Tag: coaching

Coaching Influences, Basketball Analytics, and Coaching Our Daughters with McDowell’s Zack McCartha

In this episode I talk with the North Carolina Basketball Coaches’ Association 2024-2025 Women’s Basketball Coach of the Year, McDowell’s Zack McCartha.

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Coach McCartha and I discuss some of the keys to his team’s undefeated season, our coaching influences, how we use analytics to aid in our coaching decisions, and what it’s like to coach our daughters on our respective teams.

There are even some book recommendations at the end!

Coach McCartha with his daughter Clara and son Everett

Coach, you’re at McDowell High School in Marion, North Carolina. Your team went undefeated in the regular season last year. What are a couple things you’d point to that made your team so successful? 

  • Torg: Best player in the state, Pace, the three point shot, basketball IQ which goes with game planning on both sides of the ball

Is there a Zack McCartha brand of basketball? To what degree do you have a way of playing that you try and install vs. adapting your way of playing depending on the players you have? 

  • Torg: shooting in practice, custom scheme for the group, adaptability for each opponent, limited fundamental reps and high on Small Sided Games SSGs.
Coach McCartha at the Final Four in Winston Salem 2025

I’d like to hear about your education in basketball, your coaching influences if you will. Could you look back and start naming coaches and maybe telling me what you took or adapted from them to get you to the way you think about basketball now?

Torg Influences:

  1. Coach Knight at Indiana: game planning with film and walk through, motion concepts, the phrase “surprise and change” when it comes to defense even though that isn’t what Coach Knight believed.
  2. Don Meyer from David Lipscomb – comprehensive skill development, mini solutions to fundamental problems such as traveling with poor footwork. 4-out motion offense. Could pair this with Majerus.
  3. Rob Irwin who I assisted at Carroll High School in Indiana: gave me 1 min three shooting drill. Just one thing but it was a big one that we do almost every single time we come together.
  4. Laura Barry who I assisted at Watauga: teaching transition def, teaching the 1-3-1 defense, intro me to PGC where I found a modernized version of a lot of what I liked about Don Meyer. Footwork especially but also things such as lighting your team up with enthusiasm. Coach Barry gifted me the Legacy book which I take the term blue head from.
  5. Bill Belichick – game planning. From his book The Art of Winning: “We did what any winning team should do: we looked at our opponent, and we adapted to what we saw.” ALSO… “I’ll say it again: not the same plan; the same planning.”
  6. Brian McCormick – mostly for small sided games SSGs. Read quite a few of his books but 21st Century Guide to Skill Development is one that sticks out as memorable.
  7. Doug Lemov – author of The Coach’s Guide to Teaching. Coach Barry also pointed me to this one. Focused feedback. Short term memory processing while you might be trying to listen to a coach and read the defense.

Has your coaching style changed over the years and how so?

  • More shots per practice. Brief on reps heavier on small sided games. I am more calm and patient. I used to to stay with things in practice until we got every detail right. I think I used to spend a lot of time on getting something right that wasn’t going to matter that much. Now I get in what I want to get in and I keep coming back to it with hopes of cleaning up.

How much influence do you put on analytics when it comes to the high school game?

  • What do we mean when we say analytics? Torg answer: using numbers and probability to aid in decision making about practice and games
  • we shoot a lot of threes in practice and we are trying to shoot a lot of threes in games. Last season we averaged 9.4 threes made per game on 27.4 attempts for 34.2%. (that’s up over 4 made threes per game over a 4-year period. When I started at Wataga as an assistant, I think we averaged something like 2-12 per game. We had games of 18, 16 and 14 twice made threes.
  • I like to look at our defensive points per possession depending on what defense we are playing.
  • I look into when to call timeout. For example, after a made free throw. Also, is it really advantageous to foul up 3 with less than 10 seconds to go? The execution of this can be really shaky and even when executed, it’s an incredibly slight advantage to foul. Another: Should I take a player out in foul trouble?
  • Don’t know but think yes: should most of our players take the wide open 15 footer? How much should we practice it?

Do you have any thoughts as it relates to load management throughout the course of a high school season? This could be in practice and/or games. If so, is this a change?

