This post is two pronged. I'm attempting to set up mobile posting, and hoping to get plenty of pictures of my boys in action as we tear through the 4th Annual Ryan Bourque Invitational Tournament this weekend. Let's hope this works, and let's go Wolfpack!
Friday, February 17, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words, But a Video?
As we make our way through the segment of the season I've termed "The Gauntlet" my assistant and I wanted to keep the boys improving without killing them with so many games and practices. At the start of the season, I decided to have the games recorded if I could get a parent to volunteer. Well, that paid dividends.
You would expect a 5th grader to have limited focus, and honestly I wasn't sure they'd take anything valuable from it at first. I love when I'm wrong. I love it even more when I see them making the conscious decision on the floor not to make the mistakes they saw in the video. And everyone took something different from it which gave the whole team a boost.
The first film we watched was from our game against Mahwah, where we lost by 12 after coming back from more than 15 to within 4 twice. Turnovers, bad transition defense, and poor defensive rotations killed us. Well, after watching that film, I think we've only allowed 6 transition points in 4 games, we've turned the ball over less times, and rotations got much better. (Note: Can't verify these stats as we don't have someone officially keeping track, so these are just estimates based on my perception of the game) We had a rematch against Mahwah, and although it was a tough, hard fought game, we pulled it out and won by 4.
The next film was from a Wyckoff game that we lost. Although it was two months old, and clearly showed how far the boys have come since then, we still got some good lessons from it, mostly about how to react in certain situations. Again, it paid dividends. Turnovers we had in that game from just poor basketball knowledge stopped, spacing is slowly starting to improve, and best of all, they told me that the energy the showed in the film was bad. I was happy to hear kids pointing out there own mistakes during the session. "I should have gone around the pick to the other side." "I have to take a better angle on that layup." I'll take that any day. While it didn't translate to a win in our rematch against Wyckoff, it was still a much better quality game, and we only lost by 3 as opposed to losing by 14 like we did in the video.
We're making good strides now, which have gotten longer and faster thanks to these video sessions, and at the right time. As we're gearing up to go to a tournament in Boston next weekend and league playoffs the fact that we're improving the way we are has us right where I want us to be - making a strong run at a championship.
You would expect a 5th grader to have limited focus, and honestly I wasn't sure they'd take anything valuable from it at first. I love when I'm wrong. I love it even more when I see them making the conscious decision on the floor not to make the mistakes they saw in the video. And everyone took something different from it which gave the whole team a boost.
The first film we watched was from our game against Mahwah, where we lost by 12 after coming back from more than 15 to within 4 twice. Turnovers, bad transition defense, and poor defensive rotations killed us. Well, after watching that film, I think we've only allowed 6 transition points in 4 games, we've turned the ball over less times, and rotations got much better. (Note: Can't verify these stats as we don't have someone officially keeping track, so these are just estimates based on my perception of the game) We had a rematch against Mahwah, and although it was a tough, hard fought game, we pulled it out and won by 4.
The next film was from a Wyckoff game that we lost. Although it was two months old, and clearly showed how far the boys have come since then, we still got some good lessons from it, mostly about how to react in certain situations. Again, it paid dividends. Turnovers we had in that game from just poor basketball knowledge stopped, spacing is slowly starting to improve, and best of all, they told me that the energy the showed in the film was bad. I was happy to hear kids pointing out there own mistakes during the session. "I should have gone around the pick to the other side." "I have to take a better angle on that layup." I'll take that any day. While it didn't translate to a win in our rematch against Wyckoff, it was still a much better quality game, and we only lost by 3 as opposed to losing by 14 like we did in the video.
We're making good strides now, which have gotten longer and faster thanks to these video sessions, and at the right time. As we're gearing up to go to a tournament in Boston next weekend and league playoffs the fact that we're improving the way we are has us right where I want us to be - making a strong run at a championship.
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