We want our middle school athletes to have a positive basketball experience and cultivate their passion for the game of basketball. It’s also important that we have vertical alignment of our concepts that they will run at the high school level. As a coach, your priority should be to focus on player skill development, character development, and sportsmanship; not wins and losses. We realize that coaching middle school can be a challenging task and you will have many players who are brand new to organized basketball. We want to create a competitive environment where kids challenge each other in practice and where coaches allow for players to develop their entire skill set.   We expect you to create an environment with high energy and enthusiasm. Every player should be talking or clapping and being enthusiastic. Equal playing time for everyone is NOT a requirement, but we do encourage you to give all players the opportunity to play in the game if they are showing up to practices. 

We want you to work on and sell our man-to-man defense as your primary defense. We have to hang our hats on that defensive philosophy. We want all players to give maximum effort on the defensive end of the floor and take pride in being physical and tough. THERE SHOULD BE VERY LITTLE ZONE DEFENSE RUN DURING GAMES. 

Offensively, WE WILL UTIIZE A SPACE AND PACE SYSTEM. The main thing we need to teach our middle school kids is spacing, moving without the ball, and how to attack small and big advantages against the defense. In order to teach these concepts, we will use several breakdown drills and small sided games that allow kids to play and learn to work together. 

Last, but certainly not least, encourage the importance of decision-making on and off the court. The athletes must understand the value of positive decision-making on the floor, in the hallways, and out in the community. The athletes that have a hard time grasping this concept will have a hard time earning a spot as a Bridgeport Bull. The team concept should be instilled from the first day. The group is more valuable than the individual. We all have individual goals and aspirations, but these cannot be achieved without the team experiencing and expecting success. That is the environment we are striving to create. Please feel free to consult any of us, at any time. 

In summary, great middle school coaches make basketball a fun and competitive experience so that lots of our players want to continue to play in high school. Set these players up for success at the high school level by teaching them our specific skill and terminology. Your contributions are absolutely vital to the success of our basketball program and know that we are here to help you in any way that we can. 

We will provide you with video and drawing of these rules. The base offense is very simple to run and will provide your teams with a template of how to move and work together on offense. This style can be run out of a 5 out or 4 out 1 in alignment. Based upon our yearly personnel we can utilize more dribble drive concepts or screening/motion concepts to create advantages. 

Any set plays you want to run are up to your discretion. We can provide some plays that we will use at the high school. We want to keep the number of set plays to a minimum (5 or less). Most time in practice should be spent on the development of skills and how to play the game of basketball. Executing a few sets plays well is far superior to having lots of set plays that are run with poor execution. 

Our offensive system works well against zone and man defenses. There are few minor adjustments that will be made when facing a zone. Our small-sided games approach that we utilize in practice will allow players to get comfortable with playing against any type of defense. Against the zone, we want to attack gaps off the dribble, short corner and high post. We can provide you with video and any information on how to implement an effective zone offense scheme. 

DO NOT RUN ZONE PRESSES OR HALF COURT ZONES AS YOUR MAIN DEFENSE. WE PREFER THAT YOU DON'T RUN 2-3 ZONE AT ALL. At the high school level, we will utilize a 1-2-2/2-1-2 or Point Zone. We will provide you with resources on how to implement these zones for special situations. 

100 RED:  Full Court man-to-man press – Run and Jump Trap

50 RED:  Half court man-to-man defense – really pressure the ball and focus on having weak side defenders in a position to help on drives

We have a very simple press break that works well against various types of presses. We will provide you with videos and diagrams on how to install this simple press break. Being able to handle pressure and break a press is one of the main ways to allow these players to experience success at the middle school level. 

It is important to keep practices shorter with high intensity, rather than long practices with low intensity. Have a practice plan written or typed out prior to going into practice. Practices should flow efficiently and have lots of player participation. I don’t want to see a majority of players standing while only a few perform a task.Spend the first 20-25 minutes of practice every day with a focus on skill development. Make these skill sessions competitive and as game-like as possible. Allow players the freedom to make mistakes as long as they are focused on getting better.

Spend at least 10-15 minutes each practice working on man-to-man defensive concepts. Break down how to rotate on defense, get through various types of screens, and most importantly, how to block out and rebound. 

You will have 40-50 min of each practice to work on team breakdown drills and live situations. The main focus of practice should be competition and giving maximal effort. Small-sided games allow players to learn the game in a smaller game-like scenario. This will maximize reps that focus on decision making. The closer practices can simulate the competitive nature of game night, the faster players will progress.

Players will be expected to have high energy and enthusiasm every day. It is the coaches’ responsibility to hold them accountable if they are not meeting expectations. Our culture is the most important thing that we need to protect.

We really want to focus on the details of our skills work; this is not a time to let the players just go through the drills. There will be a certain emphasis each day that we need to focus on (comes from “A” team coach) we need to make sure we are teaching the fundamentals the way we teach them at the High School. This is the most important aspect of our Middle School program. If you see it being done wrong, we need to correct and make sure they understand the correct way to dribble pass and shoot the basketball. Keep feedback short and allow players to play and move as much as possible. Lots of standing and talking tends to take the energy out of practice. 

The last thing is to have a positive attitude and have fun with the players. If they see you care and they see you are excited to be there, they will feed off that.It’s ok to have fun and be crazy sometimes. We want to create a culture of high energy and enthusiasm. When people walk through the gym, I want them to say, “What is going on in there?”  

IT STARTS WITH YOU! THE SUCCESS WE HAVE AT THE HIGH SCHOOL IS A DIRECT RESULT FROM THE SKILLS AND FOUNDATION THEY RECEIVE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL. I APPRECIATE WHAT YOU DO FOR OUR PROGRAM, AND I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE THAT IT CAN BE FRUSTRATING. HOWEVER, THE IMPACT YOU HAVE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR SKILLS AND BASKETBALL KNOWLEDGE WILL PAY-OFF FOR OUR PROGRAM DOWN THE ROAD. YOU HAVE A VITAL ROLE IN THE SUCCESS OF OUR BASKETBALL PROGRAM.