10 Amazing Youth Basketball Drills

If kids like basketball they will enjoy learning and playing these 10 amazing drills. Theses drills are quick and easy youth basketball drills.

1. QUICK - In a circle, you in center. The kids copy you by running on a spot, jumping etc. When you say quick, they get into a defend position. However, if you say get low they continue to do what they were beforehand. They are only out if you look at them.

2. HEADS UP DIRECTION CHANGE - Along the middle court line space out 3 to 4 players facing you. You should be off the court at center line on the sidelines. Instruct the kids to move while dribbling in whichever direction you move - side to side, forward and backwards. Change movement without words so they have to keep their eyes on you. As they progress move more quickly and faster.

3. REDLIGHT-GREENLIGHT #2 - Have a bunch of kids start at one baseline, don't put them too close together. Each kid in the bunch has a basketball. When the facilitator shouts green light the children dribble forward. When they shout blue they dribble left, yellow they dribble right, and of course red they stop completely. At all times the kids should dribble throughout the whole youth basketball drill.

4. SPEED LAY-UP DRILL - Coach times player for 1 minute. The team counts aloud number of shots made and cheers the player along the way.

Player with a basketball stands to the right of the basketball hoop and coach says go and the player shoots a layup (using backboard) from right side... then miss or make goes to left side. They continue to switch sides, the team counts how many are made in one minute.

5. SPEED DRIBBLE - Players start at the half court line. Each player has a basketball. The object is to reduce the number of dribbles.

Let the basketball players basketball the required distance and count their dribbles. Have them cover the same distance and reduce the dribbles by 1. Repeat and reduce by 1 again. Continue reducing until you have got the speed up.

6. SIDE-LINE LAYUPS - The O's pass to the people closets to the sidelines . The line to their left if they are going to shoot left handed lay ups and and the players on the right side shoot right handed layups. The O then rules the court to receive a bounce pass at the other end. X throws a pass basketball the sideline. Then pass to the foul line, the x at the foul line gives a bounce pass to O for the lay-up. X's always follow their pass to the next line. X at the foul line get the rebound of O and are the next shooters.

7. REDLIGHT-GREENLIGHT - This youth basketball drill starts with all the players at the baseline with a ball. When the coach says 'green light', the players start to dribble and jog. When the coach says 'red light', the player stops.

8. GOPHER BALL - Players start at half court circle. Players have to react quickly to a loose ball. Go quickly into Offense.

Players lay down on stomach with eyes shut on the basketball floor. The coach or teacher tosses the ball into mid air and blows the whistle. Players quickly get up and try to get the ball.

9. PCPP - Three players are lined up in a straight line about 30ft. apart

A player on either end starts with the ball.

This players slaps the ball and starts the drill and is a sign for the player in the middle to cut towards him/her to receive a pass from him/her.

The middle player cuts towards the passer, receives the pass that is passed to him/her and completes a legal stops for a jump stop.

After making the catch and stop, this player makes a legal turn and passes to the player on the other end. After this pass is caught by the end or the middle player cuts towards the end and gets a return pass from him/her where apon the middle player again completes a legal stop, turn and throws to the player on the other end.

10. KEEP IT BOUNCING - While dribbling try to knock the other players ball out of bounds. Second dribble is not allowed. When your ball goes out of bounds you must do 5 push ups or jog one lap, after you did that you can join the game again.

Make sure the kids keep there head up and use both arms.

The more the try to knock away the other players balls (in stead of just protecting there own ball) the better dribblers they become.

I hope you enjoyed these 10 amazing and easy Youth Basketball Drills Now you go out and try these drills and your basketball drills will grow tremendously.

Marissa Simmons is an avid sports fan and plays in many different sports, enthusiast who also spends time investigating and uncovering incredible resources for her loyal readers like the one at: Pro Basketball Made Easy

Sports Betting and the Method of KISS

One mistake I see sports bettors making is they get too deep into stats and information. The best way to approach a matchup is to use basketball method of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). Usually when you look at a matchup the answer is pretty obvious, and that obvious answer is usually the right one. There will always be matchups that can go either way like two solid teams playing each other, the best way to get down on these games is to not get down at all.

The problem we usually face is not "who's going to win?" it's "who's going to cover the spread?" I'm talking about basketball and football. When it comes to baseball and hockey the same methods apply without the factor of a point spread unless you like puck lines and run lines.

