Pregame scouting/team tendencies

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by CoachFred

If you are already looking for certain things from certain players/teams, you are more likely to make those calls than if you were not expecting them.

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On what scientific theory is this opinion based.




We have a team that traps, presses, and gambles for steals on defense while on the offensive end they cherry pick and shoot a lot of 3's. I always pre-game not to be concerned with, nor listen to the coach complain about, the foul count being out of whack. Invariably in the first half the foul count in this team's games starts out 6-1, 7-3, 8-2, etc.

I had one game this year where the entire squad was practicing an up-and-under move during lay-up drills. The move looked funny but they were not travelling. So I mentioned to my partners that we didn't want to get caught off-guard by the move and call a violation just because it looked awkward.

We regularly pre-game what players are problem children and need to be watched after the whistle.

We discuss rematches of games that had bad blood.

I will point it out if we have a team that is height-challenged and tends to do a lot of pushing and shoving when jockeying for rebounding position.

We will talk about teams who throw a lot of skip passes as part of their offense so that we are not too quick to rotate in the Lead.

A good pre-game will cover plays/scenarios/tendencies unique to the participants of that game. It helps in preparation. It helps us in our mechanics and positioning.

It's not about negativity and bias.