I received an email yesterday that read:Coach Starkey,
How do you and the staff "chart screens." I remember reading one of your blog entries about approaches to emphasize screening. Our men's team has always been just a good screening team. We are thirsty for some coaching techniques that might take our screening game to the next level.
My reply was as follows:
Coach, from the Don Meyer school of coaching, we are big believers in “it’s not just what you teach, it’s what you emphasize.” We make a big deal out of screening with our team.
1. We spend time teaching screening – techniques, timing and angles…we will work on screening in some form every day in practice (as a motion team you have to)…I am attaching a chapter from my motion book (that hasn’t been released yet) that has our screening philosophy in it.
1. We spend time teaching screening – techniques, timing and angles…we will work on screening in some form every day in practice (as a motion team you have to)…I am attaching a chapter from my motion book (that hasn’t been released yet) that has our screening philosophy in it.
2. We chart screens each and every day in practice and in games…first, as a staff we want to know who is screening, how often and are they doing a good job…to do this properly, I chart the screens myself off of video…after practice, I pop it in and utilize the chart that I have also attached. We chart number of screens set. We also, however, chart if the screen was set properly – did they sprint to screen, did they get the right angle…we also chart whether or not we got a score off of it – which is the ultimate screen. We also chart illegal screens (even if the official did not call it). We set a lot of screens and very few of them are illegal and I think it’s because we chart it and talk about.
3. We make sure that each day in video session that we have clips off good screens as well as screening opportunities missed or poorly executed from the previous practice or games…we talk about how the screen created a scoring opportunity either directly or indirectly. For instance, it’s easy to see that a cutter that cuts off a back screen for a lay-up can thank the screener in part for the score. But we also point out that a down screen on the opposite side of the floor “occupies the help” when we drive the ball and score. That’s just as important.
We make sure that we point out as much as possible to our team, the fans and the media who our best screeners are…a few years ago we had a player on our team Wendlyn Jones who was a great screener. She actually went to Kinko’s and had some business cards made that said “Wendlyn Jones: Professional Screener.” It was funny but it also showed that we were getting our message across. It is a common occurrence for a player to acknowledge a screener the same way some players do a passer.
Most everyone has seen our stat package but if you'd like a copy of our "Screening Stat Sheet" email me at: rstarke@lsu.edu.