Some people get so deep into stats that all the information starts to cancel out the two teams. The trick is to narrow your research to the important stats the ones that count. For example, in football, turnovers are a unpredictable part of the game. If I see a team that averages 1.4 fumbles per game against one that averages 2 fumbles per game I am not going to assume that one will fumble more than the other in this game. A good way to identify the key stats to look at is to go through game basketball and pick out what the winners did at and what the losers didn't do. You'll be surprised on how consistent some of these stats are. Since we're in the seasons of football, basketball, and hockey I will cover some of the factors here that are important to each game. This will also give you a better understanding of my systems sections and why I choose certain aspects of a game.

If you've read my systems page for football you'll know that I preach the yards per pass stat. Many people have argued this and that's ok, I made it sound like that was the only factor to consider and I was probably wrong to say that. Do this now, go to yahoo.com and take a look at the boxscores for any week of the NFL and count out how many winners had a better yards per pass number. You'll notice only a couple teams each week won the game with a smaller YPP. Just by knowing this you have a key stat to look at while you handicap. This is definitely a key stat but unfortunately this is not the golden key to predicting who will win the game or who will cover. If it was we'd all be rich and Vegas would be out of business.

Another factor that will heavily weigh out the winners from the losers is to look at scoring margins. This works for football and basketball and will help you determine who can beat the spread as well. The best way to get a good sample of any stat is to always look at conference games or division games and not overall games. Teams play their best in conference games and this way you draw a good sample of their ability when they want a win. Let's walk through the thursday night matchup for this week and see what we can find.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS @ JACKSONVILLE +6.5 TOTAL 44

Just by looking at the record here Indy 11-4 and Jacksonville 5-9 you should already have the perception that Indy will win the game outright, that part is easy but not that easy. There is still a possibility that Jacksonville can pull off a victory or lose the game by less than 6 points. So let's pad our decision with some key stats.

We'll start with yards per pass offense and defense.

MATCHUP YPPO YPPD MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 6.7 6.3 0.4
JACKSONVILLE 6.2 7.2 -1.0

You can see with overall stats Indy has a small edge in the margin and passing game. Let's go a step further and look at yards per rush.

MATCHUP YPRO YPRD MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 3.4 4.2 -0.7
JACKSONVILLE 4.2 4.1 0.1

Interesting result, The stats are about even with Jacksonville holding a very small edge. Now let's use division games only and see what we can come up with. I'm choosing division stats over conference stats because it's late enough in the season to draw a good sample.

MATCHUP YPPO YPPD MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 6.5 7.1 -0.6
JACKSONVILLE 5.8 7.8 -2

As you can see when using division games the stats change drastically making the Colts look worse than their record and Jacksonville looks about right. Another thing to notice when going back is to pay attention to improvements. We all know Indy started out struggling and you can see improvements through out the season. I'm not going to go too deep here but this is a good way to look at all per play type stats, Yards per pass, yards per play,yards per point and yards per rush. That pretty much sums up the stats area, now let's take a quick look at scoring margins using division games only.

MATCHUP PF PA MARGIN
INDIANAPOLIS 26.5 27 0.5
JACKSONVILLE 18.8 23.8 5

So what kind of conclusion can we draw from all this? For starters I can tell you that 44 points seems like a low total, both teams allowing an average combined total of 50.8 points per division game and the yards per pass defense is a total average of 7.5. The league average score is 22 and the league average yards per pass is 6.5. Even though the offensive stats don't reflect that it is more important to look at defenses first when figuring totals. The reason is that an offense will do better against poor defenses. An above average offense may not score a lot against an above average defense.

So who is going to cover the spread? From the looks of it I can say that Indianapolis will probably win but not cover. Unfortunately there is not enough solid evidence for me to pick Indianapolis here, so the side in this game would be a pass.

The other stat we didn't look at is yards per point, the underrated stat that can really do all the work for you. In the next lesson I will discuss a deep analysis of yards per point. It is so strong that it will blow your mind. In part two of the method of K.I.S.S. we'll get into it. Then in the 3rd part I will get into basketball because that's what will be on tap after football.

College - Duke University

Located in Durham, North Carolina, Duke University is a premier private research college. Duke University's undergraduate and graduate programs are highly regarded. Duke is also especially well known for its research, especially in natural sciences and health. The university is divided into nine schools, in which the undergraduates would enroll in either Pratt School of Engineering or the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. The graduate and professional schools to attend are the Divinity School, the School of Law, Graduate School, the School of Nursing, School of Medicine, the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and the Fuqua School of business. Recently, 19,358 students applied to become part of the incoming undergraduate class of 2010. Of these students, 3778 were admitted.

