Mark Gottfried's actual practice plan for the day before a game, from Tuesday, February 19, 2008: practice 61 of Alabama's season, 3:00 p.m., with the next day off. He planned every practice of his 33 years to the minute and kept the sheets, and this one is here with his permission, step for step as he wrote it, with the opponent's name taken off so any team can run it the day before any game. The sheet reads the way a game-week practice should. It opens with a fifteen-minute walk-through of the game plan (man sets, zone sets, the attack on the opponent's zone, which that week was a 1-3-1, the numbered defensive calls, the trap alert, and out-of-bounds plays) before anyone stretches, so the scouting report is the first thing in every player's head. Then twenty minutes of short skill segments, none longer than six minutes: layups, early offense, closeouts on three-point shooters, post feeds, rebounding, one on one at the wing and in the post, and the two-man game off ball screens. The middle of practice is five on five in pieces, the game plan again at live speed, dummy offense against man and zone, and ten minutes of shooting. The last fifty minutes are the game: two controlled scrimmages against man and zone with two set units, a three-on-two conditioner, the 60 Point Game, and free throws in sets of ten to close. Two things to copy from it. The segments are short and the clock runs them; a four-minute closeout block is enough when it happens every day. And the walk-through comes first and comes back live an hour later, so the plan is taught twice before the game. His own words on why the sheets exist: “Those notebooks were never records of control. They were proof of care.” This is Mark Gottfried's own sheet, shared with his permission out of the notebooks he wrote about; it comes from him, not from me, and the drills that carry his name in the bank are the ones the library did not have before.