Get the ball inside! (playing aggressively to obtain foul shots in basketball)

Basketball coaches constantly exhort their players to "Get the ball inside!" and "Go to the foul line!" Teams that can do these things regularly are going to frustrate their opponents and win a lot of games.

At Southeastern Regional last season, we used these cardinal principles to minimize our weaknesses and produce one of the most memorable years in school history.

Though losing our top returning player for the season, lacking a true "go to" star, possessing little size, and being just an average defensive rebounding team, we still managed to post a 16-7 record and advance to the state sectional championship game.

Perhaps our most telling statistic was averaging six free-throws more per game than our opponents. Though we were not outstanding foul-shooters - we averaged slightly less than 60% - we went 15-1 for the games in which we shot more free throws than our opponents and just 1-5 for the times we shot fewer free throws.

From our opening game, we had our players strive to get the ball inside to a low-post and to play aggressively for foul shots. We allowed all of our players, even the guards, to flash into the low-post and geared all of our offenses, including our zone attack, to produce good shots in the lane area and draw fouls.

With this kind of approach, we had to devote considerable practice time to improving our low-post moves, executing the proper entry passes, playing physically, going to the hoop aggressively, and naturally, foul shooting.

As the season progressed, we made the following discoveries: