Try practicibng some 3 on 3 NO dribble games.... that should take away the screen ON the ball since he cant dribble.

Scrimmaged a team from another league last night and lost.

They were generally bigger than us, but not quicker. But they were the first team we've seen that was aggressive with ball denial and we had was too many passes intercepted throwing to stationary targets. They were also the first team we've seen playing a zone (3-2). That threw us off for a while until we called time out and explained that we needed players flashing in to the middle of the lane as they were leaving that space totally unguarded. That got us some decent looks. Generally our offense was poor and it was night where we had of shots that were in and out.

The opponents offense was very much a high screen on the guy bringing the ball up offense. They clearly were well coached and were good at cross overs and setting up the defender to run in to that high ball screen. We lunged for too many steals and go beat consistently in the first half until I really emphasized simply staying in front of the ball handler and not reaching. We go over this all the time, but then again, they're 10.

Pet peeve: we played by the other team's league's no back court pressure rule. Their coach called a time out with 5 second to go in a quarter with them needing to advance the ball from under the basket they were defending. Because we couldn't guard half court, they rolled the ball from the inbounder to a waiting receiver just inside the half court line while our defender could not cross half court and get the ball. Stupid rule that should be modified for situations like this. They didn't end up scoring but almost did.

All and all I think it was good to knock us back a bit and hopefully deflates a little bit of the "we can do whatever we want and still win" I could see creeping in at the last couple practices and games.

We play a pretty good team tomorrow morning, the one with the 3 hulks, so hopefully we respond with a bit of fire.

Use this a learning experience - playing vs a bigger team is tough, but it should tell your kids that we will have to work harder against teams like this!

One question.... why the heck are they playing a 3-2 zone at 10 years old? The almight W.... what a shame. teach your kids how to play m2m and some sort of motion offense... simple 5 out pass and cut. They can learn how to play the game that way and hopefully be able to play at the next level. Have FUN

So we won our last couple of games and now head to the playoffs. Our scoring has tailed off a bit, mostly due to the unbelievable number of "unforced" travelling turnovers: shuffling the feet on a rebound; taking 2 steps after picking up the dribble; changing the pivot foot.

Most of them come from the same 2-3 players. So our last practice may be a bit of a back to the basics boot camp.

You can never practice fundamentals too much, especially at that age. We worked on fundamentals every day and we were boys varsity. A lof our practices were geared towards the team we were playing next.

To complete the takeover of this thread into my own personal season long diary, we finished our season yesterday in the finals against the other strong team in our league. This is the team with 3 kids bigger than our biggest, and a couple of other kids with good skills. Plus a loud and vocal parent group and yesterday they even showed up with an 8 person cheerleading squad! But we had beaten them twice previously, both times holding a lead for the whole game.

I had been preaching since our last practice that if we focused on 3 things--taking care of the ball, defense and rebounds--we'll win this league. Didn't talk about our offense at all. We won the semis on Saturday handily playing pretty good D and minimizing the travelling that had plagued us in the previous game.

Well, perhaps I should have said something about offense. We were down 7-0, I believe, before getting our first point. The other team came out with lots of energy and aggression. In 3rd/4th grade hoops, that is a big hole. It was physical, but it was physical both ways. There must have been 25 jump balls in the game. We couldn't get anything to go in and they were making shots. I had a couple of kids in tears half way through the first half as their shots that normally go in just wouldn't fall. But I just project calmness,show that I was not worried and told them over and over that we were fine, that our shots would would come around, just keep focusing on our three things. We kept grinding and started to get a foothold in the game. I think we were down 5 at half.

Finally tied it up at 16-16 with about 5 minutes to play. Pulled ahead two on two free throws (by a kid who, for some reasons, has a habit of making his first free throw and air balling the second--this happened twice in the semis--but in the clutch here he came through). Got up 4 on a baseline runner from a kid who normally doesn't score, and then I think we scored 1 more free throw and one more basket in the last 2 minutes while they scored 2 points. Our D smothered them in the second half.

Oh, and a great moment in the first half. Their giant (our boys called him Shaq) and our smallest player get in a tie up. Shaq tries to rip the ball away, our little dude will not let go. Jump ball eventually called as our little guy is pulled off the ground with his feet furiously kicking in the air for a few seconds. I loved it.

This was our first game where we were behind for any length of time, and our best player never found his shot, but I was thrilled that the boys were able to dig in and not give up. It was a battle against a bigger squad but after we calmed down a bit, we played better than they did.

Had a new one happen yesterday too: mom of our best player came over and ripped into him during the first half. Told him to stop pouting and improve his attitude or she was going to yank him of the court. He was sulking around a bit, but he is an aggressive and emotional kid. I probably should have told her to get out of there, but I was a bit in shock. When she left, I just put my arm around him and told him he was fine, just go out and play his game, I had total confidence in him. He played well the rest of the game---he actually played well throughout, his shot just wasn't falling like usual. But he was our best defender and rebounder.

Overall pleased with they year. I had no problem kids. I've had problem kids in soccer before and it makes things hard for both the coach and the other players, but this team was pleasantly free of that. I had no problem parents, though our parents were certainly worked up in the finals and screaming a lot, but they got their kids to practices and games on time and I had no parent complaints. All kids got to play at least half of every game, so no PT ccmplaints. In the finals a did tighten things a bit and a couple of kids probably played 15 of the 40 minutes, but I felt that was reasonable.

Did pretty well with coaching my own kid, I think. He told me once on the way home that I am harder on him than other kids, and I told him that was because I know he can handle it whereas I wasn't sure how touchy some of the other kids might be to criticism. But I definitely made a conscious effort going forward to try to treat him just like the other boys and we had no issues going forward. His shot needs lots of work (two handed shot, working on making it one handed) and he had several games where he didn't score, but he passed well, played hard on D and was better than average at rebounding. He was one of the kids I had in down the stretch yesterday and he did great on D and rebounding and didn't turn it over. He is just a bit uncoordinated with his long limbs, just like his dad was.

We'll see if I coach this bunch next year. 3 of them were 3rd graders, the rest 4th graders, and we'd have to go up to the 5/6 grade division. That might be too much for 2 of the 3rd graders. We may also investigate other league options. I liked this league, but I want to play more than the same 3 teams over and over. I'd also like to get more than 1 hour of practice a week.

Thanks for the thoughts and advice here....it was very very helpful.