One More Question to Coaches: Blow out wins

I just wanted to get some opinions on how to handle things when you are blowing out a team in early in a game. I got good feedback on my last posting so I wanted to see if I could do the same here.

Earlier in the year, we were playing and up 20 points mid way through the first. Late in the quarter I started subbing my bench players freely. Soon our lead dropped from 20 points to 12 points so I started pressing and trapping again. Ideally, I wanted a big lead so I could provide an opportunity for our bench players to get extended minutes. In my mind, a game is not over until the lead is at least 30 points by the end of the 3rd quarter. I have seen many teams come back from 22 or 24 points deficits in a quarter, however, 30 points seems safe.

My team was up 34 points mid way through the 3rd quarter so I stopped pressing and playing man-to-man defense....our ball line defense was to strong for them. I took out all my regular rotation players....starters and my 6th, 7th and 8th players in my usual rotation. I also took off the 2-3 zone trap that we dropped into after we stopped pressing. I had my weakest players in the game and gave them instructions to play a soft zone....no real pressure...and definitely no aggressive trapping. Then, a funny thing happened.... the lead went to 40, 45, 50 and then 55 points. My seldom used bench players were just playing well. They were making plays, hitting shots, having fun and feeling good about themselves. It wasn't disrespectful or anything. I didn't want to take that away from them, but, some people said that i should stop trying to score. I thought about it...but I didn't want to hold back players that rarely get chances to shine and score.

The other team had plenty of chances to score playing against a passive zone. However, they missed a lot of shots and my guys are in the paint in ideal rebounding position...so my team had a lot of extra possessions from all their missed shot opportunities. Again...as coaches what would you do?....do you put in a five or ten pass rule with your weakest players and chose not to score after your up 30+ points or do you let your weaker players play and experience the success even though the final score might not look very flattering to your opponents? The coaches did not say anythng after the game, but, they were not happy either. I felt that I did everything I could to negate some of our advantages...no pressing, no aggressive trapping, no ball line defense...no aggressive zone...just stand in the paint with your hands up. I just did not want to restrict the guys on my team who do not get alot of Playing time and experience great moments on the court regularly.

Let me know what you think....thanks again!

why do u worry so much about what others think?

focus on developing YOUR kids and less on what types of defense, offense, etc.

i assume you are not coaching professionally...or intentionally trying to showboat...you probably have more talent

at the end of the day the players will benefit from developing their skills and a healthy attitude towards the game and that is a reflection on you

what other people think about you is none of your business.

I think you got it all wrong. I'm not worried at all...I'm not overly concerned with what others think...I just honestly want to know other coaches' perspective on certain situations that's all...plain and simple curiosity... There's always room to learn from others....LOL you're reading way to much into it! However, you are right....I don't coach professionally.

You did everything appropriately. You took off the pressure, and played your bench. You were probably playing the second unit guys for the other team during the end of the game when you extended your lead.

I think that animosity builds when a coach up 30 or 40 keeps his starters in, doesn't take off the full court press and tries to run up the score as high as possible. Sometimes coaches may want to keep starters in the game longer if kids are being scouted, recruited, or whatever, but I think that this is poor sportsmanship.

We have seen cases in the news of teams beating other teams by 80 or 90 points, keeping the press on all game, and most of the starters in most of the game, etc. Something's amiss with the coach's values in those cases.

Blowouts are awkward and when coaching I was on both ends of those kids of games. When up 40 you really don't want to extend a lead so you let the end of the bench guys play. When down 40 or 50 you just want the game to end. But when you see another coach show sportsmanship as you did it is always good as the losing coach to make a mention of it when shaking hands. Sometimes a team is missing key players due to injuries, suspensions, illness or whatever, and you really don't have the troops to compete with a powerhouse opponent.

I find a lot wrong with your post. you get up 20 in the first 4 min of the game, then put ur 6-10 guys in who have been sitting on the bench and they give up 8 pts to arguabley the other teams starters. so u put your starters back in and press and trap until midway through the 3rd when then take all this off and put your bench in to play a soft zone? sorry but a good coach would realize early on his starters could enter and win the game at any point and to press and trap an inferior team with your starters for as long as you did is poor coaching and sportsmanship. you culd have given your bench kids the opportunity to actually play and win a game, especially early in the season, maybe have 1 or 2 starters on at all times so you know u would always have scoring. imo i dont think you showed good sportsmanship. the part where you say "my team was in ideal rebounding position" is hilarious, of course they are they are standing in a zone. im assuming the score increased because YOUR bench kids were playing against THEIR bench kids and your team was far more talented.

I think that since you were quite confident that your starters were simply that much better than any five man unit the other team could put together, you should let your reserves play as much as possible from 4 minutes in to the end if possible. Should the team tie the score, or even take the lead by half, you could come back out with your starters to start the second half. I also like the idea of mixing my top 5 with the other guys as it gets the other guys an opportunity to raise the level of their play and develop by playing with player who are superior. Simply taking off all five starters and throwing in the rest sends a bad message to your team. That is, you are saying, okay this game is in the bag and no you other guys can play. This is an opportunity for all of your players to contribute to the team's success and develop so that if an injury should occur, other players have been through it before with each other and can step up to the challenge.

Another approach is to work your system and demand that they players do not look to score a shot other than the type of shot your system is designed to get. For example, you might want to work the ball through the post so no player is permitted to take an outside shot unless it is off a kick out from the post. This is actually a good thing for your team to have an opportunity to practice, in a game situation, those things that you have evaluated to be weaknesses with your team.

WELL SAID COACHC could'nt of said it any better