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How do you run Competitive Practices?

2026/10/19

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out. [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ep 2035 What Should You Say at Your Preseason Parent Meeting?

2026/10/16

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why this meeting matters more than your first game. Parents who understand your program become allies. Parents who are surprised become critics. Coach Collins explains why thirty minutes in October saves dozens of hours in January. Start with who you are. Open with your team identity and what you are building. Parents support a vision they can understand. Explain how decisions get made. Be clear that coaches decide the roster, roles, and playing time, and explain what those decisions are based on. Transparency about the process is not the same as negotiating the outcome. The communication policy. Share a simple path: the player talks to the coach first, a parent meeting can follow, and nothing gets discussed right after a game. A twenty four hour cooling off rule protects everyone. What you expect, and what they can expect. Ask parents to be fans, not coaches, from the stands. Then tell them what you promise in return: honesty, safety, communication, and care for their child. The car ride home. Coach Collins closes with one request for parents: make the car ride home about support, not analysis. Five simple words can change a season: I love watching you play. This week's homework. Build a one page handout with your identity, communication policy, schedule, and contact information, and run your meeting in thirty minutes or less. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question. What should you say at your preseason parent meeting? Here's how I see it. Your parent meeting might be the most important thirty minutes of your season. Parents who understand your program become your biggest allies. Parents who get surprised become your loudest critics. So let's walk through an agenda that builds trust and draws clear lines. Start with who you are. Open with your team identity. Tell them what you're building and why. Parents will support a vision they understand. If you say, we're going to be the hardest working, most unselfish team in the conference, they now have a lens to watch every game through. Next, explain how decisions get made. Be clear and be calm. The coaching staff decides the roster, roles, and playing time. Then tell them what those decisions are based on. Practice performance. Effort. Attitude. Fit within the team. Being transparent about the process is not the same thing as negotiating the outcome. You're telling them how you think, not asking for a vote. Then share your communication policy. Keep it simple. Step one, the player talks to the coach. We want our kids learning to advocate for themselves. Step two, if a parent still has a concern, we'll set up a meeting. And here's the big one. Nothing gets discussed right after a game. We use a twenty four hour rule. Emotions are high after games, for parents, for players, and honestly, for coaches too. A day of space protects everybody. Now, what do you expect from them? I ask parents to be fans, not coaches. Cheer for every player, not just your own. Leave the officials alone. And please, don't give your child different instructions than we gave them in the huddle. A kid who hears two voices freezes. And then, what can they expect from you? This is the part coaches forget. Tell them what you promise. I will be honest with your child. I will keep them safe. I will communicate the schedule clearly. And I will care about who they are, not just how they play. When parents hear your promises, they're much more willing to accept your boundaries. I like to finish with one request. The car ride home. That ride can make or break a kid's season. Ask parents to make it about support, not analysis. No breakdown of every turnover. No commentary on the coach's decisions. Just five words. I love watching you play. That's it. You'd be amazed how much that changes a kid's experience. A couple of practical tips. Keep the meeting to thirty minutes. Hand out a one page sheet with your identity, your communication policy, the schedule, and how to reach you. Have your assistants there so parents know the whole staff. And leave a few minutes for questions, but steer individual player conversations to a separate time. Let me share a few things not to do at the parent meeting. Don't talk about individual players. Don't make promises about playing time, starting spots, or college recruiting. And don't spend twenty minutes on your offense. Parents don't need to know your sets. They need to know your values, your process, and how to talk to you. Here's another idea that's worked for a lot of coaches. Invite your captains or a couple of seniors to speak for two minutes. Let them tell parents what this team means to them and what they're working toward. Parents hear things differently when they come from players. It also shows them the culture you're building is real, not just a speech from the coach. And think about the parents who can't make it. Some work nights. Some have other kids with games. Record a short video of the key points, or send the one page handout home with every player, and ask families to sign and return it. That way no one can say they didn't know the communication policy. When the first tough conversation comes in December, you can point back to the page they signed in October. It changes the tone completely. Last, follow up. Send a thank you email the next day with the handout attached and the season calendar. Small touches like that tell parents you're organized and that you value them. Trust is built in the little things. So here's your homework. Build your one page handout this week. Practice your thirty minute agenda out loud. And go into that room confident, because a clear coach is a trusted coach. That's today's episode. For parent meeting templates and more program building resources, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Win the parents in October, and you'll coach in peace in February. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What are you rebounding absolutes?

