The 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast
by Steve Collins (Teachhoops.com)
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Ep 2036 How do you run Competitive Practices?
Oct 19, 2026
7m 35s
Ep 2035 What Should You Say at Your Preseason Parent Meeting?
Oct 16, 2026
6m 23s
Ep 2034 What are you rebounding absolutes?
Oct 15, 2026
8m 10s
Ep 2033 How Do You Cut a Player Without Breaking Them?
Oct 14, 2026
6m 25s
Ep 2032 Basketball Pre-Practice
Oct 13, 2026
5m 27s
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| Date | Episode | Description | Length | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/19/26 | Ep 2036 How do you run Competitive Practices? | Teachhoops.com WintheSeason.com CoachingYouthHoops.com https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7 Coach Collins Coaching Store Check out. [Teachhoops.com](https://teachhoops.com/) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A Funnel Down Defense Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011 Want More Funnel Down Defense https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/) [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/) Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 7m 35s | ||||||
| 10/16/26 | Ep 2035 What Should You Say at Your Preseason Parent Meeting? | https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why this meeting matters more than your first game. Parents who understand your program become allies. Parents who are surprised become critics. Coach Collins explains why thirty minutes in October saves dozens of hours in January. Start with who you are. Open with your team identity and what you are building. Parents support a vision they can understand. Explain how decisions get made. Be clear that coaches decide the roster, roles, and playing time, and explain what those decisions are based on. Transparency about the process is not the same as negotiating the outcome. The communication policy. Share a simple path: the player talks to the coach first, a parent meeting can follow, and nothing gets discussed right after a game. A twenty four hour cooling off rule protects everyone. What you expect, and what they can expect. Ask parents to be fans, not coaches, from the stands. Then tell them what you promise in return: honesty, safety, communication, and care for their child. The car ride home. Coach Collins closes with one request for parents: make the car ride home about support, not analysis. Five simple words can change a season: I love watching you play. This week's homework. Build a one page handout with your identity, communication policy, schedule, and contact information, and run your meeting in thirty minutes or less. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question. What should you say at your preseason parent meeting? Here's how I see it. Your parent meeting might be the most important thirty minutes of your season. Parents who understand your program become your biggest allies. Parents who get surprised become your loudest critics. So let's walk through an agenda that builds trust and draws clear lines. Start with who you are. Open with your team identity. Tell them what you're building and why. Parents will support a vision they understand. If you say, we're going to be the hardest working, most unselfish team in the conference, they now have a lens to watch every game through. Next, explain how decisions get made. Be clear and be calm. The coaching staff decides the roster, roles, and playing time. Then tell them what those decisions are based on. Practice performance. Effort. Attitude. Fit within the team. Being transparent about the process is not the same thing as negotiating the outcome. You're telling them how you think, not asking for a vote. Then share your communication policy. Keep it simple. Step one, the player talks to the coach. We want our kids learning to advocate for themselves. Step two, if a parent still has a concern, we'll set up a meeting. And here's the big one. Nothing gets discussed right after a game. We use a twenty four hour rule. Emotions are high after games, for parents, for players, and honestly, for coaches too. A day of space protects everybody. Now, what do you expect from them? I ask parents to be fans, not coaches. Cheer for every player, not just your own. Leave the officials alone. And please, don't give your child different instructions than we gave them in the huddle. A kid who hears two voices freezes. And then, what can they expect from you? This is the part coaches forget. Tell them what you promise. I will be honest with your child. I will keep them safe. I will communicate the schedule clearly. And I will care about who they are, not just how they play. When parents hear your promises, they're much more willing to accept your boundaries. I like to finish with one request. The car ride home. That ride can make or break a kid's season. Ask parents to make it about support, not analysis. No breakdown of every turnover. No commentary on the coach's decisions. Just five words. I love watching you play. That's it. You'd be amazed how much that changes a kid's experience. A couple of practical tips. Keep the meeting to thirty minutes. Hand out a one page sheet with your identity, your communication policy, the schedule, and how to reach you. Have your assistants there so parents know the whole staff. And leave a few minutes for questions, but steer individual player conversations to a separate time. Let me share a few things not to do at the parent meeting. Don't talk about individual players. Don't make promises about playing time, starting spots, or college recruiting. And don't spend twenty minutes on your offense. Parents don't need to know your sets. They need to know your values, your process, and how to talk to you. Here's another idea that's worked for a lot of coaches. Invite your captains or a couple of seniors to speak for two minutes. Let them tell parents what this team means to them and what they're working toward. Parents hear things differently when they come from players. It also shows them the culture you're building is real, not just a speech from the coach. And think about the parents who can't make it. Some work nights. Some have other kids with games. Record a short video of the key points, or send the one page handout home with every player, and ask families to sign and return it. That way no one can say they didn't know the communication policy. When the first tough conversation comes in December, you can point back to the page they signed in October. It changes the tone completely. Last, follow up. Send a thank you email the next day with the handout attached and the season calendar. Small touches like that tell parents you're organized and that you value them. Trust is built in the little things. So here's your homework. Build your one page handout this week. Practice your thirty minute agenda out loud. And go into that room confident, because a clear coach is a trusted coach. That's today's episode. For parent meeting templates and more program building resources, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Win the parents in October, and you'll coach in peace in February. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 6m 23s | ||||||
| 10/15/26 | Ep 2034 What are you rebounding absolutes? | Teachhoops.com WintheSeason.com CoachingYouthHoops.com https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7 Coach Collins Coaching Store Check out. [Teachhoops.com](https://teachhoops.com/) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A Funnel Down Defense Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011 Want More Funnel Down Defense https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/) [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/) Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 8m 10s | ||||||
| 10/14/26 | Ep 2033 How Do You Cut a Player Without Breaking Them? | https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why the list on the door has to go. Posting names on a gym door or a website is efficient for the coach and brutal for the player. Coach Collins explains why every cut deserves a face to face conversation, even when there are dozens of them. Set expectations before tryouts begin. Tell players and parents on day one how decisions will be communicated, when, and by whom. A clear process removes surprise and cuts down on angry emails. The three part conversation. Every cut meeting covers two things the player did well, one or two honest reasons they did not make the roster, and a specific path forward. Keep it to three to five minutes and keep an assistant in the room. Words that help and words that hurt. Avoid vague phrases like it was close or numbers game. Be specific and kind. Do not make promises you cannot keep about next year. Seniors and the last cut. Seniors who are cut deserve extra care, and the last player cut is the hardest decision on the roster. Coach Collins shares how to handle both with honesty. Keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting, a summer workout plan, or a role such as manager or practice player when it fits. Many kids come back better because of how they were cut. This week's homework. Write your cut meeting script, choose the assistant who will sit in, and tell your players exactly how the process will work. