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The Toughest Score in Sports

By Aim High Hoops

Recently I saw some fantastic high school basketball. Hononegah hosted their yearly Martin Luther King tournament all day Saturday and Monday. Division I talent was everywhere in sight, including seniors Jordan Treloff (Illinois State) from DeKalb HS, Dwayne Evans (St. Louis) from Neuqua Valley HS and Lenzelle Smith (Ohio State) from Zion-Benton HS. There were numerous other players from the 8 teams that will certainly be playing competitive college basketball after high school.

Nearly all match-ups were competitive. Every game was filled with highlights: great defense, passing, dunking, and shooting. The shooting was amazing! A number of the players I saw were making 3-point shots like they were lay-ups. Just like with any skill in any sport, the great players can make it look easy. Occasionally for players, it is rather easy. Just ask a good player in any sport about a time he or she was in “the zone”, when the hoop is bigger, the fastball slower, the fairway wider, etc.

That brings me to the article title. OF COURSE I can’t win this point with everyone, but I might as well give it a try by propping up my bias and playing devil’s advocate with the rest in addressing this question: what’s the toughest sport to score in?

Some say hitting a baseball, because it’s a moving object. Hitting a golf ball square is definitely a challenge because the need for angles to be so exact. What about scoring a goal in soccer….or hockey? Both of those seem kind of tough, proven by the fact that scores are always so low in both of those sports. In football there are numerous things that need to go right on every play to even gain a few yards.

A few things to consider regarding the other sports: 1) In golf and baseball a player gets time to set themselves before hitting. 2) A part of the reason hockey & soccer goals are so tough is the role of the goalie, who just stands in front of the goal trying to stop scores! 3) How about the size proportion of the game piece when it comes to the goal…in baseball? An average baseball field is close to 100,000 sq. ft of fair territory, covered by 9 players. Do the math! In hockey or soccer? How many pucks or soccer balls fit into those nets? Some big targets there proportionally! In golf, the proportion is smaller there is, however, no defense to contend with. With football, a ball just has to cross a line, etc.

Under no circumstances am I saying that scoring in other sports is easy; they are all difficult. But which sport presents the most difficult environment in which to score? Let’s consider the job a good jump shooter in basketball has.

Imagine having a goalie in basketball, just like in hockey and soccer, who stands directly in front of the goal the entire game. It might be a different kind of sport, wouldn’t it?

Handling the proportion of ball to goal aspect, two basketballs can fit through a hoop, which means basketball players try to score in a goal that is ONLY twice the size of the game object, a far smaller proportion than the other sports I said, and they do so with only split-second opportunities, on the move, while getting harassed by pesky defenders throughout the whole process!

Well, regardless of if you agree with me or not, successful offense in any sport is tough for numerous reasons. Even “the best” in their sports fail in more than 50% of their scoring attempts….but still make it look easy when they do get it right!

Keep coming back to visit. We want to enable you to make it look easy too.

Billy Lewis & Jonathan Schneiderman

Aim High Hoops, Inc.

Aim High Hoops vs. the competition

By Aim High Hoops

Many companies have instructional basketball videos to offer which is where customer relations begin and end. A lot of these online companies serve only as the distribution channel between production and sale, and they have no other horse in the race besides making sales. Whether you are content with your product, or understand the content…or apply the teaching correctly is….well….immaterial. In any of those situations, there isn’t much that you can do to feel better about your product.

I point this out so that you can put what we want to do in context.

Picture this: Buying an instructional video on shooting a basketball, maybe for you, your son or daughter, etc, and having an online resource center available to help measure your (or your son’s, or daughter’s) individual shooting progress. Taking it a measure further, how about some personalized feedback on your shooting?

Consider our basketball instruction as a curriculum in a school. Our videos are the classroom lessons. When a student enters middle school or high school, he or she is placed in various classes depending on the level of readiness. This same concept applies with the videos we offer, as I have previously mentioned. Beginning players start with a focus on the basic foundations of shooting and ball-handling, while more advanced players may benefit from a quick overview of certain basic fundamentals before moving on to the more advanced concepts.

Great educators don’t just teach during the 45 or 50 minutes of class, exactly like our job doesn’t conclude when you buy one of our videos. A former teaching colleague of mine, a math professor, used to make his students keep an eye on all their grades to be able to measure their progress and figure out their grades. Our online resources will allow you to do the same thing, by measuring your own individual shooting and ball-handling progress with easy-to-understand benchmarks.

Very good teaching also means spending time with individual students outside of class, to identify academic strengths and weaknesses and then work towards advancement in all areas in order to improve overall performance. We would like ALL of our customers to realize highest performance levels and to help achieve that, working individually with customers on skill development is PRECISELY what we are offering. We intend on creating a scenario in which we at Aim High Hoops are available to provide “personal tutoring” to customers that think they need it and/or just want it.

We’ll be writing more on this soon.

Billy Lewis & Jonathan Schneiderman

Aim High Hoops, Inc.

Videos overview

By Aim High Hoops

By June 2010, we are expecting to have the very first of three instructional videos available. There isn’t a much better feeling in sports than shooting a basketball, and that is where we are going to start. The first video is dedicated to the correct mechanics of shooting a basketball. We also plan on discussing effective ways to make those mechanics become second nature through proper conditioning.

Listen closely next time you are watching a great shooter on television. The announcers usually have some excellent insight as to the differences between good and good shooters. Take Jon Scheyer from Duke, for example. In a game against Iowa State, a game in which Scheyer had a tremendous game shooting the ball, the announcers brought up how he shot the ball “the same way every time.”

