Bill Ferguson is the USC men’s volleyball head coach and seventeen year coach of the SCVC. Bill has taken the Trojans back to the top with two NCAA final fours in three years. On his way up Bill coached twelve USA Volleyball national championships. Thirty one USA Volleyball medals in fifteen years. Twenty two NCAA National champion players.
This video we filmed for the AVCA video tip of the week a few years ago. I think its the best video in the world on running the “Bic” set. This video shows why Bill Ferguson is such an incredible coach! Enjoy and be sure to thank him next time you see him! 🙂
This post contains a full USC Men’s volleyball practice, start to finish, plus post practice lifting / workout session, plus full video review with questions and answers regarding every drill, practice coaching philosophy and more. The coaches include USC volleyball coaching staff; Bill Ferguson, Jeff Nygaard, and Cam Green.
I am excited to add our newest volleyball coach this month (1/18/13) USC Men’s Head Volleyball Coach – Bill Ferguson. I have been friends with Bill for a number of years now, back to when I ran my own club of 8 teams and his volleyball coaching accomplishments are nothing short of incredible!
For information of USC Volleyball – Click Here
In this video Bil offers sound advice on volleyball coaching for all you coaches out there. With Bill experience not only coaching College, but also club this video is a must see.
In this video Bill shares coaching advice and tips he picked up from Super Bowl, National Champion, and former USC Football coach Pete Carroll. This video also reveals some of Bill’s roots in coaching and how he looks outside of the sport of volleyball to innovate and improve his coaching ability.
The sign of any great person is their ability to change and grow as the circumstances need. To reflect on what happens and make improvements in the future. In this video Bill Ferguson talks about some of the challenges he has experienced as a coach and improvements he has made in himself, with his staff and in his program to try and overcome these challenges.
In this video Andor and Bill talk about how Bill connects and motivates his players. USC Volleyball is a program that really cares about its players development both on and off the court. This video plus other videos previously filmed really makes this apparent. This video also offers great insights for coaches to use themselves when coaching and building relationships with their players.
In this video Bill and Andor discuss the USC Coaching staff and their responsibilities. This is a good video for all coaches to see and also learn how each coaches skills and personality is used successfully to enhance the program and its results.
This video is a result of a question Andor asked from Bill Ferguson on his opinion on of what are the best ways to start the play or rally more effectively in practice. A Problem many coaches have is they are not making their practice as game like as possible and putting balls into play that are not balls the players will see in matches.
In this video Andor and Bill discuss how the teams serving strategy has changed with its players and how this affects practice and team goals. This is an insightful video and shows how good coaches adjust to their personal, strengths and weaknesses.
The final drill for practice was the 6 on 6 Break Point Drill. This drill is not an easy drill to understand the scoring and it is an even more difficult drill to win on the offense. This drill really calibrates the offense and really show the value of tough serving and scoring on defense.
In this video we discuss Pat Powers famous Battle Star Drill as well as who in Bills staff is Han Solo. But seriously this is a simple yet extremely effective drill to help your blockers plus teach your hitters to swing out of tough situations. Also this is a great transition drill because of the nature of the drill often a transition play follows.
In this video Bill and Andor discuss Cam Green rapid fire correction drill. Also discussed is the timing of the drill and why it is included in practice. If you do not know or currently use a correction drill in parts of your practice make sure to watch this video.
This video describes in details some of the breakout sessions used by Bill and his coaching staff to build individual skills in players. This video offers an insight to practice design and Bill volleyball coaching philosophy.
In this video Bill and Andor discuss changes to how blocking trips drill is run now verses practices in the past. The main point being that a ball is hit from the box to make it more game like and simulate someone hitting. The results are significant and include players jumping higher, making better moves, following better technique and most importantly be far more engaged to the outcome of running the drill at 100%
This is a great revealing video where Bill and Andor discuss changes to practice and how Bill has improved as a coach and some of the changes he has implemented as a result.
In this conversation from the office Bill Ferguson explains “Tell the Truth Monday” and how they got the name and how it fits into his volleyball practice planning and coaching philosophy.