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today we're talking about the hardest part of October. How do you cut a player without breaking them? Let me start with something I believe deeply. The way you cut a kid will be remembered longer than any game you win this season. That player will tell their parents about it. They'll tell their friends. Someday they might tell their own kids. So let's do it right. First, never post the list. I know it's efficient. I know you might have fifty kids trying out. But a list on a gym door means a fifteen year old finds out the worst news of their year in front of a crowd. Every kid who gave you three days of effort deserves a few minutes of your time, face to face. Second, set the expectations before tryouts even start. On day one, tell players and parents exactly how decisions will be shared, when, and by whom. Something like this. On Thursday after practice, every player will meet with me individually for a few minutes. When the process is clear, there are fewer surprises and a lot fewer angry emails. Third, use a simple structure for the conversation. I use three parts. One, tell them two things they did well, and be specific. You communicated on defense better than anyone in your group. Two, give them one or two honest reasons they didn't make the roster. Right now your ball handling under pressure isn't where it needs to be at this level. Three, give them a path forward. Here's what I'd work on, and here's who can help you. Keep it short. Three to five minutes. And always have an assistant in the room. That protects you, it protects the player, and it gives you a witness to what was actually said. Now, a word about language. Avoid the vague stuff. It was really close. It's just a numbers game. Kids hear that as, there's nothing I could have done. Be specific and be kind. And never make promises about next year that you can't keep. Don't say you'll definitely make it next season. Say, if you do this work, you'll give yourself a real chance. Seniors deserve extra care. A senior who gets cut is losing their last chance to wear the jersey. Meet with them first, give them more time, and when it fits, offer them a real role. A manager. A practice player. Somebody who's still part of the family. And the last cut. That's the one that keeps you up at night. Be honest with yourself about why. Go back to your rubric. Go back to your identity. When you can explain the decision in those terms, you can look that kid in the eye. Finally, keep the door open. Offer a follow up meeting in a week, when emotions have settled. Give them a workout plan. Invite them to open gym in the spring. Some of the best players I've seen were cut once, and came back hungrier because a coach treated them with respect. Let me give you an example of how that conversation can sound. Jordan, thanks for sitting down with me. First, I want you to know two things you did really well. You competed on every rep in the shell drill, and you were one of the best communicators in the gym. Here's where you're not there yet. At this level, we need guards who can handle pressure, and right now that's still a work in progress for you. So this year, you're not on the roster. Here's what I'd do. Work on your ball handling against pressure every day. Come to our spring open gym. And come see me in a month so we can talk about your plan. That's about ninety seconds. Honest, specific, and respectful. Now, prepare yourself for emotion. Some kids will cry. Some will go silent. Some will get angry. All of that is normal. Don't rush to fill the silence, and don't argue. Just say, I understand this is hard, and I respect how hard you worked. Let them have their reaction. You're not there to win the conversation. You're there to deliver hard news with care. And think about the parents. Send a short email that night to every family of a player who was cut. Thank them for their child's effort, and repeat that you're available for a follow up meeting once everyone has had a day to process. That one email heads off a lot of angry phone calls, and it shows families that the way you treat their kid doesn't end when the roster is set. So here's your homework. Write your three part cut script. Pick the assistant who will sit in with you. And tell your players on day one exactly how the process will work. That's today's episode. For more on tryouts, roster decisions, and building culture, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Cut with dignity, and you'll never lose a kid's respect. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 6m 25s | ||||||
| 10/13/26 | Ep 2032 Basketball Pre-Practice | Teachhoops.com WintheSeason.com CoachingYouthHoops.com https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7 Coach Collins Coaching Store Check out. [Teachhoops.com](https://teachhoops.com/) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A Funnel Down Defense Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011 Want More Funnel Down Defense https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/) [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/) Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 5m 27s | ||||||
| 10/12/26 | Ep 2031 Are Your Tryouts Measuring the Right Things? | https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The problem with traditional tryouts. Layup lines and shooting stations show you skill, but skill is the easiest thing to see and the least predictive of who helps you win in February. Coach Collins explains why tryouts should be built to reveal the things you cannot see in a box score. The coachability rep. Give a player one specific correction, then watch the very next rep. Did they try to apply it? That single moment tells you more about a player's growth curve than ten made jumpers. Talk and transition. Run live defensive drills where the only thing an evaluator tracks is talk. Then run transition drills and watch who sprints back when the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Response to mistakes. Put players in competitive situations where they will fail. Watch what happens next. Do they hang their head, blame a teammate, or get back on defense? Watch the kids who are not playing. Water breaks, sideline time, and the end of the line are evaluation moments. Who picks up a teammate? Who is on their phone? A simple scoring system. Use multiple evaluators, a short rubric scored one to five, and a handful of categories tied to your identity. Tell the players in advance exactly what you will be watching. This week's homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan, and give every evaluator the same rubric. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Tryouts are coming, and today I want to ask you a hard question. Are your tryouts measuring the right things? Here's what usually happens. We run layup lines. We run shooting stations. We run some three on three. And the kids who shine are the ones who can make shots in a gym with nobody guarding them. Then February comes, and we realize we kept the best shooter in October, not the best teammate in a tight game. Skill is the easiest thing to see in a tryout. It's also the thing you can teach the most over a season. What's hard to see, and hard to teach, is coachability, toughness, and how a kid treats the people around them. So let's build tryouts that show you those things. First, the coachability rep. Pick a player in the middle of a drill. Give them one specific correction. Get lower in your stance. Show me your hands. Then watch the very next rep. Not the result. The attempt. Did they try to do what you just asked? That one moment tells you more about how a kid will grow over a season than ten made jumpers. Second, talk and transition. Run a live shell drill and assign an evaluator to track one thing only. Who talks? Who calls ball, who calls help, who calls shot? Then run a transition drill, and watch who sprints back the moment the ball changes hands. Effort without the ball is a choice, and it shows up fast. Third, response to mistakes. Put players in competitive drills where they're going to fail. Score everything. Keep a winner and a loser. Then watch what happens after a turnover or a missed box out. Does the kid hang his head? Blame a teammate? Or sprint back and get the next stop? You are not just evaluating basketball. You are evaluating how they handle adversity, and you'll need that in January. Fourth, watch the kids who aren't playing. Water breaks. The end of the line. Sideline time. Who picks up a teammate off the floor? Who claps for somebody else's good play? Who's sneaking a look at their phone? Some of the best evaluating I ever did happened when the kids didn't think anyone was watching. Now, let's keep it fair. Use more than one evaluator. Give every evaluator the same short rubric. Five categories, scored one to five. Make those categories match your team identity. If your identity says we defend and we share the ball, then defense and unselfishness had better be on that sheet. And here's the part a lot of coaches miss. Tell the players ahead of time what you're looking for. Say it on day one of tryouts. We are evaluating talk, effort in transition, how you respond to mistakes, and how you treat your teammates. When kids know what matters, the right kids rise up. And when you have to make tough decisions, you can point to exactly what you said. One last thought. Tryouts are the first message about your culture. The way you run them tells every kid in that gym what you value. If you value hustle, make hustle visible. If you value teammates, reward the kid who picks someone up. Let me walk you through what a day of tryouts could actually look like. Start with fifteen minutes of a dynamic warmup, and have an evaluator watch who's leading lines and who's hiding in the back. Then twenty minutes of skill stations, because yes, skill still matters. Then the shell drill with an evaluator tracking talk. Then a scored transition drill. Then live three on three and five on five, with winners and losers recorded. Finish with free throws while tired. In about ninety minutes, you've seen skill, effort, communication, competitiveness, and composure. Here's a mistake I see a lot. Coaches let one great play or one bad play decide a kid's fate. A player hits three straight threes and suddenly he's on the roster. Another kid fumbles one pass and he's written off. That's why your rubric matters, and that's why you need more than one day. Look for patterns, not moments. A pattern over two or three days tells you who a kid really is. And don't forget the evaluators' meeting at the end of each day. Ten minutes. Go player by player and compare notes. You'll be surprised how often your assistant saw something you missed. Sometimes it's a kid who was great on the weak side of the shell drill, where you weren't looking. Sometimes it's a kid who said something to a teammate at the water fountain that changes your whole view. Those conversations are where good decisions get made. So here's your homework. Add one coachability rep and one transition effort station to your tryout plan. Build a five category rubric. Give it to every evaluator. That's today's episode. For tryout plans, evaluation forms, and more, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Pick the players who make your team better, not just the ones who make shots. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 6m 43s | ||||||
