A 'Game-Based' Practice Plan For A Conceptual Offense
The Challenge? Create a plan to teach Principles of Play from a national team
Quick Note: I’m traveling with family throughout Ireland 🇮🇪 (Dublin, Kenmare, Galway, Clifden) from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, and I would love to connect with some coaches on my visit. If you or someone you know might be up to talk some basketball, email me at idahobasketballcoachingpodcast (at) gmail.com.
Thanks for reading! ~Will
The challenge? Create a practice plan entirely of SSGs for a youth national team after watching one quarter of their game.
For this, I’m choosing Latvia’s U16 women’s national team. The main reason? I was watching Latvia play Belgium when I thought this might be a good exercise.
The other reason? Latvia reminded me of the team I will coach this season. In fact, they run a lot of concepts and an ATO we’ve had success with the last two years. The hope is I can use what you see here as basis for some practices when our season starts in November.
A couple of notes …
The SSGs are based off Latvia’s Principles of Play that I’ve collected from watching the first quarter of the game. My compliments to the coaching staff because I love how they approach the game.
Everything is a SSG with offense and defense. What is important is to think about is the specific constraints you will use to help guide players learn concepts and develop their skills.
The segments are just to group common activities. This wouldn’t necessarily be the sequence in which they would occur during a practice.
These are raw clips from the game. Would love to break down & highlight with arrows, shading & other cool stuff how the SSGs might look, but I don’t really have the software or the time to do that. I do include FastDraw panels, though.
Segment I - Transition (Look Forward, Play Forward)
ACTIVITIES (Game Clip Order)
Transition Finishing (Advantage) 1v1
Pass-Ahead Wing Attacks (Guided) 2v1
Trail Attacks 2v1
Lane Line Spacing 2v1 (This isn’t a spacing situation we would necessarily encourage, but it happened. Love this idea if you are working with 2 bigs.)
Drive & Kick 2v2
Beat The Defense 2v2
Like a lot of teams that play under FIFA rules, Latvia looks to run every chance they can. To develop that mindset, the practice will focus on several aspects of transition and dedicate a proper chunk of practice toward it. Look Forward, Play Forward!
These scenarios also provide a great opportunity to teach defensive concepts and construct an environment where players receive reps without repetition. For example, the closeout in the Wing Attacks activity can give the defensive player the opportunity to force the offensive player right or left on the catch.
Segment II - Half Court Principles (Decision Making)
ACTIVITIES (Game Clip Order)
Baseline Drive Second Cut Reads 3v3
Get into Flare 3v3
DHO into Weakside Pindown 4v4
This is the heart of implementing a conceptual offense, I believe. Running SSGs where players learn actions and develop coverage solutions based on your personnel. This is also the part of practice planning that I absolutely love. Creating scenarios that players will see in games. What better way to do that than pull clips from games.
Through the use of constraints, this is where you can also work on skill development. An extra point for using an off-hand finish. Turnover on the wrong read. Double the value for any shrink 3. This is also the opportunity for two-way teaching. Show the defense their options, so that the offense starts to scan and make decisions. Finally, change the geography, so that the concepts can be applied to different areas of the court.
Segment III - Defensive Concepts (Proactive vs. Reactive)
ACTIVITIES (Clip Order)
Sideline Pass ➡️ On-Ball 3v3
Halfcourt Trap No Dribble 4v4
3-Side Rebound (2 Possession) 4v4
Time to work on defense … and offense! The film showed that Latvia was a mess when it came to defending on-ball screen actions. So that’s what we would emphasize in our defensive work. In this case, the clips are from what Belgium does, but remember it’s simple to turn what your opponent likes to do into a SSG.
Latvia also looked to implement a halfcourt trap throughout the quarter. They struggled with rotations, so we would definitely work on that. The bonus? Add a no-dribble or 1-dribble constraint for the offense and this is a great passing drill. The final clip includes a rebounding situation where Latvia gives up an offensive rebound when a defender loses their mark on some simple movement. You might play a couple of possessions down-and-back in this scenario.
Segment IV - Offensive Flow (Initial ➡️ Secondary Actions)
ACTIVITIES (Clip Order)
Guided Get-into-Flare-Screen ➡️ Secondary Actions 5v5
Roll & Post Reaction to Drive (Pop)
Get ➡️ Twist (On-Ball)
Gallery: Initial Action into Secondary Actions
The question I probably get the most with a conceptual offense is how do you teach flow throughout a possession. Frankly, this might be the primary reason that keeps coaches from incorporating this style of offense. Initial actions are easy to teach, but coaching what might come next if you don’t get a shot off that initial action is difficult due to the number of possibilities.
Ryan Pannone has a great clinic on 🔗 Coaching U+ that addresses how to teach play that he calls “Random with Purpose.” The key takeaway for me is that I need to create an environment for random play to happen — especially as a possession progresses.
There’s probably better terminology for this, but basically I look at it as what occurs after the Initial Action. Emphasizing time in practice — a lot of time, really — on what I call the Secondary Actions in a possession is so important because this is the offensive state where your team needs to produce. Most teams can guard the Initial Action but will struggle guarding the Secondary Actions if your team can stack them together efficiently.
The video demonstrates Pannone’s process for manufacturing these scenarios. Essentially, you “guide” your team through the initial action so they can get into the secondary action. Easy, right? Well, the key as a coach is anticipating the vast number of scenarios that can happen and then introducing them to your players. For example, Latvia runs a lot of Get-into-Flare-Screen action. So how can we create an environment for random play so they can get to these Secondary Actions in a SSG? And what Secondary Actions will we incorporate for our players so they can keep the possession flowing? Finally, what are the coverage solutions your players need to know so they can punish the defense?