The 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast

Osad

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  Ep 2000 What Make a Successful Coach and Program 25.09.2026 39min

  https://teachhoops.com/teachhoops-memberships/2000/ https://www.thechampionshipcoach.com/ When Your Tank Is Only 80% Full, Is It Time to Walk Away?  Episode 2000: Coach Bill turns the microphone on Steve Collins for a conversation about 37 years on the sideline, three state titles, one 7 and 14 season, and what the game actually owes the kids who never become stars. For the 2000th episode of Coach Unplugged, the format flips. Coach Bill takes over the questions and Steve sits in the guest chair for the first time, fresh off a state finals run and the first fall in nearly four decades with no season to plan. They talk about what it felt like the moment it ended, the bus ride from La Crosse that turned a losing program around, and the price his family paid along the way. Stay to the end for a 2000th episode offer that only lives here in the show notes. IN THIS EPISODE 01:17 A milestone inside a milestone. First fall in 37 years with no season and no lesson plans. 02:13 How Coach Unplugged started. A YouTube idea with a friend, back when podcasting was actually hard. 04:33 "I felt full." The feeling after the final game, and why you want to leave the amusement park while you still want to ride. 06:35 The storybook ending. Up two at halftime on the eighth ranked team in the country, 27 and 3, and why a great taste makes walking away both easier and harder. 08:13 What retirement actually looks like. Family, travel, and four clinic dates this fall including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Brooklyn. 09:32 Why start another basketball podcast? Nobody was talking to the coach in the trenches. The parent problems, the bus that never shows, the missing official 30 minutes before tip. 11:37 The 7 and 14 season. Sitting in a locker room in La Crosse saying "I don't think I can do this," as the only applicant for the job. 13:03 The roadmap from that bus ride. How two hours back to Madison became the plan for one of the best programs in the Midwest. 14:32 Find your circle and keep it close. The advice from his high school coach that produced two staffs in 30 years. 16:18 The resume. Three state championships, five runner up finishes, eleven state appearances, fourteen straight conference titles, twenty six consecutive winning seasons, and why none of it sounds real to him. 17:08 Micro goals. Don't get fired. Then have a winning season. Then beat the perennial power. Then contend. Then win it. 18:40 Out scouting everybody. Sending his mom to a game with a camera, VCRs in the basement until 2 a.m., and why that edge is gone now. 19:43 What does coaching owe the kids who never play in college? Roles, camaraderie, failing together, and the life lessons kids remember long after the Pythagorean theorem. 22:23 The two kinds of coaches who ask for help. The young ones who know they don't know, and the veterans still hunting for an edge. It's the middle group that stalls out. 23:35 The price. What the wins cost his wife, his parents, and his mother in law, and why both of his kids will tell you he never missed anything. 26:15 Rapid fire for the first year coach. Worry less about parents and more about players. Communicate, then over communicate. After a bad loss go exercise and do not watch film. Stop drilling for the sake of drilling. 28:37 How do you know you were successful? Strip away the banners and the wins and what's left is the connection with the players. 29:21 One sentence, if that's all a coach remembers. People first. 29:44 The second act. The Championship Coach fellowship, one on one calls, group calls, and coaches who have his actual cell number. 30:02 Building Hey Sammy. Bill on the app overload problem in youth sports, and a text based assistant that pulls in schedules, calendars, drive time, and weather with nothing to install. 32:04 The golden nugget, buried at the end on purpose. THE 2000TH EPISODE OFFER 20% off teachhoops.com for the lifetime of the membership, for the first 20 coaches only. Use code FIRSTTWENTY at checkout. This is not being announced anywhere else. If you made it to the end of the episode, it's yours. LINKS https://teachhoops.com/ The coaching library, drills, and community.https://championshipcoach.com/ The fellowship Steve runs with a small group of coaches each spring and fall.https://heysami.com/ The text based family sports assistant Steve and Bill are building.Email Steve directly at [email protected]. He is speaking at four clinics this fall and will happily grab a soda and talk hoops. QUOTABLE "I felt full. I felt complete. You want to leave the amusement park when you still want to go on rides." "It's about the Jills and Joes, not the X's and O's." "When I was 27, I knew everything. I feel like I know less now than I did 30 years ago." "People first. You're going to win if you put people first." HELP THE SHOW If 2000 episodes have helped you survive a season, leave a five star review, share the show with a coach who needs it, and send in your questions. Here's to the next 2000. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1999 Are You the Thermostat or the Thermometer for Your Team? 24.09.2026 8min