  • The is Coach McCartha’s question. For me, not much thought about load management other than that was a tough game last night. I know you once asked me if Kate practiced.
  • Also, playing 2-3 games in a day. I def just take my lumps if I have to and I don’t play anyone big minutes.
  • We do things like take charges and dive for balls.
  • More film and rehearsal than live
Coach McCartha and daughter Clara competing for McDowell HS in Marion, NC

We each coach our daughters. Let’s try and talk about that a little bit:

  1. Are there parts of it we enjoy? Chance for them to know me and see how I am everyday instead of if I went off to work for 12 hours a day and saw them once in awhile. Riding to and from in the car. We’re sometimes working on a project together.
  2. What’s difficult about it? People, including teammates, treating my kids in a different way because of things I do. Incorrect assumptions about what my kids know. She must have told Coach X whereas people come to me all the time with good and bad they think about what our players do.

What is one non-negotiable that you have for your teams?

  1. Torg: non-negotiable and culture are not phrases I use. The best I can do is to share what I emphasize. I call these things out when we fall short and I find as many ways as I can to praise them when I see them: enthusiasm, team first attitude, 9 and 7 shots on offense, sportsmanship, positive body language, being a blue head, bolting, the extra pass

We’ve got the NCAA exposure event coming up in June at the RISE facility. Let’s talk about that, recruitment, and then travel basketball. Is your daughter playing? 

What is a book or a movie possibly that you feel like all coaches should read or see?

  1. The Coach’s Guide to Teaching by Doug Lemov. Click here for Torg’s post about the book.

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The Rewards of Playing Sports, A Diva Athlete List, and Ted Lasso Season 3, Episode 2

On this episode we discuss the Rewards of Playing Sports, Wild Card Athletes, and Season 3, Episode 2 of Ted Lasso. It’s the episode where Roy returns to Chelsea and Coach Lasso’s team goes after the mercurial fictional football legend, Zava.

For me, I took note that St. John’s won the Big East tournament since 2000, it’s NCAA selection Sunday. I have so far failed to pump the water out of the pond in my driveway caused by the blocked culvert, Season 3, Episode 2: (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea

  • The episode opens with a song from Pomplamoose. It’s a song that combines Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” and Bill Wither’s “Lovely Day.” Click here for info.
  • The first big news is that Trent Crimm is going to follow the team and write a book. This makes me think of John Feinstein, who passed away last week and wrote A Season on the Brink. Compare and contrast what Crimm might come up with compared to the book Feinstein wrote.
  • We get the news that a fantastic but maybe wild card, mercurial player is leaving his team. His name is Zava. Anne, I think you knew right away who the player was based on.
  • There is a lot in this episode related to luck or jinxes. We’re got mention of a psychic. Rebecca says Higgins jinxes it when he says there is nothing Rupert can do to get Zava. Ted wishes at 11:11 and so does Danny. I have never heard of that. In the pub, Mae tells the “boys” that their hats are bad luck. Would you say you are superstitious?

If Zava is a wild card athlete, what’s your list of wildest card athletes?

  1. Dennis Rodman – Did wrestling during the NBA finals. Tats. Wedding dress.
  2. John Daly, golfer. Pants. Smoking. What he ate and drank. Anger. Gambling.
  3. Mike Tyson. Biting off an ear.
  4. Ron “Meta” Artest.
  5. Terrell Owens. Sit ups in his driveway while holding out
  6. Lance Stephenson blowing in LeBron’s ear
  7. Chris Andersen “The Birdman” for The Heat. Mohawk and colorful tattoo.

Keeley is up for Zava because he has 50 million Instagram followers. I’ve got the top 10 people with the most Instagram followers. Want to take some guesses? Three strikes and you’re out?

Let’s see how many of the top 10 people with the most Instagram Followers:

  • Keeley and Roy have broken up. It becomes a thing that everyone knows Roy is the one who did it and everyone seems to think it was a big mistake.
  • Anne, Roy and Jamie are teammates. Any guidelines from you about whether Jamie can ask her out?
  • Keeley hires her friend Shandy Fine. Her CFO Barbara doesn’t like it. What do you think Barbara’s deal is?
  • Barbara collects snow globes of the places she’s been. Anne, would you say you collect anything?

