tryouts measuring the right things? Here's what usually happens. We run layup lines. We run shooting stations. We run some three on three. And the kids who shine are the ones who can make shots in a gym with nobody guarding them. Then February comes, and we realize we kept the best shooter in October, not the best teammate in a tight game. Skill is the easiest thing to see in a tryout. It's also the thing you can teach the most over a season. What's hard to see, and hard to teach, is coachability, toughness, and how a kid treats the people around them. So let's build tryouts that show you those things. First, the coachability rep. Pick a player in the middle of a drill. Give them one specific correction. Get lower in your stance. Show me your hands. Then watch the very next rep. Not the result. The attempt. Did they try to do what you just asked? That one moment tells you more about how a kid will grow over a season than ten made jumpers. Second, talk and transition. Run a live shell drill and assign an evaluator to track one thing only. Who talks? Who calls ball, who calls help, who calls shot? Then run a transition drill, and watch who sprints back the moment the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Third, response to mistakes. Put players in competitive drills where they're going to fail. Score everything. Keep a winner and a loser. Then watch what happens after a turnover or a missed box out. Does the kid hang his head? Blame a teammate? Or sprint back and get the next stop? You are not just evaluating basketball. You are evaluating how they handle adversity, and you'll need that in January. Fourth, watch the kids who aren't playing. Water breaks. The end of the line. Sideline time. Who picks up a teammate off the floor? Who claps for somebody else's good play? Who's sneaking a look at their phone? Some of the best evaluating I ever did happened when the kids didn't think anyone was watching. Now, let's keep it fair. Use more than one evaluator. Give every evaluator the same short rubric. Five categories, scored one to five. Make those categories match your team identity. If your identity says we defend and we share the ball, then defense and unselfishness had better be on that sheet. And here's the part a lot of coaches miss. Tell the players ahead of time what you're looking for. Say it on day one of tryouts. We are evaluating talk, effort in transition, how you respond to mistakes, and how you treat your teammates. When kids know what matters, the right kids rise up. And when you have to make tough decisions, you can point to exactly what you said. One last thought. Tryouts are the first message about your culture. The way you run them tells every kid in that gym what you value. If you value hustle, make hustle visible. If you value teammates, reward the kid who picks someone up. Let me walk you through what a day of tryouts could actually look like. Start with fifteen minutes of a dynamic warmup, and have an evaluator watch who's leading lines and who's hiding in the back. Then twenty minutes of skill stations, because yes, skill still matters. Then the shell drill with an evaluator tracking talk. Then a scored transition drill. Then live three on three and five on five, with winners and losers recorded. Finish with free throws while tired. In about ninety minutes, you've seen skill, effort, communication, competitiveness, and composure. Here's a mistake I see a lot. Coaches let one great play or one bad play decide a kid's fate. A player hits three straight threes and suddenly he's on the roster. Another kid fumbles one pass and he's written off. That's why your rubric matters, and that's why you need more than one day. Look for patterns, not moments. A pattern over two or three days tells you who a kid really is. And don't forget the evaluators' meeting at the end of each day. Ten minutes. Go player by player and compare notes. You'll be surprised how often your assistant saw something you missed. Sometimes it's a kid who was great on the weak side of the shell drill, where you weren't looking. Sometimes it's a kid who said something to a teammate at the water fountain that changes your whole view. Those conversations are where good decisions get made. So here's your homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan. Build a five category rubric. Give it to every evaluator. That's today's episode. For tryout plans, evaluation forms, and more, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Pick the players who make your team better, not just the ones who make shots. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The meeting most coaches skip. Coaches spend hours on X's and O's and almost no time aligning the adults who teach them. Coach Collins makes the case for one real staff meeting before tryouts, with an agenda, a notepad, and no phones. Question one: who are we? Every coach in the program should be able to say the team's identity sentence word for word. If the levels teach different identities, players get mixed messages and the program loses its spine. Question two: what does each coach own? Give every assistant a clear area of ownership, such as defense, player development, scouting, or academics. Ownership turns helpers into coaches and keeps the head coach from trying to do everything. Question three: how do we speak to players? Decide who talks in timeouts, who corrects in drills, and how feedback is delivered. One voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. Question four: how do we disagree? Disagreement is healthy behind closed doors and harmful in front of players and parents. Set that rule in October so it never has to be enforced in January. Question five: do we use the same words? Shared terminology from freshman to varsity means a player called up in February already speaks the language. Write a one page glossary of your calls and terms. This week's homework. Schedule a ninety minute staff meeting before tryouts, walk through the five questions, and leave with every coach owning one area of the program. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question is one I wish someone had asked me early in my career. Is your coaching staff really on the same page? Here's what I've learned. Most staff problems that blow up in February started with a conversation that never happened in October. An assistant says something to a parent he shouldn't have. The JV coach runs a different defense. Somebody rolls their eyes on the bench after a decision. None of that is about bad people. It's about a meeting that never took place. So before tryouts, I want you to hold one real staff meeting. Ninety minutes. An agenda. A notepad. Phones in the bag. And I want you to walk through five questions. Question one. Who are we? Every coach in your program, from freshman to varsity, should be able to say your team identity word for word. If your levels are teaching different identities, your players get mixed messages and your program loses its spine. Question two. What does each coach own? Assistants who just show up and rebound are wasted. Give every coach a lane. One owns defense. One owns player development. One owns scouting. One owns academics and grade checks. Ownership turns helpers into coaches, and it keeps you from trying to do everything yourself. Question three. How do we speak to players? Decide this now. Who talks in timeouts? Who corrects in drills? My rule of thumb is one voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. During a drill, I want every coach teaching. During a timeout, players need to hear one message, clearly. Question four. How do we disagree? And you will disagree. That's healthy. The rule is simple. We argue behind closed doors, and we walk out of that room as one staff. Never in front of players. Never in front of parents. Never on social media. Say it in October, so you never have to enforce it in January. Question five. Do we use the same words? If your freshman coach calls it a hedge and your varsity coach calls it a show, you just wasted a week when a kid gets called up. Write a one page glossary. Your calls, your terms, your defensive language. Hand it to every coach at every level. I'll add one more thing. Talk about parents. Agree that every parent concern about playing time or role goes to the head coach. Your assistants should never be stuck in a parking lot conversation they're not equipped to handle. Protect them, and they'll protect the program. When you walk out of that meeting, every coach should know three things. Who we are. What I own. And how we behave as a staff. That's alignment. And here's the payoff. Players notice. When kids see a staff that is unified, that uses the same language and backs each other up, they trust the system faster. Culture isn't just what your players do. It starts with what your coaches model. Let me give you a picture of what this looks like when it works. Picture the second week of January. Your varsity point guard goes down with an ankle. You pull a sophomore up from JV. If your staff is aligned, that kid walks into varsity practice and already knows the calls, already knows the defense, already knows what the head coach means when he says show. He's ready in a day, not a week. That's what alignment buys you. It's not a nice idea. It's insurance. Now, a common mistake. Coaches hold the meeting, everybody nods, and then nobody revisits it. Alignment isn't a one time event. I'd schedule a fifteen minute staff check in every week of the season. Same three questions every time. What are we seeing? What do we need to fix? Is anyone struggling? Put it on the calendar the same day, the same time, so it never gets skipped when the schedule gets crazy. And take care of your assistants as people. Ask about their families. Thank them in front of the players. Give them credit when the defense plays well. A lot of assistant coaches are working for very little money and a lot of hours. When they feel valued, they invest. When they feel like helpers, they drift. The best staffs I've been around were made of people who would run through a wall for each other, and that started with a head coach who made them feel like it was their program too. So here's your homework. Put a staff meeting on the calendar before tryouts. Walk through those five questions. Leave with every coach owning one piece of the program. That's today's episode. For staff resources, practice plans, and more, visit teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Build your staff before you build your team. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why identity comes first. October is when coaches order gear and draw up sets. Coach Collins argues the first job is simpler and more important: write one sentence that tells a player, a parent, and an assistant exactly what kind of team you will be. Every October decision, from tryout selections to practice minutes, flows from that sentence. The three part formula. A strong identity sentence answers three questions. How do we defend? How do we attack? How do we behave? Coach Collins shares two sample sentences and explains why specific language beats slogans every time. Fit the identity to this year's roster. Your identity has to match the players who will wear the jersey, not the team you wish you had. A roster without size should not build around the post. A roster of quick guards might press and run. Make it measurable. If your sentence says you play hard, define what hard looks like on film: deflections, charges, loose balls. If you cannot count it, sharpen the word until you can. Use it as a filter. Once the sentence is written, share it with your staff first, then put it at the top of every practice plan. Use it to judge drills, evaluate tryouts, and frame postgame talks. This week's homework. Write three lines on a blank sheet: we defend by, we attack by, we behave by. Cut them into one sentence, show it to your staff, and say it out loud on day one. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins, and this is the show where we give you one idea you can use in your program this week. It's October. Tryouts are close, gyms are opening up, and every coach I know is busy drawing up sets and ordering practice gear. Today I want you to do something before any of that. I want you to write one sentence. Here's the question. Can you say your team's identity in one sentence? Not a mission statement. Not a poster on the wall. One sentence that tells a player, a parent, and an assistant coach exactly what kind of basketball team you are going to be. Why does this matter in October? Because every decision you make in the next six weeks flows from it. Who you keep at tryouts. What you teach first. How you spend practice minutes. What you praise and what you correct. If you don't know who you are, you will make those decisions based on whatever happened yesterday, and your players will feel that. So let me give you a simple formula. Your identity sentence should answer three things. How do we defend? How do we attack? And how do we behave? That's it. Defend, attack, behave. Here's an example. We guard the ball like it owes us money, we play fast and share it, and we never leave a teammate on the floor. Here's another one. We win the possession game with rebounds and zero wasted trips, we run our stuff with patience, and we are the toughest team in the gym. Notice those sentences are specific. Anybody who hears them can picture the team. Now, how do you write yours? Start with your personnel, not your ego. Look honestly at the players you expect to have. If you don't have size, don't build an identity around pounding the post. If you have five guards who can fly, maybe you press and run. Your identity has to fit the people wearing the jersey this year. Second, test every word. Ask yourself, could we measure this? If you say we play hard, what does that look like on film? Deflections? Charges taken? Loose balls? If you can't count it, sharpen the word until you can. Third, share it with your staff before you share it with your players. Your assistants need to own it. If your JV coach is teaching one identity and your varsity coach is teaching another, you don't have a program. You have a collection of teams. Here's where it gets practical. Once you have the sentence, use it as a filter. When you plan practice, look at every drill and ask, does this build our identity? If it doesn't, cut it or shorten it. When you evaluate players at tryouts, ask, does this kid fit who we're going to be? When you talk to your team after a loss, go back to the sentence. Did we defend the way we said we would? Did we behave the way we said we would? And say it out loud. Say it on day one. Put it at the top of every practice plan. Have your players say it back to you. By December, you want a freshman at the end of the bench to be able to tell a parent in the stands exactly what this team is about. One more thing. Your identity can grow during the season, but it shouldn't change every week. Consistency is what gives it power. Players trust a coach who knows who he is. So here's your homework this week. Get a blank sheet of paper. Write three lines. We defend by. We attack by. We behave by. Fill them in. Then cut them down to one sentence. Show it to your staff. Then live it. That's today's episode. If you want practice plans, drills, and a full library of coaching resources to help you build that identity, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Go build something you're proud of. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Are You Punishing the Exact Mistakes That Would Make Your Team Better?Tryout week, the quick hook, and what happens to a player who learns that trying something is dangerous. Show Notes A quick hook feels like standards. This episode argues it is often just fear, and that the lesson a player actually takes from it is that trying something is dangerous. With tryouts here, it is worth asking what your sideline reaction is teaching. What we cover: Sorting mistakes of aggression from mistakes of selfishness, and why only one earns a seat Telling players out loud what you want them to risk this week The mistake budget, and using practice as a lab instead of a courtroom Why your face coaches louder than your voice Separating sloppy from brave, and why the player you will not trust in November is the one you need in February This week's challenge: run one practice where you never stop play for a mistake of aggression. Let it go, then write down what you saw. Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, on court clinics, and the coaching community at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Are Your Players Hearing You, or Actually Seeing It?Why installation week moves twice as fast when you stop explaining and start showing. Show Notes Installation week always sounds the same. A coach talking, a group of heads nodding, and then total chaos the second the ball goes up. This episode makes the case that the problem is not attention. It is that most young players learn with their eyes and we keep teaching with our mouths. What we cover: Show it before you say it, so the words have a picture to stick to Putting a screen in your gym, and why twenty seconds of clip beats two minutes of talking One cue, then go, because when you stack four instructions they keep the last one Letting players watch their own possession and coach themselves off it Locking your vocabulary in October so you are not reteaching words in February This week's challenge: install one thing using under thirty seconds of talking. Show it, run it, fix one detail, run it again. Resources: Practice plans, teaching progressions, drills, courses, and on court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TeachHoops.com NukeHydration.com — ready to drink clean sports hydration, shipped nationwide. Sample pack (two Lime Time, two OG Orange, plus extras) is $19.99 with shipping included. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off, sample pack included CoachingYouthHoops.com Is Your Kid Actually Hydrated, or Just Drinking Something Blue? The couple taking on Gatorade from a Mississippi warehouse. Coach Bill sits down with Marty and Lesley Frascogna, the husband and wife team behind Nuke Hydration and a sponsor of this show, which he discloses right up front. They found each other through a LinkedIn conversation, and Coach Bill's interest was simple: he was tired of picking up bottles full of dye and would never hand that to his own team. Lesley owns this part of the story. Gatorade, Gatorade Zero, a stretch where their son drank Prime because he thought it was cool, and some Propel because, as she puts it, in her brain clear must mean healthy. The tipping point was standing over a grocery cart loaded with Gatorade she was about to hand out to a house full of kids and feeling guilty about it. Marty's side was the Ironman. He came to triathlon with no background in it, and when his nutrition coach asked what he was actually putting in his body, the answer turned out to be not much: not enough sodium, not even enough fluid ounces. And he had played college sports. He thought he knew this stuff. This is the running argument of the episode. Coach Bill had heard the Ironman version. Marty, an attorney for eighteen years and self described steady hand, says the Ironman was the setup, but Lesley took it and ran. She is the impulsive one. She had also been a florist for twenty four years and wanted a career change, and so did he. Her one non negotiable from the start: it had to be ready to drink. Not a powder. A bottle a kid can hold. Marty asked about powder and she shut it down immediately. She was calling formulators the next day. For the record, Coach Bill and Lesley referred to Marty as an Ironman six times before he brought it up himself. He wanted that noted. Market research pointed to a real gap. Hydration packets are everywhere. Ready to drink is essentially Coke's Powerade and Pepsi's Gatorade and not much else. When they walked into Whole Foods looking for the clean alternative that surely already existed, they found a couple of options with two problems. First, no cool factor. Their own kids laughed and said they would not walk around with it. Second, natural flavors. Lesley's view is that natural flavors are not really natural. They start from a natural product and then get heavily processed in a lab. That was a line they would not cross, and she notes that avoiding natural flavors is becoming a real consumer trend this year. Their answer to what parents miss when they think hydration means water: most youth athletes are not drinking enough to begin with, they are not getting enough sodium, and they are short on electrolytes. Sweat goes out, salt has to go back in. Coach Bill can vouch. He carries a large bottle, drinks three a day, and still came back dehydrated on routine bloodwork. Volume alone does not do it. Marty's favorite frame, from his training: carbs are the gas, hydration is the oil. If you burn all the oil, you cannot retroactively pour it back in. The engine is already gone. He has actually blown an engine by skipping an oil change, so the metaphor stuck. On timing, both agree with what Coach Bill preaches to his team. Hydration starts the night before. If your game is Saturday and you start Saturday morning, you are already behind. This one they did not plan to collect. A high school team they work with gave players a Nuke two hours before a game, water alongside it, and another Nuke at halftime, in Mississippi heat. Not one cramp on the team. The coach said it was the first time in school history. They watched the opposing team go down every few minutes on TV, on a weekend when a player elsewhere died on the field from heat. They have now seen it repeat for three straight weeks. They are also hearing from women who drink one a day and say it keeps their headaches and migraines away. A study with Mississippi State's kinesiology department on Nuke specifically is in the works, which should say whether the credit belongs to the coconut water, the Celtic sea salt, or the combination. Coconut water as the base, for hydration and the added benefits, and because almost nothing else in the category uses it. Celtic sea salt, not table salt. Lesley says the internal debate over which salt to use was close to infinite. They wanted something from the ocean, with the trace minerals that come with it. Lemon and lime juice for actual flavor in the original Lime Time. Five grams of added organic cane sugar. They deliberately did not go to zero. A little sugar helps hydration, carries flavor, and gives kids a small burst of energy. It is a fraction of what is in a conventional sports drink. Stevia and monk fruit to balance the lemon and lime without piling on more sugar and calories. They said no to extra vitamin C, extra vitamins, extra magnesium. Not necessary. The moment that defined the whole company came at the formulation lab, six months in, when they finally loved the taste and spotted an ingredient on the panel they did not recognize. They asked what it did. The answer was mostly color, with a little magnesium they did not need. Lesley's response: get rid of it. Two halves. Nothing Unnecessary, and Keep the Energy. No, there is no caffeine in it, which is the first thing most people ask. Nothing Unnecessary has become the filter for the whole company, not just the formula. Lesley catches herself planning a big elaborate activation in Nashville and then pulls it back to something simple that is all about the drink. Keep the Energy is about the daily wins: no sugar spike, no crash, one brick in the wall every day. The bottle says no guilt. The team pushed back on putting it there. Lesley insisted, at a hundred and ten percent, because of exactly what she felt pushing that Gatorade cart. Mom guilt is everywhere, parents are doing their best, and if one decision can be made easier and feel good, that is the job. Coach Bill's version is the same from the coach's side: he does not feel bad handing it to his players. Neither of them is a nutritionist and they say so. Lesley's honest answer is that the two go hand in hand and nobody is perfect. There is still junk food in their pantry. But fully hydrated and badly fueled is a moot point. Coach Bill's version of this was handing out nutrition bars before early morning games, because so many kids skip breakfast and you can see how that game is going to go before it starts. Lesley's broader point: it is not just the kids who need educating. She did not understand the difference hydration actually makes until Marty started training. She thought eight glasses of water was just the recommendation so you do not die. The second husband and wife pair to appear on the show, and Marty's first question was whether the first couple is still married. They describe a good yin and yang: Lesley is passionate, impulsive, burn the boats, we are doing this now. Marty wants the long term plan and the strategy thought all the way through. The bigger problem is that they are never off. Date night turns into a work meeting. Lesley, diagnosed with ADHD at thirty six, needs the schedule to stay fluid, which frustrates a man who would like a schedule set in stone. They also have a warehouse and still fight over which corner of the house to work in. Their kids, Lesley jokes, would like mom and dad to go back to their real jobs. Two flavors now: the original Lime Time and the just launched OG Orange. A third is coming in the spring as a collaboration with someone they are not naming yet. Direct to consumer at nukehydration.com, with a new site launching in about three weeks. Lesley ships it herself, nationwide, with handwritten notes. They are in independent grocery stores around Jackson, Mississippi and Birmingham and expanding. The growth they are proudest of is schools. Athletic directors are getting real pressure from parents asking for healthier options, and "we have always given the team Gatorade" is no longer an answer. Next goal: working directly with coaches to set up team shops so parents can buy straight from them. And for anyone who does not want to commit to a full case, the $19.99 sample pack includes two of each flavor with shipping, and YOUTHHOOPS15 works on it. Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com TitleSubtitleShow NotesBefore Nuke, they were a Gatorade familyWho actually had the ideaThe void they foundHydration is not the same as waterThe Mississippi football data pointWhat is in it, and what is notWhat NUKE actually stands forThe two words Lesley fought forNutrition and hydration togetherWorking together, married eighteen yearsWhere to get it Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Performance equals potential minus interference. That one equation, borrowed from Timothy Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis, is the spine of this episode, and it flips the way most coaches think about player development. Nearly all of our energy goes into the first half of that equation. Better drills, better lifts, better skill work, better film. But Coach Collins argues that some of the biggest breakthroughs in a season do not come from adding anything at all. They come from removing what is standing in front of a kid. The episode opens with a player every coach knows. Terrific on Tuesday, unrecognizable on Friday. His ability did not vanish between those two days. Something got in front of it. Coach Collins walks through why the interference we go looking for is usually external, the crowd, the refs, the matchup, when the loudest interference is almost always internal. Fear of failing. Fear of looking foolish in front of friends. Overthinking. Trying to prove something to someone in the stands. Playing to protect a stat line instead of playing to compete. That is not a skill problem, and it does not respond to skill answers. Then comes the uncomfortable part of the conversation. Sometimes the coach is the interference. A player struggles, so he gets a cue, then another cue, then a correction and one more reminder on his way out of the huddle. Now he is standing at the free throw line running six voices at once, and none of them are his own. Coach Collins makes the case that our job is not to fill a player's head. It is to free it. From there the episode turns to a simple change in the question we ask. Instead of what does he need to learn, try what is getting in the way of what he already knows. One question assumes the player is missing something. The other assumes he has more inside him than he can currently reach, and those two questions build two completely different practices. Coach Collins also connects the idea to culture, because programs manufacture their own interference. Unclear roles create it. A coach who runs hot and cold creates it. Mistakes punished in public create it. When a player is calculating what failure will cost him, he is protecting rather than competing, and gyms where kids play free are never an accident. The episode closes with a challenge coaches can run this week. Pick one player, write down one thing you are going to take away rather than add, then audit your own practice for the fog you may be putting in front of your team. This is an episode for coaches who have been trying to add their way to better and are ready to try subtracting instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/teachhoops-memberships/2000/ https://www.thechampionshipcoach.com/ When Your Tank Is Only 80% Full, Is It Time to Walk Away?  