Team Disparity

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by bbcoach7

I've been trying to figure out a creative way to make the last game more challenging and still get something of value out of it. Like I said, I won't make them count passes. That's bush league in my opinion, and it messes up flow and rythym on offense.

In addition to reffing basketball, I coach a different sport (soccer) and have generally been fairly successful.

We've often found ourselves up on teams and not being one to want to run up the score, I take measures that both limit scoring and benefit my players. I flip the positions around...defenders (many who never have a score all season) move forward into attacking positions. The forwards (who usually get most of the scores) are moved back to defense....hard to score from there. It does two things....it gives each player a chance to work on a skill set they don't use as often and it gives players who don't normally get the chance, an opportunity to score. Our rate of scoring drops (keeping it from getting out of hand) while we still rarely allow scores on us.

For basketball, you can do basically the same thing....make your bigs play on the perimiter and have the guards in the post. Your 5 or 4 brings the ball down the court and runs the offense. The 1 & 2, post up on the blocks or some such inside play. The 1 & 2 will learn how the post player wants to receive the ball and will usually be playing against bigger players, the post players will learn what it takes to get it inside and will learn better ball handling skills.