Saturday, October 18, 2008

THINGS I'VE LEARNED FROM COACH (#25)

I have tons of stuff from Coach Meyer. I've been to 10 of his academies, 2 free clinics, several of his camps not to mention just hanging out with him when I get the chance, so right off the bat I have tons of notes from listening to him speak. I also have all of his video/dvd series. I can't imagine a coach that doesn't though I guess there are a few. As I often do, I try to find a little time each week to go through some of my notes from Coach as well as others in the business that I respect to make sure I'm not forgetting something that could help my team.

As we head into this season, we will be the youngest team in the nation. We lost all five starters and three of our top four subs. We will probably start a freshman at the point and back her up with another freshman and sophomore that played sparingly. With our schedule we are sure to meet up against a lot of pressure. The nature of the SEC is great defense and we play a tremendous non-conference schedule as well. We have practiced three times in the past two days with the first session coming Friday night at 5:00 pm (per NCAA rules) and then going twice on Saturday. Our team has responded well and worked hard but we have a ways to go to compete and execute against our level of competition.

No place is it more evident than with our young point guards handling pressure. We bring in LSU male students to practice against and we have been far to liberal with ball. Our staff met late Saturday night to talk about what we can do to help our guards. The first thing is obvious -- teach every day to the best of our ability to continue to improve them. The second thing, is what can we do with in our system of play.

And after a quick review of Coach Meyer notes we have some things to work for tomorrow. We utilize a motion offense and one of the key components is high post touches. One of the things that Coach Meyer talks about in terms of a pressure release is getting someone into the high post. But he gives details as to how else to help in terms of pressure release and this will be a passout for our team as well as a point of emphasis in parts of our practice. Coach Meyer's keys for helping with pressure release include:

1) Meet your passes

2) Run thru the leather

3) Come to the ball

4) Shorten the pass

So a little review of Coach Meyer's notes will help our team tomorrow!

Thanks Coach!