(:nosections:)
A Quick Example: Defending The Dump | |
I've had some success teaching team D in the past, and I like to think that young players, especially bright ones, will often surprise you with their ability to learn complex concepts and make them work against very good offensive players and teams. One example of our team-D philosophy is in how we taught dump D at U of Oregon. This would usually happen at some point during February or March, after the basics of defense and offense but before the real tournament schedule got up to speed. We'd talk/walk/run through three aspects of dump D. For each aspect, we'd talk as a team, most often using a couple of people as human models. My experience tells me that people learn only rarely from whiteboards. If you want them to apply something on the field, you have to show them on the field. We'd discuss the logic first ("why" are we doing this) and then the tactics. As often as possible, we'd do a drill where everyone was in a group, and we went through a specific motion together. Wax on, wax off, only we are 'poach on, poach off.' This works really well for individual techniques like marking, as well. The three aspects we'd talk/demonstrate/drill/attempt for dump D were: 1. Body positioning
(We'd demonstrate each tool that the defender has, and practice each briefly on a slo-mo D to get the sense of body positioning.) 2. Changing the focus Crucially; this is the point at which we discuss working together with the mark. Choosing an appropriate focus based on the mark is very useful, and can give us blocks. This is where the team D aspect comes in; the dump defender was allowed to ask for a different mark or a different tendency from the mark, so that this becomes a 2v2, instead of a 2v1 against the dump defender. 3. Frame the competition I definitely do not write this to say that this is the best way to play dump D; but rather as an example of how we taught team defense (at least in this fairly specific example). | |