High school hoops: League (opinion)

The Christmas break is over. The tournament was OK – 2-1 with a rout and a tough loss – and now it’s time to get local. League play is about to begin.

For a lot of teams, what happens in the local league (or conference, depending on the terminology) defines the season. The preseason, after all, gets lost in the holidays and football, and postseason success is really only for the elite few.

So parents, players and administration will focus on what happens in that big rivalry game, and the inevitable upsets that are always a feature of league play.

Ideally, of course, your team is the one coming up with the upset, not the one that heads to locker room, heads down, wondering how that happened while the opposing fans are going nuts. But to be on the right side of an upset special in league play, you need two things: A good scouting report and a reputation for honesty.

OK, you need talent. And favorable matchups are good, but any experienced coach has lost some inexplicable league games when an inferior team just goes off, and her team crumples like a tossed-away game plan. So how does that happen?

First, familiarity may not breed contempt, but it breeds a kind of comfort. None of the gyms are new, and that goofy place with the stage at one end is not a surprise. The fans chanting near-obscenities are not unexpected, and for a veteran, adds to the fun.

Second, the players know each other, at least on the court and often off it as well, which leads to overconfidence on one hand – “We’ve beaten them every year, coach, so why are you so worried?” – and competitive fire on the other – “He’s good, yeah, but not that good. I just haven’t shot well in those games.”

So league games are, in many ways, the true test of a high school coach. Talent determines a lot, of course, especially in postseason, but during league, lesser talent is much more likely to prevail than in preseason or the playoffs. And league games are seen by parents and administrators, and noted by local coaches and media (whatever happens to have survived).

Let’s begin with familiarity. There’s a sense that our side knows what the other side will do. We’ve seen their act before, the coach has been there a couple years, and they’ve got three starters back. So let’s just go play.

Wrong. And dangerously wrong. It is absolutely imperative to scout league opponents a couple times, because coaches almost always tinker, and high school players improve.

And it’s equally important that your players are used to getting scouting reports and are held accountable for them. If the first scouting report they see in a season is the day before the game with your archrival, you’re in trouble. Scouting reports should be a regular part of game preparation, primarily so that in those either-or games where little things matter, players understand their importance.

But you have to scout for the easy wins as well. Yes, you do a preseason scouting report on a team you should beat by 20. Players have to learn how to read and react to scouting reports, whether written or during practice. For example, the opposing point guard on a crummy team wants to go left even though she’s right-handed. Your defenders have to be held accountable for preventing her from going left, and since you’re going to win anyway, you can yank your starter for not following the scouting report without costing yourself a game.

If players understand that they have to read and absorb and apply a scouting report in game situations, they will do their best to do so. (Some players, of course, simply can’t apply a scouting report to a game, but most can, at least to some extent.) If they never see a scouting report until league, they won’t grasp how important it is to screen out #34, both in terms of winning the game, and their playing time.

Of course, there are surprises. League play is where coaches will try that triangle-and-two they ran a couple times in preseason. Or the zone will be a 3-2 instead of a 2-3, just to make the other side think. But the better the scout, the better the chance for a win, as long as the players can translate that report into on-court action.

The other important issue is how the players react to the coaching staff’s take on the game. For example, if the staff makes every game all season sound like it’s against the Celtics, the players are going to tune them out. Some teams are horrible, and coaches just have to say it.

When players first hear me say “This team is terrible and we’re going to win by 20 or more,” they’re shocked. But then when I say “This team is really good and we’re going to have to play our A game to have any chance of winning,” they believe me.

More important, they will believe me when I talk about a league opponent we should beat by 20, and maybe did beat by 20 in the first game of the round-robin. “If we play our A game, we’ll win,” I’ll say, “but if we play our C game and they play their A game, we’ll struggle.”

In reality, I may think that we’d have to play our F game, but I don’t want to take any chances in league – I don’t want to be explaining to parents and the AD how we lost to a team seven games under .500. I don’t want to come into any league game unprepared, and it’s my fault if we get surprised because I didn’t scout – or if my players can’t apply the scouting report.

If we lose to the best team in the league because they’re better, everyone understands. But if we lose to a team we should beat – at home, with students, parents, friends and administrators watching – it’s a killer. And in the end, those are the games people remember, those are the ones that the local community and coaching community will recall.

And those are the ones that hurt the most. Which is why I’ve always taken every league game very seriously. Preseason is quickly forgotten and postseason is a roll of the dice, but there’s no excuse for not being at your best during league.

And, on the flip side, there’s nothing more fun than upsetting your arch-rival when they have the better team, and watch their coach walk off the floor thinking about what’s he going to say in the locker room – and to the parents.

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Photo byClay Kallam