Although Duke University was official founded in 1924, what is known today as Duke University started as Brown's Schoolhouse, a private subscription school founded in 1838 in Randolph County, North Carolina. The state legislature granted a rechartering of the academy as Normal College in 1851 and gained privilege of granting degrees in 1853. To keep the school operating, the trustees agreed to provide free education for Methodist preachers in return for the churches' financial support and in 1859 the name was changed to Trinity College. In 1892, Trinity opened in Durham, as it became more involving with research instead of recitation. It was in 1900 when Trinity College became the first white institution of higher education in the South to invite Booker T. Washington to speak and that same year graduated its first Native American student. Soon after, Trinity College had developed into one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the southern United States. When 1924 came around, Duke University was born out of the establishment of the Duke Endowment, which was a $40 million dollar trust fund. The university grew quickly and within the next 20 years it had such additions as the Medical School and hospital, the Religion and Graduate School, the School of Nursing, School of Forestry and the Law School.

Besides the universities fine academics, it has 26 varsity sport teams known as the Blue Devils. Within the 26 teams is the very successful men's basketball team under 25 years of coaching by Mike Krzyzewski. Their successes include becoming the only team to basketball three national championships since the tournament field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985. In addition to winning the championships, they have reached the "Final Four" of the tournament ten of the past twenty years. Many of the players of Duke have gone on to become basketball players of the National Basketball Association and make millions of dollars on top of that. In recent years, the women's golf team has also become dominant, winning three championships.

There are many great things to see at Duke University, such as the huge William R. Perkins Library or the Nasher Museum of Art. The indoor athletic games are held at the Cameron Indoor Stadium while the football games are played at Wallace Wade Stadium. Despite the recent controversies at Duke University involving the lacrosse team, Duke is a great university but is difficult to be admitted into without a doubt.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to College

Basketball - The "Mind Set" to Master Freethrow Shooting

In reference to free throw shooting, it is really ironic that in a way the 'mindset' in shooting efficiency is a lot similar to the 'mindset' in achieving goals in life. Shooting at goals and setting goals have a lot in common.

Understanding the 'mind' and its basketball in general is a very difficult chore. To 'control' the mind and to direct it towards materializing your wishes or desires is a major process and may even require some maturation.

What I hate about the 'mind' is that I can't understand my mind and all of its operations and capacities. My mind actually comprehends ME. What makes up my mind is ME, so I better be careful what enters my mind. You have heard the maxim by James Allen "As a man thinketh, so is he". Repeat that 100 times today.

The 'mind' and the brain are 2 separate entities. The 'Mind' collectively refers to the aspects of the intellect and consciousness manifested as combinations of thought, perception, memory, will, imagination and even basketball The 'mind' is a constant stream of consciousness.
All of the above aspects except emotion are involved in free-throw shooting. Actually I believe that emotion is involved to a certain extent in the process but it should not be since a ball does not recognize color, race, gender, age, height, or even emotions during the process of being shot. The mind includes all of the brain's conscious processes. The thought process of reason is another major factor of the 'mind'. Bear in mind though that becoming emotional during a shot can definitely affect the final result. Choking has emotional overtones and will be discussed in a future article.

Edgar Cayce once stated and this fits perfectly into the shooting mould,

"...if there is intense study of how the MIND is indeed the builder, it will see that what is held in the act of mental vision becomes reality in the material experience".

Mind thoughts fit into 2 categories:
1. Simulations of future scenarios using existing insights in the mind model in order to predict outcomes.
2. Analysis of past experience with the purpose of gaining insight for use within this model at a later date.
As you can see from the first category, we want a better future outcome (basketball shooting efficiency and consistency), by using insights, accumulated knowledge, and our reasoning ability to predict future outcomes for free throw shooting accuracy and 3 pointers as well. Actually your future predictions of excellence or even perfection from the charity stripe become foregone conclusions.

To further clarify the meaning of the 'mind' for the basketball world, it is safe to say it is synonymous with "thought". It is that private conversation that we carry on inside our skulls." This is how we in essence 'make up our minds', or 'change our minds' or more specifically tell ourselves what we need to do at the moment we shoot the ball, and this mainly relates to controlling bodily movement of the finer muscles responsible for accurate shooting (exact muscles will be covered in future Ebook). This is definitely a 'mind over matter' procedure and all of this has to take place within the blink of an eye.

'Thought' is a mental process whereby the 'mind' allows you to model or duplicate actions or movements of other shooters, etc, whether good or bad (muscle memory). The thinking process involves cerebral manipulation of information, as when one forms concepts, engages in problem solving, reasoning and/or making decisions. How long does it take you to figure out that you are a poor free throw shooter if you shoot around 70%, and how long before you recognize that you need to do something about it? Notice how your thought process is active but it all depends on what you do with that 'thought'.

