2011 Dallas Basketball Coaching Workshop

Matt Grahn Basketball is proud to announce the inaugural Dallas Basketball Coaching Workshop at The University of Dallas Saturday and Sunday October 1st, 2011.

My hope is to get you excited about the upcoming season ahead and take advantage of the opportunity to hear from some successful coaches. I want to create an environment of true learning and give you tools that you can implement into your own programs. Please pass the word to make this a HUGE success for all parties and something we can make an annual event!!!

Currently scheduled to present:

Del Harris, Former NBA Head Coach - 13 years NBA head coach. Veteran of international competition with USA, China, Canada, and Dominican Republic. Member of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame and the NAIA Hall of Fame.

Monte Mathis, Assistant Coach with the Dallas Mavericks - 2011 World Champions. Former collegiate assistant coach at Xavier, Ohio State, South Alabama, McNeese State and Toledo.

Scott Cross, Head Coach at UT-Arlington - 2008 Southland Conference Champions

Jim Boone, Head Coach at West Virginia WesleyanCollege - More than 400 career victories and 2 Final Fours in 24 years

Jarred Samples, Head Coach at University of Dallas - Ranks 3rd in all time wins at University of Dallas

Terry Waldrop, Head Coach at Texas Wesleyan University - 2006 NAIA National Champions and 4-time Red River Conference Champions

Matt Grahn, Assistant Coach at University of Dallas - 16 years college coaching experience. 2 years at the high school level.

Arkansas Little Rock - Collaboration!

Last week, UALR was in Dallas to play SMU. Our head coach here at UD, Jarred Samples, is good friends with UALR DBO, Chris Lowry (bottom right picture). My good friend, Joe Golding (bottom left), is on the UALR staff as well. They needed a place to practice and we gladly offered our facility.

Being that SMU runs the Princeton offense and our first opponent, Southwestern, also runs Princeton, it was a perfect situation for Coach Samples and I to pick the brains of Steve Shields and Joe Kleine as well as our friends on how to stop it. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun to share ideas and hold a mini-clinic of sorts.

Obviously we were all on the same page when it came to not letting them beat us on backdoor layups. Coach Samples and I had talked about using the terminology "Gap it up". Essentially we wanted our players to clog up the gaps between the offensive players. I liked Coach Shields' terminology of "Loosen up". He wanted his players, especially on any screening action, to give the cutter's defender room to go under the screens.

Coach Kleine talked about playing "Below the line". Not just below the passing lane, but below the imaginary line that runs parallel with the baseline and midcourt line through the offensive player. Almost like being in a help position the entire possession: butt to baseline, seeing both ball and man. This gives the defender the advantage of already beating the cutter to the basket.

Coach Golding and I talked about ball pressure. Sure, we wanted our players to loosen up and get below the line, but only far enough where they could quickly apply tremendous pressure once their man caught the ball. We didn't want the ball handler to be able to see the entire floor and pick us apart. I teach our players the "Where the ball is, a hand is" in any on ball defensive situation. Coach Golding's terminology was "Get under him" as they wanted their players to get low and into the offensive player's body.

By loosening up and playing below the line, cutters are now forced to run through the defender. This alters their path and essentially jams up the continuity and timing. This is simply playing percentages. Both staffs were in agreement that we were not going to get beat on open layups. If they were going to beat us, it was going to be on contested perimeter jumpers.

Just for the record, we both won our first games. We only gave up 1 backdoor layup.

Another teaching point I took away from Coach Shields is jump stopping on screens. His players jump stop hard on all of their screens. He drills it where the players' almost drive the bottom of their feet through the floor and make a loud thud. Due to the fact we got called for a ton of illegal screens in our scrimmage, we instituted the jump stop screen. Our terminology is "Hear the feet". The cutter or ball handler can't come off the screen until they hear the screener's feet.

Excel Practice Plan Form

A request was made for an Excel file practice plan template that would calculate the actual time by simply entering the length of time to set the clock for. Ask and ye shall receive! I thought this was a fantastic idea and went to work on putting a working model together. With the help of my Excel guru, absolutely brilliant “numbers” man, and compadre, Mike Rohr, this came together. My head coach here at the University of Dallas, Jarred Samples, is using this form now and likes the time feature (although he is struggling with one unfortunate “glitch”).

I have 2 versions of this form. One for Windows 2007 and one for Windows 97-2003. When you go to these links, it will probably look crazy. I tested it and it still works. Once you download and save the file, it will look like the example below.

Some things you need to know about using this form:
- In the “Start Time” cell, you can enter the time either HH:MM or H:MM. You do not have to use military time, nor do you have to add AM or PM.
- Once you enter the Start Time, you will not have to edit the “Time” column down the left side of the form.
- Under the “Clock Set” column, you will need to enter the time H:MM. In other words, a 5 minute drill will be entered in that column as “0:05”. Once you have entered the Clock Set, the “Time” in the next row should automatically update.
- You are able to enter multiple lines of text in an individual cell under the “Drill” column. To do this, you need to hit the alt button and the enter button at the same time (This is the struggle for Coach Samples I mentioned earlier). In the example below, the first drill would be typed like this: “Individual Work (2 @ 7:30)” [alt+enter] ”-Ball Handling (JS)” [alt+enter] ”-Shooting (MG)”
- Once you enter the text, you can tab out of the cell and it will automatically adjust the height of the row.
- You may have rows that are not used at the bottom. The Time column will still print “#NAME?”. You can highlight the rows, right click on them, and click “Delete” to get rid of those rows.
- You cannot insert rows. The time function will not work if you insert rows. You can cut and paste.
- You cannot have blank cells in between Clock Set times.

If you have problems with this form, please feel free to contact me. I will do my best to provide some customer service (notice I didn’t say technical service, but I can get answers for you).

Excel Practice Schedule Example