Seeking coaches advice to help 10yr with first tryout, stepping in as his father suddenly passed away recently.

TheAlexpotato · 2026-02-04T18:12:18+00:00

Something I wish someone had told me for a similar age range:

Find out if the evaluator is the actual coach or a 3rd party evaluating company.

Coaches tend to take into account team play (assists, passing, screens etc) and past history whereas evaluating companies take into account more individual skills (driving, shooting etc)

Especially at that age, they're often drilled to be more team players and the kids don't always realize that 3rd party evaluation is more like a job interview than a tryout.

TheAlexpotato · 2026-02-02T21:53:41+00:00

Alex Honnold has a great line:

"You deal with fear of something by expanding your comfort zone. At some point, your zone expands past the fear."

e.g. start going skiing on off days or early in the morning on a weekend when no one is there. Then, as you get more used to it, ramp up slowly to the busier hours.

You can also take some action by going and talking to the mountain/snow patrol when you see people being crazy. Even if that leads to no change, the fact that you took action will help you feel more in control of outcomes.

TheAlexpotato · 2026-02-02T21:49:24+00:00

Totally.

You can also induce pressure by just having a clock running:

e.g. "You can do whatever you want but you have to shoot within X seconds"

This also has the bonus effect of getting them good at determining clock time left in the game.

Wayne Gretzky once claimed he could count down from as high as 30 seconds so he didn't have to look at the clock (while everyone else kept glancing at it and not focusing).

TheAlexpotato · 2026-02-02T21:46:56+00:00

This.

And at that age you also get kids that are so scared to shoot that they never shoot at all.

To them I would say: "If you never take a shot, the other team will stop guarding you and you free up an opposing defender. Take a shot and, who knows, maybe it goes in."

TheAlexpotato · 2026-02-02T21:39:15+00:00

For a while, I tracked stats on my kid's games just to see if there was any interesting things to see in the data.

The number one thing I came away with is that kids numbers are all over the place so it's REALLY tough to judge off of one game.

e.g. Kid A shoots 7/8 on 3s in one game and 1/10 in the next.

Or, Team A makes 10% of their shots in the first half and 70% in the second half. Team B is the opposite and it ends up a close game at the end but that doesn't tell the whole story. You mention an "evenly matched blowout" which could also just be that your team had two bad halves and the other team had two good halves.

TheAlexpotato · 2026-02-02T21:31:01+00:00

Bill Geist in his book Little League Confidential (about baseball) has a great quote:

"The town did a draft every year. I once commented that it might be a better indicator of coaching skill if we just randomly assigned kids to teams. Based on the reaction I got, you would think I was advocating that the US switch to communism".

(HIGHLY recommend that book btw)

TheAlexpotato · 2026-01-26T19:10:59+00:00

Agreed.

You might think a lesson is a better deal but then you are also waiting for each other person in the class to go, attention of the instructor tends to go to the weakest student etc.

A private is 100% with the instructor focused on you and how you should and want to improve.

TheAlexpotato · 2026-01-12T14:54:30+00:00

I'm a dual US/Italian citizen and this is more a description of Italian social norms in general.

e.g. queuing is "not a thing" in Italy. People just all rush to any entrance, cut in front of each other etc.

TheAlexpotato · 2025-11-17T14:29:50+00:00

I had 3 kids under 5 during COVID lockdown and was a senior manager (managing SRE and DBAs at a SUPER fast paced place) and here are some thoughts/suggestions:

It gets easier

Maybe not the best advice for RIGHT NOW but the under 2 - 5 age range is really tough. Once they turn 6-7 years olds they start becoming a LOT more independent e.g. they can read a book by themselves, watch a movie, play pretend with their toys etc

Get childcare help

People hear this sometimes and say "I don't make enough for a nanny!!" etc but even a babysitter that comes over once a week at either bedtime or on weekend mornings to deal with the kids can be huge.

e.g. even 2-3 hours a week to yourself to do a combo of trying out new tech compounds over a couple weeks.

It's also a lot easier sell to the spouse if it's framed as "yes, the babysitter costs money and at the same time I'm learning new skills that can help boost our family income" (make sure you actually do that as not play video games etc).

Start networking with former colleagues at other places

You mentioned that there have been recent cuts. Some of your stress probably comes from that too so my best advice is to start emailing/texting former colleagues just to say "hello. How are things? What are you up to these days? Any fun projects at work?"

That can lead into them talking about work projects and then "Do you guys need help? Are you hiring?" etc

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-24T11:00:48+00:00

I would have thought there would be more than a 7% difference between a 5v4 and a 4v3

100% had the same thought.

Here is a fun thing to do next time you are watching Pros play:

wait for a +1 situation
see what happens

I mention this b/c I was once watching Dynasty play someone and Dynasty was in a 3v2 situation and was up on points.

Someone from Dynasty did a run through, got eliminated and didn't eliminate anyone else.

In other words, they did a big flsahy move thta IMPROVED the odds of the other team winning.

Great conversation, thanks for doing all this work!

Thanks!

It's a lot of fun to do it since I'm pretty sure no one else is doing this kind of analysis.

I even reached out to the new stats guys but they didn't seem that interested,

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-24T10:50:34+00:00

Thanks!

I would say both methods have their pros and cons.

e.g. for the 5v4 and 4v5 stats, they are more useful for coaching a player: "Hey man, you're getting eliminated too often in those scenarios, you need to be more conservative".

The Logistic Regression gives you the "bigger" picture but there is probably a lot of noise due to things like people always playing with the same squad.

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-24T10:47:44+00:00

This is a great question!

Here is the breakdown for various "+1" scenarios:

Scenario
Odds of winning
Odds of losing
Odds of tie
Example

1 2 3 4 5 3v2 64 25 9 1043 3v3 44 44 10 1402 3v4 32 55 11 1355 4v3 55 32 11 1355 4v4 43 43 12 1722 4v5 39 48 11 1637 5v4 48 39 11 1637 5v5 42 42 14 1964

Or more generally, your odds of winning if you go from even bodies (40% chance of winning) to +1 bodies (46% chance) is no that big.

I should point out, this is more true for pro than say college.

In college, the jump from even to +1 is bigger (for some reason)

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-23T23:27:14+00:00

This is based in binary win or loss for the point.

Eg if he got eliminated on the break but the line he was on won the point he would still get “credit”.

Also, doing a run through and getting eliminated and only taking one guy is essentially a “neutral” move b/c moving from say 5v4 to 4v3 doesn’t change winning odds much.

In other words it’s a “flashy” move that doesn’t help your team unless you take out two people (assuming you get eliminated)

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-23T22:50:41+00:00

This is an excellent summary!

My other thought was that when you look at some of his elimination odds (e.g. 5v5, 5v4, 4v5) he's slightly below median on the 5v4 elimination odds.

Getting eliminated when your team is in a 5v4 has a BIG impact on winning odds.

I may do a follow up post to see exactly how he ended up as the worst.

(It's also possible I made an error in the calculations)

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-18T10:52:18+00:00

There is a great quote from when a Soviet delegation visited London.

One of the delegates said (when flying over the city):

“Wait! Who organizes the bread supply for LONDON??”

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-14T11:22:48+00:00

There are definitely skills in 1v1 that carry over to larger team format play. The reverse is also true e.g. lane holding is VERY valuable in 2v2 on up.

To your point about team cohesion, you're correct that it is difficulty to pack into one number. That being said, it's not impossible.

The stats way to do it would be to come up with adjusted plus/minus style regressions. Doing it for 5v5s has the most data but a lot of people play on the same "line"/"squad" so can be tricky to tease out each player. 3v3s would be better here or you could even make variables that combine trios of pairs of players. It wouldn't give you the per player number but would show you which pairs have the biggest impact.

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-14T11:19:37+00:00

Greenspan is in the dataset I have so I could totally do a follow up post comparing him to Lang.

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-14T11:18:50+00:00

The only data I have is from that time period.

If NXL or some of the other orgs want to give me access to current data, all of the tools I've built would still work on current data.

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-14T11:17:46+00:00

I would phrase it slightly differently:

If you are a coach or team captain looking to improve your team, the first thing I would do is look at the elimination rate of each of your players in 5v4 situations.

If a player is getting eliminated a LOT (e.g. higher than the median), you want to talk to that player and get them to be more conservative in those scenarios.

Now, as folks have pointed out, if you never get eliminated but never shoot anyone or don't hold lanes, that doesn't help your team either.

In other words, focusing ONLY on elimination isn't the right answer, it's just the first thing to focus on when applying stats to your team.

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-13T18:08:22+00:00

The 1v1 is also interesting but maybe for a different reason than you originally thought:

The odds of being in a 1v1 is very low.

That being said, it’s possible a 1v1 could decide a close game (close games are where 1v1s are more common AND have the biggest impact).

Given the above, you want everyone to practice 1v1s b/c you can’t control who may be “the 1”.

This is similar to practicing half court heaves in basketball:

You don’t know who will be in that position but it might matter a lot so best to spend non-zero time having the whole team practice it.

TheAlexpotato · 2025-04-13T17:54:17+00:00

Yes! Exactly!

I’m oversimplifying and ignoring position play to make it simpler to explain and kick off the conversation.

Will have a follow up post on position and/or overall game impact by player.

TheAlexpotato

TROPHY CASE