I'll try to post these situation type stuff to see what other opinions there are on a certain topic. This is the first one.

Here's the situation:

Your team plays in a league with 4 other teams, the 2 top teams happen to be ranked in the top 10 in state and your team is one of them (You are Team A, they are Team B). You play 2 leagues games against each other, 1 home and 1 away. Only 1 team (the top obviously) from your league will advance to the state tournament in March. It is December and you are entered in a very competitive invitational tournament. At the last minute, one of the other teams pulls out and you find out that Team B has entered in this tournament.

You win your first game of the tournament and in the semifinals you face Team B. You've been working on a number of specific plays in practice over the last couple of months in preparation for league games against Team B, so the question is, do you play Team B with all of your repertoire of plays designed specifically on your scouting report of Team B that you will be using in the league games? Or do you play straight up without putting in the adjustments and take your chances?

My Answer:

Keeping in mind that there are no right or wrong answers, here is what I would do.

It's easy in these situations to get distracted by what the other team will or will not do. I say put in some of your adjustments and see if they work. Some may see this as showing your hand and thus giving away your cards. But I look at it as an opportunity to see if your gameplan will work against Team B. Once the game is over, evaluate what worked and what didn't and further tweak your gameplan for when you meet Team B in the regular season.

Sure, Team B will get to see what plays and stuff you will run against them, and surely they will attempt to adjust, but ultimately, for me it comes down to whether our players can execute better than their players.

Let me know what you all think about this, I'm sure it comes up every so often...

Go over the Coaching Basketball Forum to discuss.

0 comments