GUARD AND POINT GUARD PLAY
Running a team is a skill, and it can be drilled.
Guards are asked to handle pressure, read a ball screen, control pace and keep four teammates organized. Most players are never taught any of it directly. Alex teaches it as its own skill, with repetitions.
01 / WHAT IT IS
What does point guard training include?
It covers the parts of the position that are not just dribbling: handling full court pressure, reading a ball screen, changing pace on purpose, entering the offense on time and knowing which teammate should get the ball. Each of those is broken into drill work rather than left to instinct.
Start with pressure, because a guard who cannot get the ball across half court cannot do anything else. Alex picks you up full court, traps you, and makes you handle a real double team. The skill is not escaping every time. It is knowing before the trap arrives where the release is, and getting the ball there before you are stuck.
Then ball screens, which is where most possessions in a high school game are decided. How the defense guards the screen tells you what to do: over, under, hedge or switch, each one has a correct answer. Alex drills the read itself, not just the dribble, so the answer comes fast enough to matter.
Pace comes last and is the hardest to teach. Good guards are not always fast. They are fast when it helps and slow when it hurts, and they know which one the situation calls for. That is trained by putting a player in the same situation many times, with a defender, and making them choose. Kentucky has no basketball class system, so a small school guard can face a much bigger program in the Sweet 16 with no separate bracket to hide in. The guard usually decides how that goes.
02 / INSIDE A SESSION
What guard sessions cover
- 01
Getting the ball across the line
Full court pressure, traps and live ball defense with nowhere easy to go. The answer is usually made before the trap, by knowing where the release already is.
- 02
Reading the ball screen
Over, under, hedge and switch each demand a different answer, drilled until the read is instant. The dribble is the easy half of a ball screen.
- 03
Changing pace on purpose
Fast when it helps, slow when it hurts, and knowing which the possession needs. Trained by repeating the same situation with a defender until the choice becomes automatic.
- 04
Organizing the other four
Where the ball should go, who is open next and how to get an offense started on time. A guard's voice and timing are trainable, not personality traits.
04 / WHAT CHANGES
Why guard decisions carry so much weight
Kentucky has no basketball class system. Every school plays one state tournament, so small programs meet large ones with no separate bracket.
Kentucky high school format. NKY splits across the 9th and 10th Regions.
Share of high school boys basketball players who reach NCAA Division I. Division II is 1.1% and Division III is 1.5%.
Alex has coached middle school, high school and college guards on the men's and women's side, and played three years in college as a captain.
Coaching background.
Local programs guards here come from include Covington Catholic, Highlands, Newport, Holy Cross, Newport Central Catholic, Beechwood, Bellevue, Dayton, Holmes, Cooper, Ryle, Conner, Simon Kenton, Scott and Campbell County.
06 / Questions
What people ask about this
My son is short. Can he still play guard in high school?
Size limits some things and not others. A smaller guard has to be faster in the head, better with both hands and more reliable under pressure than the player across from him, and all three of those are trainable. Alex builds the plan around the body a player actually has rather than the one a drill video assumes.
Can a shooting guard do this training?
Yes, and it is common. Plenty of players are asked to handle the point in a game or two, or move to it entirely when a team loses a senior. The pressure work, the ball screen reads and the pace work all apply to any guard who touches the ball, not just to a listed point guard.
Will this conflict with what my high school coach teaches?
It should not, because Alex trains reads rather than a system. Your coach owns the offense and the terminology, and Alex will not tell a player to ignore them. If there is a genuine conflict, the team's coach wins. A player who follows a trainer over their coach loses minutes, and minutes are what actually develop players.
Is AAU enough for guard development?
AAU shows what a player already has, it does not build it. Games and showcases are a display, and skill only comes from repetition and drill work done away from them. Playing is worth doing. Just do not expect a summer of games to teach a guard how to read a hedge, because nothing in that format ever slows down enough to teach it.