What movies featured what could have been stalking but it wasn’t because the interest was reciprocated?

  1. Say Anything – the boom box
  2. Sixteen Candles – Michael Anthony hall the bus, the dance
  3. Sleepless and Seattle – she hears him on the radio
  • Roy and Trent make peace. Roy rips up the article. I thought that end scene was the best of the show. What was it like being back at Chelsea? Roy says it felt sad. Roy can’t enjoy himself. I guess that’s not who I am. Ted: Not yet.
  • Trent says sport is quite the metaphor. Ted says it’s a heck of a nickname too. Anne, what would you say were the rewards of sport?

How would I rank the rewards of my time playing sports?

  1. Go do my job with effort and enthusiasm.
  2. Keep going through failure.
  3. Learning to enjoy the journey.
  4. Ability to handle and use criticism
  • #TorgStories #We are Richmond @tedlasso tweeting

Thank you for checking out this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!

The Basketball Season Ends, Post-Game Process, and A Coach’s Exhaustion

I coach a high school girls basketball team in North Carolina. Our season ended last Friday and when that happens, at least for me, there’s a feeling of not knowing if I could make it through another season. Maybe it’s like finishing a marathon and then being asked as you cross the finish line, “Do you want to do that again?” In this episode, my sister Anne talks me through the end of the basketball season.

The Notes below guided my discussion with my sister Anne about the end of the basketball season:

Big Picture the End of the Season:

  1. The players enjoyed each other; I can point to ways that each of them grew, and I believe the team played to its potential. These are big successes.
  2. The players wanted to make a return to the final four, and we believed we could win a state championship. We didn’t accomplish those things, but there is not a feeling of “we blew it.” for me. I think we all did everything we could. Making the final four has a lot to do with what teams are where in the brackets. We could beat the team that we lost to, but that team is really talented and played well on their home court in order to beat us.
  3. Our final record was 22-6. We won the regular season and conference tournament championships. It’s the fourth year in a row the team has won or shared the regular season title and the fourth year in a row the team won the conference tournament. The players on this team played well under pressure to accomplish these things again.
  4. We lost in the elite eight at Lake Norman to a team that’s 28-1. We led after the first quarter and we were down 43-40 at half. I thought the players were fearless in the big game and made lots of winning plays.

The Coach’s Exhaustion at the End of the Season:

  1. If we think of a season as an academic school year, there was a lot of loss and sadness in this year’s season. I’m not talking about winning or losing games: my oldest daughter went six hours away to college. Our dad broke his hip, there was a lot of care for him, and he eventually passed. Hurricane Helene hit the Boone, NC area where I live the day of dad’s funeral, and then there’s the end of this run with this group of players that has been so committed and successful.
  2. I think as these things happen in life, what I mostly do is briefly acknowledge them and then get back to work. Is this healthy? What’s going on with me that I might not be seeing?

The Post Game Process, especially during the conference and the playoffs. Games are usually on Tuesdays and Fridays. Here’s what I do after most games:

  1. Post the results of the game on a website called MaxPreps. Upload the game video to HUDL. Post the results to social media or re-share something that has already been posted that nicely summarizes the result.
  2. Open a new Google Doc and start taking notes on personnel. Who has made the most threes? What percentages does each player on the opponent’s team shoot? I’m preparing to watch video of the opponent and know a little bit about each player.
  3. I watch at least two videos of our opponent. I pull clips that will be used for my planning and some of which I will show to the team. Before each game, I’ve tried to get game video of the next opponent. That often involves videoing a television upstairs at our house with an iPad.
  4. Put together the game plan for the next game. This involves a lot of moving magnets around on a board imagining game situations and drawing diagrams on my iPad.
  5. At some point, the stats come back from HUDL. This is usually the next morning or later in the day. I watch all of our baskets and at least check to see if the assists seem right. Does every player’s point total match what is in the book? I down the file from HUDL and upload it to Max Preps. I type up a box score of the positive stats from the game and share it on social media.
  6. I type up the notebook pages for the following day that point out significant statistics. I create a player scouting report, keys to the game, and scripts for the players to read that go with video clips we will watch.
  7. I put together the next day’s practice plan. These are usually 5-7 pages with screen shots and/or diagrams. I wonder if any other coaches would even recognize what I use as a practice plan. I feel like it’s a pretty unusual way of working.
  8. I check social media almost everyday to see if there are posts that need to be shared. I post a game day post.
  9. This process repeats itself on most Tuesday and Friday nights. So Tuesday and Friday nights are often work sessions that last beyond 1AM. I share my process to think about the work I’ve created. Is it the right work? Is it the most efficient way to do the work?