  https://teachhoops.com/ What happens to your team when the head coach has a bad day? In this episode, Coach Collins takes a deep dive into one of the most important responsibilities of leadership: managing the emotional temperature of your program. Coaches often spend enormous amounts of time thinking about strategy, practice planning, player development, and culture. But players and assistant coaches are also constantly reading something else—the emotional state of the person leading them. Coach Collins uses the idea of the thermostat versus the thermometer to explain the difference. A thermometer simply reflects the temperature around it. A thermostat helps set it. Athletes naturally react to what is happening around them. Coaches have a greater responsibility. Their frustration, confidence, fear, patience, body language, and emotional consistency can quickly spread throughout a team. This becomes especially important when circumstances change quickly. Winning streaks, great practices, injuries, difficult losses, parent problems, player issues, staff disagreements, and unexpected setbacks can all happen within days of each other. If a coach’s emotional state rises and falls with every event, players begin experiencing leadership whiplash. The episode explores the idea that every coach has a leadership range. At the top end, coaches are clear, proactive, relational, confident, and able to see the big picture. At their baseline, they are steady and dependable. At the low end, fatigue and frustration can lead to emotional reactions, micromanaging, distance, impatience, or poor communication. The goal is not to pretend that great leaders never reach their low end. They do. The goal is to raise the floor. How do you behave when things go badly? Can you lose and still communicate clearly? Can you receive difficult news without bringing panic into the gym? Can you correct a player without turning your frustration into that athlete’s shame? Can your assistant coaches concentrate on coaching instead of trying to figure out what mood you are in? Those questions reveal a great deal about leadership. Coach Collins also challenges coaches to separate their identity from the scoreboard. Winning matters. Competition matters. Championships matter. But when a coach needs winning to validate who they are, the entire culture begins riding the emotional roller coaster with them. A great night means everything is wonderful. One loss suddenly makes everything feel broken. That is not stability. Great programs need leaders who can compete intensely while remaining grounded through both success and adversity. The episode gives coaches three practical questions for evaluating themselves: Did I act as the thermostat or the thermometer this week? What did my low end cost the people around me? And what boundary can I create to protect my emotional baseline next week? Sometimes that boundary is waiting before speaking after a difficult loss. Sometimes it is refusing to send the emotional text. Sometimes it is sleep, time away, perspective, or simply recognizing that an important decision should not be made while angry. For coaches trying to build sustainable culture, this episode is a reminder that your emotional regulation is not just personal. It becomes organizational. Players feel it. Assistant coaches feel it. Your program eventually reflects it. The scoreboard can change your circumstances. It does not have to change your leadership. basketball leadership, coaching leadership, basketball coaching, team culture, emotional leadership, thermostat vs thermometer, coach emotional control, leadership under pressure, coaching adversity, basketball culture, mental toughness for coaches, emotional regulation, head coach leadership, coaching staff, player development, program culture, leadership consistency, handling losses, coaching confidence, basketball program, high school basketball coach, coaching mindset, team leadership, sustainable culture, basketball podcast, TeachHoops Keywords Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1998. How Do Youth Parents Deal with Tryouts 23.09.2026 14min

