BUZZ WILLIAMS TABC CLINIC NOTES (Part I)

A day following an off day, Virginia Tech has an “Early Bird.” Might watch video, walk through something or do individual work...during season if will be about opponent, us, short and teach...in off-season if will be about life — not basketball.

Everybody in our program is the head coach of something...they are in charge of something.

Coach Williams has a “Head Coach in Charge of Time.” He also has a “Head Coach in Charge of Calendar.” Team and Coach William’s calendar are updated daily.

“If you struggle getting up early, you’re probably not very good.”

Likes to start day with quiet time — reading books.

Circle of influence in recruiting...how many “spokes” are there to the wheel — what is your plan in building a relationship with each.

Coach Williams uses W-C-E-T

Write

Call

Email

Text

Monthly contact list — changes monthly

List changes about 10% each month

Consistency in relationships

Can never achieve greatness unless you can max your pettiness.

Writes 2 thank you notes daily.

Sends team a “Teaching Text” every Tuesday.

Utilized Greg Brown type note card

Charts:

Man Offense

Zone Offense

Special Situations

Short Clock — obsessed with short clock plays

Scouting Reports on their way out...don’t give written reports to their kids.

Left Brain...Right Brain...Wires Crossed

Ways to learn:

   Write

   Visual

   Audial

   Do It

First coach Coach Williams worked for said “If I every catch you without pen & paper you’re fired.”

First thing you do with a new play? Teach it to your staff.

When teaching, you must understand that different players will pick it up differently based on how they are wired.

Goal: improve retention rate

“My best gift is I can help people.”

Huddle: Draw — Hear — Walk Thru guys are dead in front of me and last ones he talks to coming out of huddle.

Has football based mentality in preparation:

   2 Days before playing routine

   1 Day before playing routine

Coach Williams has few friends in basketball coaching. Lots of his friends are football coaches.

If your kids or coaches are asking “What are we doing in practice today?” you’re a poor coach.

“The best coaches are the exact same everyday.”

Coach Williams likes coaching kids with problems.

Beware of “imposters on your path” — like winning and losing. Be process oriented.

Has manager in charge of pulling clips from the newspaper on his opponents.

Coach Williams likes to do everything in 4’s (keys to the game, etc.)

GREAT TEAMS: 16 THINGS HIGH-PERFOMING ORGANIZATIONS DO DIFFERENTLY

I got to know Don Yaeger while working for Dale Brown at LSU.  Don spent an entire year around our program and the best thing I can say about him is that he gets it.  He has a great understanding of the human element as it equates to athletics and he understands what goes into successful programs.  It's why I am always anticipating his next book.  This summer he may have topped himself with "Great Teams: 16 Things High-Performing Organizations Do Differently."

I'm going to share a few highlights from the book but if you are involved with any group that you are trying to force as a team, to help an organization achieve it's maximum potential, you're going to want to get a copy of this book!

Chapter 1
Great Teams Understand Their "Why"
"You can try to tell people why what they do matters.  You can try to show them.  But people get what it means when they can feel it."
-Mike Krzyzewski.

"Culture must be reminded everyday. The history gives us a starting point to learn from the past, produce in the present and prepare for the future."
-Kevin Eastman

Chapter 2
Great Teams Have And Develop Great Leaders
"Part of being a leader is getting to know your players."
-Anson Doorance

Chapter 3
Great Teams Allow Culture To Shape Recruiting
"Leadership gets what it emphasizes.  When the recruits arrive to campus, there's so much hype in the facilities and the winning.  But we tell them that all of the hype will not be their happiness.  Instead, their happiness will be in the coaches we surround them with and how we treat them in the locker room.  Culture will determine their happiness."
-Chris Peterson

Chapter 4
Great Teams Create And Maintain Depth
"If you don't have someone on your team that's a capable replacement, then you're going to have a hole in the picture of your puzzle."
-Jerry West

Chapter 5
Great Teams Have A Road Map
As a former Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain explained during an ESPN radio interview, Saban "has a vision.  He has a plan.  And yet, I think the thing that keeps him consistent and ahead of the curve, not just football-wise, but everything within the organization -- there's a follow-up, as far as 'What can we do better? What is new out there?  What can we do, you know, to move things forward whether it is offensive, defense, special teams, recruiting, academics, training room," it doesn't matter...What he does is set the vision and then gets great people around him and lets them be creative.

