Youth Basketball Warmup Drills: Shell Drill

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Sean Hobson. What we want to work on right now is our man-to-man defense. And what we're really concentrating on is working on our help-side defense. This drill is called the "shell drill". And what we do here is, normally we'll have a defensive player assigned to each of these positions. But for todays practice purposes, what we're going to do is, we're going to use one defender and show you how you use each position. What we're working on right now is, if the ball were in a game setting and the ball would go to the corner, this defensive man's main assignment is the ball right now. So the first thing he's going to do in the shell drill is he's going to play up the ball. Now one important thing, too, on defense, is that you talk through the defense. So right now he's saying, "Ball, ball, ball, ball, ball!", because he's on the ball, ok? So the first thing is we got man on man, because he's on the ball. Now as the pass is made, one pass away, Hunter then is going to go into a defensive mode to deflect the pass away from the wing. So he's going to be in "deny" right now. He's going to be yelling, "Deny, deny, deny!" Now as the ball moves to the top, he's no longer concerned about his man, or that his man is getting the one pass back. Now what he's going to do is, he's going to drop on to help side. One important thing he's got to make sure and do is, he's got to be able to see the basketball and his man, so that his man, if he's concentrating on the basketball, his man can go behind him on a back door cut. So he's got to be concerned with the ball. Now as the ball continues to move, then Hunter's going to drop farther over. It's ok if our defensive guy gets all the way over to the middle of the court, because if this guy skips the ball--go ahead and skip it back--he can recover out there quickly and get back on it. So you want to make sure that it's "Ball, ball, ball, ball, ball!" Then you're in deny, one pass away. Then when you go to help side, you're in "Help, help, help!" all the way. And this is called the shell drill, for each player on the floor to be working on their defensive positions."