  Parents' Role in Tryouts Links mentioned in this episode TeachHoops.com CoachingYouthHoops.com — print and go practice plans built from years of coaching, not ChatGPT NukeHydration.com — clean sports drink for kids and coaches, started by a couple out of Mississippi. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off any order What Is a Parent Actually Supposed to Do During Tryouts? Shoes, snacks, and getting out of the way. Fall basketball season is kicking off, tryouts are here, and Coach Bill wants to talk about the person nobody writes a rubric for: the parent. Two sides to it. What coaches should be teaching parents to expect, and how parents can actually support their kid through a stressful week. Coach Collins goes first, and his list is unglamorous on purpose. We are dealing with kids, not young adults who can drive themselves. So the number one parent responsibility is logistics: shoes that fit, a ball in the bag, properly hydrated, everything they need, and there on time. That is most of the job. Tryouts can be genuinely stressful for a family, especially when nobody knows whether the kid makes a team at all, or which team. Coach Collins' advice is to drop both the coach hat and the parent evaluator hat and just be the supportive person in the front seat. When they get in the car, ask how it went. Ask what was fun today. Not "how'd you do" and not "were any of the other kids good." That one shift is what makes a kid want to come back next year. Coach Bill's biggest coaching side point: share your tryout rubric with parents before tryouts. How are teams being picked? If there is an A and a B team, what actually separates them? If there are cuts, why would a kid get cut? Say it plainly and say it early, and you avoid most of the fallout after the list goes up. He also names the thing everyone has seen: the leagues where the three dad coaches end up with the top three kids, automatically, because of how the structure works. Coach Collins frames it as a triangle. Parent to kid, parent to coach, coach to kid. When one leg of that breaks down, what the kid heard and what the parent tells the kid stop matching what the coach actually said, and that is where the problems come from. Ten spots, here is what we are looking for, here is what competitive means. Say it out loud to all three points of the triangle. Coach Bill lays out two scenarios worth walking through with your kid ahead of time. Your kid makes it and their best friend does not. One kid is thrilled, the other is crushed. Teach yours how to handle that, because the bragging happens more often than you would think. Your kid does not make the team you both expected. Talk through what it actually means, which is not much. A career is not over in fifth grade because someone did not make the A team. Coach Collins agrees and adds the frame: life is about disappointment, and you learn more from failure than success. But he pushes it one step further. His favorite parenting lesson from this episode. Before tryouts, have your athlete go ask the coach what they are looking for. After tryouts, have them ask what to work on for next year. The story behind it: his son Drew, in fourth or fifth grade, got in the car furious about a book report. Coach Collins pulled over about three hundred yards from the school and told him to go back in and talk to his teacher, who was still there. The teacher had a great conversation with him. Coach Collins believes that single moment taught Drew more than the rest of that school year, and that it made him an advocate for himself through his entire education. Coach Bill's addition is that this is really about teaching a kid how to speak respectfully to an adult in authority, which outlasts basketball by decades. And it is the kid who should do the asking, not the parent. Both agree a fourth grader is old enough. Coach Bill says he would love it if one of his fourth grade girls walked up and asked him to explain. As Coach Collins puts it, your job is to get them ready to leave the nest, not to stay in it. Nobody wants their thirty five year old kid still hanging around the house. Coaches: publish the rubric before tryouts, not after. Parents: handle the logistics, ask what was fun instead of how they did, and send your kid to talk to the coach themselves. Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com TitleSubtitleShow NotesStart with the boring stuffThen take off the coach hatThe communication triangleRehearse the hard conversations before they happenTeach the kid to advocate for themselvesCoach's takeaway Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1997 Is Your Culture Already Set Before the First Game Tips Off? 22.09.2026 14min

