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Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Basketball: In Group Projects, Are Players Pulling Their Weight?

Coaches have many tasks, including as 'judges'. In The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch, dying of cancer, explains some of his methods. In group projects, peer feedback explicitly told students where they stood. 

Here are the three questions they graded each other on: 

1) Did his peers think he was working hard? Exactly how many hours did his peers think he had devoted to a project?

2) How creative was his contribution?

3) Did his peers find it easy or hard to work with him? Was he a team player? 

Pausch hoped the feedback would make students more accountable to the projects. He wrote, "Wow, I've got to take it up a notch."

One smart but arrogant student was told he ranked in the bottom quartile. He was not moved. Professor Pausch told him, "out of 50 students, you are number 50. You have a serious issue. They say you're not listening. You're hard to get along with. It's not going well." 

Teams don't regret losing the bad teammate, the lazy guy, the uncommitted player. You know the expression, "don't let the door..."

Part of being great teammates is modeling excellence and holding each other accountable to hard work. 

The old saying goes, "be easy to play with and hard to play against." On defense that means pressuring the ball, denying penetration, and shrinking space. On offense that means helping teammates with spacing, screening, player and ball movement. 

Lagniappe. Footwork and separation. 

Lagniappe 2. Less dribbling demands player and ball movement.  

Lagniappe 3.  What are good shots for your program? 

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