Agreed with the zone comment, it is actually tougher for a weaker team to score against a stronger team's zone than their full court man. It sounds like only the Sturt coach knew this and was able to put one over both the opposition coach, the referee(s) and the "anonymous" ( i.e. either "I'm too dumb to know my own name" or "I'm too gutless to actually have my idiotic opinion associated with even an "imaginary" board account) original poster.

Not much sympathy for any of these people, just sorry for both teams.


some smarter coaches here http://www.ozhoopsboards.com/showthread.php?t=5371

my applogies to original poster meant this twerp - Anonymous
Today
09:32 16 Apr 11

In particular, the posting I liked from the ozboards thread was

whole quote"

QUOTE
Societal reason: some small associations struggle to get a team at all. If the better teams in their division keep the foot on the throat, that assocation might have kids (or thier parents) pull out and, so, not field a team next year. So the kids that like basketballl miss out and basketball overall is worse off. QUOTE


Absolutely agree - one difficulty is how to do it without appearing to be "dogging" it.


Many years ago, the club I ran/coached would be involved in some outrageously unbalanced games during "grading " seasons, and please don't start on the "play in appropriate grades" slurs.

In an age group like u14s, we would field 2 separate teams in div 1,who would generally end up 2nd and 3rd or 3rd and 4th at the season end. Then 2 more teams in div 2 who would do likewise and a 5th team in div 3. In some cases our players ranked outside out "best" 36 players would be playing against the other club/teams/associations no 2 team , or basically their 9th-17th players.

Often the the teams in div 3 and even div 2 would play against some truly unskilled ( but willing ) coaches and teams from other clubs that were just not competitive.

So these are the restrictions that were put in place.

It resulted in full court, fast and furious games where the other team found themselves actually stringing some passes together and even getting some shots away and feeling not so bad about themselves, and our players got some discipline drummed into them rather than a unwanted and unjustified " we are the greatest" attitude.

In fairly loose progression / order of gradual implementation during the game

1) straight up man to man - so no double teams in defence

2) then ABSOLUTELY no help defence, if your player beat you on the dribble 15 m away from the ring ( or 2 m), then they could go ALL the way unless YOU caught them - this was great for instilling the "hot pursuit" attitude for later games against stronger opponents

3) then no taking the ball out of the oppositions hands when they were standing, you had to pressure the passing lane and get them for a 5 second violation - this had the side effect of reducing those stupid "reach in" fouls that we would get against the better teams AND of letting the other teams players have some confidence rather than being totally intimidated.

3) then no reaching in and stealing the ball when they were dribbling, you had to play ahead and use good footwork to keep them from the basket and to get them to change hands ( usually they picked the ball up as they had no off hand dribble). benifits - see previous point.

4) then all our consecutive bounces in a dribbles had to be on our weak hand, only 1 bounce allowed on your strong hand.

5) 4 players touch the ball before we shoot. Meant everyone had to run the court or come off

6) then we had a maximum of 3 dribbles in offence, and that would go to two if their defence was really bad, so every one had to run and pass rather than watch our player with the ball dribble through 4 defence players and score. the benefit was that you STILL had to fake to get past in 2 bounces and 2 steps, instead of just going head down for 3 metres against slow and bad footwork.


7) then if they were really uncompetitive then you could not intercept a pass NOR jump to block a shot either , after this we could only regain possession after our score if they violated ( 3 sec, 5 seconds, charge, travel, out of court) or missed/made a shot. This really improved out ability to take a charge.

in 3 games the other teams were such beginners than I had to add

8 ) no jumping for rebounds
9) no blocking shots even without jumping

as I immediately pulled players off if they broke the rules, we had lots of subs and a lot of activity, and the other team were actually able to "play" as well without us looking disrespectful or arrogant. our players really had to work hard and run under those rules


Even so in one of those 3 games the other team made their first basket of their entire season ( 5th round !) in the last quarter, and both the other players and their parents were absolutely stoked to have scored against one of the top teams.

our players were also ecstatic as they knew about the following rule


1) if any opposition team failed to score in any game, our players would have 2 push-ups for every point we scored in that game at the next training, so a 20 to 0 scoreline gave 40 pushups ( spread over the 2 hours).

The players were asked if the other team were such "bad people" that they deserved to have their day/night ruined by being absolutely trashed, and the reply was usually "no - they are just not very good at basketball" - and so I hope it generally taught them a lesson about how to play sports for something other than sheepstations.

Of course when we played better teams, then it was 100%, but at least we did not have players and parents who thought going coast to coast was the ultimate standard of basketball skill.
Last edited by whenever; 11-01-2011 at 01:07 AM.

very old, you are indeed very wise.

Very Old, that is by far the best post I have ever, and probably will ever read on this forum. Basketball in our state, needs so many more people like you.

happened in ABA 2 weeks ago west women v mavs - it's a competition and there will be top teams and bottom teams.

West have returned reasonable results in the boys competition - won summer u16 and 18 boys - I would not even bother posting this thread to start with

Me3, were you even at the game??
sturt played a press not a zone for 3/4 of the game.
both referees were grey shirts and senior grey shirts.
if you were sitting close enough to the coaches, you may have heard the coach ask "will i be tech fouled if i bring my boys back"
which the referee responded with no, but just make sure they pick up a player when they come over half court.

if you watched the first quater/half, you would have noticed that after a score west couldn't even get the ball in, let alone over half way.

so at a u/12 div 2 level, the kids are not looking at becoming superstars they are just looking to walk off the court smiling. but how can you have fun if you never get to touch the ball?

the zone was allowed to let west at least get over halfway and have a few attempts at a goal.
and it was the senior ref on the game's decision to let them play the zone or half court Defense.

if you stick to the rules where a tech foul should be issued, would that help the game?
the coach would then move his players back to a press
and the score would have been worse

maybe a mercy rule should be brought into district?? it seems to work at mini-ball level

it is just common sense by the club when entering a team in a grade.

I applaud other clubs have re jigged their teams grading after summer.

if this happened week in week out to that team - I would suggest the competition committee may have to step in and speak with the club re appropriate grading.

however they did play sturt at pasadena and it would not be the first or last team that ventured there and received a shalaking.

Would people be complaining if it was Sturt getting smacked?

great post Very Old, good to see some people still see the bigger picture

where was this game at???Port Adelaide??

i saw a 122 to 2 game in under 10 girls back in hte ninties should be a rule that a team has to make a set number of ball reversals before they shoot once they are 30 up or somethink!

Very Old you should be the new JDO at Sturt Basketball Club. Fantastic Post.

Very old ... a legend clearly.

Coached some very good team in my youth and now relaise how much of a dumbass I was pression 3 1 1 for most of the game in a state champs.

Everyone deserves a go.

Very old I salute u ... form someone that is somewhat old

Thanks to those who posted positive stuff re that post. I've been on both ends of the score-line both as a player and as a coach.

For those with very long memories, my junior SA coach for 4 years was the late (and very missed) Trevor Martin, whose name is on the SA junior club trophy.

Whose team philosophy , as I remember it, was basically - everyone who trials gets into a team and everyone in the team gets a game each week, no matter what.

He hated to lose but it seemed that his game philosophy was - we want to just scrape a win against the weak teams - 'cos the score is not important, then beat the best teams by as much as we can within the rules, and THEN absolutely slaughter the arrogant %$#@'s who think they are better than every-one else - of which there were not many in our grade, so we were rarely let lose for a full 40 minutes.

Locally I seem to see that many coaches are just trying to be exactly the type of coach and team that Trevor loved us to take apart and would just set us lose on.