Developing Defensive Literacy in young players

The challenge for coaches to teach and impact defence in a game-like and conceptual manner is significant at all levels of the sport.

Finding engaging and a games approach to drilling defence is challenging, but with the increased complexity of offensive systems, it is important to build context into all your defensive drilling.

Developing “defensive literacy” in young players is so important as they progress through their careers. Ensuring you impact the following areas both in terms of skill and understanding is a crucial element for the youth coach.

• Stance and footwork
• The ability to change stance
• Defensive conversion understanding
• Close-out and containment technique
• Jumping to the ball
• Defending cutting action
• Defending the post
• Screen defence – on and off the ball
• Defending the dribble and stationary hand-off
• Walling up and verticality at the rim
• Boxing out and rebounding

At the recent FIBA Under 17 World Cup, the offensive systems were complex and included a series of screens on and off the ball, extensive use of the dribble and stationary hand-off and mis-direction concepts. In short, as a young player, if you could not defend and understand the rules and techniques of your team’s defence, you couldn’t be on the floor.

Developing defensive literacy through Shell –

The techniques and individual fundamentals of defence cannot be short changed and youth coaches need to invest in developing stance, foot movement, change of direction/stance, closing out and jumping to the ball.

To further enhance this, we need to look at strategies to get more value out of the 4 v 4 defensive positioning environment, or Shell Drill as it is commonly referred to.

Basic Shell is a staple of most coaches drilling and defensive work each practice. The drill provides the ability to teach positioning, movement away from the ball, defending of ball movement and player movement.

Adding common actions and offensive concepts in the 4 v 4 defensive positioning setting is a valuable and time efficient way to improve your defence and can also cut down time spent on specific scouting.

By incorporating common actions into the day defensive drilling, when it comes to provide scout detail for a specific opponent, your team should already have a base defensive literacy on how to defend actions such pick and roll, screening or continuity actions.

The video link below demonstrates some of the Shell concepts used in the daily training environment at the Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence.

What sort of actions/concepts should be in your Shell package –

The concepts incorporated in your Shell package will be dictated by common actions from the league or competition you compete. If your league has a heavy staggered screen emphasis, that should reflect in your defensive drilling.

Some common actions or concepts that you should consider incorporating into your defensive package –

• Defending drive and kick
• Defending down and flare screens
• Staggered screens are more common now
• Pick and roll coverage
• Defending dribble and Stationary hand-offs
• Defending the post
• Defending “action into action” – DHO to ball screen, “Spanish” or stack ball screen action

Developing defensive literacy is not scouting –

Developing the defensive skill package and understanding of young players is not scouting. Scouting and game planning is important, but the challenge is to build capacity before focusing on technique.

If a young player has been shown, taught and practiced the skills and concepts to be a well-round defender, they will be able to use these skills in the tactical setting.