It is Thursday night. Friday's opponent is a team you have never seen. There is no film exchange, no assistant coach to send, and you have about twenty minutes before you need to start on tomorrow's practice plan.
For most high school teams in the United States, the best free source you have is the opponent's MaxPreps page. It will not tell you their sets. It will tell you who shoots, who rebounds, what kind of scores they play, and how they did against teams you know. Read in the right order, that is enough for a real game plan.
This is the routine: five pages, twenty minutes, one sheet of paper at the end.
Before the timer starts: two checks
Is it this season's page? MaxPreps keeps every season, and the season is in the page address, written like 25-26. Last year's stats on a team that graduated four seniors will build you a game plan for a team that no longer exists.
Are there stats at all, and how many games do they cover? The numbers on a team page are entered by that school, usually the coach or a team statistician. Some programs keep them current after every game. Some enter the scores and nothing else. Look at the number of games behind the stats before you trust any average. A player averaging 20 points over three games is a question, not a fact.
If there are no stats, the routine still works. You lose the middle step and lean harder on the schedule and the common opponents.
The 20 minute routine
| Minutes | Page | What you are looking for |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 3 | Schedule and results | Record, the last five games, points scored and allowed |
| 3 to 6 | Roster | Heights, positions, grades, who is new |
| 6 to 14 | Stats | Who takes the shots, how many threes, free throws, rebounds, turnovers |
| 14 to 17 | Common opponents | Their scores against teams you also played |
| 17 to 20 | Your one page | Three threats, three keys, one question |
Set a timer. The point of the routine is that it ends.
Minutes 0 to 3: schedule and results
Read the scores, not just the wins and losses.
- The record, and the last five games. A team that started 2 and 5 and has won five straight is not the same team its season record describes.
- Points scored and allowed. Add up their points for and against and divide by games played. A team that wins 41 to 37 and a team that wins 72 to 66 are giving you two different games to prepare for. Low scores on both sides usually mean a slower team, a patient offense, or a defense that takes away easy baskets, and often all three.
- Close games. Count the games decided by a few points. A team that keeps winning close ones has someone they trust at the end, and you want to know who before the fourth quarter.
Minutes 3 to 6: the roster
You are looking for size and experience.
Find the tallest players and their positions, because that tells you who defends the post and who will be on the glass. Note the grades: a starting group of seniors behaves differently late in a game than a group of sophomores. Mark anyone listed on the roster who does not appear in the stats yet, which can mean a new transfer, a returning injury, or a player who simply has not been entered.
Minutes 6 to 14: the stats
This is the longest block, and it is where most coaches read the wrong numbers. Points per game is the first thing on the page and the least useful thing on its own. Read these instead.
Who takes the shots. Divide a player's field goal attempts per game by the team's. A guard taking 14 of the team's 48 shots a game takes about 29 percent of them. That is your first threat, whether or not he is the leading scorer.
How much of it is from three. Divide the team's three point attempts by its field goal attempts. If 18 of 48 shots a game are threes, about 38 percent of their offense comes from behind the arc, and your closeouts decide the game. If it is a small share, they are a paint team and your help defense does.
How often they get to the line. Divide free throw attempts by field goal attempts. With 14 free throws for every 48 shots, they earn about 29 free throws per 100 shots. A high number means a team that attacks the rim and draws fouls, and it means foul trouble is a real risk for your bigs.
Who rebounds. Find the one or two players with the most rebounds per game. Those are the players you assign a body to on every shot.
Turnovers. Turnovers per game, for the team and for the main ball handler. A team that gives the ball away often is a team you can pressure. A guard with very few turnovers and a heavy shot load is a guard you will not trap into mistakes; you have to keep him in front instead.
Do the divisions with a calculator. They take two minutes and they are the difference between "their best player scores 16" and "their best player takes almost a third of their shots, six of them from three."
If you want a single number per player to sanity check your read, the efficiency ratings in PIR vs EFF can be worked out from the same columns.
Minutes 14 to 17: common opponents
Find two or three teams on their schedule that you have also played. Compare the scores.
Treat it as a hint, not a prediction. Margins swing with injuries, home court, the date in the season and whether a starter sat with fouls. But if they beat a team by 20 that beat you by 10, that is worth knowing, and if they lost to a team you handled, that is worth knowing too. What you are really looking for is a pattern: do they beat the teams they should and lose to the good ones, or are their results all over the place?
Minutes 17 to 20: your one page
Stop reading. Write.
The whole scout fits on one page: three threats, three keys, and one question you cannot answer from a website. Here is what that looks like for a made up opponent, using the numbers from the stats section above:
| Threat | The number | How we take it away |
|---|---|---|
| Their number 3, a guard | 14 of the team's 48 shots a game, 6 of them threes | Top lock him, no catch above the arc, make someone else start the offense |
| Their number 22, a forward | Leads the team in rebounds | A body on him on every shot, guard and forward both crash |
| Team three point share | About 38 percent of their shots | Short closeouts with a high hand, no helping off shooters |
Three keys:
- Win the possession battle: box out every shot and take care of the ball against their pressure.
- Make their number 3 give the ball up.
- Stay out of foul trouble in the post, because they get to the line.
One question: do they press after made baskets? The page cannot tell you. The first two possessions will, so tell your guards what to look for before the tip.
Keep it to one page. A twelve point scouting report gets read by the coach who wrote it. Three threats and three keys get remembered by players.
What MaxPreps cannot tell you
Be honest with yourself about the gaps, so you plan to fill them instead of guessing.
- Their sets and actions. Stats tell you who scores, not how.
- Their defense. Man to man or zone, press or no press, how they guard ball screens. None of it is on the page.
- Who starts and who closes. Minutes are often missing, and the leading scorer is not always on the floor at the end.
- How accurate the numbers are. The stats are what their scorekeeper entered. A volunteer at a busy table can miss assists and turnovers. Trust shot attempts and points more than the rest.
The fixes are old fashioned. If their games are streamed, for example on the NFHS Network, ten minutes of one recent game answers most of the questions above. A coach in your league who played them last week can answer the rest in one phone call. And the first quarter of the game itself is a scouting report, if your bench is watching for the right things.
Let the scout do the reading
The routine above is twenty minutes because the reading and the arithmetic take time. If you would rather spend those twenty minutes on the game plan, paste the opponent's MaxPreps team page links into a chat with Jack, the scout on the NextPlay coaching staff, and ask for a scouting report. He reads the schedule, roster and stats pages, files a report on that opponent with the threats and their numbers, and marks what came from the pages and what is his own read. The finished report has a link you can send to your players, and the scouting report page shows what one looks like.
Either way, the one page at the end is yours to decide. The threats are facts. The keys are coaching.
NextPlay is not affiliated with MaxPreps.
Frequently asked questions
Can you scout a basketball team on MaxPreps?
Yes, for the parts that are numbers. A team's MaxPreps page usually shows its schedule and results, its roster, and, when the school enters them, player and team stats. That is enough to find who takes the shots, how much the team shoots from three, who rebounds and how often they turn it over. It will not show their sets or their defense, so plan to fill that gap with film or the first possessions of the game.
Where do MaxPreps stats come from?
They are entered by the team itself, usually the head coach or a designated statistician. That means coverage varies a lot from school to school: some keep every game current, some enter only scores. Check how many games the stats cover before trusting an average.
What should a basketball scouting report include?
Three threats with the numbers behind them, three keys to the game, and the questions you could not answer in advance. For each threat, write how you plan to take it away. Keep it to one page so players actually remember it.
How long does it take to scout an opponent?
A useful scout from public stats takes about twenty minutes if you read in order: schedule, roster, stats, common opponents, then write. Watching film adds time, but even ten minutes of one recent game fills most of the gaps a stats page leaves.
What can't MaxPreps tell you about an opponent?
Their offensive sets, their defense, who starts, and how reliable the numbers are. Those come from film, from other coaches who played them, and from watching the first possessions of the game closely.
How do you scout a team that has no stats on MaxPreps?
Use the schedule and the scores. Points scored and allowed tell you the kind of game they play, the last few results tell you their form, and scores against common opponents give you a rough comparison. Then fill in the rest from film if their games are streamed, or from a coach who has played them.
Jack, the scout on the NextPlay coaching staff, turns an opponent's pages into a one page scouting report you can share with your players. NextPlay is free for fourteen days with no card.