Changing Tempo During a Game
I've been coaching for a very long time but I've always made it a point to approach coaching with the attitude of "you don't know everything." I was coaching a game last night and my team was giving up a lot of height to the opposition. At the same time, the other team were not good shooters from the outside so we decided to play a 2-3 zone and pack it in. This would serve the dual purpose of having all 5 of our boys crash the boards and protect the paint from the height difference we were dealing with. The zone worked fairly well. The rebounding was okay and the outside shooting by the other team kept us in the game as it was poor. At about the 3 minute mark of the 4th quarter we found ourselves down 6 points and we decided that we would no longer be in the packed in zone but would rather go man to man and extend full court. This change of defense caught the other team off guard and got me thinking. How much did the change in tempo that the new defense