| 10/9/26 | Ep 2030 Is Your Coaching Staff Really on the Same Page? | Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. The meeting most coaches skip. Coaches spend hours on X's and O's and almost no time aligning the adults who teach them. Coach Collins makes the case for one real staff meeting before tryouts, with an agenda, a notepad, and no phones. Question one: who are we? Every coach in the program should be able to say the team's identity sentence word for word. If the levels teach different identities, players get mixed messages and the program loses its spine. Question two: what does each coach own? Give every assistant a clear area of ownership, such as defense, player development, scouting, or academics. Ownership turns helpers into coaches and keeps the head coach from trying to do everything. Question three: how do we speak to players? Decide who talks in timeouts, who corrects in drills, and how feedback is delivered. One voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. Question four: how do we disagree? Disagreement is healthy behind closed doors and harmful in front of players and parents. Set that rule in October so it never has to be enforced in January. Question five: do we use the same words? Shared terminology from freshman to varsity means a player called up in February already speaks the language. Write a one page glossary of your calls and terms. This week's homework. Schedule a ninety minute staff meeting before tryouts, walk through the five questions, and leave with every coach owning one area of the program. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins. Today's question is one I wish someone had asked me early in my career. Is your coaching staff really on the same page? Here's what I've learned. Most staff problems that blow up in February started with a conversation that never happened in October. An assistant says something to a parent he shouldn't have. The JV coach runs a different defense. Somebody rolls their eyes on the bench after a decision. None of that is about bad people. It's about a meeting that never took place. So before tryouts, I want you to hold one real staff meeting. Ninety minutes. An agenda. A notepad. Phones in the bag. And I want you to walk through five questions. Question one. Who are we? Every coach in your program, from freshman to varsity, should be able to say your team identity word for word. If your levels are teaching different identities, your players get mixed messages and your program loses its spine. Question two. What does each coach own? Assistants who just show up and rebound are wasted. Give every coach a lane. One owns defense. One owns player development. One owns scouting. One owns academics and grade checks. Ownership turns helpers into coaches, and it keeps you from trying to do everything yourself. Question three. How do we speak to players? Decide this now. Who talks in timeouts? Who corrects in drills? My rule of thumb is one voice in the huddle, many voices in teaching. During a drill, I want every coach teaching. During a timeout, players need to hear one message, clearly. Question four. How do we disagree? And you will disagree. That's healthy. The rule is simple. We argue behind closed doors, and we walk out of that room as one staff. Never in front of players. Never in front of parents. Never on social media. Say it in October, so you never have to enforce it in January. Question five. Do we use the same words? If your freshman coach calls it a hedge and your varsity coach calls it a show, you just wasted a week when a kid gets called up. Write a one page glossary. Your calls, your terms, your defensive language. Hand it to every coach at every level. I'll add one more thing. Talk about parents. Agree that every parent concern about playing time or role goes to the head coach. Your assistants should never be stuck in a parking lot conversation they're not equipped to handle. Protect them, and they'll protect the program. When you walk out of that meeting, every coach should know three things. Who we are. What I own. And how we behave as a staff. That's alignment. And here's the payoff. Players notice. When kids see a staff that is unified, that uses the same language and backs each other up, they trust the system faster. Culture isn't just what your players do. It starts with what your coaches model. Let me give you a picture of what this looks like when it works. Picture the second week of January. Your varsity point guard goes down with an ankle. You pull a sophomore up from JV. If your staff is aligned, that kid walks into varsity practice and already knows the calls, already knows the defense, already knows what the head coach means when he says show. He's ready in a day, not a week. That's what alignment buys you. It's not a nice idea. It's insurance. Now, a common mistake. Coaches hold the meeting, everybody nods, and then nobody revisits it. Alignment isn't a one time event. I'd schedule a fifteen minute staff check in every week of the season. Same three questions every time. What are we seeing? What do we need to fix? Is anyone struggling? Put it on the calendar the same day, the same time, so it never gets skipped when the schedule gets crazy. And take care of your assistants as people. Ask about their families. Thank them in front of the players. Give them credit when the defense plays well. A lot of assistant coaches are working for very little money and a lot of hours. When they feel valued, they invest. When they feel like helpers, they drift. The best staffs I've been around were made of people who would run through a wall for each other, and that started with a head coach who made them feel like it was their program too. So here's your homework. Put a staff meeting on the calendar before tryouts. Walk through those five questions. Leave with every coach owning one piece of the program. That's today's episode. For staff resources, practice plans, and more, visit teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Build your staff before you build your team. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 6m 32s | ||||||
| 10/8/26 | Ep 2029. How do you guard your Yard? | Teachhoops.com WintheSeason.com CoachingYouthHoops.com https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7 Coach Collins Coaching Store Check out. [Teachhoops.com](https://teachhoops.com/) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A Funnel Down Defense Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011 Want More Funnel Down Defense https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/) [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/) Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 7m 19s | ||||||
| 10/7/26 | Ep 2028 Can You Say Your Team's Identity in One Sentence? | https://teachhoops.com/ Visit TeachHoops.com for practice plans, drills, and coaching resources. Why identity comes first. October is when coaches order gear and draw up sets. Coach Collins argues the first job is simpler and more important: write one sentence that tells a player, a parent, and an assistant exactly what kind of team you will be. Every October decision, from tryout selections to practice minutes, flows from that sentence. The three part formula. A strong identity sentence answers three questions. How do we defend? How do we attack? How do we behave? Coach Collins shares two sample sentences and explains why specific language beats slogans every time. Fit the identity to this year's roster. Your identity has to match the players who will wear the jersey, not the team you wish you had. A roster without size should not build around the post. A roster of quick guards might press and run. Make it measurable. If your sentence says you play hard, define what hard looks like on film: deflections, charges, loose balls. If you cannot count it, sharpen the word until you can. Use it as a filter. Once the sentence is written, share it with your staff first, then put it at the top of every practice plan. Use it to judge drills, evaluate tryouts, and frame postgame talks. This week's homework. Write three lines on a blank sheet: we defend by, we attack by, we behave by. Cut them into one sentence, show it to your staff, and say it out loud on day one. Welcome to the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast. I'm Coach Steve Collins, and this is the show where we give you one idea you can use in your program this week. It's October. Tryouts are close, gyms are opening up, and every coach I know is busy drawing up sets and ordering practice gear. Today I want you to do something before any of that. I want you to write one sentence. Here's the question. Can you say your team's identity in one sentence? Not a mission statement. Not a poster on the wall. One sentence that tells a player, a parent, and