Episode 2000: Coach Bill turns the microphone on Steve Collins for a conversation about 37 years on the sideline, three state titles, one 7 and 14 season, and what the game actually owes the kids who never become stars. For the 2000th episode of Coach Unplugged, the format flips. Coach Bill takes over the questions and Steve sits in the guest chair for the first time, fresh off a state finals run and the first fall in nearly four decades with no season to plan. They talk about what it felt like the moment it ended, the bus ride from La Crosse that turned a losing program around, and the price his family paid along the way. Stay to the end for a 2000th episode offer that only lives here in the show notes. IN THIS EPISODE 01:17 A milestone inside a milestone. First fall in 37 years with no season and no lesson plans. 02:13 How Coach Unplugged started. A YouTube idea with a friend, back when podcasting was actually hard. 04:33 "I felt full." The feeling after the final game, and why you want to leave the amusement park while you still want to ride. 06:35 The storybook ending. Up two at halftime on the eighth ranked team in the country, 27 and 3, and why a great taste makes walking away both easier and harder. 08:13 What retirement actually looks like. Family, travel, and four clinic dates this fall including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Brooklyn. 09:32 Why start another basketball podcast? Nobody was talking to the coach in the trenches. The parent problems, the bus that never shows, the missing official 30 minutes before tip. 11:37 The 7 and 14 season. Sitting in a locker room in La Crosse saying "I don't think I can do this," as the only applicant for the job. 13:03 The roadmap from that bus ride. How two hours back to Madison became the plan for one of the best programs in the Midwest. 14:32 Find your circle and keep it close. The advice from his high school coach that produced two staffs in 30 years. 16:18 The resume. Three state championships, five runner up finishes, eleven state appearances, fourteen straight conference titles, twenty six consecutive winning seasons, and why none of it sounds real to him. 17:08 Micro goals. Don't get fired. Then have a winning season. Then beat the perennial power. Then contend. Then win it. 18:40 Out scouting everybody. Sending his mom to a game with a camera, VCRs in the basement until 2 a.m., and why that edge is gone now. 19:43 What does coaching owe the kids who never play in college? Roles, camaraderie, failing together, and the life lessons kids remember long after the Pythagorean theorem. 22:23 The two kinds of coaches who ask for help. The young ones who know they don't know, and the veterans still hunting for an edge. It's the middle group that stalls out. 23:35 The price. What the wins cost his wife, his parents, and his mother in law, and why both of his kids will tell you he never missed anything. 26:15 Rapid fire for the first year coach. Worry less about parents and more about players. Communicate, then over communicate. After a bad loss go exercise and do not watch film. Stop drilling for the sake of drilling. 28:37 How do you know you were successful? Strip away the banners and the wins and what's left is the connection with the players. 29:21 One sentence, if that's all a coach remembers. People first. 29:44 The second act. The Championship Coach fellowship, one on one calls, group calls, and coaches who have his actual cell number. 30:02 Building Hey Sammy. Bill on the app overload problem in youth sports, and a text based assistant that pulls in schedules, calendars, drive time, and weather with nothing to install. 32:04 The golden nugget, buried at the end on purpose. THE 2000TH EPISODE OFFER 20% off teachhoops.com for the lifetime of the membership, for the first 20 coaches only. Use code FIRSTTWENTY at checkout. This is not being announced anywhere else. If you made it to the end of the episode, it's yours. LINKS https://teachhoops.com/ The coaching library, drills, and community.https://championshipcoach.com/ The fellowship Steve runs with a small group of coaches each spring and fall.https://heysami.com/ The text based family sports assistant Steve and Bill are building.Email Steve directly at steve@teachhoops.com. He is speaking at four clinics this fall and will happily grab a soda and talk hoops. QUOTABLE "I felt full. I felt complete. You want to leave the amusement park when you still want to go on rides." "It's about the Jills and Joes, not the X's and O's." "When I was 27, I knew everything. I feel like I know less now than I did 30 years ago." "People first. You're going to win if you put people first." HELP THE SHOW If 2000 episodes have helped you survive a season, leave a five star review, share the show with a coach who needs it, and send in your questions. Here's to the next 2000. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ What happens to your team when the head coach has a bad day? In this episode, Coach Collins takes a deep dive into one of the most important responsibilities of leadership: managing the emotional temperature of your program. Coaches often spend enormous amounts of time thinking about strategy, practice planning, player development, and culture. But players and assistant coaches are also constantly reading something else—the emotional state of the person leading them. Coach Collins uses the idea of the thermostat versus the thermometer to explain the difference. A thermometer simply reflects the temperature around it. A thermostat helps set it. Athletes naturally react to what is happening around them. Coaches have a greater responsibility. Their frustration, confidence, fear, patience, body language, and emotional consistency can quickly spread throughout a team. This becomes especially important when circumstances change quickly. Winning streaks, great practices, injuries, difficult losses, parent problems, player issues, staff disagreements, and unexpected setbacks can all happen within days of each other. If a coach’s emotional state rises and falls with every event, players begin experiencing leadership whiplash. The episode explores the idea that every coach has a leadership range. At the top end, coaches are clear, proactive, relational, confident, and able to see the big picture. At their baseline, they are steady and dependable. At the low end, fatigue and frustration can lead to emotional reactions, micromanaging, distance, impatience, or poor communication. The goal is not to pretend that great leaders never reach their low end. They do. The goal is to raise the floor. How do you behave when things go badly? Can you lose and still communicate clearly? Can you receive difficult news without bringing panic into the gym? Can you correct a player without turning your frustration into that athlete’s shame? Can your assistant coaches concentrate on coaching instead of trying to figure out what mood you are in? Those questions reveal a great deal about leadership. Coach Collins also challenges coaches to separate their identity from the scoreboard. Winning matters. Competition matters. Championships matter. But when a coach needs winning to validate who they are, the entire culture begins riding the emotional roller coaster with them. A great night means everything is wonderful. One loss suddenly makes everything feel broken. That is not stability. Great programs need leaders who can compete intensely while remaining grounded through both success and adversity. The episode gives coaches three practical questions for evaluating themselves: Did I act as the thermostat or the thermometer this week? What did my low end cost the people around me? And what boundary can I create to protect my emotional baseline next week? Sometimes that boundary is waiting before speaking after a difficult loss. Sometimes it is refusing to send the emotional text. Sometimes it is sleep, time away, perspective, or simply recognizing that an important decision should not be made while angry. For coaches trying to build sustainable culture, this episode is a reminder that your emotional regulation is not just personal. It becomes organizational. Players feel it. Assistant coaches feel it. Your program eventually reflects it. The scoreboard can change your circumstances. It does not have to change your leadership. basketball leadership, coaching leadership, basketball coaching, team culture, emotional leadership, thermostat vs thermometer, coach emotional control, leadership under pressure, coaching adversity, basketball culture, mental toughness for coaches, emotional regulation, head coach leadership, coaching staff, player development, program culture, leadership consistency, handling losses, coaching confidence, basketball program, high school basketball coach, coaching mindset, team leadership, sustainable culture, basketball podcast, TeachHoops Keywords Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Parents' Role in Tryouts Links mentioned in this episode TeachHoops.com CoachingYouthHoops.com — print and go practice plans built from years of coaching, not ChatGPT NukeHydration.com — clean sports drink for kids and coaches, started by a couple out of Mississippi. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off any order What Is a Parent Actually Supposed to Do During Tryouts? Shoes, snacks, and getting out of the way. Fall basketball season is kicking off, tryouts are here, and Coach Bill wants to talk about the person nobody writes a rubric for: the parent. Two sides to it. What coaches should be teaching parents to expect, and how parents can actually support their kid through a stressful week. Coach Collins goes first, and his list is unglamorous on purpose. We are dealing with kids, not young adults who can drive themselves. So the number one parent responsibility is logistics: shoes that fit, a ball in the bag, properly hydrated, everything they need, and there on time. That is most of the job. Tryouts can be genuinely stressful for a family, especially when nobody knows whether the kid makes a team at all, or which team. Coach Collins' advice is to drop both the coach hat and the parent evaluator hat and just be the supportive person in the front seat. When they get in the car, ask how it went. Ask what was fun today. Not "how'd you do" and not "were any of the other kids good." That one shift is what makes a kid want to come back next year. Coach Bill's biggest coaching side point: share your tryout rubric with parents before tryouts. How are teams being picked? If there is an A and a B team, what actually separates them? If there are cuts, why would a kid get cut? Say it plainly and say it early, and you avoid most of the fallout after the list goes up. He also names the thing everyone has seen: the leagues where the three dad coaches end up with the top three kids, automatically, because of how the structure works. Coach Collins frames it as a triangle. Parent to kid, parent to coach, coach to kid. When one leg of that breaks down, what the kid heard and what the parent tells the kid stop matching what the coach actually said, and that is where the problems come from. Ten spots, here is what we are looking for, here is what competitive means. Say it out loud to all three points of the triangle. Coach Bill lays out two scenarios worth walking through with your kid ahead of time. Your kid makes it and their best friend does not. One kid is thrilled, the other is crushed. Teach yours how to handle that, because the bragging happens more often than you would think. Your kid does not make the team you both expected. Talk through what it actually means, which is not much. A career is not over in fifth grade because someone did not make the A team. Coach Collins agrees and adds the frame: life is about disappointment, and you learn more from failure than success. But he pushes it one step further. His favorite parenting lesson from this episode. Before tryouts, have your athlete go ask the coach what they are looking for. After tryouts, have them ask what to work on for next year. The story behind it: his son Drew, in fourth or fifth grade, got in the car furious about a book report. Coach Collins pulled over about three hundred yards from the school and told him to go back in and talk to his teacher, who was still there. The teacher had a great conversation with him. Coach Collins believes that single moment taught Drew more than the rest of that school year, and that it made him an advocate for himself through his entire education. Coach Bill's addition is that this is really about teaching a kid how to speak respectfully to an adult in authority, which outlasts basketball by decades. And it is the kid who should do the asking, not the parent. Both agree a fourth grader is old enough. Coach Bill says he would love it if one of his fourth grade girls walked up and asked him to explain. As Coach Collins puts it, your job is to get them ready to leave the nest, not to stay in it. Nobody wants their thirty five year old kid still hanging around the house. Coaches: publish the rubric before tryouts, not after. Parents: handle the logistics, ask what was fun instead of how they did, and send your kid to talk to the coach themselves. Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com TitleSubtitleShow NotesStart with the boring stuffThen take off the coach hatThe communication triangleRehearse the hard conversations before they happenTeach the kid to advocate for themselvesCoach's takeaway Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visit https://teachhoops.com/ for more coaching resources, practice plans, and the TeachHoops community. Title: Is Your Culture Already Set Before the First Game Tips Off? Subtitle: Why the six weeks before tryouts decide more about your season than any scouting report, and how to build the standards your players will hold each other to when you are not in the gym. Show Notes Most coaches think culture gets built during the season. In this episode we make the case that by the time the first official practice arrives, the culture is largely already in place, and the preseason is where it either gets built on purpose or gets built by accident. Players walk into November already knowing what the standards are, who the leaders are, and whether the coach means what he says. All of that gets decided in September and October. We start with the idea that culture is simply what your players do when the coach is not watching. Open gyms, weight room sessions, and pickup runs are where that gets revealed. If your best players show up late to open gym in September, they will show up late to shootaround in January. The preseason is the one time of year when you can address that without the pressure of a game on Friday night, so use it. Set an expectation, watch how they respond, and correct it immediately and calmly. From there we talk about what a coach can actually control before the season starts. You can control your presence. Being visible at open gyms and lifting sessions, even when you cannot run them under your state rules, tells players what matters to you. You can control the message. Pick two or three non negotiables, say them the same way every time, and do not add a fourth until the first three are automatic. At Memorial the standards were simple: be on time, compete every rep, and talk. Everything else was coaching. You can control who you empower. The preseason is when you identify your captains not by a vote but by watching who does the work when nobody is making them. We spend some time on player led work. The strongest programs have upperclassmen running the show in the preseason, and that does not happen on its own. Meet with your returning players early. Tell them exactly what you need from them, give them a specific role such as running the shooting sessions or getting the freshmen to the weight room, and then hold them to it. When a senior corrects a sophomore in October, you have culture. When a coach has to do all of the correcting in December, you have a problem. The conversation also covers the small habits that compound. How players enter the gym, whether they rack the balls, whether they thank the custodian, whether they pick up after a lift. None of those things win a game by themselves, but they are the evidence that your standards are real. Coaches who let the small things slide in the preseason spend the whole season fighting the big things. Finally, we talk about the coach's own preseason discipline. Culture is a mirror. If you want players who are organized, prepared, and consistent, they need to see that from you first. Have your practice plans built before the first day. Have your team rules written down and explained in a meeting, not discovered through punishment. Communicate with parents before the first game about playing time and expectations so the culture on the bench matches the culture on the floor. The takeaway is that your culture is not a speech you give on day one. It is a set of habits your players are already practicing before day one arrives. Build them now and the season takes care of itself. For more on building program standards, leadership development, and full season practice planning, visit https://teachhoops.