2026/10/15

How Do You Cut a Player Without Breaking Them?

2026/10/14

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why the list on the door has to go. Posting names on a gym door or a website is efficient for the coach and brutal for the player. Coach Collins explains why every cut deserves a face to face conversation, even when there are dozens of them. Set expectations before tryouts begin. Tell players and parents on day one how decisions will be communicated, when, and by whom. A clear process removes surprise and cuts down on angry emails. The three part conversation. Every cut meeting covers two things the player did well, one or two honest reasons they did not make the roster, and a specific path forward. Keep it to three to five minutes and keep an assistant in the room. Words that help and words that hurt. Avoid vague phrases like it was close or numbers game. Be specific and kind. Do not make promises you cannot keep about next year. Seniors and the last cut. Seniors who are cut deserve extra care, and the last player cut is the hardest decision on the roster. Coach Collins shares how to handle both with honesty. Keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting, a summer workout plan, or a role such as manager or practice player when it fits. Many kids come back better because of how they were cut. This week's homework. Write your cut meeting script, choose the assistant who will sit in, and tell your players exactly how the process will work. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today we're talking about the hardest part of October. How do you cut a player without breaking them? Let me start with something I believe deeply. The way you cut a kid will be remembered longer than any game you win this season. That player will tell their parents about it. They'll tell their friends. Someday they might tell their own kids. So let's do it right. First, never post the list. I know it's efficient. I know you might have fifty kids trying out. But a list on a gym door means a fifteen year old finds out the worst news of their year in front of a crowd. Every kid who gave you three days of effort deserves a few minutes of your time, face to face. Second, set the expectations before tryouts even start. On day one, tell players and parents exactly how decisions will be shared, when, and by whom. Something like this. On Thursday after practice, every player will meet with me individually for a few minutes. When the process is clear, there are fewer surprises and a lot fewer angry emails. Third, use a simple structure for the conversation. I use three parts. One, tell them two things they did well, and be specific. You communicated on defense better than anyone in your group. Two, give them one or two honest reasons they didn't make the roster. Right now your ball handling under pressure isn't where it needs to be at this level. Three, give them a path forward. Here's what I'd work on, and here's who can help you. Keep it short. Three to five minutes. And always have an assistant in the room. That protects you, it protects the player, and it gives you a witness to what was actually said. Now, a word about language. Avoid the vague stuff. It was really close. It's just a numbers game. Kids hear that as, there's nothing I could have done. Be specific and be kind. And never make promises about next year that you can't keep. Don't say you'll definitely make it next season. Say, if you do this work, you'll give yourself a real chance. Seniors deserve extra care. A senior who gets cut is losing their last chance to wear the jersey. Meet with them first, give them more time, and when it fits, offer them a real role. A manager. A practice player. Somebody who's still part of the family. And the last cut. That's the one that keeps you up at night. Be honest with yourself about why. Go back to your rubric. Go back to your identity. When you can explain the decision in those terms, you can look that kid in the eye. Finally, keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting in a week, when emotions have settled. Give them a workout plan. Invite them to open gym in the spring. Some of the best players I've seen were cut once, and came back hungrier because a coach treated them with respect. Let me give you an example of how that conversation can sound. Jordan, thanks for sitting down with me. First, I want you to know two things you did really well. You competed on every rep in the shell drill, and you were one of the best communicators in the gym. Here's where you're not there yet. At this level, we need guards who can handle pressure, and right now that's still a work in progress for you. So this year, you're not on the roster. Here's what I'd do. Work on your ball handling against pressure every day. Come to our spring open gym. And come see me in a month so we can talk about your plan. That's about ninety seconds. Honest, specific, and respectful. Now, prepare yourself for emotion. Some kids will cry. Some will go silent. Some will get angry. All of that is normal. Don't rush to fill the silence, and don't argue. Just say, I understand this is hard, and I respect how hard you worked. Let them have their reaction. You're not there to win the conversation. You're there to deliver hard news with care. And think about the parents. Send a short email that night to every family of a player who was cut. Thank them for their child's effort, and repeat that you're available for a follow up meeting once everyone has had a day to process. That one email heads off a lot of angry phone calls, and it shows families that the way you treat their kid doesn't end when the roster is set. So here's your homework. Write your three part cut script. Pick the assistant who will sit in with you. And tell your players on day one exactly how the process will work. That's today's episode. For more on tryouts, roster decisions, and building culture, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Cut with dignity, and you'll never lose a kid's respect. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Basketball Pre-Practice

