AAU vs High School Basketball: How Coaches Work Together

AAU vs high school basketball is not a fight a school coach can win, and it is not one he needs to. AAU is year round now, and nearly every serious player spends his summer on a club team. The coach who works with that season keeps his voice in the player's year. The coach who fights it loses that voice.

This page covers how the two seasons differ, how to place players and plan the summer, the two ways a program can relate to club basketball, how to coach an AAU team, and what to tell families about exposure and playing time. What AAU is, its age groups and its costs are on what is AAU basketball.

AAU vs High School Basketball: What Differs

The goal is the same in both, beat the other team and do it again. The conditions are not. A school coach knows his players at their best and worst, and an AAU coach often meets them a few days before the first tournament.

• Calendar. The main AAU season runs February through July, right after the high school season, with tournaments at other points in the year. Boys can start at 7-and-under and girls in 2nd grade, and both can play through the 12th grade or 19-and-under division.
• Practice time. A high school coach has months or years to install habits. An AAU coach may get one or two practices before the first tournament. Weekday gym time and uneven attendance make individual fundamentals harder to teach on a club team.
• The roster. A club roster is often built from the best player on each home team. The job is less about developing talent and more about getting talented players to sacrifice for a new team, fast, with parents watching.
• Job security. A high school coach is rarely fired in the middle of a season. An AAU coach can be pulled at almost any point.
• Officials. AAU officiating is often uncertified and weaker than high school officiating.

Same game, different job. Coach the conditions you actually have.

Where Coaches Split on AAU

Coaches split on what AAU does to a player. Most agree the program itself decides the answer:

• It kills skill. Tournament-heavy and practice-light, run and gun with little focus on fundamentals or shot selection, defense optional. Steve Kerr, Kobe Bryant, Gregg Popovich and Charles Barkley have all criticized AAU in public, Kerr for game after game with almost no practice, Bryant and Barkley for players who never learn the fundamentals. The shift is traced to the 1980s, when shoe company sponsorships of club programs pulled the focus toward marketing.
• It is reps under a real score. A well-run club team gives a player extra games under a real score and clock, and a second coaching voice. A correction the player stopped hearing from his school coach often lands when someone else says it.
• It is what its people make it. A club is what its coaches, players and parents make it. Better competition than a local league and a look from college coaches sit on one side. Win-first programs with few or no practices, and coaching that varies because anyone can start a team, sit on the other.
• It starves some players of touches. Many club teams do not reliably reward the open shooter or the post player, so those players lose touches and stop growing the skills that would earn them the ball.

Coach Shep started with the first view and ended with the second. AAU basketball is not going away, and fighting it is pointless. A well-run program strengthens the high school team.

Judge the program, not the letters on the jersey.

Place Players, Do Not Block Them

Blocking AAU outright gives up the influence a school coach could have over how his player uses it. Placement keeps it. Start with what the player needs, then find the team that gives it to him.

• Match the team to the need. Coach Shep steered a player who needed point guard reps toward a club team that needed a point guard, before that player was ready to run the point for the varsity.
• Check the coaching first. Look for good coaching, a team-first philosophy, a good fit with the parents and players already on the team, and at least one, better two, scheduled practices a week instead of tournament weekends only.
• Match the style. A fast team or a slow team should fit the player. Confirm he will get enough playing time, and know the season's practice count, tournament count, travel and cost up front.
• Name the club type. A participation club expects every player to play. A performance club is a selected all-star roster that plays to win events, often two practice nights a week plus a tournament every weekend. Families should pick the type that matches what they want, and kids often just want to play with their friends.
• Choose for development. Pick the program that develops the player, not the one that is most convenient.

The summer workout that fills the gaps a club team leaves is on basketball summer workout, and a written plan for one player is on individual basketball workout plan.

Ask what the player needs before you ask which team he wants.

Plan the Summer Before It Starts

Most summer fights between a school and a club are scheduling fights, and they are settled before the first tournament or not at all. Teams are built from October to March. Players are built from March to October, so youth basketball has to run all year.

• Build the plan early. Coach Shep writes each player's summer plan before the club season starts.
• Require the rotation. Starters and rotation players attend every high school team event over the summer, with no exception for AAU.
• Track the club dates. Collect every AAU state and national tournament date in advance, so the school never schedules an event that forces a player into a lose-lose choice.
• Share the calendar. For a player in a second sport, share calendars with that sport's coach, meet about the shared athlete's load, and adjust practice times around his other commitments.
• Put family and school first. An AAU weekend can collide with another sport's tournament or a family event, and family and school outrank club basketball.

Keep the school coach's voice in the summer with planned touchpoints:

• Meet each player. Individual meetings with every player and exit interviews with the seniors.
• Hand out the work. A summer workout program, and two letters from the coach to each player and two back.
• Open the gym. Open gym at least two nights a week.
• Play man to man. Open gym games to 7, played man to man.
• Play games. Camps, AAU and a summer schedule of 20 to 25 games.

Open gym game to 7, man to man. 2 has the ball on the left wing, 1 is at the top of the key, 3 is on the right wing, 4 is in the right corner and 5 is on the left block. Each defender guards one man.

More on the months between seasons is on basketball offseason.

Publish the dates first. Every conflict you prevent is a conversation you never have to win.

Two Ways a Program Can Relate to AAU

A school can work with outside clubs or run its own. Pick one on purpose, because each needs different staff and gym time.

• Place players with outside clubs. The school cannot control the clubs, so the job is to place players well and clear the calendar, as above.
• Run the program's own AAU teams. The program fields club teams at every age as one feeder ladder: a youth program at ages 8 to 12, then 7th and 8th grade, freshman and varsity. Clinics teach every coach the same offense and defense, 8th graders move up into the high school program in the spring, and the program runs summer camps and AAU teams for each age group.

Tournament load has a ceiling. For a participation club, three weekend tournaments a season is about right, and a fourth burns out players and parents.

A performance club adds fatigue, injury, burnout and overly aggressive sideline parents to its costs. It has to stay fun, because good players quit the game under too much pressure before they are ready for it. The whole program ladder is on how to build a basketball program and the youth end of it on how to build a successful youth basketball program.

Choose the model your staff and gyms can carry, then run it the same way at every age.

Coaching an AAU Team

A high school coach who takes an AAU team in the summer is starting over. He has two practices and a weekend of eight games, so trust has not been built yet. Coach Shep's sideline rules for that job:

• Earn the demeanor. A demanding high school sideline works because the trust behind it is already there. The same intensity from a new coach reads as alienating. Do not be a Bobby Knight on the sideline with a team you have had for a weekend. Calm, next-play focus is the higher-percentage choice.
• Coach what you control. Put the focus on matchups, offensive and defensive calls and timeouts. Do not get pulled into missed calls or the clock.
• Do not coach only mistakes. Correcting only after an error, and only some players for the same error, embarrasses players and raises pressure without improving decisions. Players do not make mistakes on purpose. Correct one player for a bad pass and not another, and the parents in the stands notice.
• Size the roster for the weekend. 8 to 10 players works for a two-day, eight-game weekend, and a rotation of 7 or 8 is often easier to manage.
• Read losses for what they are. Unless the team is one of the best in the country, it will lose games, sometimes to a less talented team that is better organized. Parents grant more room for a moral victory in AAU than in a high school season.

Honest player evaluations to college coaches are what build a coaching reputation, and overselling one player ends that trust. More on the school side of the job is on high school basketball coaching guide.

Same standards, softer voice, until the team knows you.

Exposure Is Not Development

Families chase exposure. A coach's job is to show them the arithmetic and point them at the gym. Get good, then get seen.

• Count the touches. An average high school player who is not the star or the point guard holds the ball about 1 minute 47 seconds a game. Five games at an exposure tournament gives him roughly 10 minutes of real touches, after five days of travel and waiting.
• Count the training. The same five days at home, lifting, shooting, ball handling, footwork, agility and pickup, can give him about 25 hours of development.
• Play the team game in front of scouts. Exposure should never turn into forcing shots to build a stat line for watching college coaches. Shot-making means a reliable catch-and-shoot look, never a forced low-percentage shot.
• Teach what recruiters weigh. How a player scores matters more than how many points he scores. A lower scorer who defends and takes good shots outranks a high-volume scorer with poor habits.

Take the catch and shoot. 1 drives from the top of the key toward the right elbow, X3 is in help, and 1 kicks to 3 on the right wing for the catch and shoot.

In the gym, only pickup against players who play at a high level and play the right way improves a player. Set one-on-one rules that look like a game, a dribble limit and a reset after a defensive rebound, so it is not isolated scoring.

1-on-1 with a dribble limit. 1 drives baseline from the right wing against X1 and has only the dribbles the rule allows.

More one-on-one formats are on 1 on 1 basketball, and the recruiting side is on basketball recruiting tips for coaches.

If a player is good, a college coach will find him. Spend the summer making him good.

Playing Time and Families

Playing time is the sharpest pressure point in both seasons, and the rules differ by level. Say the rule out loud before the season.

• Performance teams do not split minutes. Varsity, performance AAU and club teams will not split minutes evenly. Younger and participation teams try to spread time, even though better players still play more.
• Minutes are a player topic. At the preseason parent and player meeting, set playing time as a talk between the player and the coach only, keep the door open for every other concern, and ask parents to wait 24 hours after a game before asking for a conversation.
• Place the role players early. On an AAU weekend, play the less experienced players early in each half, not in the last minutes of a game already decided. Families drive hours and pay for the weekend, so they expect playing time.
• Talk about transfers before they happen. AAU friendships can pull a player toward another school. Most players will not play beyond high school, and staying loyal to the home school, barring unusual circumstances, is the old-school answer.

The meeting itself is on basketball parent communication, and the youth season's version of these rules is on coaching youth basketball. The roster decisions behind the minutes are on basketball tryouts, and the rest of running a team is on the coaching hub.

Write the playing-time rule down, hand it out, and say it the same way to every family.

More Program and Rules Guides

• Basketball Tryout Evaluation Form: What to Score and How
• Cutting Players: What to Say and How to Say It
• FIBA Basketball Terminology: Words Coaches Hear Abroad

Back to How to Build a Basketball Program and every Coaching page.

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