Where I’m at as the season ends:

  1. My mind clamps down–it feels like a tight clenching–on the topic of our team and the teams we will play. So I don’t sleep well once the season gets going. I assume I have a lot of company on that front with other coaches and lots of other people with all kinds of jobs. I wake up and my mind is working on something to do with the team. I feel addicted to the work. It takes several weeks, maybe over a month, to break the addiction of the work.
  2. The season is over. There is the feeling every second of…I should be doing something. What should I be working on now?
  3. I’ve developed this process (notebooks, the way I plan practices, the way I scout, the way I do social media) that has created so much work. Maybe too much work? Is there a better way?
  4. What’s left undone: there are at least 75 pieces of mail sitting on the desk next to my desk at home. There’s a tree down in the yard that has been there for months. The culvert under the driveway is blocked. One of the garage doors doesn’t work. The truck isn’t running well. Mom’s car still has a messed up bumper. I have ignored these things during the season.

What’s left to do after the last game?

  1. Social media promotion for things like all conference and all district teams.
  2. Collecting and organizing gear. Overall equipment assessment including new uniforms.
  3. Hopefully designing a shirt to celebrate this team’s accomplishments.
  4. Attending an all star game in Wilmington.
  5. Planning and executing the awards banquet.
  6. Maybe in three weeks there is a break at the end of March that lasts something like 6 weeks. In mid May, it’s probably time to get ready for the June games and camp.

The above notes were talking points for my sister Anne and I on this episode of the Torg’s Stories Podcast. Thanks for checking it out!

Mars Hill University Coach Emry Tsitouris

Today’s guest on the Torg Stories Podcast is the new head coach at Mars Hill University, Coach Emry Tsitouris. Mars Hill is located just north of Asheville, North Carolina and competes at the Division II level as a member of the South Atlantic Conference. Coach Tsitouris was hired in the spring of 2022 and was previously an assistant coach at Catawba College. Tsitouris played college basketball at both USC Aiken and Belmont Abbey.

Audio File Above of Conversation with Coach Emry Tsitouris

You can also access this episode through the podcast app of an iPhone. Just search for Torg Stories.

YouTube video edition of the episode:

Here are some topics covered in the episode:

  • The story of Coach hearing about, applying for, and eventually accepting the position as head coach at Mars Hill.
  • Some of the first things she did on the job.
  • So, where is Mars Hill? What’s it like there?
  • How has the roster changed since you took the job?
  • What are you looking for when it comes to a Mars Hill player?
  • What was with the combine portion of your elite camp?
  • How would you describe your preferred style of play?
Coach Tsitouris is center in her long sleeve “Mars Hill Lions” shirt

You can reach Coach Tsitouris on Twitter @Emry_T.

Connect with me on Twitter @BillTorg.

Thanks for checking out this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!

5 Lemov Inspired Questions for Coaches

Coaches, I’ve come up with 5 Lemov inspired questions for you that I hope will start a conversation among us.

Doug Lemov’s book The Coach’s Guide to Teaching was probably one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read about coaching. There’s a lot in the book that I want to immediately apply to the way I coach basketball.

I read the book on my Kindle and highlighted or took a note on over 200 passages in the book. I read through those and typed up seven pages of reflections in a Google Doc. Now, in hopes of facilitating some conversation with you all, I’ve come up with some questions for discussion. I’d also love to hear from you in the comments section about some of what you found most interesting in the book.

Lemov often references videos in his book of coaches and teachers practicing their craft. Those videos are helpfully collected here.

In what I write below, I will often use a phrase such as “Lemov argues,” when what he actually does is quote a lot of teachers and coaches he’s talked to. He also takes the time to situate the idea within scholarship on teaching and how the brain works. For this post, I just say “Lemov” instead of all of the different coaches he quotes.

