Walking on in D3 Basketball

sushiritto
Sun, 01 Aug 2021 22:57:39 +0000

CTDad-classof2022:

The biggest way basketball is different than soccer is that anyone can work on their game to get better, at any time. I had friends in college that would play pickup 4 days a week, and they got a lot better over time. I know walk-ons who worked their way into contributing minutes for D1 NCAA Tournament teams.

That is hard to do in soccer or lacrosse. In those sports, if you don’t play your freshman year, your skills will deteriorate and there is no real path to work your way on to the team.

If you’re playing at the highest levels of youth soccer, often the coaches will not allow you to play high school soccer at all. The level of play in HS is inferior than the Development Academy League.

At our local public HS, there is a varsity, JV and freshman teams. Except in some rare case, like a late bloomer, if you can’t make any of those teams as a freshman (or JV as a sophomore or junior, if allowed), then the cold hard truth is that you should probably try another sport or another school. Again, there are late bloomers or kids who pick a sport later than the rest and are “naturals”.

Working on one’s basketball game with playground pickup games isn’t a great way to improve your skills. And much of your development depends on the players around you, which often isn’t that great, to put it mildly. I’ve played in high level pickup games, where you may not even get the ball (i.e., ball hogs, outsider), where everyone thinks they’re Steph Curry, and lower level games where movement is limited and the skills displayed around you are inferior and often dangerous. You can actually pickup bad habits. And ignore fundamentals (e.g., defending pick and rolls is almost nonexistent, on ball off ball D).

Working on dribbling, shooting, strength, conditioning, etc. is best done by yourself in a gym (with courts and with gym equipment) with and without a coach/trainer. Repetition, 10,000 hours, etc.

As for soccer (and basketball) there are many levels of play for HS players. In our area, we have pickup soccer games, organized leagues (A, B and mixed) or just show up and play. And that’s not even including indoor soccer and Futsal leagues and pickup.