Last Saturday, we were in Twin Falls for the anual CSI basketball coaches clinic. This year featured Lorenzo Romar, Matt Doherty, Max Good and Gary Colson. Brooks Thompson was also scheduled but came down with an illness and couldn't make it.
They day started with Coach Good, head coach at Loyola Marymount. He has the tough task of rebuilding the program that once featured Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble. According to his talk, he's going to do it through toughness and effort, even referencing an article by Jay Bilas that IdahoSports.com readers are familiar with.
Coach Good was by far the most animated and humorous of the coaches, bringing an old boy feel to the court. He definitely wasn't worried about being PC and had us rolling most of the hour. Probably the most interesting thing that I took away was his "pre-season philosophy, game strategy" that gets his guys ready for the season and able to adjust in games.
Next up was Coach Doherty, formerly with Notre Dame and North Carolina and now at Southern Methodist University. Doherty is definitely more straight laced then the previous speaker. It was no surprise when he talked about practice preperation, spending two hours to prepare a practice pland and then spend 30-45 minutes going over it with his staff.
With Coach Doherty, who is 47, I was impressed with the changes he made in the way that runs his practices. He started to sacrafice some of his notions in order to benefit the kids' needs hoping for a trade off in production. We'll see how this transition goes as SMU has gone 33-58 over Coach Doherty's three seasons at the school. I got a kick out of seeing one of Idaho Select's formers players, Ben Van Lith, get on the court and help the coach demonstrate a few drills.
Coach Colson was a real treat. The veteran coach that has seen just about everything at every level had too many stories for the hour he was given and I suspect could have gone on all night. He was great! Coach Colson has a similiar view on the players that will help a program succeed as did Coach Good. He likes the aggressive and has no problem using peer presure to motivate others and create leaders. He briefly touched on European players and noted that they are getting ahead of the US, spending two hours in the morning and two at night working out and stressing fundamentals.
Finally, Coach Romar finished up the clinic by talking about the presure defense that he uses at Washington. It was noted by a few people that this is the same philosophy that Rod Jensen used at Boise State a few years ago. Of course, Coach Romar uses it to create a fast paced offense whereas Coach Jensen used it to, well, play more defense. Anyway, Romar continues to have incredible energy and I'd be willing to bet that the coach, who turns 51 in November, was probably still the best player in the gym. Just watching him demostrate the defensive drills made it very clear he could shut down pretty much anybody.