I love Xs and Os. I love actions, counters, and beautifully choreographed sets. And plays like this from Kansas look incredible. It is nasty. The timing, the spacing, the deception. As a coach, your brain immediately lights up watching it. But every time I see something like this, I also have two questions running in the back of my head: - How much practice time did this take - How many times are you actually going to run this in a game? Because here is the reality. Most of these super detailed, intricate actions end up producing the same thing a lot of simpler offense does: a contested shot or a difficult shot of sorts. And that does not mean the set is bad. It just means that complexity does not automatically equal efficiency. At the college level, especially at a place like Kansas, they have far more practice time, far more reps, and far more buy-in to install and maintain actions like this. That context matters a lot. So yes, marvel at it. Appreciate it. Learn concepts from it. But do not watch plays like this and immediately think, “Yeah, let me go run that with my team.” For youth and high school programs, practice time is precious. Your return on investment is almost always better spent on spacing, decision-making, advantages, and simple actions your players can execute under pressure. Cool sets look awesome on film. Winning basketball usually comes from keeping things simple on offense.

A freshman that has asked me to work with him every day after practice since August has been getting some varsity minutes and has played well during the limited minutes he was getting. He earned his first career start tonight for our varsity team and scored 20 points and grabbed 7 boards while leading us to a win. Talk about a great feeling as a coach seeing a player you pour into and know has put in the work go out and perform.

Just installed this 2 for our group yesterday. Always good to have something else in your back pocket the 2nd time you play teams in conference play. (1st one) DOUBLE: 3 is running off of a stagger screen from 5 and 4. If 4 can slip to the basket he does, 5 pops up as a safety outlet. If x2 helps too far into the paint, we can zip it over to 2 in the corner. (2nd one) TWIRL: Gives us a similar look to DOUBLE except the 3 and 5 start in different spots. 3 screens for 5 and 5 "twirls" the screen by circling back to screen for the 3. It's then essentially a "DOUBLE" look like the 1st play. On this one, 5 can slip the screen and 4 will pop.

Here's some book notes + a summary from the book "Leaders Eat Last" that I've used with some of my teams in the past. Feel free to take bits and pieces of it for yourself or for your team to use! Great stuff here. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I2mJcUSdNXwyBlJ0BUGhCGyEuaHbQA93?usp=drive_link

The Junior High program I coach for has 3 teams for 8th & 7th grade. For 8th grade there is a clear "A" "B" "C" team. Our C team has not won a game this season and that has not deterred any of the group of 9 players. On Tuesday we had a game and the attitude of the team felt different. We started the game from the jump going on an 8-0 run within the first few minutes of the game. We had our ups and downs throughout the game but something happened I never thought would happen... We won the game. When the buzzer sounded the players were smiling ear to ear. The best part of the game was 6 of the 9 players scored. We played great defense resulting in a lot of steals and rebounded the ball well. Half court offense was a struggle but did enough to win the game. Main point to remember when coaching those teams that may not be your most skilled group they still care. The feeling of that win is going to carry them high into their next game on Thursday. Continue to break the rock and developing all players.