This video features the post practice USC Men’s Volleyball lifting session with Strength and Conditioning Coach Brent Mentz. This video series is extremely powerful and revealing and you will get to see everything from what type of exercises the players do to their reps and how the coach changes lifts based upon athlete age and body type.
This video features Bill Ferguson and Andor Gyulai reviewing practice, the drills and what was accomplished. The theme of the practice was tell the truth Monday and this definitely came across in how the practice was designed and the goals for the practice.
This video contains the end of practice team meeting. This video is another great video that shows the quality of the USC Men’s Volleyball Coaching Staff as well as shows what a great place USC is to play men’s volleyball in college. Click Here to see more volleyball practice plans.
Volleyball 6 on 6 Breakpoint drill is a drill that works on all skills and is used to help calibrate the offense and teach a rhythm to your offense. The drill makes it extremely difficult for the sideout team to win because they have to get so many balls in a row over the net without making a mistake. On the other hand the defense just needs to convert a few mistakes or stop the offense in order to score and win the drill.
Battle Star – 3 Man Block Volleyball Transition Drill is a drill named and started by Olympian and former USC Coach Pat Powers. The drill basically is initiated with a high bounce ball by the coach in the back row which then sets up a set which likely has a 3 man block. The rally is then played out to work on transition offense and defense.
The next drill is USC Assistant Coach Cam Green’s Rapid Fire Correction Drill. The staff joke that this is how Cam gets so buffed but this is basically a very very fast passed correction drill that is used to get the team ready for the 6 on 6 team portion of practice. We like this drill at volleyball1on1 because of the energy it create and how it gets the players ready to compete.
In this final breakout session you will get to see Bill and his team of incredible coaches working closely with the middles on problems they were having moving and hitting out of certain rotations. This skill building session shows how diligent the coaches are about improving and helping players get better.
This is another “Breakout Session” specifically for skills building namely passing off float and spin serves. Flaws were detected during the earlier video session that need to be fixed and one was the players are leaning on the jump serve and not stepping. You will notice the balls come very quickly from the coach on purpose and the reason is so that the player only focuses on the task at hand and fixing it and is less concerned about a perfect pass.
In this breakout sessions you will see a great drill that works on middle defense and transition setting. As you can see from this drill allot of attention is paid to developing all players ball control including middles and this falls into Bill Ferguson’ philosophy on coaching volleyball and making sure his team (meaning all players – including middles) develop good ball control. This post features the coaches running the drill from both sides.
Breakout Sessions are periods in Bill Ferguson’s volleyball practice where groups of players often divided by position can improve very specific skills the coaches and team identifies from reviewing game footage. In this video you will see how Bill works with the setters to work on setting while the others coaches work with players in other positions on other skills.
This video shows the energy in practice, how the coaches motivate players, how practice is competitive and finally where we are at with the practice breakdown. I find it really interesting to watch the coaches energy and this video reveals how the coach raises the energy and gets his players excited and motivated to win.
This video features Bill Ferguson (USC – Head Men’s Coach) and Andor Gyulai (Owner – Volleyball1on1.com) discussing the important concepts and reasons behind adding music to practice. This article features two videos with different endings. One videos was used for the AVCA Video Tip of the Week while the other video was used for Volleyball1on1 only.
This video features the team working on float serving. The team is not a very good jump serving team and as a result moved more towards serving the jump float serve. In this video you will see how the coaches make this serving drill fun and competitive. Also you will start to see how the loud music in practice affects affects everything.
This is another “Tutor Drill” specifically for skills the coaches thought need work from “Tell the Truth Monday” video session. This drill is working on passing the float serve and rather than passing the serve overhand, using a platform to pass the ball. What the coaching staff observed is the offense tends to have better rhythm when this is done verses overhand passing.
The practice theme of the day is “Tell the Truth Monday”, what this means is the team reviews videos and looks for individual and team weaknesses that they can work on. The coaches then often add specific skill building drills called “Tutor Drills” to improve on those skills that need work. This video contains a tutor drill the coaches are running to fix and improve passing off spin serves.
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