Game Management

 I coached a game yesterday which my team came just short of winning.  In this league, each team is given 1 time out in the first half and 2 in the second half.  The team was down by as many as 13 points in the second half.  We put on a full court press to get back in the game and with about 2 minutes left I used 1 of my 2 second half timeouts to draw up a play in an effort to tie the game.  My thinking at the time was to get the ball to my hot hand and put pressure on the other team by tying the game.  The time out worked as we scored and the game kept going back and forth.  With about 50 seconds left I called another timeout as we had possession and were down 2.  We set up another play and it worked to tie the game but I was out of timeouts.  At the end of the game the other team called a timeout and I decided to continue pressing them.  The logic was to continue to go with what has worked.  The other team broke the press and got a layup out of it.  This is where the second guessing begins.  Should I have saved the last timeout?  Should I have switched up the defense knowing that they were probably designing a play to combat the press?

The saving of a timeout for the end of the game would have been nice.  I don't always like calling timeouts at the end of games because it allows other teams a chance of getting their defense set up.  This being said, this particular team of mine has not had much practice time so we have not practiced end of game situations so the saving of a timeout would have been nice.  On the other hand, we did score after the timeouts we used earlier which helped us stay in the game.

As for the switch of defenses, I am always a believer in giving the other team something else to look at when they are setting up a play against us.  I didn't do this, in this game, for a couple of reasons.  The first was that our man to man was horrible all game long.  The second was that the press is what got us back in the game.  So I decided to go with what worked.

That's the beauty of coaching this game.  When your strategy works you feel great, when it doesn't you feel bad.  There are multiple ways to handle each situation and none of them are wrong.  As long as you have valid reasons for doing what you are doing, you have to live with the results.

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