The Countdown

A week from tomorrow begins the official first practice of the 2012-13 Season, and it has come fast! A few years ago the Women's Basketball Coaches Association pushed through legislation for women's basketball to start 40 days out of our first contest. Our reasoning was to transition our teams into the preseason with somewhat of a buildup after having roughly 8 hours a week of fall training. We are now allowed to have 30 practices during that window which gives coaches great flexibility on which days to take off. If you ask our players, they would say that change was awesome as semester schools have already had more than their share of preseason conditioning. Now we are a week out from our first official practice so I thought I would give a wrap up of our fall training. 1) Mental Training-If you have been following my blog you have seen we have targeted the Four C's as a point of emphasis in becoming a tougher team both mentally and physically. Now we will work on applying these concepts until they become habit. 2) Strength Training-As I'm sure you know, the game has gotten a lot more physical in recent years. One of our points of emphasis has to be for our squad to be a more PHYSICAL team. The weight room builds strength, expolosiveness, speed, quickness, and most importantly focuses on injury prevention to keep us on the court. 3) Speed & Agility-Our team would tell you that 11 seconds and 32 seconds enters their dreams (or nightmares!) because they have had plenty of Up Back sprints and "Champion" sprints to make. If you don't know what a Champion is it's a better term for "Suicide" sprint as we want to think of it as making us a Champion. Our strength coach has pushed them to their limits and it will pay off when we get to our high octane transition game this season. 4) Dictating Defense-Coach Starr ran our fall individual practice sessions and made a major point of emphasis on being a more aggressive and physical defensive team than last year. We may see double digit foul trouble in our first few games but the eventual payoffs will be transitioning off of the steals we get. 5) FOUL LINE, FOUL LINE-Yes, we want to and will be getting there this year. Last season we lit it up from 3 which I have no problem with but our mentality will be to get to the rack, first. Our fall emphasis has been our moves at the basket, whether off the dribble or the catch. So if you are in Bozeman on October 7th, enjoy the sunrise and come watch the Bobcats at 7AM. Yes, we start the day the right way... in the GYM, and will be working toward an exciting 2012-13 Season. This team is FAST & PHYSICAL, has depth and experience, so it's time to get the Fieldhouse rockin! Coach Bin