[J. R. VanHoose]

So what you are saying is that coaches shouldn't have a game plan? That they should fly by the seats of their pants and just "coach it as it happens"? I take it you haven't coached before.

I think she may be saying that you can't plan for each thing that happens during the course of a game, at least that is what I hope she is saying. I will agree with you however, you do need a game plan of some type before you go into each game. For example, what defense will I play on a good 3-point shooter? How will I play a tall post player if none of my players are over 6'1"? Should I press this team that likes to run, or should I try to play slow?

On the other side of this argument, I have been around many college coaches and have seen many examples of scripting out your first 5-10 offensive sets that you will run at the beginning of a game/half. For example, when I was at Marshall, we usually had games on Saturday, Monday, and Thursday. Two days prior to the game we would have a brief scouting report of the team we were going to play at the end of our practice. The next day, we would spend 45 minutes to an hour at the end of practice reviewing the scouting report and running throught their plays. On games days we would have a 1:30 "walk-through" where we would once again go over the personel, their sets, and what sets we would run. Our head coach would then have a small "cue card" with the other teams tendancies, favorite sets, and personel to use during the game. When I say scouting reports, I mean a break down of the top 8-9 players on the opposing team (height, weight, school class, right/left hand, shooter, penetrator, good post player, strong, bad free throw shooter, power player, etc.). Each of the oppoents sets (seen in up to six different videos) were then broken down on a dry erase board and each of our starting five were required to know each of the opponents positions and keys that would signal the beginning of a particular play.

Just wanted to throw this in here to hopefully settle the argument!!!