Individual Game Planning

Here I am just going to make many bullets as to what other coaches and/or myself have said they do to game plan. Use any or none of these points, just a few things to get your mind thinking of how to deal with this nightly event!

• Where does this team score from?
• Do they play the same line-up every night?
• Do they change tempo?
• Are they a good 3-point shooting team?
• Any line-up weaknesses?
• Can I move around any players to give myself an advantage?
• What do their IQs look like compared to my team?
• Are they a good rebounding team, do they lack Ball handling?
• Do they change their O or D?
• Are their any individual matchups I can take advantage of? (Ie a bad defender or slow player)
• Can I make any defensive line-up changes to better contain them?

Personally, when looking at only scoring that can be misleading. Just because a team scores most with their big men does NOT mean that they are scoring from the low block. Many teams run with big men that can nail the mid-range jumper. So beware of that before moving to close down the interior just because their big men are the top 3 leading scorers.

Thanks to emgilligan, cbriese, daalter and oldave whose input was used from former threads.

Note: While I usually don't move my starters around as I like to keep the same guys playing at the same places. The most common thing I do is move around my starting Big Men to take advantage of a slower guy down low. My bigmen are always the fastest and most athletic and I do not differentiate between PFs and Cs. So If the other team has a slow C i might switch my PF to C to take advantage of that matchup.

Note: Many coaches (for one reason or another) find it hard to find a good sf. I disagree with that and think its very easy to find a good one, you just have to spend the time during recruiting. Anyway here is something to think about if you are a non-believer in the lower level sf. When you are playing someone out of position there always make sure that you like the matchup at that position. IE if you are playing a press team, having a pf playing the 3 might not be a good idea. So maybe you'll want to move a sg over there? Or maybe your usual starting pf is a better athlete and you want him playing sf for a game.