Talking Split

Everyone’s favourite podcast segment is back with 2 new contestants – Would You Rather? We throw a range of questions at the newly returned Jenni and Coops and discuss Jenni’s alter ego chess master skills, and Coops love for the move Father of the Bride. It took some weird turns this week.

It was the All State Camp in Bendigo last weekend, where our HP coaches added “photographer” to their PD with 300 plus kids to coach and take photos of! We talk to Zoe and Darren about what the content was, why it was in there, how it went, and what coaches at Club & Association level can be doing to give themselves and the players the best chance of success!

On the back of the U20 Championships and the Country Championships, we look through some of the things that coaches will need to consider for tournaments. There’s things like rest and recovery, knowing your fixture, what tech gear you need to have, and of course, how are you going to defend those pesky onball screens?

The Head Coach of Paris Basketball – Will Weaver joins us on the podcast this week, to talk all things coaching. We cover what pathways look like around the world, how you coach in a different country, assembling a team in the middle of a COVID pandemic, and what it’s like to travel the world as a professional basketball coach, whilst also balancing a family on the side. Will was incredibly generous with his time, and made us very welcome in a foreign country, and we can’t thank him enough for Talking Split with us!

And just like that, we are into February. But what happened to January? As it turns out, quite a lot. With East Coast Challenge (ECC), Australian Country Junior Basketball Cup (ACJBC) and Southern Cross Challenge (SCC) all running we have a look at how the teams and coaches went, and what the areas of focus are coming out of the tournaments. We also discuss the National Performance Camp (NPC) and what the key takeaways were from what the coaches saw.

Final episode for the season is upon us! We dive back into the listener mailbag and discuss how to impact defence without zoning in junior basketball, how to deal with a difficult opposition coach, how long to stick with an offence or defence before changing, balancing teaching and intervening in drills and some of the things we think could potentially improve the basketball experience for everyone!The information about Bio Banding is here for those interested: https://youtu.be/odcP9Grw6h0A huge thanks to everyone who’s listened to the podcast over the years. It’s no lie to say we didn’t expect this sort of uptake when it first started, and we’ve just managed to tick over the 100k listens for the podcast, which is amazing support from the basketball community. We will be back in the New Year with season 8, until then, please leave a rating, review, like, share, retweet and subscribe…

We asked, and like Postman Pat, you, the listeners, delivered. It’s Part 1 of the Talking Split Mailbag this week, with fresh off the plane Gold Medal winning Head Coach in Zoe Carr back on the podcast! We discuss questions like how to train your child who wants to get into rep, our most disliked drills, what should go into an Individual Performance Plan, what we can take from other sports to help basketball, and rebounding drills - valid or pointless? Part 2 of the Talking Split Mailbag next week!

After we went off on various tangents and ran out of time on the previous podcast, we thought we should head back into the senior coaching space and try and give some more information around it for the coaches out there. Turns out, we are going to need a Part 3! We look at preseason, team selection, how to progress players, and why we have senior programs to begin with.

It doesn’t matter if it’s fish in a barrel, on Fortnite, or pull up 3’s in transition – shooting is a massive part of what our players are doing now. We have a look about what we can be teaching our athletes, what the important teaching points are, what types of shots we want our players taking, and how we can help them depending on how we are coaching them. There are some shooting “myths” we tackle, and how we can try to help produce the next generation of perimeter shooters!

This week we are looking at a space we haven’t touched on in over 80 episodes – coaching in senior programs. We explore the importance of being transparent, knowing the parameters, how to assemble a team, how to work in with junior programs and everything in between. Even if you’re a junior coach, this could remove a few of the barriers to get involved in the senior coaching space.