If You Want To Dominate High School Basketball, Watch This.

If you want to score more points, be more consistent, and stand out more in your high school games, then you need to understand this. The best players don't just play harder, they play smarter than everybody else. They know exactly when to attack, how to find their opportunities, and ultimately it's not the skills that set them apart, but it's the decision making. By the end of this video, you'll have those same tools at your disposal so that you stop struggling on the court, start playing more consistently, and can dominate at the high school level. Let's get into it. One of the biggest misconceptions in my estimation as a high school coach, as a trainer, as someone who's around a lot of high school players and around the high school game a lot in general, is that the difference between the best players of the high school level and everybody else isn't always the skill. It definitely isn't the amount of time that players spend working out, spending the gym, working on their skills. The biggest separator, the biggest key difference between the best players and everybody else is the decision making and the basketball iq. Those are the two things that really separate the best players from everybody else. And there are specific things that we can point to and that we can look at and say, hey, if you understand these things, it's going to allow you to be really successful by high school level. And so today in this video, I want to go through the exact things that the best high school players know. You're going to be able to take these things, apply it to your game and see results instantly start to play better, instantly start to see more success right away. So let's dive into it. The first thing that the best high school players do is that they understand the best times to score. So really what this comes down to is you need to identify and attack advantages. There are certain situations you're going to be in that are going to present advantages for you as the offensive player. And the players who struggle to be consistent, who struggle to score at a high level, struggle to create plays and be successful, are generally the ones who don't understand this concept of advantages, or they don't understand when they have the advantage and they don't understand that they need to look to exploit and attack those advantages right now. So we're going to talk about the situations that you need to be aware of, that you need to hunt, that you need to put yourself in and really go after if you want to play consistently at a high level. The first one is transition. Right now, this is an area That I think a lot of players overlook, maybe not fully overlooked, but don't quite understand just how important transition is. If you want to be a consistent player on offense and you want to be a high level scorer at the high school level, especially because you're not going to have necessarily a ton of time to score in just a half court in high school because the games aren't very long, right? And in a lot of states there's no shot clock too. So the. You might not get as many possessions as you're going to get at higher levels. Right. So it's really important that we take advantage of transition. The best players, the high school level do this at a really high level. So here's really what you have to understand. The first six seconds that your team has the ball is going to be the best opportunity for you to look to score. The reason for that is because obviously the defense is not going to be fully set. They're going to be rotating back. Some teams are not very good at defensive transition and getting back. And even the teams that are, are, they're going to be worse at that than they are playing defense when they're already set in the half court. So that first six seconds when you catch the ball or when your team gets the defensive rebound, when your team inbounds the basketball, those are the. That's the most important time to look to take advantage of the defense right there. So if you don't have the ball in your hands, the important thing to understand in these situations that you want to win the first three steps, so you're on the wing, your teammate gets a defensive rebound. Those first three steps you take down the court need to be faster than anybody else's first three steps. And when you focus on doing that, you're going to put yourself at an advantage and you're going to allow yourself to beat a lot of other players on the floor and you're going to be open for a lot of advances to layups and to driving kicks for your teammates as well. So focusing on winning those three steps is crucial if you want to be great. And then we talk about if you're the one who has the basketball. Well, the first thing we want to do is make sure that we get eyes down the floor within the, like within one dribble, right? So you catch the ball on a defensive rebound or on an inbounds, you get one dribble to start to go. Your eyes have got to be up and seeing what you have as an advance. Right now we talk about Advanced passes, the first thought is going to be, can I advance the ball directly up the floor? So if I'm on the right wing, could I advance it up on the right sideline? Okay, that's going to be our first look right there. If we can't do that, because that's the simplest advance pass to make, can I advance the ball across the floor? So over to the left side of the floor, which will force the defense to have to shift sides of the floor, which is probably going to give your, your teammates and more opportunities to look to do something or at least when you get up the floor now the defense is going to shift back to you if the ball gets passed back to you. So that's a really important situation to understand is that if we can advance that basketball up the floor, want to do that, if not, we're going to go across with it. If you could do neither of those things, then it's probably you who wants to be the one to go and attack. And I think the best way to think about what your mindset should be in transition is the acronym Gus. I heard this from the Fairfield women's basketball coach and GUS just stands for go until stopped. So if you have the ball and no one's stopping you in transition, go to the rim. I think a lot of times players get so caught up in what should I do, what should I do, what should I do? Make the defense stop you. Okay. And if they do stop you, it means your