The Patterned Offense Does It Again

A few days ago I was watching a high school game. One team was clearly superior. Better athletes, bigger, more skilled, all that good stuff. I'll call them the Pattern team.

So anyway, Pattern team is up 7 at halftime after being up 10 early in the second quarter. They were running their offense well, lots of cutting, fairly quick ball reversals, good looks into the post. Sounds great, right?

The problem is, if Pattern team can figure out the movement the "pattern" than the other team can to. And that is exactly what happened. The other team began to get a feel for where the cuts were going, when the happened, when they wanted the high low.  And once they got a feel for the pattern, they were able to "play the play." They jumped into the lanes, anticipating where the ball was going. Pattern team never varied from running their offense. No entries, nothing creative from it. Nothing. By the fourth quarter they were reduced to trying to make plays from their pattern and they didn't know how to do that. They only managed 11 points in the second half and lost the game by 10.

Please, you don't have some super secret magic offense that is going to fool another team for an entire game. You just don't. Nobody does. Junk the pattern offense until you teach your kids how to create their own shot, what to do when a teammate puts the ball on the floor, how to play OFF of a pattern. Stick to that and you will be doing your kids right.

Let's talk about what happened to the other team tomorrow