3 Simple Youth Basketball Offenses to Help Your Team Score More Points

Usually, I don’t write much about offenses at this level because it’s difficult enough trying to learn the fundamentals. Learning plays just takes away from the development of the player’s ability to master the basics.

With that said, my premise is before you teach offense, your players must learn how to play defense. Thus, your first basic offense is a solid defense. Play solid man-2-man defense and you will be able to steal the ball for easy layups. Maybe, I shouldn’t say easy, but it is a better shot than most shots in a set offense. Also, don’t forget rebounding as the final piece in the defensive puzzle.

What if you can’t fast break? How happens when your team has to slow down the ball?

If you are forced to run a set offense because of timeouts, turnovers, or other stoppages or slowdowns, here’s what you can do.

Each of these are very simple and require no extraordinary amount of time to learn; therefore, I don’t refer to them as plays.

Here’s what I mean:

1) Teach your players to pass and move/cut. The ultimate youth basketball give and go offense. The point guard is the player to start the offense, you can have almost any set up you wish, but I prefer to spread the floor and have the point pass to the wings and cut to the basket while facing the person to whom he/she passes.

The wing player passes the ball (if no open shot is available) to the next open player and performs the same cut towards the basket. If the wing player on the opposite site has not received the ball, they stay where there are until the ball is passed to them. Also, this creates floor balance against a fast break.

This keeps the players from staring at one player and being a spectator on the offensive end.

This offense will be covered in detail in an upcoming article written by Ed Riley.

2) Screen and roll aka pick and roll.

This takes a bit of practice, but will free up a player more open shots. Defenses at the youth level aren’t equipped to handle this just yet, primarily because they lack communication.

3) Spread offense.

This keeps the point guard from over dribbling and gets everyone involved. Works best against a zone defense where the ball is passed around the perimeter and moved til the player has and open drive to the lane for a layup.

I tried this offense a couple years ago when coaching a U-9 team. We were up by 20 points in the 4th quarter and didn’t want to run up the score. So we went to basically a “four corners” offense. Those of you who are old enough should remember the old University of North Carolina’s offense run by Phil Ford.

What I found is by passing the ball around the perimeter, the zone defense they were playing, couldn’t shift fast enough to keep up with the ball, and lanes were wide open. Actually, this is how a couple of players who hadn’t scored all year garnered their first points of the season.

Side note: What to see a confidence builder? Wait til you have a player to finally score their first points of the season. You will notice the increased enthusiasm and confidence.

This offense works well against teams who allows a defensive player to freelance or spy while the rest play zone. Eventually, the player gets tired of chasing the ball and result is open lanes.

Usually, teams allow their best offensive player to roam because most of their points scored are layups from steals.

My experience is these are the 3 simple offenses you can run without sacrificing time for fundamental drills.

Each of these will be covered in detail in subsequent articles.

Enjoy and share with a fellow coach.

Coaching Surprises, What I Learned From My U-11 Team

Last year I was coached a U-11 girls basketball team for rec league. Our games were once a week and we had one practice a week for 90 minutes.

There were 8 players on my team with 4 of them playing organized basketball for the first time. Thus, you understand how much fundamentals were a large part of practice sessions. I actually held back on what I taught them beyond the basics of dribbling, passing, defense, and shooting layups.

What I held back on was defense. Figuring it was easier to teach zone for our limited practice time, we actually became a very passive team. The reasoning being it was easier for them play an area rather than playing a man or girl even though were doing slide and other man-to-man drills.

After 4 weeks of getting blown out in a few games, and watching the girls stand around as if they were spectators, it became evident something had to change. Luckily, the girls were like a sponge when we started implementing man-to-man defense.

Wow! What a revelation! The girls, especially the new players, understood sticking your man and guarded them with fervor. We actually started winning games, which wasn't the main focus, but they added another aspect to their game that will carry them a long way in the future.

Guess what?

No matter the level of play or the limited practice time, my teams will never ( I know never say never) play zone again.

So what I really learned is that our youth can learn whatever thrown at them as long as they understand and see themselves getting better. All of our m2m drills were competitive and rewards were given to the winners of the drills.

What we actually did was make it fun! Remember, when you coach teams under 13 years of age, learning must be fun for them.

Yes, this article is primarily advertisement for m2m defense. They can learn zone in high school, but their m2m skills will allow them to play any type of defense.