So, here are the questions I’ve come up with for you that I hope will spark some conversation among us:

  1. What’s your feedback like for players? Is it all over the place? Too much of it? Lemov suggests we focus our feedback and keep it short.
    • Let’s say I’m using a 4v4v4 drill because I want players to make better decisions in our screen and roll action. Specifically, I ask players to watch the roll player (players are often looking at the floor) and to watch to see where the help defenders are positioned. In the past, it would be my tendency to stop play and offer feedback on any number of things I see that I’d like for us to do better including footwork on a catch or the way a defender closes out a shooter. I’ve also been the head coach who wraps up a drill by asking all of the coaches if they’ve got any feedback. Lemov suggests this is too much information to be retained and that feedback should be focused on one area of play.
  2. What are your best drills or games for practice? Lemov suggests we choose core games that can be adapted for emphasis. By modifying restrictions during a game or drill, we can change the emphasis of the drill.
    • I’ve wasted time teaching players a lot of different drills and games. I’ve done this, in part, because I’m always learning activities that I’d like to try, and I believe that using a variety of ways of working on the same concept can help to keep players engaged. What I hope to do instead of teaching players lots of new games is to identify some core games and drills that I use again and again. When I encounter a new drill or game, I need to consider if the time it will take to teach it is worth adding it to practice.
    • So as a basketball coach, what do I mean play with restrictions? An example of a core game that many coaches use is a three-quarter court game that could be run with teams ranging from 3v3 to 5v5. I know when I used to watch Knight’s Indiana teams practice, huge sections of practice were devoted to 4v4v4 done three -quarter court. Let’s say I want to work on screening, and so I say that the offense has to either get a lay up or hit the screener two times before they can shoot. We will always take a lay up if we can get it no matter the restriction. We can play the game make it take it, or we can play the game to stops. We can give an extra point for an offensive rebound, but as we add these restrictions, Lemov suggests that we don’t over complicate the scoring system. Just one restriction for what we most need to teach at this point in the players development. By not having to learn a new game, the players can devote all of their attention (working memory) to the concept we want them to learn.
Appalachian State players talk to campers during a stoppage in play. That’s my kid #85

3. How are you managing / coaching play stoppages? Do you stop practice the right amount? For what reason do you stop? What do you say when you stop practice?

One thing that Lemov suggests that I haven’t done is to use the same word every time to stop and then resume play in practice. That might be “freeze” or “pause” or maybe two whistles. Next, I need to coach the players up that we need them to stop moving so that the situation I stopped practice for can quickly be recreated. What I say needs to be very short, probably less than 45 seconds and then I need to give the players a chance to do what I just talked about. The word to resume play also needs to be the same. Maybe it’s, “Let’s play.”

4.Are you individualizing player development?

Lemov suggests that we have at least one thing for each player we are trying to improve. We’d meet with the player to decide on this one thing. We’d develop a plan for improving the one thing. We’d meet regularly to see if we are “moving the needle” on the one thing. In basketball, we get a lot of reps on something we call a stride stop. For some of our players, this is a very new concept. Others have done hundreds of stride stop. As a classroom teacher, we call this differentiating instruction. Lemov suggests that we consider what each player needs when it comes to skill development.

5. How far in advance do you plan what you will teach to your team? Are you always scrambling to get the next practice plan finished? Have you organized your team (in my case basketball) curriculum?

Lemov suggests that we list the concepts we need to teach our team and then prioritize them. The books suggests students probably need three days of instruction to understand a concept such as something like attacking 2-3 zones or trapping in our man to man defense. After we’ve got a concept in such as attacking odd-front zones, we need to circle back once in awhile to make sure our players retain the concept. Remember that last second cramming we might have done as a student before a big test? That’s not good for our teams. Obviously, there’s probably more that we want to teach our players than we can even get done in an entire season. So by listing all that we want to teach, prioritizing what we will teach when, and then looking at what we can fit into our scheduled practices, we can make more educated decisions on how to spend our practice time.

To wrap up…

I see my questions and commentary above as just an opening to a conversation about Lemov’s thought-provoking book on teaching and coaching. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section about what you are most excited to take from this book to your coaching pedagogy.

Thanks for taking the time to read the post!