an assistant coach exactly what kind of basketball team you are going to be. Why does this matter in October? Because every decision you make in the next six weeks flows from it. Who you keep at tryouts. What you teach first. How you spend practice minutes. What you praise and what you correct. If you don't know who you are, you will make those decisions based on whatever happened yesterday, and your players will feel that. So let me give you a simple formula. Your identity sentence should answer three things. How do we defend? How do we attack? And how do we behave? That's it. Defend, attack, behave. Here's an example. We guard the ball like it owes us money, we play fast and share it, and we never leave a teammate on the floor. Here's another one. We win the possession game with rebounds and zero wasted trips, we run our stuff with patience, and we are the toughest team in the gym. Notice those sentences are specific. Anybody who hears them can picture the team. Now, how do you write yours? Start with your personnel, not your ego. Look honestly at the players you expect to have. If you don't have size, don't build an identity around pounding the post. If you have five guards who can fly, maybe you press and run. Your identity has to fit the people wearing the jersey this year. Second, test every word. Ask yourself, could we measure this? If you say we play hard, what does that look like on film? Deflections? Charges taken? Loose balls? If you can't count it, sharpen the word until you can. Third, share it with your staff before you share it with your players. Your assistants need to own it. If your JV coach is teaching one identity and your varsity coach is teaching another, you don't have a program. You have a collection of teams. Here's where it gets practical. Once you have the sentence, use it as a filter. When you plan practice, look at every drill and ask, does this build our identity? If it doesn't, cut it or shorten it. When you evaluate players at tryouts, ask, does this kid fit who we're going to be? When you talk to your team after a loss, go back to the sentence. Did we defend the way we said we would? Did we behave the way we said we would? And say it out loud. Say it on day one. Put it at the top of every practice plan. Have your players say it back to you. By December, you want a freshman at the end of the bench to be able to tell a parent in the stands exactly what this team is about. One more thing. Your identity can grow during the season, but it shouldn't change every week. Consistency is what gives it power. Players trust a coach who knows who he is. So here's your homework this week. Get a blank sheet of paper. Write three lines. We defend by. We attack by. We behave by. Fill them in. Then cut them down to one sentence. Show it to your staff. Then live it. That's today's episode. If you want practice plans, drills, and a full library of coaching resources to help you build that identity, head to teachhoops.com. I'm Coach Collins. Go build something you're proud of. Podcast script Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 5m 35s | ||||||
| 10/6/26 | Ep 2027 Building Confidence in your Players | Teachhoops.com WintheSeason.com CoachingYouthHoops.com https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7 Coach Collins Coaching Store Check out. [Teachhoops.com](https://teachhoops.com/) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A Funnel Down Defense Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011 Want More Funnel Down Defense https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/) [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/) Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 4m 54s | ||||||
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| 10/5/26 | Ep 2026 Do you have a Pre Season Philosophy | Teachhoops.com WintheSeason.com CoachingYouthHoops.com https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7 Coach Collins Coaching Store Check out. [Teachhoops.com](https://teachhoops.com/) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A Funnel Down Defense Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011 Want More Funnel Down Defense https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/) [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/) Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 9m 43s | ||||||
| 10/2/26 | Ep 2025 Are You Punishing the Exact Mistakes That Would Make Your Team Better? | https://teachhoops.com/ Are You Punishing the Exact Mistakes That Would Make Your Team Better?Tryout week, the quick hook, and what happens to a player who learns that trying something is dangerous. Show Notes A quick hook feels like standards. This episode argues it is often just fear, and that the lesson a player actually takes from it is that trying something is dangerous. With tryouts here, it is worth asking what your sideline reaction is teaching. What we cover: Sorting mistakes of aggression from mistakes of selfishness, and why only one earns a seat Telling players out loud what you want them to risk this week The mistake budget, and using practice as a lab instead of a courtroom Why your face coaches louder than your voice Separating sloppy from brave, and why the player you will not trust in November is the one you need in February This week's challenge: run one practice where you never stop play for a mistake of aggression. Let it go, then write down what you saw. Resources: Practice plans, drills, courses, on court clinics, and the coaching community at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 6m 34s | ||||||
| 10/1/26 | Ep 2024 Building Culture | Teachhoops.com WintheSeason.com CoachingYouthHoops.com https://forms.gle/kQ8zyxgfqwUA3ChU7 Coach Collins Coaching Store Check out. [Teachhoops.com](https://teachhoops.com/) 14 day Free Trial Youth Basketball Coaches Podcast Apple link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coaching-youth-hoops/id1619185302 Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/0g8yYhAfztndxT1FZ4OI3A Funnel Down Defense Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/funnel-down-defense/id1593734011 Want More Funnel Down Defense https://coachcollins.podia.com/funnel-down-defense [Facebook Group . Basketball Coaches](https://www.facebook.com/groups/basketballcoaches/) [Facebook Group . Basketball Drills](https://www.facebook.com/groups/321590381624013/) Want to Get a Question Answered? [ Leave a Question here](https://www.speakpipe.com/Teachhoops) Check out our other podcast [High School Hoops ](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/high-school-hoops-coaching-high-school-basketball/id1441192866) Check out our Sponsors [HERE](https://drdishbasketball.com/) Mention Coach Unplugged and get 350 dollars off your next purchase basketball resources free basketball resources Coach Unplugged Basketball drills, basketball coach, basketball workouts, basketball dribbling drills, ball handling drills, passing drills, shooting drills, basketball training equipment, basketball conditioning, fun basketball games, basketball jerseys, basketball shooting machine, basketball shot, basketball ball, basketball training, basketball camps, youth basketball, youth basketball leagues, basketball recruiting, basketball coaching jobs, basketball tryouts, basketball coach, youth basketball drills, The Basketball Podcast, How to Coach Basketball, Funnel Down Defense FDD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 10m 07s | ||||||
| 9/30/26 | Ep 2003 Is Your Team Great at Practice and Lost in the Game? | https://teachhoops.com/ Are Your Players Hearing You, or Actually Seeing It?Why installation week moves twice as fast when you stop explaining and start showing. Show Notes Installation week always sounds the same. A coach talking, a group of heads nodding, and then total chaos the second the ball goes up. This episode makes the case that the problem is not attention. It is that most young players learn with their eyes and we keep teaching with our mouths. What we cover: Show it before you say it, so the words have a picture to stick to Putting a screen in your gym, and why twenty seconds of clip beats two minutes of talking One cue, then go, because when you stack four instructions they keep the last one Letting players watch their own possession and coach themselves off it Locking your vocabulary in October so you are not reteaching words in February This week's challenge: install one thing using under thirty seconds of talking. Show it, run it, fix one detail, run it again. Resources: Practice plans, teaching progressions, drills, courses, and on court clinics at https://teachhoops.com/ Recorded at the Fifth Quarter Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 6m 56s | ||||||