  Visit https://teachhoops.com/ for more coaching resources, practice plans, and the TeachHoops community. Title: Is Your Culture Already Set Before the First Game Tips Off? Subtitle: Why the six weeks before tryouts decide more about your season than any scouting report, and how to build the standards your players will hold each other to when you are not in the gym. Show Notes Most coaches think culture gets built during the season. In this episode we make the case that by the time the first official practice arrives, the culture is largely already in place, and the preseason is where it either gets built on purpose or gets built by accident. Players walk into November already knowing what the standards are, who the leaders are, and whether the coach means what he says. All of that gets decided in September and October. We start with the idea that culture is simply what your players do when the coach is not watching. Open gyms, weight room sessions, and pickup runs are where that gets revealed. If your best players show up late to open gym in September, they will show up late to shootaround in January. The preseason is the one time of year when you can address that without the pressure of a game on Friday night, so use it. Set an expectation, watch how they respond, and correct it immediately and calmly. From there we talk about what a coach can actually control before the season starts. You can control your presence. Being visible at open gyms and lifting sessions, even when you cannot run them under your state rules, tells players what matters to you. You can control the message. Pick two or three non negotiables, say them the same way every time, and do not add a fourth until the first three are automatic. At Memorial the standards were simple: be on time, compete every rep, and talk. Everything else was coaching. You can control who you empower. The preseason is when you identify your captains not by a vote but by watching who does the work when nobody is making them. We spend some time on player led work. The strongest programs have upperclassmen running the show in the preseason, and that does not happen on its own. Meet with your returning players early. Tell them exactly what you need from them, give them a specific role such as running the shooting sessions or getting the freshmen to the weight room, and then hold them to it. When a senior corrects a sophomore in October, you have culture. When a coach has to do all of the correcting in December, you have a problem. The conversation also covers the small habits that compound. How players enter the gym, whether they rack the balls, whether they thank the custodian, whether they pick up after a lift. None of those things win a game by themselves, but they are the evidence that your standards are real. Coaches who let the small things slide in the preseason spend the whole season fighting the big things. Finally, we talk about the coach's own preseason discipline. Culture is a mirror. If you want players who are organized, prepared, and consistent, they need to see that from you first. Have your practice plans built before the first day. Have your team rules written down and explained in a meeting, not discovered through punishment. Communicate with parents before the first game about playing time and expectations so the culture on the bench matches the culture on the floor. The takeaway is that your culture is not a speech you give on day one. It is a set of habits your players are already practicing before day one arrives. Build them now and the season takes care of itself. For more on building program standards, leadership development, and full season practice planning, visit https://teachhoops.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1996 What Are the Things That Show Up in Every Great Practice? 21.09.2026 12min

  https://teachhoops.com/ This episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast is brought to you by teachhoops.com, the coaching platform built by a coach for coaches who want their gym time to matter. Every coach has walked out of a practice that felt great and every coach has walked out of one that felt like ninety wasted minutes. The difference is rarely talent or effort. It is whether a handful of specific things were present. Coach lays out what those things are so you can build them into your plan on purpose instead of hoping they show up. It starts with a plan and a purpose. A great practice has a written plan with times, a stated focus for the day, and a reason behind every single drill. Players know what today is about before they stretch. There is a warm up that actually prepares them for the work, a flow that moves from teaching into pressure into live play, and an ending that leaves them with the message you most wanted them to carry home. Nothing on the sheet is there because it has always been there. The second group of things is about the work itself. Great practices are full of quality reps rather than long lines. They add a defender, a clock, or a score so players learn to execute under some kind of pressure. They include competition with a winner and a small consequence, because that is where toughness and composure get built. They include real teaching moments where the whistle stops everything, a correction gets made, and the very next rep is better. And they include the same core habits every day, so the fundamentals never get skipped just because something new got installed. The third group is the human part, and it is the piece most coaches undervalue. Great practices have energy that comes from the coaching staff first. They have communication, players talking on both ends and coaches using consistent language everyone understands. They have accountability, where the standard holds on the days nobody feels like holding it. They have players who get corrected and praised in the same practice, and a coach who is present rather than distracted. And they have a clear connection to the game, so players walk out understanding how what they just did will show up on Friday night. Put the whole list together and you get the honest test at the end of every practice. Did players get high quality reps? Did they get feedback that changed something? Did they compete? Do they know what they are better at today than they were yesterday? If the answer is yes on all four, that was a great practice regardless of how long it lasted. For customizable practice plans, a full drill library, offenses, defenses, and a community of coaches building better practices every week, head over to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1995 Is Your Practice Setup Costing You Twenty Minutes Every Day? 18.09.2026 11min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Today's episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast comes to you from teachhoops.com, the coaching platform built to hand you the plan instead of making you invent one every night. Coach opens with a topic that sounds boring and quietly decides your season: how you set up practice before players ever touch the floor. Baskets, balls, cones, groups, who is where, and what happens the second a drill ends. Get that right and you gain real minutes every single day. The first stretch covers the physical setup. How many stations can your gym realistically support, how do you split baskets so nobody is standing in line, and where do you put the equipment so transitions take seconds instead of a minute? Coach talks about pre assigning groups by name or number so you never burn practice time picking teams, and about having the next drill's spacing already marked so you can flow straight into it. From there the conversation moves to the mental setup, which is the part most coaches skip. Players should walk in knowing what today is about. Coach explains why posting the plan, naming the focus for the day, and repeating the same two or three teaching points gives players something to hold onto. Practice becomes a story instead of a list of unrelated activities, and players start connecting the drill to the game situation it is preparing them for. The last section is about your staff and your own preparation. Assistants who know their station and their coaching points before practice starts are worth double. Coach also talks about writing the plan with times, then actually respecting those times, because the coach who lets one drill run long is stealing from the drill at the end that probably mattered more. Setup is not glamorous work, but it is where organized programs quietly separate themselves. For ready to run practice plans you can customize with your own drills, offenses, and defenses, go to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1994 Do Your Players Actually Know What a Good Shot Is? 17.09.2026 8min

