What Do Northern Michigan Basketball Players Need to Improve for AAU Success?
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What do Northern Michigan Basketball Players Need to Improve in AAU?
The world of travel basketball keeps increasing in volume, size, skill, and athleticism every year. We see now from a young age the need and want to play travel basketball at all ages. Going to the park, training alone, and using your imagination in the backyard is sadly gone.
AAU basketball has become a full-time job for parents and kids. Playing travel basketball has many positives and negatives to your overall game, attitude, work ethic, and mindset.
Our HB Elite program stands for teaching sports life lessons on and off the court:
E- Excellence
L- Leadership
I- Integrity
T- Teamwork
E- Empathy
From a pro basketball skills trainer perspective, an AAU coach who doesn’t coach with the end in mind teaches the athletes bad habits that are hard to fix later in their careers. We condensed this article into one of the three areas that athletes need to improve in AAU: handling pressure, defense (both on the ball and help side positioning), and reading the game with or without the ball (what we’ll call “basketball IQ”).
In this article, we will touch on each skill and how to make it something you can work on to help separate yourself from all other players.
Skill #1: Can You Handle Pressure?
You go to any AAU tournament game these days, and at each level from 2nd grade- 17U, each team is pressing full court or playing a half-court zone defense. Each team is up on the ball right as they get it in. With this idea and concept of pressure, each team seems to do for the fact that, from any age or level, it causes the offensive players to speed up and create chaos.
Then, that chaos turns into many turnovers and easy buckets for the opposing team. So, as a basketball skills coach, coach, parent, or player, we need to teach our players how to handle pressure and attack it correctly.
A great way to start with this is your own personal skills training. You must train and rep the situations you will see with all that pressure. So, I'm working on retreat dribbles, middle jabs, hip rotations, pivoting and passing in all different ways, etc.
You start against air, repping the moves and footwork and passing. The two great fundamentals against pressure are the retreat dribble and mid jabs with hip rotation. This retreat move happens when you dribble up the floor, and when you see the pressure coming or if a trap is already on you, you stop quickly and retreat with a backward d-slide, keeping the ball dribbling on your back hip and off-hand up, and your body between the defenders protecting the ball from reaches and swipes or tips.
The second move is a middle dribble jab into hip rotation.
I take my right foot, dribble with my left hand, and then step into the middle of the defensive player’s defensive stance in unison with the pound dribble as my right foot lands between them. Then, after making contact with my shoulder and right leg, I take their space with a bit of contact to create space for my hip rotation.
Now I bounce back my right foot that was jabbing between their defensive stance, rotate my hips, and drop my right foot back to land into a drop or split stance with the ball dribbling outside my left hip. I’ve created separation and am ready to freeze the defender with a dribble move or take an escape dribble toward more space to find a crease for a pass.
The key to handling pressure is finding the right pass to force the defense to move their defensive zone or to rotate out of their traps, creating more passing and driving gaps. Passes are always faster than a dribble. You will be fine if you learn to be firm with the ball, make explosive retreat dribbles and hip rotations, use ball fakes, and get yourself out of trouble with fundamental footwork!
Then, once you master the movements against air, you need to find the quickest and best player(s) you know and play one-on-one or two-on-one with all-out pressure. Compete, work on the moves you practiced, and apply them. It will not be pretty initially, but you will be comfortable in those situations over time.
Before the AAU tournaments start, you should be going against presses and playing without dribbles or dribble limits to make your dribbles count to prepare your kids to learn how to move, pivot, and pass under duress.
From there, you’ll be thrown to the wolves. Then, they’ll figure out how to prepare for press breakers, zone busters, and staying calm under pressure. Most youth players try to make the easiest next pass (that’s not open or being taken away without them realizing it) or telegraph a pass instead of using their eyes, hip rotations, retreat dribbles, or ball fakes to shift the defense before attacking to make a pass.
A lack of skills, footwork, and IQ leads to a turnover.
It’s that simple.
It’s why you don’t see many pro or college teams try to press an entire game—it’s too easy for highly skilled and intelligent players to take advantage of having numbers or open shots.
Another big key to handling pressure is your mindset, openness to coaching, and willingness to be uncomfortable. When you are pressured with anything, you get irritated, out of your element, and easily frustrated. As players and coaches, we need to be able to take pressure for what it is and accept the miscues for what they are:
Learning.
Failing under pressure isn’t actually failing. It’s learning how to handle pressure better the next time you’re pressured.
Know the pressure is coming. Now, get out there and execute (and please share this with a basketball friend if you find any value!)