| 9/29/26 | Ep 2002 What Would You Put in a Sports Drink If You Started From Scratch? | TeachHoops.com NukeHydration.com — ready to drink clean sports hydration, shipped nationwide. Sample pack (two Lime Time, two OG Orange, plus extras) is $19.99 with shipping included. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off, sample pack included CoachingYouthHoops.com Is Your Kid Actually Hydrated, or Just Drinking Something Blue? The couple taking on Gatorade from a Mississippi warehouse. Coach Bill sits down with Marty and Lesley Frascogna, the husband and wife team behind Nuke Hydration and a sponsor of this show, which he discloses right up front. They found each other through a LinkedIn conversation, and Coach Bill's interest was simple: he was tired of picking up bottles full of dye and would never hand that to his own team. Lesley owns this part of the story. Gatorade, Gatorade Zero, a stretch where their son drank Prime because he thought it was cool, and some Propel because, as she puts it, in her brain clear must mean healthy. The tipping point was standing over a grocery cart loaded with Gatorade she was about to hand out to a house full of kids and feeling guilty about it. Marty's side was the Ironman. He came to triathlon with no background in it, and when his nutrition coach asked what he was actually putting in his body, the answer turned out to be not much: not enough sodium, not even enough fluid ounces. And he had played college sports. He thought he knew this stuff. This is the running argument of the episode. Coach Bill had heard the Ironman version. Marty, an attorney for eighteen years and self described steady hand, says the Ironman was the setup, but Lesley took it and ran. She is the impulsive one. She had also been a florist for twenty four years and wanted a career change, and so did he. Her one non negotiable from the start: it had to be ready to drink. Not a powder. A bottle a kid can hold. Marty asked about powder and she shut it down immediately. She was calling formulators the next day. For the record, Coach Bill and Lesley referred to Marty as an Ironman six times before he brought it up himself. He wanted that noted. Market research pointed to a real gap. Hydration packets are everywhere. Ready to drink is essentially Coke's Powerade and Pepsi's Gatorade and not much else. When they walked into Whole Foods looking for the clean alternative that surely already existed, they found a couple of options with two problems. First, no cool factor. Their own kids laughed and said they would not walk around with it. Second, natural flavors. Lesley's view is that natural flavors are not really natural. They start from a natural product and then get heavily processed in a lab. That was a line they would not cross, and she notes that avoiding natural flavors is becoming a real consumer trend this year. Their answer to what parents miss when they think hydration means water: most youth athletes are not drinking enough to begin with, they are not getting enough sodium, and they are short on electrolytes. Sweat goes out, salt has to go back in. Coach Bill can vouch. He carries a large bottle, drinks three a day, and still came back dehydrated on routine bloodwork. Volume alone does not do it. Marty's favorite frame, from his training: carbs are the gas, hydration is the oil. If you burn all the oil, you cannot retroactively pour it back in. The engine is already gone. He has actually blown an engine by skipping an oil change, so the metaphor stuck. On timing, both agree with what Coach Bill preaches to his team. Hydration starts the night before. If your game is Saturday and you start Saturday morning, you are already behind. This one they did not plan to collect. A high school team they work with gave players a Nuke two hours before a game, water alongside it, and another Nuke at halftime, in Mississippi heat. Not one cramp on the team. The coach said it was the first time in school history. They watched the opposing team go down every few minutes on TV, on a weekend when a player elsewhere died on the field from heat. They have now seen it repeat for three straight weeks. They are also hearing from women who drink one a day and say it keeps their headaches and migraines away. A study with Mississippi State's kinesiology department on Nuke specifically is in the works, which should say whether the credit belongs to the coconut water, the Celtic sea salt, or the combination. Coconut water as the base, for hydration and the added benefits, and because almost nothing else in the category uses it. Celtic sea salt, not table salt. Lesley says the internal debate over which salt to use was close to infinite. They wanted something from the ocean, with the trace minerals that come with it. Lemon and lime juice for actual flavor in the original Lime Time. Five grams of added organic cane sugar. They deliberately did not go to zero. A little sugar helps hydration, carries flavor, and gives kids a small burst of energy. It is a fraction of what is in a conventional sports drink. Stevia and monk fruit to balance the lemon and lime without piling on more sugar and calories. They said no to extra vitamin C, extra vitamins, extra magnesium. Not necessary. The moment that defined the whole company came at the formulation lab, six months in, when they finally loved the taste and spotted an ingredient on the panel they did not recognize. They asked what it did. The answer was mostly color, with a little magnesium they did not need. Lesley's response: get rid of it. Two halves. Nothing Unnecessary, and Keep the Energy. No, there is no caffeine in it, which is the first thing most people ask. Nothing Unnecessary has become the filter for the whole company, not just the formula. Lesley catches herself planning a big elaborate activation in Nashville and then pulls it back to something simple that is all about the drink. Keep the Energy is about the daily wins: no sugar spike, no crash, one brick in the wall every day. The bottle says no guilt. The team pushed back on putting it there. Lesley insisted, at a hundred and ten percent, because of exactly what she felt pushing that Gatorade cart. Mom guilt is everywhere, parents are doing their best, and if one decision can be made easier and feel good, that is the job. Coach Bill's version is the same from the coach's side: he does not feel bad handing it to his players. Neither of them is a nutritionist and they say so. Lesley's honest answer is that the two go hand in hand and nobody is perfect. There is still junk food in their pantry. But fully hydrated and badly fueled is a moot point. Coach Bill's version of this was handing out nutrition bars before early morning games, because so many kids skip breakfast and you can see how that game is going to go before it starts. Lesley's broader point: it is not just the kids who need educating. She did not understand the difference hydration actually makes until Marty started training. She thought eight glasses of water was just the recommendation so you do not die. The second husband and wife pair to appear on the show, and Marty's first question was whether the first couple is still married. They describe a good yin and yang: Lesley is passionate, impulsive, burn the boats, we are doing this now. Marty wants the long term plan and the strategy thought all the way through. The bigger problem is that they are never off. Date night turns into a work meeting. Lesley, diagnosed with ADHD at thirty six, needs the schedule to stay fluid, which frustrates a man who would like a schedule set in stone. They also have a warehouse and still fight over which corner of the house to work in. Their kids, Lesley jokes, would like mom and dad to go back to their real jobs. Two flavors now: the original Lime Time and the just launched OG Orange. A third is coming in the spring as a collaboration with someone they are not naming yet. Direct to consumer at nukehydration.com, with a new site launching in about three weeks. Lesley ships it herself, nationwide, with handwritten notes. They are in independent grocery stores around Jackson, Mississippi and Birmingham and expanding. The growth they are proudest of is schools. Athletic directors are getting real pressure from parents asking for healthier options, and "we have always given the team Gatorade" is no longer an answer. Next goal: working directly with coaches to set up team shops so parents can buy straight from them. And for anyone who does not want to commit to a full case, the $19.99 sample pack includes two of each flavor with shipping, and YOUTHHOOPS15 works on it. Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com TitleSubtitleShow NotesBefore Nuke, they were a Gatorade familyWho actually had the ideaThe void they foundHydration is not the same as waterThe Mississippi football data pointWhat is in it, and what is notWhat NUKE actually stands forThe two words Lesley fought forNutrition and hydration togetherWorking together, married eighteen yearsWhere to get it Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 37m 32s | ||||||
| 9/28/26 | Ep 2001 Are You Adding Potential or Removing Interference? | https://teachhoops.com/ Performance equals potential minus interference. That one equation, borrowed from Timothy Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis, is the spine of this episode, and it flips the way most coaches think about player development. Nearly all of our energy goes into the first half of that equation. Better drills, better lifts, better skill work, better film. But Coach Collins argues that some of the biggest breakthroughs in a season do not come from adding anything at all. They come from removing what is standing in front of a kid. The episode opens with a player every coach knows. Terrific on Tuesday, unrecognizable on Friday. His ability did not vanish between those two days. Something got in front of it. Coach Collins walks through why the interference we go looking for is usually external, the crowd, the refs, the matchup, when the loudest interference is almost always internal. Fear of failing. Fear of looking foolish in front of friends. Overthinking. Trying to prove something to someone in the stands. Playing to protect a stat line instead of playing to compete. That is not a skill problem, and it does not respond to skill answers. Then comes the uncomfortable part of the conversation. Sometimes the coach is the interference. A player struggles, so he gets a cue, then another cue, then a correction and one more reminder on his way out of the huddle. Now he is standing at the free throw line running six voices at once, and none of them are his own. Coach Collins makes the case that our job is not to fill a player's head. It is to free it. From there the episode turns to a simple change in the question we ask. Instead of what does he need to learn, try what is getting in the way of what he already knows. One question assumes the player is missing something. The other assumes he has more inside him than he can currently reach, and those two questions build two completely different practices. Coach Collins also connects the idea to culture, because programs manufacture their own interference. Unclear roles create it. A coach who runs hot and cold creates it. Mistakes punished in public create it. When a player is calculating what failure will cost him, he is protecting rather than competing, and gyms where kids play free are never an accident. The episode closes with a challenge coaches can run this week. Pick one player, write down one thing you are going to take away rather than add, then audit your own practice for the fog you may be putting in front of your team. This is an episode for coaches who have been trying to add their way to better and are ready to try subtracting instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 7m 50s | ||||||