2026/10/13

Are Your Tryouts Measuring the Right Things?

2026/10/12

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The problem with traditional tryouts. Layup lines and shooting stations show you skill, but skill is the easiest thing to see and the least predictive of who helps you win in February. Coach Collins explains why tryouts should be built to reveal the things you cannot see in a box score. The coachability rep. Give a player one specific correction, then watch the very next rep. Did they try to apply it? That single moment tells you more about a player's growth curve than ten made jumpers. Talk and transition. Run live defensive drills where the only thing an evaluator tracks is talk. Then run transition drills and watch who sprints back when the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Response to mistakes. Put players in competitive situations where they will fail. Watch what happens next. Do they hang their head, blame a teammate, or get back on defense? Watch the kids who are not playing. Water breaks, sideline time, and the end of the line are evaluation moments. Who picks up a teammate? Who is on their phone? A simple scoring system. Use multiple evaluators, a short rubric scored one to five, and a handful of categories tied to your identity. Tell the players in advance exactly what you will be watching. This week's homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan, and give every evaluator the same rubric. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Tryouts are coming, and today I want to ask you a hard question. Are your tryouts measuring the right things? Here's what usually happens. We run layup lines. We run shooting stations. We run some three on three. And the kids who shine are the ones who can make shots in a gym with nobody guarding them. Then February comes, and we realize we kept the best shooter in October, not the best teammate in a tight game. Skill is the easiest thing to see in a tryout. It's also the thing you can teach the most over a season. What's hard to see, and hard to teach, is coachability, toughness, and how a kid treats the people around them. So let's build tryouts that show you those things. First, the coachability rep. Pick a player in the middle of a drill. Give them one specific correction. Get lower in your stance. Show me your hands. Then watch the very next rep. Not the result. The attempt. Did they try to do what you just asked? That one moment tells you more about how a kid will grow over a season than ten made jumpers. Second, talk and transition. Run a live shell drill and assign an evaluator to track one thing only. Who talks? Who calls ball, who calls help, who calls shot? Then run a transition drill, and watch who sprints back the moment the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Third, response to mistakes. Put players in competitive drills where they're going to fail. Score everything. Keep a winner and a loser. Then watch what happens after a turnover or a missed box out. Does the kid hang his head? Blame a teammate? Or sprint back and get the next stop? You are not just evaluating basketball. You are evaluating how they handle adversity, and you'll need that in January. Fourth, watch the kids who aren't playing. Water breaks. The end of the line. Sideline time. Who picks up a teammate off the floor? Who claps for somebody else's good play? Who's sneaking a look at their phone? Some of the best evaluating I ever did happened when the kids didn't think anyone was watching. Now, let's keep it fair. Use more than one evaluator. Give every evaluator the same short rubric. Five categories, scored one to five. Make those categories match your team identity. If your identity says we defend and we share the ball, then defense and unselfishness had better be on that sheet. And here's the part a lot of coaches miss. Tell the players ahead of time what you're looking for. Say it on day one of tryouts. We are evaluating talk, effort in transition, how you respond to mistakes, and how you treat your teammates. When kids know what matters, the right kids rise up. And when you have to make tough decisions, you can point to exactly what you said. One last thought. Tryouts are the first message about your culture. The way you run them tells every kid in that gym what you value. If you value hustle, make hustle visible. If you value teammates, reward the kid who picks someone up. Let me walk you through what a day of tryouts could actually look like. Start with fifteen minutes of a dynamic warmup, and have an evaluator watch who's leading lines and who's hiding in the back. Then twenty minutes of skill stations, because yes, skill still matters. Then the shell drill with an evaluator tracking talk. Then a scored transition drill. Then live three on three and five on five, with winners and losers recorded. Finish with free throws while tired. In about ninety minutes, you've seen skill, effort, communication, competitiveness, and composure. Here's a mistake I see a lot. Coaches let one great play or one bad play decide a kid's fate. A player hits three straight threes and suddenly he's on the roster. Another kid fumbles one pass and he's written off. That's why your rubric matters, and that's why you need more than one day. Look for patterns, not moments. A pattern over two or three days tells you who a kid really is. And don't forget the evaluators' meeting at the end of each day. Ten minutes. Go player by player and compare notes. You'll be surprised how often your assistant saw something you missed. Sometimes it's a kid who was great on the weak side of the shell drill, where you weren't looking. Sometimes it's a kid who said something to a teammate at the water fountain that changes your whole view. Those conversations are where good decisions get made. So here's your homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan. Build a five category rubric. Give it to every evaluator. That's today's episode. For tryout plans, evaluation forms, and more, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Pick the players who make your team better, not just the ones who make shots. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is Your Coaching Staff Really on the Same Page?