Part of your consciousness is the quality of the mind that is responsible for self-awareness and the ability to perceive the relationship between yourself and your environment. Imagine yourself doing a jump shot, while being bumped from the side, body twisted, your left hand is off the ball which is resting on the right about to be released and you have an athletic 'post player' ready to block your seemingly difficult shot, and you must take into consideration all these elements while having to concentrate on all the factors on the shot release ( another chapter or article) and all this has to be done under one second. Oh, how I love the 'mind' and its incalculable capacity and how much we take it for granted.

Bruce Lee, the great martial artist who died very young at the peak of his career said this " Knowledge is not enough; we must apply, willing is not enough; we must do".

Knowledge without application of the new information is not knowledge. They must marry to be effective. I find that players reach their peak which is usually average and then they stagnate or plateau and never get better. They have the capacity to improve but unless they seek new knowledge and apply new principles ("Smartball Shooting System" by Ed Palubinskas, then mediocrity dominates.

Perfection in free throw shooting is attainable but it is very difficult to accomplish with just natural ability. Scientific principles and natural laws must be adhered to, combined with natural ability to achieve a superior level of shooting excellence.

It is common knowledge that humans in general operate at 7-10% of mental capacity. This means that we are leaving about 90% of our potential on the table. This is inconceivable to me and should be unacceptable by all mankind. If I was created in God's image, I wonder how He feels about me wasting any of the God given ability that He blessed me with. Could that be considered stealing? Scary thought, huh?

With this in 'mind' excuse the pun, I feel that mankind as a whole has great difficulty grasping the power that is inherent within the 'mind' because the mind's activity is manifested through physical form, specifically, a visual of the perfect follow through on a freethrow is something we can physically see, comprehend and measure like the follow through in relation to the ball's flight pattern and delivery route. Seeing is believing. One simple scientific concept is that the ball goes exactly where it is told. It responds just as well to correct energy control with deliberate educated distance and direction, or an at random uncalculated thrust in the direction of the basket.

According to my semi-scientific tests involving free-throw shooting of many teams of different ages and gender all over the world, I found that about 75-80% of shots are 'crooked' or 'off-center' with the middle of the rim. Shots can be 'off-center' and still go in but your chances are reduced. With this in 'mind' (every shot you shoot for the rest of your life) your thought should be on direction which I feel is more important than distance, because I believe most players know the distance to the basket. Test yourself on this. Go to the free throw line. Shoot 10 free throws with your eyes closed. I bet you hit the rim all 10 times. You may have made some, missed some, and add an air-ball or 2. The idea is that you did not shoot over the top of the backboard, shatter the glass or shoot short by 3 feet. If you have a decent shot you should make around 50% without vision. You will find that your missed shots will generally be crooked. So your distance is there but your direction is in jeopardy. And if you have the right things to concentrate on that guarantees straight shooting then there is no reason to miss free throws when you get your sight back. I can see... I can see! My best attempt with my eyes closed was just shot recently in October 2008 when I shot 87/100. This was a definite testimony to the alignment factor, because with eyes open I shoot 99% all the time and have done for over 25 years. No big deal at all once you master the scientific principles. Any good shooter can get to the mid nineties under 7 days using my secrets which are really natural laws that can't be compromised.

The brain which means "in the head" is a physical object and is the control center of the central nervous system which is responsible for harvesting thought' and gets impulses from the 'mind' and translates them to that physical reality through the senses and the nervous system.

What I am trying to say in a nut shell is that you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever think of making the basket. Your 'mind' should be on your mechanics, and once you realize that if you are not shooting 95-100% from the line, then you have mechanical problems and you need to desperately find out why you may be an average shooter. Then you will understand the beauty of being a "great" shooter. Just remember "SCIENCE RULES". Then seek the knowledge that you lack, gain strength, and apply your new mental power to the equation for excellence in free throw shooting.

Author- Ed Palubinskas is President of the National Basketball Shooters Association

http://www.nbsahoops.com He was a Junior College All American, Olympic world record scoring champion in 1976 Olympics and second leading scorer in 1972 Olympics. He has set Guinness world free throw records, and still shoots at 99% from the free throw line. His principles of perfect shooting are timeless and priceless when understood and mastered and anyone can duplicate these principles if they really want to.

For more details on accomplishments and career go to http://www.freethrowmaster.com where you can also order some of the shooting products. Ed Palubinskas