What obstacle have you encountered this week? What obstacles or challenging situations have you overcome (or not) and how did you tackle it?
I have always said that problems at the individual level are always easier to solve at the group level. Why? Because the odds go up in a group that someone has already solved the problem or challenge or “obstacle” that is causing you trouble. Is there more than one way to solve a particular problem? Of course, but wouldn’t it save you time to at least consider what someone else has already tried?
Our goal with the weekly “COW’s” is to leverage the experience of our fellow coaches so that when you encounter one of the situations we describe here you are armed with some ideas for a solution. As the coach of your team, you always get the choice of what you think will work best for your team in that situation. Need an example? Here is one from my own history…
COW # 1 – The Slow Start / Poor Shooting
This example of a COW might be something that a lot of coaches have encountered…
My team started out the game very slow and fell behind 7-0 before we knew what hit us. To compound the situation, it was against our toughest rival who had beaten us multiple times the year before. If things kept going this way, it was not going to be a pretty picture by the end of the game. What would you do?Need more information about the situation?
We were taking good, high percentage open shots that just were not going in. They were shots that we typically make. We also did not get as many offensive rebounds as we had against other teams. (That could be because of the competition or our own effort… hard to say.) Our full court press, which was one of our strongest weapons, had yet to be applied since we had not scored. I called a timeout. What would you say to your team?
Here is what I said in the timeout.
Do you agree? Or would you have done something different?
“OK, we are taking good shots and we got the misses out of the way. Keep moving the ball and shooting those open shots. Do you know why we were missing? We were TOO open. We had time to think about the shot before we shot it. We don’t have to think… just pull the trigger and put it in.
What we do need to do is hustle after those offensive rebounds and get more shots. Keep playing hard, especially on defense and we will wear them down. They can’t keep up with us!”
What do you think happened?
Leave your comments and ideas below. Once I get a comment or two, I will let you know how this challenge turned out and break down the psychology of it as well.
Be sure to add your own COWs to the comments as well. It might be chosen for next week’s COW discussion!