Chapter 6
Great Teams Promote Camaraderie And A Sense Of Collective Direction
St. Louis Cardinals' chairman Bill DeWitt and his management team send a sixty-eight-page book to all new recruits.  The book is packed with historical relevancies, general expectations for a Cardinal player, and specific instructions tailored to that particular player's position.  The information is helpful, but it is the book itself that carries the meaning of "now you're one of us."

Chapter 7
Great Teams Manage Dysfunction, Friction, And Strong Personalities
Great teams understand the reason behind conflict and find ways to rise above it; however, conflict resolution is a skill that must be exercises to be effective.

Chapter 8
Great Teams Build A Mentoring Culture
"In the SEAL teams we figured out very, very early on that specific mentorship of connecting a senior officer to a junior officer has a tremendous value.  It's a fundamental thing that SEAL development looks at.  The minute you stop learning and stop seeking out growth opportunities, you'll begin to rot pretty quickly."
-Rorke Denver

Chapter 9
Great Teams Adjust Quickly To Leadership Transitions
"Change is almost uncomfortable and exhausting.  You are asking your organization to do something in a new way -- every day -- until it's a habit.  The 'old' habits may have taken years to form and were likely linked to rewards to it's normal for individuals and teams to reverse to what's comfortable when difficulties or confusions arise."
-Sharon Price John

Chapter 10
Great Teams Adapt And Embrace Change
"It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change."
-Charles Darwin

"The younger players see the world differently.  And it's up to you as the communicator to know who you are addressing.  Adjustment is hard, but is a lot easier if you, as a leader, are a willing learner."
-Mike Krzyzewski

Chapter 11
Great Teams Run Successful Huddles
Bill Walsh analyzed and even recorded meetings to spot potential lulls and weaknesses in their process.  He wanted to make sure his assistant coaches -- who would sometimes change from year to year -- were teaching his team in a consistent fashion.

Chapter 12
Great Teams Improve Through Scouting
"I think you have to study yourself a lot.  It's important as a quarterback to study yourself, your opponent and be sure you're doing the fundamentals and mechanics right."
-Peyton Manning

Chapter 13
Great Teams See Values Others Miss
Great teams never answer the "why" question with, "Because we've always done it this way."  Instead, they regularly evaluate each situation and seek unique opportunities for improvement.

Chapter 14
Great Teams Win In Critical Situations
Many companies mistake movement for momentum.  By paying employees to work harder, organizations also create an incentive bias when trying to motivate a strong finish.  Paying someone to do more gets movement but not always true motivation.  And teams with higher motivation will always beat teams that only get movement.

Chapter 15
Great Teams Speak A Different Language
Steve Kerr on observing Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks:  "There's no yelling and screaming...there's teaching.  It was liberating to see and had a great influence on me."

"As a leader it is so important to be precise with your language."
-Pete Carroll

Chapter 16
Great Teams Avoid The Pitfalls Of Success
The great John Wooden, whom I have mentioned several times in this book, often said, "Winning takes talent; to repeat takes character."

