Morris Catholic Alumni Basketball Game

Set for all Boy's basketball alumni at M.C. on January 2nd, 2010 at 11:00am! It will be an excellent day of playing ball and then having a lunch and social afterwards. I have contacted many alumni but if there are any boys basketball alumni you know that are unaware, please let them know. Thank you!

Opening Night this Friday December 18th at Hackettstown

Freshman play at 4
J.V. plays at 5:30
Varsity plays at 7

Program is fired up and ready to ATTACK!

1st Test/Scrimmage Today vs. Hawthorne Christian

They boys J.V. and Varsity have their first scrimmage of the season today at Hawthorne Christian. I am excited about the J.V. team, they are first and foremost a great group of players who are very coachable. Secondly, they have some nice talent and are ready to go to battle for 2 quarters today!
Varsity is so amped up and ready to play that after I talked about some of the things we are going to do in the game and how we are going to play, they pleaded their case to scrimmage eachother after practice last night! I let them run up and down for 2 minutes, running time. We are ready to let the beast our of their cages today! The effort, intensity and focus will be there today but the coaching staff will need to have patience because we will be working out the kinks and smoothing out our style of play. There is one thing to look good in practice but it's how well they pick up on our practice schemes and relay them into game situations. As mentioned before, this scrimmage is a test, and I am looking forward to how we score!

Varsity Progress

Basketball is normally the name of the game but at recent varsity practices the name of the game is ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. Offensively AND defensively. We want put so much pressure on each team and make them play our style of game....uptempo! Our new motto/slogan for the year (which seniors voted on) is "It's not how big you are, it's how BIG you play". If you got the idea that we don't have towering 6 foot 8 centers walking our hallways, that idea would be correct. We don't want to rely on rebounding to win us games, therefore we want to limit the amount of shots the other team takes. The way to make it difficult for them, is to strap on a full court press. Think about this. If we have players who can put alot of pressure on the ball, force turnovers, get steals, and wear down the opposing guards.... if we are DEFENDING a basket and the opposing team has to travel 84 feet to get there, why would we allow them 50 feet of free space?!?!
Offensively, I want to put as much pressure on their defense with dribble penetration. I want the players to ATTACK the basket at will. They are understanding more and more each day how to do this within our "DRIVE" offense.
We have an intelligent group of players who are picking up on (offensive & defensive) concepts beautifully. It will take a high level of focus and a matter of time in practice in order to master our style of play. If we continue to get better everyday, I am excited about the product that will be on the floor!

Freshman Tryout Weekend

The freshman tryout consisted of 31 players which was the highest since 2001. That is an excellent and difficult number, all at the same time. It is great that there is such interest in players wanting to participate in the basketball program. On the other hand, unfortunately, we cannot take 31 players for the team, so we had to make cuts. It was not an easy decision, but after every second, of every player being evaluated through 6 hours, the team was formed sunday evening. Looking forward to watching Coach Hall develop this talented group of freshman!

Transition from Off-Season to Basketball Season

The off-season is all about you, the individual getting better and developing your skills. The winter basketball season is upon us and now is the time to bring those skills you have developed and contribute them to TEAM play. This season is not about you, it is about the TEAM. If you are selfish and put yourself first, the team will fail and therefore, you will fail. If you put the team first, the team can gel, be successful and therefore, your individual success will rise. It is up to you.

Successful programs consist of people working hard, working together, while never worrying about who gets the credit.” -Coach Don Meyer

2009-2010 season countdown .... 8 days!

Attack mode is upon us...... Lets goooooo!!!!!!!

2009-2010 Pre-Season Meeting (Tryout Information)

The 2009-2010 Morris Catholic Boys Basketball season is exactly 2 weeks away! Lets get you guys ready.

What: Preseason meeting to give players all the information they will need in order to tryout.

When: 2:45 p.m. on Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Where: A classroom at MC (Listen to announcements to find out which room)

Who: Any freshman, sophomore, junior or senior that wants to tryout for the 2009-2010 Boys Basketball Team.

Still have time to get your conditioning better and work on your game!

Morris Catholic Boys Basketball...Coaches Meeting!

I'm excited to get our great coaching staff together again for our first official pre-season meeting this Thursday! We are getting together to continue to plan for the upcoming season. We will be talking about a variety of topics and tying down some loose ends.
Coach Bob King is of course our J.V. coach going into his 3rd year, who does an outstanding job with preparing our guys to practice hard and prepare for games. At the same time prepares them to play on the varsity level.
Coach Rob Hall is of course our Freshman coach going into his 4th year, who does an excellent job shaping the minds of our young one's and improving their games over the course of the season.
I know you already got introduced to our new assistant, Coach Kareem Brown.
The 4 of us are getting together to make this season our best yet!
5 weeks and 3 days away from opening weekend!

Continue to work on your game and make sure you are in OUTSTANDING CONDITION when you arrive at tryouts!

Introducing Coach Kareem Brown

I want to welcome and introduce Coach Brown to the Morris Catholic community! I met Coach Brown at the prestigious Five-Star basketball camps. I am excited and looking forward to having him as part of the Morris Catholic boys basketball coaching staff.

Kareem developed his love and passion for basketball as a kid playing against his brother in the backyard. A 2002 graduate of Immaculate Conception High School in Montclair, he is no stranger to success. At Immaculate he was a three sport athlete, participating in football, basketball, and outdoor track. During his senior year Kareem was All-State in football as a wide out, making the Paul Robeson EAST vs. West All-Star Classic and the North vs. South All-Star game. As a member of the track team he was the 2001 Long Jump Champion and 2002 High Jump for "Parochial B". On the court he was a three-year starter averaging 15 points, 6 rebounds, and 3 assists per game which earned him first team All-Conference honors and All-County accolades. He led his team to a 13-9 record and the school’s first county and state appearance since 1999.

He then went on to play college football at St. John’s University (NY). The program was then cut after his freshman year. He then turned to Intramural sports where he was a four time Intramural basketball champion and two time football champion. He then tried out for the basketball team during his junior and senior year. Finally making the team as a walk-on his senior year. He was unable to play due to eligibility issues.

While at St. John’s he earned a BS degree in marketing and a MPS degree in Sport’s Management. During that time he worked as a graduate assistant in the athletic department, intramural department, and as a summer basketball coach for the Norm Robert’s Basketball camp. He also worked as a youth coach and administrator at the legendary Five-Star basketball camp.

Pre-Season Meeting

Our fall meeting will take place Thursday September 17th, 2009 at 3:00 in room 103. This is a meeting for basketball players NOT playing a fall sport. The main topic being discussed will be weight training and conditioning.

With your transition from summer to school mode, I just wanted to remind you of priorities how I see them.

1. Faith
2. Family
3. School/Academics
4. Basketball/Sports

If you can't make a fall workout because one of the first three priorities...Never a problem.

Other than that, I expect to see you there!

"Excuses are tools of incompetence used to build monuments of nothingness. And those who specialize in them are seldom good at anything else"

Let's not make excuses for not being in the weight room or at a workout. Bigger, stronger and faster is the name of the game!!!

(Speaking of faith...Please say a prayer for Robbie Drexel who just ended his football season because he broke his ankle) Get better soon Robbie

Summer Circuit Complete!

My apologies for a long stretch in between posts! Morris Catholic summer basketball circuit ended August 6th and my circuit ended August 28th at the Five-Star Basketball camp. That officially means that fall sports have started and the next season is Basketball season....only 3 months away! Good luck to the players in their fall sports and good luck to Coach Adriano and Coach Lusardi.
For those who worked hard this summer, continue to build on what you learned this summer. For those who know you could have worked harder, the time is always now to put some work in!
"History repeats itself, opportunity does not...the time is now!"
For those players not playing a fall sport, we will have a preseason meeting to talk about fall plans. Listen to announcements in school for the time and date of meeting.

As mentioned previously, I was at Five Star Camps for August and had an incredible opportunity to coach or work with Doron Lamb (top 10 guard in the country, who has Coach Calipari and Kentucky drooling), Sterling Gibbs (Seton Hall Prep stud), Kyrie Irving (probably top guard in the country), Jayvaughn Pinkston and many other outstanding top HS players......I had them at stations teaching them "Game conditioning dribbling drills" and noticed that there were only a certain number of players going 100 percent (as other coaches noticed this group not giving full effort as well), so I called them in to let them know I went to 5 star as a camper when Ron Artest and Elton Brand were the studs at camp. Coaches at that camp knew they were going to make it to the NBA because of their hard work ethic and determination to get better. I told them specifically that Kyrie Irving was going to make it to the league because he was working his butt off. Others thought they already made it and everything will fall into place. No matter what business you are in, there is always someone out there better than you, and if you become complacent, you will be left behind!!!
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them

Currently reading "Coaching Team Basketball" by Tom Crean (my favorite coach in NCAA) for the second time and wanted to share a paragraph about how teamwork trumps individual talent.
Teamwork separates winners and losers. No collection of players, no matter how talented, can win unless they form a team. The word "team" is an acronym for a dominant truth: Together Everyone Achieves More. No dream is out of reach for a smooth-functioning team!

See you fellas soon!!!

Open Gym

What a great open gym we had today! The opportunity that the players got to improve their game was just outstanding. Today we reviewed our new offense "Drive" and added options, patterns and opportunities for them to understand, in order to succeed in this brilliant, new style of play. The whole Morris Catholic coaching staff is excited about tweaking our style of play. We are doing this in order to complement the strengths of the players we have in this program. For example, if we had 3 outstanding big men who had incredible post moves that were 6 foot 4 and above, but were slow. We would be in a situation where we would be trying to play a slow up, half court game in order to try and expose mismatches on the post. BUT.... that's not exactly the situation. We have some good guards who have good perimeter and full court skills. So the coaching staff is trying to put them in a situation where they can be successful, which is our new "Drive" offense. Although we are tweaking our style of play, we are not forgetting about what we have developed over the last 2 years. And although I talk about not having giant size big men, do not be mistaken that big guys do not exist in our program. Jeff Rogers is not exactly huge, but the kid plays big and plays his tail off every single play is never afraid to put his body in harms way in order to help the team win. That in itself, makes him an invaluable big guy (so unselfish). Jeff is averaging almost 2 charges per game in summer league games.

We also had 2 incoming freshman workouts this week at the open gyms. I was very excited that I got to work with them and see them perform, but like all freshman, they seemed like dear in headlights. Mostly because we introduced them the baseline (flex) offense. Which is not an easy offense to understand in 2 days. With that being said, I am excited to work with them in order to improve their game.

But we had an excellent person show up, who was a senior last year, to get a workout in with them. (MC Bball alumni are always welcomed back with open arms to get a workout in ANY TIME they want.) His name is Ryan Smith. Just a great, natural leader who led his team on and off the court last year. We had a successful year, and a big reason for that was him. He was vocal, told other players what they should do better and had a knack for having everyone on the team understand that it wasn't about them....It was about what was best for the team! Ryan will be missed.

Lets move onto the next topic....You might call this old school because there are not enough people that buy into this concept in todays society....but you wanna talk about HARD WORK...There is no shortcut to being successful.....All it takes hard work!!! If you want to be a PLAYER, get after it!!!


The Morris Catholic future is bright and I am incredibly happy to be a part of it!!!


LETS GOOOOO!!!

Five-Star Basketball Camp

Just got back from 5 days at Five Star basketball camp (Best in the country) held at Fordham University in the Bronx. This camp was LOADED with talent and I was fortunate enough to coach players in the "NBA Division" that will have major Big East and ACC schools calling them come July 1st (Live recruiting period). Always love going to these camps not only to teach high school players the game of basketball but to continue to learn the game myself from the best in the business. Talking basketball with Evan Pickman (NBA scout), Tony Bergeron (coached lottery pick in 2009 NBA draft, Tyreke Evans in HS), Mitch Buonaguro (Siena Coach) among other great college and high school coaches is awfully stimulating. Trying to understand how they approach the game, talking X's and O's, what works and what doesn't.
With our Fundamental Mini-Camp starting Monday, it was particularly refreshing to see a lecture in front of the whole camp (that two Morris Catholic players also attended) by Tony Bergeron. The title of the lecture was "Footwork for Future Fame". The main focus was on triple threat, jumpstops and pivoting (crucial for our new offense "Drive").
Can't wait for Mini-Camp!!! Gotta get better!!!

DRIVE

Loving our new offense that we call ....."DRIVE" ....It cannot get more simple, if you are not sure what to do when you have the ball......yep, that's right....DRIVE!!! Every player has a responsibility to react to what the ball is doing. The basic philosophy being the ballhandler tries to get to the rack for a layup. If no defender helps, layup. If a defender helps, find the open man. Driving lanes are opened up by great spacing. Spacing is such a huge concept...as well as usage of JUMPSTOPS!!! Having the ability to be in a triple threat after the jumpstop and utilizing your pivot feet will prove crucial. Can't wait for you guys to understand and grasp the basics so we can get into more details and develop this system!!!
With this new offense being installed, there are a few things that need to be reinforced as well as concepts that you need to understand.

Reinforcements:

Indisputable Laws of TeamWork
1. The law of significance. One is too small a number to achieve greatness.
2. The law of the big picture. The goal is more important than the role.
3. The law of the chain. The strength of the team is impacted by its weakest link.
4. The law of the bad apple. Rotten attitudes ruin a team.
5. The law of countability. Teammates must be able to count on eachother when it counts.
6. The law of dividends. Investing in the team compounds over time.



Understand: What being "coachable" is.
I copied and pasted some paragraphs about how I feel about what
being coachable is from different articles.

A coachable player is one that is willing to take constructive criticism in any form and learn from it. Coachable players want to improve and understand that when they are being coached it is for their own good and for the good of the team. A coachable player is willing to sacrifice personal stats or goals for team goals. Is that the type of player you are? Or are you the type of player that goes straight to the scorers book after the game to see how many points you got? Scholarships aren't going to the kids who aren't playing in the summer or to the kids who don't pick up a ball until tryouts. No chance. Scholarships go to the kids who put in the work and realize that the best players play on any team. Be the player that nobody can question or ask 'why is that kid out there'.

Coachable and teachable are synonymous. Coaches are first and foremost, teachers. Players are students. Coaches want to feel players care about what they say. During practice, during timeouts, in the post-game, etc., a coachable player will give his coach his undivided attention and then do what he has been told to do. If a player doesn't learn to listen, then he will have to learn to like a seat on the bench. More opportunities come to those who are willing to be taught.One of the things that has always amazed me as a basketball player is how much time some players spend wishing the coach would change the way he did things—wishing that the coach would change the offense, wishing that the coach would change the defense, wishing the coach would change who he plays. Those players need to take all that energy and think about what they can change within themselves. A potential All-American doesn't worry about the things he can't control. He just deals with the things he can control. As a player, one thing he can control is where he is going to expend his energy.An athlete should focus on how to become a better athlete. A coachable athlete will try to understand what the coach is trying to accomplish and then do his best to make that happen.Some athletes say, "The coach doesn't like me." That attitude creates a self-imposed negative barrier blocking the athlete from success. Remember a coach usually loves his players because they are playing their guts out for him. A coach may criticize a player, but that doesn't mean he doesn't like the player. A potential All-American doesn't blame his lack of playing time on a feeling that the coach doesn't like him personally. The coach is going to play those players that he thinks give him the best chance to get a victory.A coachable player is not an excuse maker. He takes responsibility for his actions. If his coach takes him out and jumps all over him, he doesn't blame the coach. He is accountable for his own errors. When he makes a mistake, he acknowledges it and moves on. He then does his best not to make the same mistake again. A coachable player knows he needs to take criticism or he will never get any better. One thing all great players seem to have in common is during their careers, one or more coaches were critical of them. As a matter of fact, one form of coaching is criticism.

One of the best examples I have ever seen of someone who could take criticism and then go out and do good things was Charles Barkley. I was his teammate representing the United States in the University Games some years back. As we prepared for the games, we spent some time in Kansas City where we played an exhibition game. At one point in the game I was on the bench and Charles was on the floor. He made a mistake and the coach immediately sent someone in for him. Charles came over to the bench and sat down right by me. Our coach, Norm Stewart, who was the coach at the University of Missouri at the time, walked down the bench and stood above where the two of us were seated. I don't remember what Charles had done wrong on the court, but Coach Stewart let him have it. I watched Charles as he looked Coach in the eye. He didn't say anything, didn't challenge him, just took it like a man. Coach Stewart finished his tirade, returned to his chair, and sat down. Charles got himself ready to go back in the game. Nothing more was said of it. It was over for Charles and it was over for Coach Stewart. Charles went on and had a successful experience with that team at the University Games. I was impressed at how well Charles handled that tongue lashing. It took a lot of character just to take it and move on, but I believe Charles knew Coach Stewart's goal was to make him a better player.

One of the pluses of participating in athletics is that it teaches accountability. When a player makes a mistake, he is immediately held accountable. That might mean that he will be taken out of the game and get to sit on the bench for a while, or even for the rest of the game. That could happen because the coach is making him accountable for his mistakes.Pat Summitt, the very successful coach of the women's basketball team at the University of Tennessee, said: "Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you're never wrong? If you don't admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you're bound to make the same one again."


Official reinforcement and understand this!!!

How we play defense will dictate how effective our offense will be. If we are not a good defensive team, this offense will be less effective.
High powered defense = High powered offense

WE ARE GOING TO BE A FULL COURT UPTEMPO TEAM

LETS GOOOO!!!!!!!

A.T.T.A.C.K.- ATTACK - A.T.T.A.C.K - ATTACK

A.T.T.A.C.K. (Defensively)
A = Attitude. GREAT DEFENDERS show desire, discipline, dedication and mental toughness.
T = Teamwork. 5 defenders working as 1 is an incredible thing to watch.
T = Tools. Tools of Defense are the mind, body, feet, eyes, hands and voice.
A = Anticipation. Quickness is the result of being ready & knowing whats gonna happen next.
C = Concentration. Defenders have to be solely focused on the task at hand.
K = Keep in the defensive stance. Having knees bent in a stance an entire defensive possession.

ATTACK (Offensively)

ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK!!!
Rack It!!!
Get a layup or a foul!!!

Mastering the combination of In & Out and Crossover moves will bring you to the next level.

WHO CAN CREATE THEIR OWN SHOT?
When you can get to the basket and create your own shot to score, you are now a threat to the defense to score any given possession. The other team has to pay attention to you. Now when this happens you start opening up the floor for your teammates. There is NOTHING BETTER than getting your teammate an open shot.