Oklahoma Coach Lon Kruger taught Player Development and Practice Drills during his presentation with NABC. Coach Kruger is one of the best player development coaches in the country. Similarly to Coach Kruger, I’ve found success offensively in transition first. If we don’t score, I like running a quick hit into our motion.

• Starts with communication and time investment
• Coaching development – expose our assistants to every aspect of the program, change on the floor responsibilities, we don’t want our guys to be one type of coach (offensive, defensive, guards, bigs)
• How to correct a player without coming off as an attack – communication, body language, ask the player questions, what do you need from us, how can we help you? Talk about the players goals and then hold them accountable – are your actions matching to your goals? Talk to them about routine, habits, setting the tone for teammates, lifting others up – demanding in a positive way, challenge them but never demean, challenge in an individual and team setting, find what works
• Leadership and captains – you can’t name a leader, the players know who the leaders are and we hope the upper class men take that on – we hope it comes naturally for the guys, when you walk in the gym who determines teams, score, who plays next
• Tailoring your offensive and defensive system to your current roster – base system of pushing the ball, attacking, putting players in the best position to be effective – player results will determine what their role is
• What are you looking for on your halftime stat sheet to determine how you are playing? – defensive FG% relative to our offensive FG%, rebounding, we hate giving up easy offensive buckets, second shots, offensive rebounds, transition buckets, turnovers
• Most important things you want to give your players on the scouting report? – keep it simple, focus on player tendencies (take away what the offensive player does best)
• Practice schedule – promote individuals working before and after practice, 2.5 hours in October, shorten when we get into games and go 1.5 on the floor in January and February – our practices are the same intensity regardless of day before the game or not, we’ll change the amount of contact and shorten it but still go intense – we expect the guys to shoot a lot on their own outside of practice – transition drills – guards and bigs breakdown – do shell everyday, working on seeing ball man, jump to pass, communication
• Philosophically – quick hitters into a drive and kick/motion offense – look to take advantage of mismatches – willing to change what we run early season to late season – push in transition and attack early, if we don’t score we swing it and attack – out of a timeout or dead ball we like half court ball screening, middle ball screen, wing pick and roll, spacing options behind the ball screens to keep the defense honest – identifying what the opponent is going to do defensively against the ball screen and give our guys advantage coming out of that
• We implement wrinkles into our offensive actions throughout the year – making the extra pass, counter actions, advantages
• Quick huddles during practice – everything comes back to the base, the extra pass, shot selection (not determined solely if the shot goes in) a good shot is one we and the opponent expects to go in the majority of the time – push the ball harder, block out, transition d, see ball man, our huddles go back to the basics
• Assistants – I want them to tell me what they see, often we get caught ball watching – substitution patterns
• Every drill is a piece of what we are going to see and do in the game – 4 on 4 – rapid reps, focus on what we are trying to emphasize (ex. Baseline drive, high hands on a close out)
• Skill development – talk, get lower (lower base), play defense early in the post, ball man position off the ball and up the floor, low and ready to compete
• Transition into your offense – we want all 5 guys worried about securing the ball controlling their area with a block out, if you’re on the weak side you need to go out and meet the offensive guy – once we gain position we sprint to the other end, if any of our perimeter guys get it they go, 4 man can go if he can handle, 5 man one dribble and pass – space the floor, kick ahead, attack – first big man down runs block ball side – we want to attack the first side, if we can’t we rotate the ball, force a closeout and attack again, if not there we get into a ball screen and attack
• Defensively if we can make them dribble the ball across mid court then we can set our defense
• Wing ball screen, PG cuts same side corner, 4 trail man sets the screen – pick and pop we roll the corner PG out opposite – if it’s a roll we’ll have the PG loop behind, 5 man punch middle to occupy defender
• Horns action, space and attack and fill – depending on personnel different things will be a priority
• Zone teaching points – keep it simple, space up with a two guard front of point and 2 wings – low posts punch in to swing it and enter – we want to attack gaps, get the ball to the middle and short corner and we will get what we want – if ball goes middle check low and then check weak side – ball goes short corner look middle and look skip opposite – screen the top defenders and swing it to get downhill, getting two guys to play the ball force defenders to make decisions on drive or kick – if you have big who is a threat at the rim you have to keep him inside to be a threat at the rim, threat to kick to shooters
• Take advantage of the pack line – attack to be a willing passer – spacing against the pack – initiate and be aggressive on the first side, swing and attack the second side, drive to kick to third side – strong with the ball
• How do you stress to PG’s to get it out and go? We want our PG in for a deep rebound, his offensive player is probably playing back for safety – catch the outlet as deep as possible – turn, see and then go – if you can throw ahead without the dribble then do it – PG dribble through middle of the floor and get to the opposite elbow for the kick to running wing
• Space quickly after the drive and kick
• You can never be a good enough ball handler – lots of shots are missed and poor passes made because we aren’t handling the ball well enough – practice game speed ball handling, game speed shooting, hard last bounce and pop into the shot
• Play more 3 on 3 games, pass, cut, space, move
• We run the quick hitter to put players in a advantage to be able to drive and kick