  https://teachhoops.com/ This episode is presented by teachhoops.com, where coaches get the systems and drills that turn ideas into habits. Shot selection is one of those things coaches complain about constantly and teach almost never. We yell "bad shot" after it goes up, then move on without ever defining what a good shot actually is. Coach makes the case that shot selection is a teachable skill, not a personality trait, and that clarity fixes most of it. The core framework is simple enough for a third grader and useful enough for a varsity team. A great shot is wide open, in rhythm, and inside your range. A good shot is contested a little but on balance, at a spot you have practiced, taken by a player who can make it. A no shot is off balance, hand in your face, outside your range, early in the possession when nothing has been created, or taken by the wrong player at the wrong time. Once players have that vocabulary, coaching becomes correction instead of criticism. Coach then gets into the part that matters most: range and role are different for every player. Every player should know their spots, and every player should know which shots belong to somebody else. That is not punishment, it is clarity. The episode covers how to communicate a player's shot diet honestly without crushing confidence, and how to expand that range in the offseason so the conversation changes next year. The episode wraps by tying shot selection to your offense. If players are hunting bad shots, sometimes the answer is not a lecture, it is better spacing, better ball movement, or a clearer definition of what the offense is trying to produce. Track shot quality in scrimmages, freeze the action when a bad one goes up, and praise the pass that leads to a great shot as loudly as you praise the make. For drills and teaching progressions that build this in, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1993 Practice Time, Practice Length, and Getting More From Both 16.09.2026 8min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Brought to you by teachhoops.com, a platform built by a coach for coaches who want their limited gym time to count. Practice time is the one resource every coach wishes they had more of, and the one most coaches quietly waste. This episode takes an honest look at how long practice should be at different levels, how to break that time into pieces, and what to cut when the clock forces a decision. Coach starts with length by age group. Youth practices that stretch past an hour and a half usually turn into supervised exhaustion. Middle school and high school can handle more, but more is only better when the extra minutes are purposeful. The point is not endurance, it is quality reps with feedback. A tight seventy five minutes beats a sloppy two hours in almost every situation. The next section is about dividing the time. How much goes to individual skill work, how much to team offense and defense, how much to live competitive play, and how much to situations and special teams? Coach explains why those percentages should shift as the season moves from preseason to conference play to postseason, and why hanging onto the same practice template all year is a mistake. The last stretch is about the hidden leaks. Water breaks that stretch, drills that run long because they are going well, teaching moments delivered to twelve players when they were meant for one, and the ten minutes at the end when everyone is already thinking about going home. Fix those and you find an extra practice worth of time every couple of weeks. For customizable practice plans with built in timing, go to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1992 How Do You Teach So It Actually Sticks? 15.09.2026 14min

  https://teachhoops.com/ This episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast is supported by teachhoops.com, where the whole idea is teaching coaches how to teach. Most coaching content tells you what to run. This one is about how you deliver it. Two coaches can install the exact same offense and get completely different results, and the difference is almost always the teaching method. Coach walks through a progression that works at every level. Show it, say it simply, break it into the smallest useful piece, get reps without pressure, then add a defender, then add speed, then put it in a live setting. Skipping a step feels efficient in the moment and costs you three weeks later when players cannot execute it against real defense. The episode digs into how long to stay at each stage and what tells you a group is ready to move up. There is also a real conversation about language. Coaches who use ten words to describe one action get ten different interpretations. Coach talks about picking short consistent cue words, using the same ones every time, and getting your assistants and your youth feeder coaches saying the same thing. When the vocabulary is shared, teaching gets faster every year because you are not starting over. The final piece is feedback. Correction that comes too late, too vague, or too constantly stops working. Coach covers timing your corrections, giving one thing to fix at a time, and letting players self correct so learning transfers to games where you cannot talk to them. Great teaching is repeatable, and once you have a method, every new drill you add becomes easier to install. For the full library of teaching progressions and drills, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1991 Why Do So Few Teams Screen Well, and How Do You Fix It? 14.09.2026 9min

