Shells

Shells are a great way to drill your team on defensive principles in a controlled yet game like situation.  Many coaches use them to help reinforce certain topics that the coach feels are important.  They are particularly effective when trying to teach your team how to play defense together.  It brings all of those defensive drills that you put your team through all year long together.  It promotes cohesiveness and shows how to rotate.  It is effective because you can control how you attack the defense thus allowing the defense to focus on the specific actions you want to cover with your team.  The question is are shells worth adding to your plans as a coach?  I think they are.

My belief is that the teaching process is broken into 2 different categories.  The first one is skill acquisition and the second is skill application.  The difference between teaching offensive skills and defensive skills is that regardless whether you are teaching on ball, help side, rotations, or how to deal with cutters or ball screens it is always better to teach defense against an opponent.  Whether we are in skill acquisition or skill application mode our defensive drills are always against an opponent.  Our skill acquisition drills are usually 1v1, 2v2, 3v3.  Skill application will be 3v3, 4v4, 5v5 both controlled and live.  In shells and as a scrimmage.

Some of the concepts that we use shells for are as follows:

  • Playing one pass vs 2 or more passes away.
  • Playing help line
  • Sealing the gap or faking the double
  • How to defend cutters thru the lane.
  • How to defend off ball screens
  • How to defend on ball screens
  • Help the ball
  • Help the help
  • How to defend the post
  • How to communicate to each other

In general, man to man defense is a misnomer. The misnomer exists because the name suggests that when playing man we only have one responsibility which is not true. Every man must cover their own player and be prepared to help with others.  The best way to show how a good team defense works is by exposing kids to the concepts of total team defense

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