The 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why the list on the door has to go. Posting names on a gym door or a website is efficient for the coach and brutal for the player. Coach Collins explains why every cut deserves a face to face conversation, even when there are dozens of them. Set expectations before tryouts begin. Tell players and parents on day one how decisions will be communicated, when, and by whom. A clear process removes surprise and cuts down on angry emails. The three part conversation. Every cut meeting covers two things the player did well, one or two honest reasons they did not make the roster, and a specific path forward. Keep it to three to five minutes and keep an assistant in the room. Words that help and words that hurt. Avoid vague phrases like it was close or numbers game. Be specific and kind. Do not make promises you cannot keep about next year. Seniors and the last cut. Seniors who are cut deserve extra care, and the last player cut is the hardest decision on the roster. Coach Collins shares how to handle both with honesty. Keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting, a summer workout plan, or a role such as manager or practice player when it fits. Many kids come back better because of how they were cut. This week's homework. Write your cut meeting script, choose the assistant who will sit in, and tell your players exactly how the process will work. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today we're talking about the hardest part of October. How do you cut a player without breaking them? Let me start with something I believe deeply. The way you cut a kid will be remembered longer than any game you win this season. That player will tell their parents about it. They'll tell their friends. Someday they might tell their own kids. So let's do it right. First, never post the list. I know it's efficient. I know you might have fifty kids trying out. But a list on a gym door means a fifteen year old finds out the worst news of their year in front of a crowd. Every kid who gave you three days of effort deserves a few minutes of your time, face to face. Second, set the expectations before tryouts even start. On day one, tell players and parents exactly how decisions will be shared, when, and by whom. Something like this. On Thursday after practice, every player will meet with me individually for a few minutes. When the process is clear, there are fewer surprises and a lot fewer angry emails. Third, use a simple structure for the conversation. I use three parts. One, tell them two things they did well, and be specific. You communicated on defense better than anyone in your group. Two, give them one or two honest reasons they didn't make the roster. Right now your ball handling under pressure isn't where it needs to be at this level. Three, give them a path forward. Here's what I'd work on, and here's who can help you. Keep it short. Three to five minutes. And always have an assistant in the room. That protects you, it protects the player, and it gives you a witness to what was actually said. Now, a word about language. Avoid the vague stuff. It was really close. It's just a numbers game. Kids hear that as, there's nothing I could have done. Be specific and be kind. And never make promises about next year that you can't keep. Don't say you'll definitely make it next season. Say, if you do this work, you'll give yourself a real chance. Seniors deserve extra care. A senior who gets cut is losing their last chance to wear the jersey. Meet with them first, give them more time, and when it fits, offer them a real role. A manager. A practice player. Somebody who's still part of the family. And the last cut. That's the one that keeps you up at night. Be honest with yourself about why. Go back to your rubric. Go back to your identity. When you can explain the decision in those terms, you can look that kid in the eye. Finally, keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting in a week, when emotions have settled. Give them a workout plan. Invite them to open gym in the spring. Some of the best players I've seen were cut once, and came back hungrier because a coach treated them with respect. Let me give you an example of how that conversation can sound. Jordan, thanks for sitting down with me. First, I want you to know two things you did really well. You competed on every rep in the shell drill, and you were one of the best communicators in the gym. Here's where you're not there yet. At this level, we need guards who can handle pressure, and right now that's still a work in progress for you. So this year, you're not on the roster. Here's what I'd do. Work on your ball handling against pressure every day. Come to our spring open gym. And come see me in a month so we can talk about your plan. That's about ninety seconds. Honest, specific, and respectful. Now, prepare yourself for emotion. Some kids will cry. Some will go silent. Some will get angry. All of that is normal. Don't rush to fill the silence, and don't argue. Just say, I understand this is hard, and I respect how hard you worked. Let them have their reaction. You're not there to win the conversation. You're there to deliver hard news with care. And think about the parents. Send a short email that night to every family of a player who was cut. Thank them for their child's effort, and repeat that you're available for a follow up meeting once everyone has had a day to process. That one email heads off a lot of angry phone calls, and it shows families that the way you treat their kid doesn't end when the roster is set. So here's your homework. Write your three part cut script. Pick the assistant who will sit in with you. And tell your players on day one exactly how the process will work. That's today's episode. For more on tryouts, roster decisions, and building culture, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Cut with dignity, and you'll never lose a kid's respect. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The problem with traditional tryouts. Layup lines and shooting stations show you skill, but skill is the easiest thing to see and the least predictive of who helps you win in February. Coach Collins explains why tryouts should be built to reveal the things you cannot see in a box score. The coachability rep. Give a player one specific correction, then watch the very next rep. Did they try to apply it? That single moment tells you more about a player's growth curve than ten made jumpers. Talk and transition. Run live defensive drills where the only thing an evaluator tracks is talk. Then run transition drills and watch who sprints back when the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Response to mistakes. Put players in competitive situations where they will fail. Watch what happens next. Do they hang their head, blame a teammate, or get back on defense? Watch the kids who are not playing. Water breaks, sideline time, and the end of the line are evaluation moments. Who picks up a teammate? Who is on their phone? A simple scoring system. Use multiple evaluators, a short rubric scored one to five, and a handful of categories tied to your identity. Tell the players in advance exactly what you will be watching. This week's homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan, and give every evaluator the same rubric. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Tryouts are coming, and today I want to ask you a hard question. Are your tryouts measuring the right things? Here's what usually happens. We run layup lines. We run shooting stations. We run some three on three. And the kids who shine are the ones who can make shots in a gym with nobody guarding them. Then February comes, and we realize we kept the best shooter in October, not the best teammate in a tight game. Skill is the easiest thing to see in a tryout. It's also the thing you can teach the most over a season. What's hard to see, and hard to teach, is coachability, toughness, and how a kid treats the people around them. So let's build tryouts that show you those things. First, the coachability rep. Pick a player in the middle of a drill. Give them one specific correction. Get lower in your stance. Show me your hands. Then watch the very next rep. Not the result. The attempt. Did they try to do what you just asked? That one moment tells you more about how a kid will grow over a season than ten made jumpers. Second, talk and transition. Run a live shell drill and assign an evaluator to track one thing only. Who talks? Who calls ball, who calls help, who calls shot? Then run a transition drill, and watch who sprints back the moment the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Third, response to mistakes. Put players in competitive drills where they're going to fail. Score everything. Keep a winner and a loser. Then watch what happens after a turnover or a missed box out. Does the kid hang his head? Blame a teammate? Or sprint back and get the next stop? You are not just evaluating basketball. You are evaluating how they handle adversity, and you'll need that in January. Fourth, watch the kids who aren't playing. Water breaks. The end of the line. Sideline time. Who picks up a teammate off the floor? Who claps for somebody else's good play? Who's sneaking a look at their phone? Some of the best evaluating I ever did happened when the kids didn't think anyone was watching. Now, let's keep it fair. Use more than one evaluator. Give every evaluator the same short rubric. Five categories, scored one to five. Make those categories match your team identity. If your identity says we defend and we share the ball, then defense and unselfishness had better be on that sheet. And here's the part a lot of coaches miss. Tell the players ahead of time what you're looking for. Say it on day one of tryouts. We are evaluating talk, effort in transition, how you respond to mistakes, and how you treat your teammates. When kids know what matters, the right kids rise up. And when you have to make tough decisions, you can point to exactly what you said. One last thought. Tryouts are the first message about your culture. The way you run them tells every kid in that gym what you value. If you value hustle, make hustle visible. If you value teammates, reward the kid who picks someone up. Let me walk you through what a day of tryouts could actually look like. Start with fifteen minutes of a dynamic warmup, and have an evaluator watch who's leading lines and who's hiding in the back. Then twenty minutes of skill stations, because yes, skill still matters. Then the shell drill with an evaluator tracking talk. Then a scored transition drill. Then live three on three and five on five, with winners and losers recorded. Finish with free throws while tired. In about ninety minutes, you've seen skill, effort, communication, competitiveness, and composure. Here's a mistake I see a lot. Coaches let one great play or one bad play decide a kid's fate. A player hits three straight threes and suddenly he's on the roster. Another kid fumbles one pass and he's written off. That's why your rubric matters, and that's why you need more than one day. Look for patterns, not moments. A pattern over two or three days tells you who a kid really is. And don't forget the evaluators' meeting at the end of each day. Ten minutes. Go player by player and compare notes. You'll be surprised how often your assistant saw something you missed. Sometimes it's a kid who was great on the weak side of the shell drill, where you weren't looking. Sometimes it's a kid who said something to a teammate at the water fountain that changes your whole view. Those conversations are where good decisions get made. So here's your homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan. Build a five category rubric. Give it to every evaluator. That's today's episode. For tryout plans, evaluation forms, and more, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Pick the players who make your team better, not just the ones who make shots. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The meeting most coaches skip. Coaches spend hours on X's and O's and almost no time aligning the adults who teach them. Coach Collins makes the case for one real staff meeting before tryouts, with an agenda, a notepad, and no phones. Question one: who are we? Every coach in the program should be able to say the team's identity sentence word for word. If the levels teach different identities, players get mixed messages and the program loses its spine. Question two: what does each coach own? Give every assistant a clear area of ownership, such as defense, player development, scouting, or academics. Ownership turns helpers into coaches and keeps the head coach from trying to do everything. Question three: how do we speak to players? Decide who talks in timeouts, who corrects in drills, and how feedback is delivered. One voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. Question four: how do we disagree? Disagreement is healthy behind closed doors and harmful in front of players and parents. Set that rule in October so it never has to be enforced in January. Question five: do we use the same words? Shared terminology from freshman to varsity means a player called up in February already speaks the language. Write a one page glossary of your calls and terms. This week's homework. Schedule a ninety minute staff meeting before tryouts, walk through the five questions, and leave with every coach owning one area of the program. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question is one I wish someone had asked me early in my career. Is your coaching staff really on the same page? Here's what I've learned. Most staff problems that blow up in February started with a conversation that never happened in October. An assistant says something to a parent he shouldn't have. The JV coach runs a different defense. Somebody rolls their eyes on the bench after a decision. None of that is about bad people. It's about a meeting that never took place. So before tryouts, I want you to hold one real staff meeting. Ninety minutes. An agenda. A notepad. Phones in the bag. And I want you to walk through five questions. Question one. Who are we? Every coach in your program, from freshman to varsity, should be able to say your team identity word for word. If your levels are teaching different identities, your players get mixed messages and your program loses its spine. Question two. What does each coach own? Assistants who just show up and rebound are wasted. Give every coach a lane. One owns defense. One owns player development. One owns scouting. One owns academics and grade checks. Ownership turns helpers into coaches, and it keeps you from trying to do everything yourself. Question three. How do we speak to players? Decide this now. Who talks in timeouts? Who corrects in drills? My rule of thumb is one voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. During a drill, I want every coach teaching. During a timeout, players need to hear one message, clearly. Question four. How do we disagree? And you will disagree. That's healthy. The rule is simple. We argue behind closed doors, and we walk out of that room as one staff. Never in front of players. Never in front of parents. Never on social media. Say it in October, so you never have to enforce it in January. Question five. Do we use the same words? If your freshman coach calls it a hedge and your varsity coach calls it a show, you just wasted a week when a kid gets called up. Write a one page glossary. Your calls, your terms, your defensive language. Hand it to every coach at every level. I'll add one more thing. Talk about parents. Agree that every parent concern about playing time or role goes to the head coach. Your assistants should never be stuck in a parking lot conversation they're not equipped to handle. Protect them, and they'll protect the program. When you walk out of that meeting, every coach should know three things. Who we are. What I own. And how we behave as a staff. That's alignment. And here's the payoff. Players notice. When kids see a staff that is unified, that uses the same language and backs each other up, they trust the system faster. Culture isn't just what your players do. It starts with what your coaches model. Let me give you a picture of what this looks like when it works. Picture the second week of January. Your varsity point guard goes down with an ankle. You pull a sophomore up from JV. If your staff is aligned, that kid walks into varsity practice and already knows the calls, already knows the defense, already knows what the head coach means when he says show. He's ready in a day, not a week. That's what alignment buys you. It's not a nice idea. It's insurance. Now, a common mistake. Coaches hold the meeting, everybody nods, and then nobody revisits it. Alignment isn't a one time event. I'd schedule a fifteen minute staff check in every week of the season. Same three questions every time. What are we seeing? What do we need to fix? Is anyone struggling? Put it on the calendar the same day, the same time, so it never gets skipped when the schedule gets crazy. And take care of your assistants as people. Ask about their families. Thank them in front of the players. Give them credit when the defense plays well. A lot of assistant coaches are working for very little money and a lot of hours. When they feel valued, they invest. When they feel like helpers, they drift. The best staffs I've been around were made of people who would run through a wall for each other, and that started with a head coach who made them feel like it was their program too. So here's your homework. Put a staff meeting on the calendar before tryouts. Walk through those five questions. Leave with every coach owning one piece of the program. That's today's episode. For staff resources, practice plans, and more, visit teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Build your staff before you build your team. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out.  [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills,  ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices