3 Possessions – The Key to Winning the Game of Runs
Basketball at all levels is a game of runs. Have more and bigger runs than your opponent and you are going to win. To emphasize this we insist that we never allow our opponents to score three consecutive possessions. At the same time we ourselves never want to go three straight offensive possessions without scoring. If we can accomplish these two goals we are going to win the battle of runs and will most likely win the game as well. Here are two scrimmage scenarios that we use in practice to reinforce these concepts.
Score… Stop… Score
Calls for teams to execute scoring and defending for 3 consecutive possessions. Drill is blown dead as soon as a team doesn’t complete one of the 3 possessions effectively. We score the ability to have executed all 3 phases. We have found through our own research if a team can execute more than 5 of these per game they win. If you consider that 5 or more (4-0) runs is like being up 20.
Stop… Score… Stop
Calls for teams to execute defending and scoring for 3 consecutive possessions. Drill is blown dead as soon as a team doesn’t complete one of the 3 possessions effectively. We score the team’s ability to have executed all 3 phases. Emphasis in the drill is turn your defense into points and then create a second stop. Use this concept to start every games in order to set defensive tone.