  https://teachhoops.com/ This one is brought to you by teachhoops.com, where coaches find the teaching progressions that make hard skills coachable. Screening is one of the most valuable and least taught skills in basketball. Every team runs ball screens. Very few teams set good ones. Coach calls it an art because good screening is equal parts technique, timing, and willingness, and all three have to be taught. The technique section covers the fundamentals that get skipped. A wide base, a legal stance, the angle of the screen, and screening the defender rather than the spot on the floor where you assume the defender is. Coach explains why the angle is the single most common failure and why most screens that "did not work" were actually set two feet from where they needed to be. Then the episode gets into the user, which matters just as much. A great screen is wasted by a player who runs past it, refuses to set up the defender, or comes off before it is even set. Coach walks through the setup step, the shoulder to shoulder read, and how the ball handler and the screener have to see the same picture. This is where teams jump from running a play to actually running an offense. The last part is culture. Screening is unselfish work that does not show up in the box score, so it only happens consistently if you make it visible. Praise it out loud, track it, put it on film, and let your best players model it. When a program values screening, spacing improves, shot quality improves, and offense stops depending on one player beating somebody off the dribble. For screening drills and full offensive systems built around them, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1990. Are You Talking Too Much to Be Heard? 11.09.2026 8min

  https://teachhoops.com/⁠ If the play breaks down and five heads turn to the bench, that is not a basketball problem. That is a coaching habit. This episode is about moving from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side, and building players who can think when the gym gets loud. What we cover: Handing players real decisions, and why ownership is a muscle that has to be loaded Trading instructions for questions, because a rented answer disappears under pressure Killing excuses by killing your own first, starting with the refs and the schedule Levels, standards, and borrowing what video games understand about motivation Why autonomy without warmth reads as checking out, and why they take hard from someone who cares This week's challenge: at one practice, tally every instruction you give against every question you ask. Then move ten of them over. Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, on court clinics, and the coaching community at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1989 What Would Make Your Practice Better Tomorrow? 10.09.2026 10min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Brought to you by teachhoops.com, the platform that hands coaches a better practice instead of a longer to do list. This episode is about improving practice without changing your schedule, your roster, or your facility. Most coaches assume a better practice requires more of something. Coach makes the case that it usually requires better use of what you already have. The first upgrade is having a real plan with times, a stated focus, and a purpose behind every drill. If you cannot say what a drill teaches in one sentence, it is a candidate for the cut list. The second is raising the intensity floor by adding a defender, a clock, or a score to drills that currently have none. Players compete the way they practice, and nobody has ever built toughness in a line. The third area is feedback quality. Coach talks about coaching one thing at a time, correcting quickly, and being specific enough that a player knows exactly what to change. There is also the flip side, which is knowing when to stay quiet and let a player figure it out. Practices where the coach talks the entire time produce players who cannot function without a voice in their ear. The last stretch is about energy and ending well. How practice starts sets the tone, how you handle the middle sag decides whether you get anything out of it, and what you finish with is what players carry home. Coach suggests ending with something competitive and something clear, so the last thing they remember is the thing you most wanted them to learn. For practice plans you can adapt to your own team in minutes, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1988 Are You Using Your Timeouts or Just Spending Them? 09.09.2026 10min

