Burger King All-Americans

"Excuses are monuments of nothingness, They build bridges to nowhere, Those of us who use these tools of incompetence, seldom become anything but nothing at all."

“To make a difference, you have to do something different”

“Discipline is the internal mechanism that self-motivates you. It gets you out of bed in the morning. It gets you to school on time, and it tells you when you need to stay up late to finish work. It drives you. It is essential to success, whether individually or collectively.”

“Self-discipline is important in any endeavor of life. People who have the ability to concentrate, focus on their goals, and consistently stay within their priorities tend to succeed. Whether in academics, the arts, or athletics, success generally comes to the self-disciplined.”

“To lead the people, you have to love the people. To serve the people, you have to care for the people.”


OK Coach, there is your bulletin board material. Use it at your discretion.


Cutting Down Turnovers

It's what makes coaches lose hair, stay up late and drink lots of Diet Coke....turnovers! Despite their frequent occurrence, very few coaches and even less players actually do anything to improve players passing and therefore reduce the likelihood of more turnovers. Here are a couple of drills you can incorporate into your next workout or practice to help improve your team avoid costly turnovers:

Feed The Post and Cut

How many passes have you seen deflected or lost from lazy post feeds? 

Put a line of players at the wing/foul line extended. First player goes to the high post, second player plays defense, and third player is on offense. Player 2 must trace and mirror the ball to prevent a successful post entry feed. Player 3 must concentrate on pivoting and ball faking maintaining good balance and triple threat position. Coaches watch for traveling violations and turnovers. Once a successful post feed is completed player 3 will cut back door for a lay-up off of a high post feed from player 1. Players alternate between offense, defense and high post. Work right and left side of the court. Rate players on their ability to feed the post accurately, court awareness, and ability to pass accurately with either hand.

Low Post Feed and Spot Up

Have players pair up on the wing. Offensive player on wing looks to enter pass into the post. Defensive player tries to steal the pass. Once pass has successfully reached the post, defender is to go back and touch the post player. Post player then passes out to spot-up shooter in the corner or at the top of the key. Coach mix up where shooter goes to spot up. Upon post kick out defensive player closes out and contests the shooter who will catch and shoot upon receiving the pass out. Rate players ability to pass accurately under pressure, as well as make shots under duress. Rate defense on their quickness as well as their ability to get deflections, double down on the post, close out contest and box out on the shooter.

Things I Enjoyed This Week

St. Patrick beats Science Park to win the tournament of champions

No one was asking anyone in the Missouri locker room about their draft status.

"Coach likes to say we don't have any McDonald's All-Americans," English said. "We have Burger King All-Americans."

Actually, what the Tigers have is a team full of guys like Mike Anderson, in his third season at Missouri's helm. These are hard-nosed, scrappy players, guys who could have played for Nolan Richardson, Anderson's coach and mentor. They outshot Memphis, yes, hitting 53 percent of their field goals against a team that was the best in the country in field-goal defense.

More, Mizzou out-toughed Memphis, literally wrenching the ball out of player's hands on more than one occasion. In a game where most people figured Missouri's best-case scenario was to keep it close and hope for a shot at the end, Mizzou went directly at Memphis and sliced and diced with ease. Mizzou needed only six 3-pointers to top the 100-point mark (that one of them was a Marcus Denmon 60-foot, halftime-buzzer-beating heave only made the night somehow more poetic for Mizzou).

By the middle of the second half, Memphis players were tugging on their shorts, the universal hoops sign for exhaustion.

"Yeah, I saw that," DeMarre Carroll grinned.

Tiller had more points in one half (16) than he had in an entire game this season, finishing with a career-high 23.

And he's the defensive specialist.

And he had a bum wrist.

"That's J.T.," Lawrence said. "He could have a broken hand and he'd be out there. Pain is nothing to him."

J.T. Tiller scored a season's best 16 points in the first half alone against Memphis.
That's what you get with the BK All-American, a kid who will not just buy into Anderson's hellacious system but who adopts his attitude, as well.

No one believed Anderson could mop up Quin Snyder's mess at Missouri; not his way anyway, not after he suspended five players following a fight, sent his leading scorer and rebounder packing and stood his moral ground despite the vultures circling over his head.

No one except a bunch of kids in the locker room.

Though not even Anderson was on board with English initially.

Asked what he would have thought if someone told him at the beginning of the season he'd be playing for a shot at the Final Four, Anderson laughed.

"I would be asking what are you smoking and drinking, man," he said.

But in those boring summer days, two things happened. First, the players who didn't know one another realized they liked one another. They have gone from virtual strangers to a merry band of jokesters. In the postgame locker room, English leaned in among the reporters interviewing Denmon with a water bottle for a microphone; Lawrence joked about Denmon's half-court prowess; and when asked about picking up two quick fouls, Zaire Taylor said with a straight face, "I wanted to give J.T. a chance to realize his full potential. I thought it was time for him to take ownership. It might have looked like it was the wrong move, but it was the right move."

Sitting one chair over, Tiller laughed and shook his head.

After the friendship came something even more critical: The players started to think that maybe English was onto something.
"The thing is you have to believe you can do it," English said. "If you aim for anything less, then you're just selling yourself short. If you don't believe you can win it all, who will?"
As of today, maybe a whole lot more people where Missouri is concerned.

NOVA NATION