FUNDAMENTALS ARE FUNDAMENTALS

Got this via an email from Greg Eubanks last week.  I know Greg through my relationship with Coach Don Meyer. Greg played for Coach Meyer from 1988-92 and as I told Greg, I know that Coach is looking down and smiling at his comparison of baseball to basketball fundamentals!

◄Breakdown drills - a starting infielder in MLB is working on fielding grounders and he starts from his knees. Crossover: do the shooting progression

◄at :42 - Line everything up - "once you cross your body you've got no control" (at 2:15). Crossover: Get your wrist, elbow, knee and toe all lined up on your shot

◄at 1:05 - Details matter - How he gets the ball out of his glove, where the ball sits in his glove makes the difference in getting an out or not. Crossover - Details matter - it's the difference in winning and losing

◄at 1:00 - Look at the intensity in which he practices, the exaggeration with his eyes and hands

◄at 4:12 - "It's a process. It doesn't happen in a couple of days."  Crossover - You don't become a great shooter or ballhandler overnight or by only doing it every few days. It's a process that takes work and you'll see results but it may not be for a while.

◄at 8:06 - Why do we do drills? We isolate skills and when we carry that over to the 5/5 is when the magic happen.

◄at 10:55 - If you practice the skills you'll be ready for the games and you can play aggressive and make plays. "Play wide open with our minds and wide open with our athletic ability"

You think Ozzie is in the MLB just by chance? He's talented but that's just one factor.

 There's lots of talented guys who never come close the MLB.  He's also coachable, pays attention to details, and works hard. 

What are your goals and what are you doing to achieve them? What's holding you back?

GARY BLAIR COACHING ACADEMY JUMP DRIVE FOR PURCHASE

We've had a lot of request for information on the Gary Blair Coaching Academy information and if it would be available to those coaches who could not attend.  It has been a tradition of our to make as much of the materials available as possible.

This year, for $40, you will receive a jump drive that will have video of each of the presentations along with all the passouts the coaches made available while speaking.  

Click here for more ordering information.

In addition, there will be the following:

Aggie Offensive Playbook
Aggie Defensive Drill Booklet
Aggie Man to Man Defense Booklet
Passout on the Aggie Point Zone Defense
Passout on Aggie Scouting Guidelines

There will be also 50 set of clinic notes taken from other clinics from coaches such as Hubie Brown, Bob Knight, Roy Williams, Sherri Coale, Geno Auriemma, Pat Summitt, Don Meyer and many more.

Also included will be over 30 articles on coaches such Bill Parcells, Nick Saban, Rick Majerus and many more.

The video  segments include the following speakers along with their topics:

Mike Neighbors - Green Light Shooting Program
Mike Neighbors - Teaching and Motivating the iY Generation
Gary Blair - Aggie Man to Man Offense
Kelly Bond-White - Aggie Primary/Secondary Break
Amy Wright - Perimeter Player Development
Bob Starkey - Good Things I've Learned Along the Way
Bob Starkey - Aggie Shell Defense Series

Plus a complete Texas A&M basketball practice.

Any additional questions? Email me at: rstarkey@athletics.tamu.edu

THE OPPORTUNITY TO PURSUE EXCELLENCE

In a few weeks I'll be speaking at the PGC/Glazier Coaching Clinic in Dallas.  I have two segments and my last one is titled: "Don Meyer - Lessons Learned from a Legacy Left."  I've spent the last few days rereading Buster Olney's great book on Coach Meyer, "How Lucky You Can Be," and came across a passage back in the acknowledgments that I'm going to share with my team today:

"I first met Don Meyer when I was twenty-four years old and a first-year reporter at the Nashville Banner.  Meyer's practices were always open to the public, and so, once or twice a week, I would sit in and watch and listen. When the team met in a classroom before of after practices, I would take a seat in the back.  The underlying message that I heard him present to his players -- that every single day provided you with the opportunity to pursue excellent or not -- resonated with me from a young age."

DON MEYER'S TEAM TRADEMARKS

The following is a list create by Coach Don Meyer on what he wanted the "trademarks" of his team to be.  Do you have a list of what you want your team to stand for?

1. TEAM ATTITUDE (WE BEFORE ME) 
Love for each other 
Unselfish 
Trustworthy 
Huddles on the floor 
Clean locker-room 
Help teammates up 
Wipe up floor 
Sprint off floor 
Disciplined Know Roles 

2. SERVANTHOOD / STEWARDSHIP 
Courteous / Polite 
Picking up trash 
Sportsmanship
 Respect for the game / Opponents
 Doing the next right thing right 
Helping Keith

3. TOUGHNESS (NEVER OUT HUSTLED, NEVER OUT THOUGHT) 

4. FUNDAMENTALS 
Defense 
Offense 
Transition and Talk 
Sureness 
Stance, Vision, Position, 
Talk 
Triple Threat 
Ball Pressure 
LBBBOS 
On and up the line 
Doleac 
Closeouts 
Feeding the post 
High hands --- Hand Above Ball 
Cut and space 
Shot pressure 
Drive and space 
BOPCRO 
Follow through 