2026/10/09

Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The meeting most coaches skip. Coaches spend hours on X's and O's and almost no time aligning the adults who teach them. Coach Collins makes the case for one real staff meeting before tryouts, with an agenda, a notepad, and no phones. Question one: who are we? Every coach in the program should be able to say the team's identity sentence word for word. If the levels teach different identities, players get mixed messages and the program loses its spine. Question two: what does each coach own? Give every assistant a clear area of ownership, such as defense, player development, scouting, or academics. Ownership turns helpers into coaches and keeps the head coach from trying to do everything. Question three: how do we speak to players? Decide who talks in timeouts, who corrects in drills, and how feedback is delivered. One voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. Question four: how do we disagree? Disagreement is healthy behind closed doors and harmful in front of players and parents. Set that rule in October so it never has to be enforced in January. Question five: do we use the same words? Shared terminology from freshman to varsity means a player called up in February already speaks the language. Write a one page glossary of your calls and terms. This week's homework. Schedule a ninety minute staff meeting before tryouts, walk through the five questions, and leave with every coach owning one area of the program. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question is one I wish someone had asked me early in my career. Is your coaching staff really on the same page? Here's what I've learned. Most staff problems that blow up in February started with a conversation that never happened in October. An assistant says something to a parent he shouldn't have. The JV coach runs a different defense. Somebody rolls their eyes on the bench after a decision. None of that is about bad people. It's about a meeting that never took place. So before tryouts, I want you to hold one real staff meeting. Ninety minutes. An agenda. A notepad. Phones in the bag. And I want you to walk through five questions. Question one. Who are we? Every coach in your program, from freshman to varsity, should be able to say your team identity word for word. If your levels are teaching different identities, your players get mixed messages and your program loses its spine. Question two. What does each coach own? Assistants who just show up and rebound are wasted. Give every coach a lane. One owns defense. One owns player development. One owns scouting. One owns academics and grade checks. Ownership turns helpers into coaches, and it keeps you from trying to do everything yourself. Question three. How do we speak to players? Decide this now. Who talks in timeouts? Who corrects in drills? My rule of thumb is one voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. During a drill, I want every coach teaching. During a timeout, players need to hear one message, clearly. Question four. How do we disagree? And you will disagree. That's healthy. The rule is simple. We argue behind closed doors, and we walk out of that room as one staff. Never in front of players. Never in front of parents. Never on social media. Say it in October, so you never have to enforce it in January. Question five. Do we use the same words? If your freshman coach calls it a hedge and your varsity coach calls it a show, you just wasted a week when a kid gets called up. Write a one page glossary. Your calls, your terms, your defensive language. Hand it to every coach at every level. I'll add one more thing. Talk about parents. Agree that every parent concern about playing time or role goes to the head coach. Your assistants should never be stuck in a parking lot conversation they're not equipped to handle. Protect them, and they'll protect the program. When you walk out of that meeting, every coach should know three things. Who we are. What I own. And how we behave as a staff. That's alignment. And here's the payoff. Players notice. When kids see a staff that is unified, that uses the same language and backs each other up, they trust the system faster. Culture isn't just what your players do. It starts with what your coaches model. Let me give you a picture of what this looks like when it works. Picture the second week of January. Your varsity point guard goes down with an ankle. You pull a sophomore up from JV. If your staff is aligned, that kid walks into varsity practice and already knows the calls, already knows the defense, already knows what the head coach means when he says show. He's ready in a day, not a week. That's what alignment buys you. It's not a nice idea. It's insurance. Now, a common mistake. Coaches hold the meeting, everybody nods, and then nobody revisits it. Alignment isn't a one time event. I'd schedule a fifteen minute staff check in every week of the season. Same three questions every time. What are we seeing? What do we need to fix? Is anyone struggling? Put it on the calendar the same day, the same time, so it never gets skipped when the schedule gets crazy. And take care of your assistants as people. Ask about their families. Thank them in front of the players. Give them credit when the defense plays well. A lot of assistant coaches are working for very little money and a lot of hours. When they feel valued, they invest. When they feel like helpers, they drift. The best staffs I've been around were made of people who would run through a wall for each other, and that started with a head coach who made them feel like it was their program too. So here's your homework. Put a staff meeting on the calendar before tryouts. Walk through those five questions. Leave with every coach owning one piece of the program. That's today's episode. For staff resources, practice plans, and more, visit teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Build your staff before you build your team. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do you guard your Yard?