"How you respond to a mistake is more important than the mistake itself."
-Tim Walton

The appendix in Don's book is 33 pages long with outstanding quotes and concepts from the best in the business and this section alone is worth the cost of the books.  It includes Ganon Baker, Colonel Bernie Banks, Bobby Bowden, Bruce Bowen, Aja Brown, Dale Brown, Jim Calhoun, John Calipari, Pete Carroll, Jack Clark, Jerry Colangelo, Barry Collier, Tom Crean, Randy Cross, Commander Rorke Denver, Bill Dewitt, Jr., Billy Donovan, Anson Dorrance, Kevin Eastman, P. J. Fleck, Willie Gault, China Gorman, G. J. Hart, Sylvia Hatchell, Tom Izzo, Jimmie Johnson, Michael Jordan, Greg Kampe, Steve Kerr, Mike Krzyzewski, Jenn Lim, Archie Manning, Eli Manning, Dan Marino, Mike Martin, Misty May-Treanor, Bill McCermott, Derin McMains, Dayton Moore, Jamie Moyer, Tom Osborne, Chack Pagano, Bob Reinheimer, Jerry Rice, Russ Rose, David Ross, Nolan Ryan, Simon Sinek, Jerry Sloan, Tubby Smith, Bill Snyder, Brendan Suhr, Stan Van Gundy, Bill Walton, Jerry West, John Wooden, Steve Young.

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES

I usually re-post this each year.  Four years ago, while coaching at the University of Central Florida, Greg Brown, then the Associate Head Coach at UCF, came up with an idea that we dedicate our blogs for an entire week to what we as assistant coaches do.  It was a serious and massive undertaking to do in the detailed fashion that we chose in the middle of the season but we thought it would be something worth sharing.  It gives a 7 day, minute by minute of everything that a coach does and it is one of the most popular posts I've had in terms of hits.

We've decided to post it again for those who may have missed it the first time.  As we mentioned, it's extremely long.  It includes charts, videos, and graphics of everything from practice, games, scouting, travel, team meetings and a little more.

If you visit, you'll want to scroll to the very bottom and work your way up.  The first entry of the week is at the very bottom.

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES

SCOUTING THOUGHTS FROM STEVE BELICHICK (PART II)

This is part two of two on some great take aways I got from a book titled "Football Scouting Methods" by Steve Belichick.  You can read about my first post here:

Scouting Check-Off List and Instructions:

1.      Do not permit your interest to be aroused to the point that you become a spectator. This will hinder, and often prevent, you from obtaining essential information. Concentrate on the action that is taking place. It is imperative that all action on the field be observed. We want to know what the other team does, not what you think they could or should have done. We want to know what they do, how many times they do it, and how successful they are. Do not give them credit for doing or being able to do anything that you have not seen them do.

2.      Review any information that can be obtained from previous scouting reports of this or last year, and from movies or newspaper accounts. Should the opponent be new to the schedule, contact some of their previous opponents to see if you can get some information from them.

3.      Before seeing a team for the first time, try to get information about them from scouts who have seen them in action. Try not to go completely cold into the first look at a team. Make an attempt to find out at least the basic offense and defenses that the opponent has been using.

4.      After seeing a team in action once, you should know the numbers of the players who are in the game most of the time. This should include any specialists that see action. Otherwise there is no need to go beyond the first two teams.

5.      You should always be at the game early enough to get settled and organized to observe the pregame warmup of the opponent. During the warm-up period, observe, appraise and record the passers, punters, centers snapping the ball to the punters, the pass receivers, safety men, as well as the kickoff and field-goal kickers.

6.      If you are working with one or more scouts from your staff, plan how you are going to work together, and divide the responsibility of getting the information desired.

7.      Complete the report as soon after the game as possible, when everything is fresh in your mind.

SCOUTING THOUGHTS FROM STEVE BELICHICK (PART I)

I purchased a copy of the book "Football Scouting Methods" by Steve Belichick.  And as expected, it was extremely detailed.  And while it had an obvious tilt to scouting football, there were some takeaways for anyone that scouts.

I got my start in coaching by scouting for Ron Chambers and Doug McElwain at Winfield High School while attending Marshall University.  The junior high coach Brad Hodges took me early to show me the ropes, how to best scout and what RC and Mac were looking for.  I also spend some time with my junior high coach Allen Osborne and picked his brain on the topic of scouting. 

I learned so much from scouting -- in part because I was taught what to look for and also because I loved doing it.  While at LSU on the staff of Dale Brown, in-person scouting was still a part of the game and I rarely was on the bench for an LSU game as I traveled the country as an advanced scout.  Again, I learned so much from observing others.