  https://teachhoops.com/ This episode is presented by teachhoops.com, where coaches sharpen the game management skills that decide close games. Timeouts are one of the few in game resources a coach fully controls, and they get burned constantly on frustration rather than strategy. Coach breaks down when a timeout is genuinely the right call, when it is a waste, and how to make the sixty seconds count once you have used one. The first part is about timing. Stopping a run before it becomes a collapse, protecting your team out of a broken possession, getting a set play in at the end of a quarter, or giving legs a break at the right moment. Coach also covers the other side, which is letting your team play through adversity so they learn to solve problems without you rescuing them every time. The middle of the episode is about what you actually say. Sixty seconds is not enough for a lecture. Coach recommends deciding your one message before you reach the huddle, delivering it in a sentence or two, showing it if you can, and then letting your team breathe. Tone matters as much as content. A panicked coach produces a panicked team, and players read your body language before they hear a word. The last section covers the end of game math. Knowing how many you have left, whether you can advance the ball, when to use one to set up defense, and how many you want in your pocket for the final minute. Coach also talks about practicing timeout huddles so the routine is automatic, including who stands where and who speaks. That is a real practice item, not an afterthought. For late game situation work and full practice plans, head to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1987 Is Your Practice Too Complicated to Work? 08.09.2026 7min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Supported by teachhoops.com, a resource built on the idea that clarity beats complexity. This short episode is a reminder most coaches need at least once a season. Complexity feels like coaching. Multiple offenses, several defenses, dozens of drills, and a new wrinkle every week all look like hard work. What they usually produce is a team that does many things poorly and nothing well. Coach lays out the case for simplicity. Pick a small number of things your team must do well and repeat them until they hold up under pressure. One primary offense with counters beats four half learned sets. One defense your team can execute beats three they can only walk through. Players play faster when they are not thinking, and they stop thinking when the menu is short and familiar. The episode also addresses the coach's ego problem honestly. Adding new stuff is fun. Repeating the same thing for the fifth week in a row is not. But March belongs to teams whose habits are automatic, not teams with the biggest playbook. Coach talks about how to keep repetition fresh through competition and constraints so simple never turns into boring. The last section gives a practical test. Ask your players to explain your offense in one sentence, or ask what your defense is trying to take away. If the answers vary wildly, you are running too much. Cut something this week and watch the execution improve. Simple is not a lack of ambition, it is how you actually get good. For practice plans and systems built to be taught, learned, and repeated, go to teachhoops.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1986 What Are You Measuring If It Is Not the Scoreboard? 07.09.2026 8min

  https://teachhoops.com/⁠ Summer is over, the banners are hung, and this episode asks an uncomfortable question: did you win because you taught something, or because you found something? One of those lasts. One of those disappears the moment everybody else grows. What we cover: The bamboo mindset and why root systems never show up on a December scoreboard Choosing success metrics before the season, and why whatever you measure is what your players chase Why development over winning is a rotation decision and a practice plan decision, not a slogan Giving shooting real time instead of the last eight minutes of practice Teaching your parents, because the car ride home carries more weight than the huddle Why assigning positions to twelve year olds builds players who run out of runway This week's challenge: write down three ways you will measure this season that have nothing to do with the final score, then show them to your players and your parents. Resources: Season plans, practice plans, drills, courses, and on court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1985 What Does Winning Actually Look Like for Your Team This Season? 04.09.2026 6min

