nlamothe
User
Senior Boarder
| Posts: 12 |   |
Karma: 1
|
pressing... - 2007/11/02 04:52
Read a post today over at CoachRB's "Coaching the Coach" blog that caused me some thought... it started with:
An issue that must be addressed is pressing full or half court at the youth level. There is no question, regardless of your opinion on the subject, that scrapping basic defensive principles for the sake of pressing is ridiculous!
So my question is simple - is it possible to press without "scrapping basic defensive principles"?
I thought so, and was planning on pressing a lot with the team I have this year (First pretryout open practice tomorrow yay!).
I coach a high school girls team in norther Alberta - basketball is way down the list after hockey, volleyball, badminton, track and soccer around here, but for the first time in years we have a lot of interest. I worked with many of the girls last year at the jr. high, and have told them I'll stick around at the HS for at least the next four years. So now we have some stability in the program, some talent, and all I have to do is pull it together for them...
My primary concern is the development of my players - half a dozen of them should/could play college ball (around here anyway  and I refuse to be the coach who limits that by not helping them develop the necessary skill sets for it.
I recognize that I am not doing the other team any favours by having my team press, but what are the defensive principles violated by extending a man to man defense to half or full court? How is it detrimental to my players development?
getting long winded, so I'll stop here...
Thoughts?
|
|
|
| | The administrator has disabled public write access. |
coachmccormick
Admin
Admin
| Posts: 643 | |
Karma: 1
|
Re:pressing... - 2007/11/02 06:49
There is some truth to the statement, and in some ways it's completely false.
Typically, teams that press often do so becasue they are not very good defensively. If you are a great defensive team, it is harder to go against a great half court defense than a great full court defense because of spacing.
At youth ages, presses dominate because offenses cannot play the ful court because of a lack of strength. So, a defens ecan put five players in the back court and really pressure a team without fear of surrendering a lay-up over the top. This, I believe, is what the coach means by abandoning defensive principles.
At the HS level, it is much more difficult to abandon defensive principles in a pressing defense, but a press can be used to mask defensive inefficiencies in the same way that another coach might use a zone.
When players see a zone, they get tentative and do not attack in the same way they would attack a man defense, which is one reason why zones are so effective.
When players see presses, the first instinct is to protect the ball. Coaches run press breaks to break the press; they do not run offense to score. As I argued in a previous post and in my newsletter, presses (I don't consider man2man defense in the full court a press) work against unprepared players who panic or hurry when they see a press. Confident, aggressive players destroy presses because it simply spreads the defense and forces the defense to cover more ground and gives more space to attack.
So, yes, many presses, especially at the youth level, do scrap basic defensive principles becasue the defense takes advantage of the inexperienced ofensive players and their lack of strength, but by the hs level, I would hope an offense would destroy a press that ignores defensive principles.
|
|
|
| | The administrator has disabled public write access. |
nlamothe
User
Senior Boarder
| Posts: 12 | |
Karma: 1
|
Re:pressing... - 2007/11/02 14:26
Thanks Coach!
As always you throw light onto the point in question and illuminate enough around it to make me think...
"a press can be used to mask defensive inefficiencies in the same way that another coach might use a zone."
- I can see this, but that certainly wasn't why I was thinking of pressing... I was just thinking it'd make my girls work harder to start with, and I'm all about hard work 
Coaches run press breaks to break the press; they do not run offense to score.
- I'm going to spend some time over the next couple of days thinking through my offense against presses - I suspect I can stretch it to full court and still be effective.
Confident, aggressive players destroy presses because it simply spreads the defense and forces the defense to cover more ground and gives more space to attack.
- in talking with the girls' coach from last year, apparently teams tried pressing us twice, and then gave up. My pg (in 12 this year, 11 last) has a dedicated streetballer for a boyfriend, and plays pickup games with him and his friends all summer long: nobody they played had a press she couldn't dribble out of.
- I have been wondering about what I need to add to make a full court man2man press (Why don't you consider full court man2man a press?) effective. This simple truth (cover more ground and more space to attack) is what I needed to evaluate my possibilities.
Thanks again for your help. I'm sure I'll be back regularly this season...
|
|
|
| | The administrator has disabled public write access. |
coachmccormick
Admin
Admin
| Posts: 643 | |
Karma: 1
|
Re:pressing... - 2007/11/02 17:10
I just don't consider a full court man2man defense a true press because the concepts remain the same for man defense regardless of how far you stretch the defense. To me, it isn't a "new" defense. For instance if you run a 2-2-1 press, what do you run if they break the press and set-up an offense?
A press, to me, is usually termed as a defense run in the back court and then the team falls back into another defense, say from a 2-2-1 to man or a 2-2-1 to a 2-3 zone.
In full court man defense, you stay in man defense the entire time.
Now, you can change things up out of man and run a run n'jump or a man2man trap, which would be forms of presses from a man2man base defense, but if you run strictly man, I do not categorize it in the same manner as other presses, so in answering the question, my points about presses would not include a full court man defense because they are, imo, different.
|
|
|
| | The administrator has disabled public write access. |
bruchu
User
Senior Boarder
| Posts: 10 | |
Karma: 0
|
Re:pressing... - 2007/11/04 02:07
What happened to the good old days with the half-court rule, you know the one where the defense had to stay behind the half-court line. I remember playing with that rule all the way up to Gr. 8.
I've always believed that your press was just a part of a greater defensive strategy. I wouldn't use a specific press all game, but in certain situations like when you want to change the momentum of the game. If your entire defense is just one press, then teams will prepare to beat it and beat you. My defensive philosophy is to force the opponent to constantly adjust. In doing so, hopefully we can take away what they do well offensively.
----------------
http://coachingbball.proboards106.com/
|
|
|
| | The administrator has disabled public write access. |
nlamothe
User
Senior Boarder
| Posts: 12 | |
Karma: 1
|
Re:pressing... - 2007/11/04 18:36
Oh indeed...
I'm in a strange situation this year really. I will have a very talented & deep bench for the size of school. I have lots of interested and excited girls raring to go. but the talent is currently 80% potential, and 20% actual fundamental skills and basketball IQ.
The Jr. High coach built a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for the game, but wasn't big on fundamentals. Started last year with a 2-1-2 zone defense and a 1-2-1-1 zone press - and didn't spend 5 minutes teaching defensive fundamentals... just this is your area to cover, this is your area to cover.
Offense was much the same.
So I now need to bring these kids fundamentally up to the level they should be at, and do so without making anything seem to remedial or boring.
So I'm planning on straight man D until I think they are playing it well, and since they love to press, insisting on a man2man press as well...just have to make sure I have my head wrapped around it all well enough that I can teach it right the first time...
and certainly I wasn't planning on full court pressure full time - I would like to teach them the principles of man defense such that we could call full, or 3/4, or 1/2, or inside the arc, and they wouldn't have to change their thinking - I want it intuitive and ingrained. Which is why my original question was about violating principles with a press...
|
|
|
| | The administrator has disabled public write access. |
|
