Pregame Breakdown
We take a lot of pride in our coaching staff in preparing our players as best we can prior to a contest. Between myself and our Head Coach Don Adams, we feel that our players are well prepared before every game through our attention to detail in practice, film preparation, video breakdown, and scouting reports. Our conference uses Synergy for all our video exchanges and breakdown. We also use Just Play for sharing playbooks, scouting reports, player quizzes, and video. At the 30 minute mark during our pregame warm up, our team will meet for our pregame talk. At this time, nearly everything in our pregame talk is review of what we have been working on in practice as well as scout on our opponent.
What We Review
- Personnel– Review of their top 7-8 players including height, points per game, shooting percentages as well as our starting match ups. With our match ups, we like to review player tendencies as well as point out some important individual strengths and weaknesses. For example, “#22 Johnson, 5’10 Guard, 44%FG, 38% 3FG: strong, physical player, driver, likes to stay on her right side, loves the spin move going to the lane, #1 option in all BLOBs (double screen/fades)”
- X’s and O’s– Review of opponent’s base offenses, top quick hitters, what defenses they play (concepts, trapping areas, and where we will look to exploit their weaknesses), and what presses we may see (and how we will break them).
- Game Plan- Discuss and go over what offenses we will look to use depending on their defenses we’ve reviewed. We will let our team know which offense we will start the game in and what areas/concepts to focus on (ex.- hi/low, short corner/dives, pick & roll reads off different defensive coverages, etc.)
- Goals– We like to give our team three different goals each game (realistic, challenging, yet achievable):
- Team goal for the entire game (Under 10 turnovers for the entire game)
- Team goal that is half specific (Get to the free throw line 10 or more times each half)
- Defensive individual goal (Contain #23 off the dribble, hold her under 10 points)
As a team, we strive on breaking the game down into segments. For example, we break down the game into segments by media timeouts, coach’s timeouts, 5 minute segments, and quarters. Each segment we focus on try to discuss during timeouts and in between quarters and as coaches keep track of shot charts, points in each segment, number of possessions and turnovers.
- Motivation– Our program is really big into quotes. We often use motivational videos on our TV’s in the locker room as well as a quote of the day. Our quote of the day in today’s pregame meeting is “Come in Together, Stay Together, and Come out Together!” which is a universal term used by firemen when accomplishing any task.
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