teammate's going to be open. So now you kick out. Now you're creating for other people as well, which makes you a really valuable high level player. Because the best players in high school don't just create for themselves and not just great scorers, but, but they're also great at creating opportunities for their teammates as well. And when you embody that word Gus, especially in transition, it's going to allow you to do that for again, not just for yourself, but for your teammates. That's the first thing right there is understanding the importance of transition. That first six seconds when your team gets the ball is going to be the best opportunity for your team to score. We want to take advantage of that as often as possible if we want to be great at the high school level. And the second type of advantage we want to attack and we want to identify are closeouts and defensive rotations. Okay? So we want to think of it like this. When a defender is standing still, they're in the best position possible to play defense, right? A defender who's completely set not rotating, not moving, not closing out. That's when they're at their best. And so we want to identify opportunities when they're moving in some way. Either they're moving towards you because the ball got passed to you and they're closing out to take away the shot. We want to attack that because it's really hard to, to go and take away the shot and stop a drive if you look to exploit that, that movement coming towards you. But also we want to think about taking advantage of defensive rotations too. So not just when the ball, when you get the ball in a closeout, but we can think about, you know, when the defense is rotating. A lot of times if we attack, the help defense won't be rotated yet. So the paint might be wide open on your drives because the help's not there yet. But if we were to wait and let the defense rotate now, all of a sudden you might try and drive and it's going to be way harder. So a lot of times when players don't understand, like I don't know when to drive to the basket, I'm not very good at driving the basket. I feel like I don't, I don't do a great job of it. A lot of times it's not because they don't work on their skills enough or they're not strong enough all the times because they don't understand when to do it. And the best time to do it is when the ball is in your hands and you've had it for. We call it the 0.5 second rule. Right. So when you held the ball and that first half a second is going to be the best time to drive most of the time because the defense is rotating towards you and the defense is also on their way rotating to help. So a lot of times they're not there yet. So we want to. When we're in these 0.5 decision situations, that's the best time to look to attack and that's the best time to be able to get paint touches, obviously get to the rim and finish. But also like we talked about earlier, the best time to drive, you get to the paint and that draws in a help defender. Now you can kick it out to your teammate for an open shot or for them to have a closeout to attack. Right, right there. Okay. So closed out defensive rotations, anytime when the defense has to move and you have the ball in your hands and you see that movement coming towards you, that's when you want to look to go. The best players at the high school level understand how to attack their defenders when they're in this vulnerable state. And these 0.5 decision situations are one of the most common times when that happens. This is really where you can start to become consistent on the offensive end is by identifying these situations, taking advantage of them. The third situation that is really important to understand if you want to dominate the high school level is ball screen situation. So ball screen is what we refer to as an action. An action is essentially just something that you're going to do on offense that's going to make the defense react. When a ball screen comes, the defense has to react. The guy guarding the ball is going to have to go under the screen or over the screen or they're going to have to switch the screen. Regardless, the defense is going to do something to neutralize that action that the offense goes to. In this case a ball screen. So, so in this situation we have to understand that there's multiple different layers to this. So as the ball handler, how does your initial defender, how do they play that? Do they go under the screen? In which case can we shoot it? Or can I flip the ball screen and go the other way now? And maybe they have to chase over the top when I, when I flip the screen and go the other way. If they're going early, can I, can I reject the screen? If they chase you over the screen, can you get downhill off of it? Does the screeners defender help on you and now you can pass to the screener on a pop or on a roll or do they not recover and help on you and they go back to their guy and now you can go all the way to the basket. So reading your defender, reading that screeners defender is super important, but then also reading what's called the tag defender. So generally when you have a wing ball screen or a slot ball screen, that same side corner defender is going to be responsible for tagging the role. Meaning when, when you come off the screen, the screener rolls to the basket, that corner defender is going to be responsible for tagging or taking away that role until the, the screeners defender can recover back. Okay, what that's going to open up is for that player in the corner to then be open. So as the, the ball handler you might need to think about that and say, okay, hey, if I see that tag defender go, I've got to hit that. My, my teammate in the corner who maybe is lifting up a little bit to give me a good angle on the pass. And if you're that player who's in the corner on a ball screen. Understand that if your defender goes to help on the roll, you're going to be open for maybe a catch and shoot or like we talked about, if that ball gets kicked to you now you got a close out to attack or in that advantage situation that we've talked about right there. Okay, so reading ball screens, being good, those situations is really, really important if you want to be good. One of the most common actions at the high school level, and that'll depend again a little bit on what position you play and, you know, what situations you yourself find yourself in, but really studying and getting good at making those decisions. So