At LSU, for organizational purposes as well as for reasons of meeting our teaching goals, we have arranged our drills in the following manner:NO DEFENSE DRILLS: These are obviously drills that do not involve any defense. We utilize these drills to create the proper technique as well as timing.
WITH DEFENSE DRILLS: This series of drills add the defense and creates the recognition part of our breakdown. In other words, we are using these drills to teach our players how to read and make decisions. We believe these are the most important part of all of our drill work and we do some of these drills in some form each day in practice.
RELEASE DRILLS: These drills utilize defenders as well but also have a release person (player, coach, or manager) for the offense to throw the ball to and continue the drill. The purpose of having a release is to allow the offensive players a little more opportunity to concentrate on both technique as well as recognition.
ENTRY DRILLS: These drills are very specific and designed to get our players thinking about a particular cut, screen or even a sequence of events. In these drills, we dictate early movement to create habits that we think we are either lacking or that we need for a particular opponent.
RESTRICTED DRILLS: These are the most difficult of all of our drills because we place restrictions on our team while they are running offense. We like the term restriction and the pressure it adds on our team but I remember having a discussion with Bob Boyd who thought it better to call them conditions. He felt it put a more positive spin on what we would be trying to do.
WHOLE METHOD WORK: This would of course entail everything that involved 5-on-5 play. With very few exceptions, however, our whole method work would always include conversion. Whether we would start on offense with our motion and then convert back defensively once or start on the defensive end and use transition to get into our motion, we believe strongly that you should tie conversion in with your whole method work. It will help you with your conditioning as well as making your whole method work more game-like.
