Be a Pro!

This past weekend our program was very fortunate to host Coach Mike Moreau, the Director of Basketball for IMG Academies in Florida, and a skills trainer for numerous professional players. All told, Coach Moreau spent over eight hours on the court with our Varsity and JV players instructing them on a myriad of topics pertaining to the game as well as to life in general.

I was impressed and inspired with the intensity and focus that Coach Moreau brought to working with our players. Many of the drills he ran the kids through were not entirely new to me, but it was the manner in which the drills were presented and the effort that he was able to solicit from the kids that was so impressive. I definitely gained a clearer sense of the focus and commitment needed to succeed at the highest levels of the game, and I believe our players did as well. Coach Moreau spoke to the kids in detail about how difficult it is to sustain a career at the NBA level. He also talked to the team about what it means to "Be a Pro" - not in the literal idea of getting paid to play basketball, but in the sense of the commitment, character, and work ethic needed to maximize your potential at any level. Coach Moreau's words were made exponentially more powerful in that it was crystal clear that he personally embodies each of the characteristics of professionalism that he preached.

Clinic featuring Mike Moreau from IMG Academies

We are really excited to offer an offensive skills clinic for boys in grades fourth through eighth (ages 9-14). The clinic will be held on Saturday, November 15, 2008 from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m at Glenelg. Entitled “Training to Beat the Best,” this clinic will feature Coach Mike Moreau. Coach Moreau is the Director of Player Development at IMG Academies and a very experienced individual skills trainer for numerous NBA players, including Chauncey Billups, Kevin Martin and Tyrus Thomas. For more information and to print out a registration form, follow the link below:

http://glenelg.org/quicklinks/news_detai....981&ModuleID=36

This is going to be a great opportunity for our varsity and JV players as well. Coach Moreau will be working with all of our players throughout the weekend in addition to the clinic for younger players. I'm looking forward to learning many new tips and drills to help our players expand their games and improve their skills.

Practice Planning

Below is a link to an article on practice planning I found on Brian McCormick's site. I like a lot of the ideas in this piece, particularly the ideas on making all your practice drills competitive.

After reading this article from Coach John Harmatuk, I realized that I miss practice. We did not really practice at all this summer -- just played a lot of summer league games -- and it was very frustrating at times to see the kids making the same mistakes over and over in the games and be unable to correct those errors the next day in practice.

http://www.thecrossovermovement.com/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,61/p,266/

U.S. Olympic Team

I just finished watching the second half of the final Olympic tuneup for the U.S. team versus Australia this morning. Although the "Redeem Team" (as they have been inanely dubbed by the media) ultimately defeated the Australians by double digits, there was the usual troubling lack of discipline and smart play from the Americans, as the Australians out-executed the vastly superior American athletes on both sides of the floor throughout the half. Defensively, the U.S. continue to demonstrate a bullying mentality marked by habitual gambling and reaching. The international officials seem to allow more physicality and bumping which does help these "feast or famine" tactics. Unfortunately, all the reaching and overplaying also inevitably leads to numerous numbers advantages and easy shots for the opposition.

Apparently the basic strategy for Coach K and his staff is this: since the American players are either unwilling or unable to execute much resembling a half-court offense involving ball movement and intelligent play, the idea is to throw shock and awe tactics at the opponents on the defensive end and hope that phenomenal athleticism, slow international whistles, and intimidation will lead to enough easy transition dunks to overpower the opponents. This formula has been successful thus far in the five exhibition games, but will almost certainly not succeed against teams such as Spain, Greece, and Argentina, just as it didn't in 2004. Unless something radically changes in the opening rounds next week, I would be very surprised if the U.S. wins the gold medal despite having by far the best athletic talent in the world.

Student Accountibilty

The following is a 19th century quotation that I ran across in an autobiography of Abraham Lincoln that I have been enjoying recently. This excerpt pertains to education (specifically literacy), but the parallels to coaching basketball immediately jumped out to me. I'm convinced that to be most effective as a coach or teacher, you don't necessarily teach someone a skill or a concept, you teach a student how to teach themselves the skill or concept. Effective education is not injecting information into the brain of a passive student. The student must be intrinsically motivated to learn as well.


"If your own endeavors are deficient, it is in vain that you have tutors, books, and the external apparatus of literary pursuits. You must love learning, you must possess it. In order to love it, you must feel its delights; in order to feel it delights, you must apply it, however irksome at first, closely, constantly, and for a considerable time. If you have a resolution enough to do this, you cannot but love learning; for the mind always loves that to which it has been so long, steadily, and voluntarily attached. Habits are formed, which render what was at first disagreeable, not only pleasant, but necessary."

- William Scott

Work Ethic

I ran across the following article on the Milwaukee Bucks recent draft pick Joe Alexander, who played at Linganore high school just a little ways up I-70 from us in Frederick County. "Working hard" has become a meaningless cliche for a lot of kids who may believe they are working but have no real concept of what that means. Here is a kid who literally lived the game for years and is now in the NBA. (Of course, it also didn't hurt that he's 6'8''...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/sports/ncaabasketball/25wvu.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5124&en=3cdc4428b4739c4d&ex=1364270400&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Coach Walberg to UMASS

If you are one of the two or three people that actually read this blog, let me apologize for the recent dearth of new posts. After my last post regarding coaches needing to set aside more time for their personal lives, I guess my recent hiatus from blogging was "appropos."

Anyway, in a previous post I half-seriously compared Coach Walberg's system to a guerrilla warfare strategy similar to what the Massachusetts Minutemen employed during the Revolutionary War (scroll down a bit to read it here). Ironically enough, Coach Walberg is now a "Minuteman" himself, as he has taken a job as the lead assistant for new UMASS coach coach Derek Kellogg.
http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/college/basketball/view/Kellogg_names_four_assistants_at_UMass/srvc=colbb&position=5

I wasn't particularly surprised by this news, as I had noticed that Kellogg and Walberg seemed to have a very good rapport when I watched them work together last fall at the Mid-South coaches clinic in Memphis. I expect the Minutemen to be good next season as Kellogg inherits a strong group of athletic, penetrating guards and wings (including Ricky Harris from Calvert Hall) from former UMASS coach Travis Ford. I am hopeful that UMASS will at least be on TV more frequently than Pepperdine was, and it is nice that they are on East Coast time. I can't wait to see how much of the true Walberg philosophy Kellogg will actually adopt, as Calipari's version of AASAA was fairly watered-down imho. Regardless, look for UMASS to be among the leaders in points scored per game next year, and look for me to be sporting a UMASS t-shirt.