As a coach, you need to prepare your junior varsity basketball players to grow and develop in a way that will enable them to make and contribute to the varsity team. You will want to focus on fundamentals and overall game play with this group, and if you can, scrimmage them regularly against the varsity team to help them adjust to the higher level of play.
Seven Spot Shooting
It's important for your team to spend time shooting the ball accurately from a number of locations on the court. Set up seven cones in an arc formation at two separate baskets. Place cones on both baselines, both wings, both elbows of the lane and at the free throw line. Split your team up into two groups and assign each group to a basket. Give each group two balls and have them line up behind the cone on one of the baselines. When you say "go," both teams start shooting baskets from the first baseline cone, rebounding their own shots, and passing the ball to the next waiting player. The team can't progress to the next cone until they've made 10 shots from the first cone. The first team to make it through all seven cones, making 10 shots at each cone wins the game. Have the losing team run three horses to work on conditioning.
Three Man Weave
The three man weave drill helps junior varsity players work on passing and moving the ball up the court quickly, finishing the drive with a made shot.
Start all of the players on the baseline of one side of the court. Have the players get into three single-file lines. One line directly under the basket, and the other two lines on either side of the center line at the wing position. Every player in the center line has a ball. To start the drill, the first two players at the wing positions start running down the court. The player in the center line passes the ball to the player on his right, then he follows the pass, running around and to the outside of the player he passed to. The player who received the ball immediately passes to the opposite wing, and follows his pass. That player receives the ball and passes to the opposite wing position that's now being held by the original center-man. This "weaving" continues all the way down the court until the last player to receive the ball takes a layup shot. When the first group reaches center court, the next group can start its weave.
Defensive Slide Drill
One of the biggest differences between winning teams and losing team is the ability to play strong defense. All teams, whether junior varsity or varsity, should work on the fundamentals of defensive sliding at the beginning of every practice.
Line all of the players up on one side of the court. Stand in front of them with a whistle. When you blow your whistle, all the players should get into defensive position: legs wide, knees bent, hands up in front of the body. When you blow the whistle twice in a row, they slide to the left. when you blow the whistle once, they perform "quick feet," and when you blow the whistle three times, they slide to the right. With this process, they have to pay close attention to the cues and respond quickly.
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