Question regarding basketball

[obbay]

DD is a good athlete but is not one of the popular kids in school. She is on a travel BB team for the third year. The kids won't pass to her. Of the 12 kids, 2 have earned their place as the two best players on the team and the rest hover around the same talent level. DD has several kids playing over her who aren't as good and then when she does play she doesn't get passed to.

She has one more year (8th grade) and then she's in high school.

Any recommendations on how to handle this?

I am going to call the coach just to let him know and leave it to him. I also need to talk to him about one of the assistant coaches yelling at her in a game (parents could hear it across the court) for not "staying on her feet " when she was knocked over by bigger girls.

 

[chinamigarden]

A bb coach who allows a player to be excluded on offense by teammates is not much of a coach. Get her off this team if its as you say the coaches aren't going to help. They should already have fixed this.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

High school may be different for her. We went from a small cliquish town to a large 4A school in a different city and my DD was suddenly a major contributor.

Cliques should not exist on a team. It is terrible that the coach lets girls get by with that.

 

[JAD]

How good of an offensive player is your DD? What type of offense is her team running? What is her responsibilities in the offense? What does your DD do when she does get the ball? Can she dribble with her head up? Can she make good passes? Does she turn the ball over more than she does something positive?

If there are two girls on your DD team who are significantly better players than your DD, the offensive strategy is probably to get the ball into their hands. Travel BB is "play to win". Did Dennis Rodman complain when Michael Jordan did not pass him the ball?.....NO, he set picks, got rebounds, and got after it on defense!

A lot of basketball coaches are very vocal during the game, and it usually is "constructive criticism" trying to get the players to do their job or make corrections. Unless you feel that the AC is only being critical of your DD, my best advice would be to keep quite.

 

[GunnerShotgun]

I can't imagine any coach wants to play 4 on 5, that severely limits you offensively. Other teams are smart in that if you aren't passing it to a certain player they aren't going to guard that person. This allows the other team to double team another player and now you are playing 3 on 5 offensively.

If my point guard isn't hitting girls that are open she hears about it immediately from me. It's more in the line of, "Hey so and so was open and you missed her. Keep your head up".

 

[obbay]

Thank you for the responses. You've confirmed that its not just me.
JAD FWIW, DD is decent shooter, is in the top 3 for executing lay ups, is probably the best passer. She doesn't get a lot of playing time and typically gets two to three shots off in a game and hits 50-70%. She has had an assistant coach ream her in a practice for taking a shot when she had it. He made a big deal of her not being a team player, etc
The high scorers typically hit less than 50% she gets open and you see the girl with the ball looking for someone else. They frequently turn over rather than pass it to her.

Again, thanks for the advice!

 

[InsidePitch]

We have a pt guard that doesn't like to pass to DD even though DD leads in Assists and is in the top 2 or 3 in scoring. It's a soccer thing from what I can tell. I just say, geez the pt guard is good but she'd be great if she could find the open girl more. You see it's not just DD that she overlooks.

In your case are there any other kids that don't get the ball regularly? Also, if your kid is a post player tell her to get the rebounds and go back up for he follow up. It's often much easier to make those due to proximity to the rim.

 

[obbay]

IP- funny you should mention soccer! Travel soccer is the bane of all softball coaches in my area!
BTW- on her travel soccer team they don't pass to her either!

I remembered that she has had two coaches in recent years that basically ordered the players to pass to her. It worked out well for both of those teams

 

[quincy]

Have you asked any other parents on the Team what thier opinion is? You need to be careful but sometimes this provides some insite.

 

[Cannonball]

I'll save you my dd's horror story on ms bb. It was about as bad as it gets. If she loves the game, go support her. Sit in the stands, root for the team and be there for her when the game gets over. When dd got in to HS, varsity coach asked her to come out every year but she would not. For a student activity at a pep rally, dd was called out of stands to shoot against one of the boys bb players in a 3 pt. shooting contest. It was not a contest.