The Screaming Viking

Attached is a letter from a death row inmate.  This guy killed a 17 year old girl to whom which he offered crack for sex.  From the article I read, the father of the girl was pretty distraught about the letter.

deathrowletter

This past weekend both highschool basketball teams (boys and girls) were in action against the Minot Ryan Lions. There are a couple of schools in Minot that when we play against they bring both their teams. From an economic stand point it kinda makes sense I suppose. It gets to be a lot of basketball…but right now I’m in to watching it. I had planned on being there for the early afternoon game to watch how my girls play with the freshman team, the wife was also going to come with. I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay for the varsity games, but I found out the day before that I would need to be there for the beginning of the girls varsity game to run a video for the 2nd graders to sing to. Not a huge deal, but it gets to be quite a long day. I wasn’t sure of the logistics of the video, so I showed up at 11am to work out the video and sound. The varsity game ended around 9, for a weekend day that gets to be quite a while in ye old school house.

I am glad we stayed for the entire boys game. It was a close game…but more interesting than that Ryan had a guy on the team that looked just like me when I used to play. He was a wide body, belly over his belt, got winded fairly quick…but he was agile and could score around the rim…just like me when I played. One of the things that he, me and every other decent wide body I’ve seen play the game, does well is shield their shot with their body. I’ve tried to explain how to do this to some of the players I’ve coached, but I can’t come up with a good way to show them how to do it. I know several of the boys were at this game, and I’m hoping when monday comes they will be able to recall how this guy played as I’m talking to them and they can make the connection.

Basketball is a physical game…and the boys are going to be getting a lot of contact down low. One thing I’m trying to teach them is to not avoid the contact, seek it out, initiate it and control the contact with your body. If you embrace the fact that shots under the hoop are going to be body to body shots, if you control that contact with your body and learn how to keep the opponent off your shooting hand they will become far more effective post players.

Something else that I am going to try to explain to them and reference this game is the difference between a good player and a great player. Our varsity team has a very good player who is the star of the team. He can score, is good defensively…all that. In my mind though, the difference between a good player and a great player is a good player gets his points, can control the tempo of the game and keeps his team in the game till the end. A great player will bring out the best of his teammates. Sometimes it’s necessary to forgo your own shot at the beginning of the game just to get your teammates involved. What a lot of good players don’t realize is that once you get every one involved it makes scoring opportunities easier to come by for the “star”.

We still have two weeks before our first game, so there is a lot of training left to do. I’m really curious to see how these boys come together as a unit. There is a lot of potential there, but since I wasn’t involved with them last year…I have no idea what their competition will look like.

Oh, and since I watched my girls play ryan’s freshman team…I was able to see that when we went to Ryan and got beat up on…we were playing their freshman team. One of the girls, the main one that shut us down in the lane, saw significant time on Ryan’s JV team. Utterly ridiculous…but that is getting to be a more common story. As I watch the teams that either gave us a significant challenge or that beat us down…their main players are starters on the freshman teams and seem to see time on JV. I don’t get it…

Article source: http://www.hillbillycoach.com/2012/01/22/teaching/

I introduced the boys to the first level of the read and react on day one.  For about 15min at the end of practice we ran through 5 out pass and cut.  It was pretty rough.  I expected them to get it right away.  What I didn’t take in to account is this is most likely the first time they have been exposed to something like this.  We ran it for around 15min on the 2nd day and they ran through it much better.  Even the guys that were struggling the most with it started to click.  I was just as surprised by their sudden understanding as I was about their lack of understanding the first day.  I am, by nature, an impatient person.  Ideally I’d like to be able to explain something and have them grasp it right away…obviously that doesn’t happen.  On the up side, I did originally plan on spending these first 3 conditioning days working 15min each day on the 5 out first layer of RR…so by the end of these 3 days the boys will understand the pass and cut layer.  Given that I’d planned on taking 3 days for them to get it…why am I surprised that it looks like they will understand it after 3 days?  Clearly while I was planning things out I had a very realistic goal, but when I got on the floor and my natural coaching desire to push them kicked in I expected more.  I think that’s fairly normal.

As I’m evaluating how fast they are digesting the system and how many practices we have I’m starting to see that it’s not worth the money to buy the “complete dvd set” for the read and react system.  At one point I had contemplated it.  I’m interested in all the various drills you can run to enhance the player’s understanding of the system.  Given the relative shortness of the 7th and 8th grade season, I’m not going to be able to go deeper than about 4 layers.  I can find out information and technique for those layers on youtube.  Beyond that, I can create a few different drills on my own for them.  The only way I could see the dvd set being worth the price is if you are the varsity coach and you want to start implementing this over the course of years.  Where I would have to start over every year..the varsity coach could bring guys into the system and not have to start from the beginning each time.  Also, if he pushed it down to the Jr. High level he would be able to get deeper and deeper with it at the high school level.

I’ve been trying to make the connections for them in their heads between the drills we are doing.  One warm up drill we pass, cut to the hole, catch the ball and hit a layup.  In the 5 out drill we pass, cut to the hole, don’t get a pass, fill the empty spot.  We did a post up shooting drill yesterday, pass in to the post, relocate, post kicks it back out..take a shot, after the post player passes out, they work to the other side of the lane, catch a pass and make a move to score.  It re-enforces the pass and move concept and adds in some shooting and post work.

I think the levels I’m going to implement are the pass and cut, feed the post with a laker cut, drive and bounce off, dribble at, and the back pin.  It doesn’t sound like much…but when you think about how these athletes have been trained to this point, it gets a little difficult.  Most athletes at this age are trained like robots, they go to this spot…set this screen, move here…blah blah blah.  There are obvious problems with this, there is no creativity, there is no taking advantage of the defense sleeping, guys are not always looking for the ball and they are not always looking to pass the ball.  The players need to be aware of proper spacing…they need to not just know to do something, but why they are doing it.  Once they start to make those connections the game comes alive and so many other areas open up to them.  Doing the natural progression some athletes will come to this on their own…but I think using the read and react techniques they will gain a deeper understanding of the game.

Time will tell.

Article source: http://www.hillbillycoach.com/2012/01/18/read-react-day-2/

Not a whole lot to report after the first day.  The boys showed up and overall worked hard.  I did expect them to be a little more rowdy than they were…they were pretty well behaved.  I did end up with more on the team than came to the preseason meeting or than the boys that were there thought would play.  There is about 16 boys.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I lost 1 or 2 in the next couple of days though.  I’d hope they wouldn’t quit, I told them several times that the first little bit is going to be rough but it will get easier and easier every day.  I’m going to see how many in each grade I have today.

We started out with the very basics of the read and react.  It was a little rough for them, but by the end of the quick drill about 2/3 of the team seemed to have a good idea how the first level is done.  I’m expecting the ones that seem like they are having the most difficulty are the 7th graders, but we’ll see today.

So far, their attitudes are good and the skill level is around what I expected.  Lots of them need to work on shooting though…they are still doing the grade school shoot from the face or neck technique.  they need to realize they are older and stronger so that ball needs to move over their head.  That will take some time and dedication on their part.  It’s always tough to change something that someone perceves as “working”.

Article source: http://www.hillbillycoach.com/2012/01/17/boys-jr-high-first-day/