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ This episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast is brought to you by teachhoops.com, the coaching platform built by a coach for coaches who want their gym time to matter. Every coach has walked out of a practice that felt great and every coach has walked out of one that felt like ninety wasted minutes. The difference is rarely talent or effort. It is whether a handful of specific things were present. Coach lays out what those things are so you can build them into your plan on purpose instead of hoping they show up. It starts with a plan and a purpose. A great practice has a written plan with times, a stated focus for the day, and a reason behind every single drill. Players know what today is about before they stretch. There is a warm up that actually prepares them for the work, a flow that moves from teaching into pressure into live play, and an ending that leaves them with the message you most wanted them to carry home. Nothing on the sheet is there because it has always been there. The second group of things is about the work itself. Great practices are full of quality reps rather than long lines. They add a defender, a clock, or a score so players learn to execute under some kind of pressure. They include competition with a winner and a small consequence, because that is where toughness and composure get built. They include real teaching moments where the whistle stops everything, a correction gets made, and the very next rep is better. And they include the same core habits every day, so the fundamentals never get skipped just because something new got installed. The third group is the human part, and it is the piece most coaches undervalue. Great practices have energy that comes from the coaching staff first. They have communication, players talking on both ends and coaches using consistent language everyone understands. They have accountability, where the standard holds on the days nobody feels like holding it. They have players who get corrected and praised in the same practice, and a coach who is present rather than distracted. And they have a clear connection to the game, so players walk out understanding how what they just did will show up on Friday night. Put the whole list together and you get the honest test at the end of every practice. Did players get high quality reps? Did they get feedback that changed something? Did they compete? Do they know what they are better at today than they were yesterday? If the answer is yes on all four, that was a great practice regardless of how long it lasted. For customizable practice plans, a full drill library, offenses, defenses, and a community of coaches building better practices every week, head over to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Today's episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast comes to you from teachhoops.com, the coaching platform built to hand you the plan instead of making you invent one every night. Coach opens with a topic that sounds boring and quietly decides your season: how you set up practice before players ever touch the floor. Baskets, balls, cones, groups, who is where, and what happens the second a drill ends. Get that right and you gain real minutes every single day. The first stretch covers the physical setup. How many stations can your gym realistically support, how do you split baskets so nobody is standing in line, and where do you put the equipment so transitions take seconds instead of a minute? Coach talks about pre assigning groups by name or number so you never burn practice time picking teams, and about having the next drill's spacing already marked so you can flow straight into it. From there the conversation moves to the mental setup, which is the part most coaches skip. Players should walk in knowing what today is about. Coach explains why posting the plan, naming the focus for the day, and repeating the same two or three teaching points gives players something to hold onto. Practice becomes a story instead of a list of unrelated activities, and players start connecting the drill to the game situation it is preparing them for. The last section is about your staff and your own preparation. Assistants who know their station and their coaching points before practice starts are worth double. Coach also talks about writing the plan with times, then actually respecting those times, because the coach who lets one drill run long is stealing from the drill at the end that probably mattered more. Setup is not glamorous work, but it is where organized programs quietly separate themselves. For ready to run practice plans you can customize with your own drills, offenses, and defenses, go to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ This episode is presented by teachhoops.com, where coaches get the systems and drills that turn ideas into habits. Shot selection is one of those things coaches complain about constantly and teach almost never. We yell "bad shot" after it goes up, then move on without ever defining what a good shot actually is. Coach makes the case that shot selection is a teachable skill, not a personality trait, and that clarity fixes most of it. The core framework is simple enough for a third grader and useful enough for a varsity team. A great shot is wide open, in rhythm, and inside your range. A good shot is contested a little but on balance, at a spot you have practiced, taken by a player who can make it. A no shot is off balance, hand in your face, outside your range, early in the possession when nothing has been created, or taken by the wrong player at the wrong time. Once players have that vocabulary, coaching becomes correction instead of criticism. Coach then gets into the part that matters most: range and role are different for every player. Every player should know their spots, and every player should know which shots belong to somebody else. That is not punishment, it is clarity. The episode covers how to communicate a player's shot diet honestly without crushing confidence, and how to expand that range in the offseason so the conversation changes next year. The episode wraps by tying shot selection to your offense. If players are hunting bad shots, sometimes the answer is not a lecture, it is better spacing, better ball movement, or a clearer definition of what the offense is trying to produce. Track shot quality in scrimmages, freeze the action when a bad one goes up, and praise the pass that leads to a great shot as loudly as you praise the make. For drills and teaching progressions that build this in, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Brought to you by teachhoops.com, a platform built by a coach for coaches who want their limited gym time to count. Practice time is the one resource every coach wishes they had more of, and the one most coaches quietly waste. This episode takes an honest look at how long practice should be at different levels, how to break that time into pieces, and what to cut when the clock forces a decision. Coach starts with length by age group. Youth practices that stretch past an hour and a half usually turn into supervised exhaustion. Middle school and high school can handle more, but more is only better when the extra minutes are purposeful. The point is not endurance, it is quality reps with feedback. A tight seventy five minutes beats a sloppy two hours in almost every situation. The next section is about dividing the time. How much goes to individual skill work, how much to team offense and defense, how much to live competitive play, and how much to situations and special teams? Coach explains why those percentages should shift as the season moves from preseason to conference play to postseason, and why hanging onto the same practice template all year is a mistake. The last stretch is about the hidden leaks. Water breaks that stretch, drills that run long because they are going well, teaching moments delivered to twelve players when they were meant for one, and the ten minutes at the end when everyone is already thinking about going home. Fix those and you find an extra practice worth of time every couple of weeks. For customizable practice plans with built in timing, go to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ This episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast is supported by teachhoops.com, where the whole idea is teaching coaches how to teach. Most coaching content tells you what to run. This one is about how you deliver it. Two coaches can install the exact same offense and get completely different results, and the difference is almost always the teaching method. Coach walks through a progression that works at every level. Show it, say it simply, break it into the smallest useful piece, get reps without pressure, then add a defender, then add speed, then put it in a live setting. Skipping a step feels efficient in the moment and costs you three weeks later when players cannot execute it against real defense. The episode digs into how long to stay at each stage and what tells you a group is ready to move up. There is also a real conversation about language. Coaches who use ten words to describe one action get ten different interpretations. Coach talks about picking short consistent cue words, using the same ones every time, and getting your assistants and your youth feeder coaches saying the same thing. When the vocabulary is shared, teaching gets faster every year because you are not starting over. The final piece is feedback. Correction that comes too late, too vague, or too constantly stops working. Coach covers timing your corrections, giving one thing to fix at a time, and letting players self correct so learning transfers to games where you cannot talk to them. Great teaching is repeatable, and once you have a method, every new drill you add becomes easier to install. For the full library of teaching