2026/10/08

Can You Say Your Team's Identity in One Sentence?

2026/10/07

https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why identity comes first. October is when coaches order gear and draw up sets. Coach Collins argues the first job is simpler and more important: write one sentence that tells a player, a parent, and an assistant exactly what kind of team you will be. Every October decision, from tryout selections to practice minutes, flows from that sentence. The three part formula. A strong identity sentence answers three questions. How do we defend? How do we attack? How do we behave? Coach Collins shares two sample sentences and explains why specific language beats slogans every time. Fit the identity to this year's roster. Your identity has to match the players who will wear the jersey, not the team you wish you had. A roster without size should not build around the post. A roster of quick guards might press and run. Make it measurable. If your sentence says you play hard, define what hard looks like on film: deflections, charges, loose balls. If you cannot count it, sharpen the word until you can. Use it as a filter. Once the sentence is written, share it with your staff first, then put it at the top of every practice plan. Use it to judge drills, evaluate tryouts, and frame postgame talks. This week's homework. Write three lines on a blank sheet: we defend by, we attack by, we behave by. Cut them into one sentence, show it to your staff, and say it out loud on day one. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins, and this is the show where we give you one idea you can use in your program this week. It's October. Tryouts are close, gyms are opening up, and every coach I know is busy drawing up sets and ordering practice gear. Today I want you to do something before any of that. I want you to write one sentence. Here's the question. Can you say your team's identity in one sentence? Not a mission statement. Not a poster on the wall. One sentence that tells a player, a parent, and an assistant coach exactly what kind of basketball team you are going to be. Why does this matter in October? Because every decision you make in the next six weeks flows from it. Who you keep at tryouts. What you teach first. How you spend practice minutes. What you praise and what you correct. If you don't know who you are, you will make those decisions based on whatever happened yesterday, and your players will feel that. So let me give you a simple formula. Your identity sentence should answer three things. How do we defend? How do we attack? And how do we behave? That's it. Defend, attack, behave. Here's an example. We guard the ball like it owes us money, we play fast and share it, and we never leave a teammate on the floor. Here's another one. We win the possession game with rebounds and zero wasted trips, we run our stuff with patience, and we are the toughest team in the gym. Notice those sentences are specific. Anybody who hears them can picture the team. Now, how do you write yours? Start with your personnel, not your ego. Look honestly at the players you expect to have. If you don't have size, don't build an identity around pounding the post. If you have five guards who can fly, maybe you press and run. Your identity has to fit the people wearing the jersey this year. Second, test every word. Ask yourself, could we measure this? If you say we play hard, what does that look like on film? Deflections? Charges taken? Loose balls? If you can't count it, sharpen the word until you can. Third, share it with your staff before you share it with your players. Your assistants need to own it. If your JV coach is teaching one identity and your varsity coach is teaching another, you don't have a program. You have a collection of teams. Here's where it gets practical. Once you have the sentence, use it as a filter. When you plan practice, look at every drill and ask, does this build our identity? If it doesn't, cut it or shorten it. When you evaluate players at tryouts, ask, does this kid fit who we're going to be? When you talk to your team after a loss, go back to the sentence. Did we defend the way we said we would? Did we behave the way we said we would? And say it out loud. Say it on day one. Put it at the top of every practice plan. Have your players say it back to you. By December, you want a freshman at the end of the bench to be able to tell a parent in the stands exactly what this team is about. One more thing. Your identity can grow during the season, but it shouldn't change every week. Consistency is what gives it power. Players trust a coach who knows who he is. So here's your homework this week. Get a blank sheet of paper. Write three lines. We defend by. We attack by. We behave by. Fill them in. Then cut them down to one sentence. Show it to your staff. Then live it. That's today's episode. If you want practice plans, drills, and a full library of coaching resources to help you build that identity, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Go build something you're proud of. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Building Confidence in your Players

