Ban the Full Court Press in Youth Basketball
I love pressure defense as a coach. In fact, every team I coached somebody had to be on the ball by half-court or they would either be subbed out or practice would not be much fun the next day. The best way to take an opponent out of what they want to do offensively and eventually defensively is to wear them down over the course of the game by pressuring their point guard the length of the court the entire game. However, when it comes to basketball below the high school level I don't think coaches should have their teams press.
How many teams have you seen win a state title in high school sports by pressing for 32 minutes? Arkansas had a nice run with their "40 minutes of hell" 25 years ago, but coaches who have tried to mimic that style have had marginal success with it since. Why? Well because as talent evens out as the level of competition increases, full court pressure becomes less and less effective. Yet, at the youth levels more and more coaches like to use full court presses whenever they can. Why? Well, because at the youth levels full court pressure is extremely effective and the easiest way to win if you have the more athletic team.
Before I get into why I think using a full court press in youth basketball is not good, let me tell you why it works at the younger levels. In youth basketball, the players are not as skilled as they are at the higher levels. If they are skilled, there are usually only a couple of really skilled players, so a good coach will funnel the ball towards those less skill ball-handlers. The skilled players feel the pressure to keep the ball in their hands or are uncomfortable giving the ball up, so the result is typically like the picture above. Turning up the pressure will usually result in 3 things in youth basketball, and two of them typically are favorable for the defense. Worst case scenario, your team will give up a layup when pressing, but that's a decent trade-off for the turnover you can create that leads to an easy basket or having a less skilled player taking a quick shot as a result of your pressure. If taught properly, full court pressure is a way to quickly dispose of less talented teams or get things in your favor against a team that only has a couple of good players.
Over my years, I've been blessed to have coached a few kids that were taller than most kids their age and could run and move like a guard. When you get those kids, it's almost not fair to press. While in Bremen, the two tallest kids on my team could work at the point of a press, which meant that we could have won just about every game we wanted had we pressed the entire game. However, I refused to let those kids press until the second half, and only if the game was close. We would always guard full court man from the start of the game, but in my opinion I'd rather lose a game than win because I had better athletes than the other team.
Now once you get to the high school level, I always felt that if I had an athletic team it would be a waste to not press. There were some schools who clearly had an athletic advantage over our teams, but would seemingly do us a favor by not pressing or falling back into a 2-3 zone. As coaches we would always talk about how much fun it would be to coach a team like that and just unleash those kids on weaker and inferior teams, but I digress.
So if full court pressure is such a dynamic weapon, then why am I so opposed to it at youth levels? Quite simply I think pressing at a young age develops bad defensive habits, a false sense of how good a team really is, and neglects one of the toughest and most important aspects of basketball.
Whether you're using a diamond press, 2-2-1 press, or a full court 1-3-1 look, all pressure relies on players trapping or making a read and then stepping in front of an offensive player. Players are flying around making calculated gambles, whether it is reaching for a steal or leaving their position for a trap. Often times, if you're more athletic and/or taller, you and your team are going to have a lot of success. There is nothing more infectious for a team than getting easy baskets are creating turnovers. The more turnovers your create, the more players start to gamble or begin hunting opportunities for the steal that leads to the layup.
When kids are playing basketball up until high school, all teams are comprised of players from the same age group or class. Coaches are either limited or ecstatic by the group of kids that they inherit. If a group of kids is a bit taller or more athletic than most others their age, and if they are in the habit of pressing, this often leads to kids feeling like they are really good. I have seen a number of groups that thought they were really good because they pressed teams to death in the youth ranks, However, as those kids get older and into high school they quickly start losing games at a high rate. The biggest reason is because they rarely know how to execute in a half-court offense, and even more prevalent is that they have no clue how to play half-court defense in close games. Kids that have lived off of pressing quickly break down defensively. They do not know how to sit down and guard without gambling. Often times these kids will over-rotate defensively to look for the trap or turnover, while neglecting help-side responsibilities. All of those things that made them so successful as youth players now work against them. When a coach can pick the five best kids in the entire school to put on the floor, the full court press becomes a lot less effective at the bigger schools. Kids who do not know how to play half-court defense find themselves sitting on the bench, and parents and fans sit in the stand wondering why the coach doesn't play a kid who once used to be such a good player or is more athletic than other players.
Lastly, teams that press from a young age rarely work on one of the most important and difficult aspects of basketball, transition defense. In my decade plus of coaching basketball, the single most difficult aspect to teach is transition defense. I would always make sure to work on it in over 80% of my practices. There are elements of transition defense when full court pressing, but they become much more complex. Even coaching my 10 year old daughter's team I've noticed that our biggest weakness is transition defense. Transition defense requires a ton of communication from ALL players, whereas full court pressing doesn't require much communication. If these transition and half-court habits are not developed at a young age, then those players are significantly behind as they enter their high school years.
On top of all of this, to be a really good full-court pressure team takes a lot of time and attention to detail. It is hard to really work on your press and half-court defense and offense all in one practice, so something has to give. Too many youth coaches think that by showing a couple of kids when to trap that they should be able to press. Instead, it ends up becoming a layup clinic for the other team. I've found that it usually doesn't take long to teach kids how to beat different presses when the talent is equal. So often times, when youth teams try to execute their poor full court press it typically backfires.
Ultimately, as a youth coach in any sport your goal should be to see your players develop and succeed at the next level. Quite honestly, there is not enough time to teach kids how to effectively press while working on the nuances of half court basketball on both ends of the court. Even over the course of a full school season where you get to practice 4-5 days a week, depending on the schedule, most coaches don't feel like they have enough time to get all of the details and rotations in on their presses and traps, so it shows the short-sightedness of so many youth coaches when they want to full court press. In my opinion, if you really want to teach kids how to play hard, full court defense, then get them in the mindset of guarding full court man. Watch the top college programs in the country, and you will see virtually none of them that press, but almost all of them will guard full court.
