Utilizing your pieces

One of the most important things we do as coaches is put players in a position to succeed. One way that is underutilized is running plays for players who are "feeling" it. Watching Ohio State recently, Thad Matta does a great job of getting the hot hand a look out of the same sets.

NBA teams are very effective at swapping out positions for plays to take advantage of mismatches, foul trouble, or to exploit the way an opponents is guarding an action.

It's a given that we probably don't do enough of this in practice, but take your tried and true specials and put a different player in the target spot. Say you run a screen the screener action for your 2 man. Run it in practice for someone else (1,3,4 or 5). What we've done is run our BLOB's and SLOB's with different players at different spots. It helps players understand the timing and other options of the plays we run. Plus every once in a while it's fun to run a jump shot play for your 5 man for 3. The kids will get a kick out of it.

Coaches you never know when an injury, an ineligibility or a defection are going to weaken your ranks and make you play someone at a different position. Why not prepare for it ahead of time and get players looks at different spots.