Why is that so important? In basketball, you’ll find only so many things a player can control. On a jump shot, a shooter can do everything right (that is the key!) but the ball still may not go in. We as shooters cannot control final results of all our shots, but we can control how we develop, improve, and maintain proper shooting mechanics, and we can make certain that the correct mechanics are used as often as possible in game situations by repeating those mechanics in practice situations. Most importantly, with consistent shooting mechanics, a player improves his or her chances of making more shots in games.

Our second video will be about ball-handling and dribbling. Just like with our first shooting video, both beginners and experienced players will benefit from the information, and here is why:

Most ball-handling videos have great drills and workout routines to share. The creativity that goes into these drills is spectacular, and a few of the things people are doing out there will blow you away. However, what is missing in a lot of cases is the connection to the real game. Players are not told how to use their newfound ball-handling and dribbling skills to influence the game in the very best ways possible.

Our aim of this second video is to present the entire picture to our viewers. We not only will explain to you how to become a good dribbler and ball-handler, but we will then take it to the next level and show you how to impact games on the offensive end.

Our third video in this introductory series will focus again on shooting, but our focus is not as much on the proper shooting mechanics discussed in the very first video. Rather, we will be discussing how players can create shots on their own.

At the high school level, players that can create high-percentage shots when guarded in many cases are times the best players on their teams and among the best in their leagues. Jonathan has a great quote on this subject that his colleague and fellow coach, Jeff Jahn, told him: “If you are open it is because either you are no good or the person guarding you is no good.” Look at that. If you plan on being a good shooter and/or scorer, plan on being guarded by good defenders. It’s important to learn how to create shots even when you’re not open.

I went to a clinic back in 2005 and Bruce Weber, the current head coach for the University of Illinois men’s basketball team, was the leading presenter. This was in September of the year they lost to the University of North Carolina in the national championship game. He was referring to his philosophy on offense and why he ran a freelance motion offense that emphasized offensive creativity versus many set plays. He said: “When you are in the state championship game, your plays and players are scouted well. Defenses have learned to guard your plays. So, when it comes down the final minute of the championship game, would you rather have two really good plays or two really good players?”

Coach Weber of course is in a situation that he can recruit those good players, where at the high school level coaches most time need to play the cards they are dealt! However, Coach makes a good point. When plays do stop working or are guarded well, coaches want (need!) players that could create offense on their own. The ability to create shots for oneself often leads to scoring opportunities for other players on the floor as well, since defenses have to focus so much on stopping the main offensive threats.

Creating shots may sound like a very advanced concept, but it is one thing developing players can start thinking about early on. It worked for me personally. I started focusing on “creating” various kinds of shots back when I was 12 years old, however wasn’t until I was 16, because I was big and strong enough, that it really started paying off, and to be able to create shots helped me have the ability to compete at the high school varsity level and in college.  Same thing with Jonathan: you will soon see that he has a tremendous ability to shoot the basketball, but that alone wasn’t why he was able to compete at the Division I level. He needed to be able to create offensive opportunities for himself, and his work on that started early.

More forthcoming. Stay in touch!

Billy Lewis & Jonathan Schneiderman

Aim High Hoops, Inc.

Aim High Hoops Welcome

By Aim High Hoops

Our wives inform us we’re getting too (28 years!) old to be running around playing basketball with these youngsters. Simply because it takes a couple of hours to warm-up and three days to get over playing?! Come on!!!!!

Well, the truth is that while our official playing days are no longer, neither of us is ever far from a game. 1999 high school graduates from northern Illinois, Jonathan (Forreston HS) and I (Hononegah HS) went on to play four years of college basketball: Jonathan at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where he helped lead them to a 2002 NCAA Division I Tournament berth, and myself at Rockford College, where we were fortunate enough to make the Division III NCAA Tournament for the first and still only time in school history in 2003.

It wasn’t till 2005 that we actually first crossed paths, and it wasn’t as players, but as coaches. Jonathan was hired that spring to teach and be the head coach of the boys’ basketball program at his native Forreston High School. His first year at the helm, the Cardinals advanced to the Super-Sectional game for the Class A State Tournament, finishing just one single step shy of the Elite 8 and State Tournament appearance in Peoria.

I took a similar position in the summer of 2005 as teacher and head boys’ coach at Stillman Valley High School, where I remained at for three years before moving up to my alma mater. It is currently my second year as a teacher at Hononegah and assistant coach with the boys’ basketball program, and being back has been great. The success has reached new levels since I graduated ten years ago and so the expectations keep growing. My senior year team won 24 games, one win shy from the school record. Since then, five Hononegah teams have won 25 games or more. Hopefully that first Sectional Title is right around the corner!

We were both 23 years of age when we were hired to coach. What we had in common was minimal coaching experience, full basketball programs to lead, and a strong desire to realize the most effective ways to win, so we chatted occasionally about what each of us was doing to get our programs in shape.

It wasn’t until summer 2009 that this concept of Aim High Hoops was born. As early as 2006 I was contemplating producing training basketball videos but struggled to find the appropriate way to get it done. Jonathan had also thought off and on about producing an instructional video, basing his ideas on the skill development work he has done for years with individual players and small groups in the off-season. We started sharing ideas, and after quite a few rounds of golf and a few dozen cheesy bratwursts, we had our business concept.

Under the name of Aim High Hoops, we are going to create instructional basketball products for players, parents, and coaches. The instructional tools available will be organized and presented in a logical, easy-to-understand manner. We have something to offer beginning players, in addition to more advanced players looking to take their skills and knowledge of the game to the next level. One of our main goals is to make your time with us a personal one through our online basketball community.

We will enjoy sharing more as we move ahead, so thanks for stopping by and check back often!

Billy Lewis & Jonathan Schneiderman

Aim High Hoops, Inc.