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07 Feb

Posted at 18:09h in Archive, Tribe Spotlight by
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Reprinted with permission from Carson-Newman Men's Basketball. Carson Newman, under Head Coach, Chuck Benson is another of the Tribe's Read & React College Basketball teams. JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – For the first time since the 2001-02 season, Carson Newman (15-4, 8-3 South Atlantic Conference) has swept a season series with Tusculum (5-11, 3-8).  Carson-Newman held Tusculum to one field goal over an eight minute span in the first half while going on a 13-2 run and never looked back in a 73-43 win Wednesday night at Holt Fieldhouse. The win was the most lopsided in the series since the Eagles last swept TC more than a decade ago.  Carson-Newman knocked the Pioneers out of the SAC semifinals with an 88-51 win. Carson-Newman has locked down defensively in February.  Following Wingate's 52-point performance last Saturday against C-N, the Pioneers' 43 points are the fewest scored on the Eagles this season. "We knew they were more inside oriented than outside," Carson-Newman head coach Chuck Benson said. "We wanted to take away that.  Some of that was our guys taking it away, some of that was just not being their night.  But the numbers we gave up, those are impressive." The Eagles defense set new season lows for points (43), field goals (14), field goal attempts (45), field goal percentage (31 percent), three pointers (two), three point field goal attempts (12), three point field goal percentage (16.7 percent) and assists (six) allowed. Carson-Newman produced three double figure scorers, with Ish Sanders (Cleveland, Tenn.) scoring 18, Jared Johnson 14 (Springfield, Mass.) and Antoine Davis (Rustburg, Va.) adding 11. 

18 Jan

Posted at 13:33h in Archive, Tribe Spotlight by
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Written By JOE STEVENSON (as appeared in the Northwest Herald on Sunday, January 13th, 2013) Every year, Rich Czeslawski heads to the NCAA Final Four to watch basketball, network and, perhaps most importantly, learn. Czeslawski had just finished his first season as Crystal Lake Central’s boys basketball coach in 2007 when he headed to Atlanta for the Final Four. While there, he attended a coaching clinic and caught a glimpse of the future. The clinician, Rick Torbett, is considered one of the foremost basketball teaching authorities in the world and distributes teaching videos on betterbasketball.com, many of which involve his Read and React offense. At that clinic, Czeslawski saw the future of his program with Read and React, an offense that can be taught in layers, offers flexibility against man or zone defenses and can be difficult to scout. In the ever-evolving world of offensive basketball, Read and React is the latest system to offer coaches ways to attack by utilizing spacing, providing flexibility based on personnel and allowing teams to create offense through coordinated effort. Dribble-Drive Motion, motion and Princeton are other popular ways that use some similar concepts. “We went to Read and React three years ago. It’s a very intelligent way of teaching a free-flowing offense,” Czeslawski said. “(Cary-Grove girls coach) Rod Saffert is running it. (Prairie Ridge boys coach) Corky (Card) is running it. I don’t really feel it’s a fad offense; it’s a way of teaching offense. You’re teaching offense and empowering players.” While Czeslawski has had good talent with which to work in those three seasons, he thinks Read and React has helped the Tigers go 60-12 over that stretch. When Czeslawski invited Torbett to Crystal Lake last summer, there were 40 coaches who attended a roundtable discussion to learn more about Read and React. Johnsburg boys coach Mike Toussaint was one of them, and while he had not fully implemented it with his varsity, the Skyhawks’ feeder program and lower levels are running it.

05 Dec

Posted at 13:35h in Archive, News by
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There are a lot of things that differentiate Better Basketball from the rest of the basketball instructional market: we spend more time in development of our products than anyone else we've built the Tribe to offer ongoing support for coaches who have bought into our system we have...

16 Nov

Posted at 12:00h in Coaching Philosophy by
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The four laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation and repetition. The goal is to create a correct habit that can be produced instinctively under great pressure. To make sure this goal was achieved, I create eight laws of learning -- namely explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, and repetition." -Coach John Wooden
If only Coach Wooden could have lived long enough to see the Read & React! You would think that his quote came from a Read & React Coaching Clinic! The Read & React DVD takes care of the first three laws:
  1. Explanation
  2. Demonstration
  3. Imitation The next 5 Laws of Learning the Read & React are left up to your practice plans:

13 Nov

Posted at 13:48h in Archive, Drills and Practice by
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One of the questions I hear most often as a Read & React Coach is, "How often do you work on defense?" My answer is that we are almost ALWAYS working on defense. Very rarely do we work on offensive fundamentals or habits without introducing a defender to simulate a game situation. It is said that Leonardo Da Vinci could work with both hands independently, drawing with one while writing with the other. Inspired by this example, we thought it would be easier to collapse time frames if we gave drills both an offensive and defensive purpose. If you have assistant coaches, why not assign them to watch different sides of the ball? We call it the Da Vinci Way of drilling basketball. As an example, in our 3-Player drills, we always have a defensive emphasis. Once we teach the techniques we want used, we put 90 seconds on the clock and each group of 3 goes to a separate basket. To prevent players from 'going through the motions', we make it a competition and require each group to count out their makes. Coaches watch to make sure the offensive habits and defensive fundamentals are being followed and can subtract a point from that team's total if they are cutting corners. After 90 seconds we move to the other side of the court and repeat. At the end, the winning team breaks while the others do push ups, sit ups, etc. Here are two Layer 1 Drills that illustrate this idea.

12 Nov

Posted at 09:45h in Coaching the Read & React by
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Layer 4 is NOT about Dribble Penetration. You can dribble penetrate at any time in any offense. But that usually means the end of the offense. Layer 4 in the Read & React is about how the offense continues if Dribble Penetration fails or Penetrate, Draw the Defense, and Pass does not produce a shot. I don't think most understand WHY we Circle Move on Dribble Penetration in the Read & React. Here’s why: Elementary Reason: Receivers moving vs standing are harder to guard. Advanced Reason: Defensive help and rotation moves in the opposite direction as Circle Movement. Engineering Reason: What if the drive fails or what if the drive and pass fails to produce a scoring opportunity? The reason to Circle Move is to continue action with another Layer of the R&R if the drive fails. That requires everyone to be on SPOTS. (All layers START on spots and END on spots in order to have continuous linkage of layers or basketball actions.) When I was first engineering the Read & React (8 years ago), we did not Circle Move when someone Dribble Penetrated. That produced a problem: The empty spot from where penetration occurred was being filled by the next player (due to the habit of Layer 1) and the spot behind the filler was being filled, etc. That meant some were moving on the perimeter while others were not. The spots that were not being filled were the highest percentage

01 Nov

Posted at 13:00h in Coaching Philosophy by
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I’m a huge fan of Seth Godin. I get an email from his blog site every day. Here’s a recent one: “Banks should close at 4, books should be 200 pages long, CEOs should go to college, blogs should have comments, businessmen should be men, big...

31 Oct

Posted at 17:59h in Archive, Coaching the Read & React, Drills and Practice by
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Many of our drills are designed to work the habit of Circle Movement even if we haven't yet taught Circle Movement in Layer 4. We do it in Full Court Trips during Trip 3 (Reverse Dribble), and our 'Circle Movement Shooting Drill' is another that does the same, which allows us to install it on Day 1. We normally run this for 10 minutes with half of the team on each end of the court, starting on the right side.  We go 1:30 shot fake and drive, 1:30 shot fake-escape dribble jumper, and 2:00 catch and shoot.  Then we switch ENDS (they are now all on the left side of court) and work back down.  2:00 catch and shoot, 1:30 shot fake-escape dribble jumper, 1:30 shot fake and drive. We use this drill to collapse time frames by emphasizing ball fakes before the pass, jump stop finishes, great closeouts, making great shot fakes, calling names out on passes, and covering ground with our dribble. All while training the habit of Circle Movement! [embed]http://www.fastmodelsports.com/library/embedImage.jsp?id=dfe0cf1b-ba48-40cb-a766-61c5d855dffd[/embed] We choose 2 different spots to start from each day to change the spots we shoot from as well as the passing and driving angles, but the drill stays the same. 2 things to watch:
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