March/April 2019 - 12

FINISHING THE
SEASON STRONG
By Joshua Epperson, contributing writer
During my first season as a head coach, my squad
ended the year in lackluster fashion. The players were
tired, they lost the enthusiasm of just a few months
earlier, they didn't expect to win in the postseason, and
they coasted until the final game of the season.
We lost early in the postseason tournament, and the
coaching staff and I re-evaluated our approach to the
team and practices. We wanted to figure out a way to
finish the next season on a stronger note.
New expectations
The first thing we tackled was raising our expectations
for the next season. Without high standards, your effort as
a coach is minimized, and the players are the first ones to
see that.
To set the tone early in the following season, we put the
phrase " finishing what we start " on our team T-shirts. Of
course, T-shirts alone have little effect on performance, so
we stressed defensive deflections as a key to finding more
success on the court.
Once the expectation was placed on our players to
perform on the defensive end, they took it to heart. Our
team only averaged about 10 deflections a game the
previous season, but increased that total to 32 deflections
per game. The expectations and the goal to increase
our defensive pressure led to the major improvement in
deflections, which helped us win more games.
Team leadership
Cultivating the leaders on our team was the next step
12 MARCH/APRIL 2019
for us to finish the season strong. To prepare for the
following season, we held a captains meeting with our
two seniors to prepare them for being effective leaders.
We wanted them to have a leader's mindset before the
season started.
We discussed the characteristics that effective leaders
share and how they can implement these characteristics
into their play, as well as their interactions with
teammates. We also stressed integrity, which became the
focal point of our discussions.
Integrity comes from giving the best effort in class and
earning good grades, as well as giving a total effort on
the court or being supportive on the bench. We stressed to
the captains that integrity also means being the last one to
leave the court after practice and completing every drill
the right way every time.
Polishing our performance
A major problem our team had the previous season was
finishing layups. We missed a lot of easy shots. When
your team is missing layups, have them repeat a phrase
(we used " nothing but net " ) to get them to finish the play
instead of just releasing the ball.
It became expected of our players that they were going
to finish plays at the hoop to score easy points. We also
stressed finishing drills correctly, meaning that no drill
was complete until properly executed. When we ran
sprints, no one jogged prior to reaching the endline.
Everyone finished running as hard as they could. And,
our practices didn't end until the drill or sequence was
March/April 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of March/April 2019