progressions and drills, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ This one is brought to you by teachhoops.com, where coaches find the teaching progressions that make hard skills coachable. Screening is one of the most valuable and least taught skills in basketball. Every team runs ball screens. Very few teams set good ones. Coach calls it an art because good screening is equal parts technique, timing, and willingness, and all three have to be taught. The technique section covers the fundamentals that get skipped. A wide base, a legal stance, the angle of the screen, and screening the defender rather than the spot on the floor where you assume the defender is. Coach explains why the angle is the single most common failure and why most screens that "did not work" were actually set two feet from where they needed to be. Then the episode gets into the user, which matters just as much. A great screen is wasted by a player who runs past it, refuses to set up the defender, or comes off before it is even set. Coach walks through the setup step, the shoulder to shoulder read, and how the ball handler and the screener have to see the same picture. This is where teams jump from running a play to actually running an offense. The last part is culture. Screening is unselfish work that does not show up in the box score, so it only happens consistently if you make it visible. Praise it out loud, track it, put it on film, and let your best players model it. When a program values screening, spacing improves, shot quality improves, and offense stops depending on one player beating somebody off the dribble. For screening drills and full offensive systems built around them, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/⁠ If the play breaks down and five heads turn to the bench, that is not a basketball problem. That is a coaching habit. This episode is about moving from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side, and building players who can think when the gym gets loud. What we cover: Handing players real decisions, and why ownership is a muscle that has to be loaded Trading instructions for questions, because a rented answer disappears under pressure Killing excuses by killing your own first, starting with the refs and the schedule Levels, standards, and borrowing what video games understand about motivation Why autonomy without warmth reads as checking out, and why they take hard from someone who cares This week's challenge: at one practice, tally every instruction you give against every question you ask. Then move ten of them over. Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, on court clinics, and the coaching community at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Brought to you by teachhoops.com, the platform that hands coaches a better practice instead of a longer to do list. This episode is about improving practice without changing your schedule, your roster, or your facility. Most coaches assume a better practice requires more of something. Coach makes the case that it usually requires better use of what you already have. The first upgrade is having a real plan with times, a stated focus, and a purpose behind every drill. If you cannot say what a drill teaches in one sentence, it is a candidate for the cut list. The second is raising the intensity floor by adding a defender, a clock, or a score to drills that currently have none. Players compete the way they practice, and nobody has ever built toughness in a line. The third area is feedback quality. Coach talks about coaching one thing at a time, correcting quickly, and being specific enough that a player knows exactly what to change. There is also the flip side, which is knowing when to stay quiet and let a player figure it out. Practices where the coach talks the entire time produce players who cannot function without a voice in their ear. The last stretch is about energy and ending well. How practice starts sets the tone, how you handle the middle sag decides whether you get anything out of it, and what you finish with is what players carry home. Coach suggests ending with something competitive and something clear, so the last thing they remember is the thing you most wanted them to learn. For practice plans you can adapt to your own team in minutes, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ This episode is presented by teachhoops.com, where coaches sharpen the game management skills that decide close games. Timeouts are one of the few in game resources a coach fully controls, and they get burned constantly on frustration rather than strategy. Coach breaks down when a timeout is genuinely the right call, when it is a waste, and how to make the sixty seconds count once you have used one. The first part is about timing. Stopping a run before it becomes a collapse, protecting your team out of a broken possession, getting a set play in at the end of a quarter, or giving legs a break at the right moment. Coach also covers the other side, which is letting your team play through adversity so they learn to solve problems without you rescuing them every time. The middle of the episode is about what you actually say. Sixty seconds is not enough for a lecture. Coach recommends deciding your one message before you reach the huddle, delivering it in a sentence or two, showing it if you can, and then letting your team breathe. Tone matters as much as content. A panicked coach produces a panicked team, and players read your body language before they hear a word. The last section covers the end of game math. Knowing how many you have left, whether you can advance the ball, when to use one to set up defense, and how many you want in your pocket for the final minute. Coach also talks about practicing timeout huddles so the routine is automatic, including who stands where and who speaks. That is a real practice item, not an afterthought. For late game situation work and full practice plans, head to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Supported by teachhoops.com, a resource built on the idea that clarity beats complexity. This short episode is a reminder most coaches need at least once a season. Complexity feels like coaching. Multiple offenses, several defenses, dozens of drills, and a new wrinkle every week all look like hard work. What they usually produce is a team that does many things poorly and nothing well. Coach lays out the case for simplicity. Pick a small number of things your team must do well and repeat them until they hold up under pressure. One primary offense with counters beats four half learned sets. One defense your team can execute beats three they can only walk through. Players play faster when they are not thinking, and they stop thinking when the menu is short and familiar. The episode also addresses the coach's ego problem honestly. Adding new stuff is fun. Repeating the same thing for the fifth week in a row is not. But March belongs to teams whose habits are automatic, not teams with the biggest playbook. Coach talks about how to keep repetition fresh through competition and constraints so simple never turns into boring. The last section gives a practical test. Ask your players to explain your offense in one sentence, or ask what your defense is trying to take away. If the answers vary wildly, you are running too much. Cut something this week and watch the execution improve. Simple is not a lack of ambition, it is how you actually get good. For practice plans and systems built to be taught, learned, and repeated, go to teachhoops.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/⁠ Summer is over, the banners are hung, and this episode asks an uncomfortable question: did you win because you taught something, or because you found something? One of those lasts. One of those disappears the moment everybody else grows. What we cover: The bamboo mindset and why root systems never show up on a December scoreboard Choosing success metrics before the season, and why whatever you measure is what your players chase Why development over winning is a rotation decision and a practice plan decision, not a slogan Giving shooting real time instead of the last eight minutes of practice Teaching your parents, because the car ride home carries more weight than the huddle Why assigning positions to twelve year olds builds players who run out of runway This week's challenge: write down three ways you will measure this season that have nothing to do with the final score, then show them to your players and your parents. Resources: Season plans, practice plans, drills, courses, and on court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What Does Winning Actually Look Like for Your Team This Season? Why defining success before the first tip changes how your whole season feels If you don't define winning, the scoreboard will define it for you, and the scoreboard is a brutal boss. In this episode Coach Collins pushes coaches to decide what a successful season means before the first practice, so the team has something to compete for even in the years when the record isn't going to be pretty. What we cover The difference between outcome goals you can't control and standards you can Picking two or three team goals that are measurable and repeatable Improvement markers worth tracking: turnover rate, defensive stops, free throw attempts, rebounding margin, deflections How to talk about winning in terms of daily habits so players stay bought