BEST BASKETBALL DRILL EVER!
FIVE CATCHES!!!!! THE BEST BASKETBALL DRILL EVER!!!!!
The best basketball drill for all ages, youth through high school!
Keep all your players active
Coaches at all levels will be more successful if they figure out a way to have everybody on the team working at the same time with nobody sitting out watching. This allows all players to participate. Participating makes players happy while everybody on the team improves their skills. The way to do this is to use all of your floor space. This drills is perfect for keeping all your players active and engaged.
Use cones or dots or chairs or whatever you have to divide the court into four sections. Let’s say your team is composed of 40 players. Divide the court into quarters. Use jerseys for five players in each section and non-jerseys for five players in the same section.
This drill is called FIVE CATCHES. All 40 of your players will be involved in the drill. If you have less than 40 players, let’s say 32 players then make the drill 4 on 4 instead of 5 on 5. Or if your team is made up of 24 players then 3 on 3 in each quarter section works well. If there is an odd number of players on the team then one section could be 4 on 5 or 3 on 4. You could also use three sections or two if you had less players and still go 5 on 5. There are lots of possibilities on how to set up the drill.
sTARTING THE DRILL
“Five Catches” drill starts with one team inbounding the ball from the perimeter of their quarter of the court. The defense should play man-to-man, occasionally jumping into a trap, especially if the ball is in a corner of the section. During the drill, the defense is pressuring the ball hellaciously, yelling and waving their arms. Players need to work hard harassing the person with the ball while attempting to cause a turnover. Coaches should be intense on this drill too! While coaching their players to get in the offense’s face and to pressure the ball.
If the ball is lost out of bounds, that is a turnover, and the team which caused the turnover gets the ball out-of-bounds where the ball went out. Once the ball is thrown in bounds the offense must make five consecutive passes to score one point. Any time the ball is dropped, but a team maintains possession the count to five starts over.
If a ball is deflected out-of-bounds by the defense, the offense must in-bounds the ball and start the count over again. When a pass is intercepted the team that intercepts the ball immediately begins trying to make 5 consecutive passes, while the team that turned the ball over becomes the defense.
Once a team makes five consecutive passes, they score one point and the defense then gets the ball out-of-bounds. The first team to five points wins the game and the losers do a task like 5 squat thrusts with a jump or any penalty the coach wants to use. I like something like squat thrusts with a jump because it only takes 30 seconds or so allowing us to play again quickly or go to the next drill.
Vatiations of “Five Catches”
There is no dribbling in this drill in the first round. If we play again I sometimes allow the team to dribble, but the 5 second count would be in play. Sometimes on a third round of the game you could allow the team that gets to five catches to attempt to score a basket. The first team to score five baskets would then be the winner of that round. No dribbling in one round of trying to score, and dribbling allowed in the next round of trying to score.
This drill teaches intensity by the defense and handling pressure by the offense. The drill “Five Catches” should be done daily. It is a drill that lasts five minutes or up to 15 minutes. As much as possible apply a penalty to the team that loses. The winning team can shoot free throws while the losers do the penalty.
BEST BASKETBALL DRILL FOR ALL AGES
FIVE CATCHES is my favorite basketball drill and it allowed my junior high girls’ basketball A-B-C-and D teams to go undefeated some years. It also helped me to coach three State championship teams and five teams into the State championship game. I only coached head high school girls for 14 years while taking 8 teams to State with 3 firsts, two seconds and two thirds in state competition. My junior high and freshmen teams went undefeated many times and won a bunch of tournament championships.
FIVE CATCHES…BEST BASKETBALL DRILL…EVER!!!!!
