Good luck coach! Every time we step on the court we want to win, but it's a marathon, not a sprint!

We are in a similar situation. I think talking about it or commenting on having a “winning season” makes it worse. Also as a coach you know that you’ve got to change the culture and that just plain takes time. We as coaches really want to come in and flip it around year 1. That’s doable but I don’t know if it’s realistic. I would encourage you to hold them to a high standard and make them better basketball players. My number one goal in the last four years, has been to make the game fun.

To second what the other Andrew said, burn cut the deny and fill, follow or truck, and also burn the swing denial. I will tell you my team has struggled mightily dealing with pressure the last few years, we are currently the best we’ve ever been, and a lot of it is because we go to dribble handoff action so much. It’s the hardest action to deny in my opinion.

This is money!

Can you send game film? Also, I want to comment on "Giving them freedom to make choices has not panned out thus far and I believe we need structure." I am a coach that has always wanted players to play fun and play free. This year, we made the switch from Read and React to a RaceSpace/DriveSpace Hybrid. Last year I would tell players "when you have the ball you can do whatever you want, when you don't have the ball, you must follow the rules of spacing and our offensive Read and React system" But the problem is, I don't have super skilled players, so "do whatever you want" is EXTREMELY scary and fearful and tough for my guys. "What if I do something wrong?" Fast forward and we are playing the best offense we've ever played partly because we have a little more talent and partly because we are playing so fast, fun, and free WITH FRAMEWORK. That last part is key. The biggest implement was the shot selection. Ask your team, if you boil everything down, what's the goal of offense? Should be to score, but more specifically would be to score efficiently. Enter the SAVI shot scale from 3-9 and we are a much more efficient team. "We want 9s and 7s" but take a bigger step back, how do we get those? By finding advantages. How do we find advantages? By knowing what they are, and creating them. All that to say, here's our offensive "framework" or principles. 1. Score 2. 9s and 7s so we are efficient 3. Get those by pushing advantages 4. Get advantages by racing 5. If we don't get by racing we get by actions 6. Stack actions together to get advantages 7. Spacing is the last piece that makes every single piece above this work