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Message: [QUOTE="Dogdeacon, post: 5193429, member: 1026"] Interesting, I'm in a similar situation with a 8th grade town travel team that practices 1.5 times per week and b/c its a 10-player team with ongoing injuries/sickness we've had 9 players tops at practices - now mostly 6 or 7 making it very difficult to run an offense. Season started in December, we have a 10 day break right now then 3 games before playoffs. I do have 3-4 out-of-bounds plays, yet with limited practices (gym time more scarce this year) and some new players they are at about 60% in terms of executing without someone doing the wrong thing and blowing it up. Half court Offense plays out of a set are really challenging as I agree generally that read and react to defense with movement and screening (emphasizing screens off ball as they get older) is better for developing as basketball players. I've tried a flex offense in past yrs with some success, but over course of a game I'd say that resulted in intended movement and a score less than 1/5 times. So now mostly 4-5 out movement with off ball screens and a set 1-3-1 configuration if facing a 2-3 zone. There seems a tradeoff of either spending 50% of limited practice time on plays and still accepting they work <25% of the time OR spending the time on skills and hoping those organically create more scoring opportunities. This problem is exacerbated when one faces teams that practice ALOT more or are generally better skilled/tough defensively. That is when it'd be great to have some set plays and/or have drilled the team in effectively running a play. I think the answer is spend 10 minutes of practice time on out-of-bounds plays and morph those into another 10 minutes of a very similar play out of a half-court set. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach