Pat Sullivan Coaching Notes

I have gone to several of Coach Sullivan's clinics in the past couple of years. He was the coach at St. Francis in Joliet IL before retiring this year. Great teacher and put on really great clinics every year at the beginning of the season. At each of his clinics he handed out a 50 page or so notebook full of notes from an area that he had studied that summer. 1 year before retiring he had spent an entire summer working with coaches from across the country on mastering the ball screen offense. I would have to figure that a lot of coaches in his position probably had given up on learning but not Coach Sullivan.

Here are some ideas from his notes at a Nike Clinic that I thought were pretty interesting.

Pat Sullivan
It’s not what you coach it’s what you emphasize
- I have read a lot of great coaching notes and almost every one of them talks about emphasizing three things. They feel that anyone should be able to watch you practice or play a couple of times and be able to notice these without having to be told. Some simple questions that I think are very important for all coaches. 1 What are the 3 main things that you focus on? 2. Do your players know what these things are? 3. Do these things fit your team this year? 4. What are you doing to make yourself better at coaching the things you focus on?

Remember that the best coaches of all time have all done different things
- I went to the Nike Clinic in WI this spring and watched each presenter. And all of these great coaches had different areas of focus, and each of them taught things differently. There were great coaches from HS and College talking about their ways of doing things. 1 coach talked about denying all wing passes and the success he had with that. The next coach who had a ton of success with his program had a completely different style. I personally think you can have success with any style if it fits your team. We have all coached against teams that do something different from everyone else that makes us spend 20-30 mins of practice working on this. I always like to ask my assistants what do you think teams are doing to prepare for us.

Has 1 minute drills for repetition sake
- I just found this idea last night and started thinking what type of drills I could do in 1 minute and when would I do them. Coach Sullivan talks about repetition being the key to learning. Just think how much you could improve 1 simple skill that you anticipate your team struggling with if you spent 1 minute on it each day. One time where I think we are going to add this idea is with our drink breaks. In the past we put 5 minutes on the clock kids had this time to get a drink and come back into the gym and shoot free throws. I bet the average kid got in 8 free throws in this time. I mainly used it to re group and talk to my assistants. Maybe we could use this time better by breaking them into 2 groups. While the first group gets a drink the other group works on a skill. The first skill that comes to mind for us is catch rip and square. My idea is to have each player grab a ball spin the ball out and work on whatever skill we give them. Rip and create space, rip and jab step, rip and reverse pass. If they get in 15 square ups in this minute and we do this at every practice we have the thousands of attempts it takes to master a skill. Also might look at doing this when we have to set up for a drill or we have a break for some reason.

Believes that 65% of turnovers come from poor balance
- What do you do to work on balance during practice? What drills can you do to work on this and cut down on turnovers?