Yesterday my team played a game that ended up as a disaster due in a large part to some poor coaching. Unfortunately I was the coach making the poor decisions. I wasn’t focused on the right things in the game – and my failure to focus on the the right things cost us any chance of even competing much less winning. 

Now to be fair, I actually coached GREAT if the measure of good coaching is making sure you really hammer at the things you’ve decided to focus on. I mean, I never lost focus. Even when my assistant was gently nudging me to consider other options – I maintained focus – I kept my resolve – all the way to a big fat Loss. 

My focus was NOT on winning THAT GAME as it should have been while it was still possible. That’s right. The guy who wrote this article all about how Winners Win, and Winners Win managed to totally cheat his players out of the chance to live up to those words and failed to do so himself. Shame on me.

It took me most of the remaining day and night to understand exactly what happened. I knew I messed up, but I just couldn’t quite figure it out. But it’s clear now. My team paid the price for my poor game decision making because my focus was not where it should have been for game day. I was unwilling to be flexible with my plan. I didn’t adapt. . It makes me feel AWFUL – and I never want to make that same mistake again. I’m not new to coaching, and this feels like a mistake that only a rookie coach would make, so I’m hoping having made it now, I’ll learn from it and do better. In any case, I want to share the story and maybe someone reading it will help them avoid the same blunder I made.

The Story

No more Zones For Us

As a middle school basketball team, we end up with the majority of our players having almost no experience coming in. It means every day is a work on the basics. It means players can’t shoot, can’t really dribble, they don’t make great passes, etc. And all of that means that zone defenses are the norm. Why? Because many coaches prioritize winning over player development. Zones will shut down a bad team. And if the opponent has an actual Player with a capital ‘P’, then at this age and skill level, you can play zone and mostly prevent wide open looks near the basket. As a bonus you’ll have lots of players around the goal to rebound. So zone defenses is what most teams do when their league allows it.

I hate it! It’s bad for the girls’ development as players. It’s bad for their future coaches which means it’s bad for the player as they may lose out on opportunities. I think it’s almost unfair to the opponent – it just seems dirty. These feelings may originate from my time as a coach of even younger players. Younger players have very little chance at all against zone because they aren’t strong enough to get the ball over a zone nor are they strong enough to shoot from any distance.

So I decided that this year we’d start moving towards our girls playing a man-to-man. Simple right? In my mind it should be, but let’s just say that at this point, early in the season it’s not going super great. The blame for that is on me I’m sure, but that’s another issue.  We’ve worked on it (obviously not enough) but we’re not very good at it.

Initial Results

A week ago we played our first games. We went out and played man-to-man and split our two games, one win and one loss… in both games playing man-to-man the entire time. The game we lost was pretty brutal, but we hung in on that man-to-man. The game we won though – it was a thing of beauty! Our defense was not very good, but seemed semi-respectable. For a first time on the floor playing man-to-man I thought it was okay. And that second team’s offense was crazy strong. One player absolutely went off (15 points and 10 rebounds in a JV game is pretty rare) so she carried us to victory. I think her great offensive performance kind of hid a lot of our defensive deficiencies. 

Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results

So a week goes by. Yesterday we played again. The 2nd team, the one that won the previous week, was matched up against the team that the first team lost to in the previous week. We got SMOKED. It was really bad. The 1st team played against a worse team than they had played before and they got SMOKED too. I’d like to blame the energy – and that would be fair – since warmups were an atrocity (more on that at a later point – probably not this article). But the bigger blame for the lack of energy was the game plan provided by their coach.

The plan: we are going man-to-man. period. Talk it out. Find your person. Stay between them and the basket. Other than that – work it out. 

It was more than that, but defensively, that was it.

The result: A regular beating by the opponent every time we were on defense. It’s actually like they got worse at it the longer I left them in it! I don’t think they actually got worse. Honestly I can’t even imagine how they could have gotten worse. I think the opponents all just got better at attacking the world’s worst man-to-man defense. And those defenders? As far as I could tell they never learned at all. 

To be clear, I don’t think the girls ever gave up trying. But we gave up lots of points that game. 

I had said internally to myself and out loud to them “there will be bumps, we have to commit to this to learn it, we’re not coming out of it NO MATTER WHAT”. Why did I say that? I dunno? Big fat shrug here. If they just weren’t trying or they didn’t believe me and I needed to make some kind of point then that’s one thing. But they’re not fighting the idea and they are TRYING. So why I felt the need to box us in is a little beyond me.

What I Wish I Would Have Done

The coach’s role is to help the team win games. That means preparation, planning, and practice. Games are great times to learn things if the opportunity presents itself and the game has already been decided. It’s far less ideal to practice what you’re bad at against against another team while the game is still in doubt. 

Making adjustments is a big part of game coaching, and annoyingly sometimes those adjustments may need to be in areas you don’t want to make them. 

In our case, my players simply could not learn what needed to be learned to become better man-to-man players in the span of that one game. But even though we recognized early on that we were in trouble – I kept the course. We stayed in that man-to-man for 3/4 of the game and got beat to a pulp. A better coach, a better version of me almost any other day, when we realized that we weren’t ready for man-to-man against a better quality team (about 2 minutes into the game) would have adjusted to a zone just to see what would happen.

In this case, I didn’t want to adjust out of the man-to-man. Maybe it was that I had already made an ultimatum or maybe it was just that I want it for these young ladies so bad. Maybe I was just an idiot that day. But if I could do it again (and I will get the chance next Saturday) I’d have simply taken a timeout and explained to them the reality. “From what I’m seeing we’re not ready to play this particular team in a man-to-man. We’re going to try something else because it might give us a better change at winning. But stay ready to switch back to the man if I call for it”. Then after the game let them know we’ll get to put in some more work on that man-to-man come Monday at practice.

Closing Thoughts

Winning any battle is often about being adaptable and flexible as needed. Don’t box yourself into things on game day. It important for players and coaches alike to know that any plan is only certain until you encounter the enemy. At that point, you make adjustments as necessary.