2026/10/06

Teachhoops.com⁠ ⁠WintheSeason.com⁠⁠ ⁠CoachingYouthHoops.com⁠ ⁠https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7⁠ ⁠Coach Collins Coaching Store⁠ Check out. [Teachhoops.com](⁠https://teachhoops.com/⁠) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302⁠ Spotify link: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A⁠ ⁠Funnel Down Defense Podcast⁠ ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011⁠ Want More ⁠Funnel Down Defense⁠ ⁠https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/)⁠ [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/)⁠ Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](⁠https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops⁠) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](⁠https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866⁠) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you have a Pre-Season Philosophy?

2026/10/05

Are You Punishing the Exact Mistakes That Would Make Your Team Better?

2026/10/02

https://teachhoops.com/ Are You Punishing the Exact Mistakes That Would Make Your Team Better?Tryout week, the quick hook, and what happens to a player who learns that trying something is dangerous. Show Notes A quick hook feels like standards. This episode argues it is often just fear, and that the lesson a player actually takes from it is that trying something is dangerous. With tryouts here, it is worth asking what your sideline reaction is teaching. What we cover: Sorting mistakes of aggression from mistakes of selfishness, and why only one earns a seat Telling players out loud what you want them to risk this week The mistake budget, and using practice as a lab instead of a courtroom Why your face coaches louder than your voice Separating sloppy from brave, and why the player you will not trust in November is the one you need in February This week's challenge: run one practice where you never stop play for a mistake of aggression. Let it go, then write down what you saw. Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, on court clinics, and the coaching community at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Building Team Culture

2026/10/01

Is Your Team Great at Practice and Lost in the Game?

2026/09/30

https://teachhoops.com/ Are Your Players Hearing You, or Actually Seeing It?Why installation week moves twice as fast when you stop explaining and start showing. Show Notes Installation week always sounds the same. A coach talking, a group of heads nodding, and then total chaos the second the ball goes up. This episode makes the case that the problem is not attention. It is that most young players learn with their eyes and we keep teaching with our mouths. What we cover: Show it before you say it, so the words have a picture to stick to Putting a screen in your gym, and why twenty seconds of clip beats two minutes of talking One cue, then go, because when you stack four instructions they keep the last one Letting players watch their own possession and coach themselves off it Locking your vocabulary in October so you are not reteaching words in February This week's challenge: install one thing using under thirty seconds of talking. Show it, run it, fix one detail, run it again. Resources: Practice plans, teaching progressions, drills, courses, and on court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What Would You Put in a Sports Drink If You Started From Scratch?

