Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

GATHER YE NUTS WHILE YOU MAY (while you are?)

Today we did a whole lot of scrimmaging. It had ugly, rugby scrum moments. I hate the ball and stick bludgeoning, and when everything that was in motion seems frozen, including the ball, which often appears to be glued to the ground at those moments. I love it when someone brings a body slam into the crowded picture, though, which will either cause instant change or a whistle. Either is fine with me. I do not like stalemate.

It (scrimmage today) had beautiful moments as well, almost to the point where I want to spend much of the rest of the fall (4 weeks) scrimmaging. My hope is that we can have lots of quality game simulations with the kind of intensity that filled the air today instead of the lightning and thunder that hovered yesterday. I think we are ready to really begin to come together on the field.

I have spent much of this fall ball hurling lightning bolts at them, trying to "put in" everything, including a little offense, the deified defenses, clears, rides, and more. We are having fun, but this is not to be confused with "Country Club" Fall Ball. I have put in new things constantly, almost to distraction, and this ain’t no NFL mini camp. We work on our interpretation of the art of team defense daily. We want expanded capabilities. Partly we want to show our offense every kind of defense they might possibly see, and then to a large extent we feel like we need to constantly evolve on defense, lest we find ourselves chasing the pack and no longer leading it.

By scrimmaging a lot now, we will be able to assimilate this information and find out what works and who as well as what best fit where. We can refine and test many things, because we have more material to work with than we generally have had at this point. Usually Fall Ball unfolds quite differently from this year. It is often more like a predetermined, pre-scripted progression that always has its crescendo in Las Vegas. We will still dare to go to Sin City for three days, but I am letting this team’s "needs" take us where it will go up until then. In spite of how schizzed out I have been about it all lately, I like where we are right now as an emerging team. Las Vegas this year will just be one more dotted line on the highway that will hopefully connect us to the springtime.

HOW DO YOU GET TO CARNEGIE HALL?, asked the one man.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, said the other.

Okay, I’ve used this one before, but I think it was a long time ago. It is an old, old joke that my daddy used to tell, and it probably is not amusing to anyone outside of New York City, but that’s okay. Anyway, PRACTICE is my mantra right now. I know that sounds vague for a mantra, but then I always tended to float a little outside of that famous "bubble". I have always been a strong believer in the axioms that say you play the same way you practice. For some reason I believe the answer for this team is to be found in practice, and in an even-more-important-than-usual way.

Last year I felt going in that we oozed talent. I thought that the best approach for that team was constant challenge and lots of games. We would take on all comers, and we did, 26 of them. The rigorous schedule might have overdone the season, but I did what I felt was the right thing for that group. This year it will be different. Whether I like it or I don’t, it will be a puzzle project that we must assemble as the year goes on. There are so many new pieces. They must be carefully placed and fitted. Hell, we still don’t even have a schedule for 2005 season. In spite of that, there is one trip that I (we) are definitely planning on taking, and that would be the one to a place we have never been, Blaine, Minnesota.

UNDER PRESSURE

I have always, and at any level I have coached, tried to put as much or more pressure on them in practice than they will mostly ever feel during games. I want games to feel easy for them at times, and compared to the effort they must put into pleasing me in practice.

I want me to focus totally on the whole practice and how it can relate to the big picture. I want the scrimmage part of practice to be as close to a REAL game as we can get it. Other than technique guidance, I do not want to get too caught up with individual momentary performance. It is how the team performs consistently, and over the long haul that will make the difference.

MIDTERMS

I am obsessing over finding team energy right now, and trying to encourage it wherever it appears. Today was good.

Yes, it is true, we are not as talented as we were in the "reload" years, but I am impressed with the brashness I see in so many of our new faces. Sooner or later we will be just fine.

We have virtually ignored Extra Man/ Man Down this fall, and that is unusual for me, but we have done a ton of 6 on 4 in preparation for universal understanding of how to play team defense in outnumbered situations. You could say that we have poured the foundation for Man Down Defense. Extra Man Offense is something that I have just been putting off, and we’ll see if that hurts us later on. Last year it was pretty much just a source of irritation for me anyway, so perhaps I am just waiting until it feels right. For right now, two hours is enough practice time for one day.

If they want to use extra time well in the fall while it is warm, it should be spent doing stuff oriented toward personal goals to my way of thinking. I wish each one would take a sliver of fall ball and use a little bit of that time of the year to work on bringing something new to their game, just one small, individual thing. Then, my hope is that they would then take the more or less three months of time that we will not have come November, and do as much to stay, work, and play together as they possibly can. It’s a lot for a coach to ask for all at once, but Boy’s got to have a dream.

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