Hey coaches, I've posted on here a few times from the "Player" section, but this time I need some help coaching younger kids! My highschool basketball program asks its players to come in every Saturday morning, and help run a camp for the kids, who're 3rd and 4th graders. Each highschooler has a certain part of the game they get to cover with the kids, and I get to cover all of defense! So far I've taught them how to guard a ball handler, how to anticipate passing lanes and how to deny the pass. But the next thing I want to cover with them is Help Defense. I just can't seem to think of a drill that they'd understand and would be easy for a group ranging from 6-7 kids to do. Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!

Pistols/ Sherrif drill is a good one to start. Defensive player has a man to guard plus coach on offense with ball. D player has pistols out one pointed at their man, one at dribbler. As coach dribbles down or their player moves, they adjust, but keep the pistols pointed at both.

You can do a basic aspects of the shell drill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9GWqQI-XVM

But first you have to train the offense so it's productive.

Start with 4 or 5 offensive players on perimeter. Explain the 3 commands are pass, skip, and drive. Note there is no defense right now.

Show them a pass (is a pass to person next to you). Skip is a pass the skips the player next to you. And a drive is when you dribble to the basket. Then they come back out. You always go back to your spot and stay in that spot.

Practice for a while. You just call out the commands and get the players passing, driving, and moving the ball around. This will be a challenge at first.

So once you get your offense to do this fairly well, you can bring in the defense to work on positioning as you command the ball to be moved around. It might take a practice or two for the offense to get their passing and driving command down. The good news is they are practicing passing while prepping for shell drill.

The point your pistols drill is also a great idea. Using the phrase "point your pistols" really helps and I would suggest it. Helps players see both their man and the ball.

One thing we always emphasize is STOP ball. If someone's man got beat leave your man and stop ball.

Like the 4 v 4 shell drills, a lot. It shows the positioning of where a player should be in relation to their man and the ball (e.g. one pass away, two passes).

One thing I like to do is break it down even further and have one kid on defense and three perimeter players (with one being the coach). Assign the D player a person to guard down low on one side or the other. When his person has the ball he should be in the on ball position. When his player passes to the person up top (one pass away), he should be in the one pass away position. When that person passes to the third player (two passes away), we teach they should have two feet in the paint.

Once they get the positions down (one pass, two passes away), you can allow some penetration dribbling into the paint. The goal is to make sure your D player understands they have to stop ball. If the ball is passed back to their player, they have to recover quickly.

On the pistols drill, once they get the concept, we allow their player to try and get behind them or the dribbler to penetrate the lane. We're not going full speed here, just enough to challenge them to get the concept of not losing their man and stopping the ball if it's going in the paint.

Thank you! I'll make sure to use these tips!

My practice tonight is going be entirely dedicated to defense as our D was atrocious in game 1.

Below is my practice plan, taken in large part from http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/defense/help-positioning.html on this website. This is WAY MORE talking than I usually do in practice, but I know I'll have all my kids there tonight and I've got to cover this ground with all of them there. These are 5th grade boys. I welcome any comments or critiques:



We have got to get better at our Defense. That is what we are working on tonight.

We are starting over with our entire man to man defense from scratch.

What we want to work on is having a complete TEAM defense, where everyone is the same page, and everyone is ready to help in case their teammate gets beat. We don’t want to get beat, that is why we do thing like Z-drill, but everyone is going to get beat. We can still have a great team defense and prevent the other team from scoring if we have good help defense. The player LeBron is guarding will beat him several times a night, but his teammates are there ready to help and that is we are going to do too.

#1 way we can make our defense better, other than knowing just who the heck we are guarding, is our POSITIONING.

So, just like we have rules for our offense, we are going to set some rules for our man to man defense.

DEFENSIVE RULES
1. When you man has the ball, always stay between your man and the basket.
2. When your man does not have the ball, always stay between the ball and your man.
3. Always be able to see your man and the ball.
--HOW? Head looking between your man and the ball.
--Peripheral vision.
4. Be close enough to your man to stop him if the ball is passed to him.
--that means if he gets the ball, you are close enough to get there to stop him from driving or putting up an uncontested shot.
5. Be close enough to help if you teammate gets beat.

Defense when you are guarding a player that is ONE PASS AWAY.
One pass away means when you are guarding and offensive player and there are no other offensive players between you and the ball.
USE WHITE BOARD TO SHOW ONE PASS AWAY.
When you are one pass away, you need to be close enough to help if the player with the ball beats his man.


NEED YOU TO BE UP THE LINE AND OFF THE LINE
Show them what the line is, with tape measure between two dots.
Show them up the line…use tape measure..slide up the line towards the ball—puts you in help position.
Show them off the line---slide back off the line a bit towards the basket—puts you in even better help position.

Our basic style of man to man defense is going to be to allow that perimeter pass! We are going to call this 1 (for man to man) WOLF. Explain the why “wolf” in a minute. If they want to pass it around the perimeter all day, that is fine. We’ll let them do that. They will get bored and they will make a mistake. Or they will take a shots from way out by the 3, no problem, we’d like that all day. If we are behind in a game and really need to create some more pressure, we might go into more of a denial defense where we get on the line, we’ll call that ONE D---for denial. But tonight we are focusing on ONE WOLF.

So, when you are one pass away the correct position is up the line and slightly off the line.

If the ball is passed to your man, you have to bust your butt to get in front and prevent him from penetrating. You are close enough to your man to do that, right?

If the man with the ball drives, you are close enough to do what? HELP, correct.

So this is why we call this ONE WOLF. This is a "Wolf Pack" style defense. If a predator penetrates the wolf's boundaries, the wolf pack swarms them. Our defense should be the same. If the ball handler penetrates, the defender nearest to the ball should swarm to the ball and make him pick up his dribble or pass the ball.

So, let’s talk about your position when you are more than one pass away.

Two passes away means there is one or more offensive players between you and the ball.
--again you want to be up the line and off the line
--when you are two passes away you are more off the line


1. When the ball is at the point and you are two passes away, we want you up the line….closer to the ball, and off the line with a foot in the paint.

DEMONSTRATE THE LINE BETWEEN THE POINT AND PLAYER ALONG BASELINE AT 3 POINT LINE AND WHERE WE WANT DEFENDER TO BE.

2. When the ball is on the opposite side of the court from you (weak side)….want you up the line ALL THE WAY TO THE RIM LINE, and off the line. Show where the rim line is. Are you going to be able to steal that skip pass? Not if it is good. But that is fine, you will have time to get over and stop your man from penetrating. And when you are on the rim line, you are in a position to help.

WHAT ARE YOU ALSO DOING BY being on that rim line position?

When we run our offense, we do what? We pass and cut for a layup.

And when we are cutting for a layup, do we want the lane to be crowded or empty? EMPTY?

So, by play playing up the line all the way to the rim line, you are CLOGGING UP THE MIDDLE and making it hard for the other team to cut just by being in the right position.

Shell Defense 5 v 5

1--Start slow and simple
--pass and hold for 5 seconds, count in your head 1-5 mississippi before passing.
--defense, don’t steal the ball, this is all about your positioning
--COACH WILL CALL PASS or SKIP

2—Add the drive option
--hold for 3 seconds,
--Coach will call PASS or SKIP or DRIVE

3—5 v 5 half court, Offense running our motion offense.

-Defending inbounds plays

--defending against a stack inbound play

--person guarding the inbounder, going to play off in the lane—show position

--EVERYONE ELSE---GET BASKET SIDE OF YOUR MAN

--don’t need to be inbetween them in the stack, but you do need to be touching your man