How Can I Improve Our Scouting Reports?

Q13- Our Coaching staff has evaluated that one of our areas in need of improvement is scouting. We are limited to only being able to scout our opponents once or twice. What are the key aspects to providing your team with a winning scouting report?

Coach Milligan
THSS British Columbia

Coach Milligan,

This is a question I was eager to answer having spent the better part of my early coaching years mostly on the road scouting games in preparation for the next game.

I believe the best way to scout is from game films, if you have seen a team physically before. The one thing that films won't necessarily show is the speed of players, their decision making in specific situations, and how a team responds to crowds, and tempo swings. These are subtle but important things to know. However if I have a choice I'll take a game film anytime, because I can play it back over and over and really break down what the other team is doing.

If you are scouting live, then be prepared. I've seen hundreds of coaches that walk into a game to scout with a note pad and nothing else. This doesn't mean you can't get a good report with a notepad, but I want my reports to be organized and very precise. There should be a page for each aspect of what you might get out of a game. I always had a prepared scouting form which included a place to write in the line-ups of the team being scouted with space to provide scouting details of each players strengths and weaknesses. The next set of pages included court boxes for their offensive sets versus man, zone, man and zone presses, and inbounds plays, pressbreaks, and special situation plays. The following pages included page with court boxes for their defensive sets, zone, man, match-up, special defenses, and presses. This keeps your notes organized and uses a system which can be easily located and filed. Over a period of several years I always kept a folder with scouting reports and game reports for each team we played or will play.

Get to the game early enough so that you can have the player numbers, line-ups, and individual players skill strengths scouted during warm-ups. This isn't always possible, but you can learn a lot about individual players through and their individual tendencies (e.g., no left hand dribble, or always turns one way in the post), by watching warm-ups. This leaves you time during the game to concentrate more on team tactics and strategies. This means every player get's some comments. I've seen lots of scouting reports where #44 is a great player and can do it all, but there are no notes on the other 7 or 8 players receiving considerable time.

Coaches probably approach their scouting reports in a variety of ways. I always concentrated during the game, on getting the opponents basic offenses, defenses, and tendencies (always enter their offense to the right side, use the press after free throws, press the last three minutes of each half, etc.) down on paper. The more experience you have, and the more familiar you are with your opponent the easier this becomes. It is also important to get half-time and post game stats from the host team. Most schools will cooperate if you are polite and introduce yourself.

Finally, during the game try to keep a good eye on their substitution patterns. Which players come in at what times, and how that affects their offenses and defenses. This also helps you to access what kind of depth a team has. This is important for deciding match-ups for your upcoming game.

Immediately after the game, don't rush out the door. Take a few quiet minutes to complete any notes or play diagrams you were unable to finish because of the speed of play. It will never be fresher in your mind. It was also at this time I normally made notes about player match-up's for our team. I believe having a good knowledge of the other teams offensive and defensive patterns, and knowing their personnel are the key to success in scouting. You want to be able to put your strengths against their weaknesses, and hide your own or at least minimize their exposure. In closing, I think scouting an opponent successfully involves all of these components which I have shared with you, but probably most important is experience and instinct about the opponents strengths and weaknesses.

Several years ago I was an assistant women's coach at Penn State for Rene Portland. I was sent to scout Pat Summit's team (ranked #1 in the US at the time) playing at Old Dominion. Tennessee was really loaded, skilled, intelligent, and played very hard. It seemed they did everything extremely well. I was looking for one critical point to expose them. It turns out in most cases a teams strength is their weakness. Tennessee was an extremely intelligent team that pressured extremely hard, anticipated well, and forced you out of your set offense consistently. I passed on to Coach Portland the idea of entering our offense a very different way, and with a different play nearly every single time down the floor. This is not necessarily a good practice, especially if your team has trouble running one offense. We had a very good team as well, and were very smart led by the talented All-American Suzie McConnell-Serio. As it turned out, because we kept entering a different offense every trip down the floor, Tennessee had a lot of difficulty keeping pressure on us (which was normally how they got on top of you by turnovers and fastbreaks), and we were able to take a 8 point lead into halftime and hold on to upset the best team in the country. These kinds of observations are through experience and feel, but the best scouts find the Achilles heel of their opponents.

It takes a lot of effort to put together effective scouting reports, but I know of no team that has succeeded at a high level that doesn't do a great job of scouting their opponents. It is a must. Last don't forget to call other coaches who's teams have played them. You might have scouted a team that played zone only because the opponent was a poor shooting team. Make sure you know all of the offenses and defenses that an opponent can play. When your scouting reports are complete sit with your coaching staff and decide how much of the information to give to your team. Some teams can handle a lot of information, others it just causes confusion. In general I use the scouting reports to give my teams general information about what to expect and how we will counter an offense or defense. In terms of individual tendencies, I usually just that information with players relative to their positions, unless there is a great player which requires special defenses (e.g., doubling, or rotating).
Your question is a very important one for coaches to read and I'm glad you Asked The Coach.