  What Does Winning Actually Look Like for Your Team This Season? Why defining success before the first tip changes how your whole season feels If you don't define winning, the scoreboard will define it for you, and the scoreboard is a brutal boss. In this episode Coach Collins pushes coaches to decide what a successful season means before the first practice, so the team has something to compete for even in the years when the record isn't going to be pretty. What we cover The difference between outcome goals you can't control and standards you can Picking two or three team goals that are measurable and repeatable Improvement markers worth tracking: turnover rate, defensive stops, free throw attempts, rebounding margin, deflections How to talk about winning in terms of daily habits so players stay bought in during a losing stretch Getting parents on the same page early so everyone measures the season the same way Revisiting the definition at midseason instead of letting it drift Coaching point A team that knows what winning means for them plays harder in the games where the final score is already decided. Try this week Write your definition of a successful season on one index card. If it doesn't fit, it's too complicated for your players to remember. https://teachhoops.com/ SubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1984 Can Every Player on Your Team Repeat Your Vision Back to You? 03.09.2026 6min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Can Every Player on Your Team Repeat Your Vision Back to You? How to make your message simple enough that it actually sticks A vision your players can't repeat is just a speech you gave in October. This episode is about boiling your message down and then saying it far more often than feels comfortable, until it becomes the language of your program. What we cover Shrinking the vision to a short phrase anyone on the roster can say without thinking Repetition as teaching: preseason meetings, huddles, film sessions, hallway conversations Tying every drill back to the vision so players understand why the work matters Getting assistants using identical language, because mixed messages destroy belief Giving players ownership so the vision becomes theirs instead of yours Reinforcing the vision by publicly praising the exact behavior you want Coaching point Repetition is not nagging. It's instruction. Say it more than you think you need to. Try this week Ask three players separately what the team is trying to become. If you get three different answers, the message hasn't landed yet. https://teachhoops.com/ TitleSubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1983 Are These Three Mistakes Quietly Wasting Your Practice Time? 02.09.2026 10min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Are These Three Mistakes Quietly Wasting Your Practice Time? The common habits that eat reps, energy, and player attention Most wasted practice time comes from a handful of repeatable errors, and almost every coach makes at least one of them. Coach Collins names the three biggest offenders and gives a fix for each. Mistake 1: Talking too much Long explanations kill reps. Teach in short bursts, get them playing, then correct on the fly. If you're talking for two minutes, you've already lost half the gym. Mistake 2: Standing in lines Too many players waiting, too few moving. Break into small groups, use multiple baskets, and choose drills that keep every player active. Mistake 3: No score, no standard, no consequence Work without a winner turns into going through the motions. Put a score, a time limit, or a target number on almost everything. Also covered Planning practice on paper with time stamps, then actually honoring the clock Closing every segment with one clear teaching point Evaluating practice by reps and energy rather than by how much you said Coaching point Judge your practice by what your players did, not by what you explained. Try this week Have someone time how long you talk during one practice. The number usually surprises people. https://teachhoops.com/ TitleSubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1982 Is Your Practice Competitive Enough to Prepare Players for Game Pressure? 01.09.2026 9min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Is Your Practice Competitive Enough to Prepare Players for Game Pressure? Building daily competition so game situations feel familiar instead of new Players don't rise to the occasion in games. They fall back to the level of competition they practiced at. This episode covers how to build real competition into nearly everything you do in the gym. What we cover Putting a score on almost every drill so someone wins and someone loses Short competitive segments: first to five, best of three, beat the clock Rotating teams and matchups so the same group isn't always on top Live pressure situations: down two with thirty seconds, one and one at the line, sideline out of bounds with a foul to give Holding a real standard on the losing side, whether that's a sprint, a rebounding drill, or simply running it back Praising competitive effort as loudly as you praise made shots Coaching point Pressure in March feels normal to teams that competed in November. Try this week Take one drill you run every day and add a score to it. Watch how differently the gym sounds. https://teachhoops.com/ TitleSubtitleShow Notes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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  Ep 1981 Does Your Practice Have Games In It, Or Just Drills? 31.08.2026 8min

  https://teachhoops.com/ Your practice looks beautiful. Everybody is moving, nobody is standing around, the whistle is on time, and the assistant with the clipboard is happy. And then the game starts and your team cannot make a read to save its life. That gap between a clean practice and a confused team is what this episode is about. Coach Collins breaks down the shift from block drills to games based practice. Not throwing the ball out and letting them play, which is the other extreme and just as lazy. Small sided games with a constraint, a scoring system, and a teaching point baked into the rules, so the game itself does the coaching while you stand there and ask questions. What we get into: The difference between a drill, a small sided game, and free play, and when each one belongs in your practice Why unopposed reps build confidence but almost never build decision making Constraints as coaching: taking away the dribble, shrinking the floor, adding a shot clock, capping the passes Two on two and three on three as your best teaching tools all preseason Scoring the game so the behavior you want is the behavior that wins Asking questions instead of shouting corrections, and how to build that habit as a coach Keeping the competitive temperature high without letting it turn into a street fight How to script a practice that is seventy percent live and still teaches something specific every segment The one thing to watch for: kids who look great in lines and disappear when there is a defender Your challenge: take one block drill you have run for years, add a defender and a constraint, and run it as a game this week. Watch what you learn about your team in ten minutes. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices