Introducing “horns” to everyone, and message for U12

Hello U12,

We did a solid job yesterday but I felt we needed to reach down and play with more togetherness, savvy and effort. After discussion with Coach Ryan, we feel both games were winnable. We fell behind early and played them evenly the rest of the way. Against bigger, stronger opponents, it’s imperative that we play in a coordinated fashion and work together to defend and rebound. I felt our pick and roll defense was not good. In the SAS game, 25 or their 35 points were scored by Justin off a high screen in roll. Our defender defending the screen man was constantly out of position, flat footed and Justin just blew by them and go to the rim. I hope everyone’s sense of over-confidence has come back to earth. We are a good team but not yet great. A great U12 team will consistently beat U14b. We did not countermove too well when the U14b teams used their size and strength to block us. There was too much standing around watching players go one on one.

We will be implementing something new which is simple. We call this offensive set “horns” which is a double high post, with two wing players and a point guard up top. “Horns” I believe is a) easy to learn, b) intuitive and complementary to what we’ve been teaching the kids so far and c) takes advantage of our skills and ball movement while negating our opponents size advantage by pulling them away from the basket.

I encourage you to watch this with your child http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LccdFcaeifU. If this does link does not load, you should go to youtube and search for “bball breakdown horns.” Its the 10 minute video titled “How NBA teams run Horns.” If your interested to learn more and want to see all the variations and different actions that can be run off “horns” check out: http://www.hoopsplaybook.ca/horns.htm. You will need a VPN for this as well. You don’t have to review all these variations with your child. It’s only if they have a desire to learn more. The video covers the basic actions which can be run out of the “horns” set.

Some things we need to work on are:

defend screen and roll
Get set up in our offense and reading the defense
Getting into our fast break faster
Trapping the ball if we are behind
Packing the key against big teams who can’t shoot
Off ball player cuts to the ball when our ball handler penetrates – there was little cutting and too much standing on the perimeter
Substitutes must gather the team together to relay the coaches instructions and adjustments

Thank you for your patience reading through this lengthy email. We are eager for this new challenge and I fully expect this group to be able to execute “horns” by stringing 3-4 passes together to create a open shot and be able to play effective team man to man defense before 3/9.

Best Regards,

Stanley