Getting Back to Basketball

During our school vacation, many of us had to take a vacation from basketball, as none of the rec teams were able to practice. And the same way that you have to train your brain to write "2014" on your papers for school - or even train your hands to write, if you haven't done that in two weeks - you probably have to retrain your fingers to handle a basketball.

Some of the ballhandling drills in this video don't even require you to bounce a basketball, but they will still be useful in building some of the hand-eye coordination we have worked on in our first few practices.

While we will not be practicing on New Year's Day, we will have a practice and scrimmage at Post Road School on Saturday, from 2-4 pm. Our practice will not be as focused on skill development as the last two we have had at Highlands. Instead, we will be working on how to play together on offense, and how to play together on defense.

Here are some things to try to remember about offense from the drills we have done. Of course, everything begins with remembering to catch the ball and get into triple-threat position:

• give-and-go on the pass from the point to the wing
• pick and roll
• 1-4 set up, with a point guard and four players along the "foul-line extended," meaning, wing-elbow-elbow-wing

On defense, we will play man-to-man (or more appropriately, girl-to-girl). Before our practice on Saturday, try to remember about "keeping your head on a swivel" and these three things:

• on-ball
• deny position (one pass away)
• help position (two passes away)

See you on Saturday at Post Road.