watching great players in ball screens, watching guys like Trae Young, Chris Paul, and then again, depending on what type of player you are, maybe you're watching some bigger guards or some forwards use ball screens. Right here you can find all this stuff on YouTube going through and just watching them and okay, why did they make that decision? What worked, what didn't work for them? And then if you have access to watching your own film, I think it's also really important to see, all right, what did I do in that situation? What, what did I miss? What should I look to do next time? And that's really, really important when it comes to maximizing yourself in those situations. And then the next area that's so important to be great at if you want to dominate the high school level is pin downs, also known as way screens, down screens. This is maybe the most common action. This and ball screens are really the two most common actions that you're going to use at any level, but especially at the high school level. So really what this comes down to is making the right read depending on how your defender tries to guard this. Again, this is another action and we're going to force the defense to do something. They have to guard that action a certain way. And the way that they guard it is going to determine what sort of advantage we can potentially gain from that right there. So the first thing is that if they chase you over, right? Let's say a downstream comes for you, they chase you over. We're thinking about tight curling it because they're, they're trailing behind you and a lot of times you're going to have an open lane to go to the basket. If you tight curl when they chase you over, right? So that's that, that first read and then if they go under, we're thinking about flaring out to the perimeter. If they get caught under there, then you might have an open Shot or like we talked about, what that might create is a closeout for you to be able to attack. Okay, so that's that second read. They go under. We're thinking about flaring out to the perimeter. Then that third read is if they overplay it. Right? Right. Or they anticipated early, we're thinking about going back door. And this is a read that a lot of players miss because they just go through the motions with pin downs. They just say, okay, well screen coming, I'm just going to go fill up to the wing. And they don't, they don't actually use it with any sort of purpose because of that. They don't gain any sort of advantages from this. But when the defense starts to overplay it, anticipate and say, oh well, they've done this last two times so they're probably going to do it again. Just going with a backdoor cut a lot of times is going to, to give you opportunities to score easy buckets just by catching the defense off guard right there when they overplay. And then the last thing is when they switch. Right. Switching is really common. Slipping the screen is going to allow you to take advantage of the defense switching and allow you to gain an open shot or an advantage or you catch the ball, defender has rotated over to you, you can kick it out and, and create for your teammates as well. Okay, so understanding those reads when it comes to pin downs, such a crucial part and something that a lot of players really don't understand. Right. I didn't even know that. I didn't really get this until I started coaching and being around the game more. And then I started to recognize the importance of reading these situations. And if you think to yourself how many times you find yourself using a pin down in a game, using a down screen and away screen in a game, and how many times you actually read it, well, you probably are leaving a lot of opportunities on the table. And if you want to be a great high school player, taking advantage of these opportunities is going to give you a leg up on almost everybody else because very few players actually do this. And I want to talk two more things real quick that I think really go into this and that are simple, just kind of give you a simple focus going forward. Number one is the importance of shot making. Okay. And obviously like this seem, it seems like a no brainer. Like yeah, we know like we got to make shots, but I think that a lot of times players have to understand that like this has to be priority number one for you. There is, there is nothing more important in the game of basketball than your ability to just make shots and specifically making like catch and shoot threes, right? If you can make a catch and shoot three, it's going to open up everything else for you and make everything way easier, okay. And it's also going to allow you to obviously make more of an impact because even all this stuff, like you have to read it and all this sort of stuff, but if you can just, hey, hey, I'm open, I can shoot and make this three. That's really, really simple. The simplest way to score more than likely, right? So shot making has got to be your priority every single day. And that might mean even in season, like you might not have a ton of time, but finding 20 minutes, 50 minutes every single day to just work on specific shots, right? So whether it be just catch and shoot threes, whether it be threes on a ball screen, shots that you're going to get in games, I think it's super important that you work on that ability to shot make every single day, right? This stuff all matters. But ultimately if I had to pick like the two things that go into being a great player, I mean at any level, but here speaking up to the high school level, the, the two things that the best players that I'm around have is, number one, basketball iq, like the understanding of the game, but then that the other aspect of it is the ability to make shots. If you have those two things at a high level, which we talked the IQ stuff already, and then you have the ability to make shots, you're going to be a really, really, really good player, right? It's pretty much as simple as that there. So just something to keep in mind, making sure that every single day you're finding time to work on your ability to make those shots. And again, it might not be for an hour, two hours every single day, but, but even just 10, 15, 20 minutes a day of consistent work at those things is going to pile over time, right? With the high school team that I coach, I tell these guys we work on shooting every single day. We spend at least 35, 45 minutes, sometimes an hour of our two hour practices