Special Situations - Gut Feeling...or by "the Book"

To clarify our situation chart and the use of "the book", I have a
bench coach that has this chart on the bench and it's been his job
to be "in my ear" and remind me when one of those situations occur.
That doesn't mean that sometimes a "gut feeling" won't trump the
chart, but this serves as a guideline. Obviously, the chart has our
calls, so come up with the plays that you have in your arsenal that
best fit that situation.

Next to the situation have a play or two that you'd prefer to run in
that scenario - then maybe you can choose from a couple diferent
ones. However, some of the situations, for me, ARE pretty cut and
dry and this is what we will do in that situation *every time*. This
way the kids are prepared, through practice, and time outs are not
as necessary. KNOWING what they are going to do does wonders for
their confidence in the fact that they CAN get it done.

Lessons Learned

Having not had a great high school or collegiate experience with
coaches, When I first stopped playing and got into coaching
I thought that I knew better and had all of the answers.
After a few years I realized that I had mentors that were letting me
hang around (regardless of how stubborn I may have been) and I was
not letting them mentor me. So we began to get in open debates and I
took to becoming a real student of the game.

Allowing yourself to be exposed to a variety of ideas and styles of
play helps you solidify what you really believe and enables you
develop your own unique philosophy, instead of just being a clone of
those that you played for.

Later I realized that one of the the most important aspects of teaching was that a player recognized that they made a mistake - not to just let them know how much I know, that I'm in charge and then chastise them for making it. If a player knows that he made a mistake, what to do to correct it, and he also knows that you know - that is far more important than
the tirade that lets him know how upset you are over it.

Developing an economy of words allows you to be more productive in
practice. I remember in practice my first 3 or 4 sentences would be
useless to the kid.

Typical rant: "Dog-gone-it Johnny, how many times are you going to
make that mistake... we've been working on this for a month and you
are still doing the same stupid things that you were doing the first
week in practice... you're so much better than that ...I can't
believe...yada. ..yada... yada..."

At that point I hadn't done a thing to help him yet. He's now checked
out and entirely unable to hear whatever advice I was eventually
ready to give. Get to the point - the tirade is useless. (then when
you finally do have to let loose it will really mean something!:? )

I read a study in Psychology Today by Tharp and Gallimore that
followed John Wooden during his final year and categorized all of
his communication to his players. As a college project I audio-taped
my own practices to try and compare the amount of instruction,
information, praises, criticisms, hustles, etc. I've tried to, less
formally, go back throughout the years and analyze practices
accordingly to keep myself in check.