| 9/25/26 | Ep 2000 What Make a Successful Coach and Program | https://teachhoops.com/teachhoops-memberships/2000/ https://www.thechampionshipcoach.com/ When Your Tank Is Only 80% Full, Is It Time to Walk Away? Episode 2000: Coach Bill turns the microphone on Steve Collins for a conversation about 37 years on the sideline, three state titles, one 7 and 14 season, and what the game actually owes the kids who never become stars. For the 2000th episode of Coach Unplugged, the format flips. Coach Bill takes over the questions and Steve sits in the guest chair for the first time, fresh off a state finals run and the first fall in nearly four decades with no season to plan. They talk about what it felt like the moment it ended, the bus ride from La Crosse that turned a losing program around, and the price his family paid along the way. Stay to the end for a 2000th episode offer that only lives here in the show notes. IN THIS EPISODE 01:17 A milestone inside a milestone. First fall in 37 years with no season and no lesson plans. 02:13 How Coach Unplugged started. A YouTube idea with a friend, back when podcasting was actually hard. 04:33 "I felt full." The feeling after the final game, and why you want to leave the amusement park while you still want to ride. 06:35 The storybook ending. Up two at halftime on the eighth ranked team in the country, 27 and 3, and why a great taste makes walking away both easier and harder. 08:13 What retirement actually looks like. Family, travel, and four clinic dates this fall including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Brooklyn. 09:32 Why start another basketball podcast? Nobody was talking to the coach in the trenches. The parent problems, the bus that never shows, the missing official 30 minutes before tip. 11:37 The 7 and 14 season. Sitting in a locker room in La Crosse saying "I don't think I can do this," as the only applicant for the job. 13:03 The roadmap from that bus ride. How two hours back to Madison became the plan for one of the best programs in the Midwest. 14:32 Find your circle and keep it close. The advice from his high school coach that produced two staffs in 30 years. 16:18 The resume. Three state championships, five runner up finishes, eleven state appearances, fourteen straight conference titles, twenty six consecutive winning seasons, and why none of it sounds real to him. 17:08 Micro goals. Don't get fired. Then have a winning season. Then beat the perennial power. Then contend. Then win it. 18:40 Out scouting everybody. Sending his mom to a game with a camera, VCRs in the basement until 2 a.m., and why that edge is gone now. 19:43 What does coaching owe the kids who never play in college? Roles, camaraderie, failing together, and the life lessons kids remember long after the Pythagorean theorem. 22:23 The two kinds of coaches who ask for help. The young ones who know they don't know, and the veterans still hunting for an edge. It's the middle group that stalls out. 23:35 The price. What the wins cost his wife, his parents, and his mother in law, and why both of his kids will tell you he never missed anything. 26:15 Rapid fire for the first year coach. Worry less about parents and more about players. Communicate, then over communicate. After a bad loss go exercise and do not watch film. Stop drilling for the sake of drilling. 28:37 How do you know you were successful? Strip away the banners and the wins and what's left is the connection with the players. 29:21 One sentence, if that's all a coach remembers. People first. 29:44 The second act. The Championship Coach fellowship, one on one calls, group calls, and coaches who have his actual cell number. 30:02 Building Hey Sammy. Bill on the app overload problem in youth sports, and a text based assistant that pulls in schedules, calendars, drive time, and weather with nothing to install. 32:04 The golden nugget, buried at the end on purpose. THE 2000TH EPISODE OFFER 20% off teachhoops.com for the lifetime of the membership, for the first 20 coaches only. Use code FIRSTTWENTY at checkout. This is not being announced anywhere else. If you made it to the end of the episode, it's yours. LINKS https://teachhoops.com/ The coaching library, drills, and community.https://championshipcoach.com/ The fellowship Steve runs with a small group of coaches each spring and fall.https://heysami.com/ The text based family sports assistant Steve and Bill are building.Email Steve directly at [email protected]. He is speaking at four clinics this fall and will happily grab a soda and talk hoops. QUOTABLE "I felt full. I felt complete. You want to leave the amusement park when you still want to go on rides." "It's about the Jills and Joes, not the X's and O's." "When I was 27, I knew everything. I feel like I know less now than I did 30 years ago." "People first. You're going to win if you put people first." HELP THE SHOW If 2000 episodes have helped you survive a season, leave a five star review, share the show with a coach who needs it, and send in your questions. Here's to the next 2000. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 39m 09s | ||||||
| 9/24/26 | Ep 1999 Are You the Thermostat or the Thermometer for Your Team? | https://teachhoops.com/ What happens to your team when the head coach has a bad day? In this episode, Coach Collins takes a deep dive into one of the most important responsibilities of leadership: managing the emotional temperature of your program. Coaches often spend enormous amounts of time thinking about strategy, practice planning, player development, and culture. But players and assistant coaches are also constantly reading something else—the emotional state of the person leading them. Coach Collins uses the idea of the thermostat versus the thermometer to explain the difference. A thermometer simply reflects the temperature around it. A thermostat helps set it. Athletes naturally react to what is happening around them. Coaches have a greater responsibility. Their frustration, confidence, fear, patience, body language, and emotional consistency can quickly spread throughout a team. This becomes especially important when circumstances change quickly. Winning streaks, great practices, injuries, difficult losses, parent problems, player issues, staff disagreements, and unexpected setbacks can all happen within days of each other. If a coach’s emotional state rises and falls with every event, players begin experiencing leadership whiplash. The episode explores the idea that every coach has a leadership range. At the top end, coaches are clear, proactive, relational, confident, and able to see the big picture. At their baseline, they are steady and dependable. At the low end, fatigue and frustration can lead to emotional reactions, micromanaging, distance, impatience, or poor communication. The goal is not to pretend that great leaders never reach their low end. They do. The goal is to raise the floor. How do you behave when things go badly? Can you lose and still communicate clearly? Can you receive difficult news without bringing panic into the gym? Can you correct a player without turning your frustration into that athlete’s shame? Can your assistant coaches concentrate on coaching instead of trying to figure out what mood you are in? Those questions reveal a great deal about leadership. Coach Collins also challenges coaches to separate their identity from the scoreboard. Winning matters. Competition matters. Championships matter. But when a coach needs winning to validate who they are, the entire culture begins riding the emotional roller coaster with them. A great night means everything is wonderful. One loss suddenly makes everything feel broken. That is not stability. Great programs need leaders who can compete intensely while remaining grounded through both success and adversity. The episode gives coaches three practical questions for evaluating themselves: Did I act as the thermostat or the thermometer this week? What did my low end cost the people around me? And what boundary can I create to protect my emotional baseline next week? Sometimes that boundary is waiting before speaking after a difficult loss. Sometimes it is refusing to send the emotional text. Sometimes it is sleep, time away, perspective, or simply recognizing that an important decision should not be made while angry. For coaches trying to build sustainable culture, this episode is a reminder that your emotional regulation is not just personal. It becomes organizational. Players feel it. Assistant coaches feel it. Your program eventually reflects it. The scoreboard can change your circumstances. It does not have to change your leadership. basketball leadership, coaching leadership, basketball coaching, team culture, emotional leadership, thermostat vs thermometer, coach emotional control, leadership under pressure, coaching adversity, basketball culture, mental toughness for coaches, emotional regulation, head coach leadership, coaching staff, player development, program culture, leadership consistency, handling losses, coaching confidence, basketball program, high school basketball coach, coaching mindset, team leadership, sustainable culture, basketball podcast, TeachHoops Keywords Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 8m 26s | ||||||
| 9/23/26 | Ep 1998. How Do Youth Parents Deal with Tryouts | Parents' Role in Tryouts Links mentioned in this episode TeachHoops.com CoachingYouthHoops.com — print and go practice plans built from years of coaching, not ChatGPT NukeHydration.com — clean sports drink for kids and coaches, started by a couple out of Mississippi. Use code YOUTHHOOPS15 for 15% off any order What Is a Parent Actually Supposed to Do During Tryouts? Shoes, snacks, and getting out of the way. Fall basketball season is kicking off, tryouts are here, and Coach Bill wants to talk about the person nobody writes a rubric for: the parent. Two sides to it. What coaches should be teaching parents to expect, and how parents can actually support their kid through a stressful week. Coach Collins goes first, and his list is unglamorous on purpose. We are dealing with kids, not young adults who can drive themselves. So the number one parent responsibility is logistics: shoes that fit, a ball in the bag, properly hydrated, everything they need, and there on time. That is most of the job. Tryouts can be genuinely stressful for a family, especially when nobody knows whether the kid makes a team at all, or which team. Coach Collins' advice is to drop both the coach hat and the parent evaluator hat and just be the supportive person in the front seat. When they get in the car, ask how it went. Ask what was fun today. Not "how'd you do" and not "were any of the other kids good." That one shift is what makes a kid want to come back next year. Coach Bill's biggest coaching side point: share your tryout rubric with parents before tryouts. How are teams being picked? If there is an A and a B team, what actually separates them? If there are cuts, why would a kid get cut? Say it plainly and say it early, and you avoid most of the fallout after the list goes up. He also names the thing everyone has seen: the leagues where the three dad coaches end up with the top three kids, automatically, because of how the structure works. Coach Collins frames it as a triangle. Parent to kid, parent to coach, coach to kid. When one leg of that breaks down, what the kid heard and what the parent tells the kid stop matching what the coach actually said, and that is where the problems come from. Ten spots, here is what we are looking for, here is what competitive means. Say it out loud to all three points of the triangle. Coach Bill lays out two scenarios worth walking through with your kid ahead of time. Your kid makes it and their best friend does not. One kid is thrilled, the other is crushed. Teach yours how to handle that, because the bragging happens more often than you would think. Your kid does not make the team you both expected. Talk through what it actually means, which is not much. A career is not over in fifth grade because someone did not make the A team. Coach Collins agrees and adds the frame: life is about disappointment, and you learn more from failure than success. But he pushes it one step further. His favorite parenting lesson from this episode. Before tryouts, have your athlete go ask the coach what they are looking for. After tryouts, have them ask what to work on for next year. The story behind it: his son Drew, in fourth or fifth grade, got in the car furious about a book report. Coach Collins pulled over about three hundred yards from the school and told him to go back in and talk to his teacher, who was still there. The teacher had a great conversation with him. Coach Collins believes that single moment taught Drew more than the rest of that school year, and that it made him an advocate for himself through his entire education. Coach Bill's addition is that this is really about teaching a kid how to speak respectfully to an adult in authority, which outlasts basketball by decades. And it is the kid who should do the asking, not the parent. Both agree a fourth grader is old enough. Coach Bill says he would love it if one of his fourth grade girls walked up and asked him to explain. As Coach Collins puts it, your job is to get them ready to leave the nest, not to stay in it. Nobody wants their thirty five year old kid still hanging around the house. Coaches: publish the rubric before tryouts, not after. Parents: handle the logistics, ask what was fun instead of how they did, and send your kid to talk to the coach themselves. Learn more and get everything you need for your season at TeachHoops.com TitleSubtitleShow NotesStart with the boring stuffThen take off the coach hatThe communication triangleRehearse the hard conversations before they happenTeach the kid to advocate for themselvesCoach's takeaway Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 14m 38s | ||||||
| 9/22/26 | Ep 1997 Is Your Culture Already Set Before the First Game Tips Off? | Visit https://teachhoops.com/ for more coaching resources, practice plans, and the TeachHoops community. Title: Is Your Culture Already Set Before the First Game Tips Off? Subtitle: Why the six weeks before tryouts decide more about your season than any scouting report, and how to build the standards your players will hold each other to when you are not in the gym. Show Notes Most coaches think culture gets built during the season. In this episode we make the case that by the time the first official practice arrives, the culture is largely already in place, and the preseason is where it either gets built on purpose or gets built by accident. Players walk into November already knowing what the standards are, who the leaders are, and whether the coach means what he says. All of that gets decided in September and October. We start with the idea that culture is simply what your players do when the coach is not watching. Open gyms, weight room sessions, and pickup runs are where that gets revealed. If your best players show up late to open gym in September, they will show up late to shootaround in January. The preseason is the one time of year when you can address that without the pressure of a game on Friday night, so use it. Set an expectation, watch how they respond, and correct it immediately and calmly. From there we talk about what a coach can actually control before the season starts. You can control your presence. Being visible at open gyms and lifting sessions, even when you cannot run them under your state rules, tells players what matters to you. You can control the message. Pick two or three non negotiables, say them the same way every time, and do not add a fourth until the first three are automatic. At Memorial the standards were simple: be on time, compete every rep, and talk. Everything else was coaching. You can control who you empower. The preseason is when you identify your captains not by a vote but by watching who does the work when nobody is making them. We spend some time on player led work. The strongest programs have upperclassmen running the show in the preseason, and that does not happen on its own. Meet with your returning players early. Tell them exactly what you need from them, give them a specific role such as running the shooting sessions or getting the freshmen to the weight room, and then hold them to it. When a senior corrects a sophomore in October, you have culture. When a coach has to do all of the correcting in December, you have a problem. The conversation also covers the small habits that compound. How players enter the gym, whether they rack the balls, whether they thank the custodian, whether they pick up after a lift. None of those things win a game by themselves, but they are the evidence that your standards are real. Coaches who let the small things slide in the preseason spend the whole season fighting the big things. Finally, we talk about the coach's own preseason discipline. Culture is a mirror. If you want players who are organized, prepared, and consistent, they need to see that from you first. Have your practice plans built before the first day. Have your team rules written down and explained in a meeting, not discovered through punishment. Communicate with parents before the first game about playing time and expectations so the culture on the bench matches the culture on the floor. The takeaway is that your culture is not a speech you give on day one. It is a set of habits your players are already practicing before day one arrives. Build them now and the season takes care of itself. For more on building program standards, leadership development, and full season practice planning, visit https://teachhoops.com/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 14m 07s | ||||||
| 9/21/26 | Ep 1996 What Are the Things That Show Up in Every Great Practice? | https://teachhoops.com/ This episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast is brought to you by teachhoops.com, the coaching platform built by a coach for coaches who want their gym time to matter. Every coach has walked out of a practice that felt great and every coach has walked out of one that felt like ninety wasted minutes. The difference is rarely talent or effort. It is whether a handful of specific things were present. Coach lays out what those things are so you can build them into your plan on purpose instead of hoping they show up. It starts with a plan and a purpose. A great practice has a written plan with times, a stated focus for the day, and a reason behind every single drill. Players know what today is about before they stretch. There is a warm up that actually prepares them for the work, a flow that moves from teaching into pressure into live play, and an ending that leaves them with the message you most wanted them to carry home. Nothing on the sheet is there because it has always been there. The second group of things is about the work itself. Great practices are full of quality reps rather than long lines. They add a defender, a clock, or a score so players learn to execute under some kind of pressure. They include competition with a winner and a small consequence, because that is where toughness and composure get built. They include real teaching moments where the whistle stops everything, a correction gets made, and the very next rep is better. And they include the same core habits every day, so the fundamentals never get skipped just because something new got installed. The third group is the human part, and it is the piece most coaches undervalue. Great practices have energy that comes from the coaching staff first. They have communication, players talking on both ends and coaches using consistent language everyone understands. They have accountability, where the standard holds on the days nobody feels like holding it. They have players who get corrected and praised in the same practice, and a coach who is present rather than distracted. And they have a clear connection to the game, so players walk out understanding how what they just did will show up on Friday night. Put the whole list together and you get the honest test at the end of every practice. Did players get high quality reps? Did they get feedback that changed something? Did they compete? Do they know what they are better at today than they were yesterday? If the answer is yes on all four, that was a great practice regardless of how long it lasted. For customizable practice plans, a full drill library, offenses, defenses, and a community of coaches building better practices every week, head over to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 12m 33s | ||||||
| 9/18/26 | Ep 1995 Is Your Practice Setup Costing You Twenty Minutes Every Day? | https://teachhoops.com/ Today's episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast comes to you from teachhoops.com, the coaching platform built to hand you the plan instead of making you invent one every night. Coach opens with a topic that sounds boring and quietly decides your season: how you set up practice before players ever touch the floor. Baskets, balls, cones, groups, who is where, and what happens the second a drill ends. Get that right and you gain real minutes every single day. The first stretch covers the physical setup. How many stations can your gym realistically support, how do you split baskets so nobody is standing in line, and where do you put the equipment so transitions take seconds instead of a minute? Coach talks about pre assigning groups by name or number so you never burn practice time picking teams, and about having the next drill's spacing already marked so you can flow straight into it. From there the conversation moves to the mental setup, which is the part most coaches skip. Players should walk in knowing what today is about. Coach explains why posting the plan, naming the focus for the day, and repeating the same two or three teaching points gives players something to hold onto. Practice becomes a story instead of a list of unrelated activities, and players start connecting the drill to the game situation it is preparing them for. The last section is about your staff and your own preparation. Assistants who know their station and their coaching points before practice starts are worth double. Coach also talks about writing the plan with times, then actually respecting those times, because the coach who lets one drill run long is stealing from the drill at the end that probably mattered more. Setup is not glamorous work, but it is where organized programs quietly separate themselves. For ready to run practice plans you can customize with your own drills, offenses, and defenses, go to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 11m 40s | ||||||
| 9/17/26 | Ep 1994 Do Your Players Actually Know What a Good Shot Is? | https://teachhoops.com/ This episode is presented by teachhoops.com, where coaches get the systems and drills that turn ideas into habits. Shot selection is one of those things coaches complain about constantly and teach almost never. We yell "bad shot" after it goes up, then move on without ever defining what a good shot actually is. Coach makes the case that shot selection is a teachable skill, not a personality trait, and that clarity fixes most of it. The core framework is simple enough for a third grader and useful enough for a varsity team. A great shot is wide open, in rhythm, and inside your range. A good shot is contested a little but on balance, at a spot you have practiced, taken by a player who can make it. A no shot is off balance, hand in your face, outside your range, early in the possession when nothing has been created, or taken by the wrong player at the wrong time. Once players have that vocabulary, coaching becomes correction instead of criticism. Coach then gets into the part that matters most: range and role are different for every player. Every player should know their spots, and every player should know which shots belong to somebody else. That is not punishment, it is clarity. The episode covers how to communicate a player's shot diet honestly without crushing confidence, and how to expand that range in the offseason so the conversation changes next year. The episode wraps by tying shot selection to your offense. If players are hunting bad shots, sometimes the answer is not a lecture, it is better spacing, better ball movement, or a clearer definition of what the offense is trying to produce. Track shot quality in scrimmages, freeze the action when a bad one goes up, and praise the pass that leads to a great shot as loudly as you praise the make. For drills and teaching progressions that build this in, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 8m 06s | ||||||
| 9/16/26 | Ep 1993 Practice Time, Practice Length, and Getting More From Both | https://teachhoops.com/ Brought to you by teachhoops.com, a platform built by a coach for coaches who want their limited gym time to count. Practice time is the one resource every coach wishes they had more of, and the one most coaches quietly waste. This episode takes an honest look at how long practice should be at different levels, how to break that time into pieces, and what to cut when the clock forces a decision. Coach starts with length by age group. Youth practices that stretch past an hour and a half usually turn into supervised exhaustion. Middle school and high school can handle more, but more is only better when the extra minutes are purposeful. The point is not endurance, it is quality reps with feedback. A tight seventy five minutes beats a sloppy two hours in almost every situation. The next section is about dividing the time. How much goes to individual skill work, how much to team offense and defense, how much to live competitive play, and how much to situations and special teams? Coach explains why those percentages should shift as the season moves from preseason to conference play to postseason, and why hanging onto the same practice template all year is a mistake. The last stretch is about the hidden leaks. Water breaks that stretch, drills that run long because they are going well, teaching moments delivered to twelve players when they were meant for one, and the ten minutes at the end when everyone is already thinking about going home. Fix those and you find an extra practice worth of time every couple of weeks. For customizable practice plans with built in timing, go to teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 8m 26s | ||||||
| 9/15/26 | Ep 1992 How Do You Teach So It Actually Sticks? | https://teachhoops.com/ This episode of the 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast is supported by teachhoops.com, where the whole idea is teaching coaches how to teach. Most coaching content tells you what to run. This one is about how you deliver it. Two coaches can install the exact same offense and get completely different results, and the difference is almost always the teaching method. Coach walks through a progression that works at every level. Show it, say it simply, break it into the smallest useful piece, get reps without pressure, then add a defender, then add speed, then put it in a live setting. Skipping a step feels efficient in the moment and costs you three weeks later when players cannot execute it against real defense. The episode digs into how long to stay at each stage and what tells you a group is ready to move up. There is also a real conversation about language. Coaches who use ten words to describe one action get ten different interpretations. Coach talks about picking short consistent cue words, using the same ones every time, and getting your assistants and your youth feeder coaches saying the same thing. When the vocabulary is shared, teaching gets faster every year because you are not starting over. The final piece is feedback. Correction that comes too late, too vague, or too constantly stops working. Coach covers timing your corrections, giving one thing to fix at a time, and letting players self correct so learning transfers to games where you cannot talk to them. Great teaching is repeatable, and once you have a method, every new drill you add becomes easier to install. For the full library of teaching progressions and drills, visit teachhoops.com. https://teachhoops.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices | 14m 24s | ||||||
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Chart history for The 5 Minute Basketball Coaching Podcast
Peaked at #72 in TW, currently #72 in TW.
| Market | Genre | Peak | Current | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TW | — | #72 | #72 | — |
| AE | — | #102 | #102 | — |
Chart Positions
2 placements across 2 markets.
Chart Positions
2 placements across 2 markets.