just working on shooting, right? And that's because like I said, it's the most important thing in basketball is making shots. And so I say to these guys, we have like a 20 minute shooting warm up that we do every single day. The first thing we do in practice, every single day, most guys are only going to be making like anywhere from 50 to 75 shots within that 20 minute time frame, depending on how fast they go, how fast their partner goes, and all that sort of stuff. But what you have to understand is that we do that every single day. Think about how those numbers add up, right? If you make 50 shots a day, we practice six days a week, that's 300 makes a week. Now think about that over a month. That's 1200 makes in a month that we're getting just in that. In that drill. That's maybe half of our shooting in practice right there. So understand that those reps add up over time. Even if it's just 10, 15, 20 minutes a day, it's super, super important. Then the next thing is the mindset that the best players have, right? The best players are able to detach themselves from the outcomes and from the emotions that go into the game of basketball. Right? Basketball is a very emotional game, and obviously players who put a lot into it. If you're watching this video, you probably put a lot into it and you care a lot about it. And it's so easy to get frustrated and to get upset with yourself and feel like, I had a bad game. And now you're stuck in this. In this mindset of maybe you lack some confidence, maybe you feel upset or frustrated with yourself, feel like you let people down, you feel like you're not playing as well as you should. And all these things can go into kind of clouding your ability to just focus on what's important, which is really the present moment. I tell my players that I work with and players that I coach, the. The biggest superpower that you can have is the ability to live in the present moment, meaning you forget about what happened in the past. You forget about the shot you just missed or what happened three possessions ago, or that you shot bad in the game yesterday. You're able to. To not think about that. You're able to not think about the future, which is, oh, am I going to miss my next shot? Well, what if I. What if I don't shoot well today? Or, like, what is coach going to think? What. What are my teammates going to think? What are. What are the fans going to think? Your ability to not think about that and just think about what am I doing right now, being where my feet are, giving my best effort on this possession and this drill, in this practice, in this game. The more that you can do that, the better you're going to be. And a lot of players should be a lot better, but they get so caught up in what's already happened or they get so fearful About a mistake that they might make or a shot that they might miss, that they lose some of their ability to focus on being great in the present moment. Because of that, they never play as well as they should and they're horribly inconsistent when it comes to their results. Now the best ways to do this are by having like a mantra that brings you back into the present moment. So being able to say to yourself, okay, hey, next play. Or hey, like we're good, I got the next one, the next shot's going in, the next, the next drive, I'm gonna get to the basket and finish it or this is gonna be my game, this is gonna be my quarter. Okay, we've got it. Like being able to say that stuff to yourself, to just be able to turn your focus to giving your best effort. Right now, all that you can control is what you are doing right now. You can't control what happened, you can't control what's going to happen in a quarter in a, in three position, in three possessions from now, next week, next month, next year. You control what you do in this present second, right? And so the more that you can put your focus and your intentions on that right there and controlling that, which the, the only way you do that is by giving your best effort in this moment, the better you're going to be as a player. And the best players that I'm around and the players who dominate at the high school level are the ones who are able to drown out all the noise and focus on being great right now. They have a very short term memory where they forget the bad things that have happened, they forget the missed shots, they forget the failures. And they're not scared of the moment, they're not scared of what happens if I miss, they're not scared of this. They just worry about giving my best right now. And when you do that, it doesn't mean you're always going to be successful, but it's going to put you in the best position to be successful. Because all of your focus is on being the best you can be right now. And that's where you want to be if you want to be consistently successful right there. So if you do these things, you follow this blueprint that's going to give you a chance to be a really, really good high school player. Dominate the high school level as you continue to get better at these things. Like I mentioned basketball, IQ and shot making, the most important things. When you have those things, it allows you to dominate at this level and really it makes it much more simple than I think a lot of players kind of hype it up to be, right? It's really those two things right there. So obviously there's a lot that goes into basketball IQ if you guys want to dive, even dip. So obviously there's a lot that goes into basketball IQ if you want to dive even deeper into that. I have a free hour long basketball IQ masterclass which is where we go through some things that are going to help you to score more points, create more plays for your team and overall, just play with way more confidence, play with way more success and will really in a lot of ways change the way that you even view the game of basketball. The way that you play the game of basketball. That's completely free, top link in the description down below. Like I mentioned, hour long. So much great feedback on it and I really think that it's something that's going to help you to not even necessarily down the line, but literally right now make changes that are going to help you to score six to eight more points per game right now just by going through this stuff and implementing the stuff that we talk about in this master class. Completely free, top link in the description down below. I appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.