in during a losing stretch Getting parents on the same page early so everyone measures the season the same way Revisiting the definition at midseason instead of letting it drift Coaching point A team that knows what winning means for them plays harder in the games where the final score is already decided. Try this week Write your definition of a successful season on one index card. If it doesn't fit, it's too complicated for your players to remember. https://teachhoops.com/ SubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Can Every Player on Your Team Repeat Your Vision Back to You? How to make your message simple enough that it actually sticks A vision your players can't repeat is just a speech you gave in October. This episode is about boiling your message down and then saying it far more often than feels comfortable, until it becomes the language of your program. What we cover Shrinking the vision to a short phrase anyone on the roster can say without thinking Repetition as teaching: preseason meetings, huddles, film sessions, hallway conversations Tying every drill back to the vision so players understand why the work matters Getting assistants using identical language, because mixed messages destroy belief Giving players ownership so the vision becomes theirs instead of yours Reinforcing the vision by publicly praising the exact behavior you want Coaching point Repetition is not nagging. It's instruction. Say it more than you think you need to. Try this week Ask three players separately what the team is trying to become. If you get three different answers, the message hasn't landed yet. https://teachhoops.com/ TitleSubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Are These Three Mistakes Quietly Wasting Your Practice Time? The common habits that eat reps, energy, and player attention Most wasted practice time comes from a handful of repeatable errors, and almost every coach makes at least one of them. Coach Collins names the three biggest offenders and gives a fix for each. Mistake 1: Talking too much Long explanations kill reps. Teach in short bursts, get them playing, then correct on the fly. If you're talking for two minutes, you've already lost half the gym. Mistake 2: Standing in lines Too many players waiting, too few moving. Break into small groups, use multiple baskets, and choose drills that keep every player active. Mistake 3: No score, no standard, no consequence Work without a winner turns into going through the motions. Put a score, a time limit, or a target number on almost everything. Also covered Planning practice on paper with time stamps, then actually honoring the clock Closing every segment with one clear teaching point Evaluating practice by reps and energy rather than by how much you said Coaching point Judge your practice by what your players did, not by what you explained. Try this week Have someone time how long you talk during one practice. The number usually surprises people. https://teachhoops.com/ TitleSubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Is Your Practice Competitive Enough to Prepare Players for Game Pressure? Building daily competition so game situations feel familiar instead of new Players don't rise to the occasion in games. They fall back to the level of competition they practiced at. This episode covers how to build real competition into nearly everything you do in the gym. What we cover Putting a score on almost every drill so someone wins and someone loses Short competitive segments: first to five, best of three, beat the clock Rotating teams and matchups so the same group isn't always on top Live pressure situations: down two with thirty seconds, one and one at the line, sideline out of bounds with a foul to give Holding a real standard on the losing side, whether that's a sprint, a rebounding drill, or simply running it back Praising competitive effort as loudly as you praise made shots Coaching point Pressure in March feels normal to teams that competed in November. Try this week Take one drill you run every day and add a score to it. Watch how differently the gym sounds. https://teachhoops.com/ TitleSubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Your practice looks beautiful. Everybody is moving, nobody is standing around, the whistle is on time, and the assistant with the clipboard is happy. And then the game starts and your team cannot make a read to save its life. That gap between a clean practice and a confused team is what this episode is about. Coach Collins breaks down the shift from block drills to games based practice. Not throwing the ball out and letting them play, which is the other extreme and just as lazy. Small sided games with a constraint, a scoring system, and a teaching point baked into the rules, so the game itself does the coaching while you stand there and ask questions. What we get into: The difference between a drill, a small sided game, and free play, and when each one belongs in your practice Why unopposed reps build confidence but almost never build decision making Constraints as coaching: taking away the dribble, shrinking the floor, adding a shot clock, capping the passes Two on two and three on three as your best teaching tools all preseason Scoring the game so the behavior you want is the behavior that wins Asking questions instead of shouting corrections, and how to build that habit as a coach Keeping the competitive temperature high without letting it turn into a street fight How to script a practice that is seventy percent live and still teaches something specific every segment The one thing to watch for: kids who look great in lines and disappear when there is a defender Your challenge: take one block drill you have run for years, add a defender and a constraint, and run it as a game this week. Watch what you learn about your team in ten minutes. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Title: What Are the Five Attributes Every Great Rebounder Has? Subtitle: Why the best rebounders on the floor are rarely the tallest players in the gym Show Notes Every coach says they want a team that rebounds. Very few actually teach it. In this episode we break down the five attributes that show up in every great rebounder, and how to build each one in players who do not have length or leaping ability on their side. What we cover: Anticipation. Reading the shot before it leaves the shooter's hand. Understanding that most misses come back long and to the weak side, and how that knowledge gives a player a half second head start on the ball. Toughness and physicality. Rebounding is a contact skill and a decision, not a talent. The willingness to initiate contact and hold ground under the rim is what separates a rebounder from a tall player standing nearby. Positioning and technique. Finding a body, making contact, and going to get it. Hit and go, not hit and stand. Players who box out and then admire their work hand the ball right back. Pursuit and motor. Most rebounds are not caught on the first jump. Keeping the ball alive, tapping it out, and chasing it down again is where possessions get won. Securing and finishing. Two hands, chin it, land strong, then make the right next play. A rebound you cannot keep is not a rebound. Drills and teaching points to take with you. How to build these attributes into your daily practice plan, how to track rebounding in a way players actually respond to, and how to make it a program value instead of a pregame talking point. Join the conversation and get more coaching resources at https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

https://teachhoops.com/ Title: What Should Your Basketball Team Be Doing Before Practice Even Starts? Subtitle: How the ten minutes before the whistle shape everything that follows Show Notes Most coaches think practice begins when they blow the whistle. It doesn't. The habits players build walking into the gym, grabbing a ball, and getting shots up set the tone for the entire session. In this episode we break down what a purposeful pre practice period looks like and why so many programs waste it. What we cover: The difference between players "warming up" and players preparing. One is filling time, the other is building something. Form shooting and ball handling stations that players can run without a coach standing over them. Give them a routine they own. Getting the body ready. Dynamic movement, hip and ankle work, and short activation pieces that cut down soft tissue issues over a long season. Using the time to teach. Pull one or two players aside for individual work while the rest of the group runs the routine. Over a season those small conversations add up. Setting expectations early. Arrival time, phones away, shoes tied, ball in hands. When the standard is clear, you stop policing it by December. Managers, film, and whiteboard setup so the transition into the first drill is instant. No dead time. How the pre practice routine changes from October to February, and what to keep constant no matter the point in the season. Coaching points to take with you: pick three things you want every player better at by March, and build the pre practice period around those three. Keep it short, keep it repeatable, and hold the standard every single day. Join the conversation and get more coaching resources at https://teachhoops.com/ What Should Your Basketball Team Be Doing Before Practice Even Starts? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices