College College Basketball Timeouts

[King]

Would any college programs feel free to film their basketball media timeouts (from the second the dead ball happens to the cheerleaders come off and play resumes)? Thanks!

 

[retiredl5cheer]

I'll film my old team this weekend if you promise not to pick them apart. what are you looking to learn?

 

[Kentucky Girl]

During timeouts, cheerleaders perform partner stunts (rewinds and one-arm stunts other than cupies with an additional spotter are prohibited), two-high pyramids (various stretch pyramids, various stag pyramids, two high table top pyramids, two high wolf wall pyramids, diamond heads, and the Wildcat Pyramid), and tumbling (twisting discounts, layouts, whips, and fulls are prohibited).

Basketball cheering is different than football cheering considering that 2 1/2 high pyramids and basket tosses are prohibited.

 

[King]

I'll film my old team this weekend if you promise not to pick them apart. what are you looking to learn?

Thank you. Just the timing, pacing, and order things are done in. Ours are lacking and need to be improved. Since skills are capped its more about crowd leading and performance and entertainment from a gameday standpoint. There is very little I have seen that talks about how to properly build a timeout. From the second the whistle is blown to how people get on the court to how they leave. I'm being very analytical and seeing how the best way to build one is and maybe include dance.

 

[King]

During timeouts, cheerleaders perform partner stunts (rewinds and one-arm stunts other than cupies with an additional spotter are prohibited), two-high pyramids (various stretch pyramids, various stag pyramids, two high table top pyramids, two high wolf wall pyramids, diamond heads, and the Wildcat Pyramid), and tumbling (twisting discounts, layouts, whips, and fulls are prohibited).

Basketball cheering is different than football cheering considering that 2 1/2 high pyramids and basket tosses are prohibited.

Not supposed to do some of that stuff via aacca but I have learned no one really follows that anyway.

 

[WHOA tiger]

WE had a pretty good layout at Clemson... as soon as the time out started and the music started playing we'd tumble out to our dance formation clapping and spiriting, do a band dace, move into a pyramid or a line of stunts (where we'd ripple going up and ripple coming down), then go back to dancing, if we did a cheer we'd tumble out to our cheer sports (normally elavators with signs around the court), get the crowd to yell, then music played and we'd do a stunt/pyramid or a band dance or a combo of both. As soon as the buzzer went off, we'd tumble back to the sidelines. A couple time outs we'd have people throw out free stuff while others tumbled out to their spots then did the standard stunting/dancing. .

Fairly standard timeouts. I'd imagine GT does things pretty similar to Clemson.

It really is tough to find the perfect balance of performance and crowd leading at basketball games, without dead time.

 

[King]

WE had a pretty good layout at Clemson... as soon as the time out started and the music started playing we'd tumble out to our dance formation clapping and spiriting, do a band dace, move into a pyramid or a line of stunts (where we'd ripple going up and ripple coming down), then go back to dancing, if we did a cheer we'd tumble out to our cheer sports (normally elavators with signs around the court), get the crowd to yell, then music played and we'd do a stunt/pyramid or a band dance or a combo of both. As soon as the buzzer went off, we'd tumble back to the sidelines. A couple time outs we'd have people throw out free stuff while others tumbled out to their spots then did the standard stunting/dancing. .

Fairly standard timeouts. I'd imagine GT does things pretty similar to Clemson.

It really is tough to find the perfect balance of performance and crowd leading at basketball games, without dead time.

Tech, back when I was here, was all business no crowd leading. This was before all the rules cracking down. So we would go out there and do a 2 1/2 high pyramid from our nationals routine, through some double full baskets, then maybe to corners and do ripple awesomes. Fast forward 10 years and we do the same thing but the skills aren't near as hard that we are allowed to do. So it's not bad, but we can do things a lot more effectively. Couple questions for you:

Did you bring poms out? If you tumbled did you have someone cary them for you (a sloppy process for us now that never looks great).

I am considering having dance line up around the court while we do a timeout so while we do skills in the middle the dance team is providing some nice decoration all around. Ever do that?

Also how many cheerleaders did you have at your games? Our new place it is really nice that we are right on the floor, but we are limited to how many people we can aesthetically place there (it is 12 ish).

 

[WHOA tiger]

Tech, back when I was here, was all business no crowd leading. This was before all the rules cracking down. So we would go out there and do a 2 1/2 high pyramid from our nationals routine, through some double full baskets, then maybe to corners and do ripple awesomes. Fast forward 10 years and we do the same thing but the skills aren't near as hard that we are allowed to do. So it's not bad, but we can do things a lot more effectively. Couple questions for you:

Did you bring poms out? If you tumbled did you have someone cary them for you (a sloppy process for us now that never looks great). I feel like we would bring out poms more often for women's games because they aren't as hard core and our coach wouldn't make us tumble as much. If people still wanted to tumble, they would just have someone bring them out. But for the most part, unless it was a strictly crowd leading/dance time out, we wouldn't bring out our poms. We would do signs more than poms and only a couple people would carry them out and the rest would tumble.

I am considering having dance line up around the court while we do a timeout so while we do skills in the middle the dance team is providing some nice decoration all around. Ever do that?
For women's games it was just the cheerleaders, but at Men's games the dancers and cheerleaders would just alternate going out for time outs. For pregame and the final timeout of the game, both cheerleaders and dancers are on the floor doing the fight song lined up both ways, and we would run the flags in between them. However, I'm a big fan of cheerleaders doing skills while dancers dance. Best of both worlds.

Also how many cheerleaders did you have at your games? Our new place it is really nice that we are right on the floor, but we are limited to how many people we can aesthetically place there (it is 12 ish).

The requirements changed every year. The spirit squads stand on three rows of risers at games (you can see in the picture we are in the bottom right corner) One year we had 12 at womens games and 12 at mens games since the dancers shares the risers with us at mens games. Last year there had to be 20 cheerleaders + dancers at every game during the school year (it was different for holiday games). Now its back to 12 ish a game. The number of cheerleaders didn't really change what we did, we would just have more people on the court at a time.

 

[King]

The requirements changed every year. The spirit squads stand on three rows of risers at games (you can see in the picture we are in the bottom right corner) One year we had 12 at womens games and 12 at mens games since the dancers shares the risers with us at mens games. Last year there had to be 20 cheerleaders + dancers at every game during the school year (it was different for holiday games). Now its back to 12 ish a game. The number of cheerleaders didn't really change what we did, we would just have more people on the court at a time.

Thanks for all of that. It was extremely helpful!

 

[retiredl5cheer]

Tech, back when I was here, was all business no crowd leading. This was before all the rules cracking down. So we would go out there and do a 2 1/2 high pyramid from our nationals routine, through some double full baskets, then maybe to corners and do ripple awesomes. Fast forward 10 years and we do the same thing but the skills aren't near as hard that we are allowed to do. So it's not bad, but we can do things a lot more effectively. Couple questions for you:

Did you bring poms out? If you tumbled did you have someone cary them for you (a sloppy process for us now that never looks great).

I am considering having dance line up around the court while we do a timeout so while we do skills in the middle the dance team is providing some nice decoration all around. Ever do that?

Also how many cheerleaders did you have at your games? Our new place it is really nice that we are right on the floor, but we are limited to how many people we can aesthetically place there (it is 12 ish).

We have about 20-25 cheerleaders. As soon as the buzzer goes off, 5 or 6 girls/guys tumble on to the court. The rest spirit on with poms. Sometimes our boys will run out with shoulder sits for fun. We go directly to our "free stunt" spots (stunt groups are placed in specific spots around the court). We throw a couple random stunts. On our captains counts, we transition (clapping above our head) to our timeout formation. Throw the assigned stunt (sometime a fan with our mascot in the middle, ripple up switch ups, ripple up stretches, etc). If it's a long TV timeout, go back to our free stunt spots or throw standing tumbling. Run off spiriting as soon as the buzzer goes.

As for poms: fliers always have them. They either carry them on themselves or their base carries them on if they're tumbling. Bases being them on and leave them in front of the stunt if they don't tumble, so that they have something to spirit with.

Cheers: our crowd sucked at following cheers, so we never did them. Plus the band always plays during timeouts, so you couldn't hear anything anyways.

Dancers: while the cheerleaders are on the court for a timeout, the 12 dancers spread out on their baseline and do band dances. During fight song they join the cheerleaders on the court.

Our fight song is huge at my school. We run a 15 foot flag, so we can't have many girls on the court. 6 cheerleaders and 4 dancers are chosen to do the fight song time out. I'll videotape on Sunday.

 

[Kentucky Girl]

Kentucky would always perform the Wildcat Pyramid (just like my avatar) in which the mascot (the Wildcat in men's basketball games or Scratch in women's basketball games) would go up in an extension prep while stunts are put on both sides creating the Wildcat Pyramid (which is basically a fan pyramid). Two cheerleaders would hold the UK banner while the entire pyramid rotating 360 degrees.

Other schools (UCF, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Ole Miss, LSU, etc.) would do their own version of the Wildcat Pyramid as well.

 

[ScottyB]

At KU we would do a variety of planned timeouts

Sometimes have dance do a line down the middle if the band played music, then we would tumble on both sides of them. Afterwards either spread out to do simple but crowd pleasing stunts or come together to do pyramids or line stunts. Usually followed by a fight song or standing tumbling or free stunt again.

 

[GForce]

at every time out we go out and do a pyramid, sometimes then a sequence of them. after the pyramid we line up across the court (the long way) and dance, random stunt partners will do stunts, some people will throw some tumbling. Everyone brings out poms. if they don't need them in the group pyramid then they just leave them on the ground but then at least they will have something to spirit with after. our dance time also goes out on and goes across the side of the court that we are not one

 

[BuegeSmalls]

Basically we run out on the court once the buzzer rings/they finish saying some announcements. The music goes on and we do whatever pyramid we have planned for that timeout. After we finish that we get into our usual line and dance to whatever song is playing. Some people do random stunts with their partners, or tumble or jump.

We don't tumble onto the court, b/c we switch sides every time out so sometimes we would run into the dance team. We split the court with them.

Pretty much everyone always takes their poms out. It just depends on the person and what they are doing in the pyramids if they use them or not. I almost always don't use mine when I'm flying in pyramids.

As for cheers, we don't really do them for timeouts. Our crowd does not get into it.

At games we have our whole team there, 10 girls and 7 guys. At girls games we get one whole end zone (sorry for the football term, not sure what to call it in basketball...) and the dancers get the other side of the court. And for mens games we split one end zone. Cheerleaders on one side of the basket, dancers on the other.

A girl on my team actually has some videos of our times outs (starting once we're on the court ending when we get off , I believe). I'd post them here but I think her facebook is private :/

ETA: Awkward, didn't know my sister posted above me. Oh well, my post has more info and capitalization

 

[King]

Thank you for everyone's descriptions so far. Been doing a lot of playing around for us to make timeouts feel 'fuller'. Pyramids are awesome but its the things between all the skills I think really tie everything together. The glue if you will. Anyone willing to post a video would be appreciated.

Also we have gotten rid of all but 6 of our cheers (we had 25) and only kept simple ones. One to three words and easy cadence. Also only one defense cheer. Anyone much experience with this? Our crowd never yelled with us and chatting with someone it's cause we had too many cheers and were too complicated. Hopefully simple, then teaching the band the 6, would be good.