Tara VanDerveer: Getting Great by Mastering the Basics - Practice Organization & Skill Development

with Tara VanDerveer,
Stanford University Head Women's Coach from 1985 to 2024;
1,216 wins (when retiring, was #1 all-time men's/women's coach in wins, #1 All-time in wins);
2021 NCAA National Champions;
3x NCAA Championship Coach (1990, 1992, 2021);
5x National Coach of the Year;
11x Pac-10/12 Coach of the Year;
13x Final Four;
2x NCAA National Championship Runner-up;
1996 US Women's Olympic Team Head Coach (Gold Medal);
distinguished member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2011);
John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award (2014);
Women's Basketball Hall of Fame (2002);
Women's Sports Foundation International Women's Sports Hall of Fame (1998);
WBCA's Carol Eckman Award (2018);
Ohio State Head Coach from 1980 to 1985;
4x Big Ten Regular Season Champions;
played college basketball at Albany and Indiana

Basketball Hall of Fame legend Tara VanDerveer provides proven methods for improving your practices in the seasons ahead in this excellent on-court video!

Practice Organization

The importance of preparation before the season begins is a crucial necessity in the steps for developing a winning basketball program the right way. Coach Tara VanDerveer reviews important steps to take in preparing her team before her team's first game of the season.

One major part of VanDerveer's success is that her teams have a great routine for every one of their practices. Every practice will work on situations and team play. However, the most important part of her practice is reinforcing and fine-tuning fundamentally-sound play.

Using individual and team drills, VanDerveer shows ways that teams can get better at the basics. These drills can be incorporated by teams at all skill levels. 

Coaches can develop their philosophy for practice and drills. According to Coach VanDerveer, it's not the drills that you do, it's how you do them. She puts an emphasis on her players being fundamentally sound before being able to move on to more complex concepts. 

All of VanDerveer's practices include the following segments:

• Dynamic Warm-Up
• Ball Handling
• Passing
• Lay-Ups
• Transition
• Defense
• Offense

Skill Development: Coach VanDerveer focuses on skill development and establishing routines to help improve the individual player and the team. She focuses on building a practice layout and then changing the practice options so there is some variability and flexibility within your practice.

She believes that the best way to do that is by building skill and having several different options that a coach and a player can use to develop these skills. She spends a good amount of time demonstrating individual and small group ball handling and passing drills. Coach VanDerveer stresses the importance of making good passes that simulate what you would see in a game. She also demonstrates shooting drills that can be done in small groups that simulate game speed shots and are competitive in nature.

Layups: Coach VanDerveer demonstrates several drills that focus on building on individual improvement and applying them to more half court and full court skills. She emphasizes that her teams have many drills that focus on passing and finishing layups. She has a variety of different finishes that she practices with the players on her team. She has a plethora of different drills that she uses to practice layups.

Transition: Coach VanDerveer demonstrates a few different transition drills that feature advantages/disadvantages for the offense and defense. She focuses on pushing the ball in transition and having awareness of open players and passing to put your teammates in the best positions to score. Her transition drills are fast-paced and involve continuous movement and motion and are competitive. 

This video is great for teams who are trying to develop individual skills and to enhance their practice organization. Coaches can learn multiple ways to incorporate and to implement basic skills and drills into their team practices. These skills can help to develop routines and you can spend a part of every practice building these basic foundations. Coaches can also see the importance of building and developing skill within their program and defining a coaching philosophy that can resonate with a team.  

Coach VanDerveer stresses the importance of defining a coaching philosophy and that in practice and in the locker room is where teams win games. 

All teams and coaches should be interested in this video. There are a lot of drills and individual/team improvement skills that you can benefit from. Coach VanDerveer does a very nice job communicating, explaining, and teaching the different drills she presents in this video. 

63 minutes.  2024.