2026/09/29

TeachHoops.com NukeHydration.com — ready to drink clean sports hydration, shipped nationwide. Sample pack (two Lime Time, two OG Orange, plus extras) is $19.99 with shipping included. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off, sample pack included CoachingYouthHoops.com Is Your Kid Actually Hydrated, or Just Drinking Something Blue? The couple taking on Gatorade from a Mississippi warehouse. Coach Bill sits down with Marty and Lesley Frascogna, the husband and wife team behind Nuke Hydration and a sponsor of this show, which he discloses right up front. They found each other through a LinkedIn conversation, and Coach Bill's interest was simple: he was tired of picking up bottles full of dye and would never hand that to his own team. Lesley owns this part of the story. Gatorade, Gatorade Zero, a stretch where their son drank Prime because he thought it was cool, and some Propel because, as she puts it, in her brain clear must mean healthy. The tipping point was standing over a grocery cart loaded with Gatorade she was about to hand out to a house full of kids and feeling guilty about it. Marty's side was the Ironman. He came to triathlon with no background in it, and when his nutrition coach asked what he was actually putting in his body, the answer turned out to be not much: not enough sodium, not even enough fluid ounces. And he had played college sports. He thought he knew this stuff. This is the running argument of the episode. Coach Bill had heard the Ironman version. Marty, an attorney for eighteen years and self described steady hand, says the Ironman was the setup, but Lesley took it and ran. She is the impulsive one. She had also been a florist for twenty four years and wanted a career change, and so did he. Her one non negotiable from the start: it had to be ready to drink. Not a powder. A bottle a kid can hold. Marty asked about powder and she shut it down immediately. She was calling formulators the next day. For the record, Coach Bill and Lesley referred to Marty as an Ironman six times before he brought it up himself. He wanted that noted. Market research pointed to a real gap. Hydration packets are everywhere. Ready to drink is essentially Coke's Powerade and Pepsi's Gatorade and not much else. When they walked into Whole Foods looking for the clean alternative that surely already existed, they found a couple of options with two problems. First, no cool factor. Their own kids laughed and said they would not walk around with it. Second, natural flavors. Lesley's view is that natural flavors are not really natural. They start from a natural product and then get heavily processed in a lab. That was a line they would not cross, and she notes that avoiding natural flavors is becoming a real consumer trend this year. Their answer to what parents miss when they think hydration means water: most youth athletes are not drinking enough to begin with, they are not getting enough sodium, and they are short on electrolytes. Sweat goes out, salt has to go back in. Coach Bill can vouch. He carries a large bottle, drinks three a day, and still came back dehydrated on routine bloodwork. Volume alone does not do it. Marty's favorite frame, from his training: carbs are the gas, hydration is the oil. If you burn all the oil, you cannot retroactively pour it back in. The engine is already gone. He has actually blown an engine by skipping an oil change, so the metaphor stuck. On timing, both agree with what Coach Bill preaches to his team. Hydration starts the night before. If your game is Saturday and you start Saturday morning, you are already behind. This one they did not plan to collect. A high school team they work with gave players a Nuke two hours before a game, water alongside it, and another Nuke at halftime, in Mississippi heat. Not one cramp on the team. The coach said it was the first time in school history. They watched the opposing team go down every few minutes on TV, on a weekend when a player elsewhere died on the field from heat. They have now seen it repeat for three straight weeks. They are also hearing from women who drink one a day and say it keeps their headaches and migraines away. A study with Mississippi State's kinesiology department on Nuke specifically is in the works, which should say whether the credit belongs to the coconut water, the Celtic sea salt, or the combination. Coconut water as the base, for hydration and the added benefits, and because almost nothing else in the category uses it. Celtic sea salt, not table salt. Lesley says the internal debate over which salt to use was close to infinite. They wanted something from the ocean, with the trace minerals that come with it. Lemon and lime juice for actual flavor in the original Lime Time. Five grams of added organic cane sugar. They deliberately did not go to zero. A little sugar helps hydration, carries flavor, and gives kids a small burst of energy. It is a fraction of what is in a conventional sports drink. Stevia and monk fruit to balance the lemon and lime without piling on more sugar and calories. They said no to extra vitamin C, extra vitamins, extra magnesium. Not necessary. The moment that defined the whole company came at the formulation lab, six months in, when they finally loved the taste and spotted an ingredient on the panel they did not recognize. They asked what it did. The answer was mostly color, with a little magnesium they did not need. Lesley's response: get rid of it. Two halves. Nothing Unnecessary, and Keep the Energy. No, there is no caffeine in it, which is the first thing most people ask. Nothing Unnecessary has become the filter for the whole company, not just the formula. Lesley catches herself planning a big elaborate activation in Nashville and then pulls it back to something simple that is all about the drink. Keep the Energy is about the daily wins: no sugar spike, no crash, one brick in the wall every day. The bottle says no guilt. The team pushed back on putting it there. Lesley insisted, at a hundred and ten percent, because of exactly what she felt pushing that Gatorade cart. Mom guilt is everywhere, parents are doing their best, and if one decision can be made easier and feel good, that is the job. Coach Bill's version is the same from the coach's side: he does not feel bad handing it to his players. Neither of them is a nutritionist and they say so. Lesley's honest answer is that the two go hand in hand and nobody is perfect. There is still junk food in their pantry. But fully hydrated and badly fueled is a moot point. Coach Bill's version of this was handing out nutrition bars before early morning games, because so many kids skip breakfast and you can see how that game is going to go before it starts. Lesley's broader point: it is not just the kids who need educating. She did not understand the difference hydration actually makes until Marty started training. She thought eight glasses of water was just the recommendation so you do not die. The second husband and wife pair to appear on the show, and Marty's first question was whether the first couple is still married. They describe a good yin and yang: Lesley is passionate, impulsive, burn the boats, we are doing this now. Marty wants the long term plan and the strategy thought all the way through. The bigger problem is that they are never off. Date night turns into a work meeting. Lesley, diagnosed with ADHD at thirty six, needs the schedule to stay fluid, which frustrates a man who would like a schedule set in stone. They also have a warehouse and still fight over which corner of the house to work in. Their kids, Lesley jokes, would like mom and dad to go back to their real jobs. Two flavors now: the original Lime Time and the just launched OG Orange. A third is coming in the spring as a collaboration with someone they are not naming yet. Direct to consumer at nukehydration.com, with a new site launching in about three weeks. Lesley ships it herself, nationwide, with handwritten notes. They are in independent grocery stores around Jackson, Mississippi and Birmingham and expanding. The growth they are proudest of is schools. Athletic directors are getting real pressure from parents asking for healthier options, and "we have always given the team Gatorade" is no longer an answer. Next goal: working directly with coaches to set up team shops so parents can buy straight from them. And for anyone who does not want to commit to a full case, the $19.99 sample pack includes two of each flavor with shipping, and YOUTHHOOPS15 works on it. Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com TitleSubtitleShow NotesBefore Nuke, they were a Gatorade familyWho actually had the ideaThe void they foundHydration is not the same as waterThe Mississippi football data pointWhat is in it, and what is notWhat NUKE actually stands forThe two words Lesley fought forNutrition and hydration togetherWorking together, married eighteen yearsWhere to get it Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Podcast reviews

Read The 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast podcast reviews

4.9 out of 5

88 reviews

★★★★★

1tomvalentino 2025/11/03

Very helpful

I coach a 6th grade girls travel team, and I’ve found the 5-minute episode format super helpful for getting quick, practical ideas to help improve our...

★★★★★

nicki potter 2025/03/21

Great

I have the pleasure of having this man as a highschool math teacher. I have learned many things and will always be grateful to have that opportunity.

★★★★★

Kobe and Kwame 2024/04/22

Back Again

Angel Hernandez again, ’m telling you, it’s so difficult to miss your amazing podcasts, unlike my missed calls

★★★★★

).$&:?478:!, 2024/04/22

Amazing

I listened to this podcast for a little and it changed my life! 6 episodes later and I’m 87 out of 88 of my last NBA 2k games!

★★★★★

DR SPLENDID 2024/04/22

5 Minutes is all I need!!!

5 minutes is the perfect amount of time because I’m a very busy coach. His analytics are very good and efficient. This is the best basketball podcast ...

★★★★★

dubwern 2024/04/22

Needs more ads

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★★★★★

CoachStout 2024/04/10

Need for coaches!

Quick snippets for great info and food for thought to keep imagination going. Highly recommend!

★★★★★

Heft1102 2023/05/31

Great

Quick and knowledgeable

★★★★★

R_Lovenberh 2023/05/10

Quick and Easy

Learn A lot in just 5 minutes

★★★☆☆

SignalsFromMars 2023/03/23

Commercials are killing this show

The amount of commercials in each episode has become ridiculous. The show is supposed to be 5 minutes long, the first 90 seconds is commercials, the l...

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