Game Situations: Foul Trouble

A big part of a coach's responsibility during game day is how he will handle foul situations on given players.  How you handle a player who is in foul trouble can have a huge impact on the game and can easily take a victory and turn it into a loss or vice versa.



I like to follow a general rule of thumb when dealing with players in foul trouble (assuming 5 foul disqualification):
  • 1st quarter - 2 fouls
  • 2nd quarter - 2 fouls
  • 3rd quarter - 3 fouls
The above is pretty conservative and I do give myself some flexibility when in a game.  What are some other items that I need to take into consideration when I decode to sit my players:
  • How good is the player who is in foul trouble?
  • How confident am I in replacing him with another good player on our bench?
  • Can the player who sits due to foul trouble easily come back into the game and find his rhythm or is he the type of player who if he sits for a long period of time may be lost for the rest of the game?
  • How confident am I in the players ability not to draw another foul?
  • How aggressive is the other team?
  • How is the flow of the game going?  Do I feel like my team can continue to play well without the player who is in foul trouble?
  • What point in the game are we?
As you can see there are a lot of scenarios that should be crossing a coaches mind when a player of his gets into foul trouble.  A coach can keep it simple and follow a rule of thumb like above or he can add a bit more flexibility and take specific items into consideration.  I like to maintain some flexibility, especially with some of my better players because with your key players the game could be over anyways if you sit them so why not just play them and see if they can play thru the foul trouble.

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