5. STUDENTS / TEACHERS OF THE GAME 
Notebooks 
Camp 
Active and teaching bench 

6. COMMUNICATION 
System of talk 
Echo yells 
Posts demand the ball 

7. CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT (KAIZEN) 
Sense of urgency 
Warm-ups 
Buying-in 
Attention to detail 
Red Team workouts

TIM ELMORE'S iY GENERATION

During one of the stops along the way during the July recruiting period, Joni Taylor told me of Tim Elmore and his work in communicating and leading millennials also know as the Y Generation.  She told me of his book series titled "Habitudes."  She had so much passion in her voice I went back to the hotel that night and researched it.  Joni is someone I greatly admire and respect so when she says "you gotta check it out," I did.

I went to Elmore's website and purchased a series a books titled the "Coaching Millennial Athletes Bundle" which included the book "Generation iY."  Elmore refers the Y Generation as "iY Generation" because of their nature of their information gathering and communication through things such as their iPhones and iPads.

The book was amazing and is an absolute must read for those looking to maximize their ability to communicate and teach today's student athletes.  I took 30 pages of notes from the book. 

Elmore goes in great detail to explain how this generation has evolved and then explains the positive and negative ramifications.  Better yet, he gives some concrete guidelines to assist us as coaches. 

For example, how important are our words and messages that we deliver to our team?  As Elmore explains:

"We need to remember that every time we stand in front of our own kids or a group of students, they are silently asking: Why should I listen to you? What do you have to offer me that’s different than the other options in my life?"

Understanding this requires thought and preparation when communication.

The most profound statement from Elmore and one that so many of us have a difficult time swallowing is:

"To connect and influence Generation iY, we’ll likely have to adjust to them."

Another concept that Elmore delves into is the one of the helicopter parent:

"Too many parents invest too much energy in protecting their children, and forget that their number-one job is to prepare their children for life without them. Parenting is ultimate leadership. A parent is the ultimate mentor in the life of their child."

And while this is true, we also see instances of the same philosophy and culture within athletic teams.  Sometimes we as coaches are swift to judge parents without looking that we are guilty of the same sins.

What we must understand is regardless of the facts, that we have inherited a different and unique generation to coach, the responsibility still relies on us to help steer them in the right direction.  I often speak at clinics and one of the things that I talk about is "don't be that coach that talks about how difficult it is to coach this generation."  In all honesty, all coaches could make this statement -- including the ones that coached us.  Be the answer.  Or as Elmore states:

"If we’re serious about transforming the world, we have to be serious about investing in this next generation.  What we do today as adults will no doubt determine who they will become as adults."

As I said, I took 30 pages of notes from this book.  I fully believe I am going to be a better coach for having read it and that's a powerful thing to say about a book.  In closing, here are a few more thoughts from Elmore on teaching:

•Teaching must supply not only information, but inspiration for students.

•Teaching must do more than measure a kid’s memory; it must motivate a kid’s imagination.

•Teaching must cover not just the facts of history but the feelings that history produced.

•Teaching should not just be about increasing intelligence, but also about increasing innovation.

•Teaching cannot only be about what to think, but how to think.

USING ANALYTICS TO CHART INTANGIBLES AT PRACTICE

There has been so much talk in recent years about analytics and how each of us utilize them to best benefit our program.  But I came across an article from last year about how Buzz Williams of Virginia Tech goes as far as charting intangibles in practice.  Here is an excerpt from the article in Collegiate Times written by Faizan Hasnany:

With the stakes as high as they had been all season, Buzz Williams and his staff didn’t let the moment distract them, relying on something that has been an integral part of Williams’ coaching philosophy since his earliest head coaching days at the University of New Orleans: data analytics.

“He’s been using (analytics) ever since I’ve known him. I would say since he’s been a coach, he’s been a numbers guy. He’s really, really smart and he’s really, really good with numbers,” said Devin Johnson, who worked with Williams as an undergraduate assistant at UNO, at Marquette and now as the Hokies' director of player personnel. “I would say he’s been using it since day one.”

Analytics are not just at the core of how the Hokies scout and prepare for other teams, but are used in everything that they do, from practices, to recruiting and everything in between.

“In practice we count touches. So if me and you high-five each other, how many touches did you have at the end of the day? We feel that your touches and your high-fives motivate your teammates to get through that practice,” Johnson said.

Bringing quantitative value to things like effort, communication and teamwork has allowed the Hokies’ coaching staff to objectively reward its players for those extra efforts. It has also helped to establish the tough and hard-working character for which Williams’ teams have always been known.

“At the end of each week, for practice, we have something called a belt winner,” Johnson said. “That comes from analytic numbers from the touches, from the dives on the floor, how much talking and how many times you put your hands on your knees, which shows signs of weakness, so we count that and that’s a negative analytic that we take into account.”

You can read the article in it's entirety here.

NICK SABAN ON THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE