One-on-one situation decision-making according to equipment in youth basketball

Abstract

The goal was to verify with which ball participants improved the attackers’ decisions in one-on-one game situations during youth basketball. Participants were 88 9- to 11-year-old boys from eight teams. We organized a three-day tournament consisting of 12 games, in which four games were played with each ball among all the teams. The balls differed only in their weight (440 g, 485 g, 540 g). The videos filmed were observed by two observers trained. The dependent variables were number of decisions, appropriate decisions, inappropriate decisions and ratio of correct to incorrect decisions, in the one-on-one situation. Participants made more decisions, and more correct (but not incorrect) decisions, when using the 440 -g rather than the regulation and 540 -g ball. This view requires that youth coaches act as a facilitator of learning, designing practice context according the objective evidence.