Here is a great list from Coach Belichick:

What is Expected of the Scout

·         A scout should be static in his methods, since the frequent changes in football should cause him to re-evaluate his methods as well as seek ways to improve them from time to time.

·         The kind of information that the scout seeks should not be left entirely to his discretion, but should be spelled out in detail by the head coach, or those assistants entrusted with formulating game plans. It is not enough for the head coach to say, “Scout the game and bring back all the information you can.” Each head coach should have definite items that he wants to know about. Often, what is of importance to one head coach is of little or no concern to another. It is to be expected that every head coach will want to know the basic offense and defense used, and on the basis of this, what can be anticipated. However, the degree to which the offense and defense is to be analyzed for tendencies varies among the head coaches. Some coaches will want every analysis possible, while others will be content with the basic alignments and adjustments. Each head coach has his own requirements; these are dictated by his philosophy of the game.

·         In order for a scout to do a satisfactory job, it is important that he know thoroughly the head coach’s philosophy, as well as have a complete understanding with him as to what is expected in the scouting report.

·         In order to enlighten the scout as to what will be expected of him, some head coaches, at times with the aid of the rest of the staff, will prepare a check list for the scout to follow. This will enable the scout to have a complete understanding of what is expected of him insofar as his search for information is concerned.

·         There are other head coaches who will have a final report form prepared for the scout to use in determining what knowledge he is to seek.

·         Regardless of what type forms are used, it is important that the scout know where to place the emphasis in his work. Some coaches will want a detailed report on the personnel, while others will stress as complete a picture as possible of the offense and defense, along with the tendencies in each phase of the game.

WHAT ARE OTHERS DOING TO BEAT YOU?

The mindset of improving your team is being able to step away and take a critical look at it.  The following comes from Kentucky's John Calipari and his book "Players First: Coaching From Inside Out."

"Thinking about how you would try to beat your own team goes with the job of being coach.  You put yourself into the mind of another coach as he looks at film of your games.  Where are we vulnerable? What defenses have we struggled against? At what speed don't we like to play?"

This is also a great process to go through in the off-season.  Take time and detail those games in which you struggled and look exactly at what areas you were deficient.  Then put together clips, take extensive notes and create an action plan to improve that area for next season.

LESS IS MORE

An article on leadership in the December issued of the Harvard Business Review had the following quote:

"A wealth of information creates

a poverty of attention."

-Herbert Simon

In other words, less is more.  The art of keeping it simple goes a long way in retention and concentration.

For coaches this can come in just about every phase of your program.

Offense & Defense: How simple is your system of play and the concepts in regard to how you play?  I once heard Buzz Williams speak and in all parts of his schemes, he has three bullet points to maintain consistency and simplicity for his players. For instance on posting and sealing, there will be three point to remember.  Blocking out? Three keys for success.

Scouting: How much information are you giving to your team in regard to preparation? We keep our reports to our team around 5 pages and make them consistent in size and format no matter if we are playing the #1 team in the nation and a team that hasn't won a game.

Recruiting: How much do you give to your recruits in helping them make a decision?  The best recruiters target the two or three key important areas (and it will vary with each student-athlete) and hit those point thoroughly. You can go overboard and give them a boat-load of information but you will end up muddying the water of things they really need to know about you and your institution.

Practice: Earlier today I shared a short thought on Rick Pitino who he and his staff utilize 7-Second Corrections.  It keeps practice running smoothly and quickly -- maintaining it intensity and conditioning value -- not to mention making it more game-like.

BRAD STEVENS: SIMPLICITY IN THE DETAILS

Thanks to Lipscomb head coach Greg Brown for sending me an outstanding article in the Boston Globe written by Baxter Holmes on Brad Stevens -- find the time and read here in it's entirety.  Here are some of the excerpts that I pull that resonated with me:

THE SECRET -- SIMPLICITY

A secret. There had to be one, some special ingredient behind a small Indianapolis private school’s improbable run to consecutive NCAA championship games in 2010 and 2011.
Numbers! Yes, that was it.

“What two or three stats do you guys look at all the time?”

Former Butler assistant Matthew Graves remembered hearing that one a lot, from coaches and other sleuths.

 

Truth was, it all varied game to game, opponent to opponent. But that didn’t slow the inquiries.

“Everybody wants to break it down into this magical stat or formula,” said Graves, now the coach at the University of South Alabama.

Often overlooked was that A) Butler wasn’t a nobody out of nowhere and actually had reached four NCAA Tournaments in seven years (including two Sweet Sixteens) leading up to 2009-10; and that B) the program’s recent success could be traced back to a mid-1990s culture shift that created “The Butler Way.”

The turning point came in 1995 when Butler coach Barry Collier and another coach sat down with Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett, whose teams there and at Wisconsin-Green Bay were always a handful.

“I thought there was some kind of X’s-and-O’s secret I could learn,” said Collier, echoing what others would say years later when Brad Stevens coached Butler.

Instead, Bennett shared five Biblical-based principles that made up his philosophy: humility, passion, servanthood, thankfulness, and unity.

“ ‘Simple’ doesn’t seem like the right word,” said Collier. “But in some ways, I think it is. Because something is simple does not make it easy. It’s hard to follow these things.”

THE CULTURE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

Among their key influences was a book Lickliter had given Stevens, a book by Celtics legend Bill Russell: “Russell Rules: 11 lessons on Leadership From the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Winner.”

Two of Russell’s ideals stuck with them, one about team ego (“My ego demands — for myself — the success of my team”); and the other about the culture of the Celtics: “ ‘Celtic Pride’ is a real concept, a culture, and a practice rather than an idea. We lived it and breathed it. But we were each responsible for it. It began with a collective determination never to embarrass ourselves.”

Today, on the front wall of the Butler men’s basketball room is a placard that reads: “The Butler Way begins with a ‘collective determination never to embarrass ourselves.’ And we agree that The Butler Way is not merely a concept, but a ‘culture and a practice — and we all are responsible for it.’ ”
The culture is the foundation.
 
“Everybody thinks, ‘Well, there’s got to be more, there’s got to be something else,’ ” Graves said. “There’s not. But try doing this every single moment, every single day, over and over and over.”

Stevens kept that copy of Russell’s book, filled it with notes, and was rereading it this July during his flight to Boston, where he was to be introduced as the Celtics new head coach. As he sat in the team’s practice facility beneath 11 title banners that Russell helped win in his 13 years in Boston, Stevens used the word “culture” in his first public remarks.

“I think culture,” he said later, “is the most important thing.”

OBSESSED WITH PREPARATION

A four-tier pyramid is fixed on a whiteboard in the Butler locker room. “Results” forms its peak. “Performance” is on the second level. “Character” makes up its base. The third tier is “Preparation.” And perhaps more than any other characteristic — more than toughness, execution, or defense — Stevens’s Butler teams were as prepared as any in the nation.

“You knew Butler was never going to beat themselves,” said Ohio State coach Thad Matta, a former Butler coach whose teams were beaten twice in three games by Stevens’s teams.

As Siena coach Fran McCaffery once said, “If you’re going to beat them, you almost have to play a perfect game.”

Stevens did his homework early. While he coached games, a staff member often uploaded edited video clips to his laptop — clips on each of the next opponent’s players, on the sets it runs the most, a couple of its most recent games, a couple of its games against teams that played a similar style to Butler. Afterward, Stevens devoured the footage, processing information at a pace his staff members called “amazing,” often on late-night flights, his face illuminated by the screen’s soft glow.

By noon the next day, Stevens said, he’d have in place the firm outlines of a game plan — no matter if the game was one day or one week away, because he didn’t want to have a single unprepared practice.
 
“I wasn’t going to do a day where it’s fluff and I can’t answer everything that I possibly can about the other team,” he said. “That’s how I’m wired.”

He’d study analytics and dig through books — books on leadership, on how the mind works, on successful businesses and the people who ran them — for a motivational quote or passage, because just as he told his players to “win the next possession,” Stevens believed it was his job to find any edge that could help win that possession.
 
“People always focus on the end of the game,” said former Butler forward Matt Howard, “but one thing I learned more than ever there, and just something we talked about all the time, was it’s not always about what happens at the end of the game. It’s about what happened leading up to that.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF SCOUTING

As Lickliter had preached, Stevens and his staff spared no detail as they prepared a scouting report.
“By the end of the week, he’s got so much information on his hands that he can give out bits and pieces,” Shrewsberry said. “The players are like, ‘Whoa, he knows everything about these guys.’ ”

But, as Lickliter also preached, Stevens provided the players with only what they absolutely needed to know — nothing more.

Ronald Nored, a former Butler guard now in a player development role with the Celtics, said he realized the approach wasn’t common when speaking to players on other teams who received pages and pages of notes.

Lickliter said it is a talent to find only what will enable players to be successful, just as it’s a talent to teach it. These are traits, he said, that separate Stevens, whose background as a former star player (in high school) and role player (in college) helps him relate to every player on his teams. But Stevens also saw himself then (and today) as more of a teacher than a coach, curious about what each player wanted beyond the game and invested in a way to help them reach that goal.

The Bulldogs realized that the information they received would make them as game-ready as possible.

“I can’t remember one game where I felt less prepared than the other team,” Nored said. “Not one.”

Following Stevens’s axiom, “The game honors toughness,” regimented practices were “extremely physical,” according to Howard, who said they left him sore head to toe. However, they were short, lasting not a minute more than necessary — Nored remembers one lasting just 28 minutes — and Howard said few fouls were called. “But that’s just how they wanted us to play,” he said.

A STEP UP ASSISTANT COACHING SYMPOSIUM: BRENDAN SUHR

During NBA lockout two years ago, at Coaching U Live, there were 16 NBA coaches attending just to take notes and learn.

Don't coach basketball -- coach people.

The following are notes I took from my friend Brendan Suhr during his keynote address at "A Step Up Assistant Coaching Symposium."

Coaching is taking players where they can't take themselves.

Two important questions to ask yourself:
1. How does it feel to be coached by me
2. Would I want to play for myself

What do the great coaches have/do?
1. Energy, enthusiasm, passion
2. Determined, mentally tough
3. Be an optimist = competitive advantage
4. Develop skills

Become an expert at something

For an assistant coach is should be 10% emotion and 90% evaluation

Assistant coaches must always be up...can't have a bad day

Lou Holtz:  "Complaining is like vomiting.  It may make you feel better in the end but not everyone else around you."

Coach Suhr learned a lot from scouting -- helped him to develop his philosophy.

NBA teams have plays they only run in the last 4 minutes of a game.

When everyone knows what you are going to do -- it comes down to execution.

Culture of execution -- Jerry Sloan -- only had 7 plays.

Coach Suhr -- "Don't leave scars on your players before breaking down the video."

Loves Jon Gordon and his books.

THE BASKETBALL DIARIES

Last year while at the University of Central Florida, Greg Brown, then the Associate Head Coach at UCF, came up with an idea that we dedicate our blogs for an entire week to what we as assistant coaches do.  It was a serious and massive undertaking to do in the detailed fashion that we chose in the middle of the season but we thought it would be something worth sharing.  It gives a 7 day, minute by minute of everything that a coach does and it is one of the most popular posts I've had in terms of hits.

We've decided to post it again for those who may have missed it the first time.  As we mentioned, it's extremely long.  It includes charts, videos, and graphics of everything from practice, games, scouting, travel, team meetings and a little more.

If you visit, you'll want to scroll to the very bottom and work your way up.  The first entry of the week is at the very bottom.

The Basketball Diaries

 

Dedicated to Coach Joi Williams and the UCF Knights for giving me a great year!