Shady Spring – Westside basketball coach Thomas Evans has high expectations for the program.
High expectations are all he knows.
His dad won a pair of championships at Oceana and Evans kept the legacy alive during his playing days in the ’90s, helping the Indians to the 1994 Class AA title. But to restore the west side of Wyoming County to its former glory, he knows it will require a great deal of patience.
It’s why he’s using the summer period to acclimate his team and teach his systems, but knows Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“I’ve got a lot of babies – a lot of young players,” Evans smiled after the Tiger Shootout on Tuesday at Shady Spring. “On the court a minute ago there were four freshmen, soon to be sophomores, out there. We’re playing a lot of young kids and we’re kind of spoon feeding them the information. The defenses, the drills – we’ve played a lot of games because we’re in the Beckley summer league and went to the Marshall team camp, came here and played but it’s kind of eating up our practice days. But we’re getting into our sets and seeing who plays well with who and who can do what. My assessment thus far is we have a lot of young kids.”
While Evans has coached many of these players before at Oceana – where he won three consecutive county titles – it’s still a process to get through to the younger group he has. Patience is the word of choice and it’s a virtue Evans doesn’t mind exercising in the early going. Some in his own household might even argue he’s exercised too much of it.
“I have four kids and you learn patience real quick being a parent,” Evans said. “All these kids, I know personally because they’re either friends with my kids of been at my house. I try not to be that guy that’s screaming and yelling at them. My wife pulled me aside after the last game and she said ‘It’s time to get on them!’ and I said ‘In time.’ Right now we’re still learning and I see them thinking on the court and that makes me happy because they’re thinking about what we’re teaching them.
“Whether it be transition offense or rotations on defense, they’re thinking and once we get past thinking and doing, which we do in spurts, then we’ll be good. But I’m not to the screaming part yet.”
Evans believes that while his time on the court with the kids has been brief, they’ve responded well to his methods. The eagerness to play games has been exciting but at the same time he’s trying to make sure they grasp the concepts he’s teaching.
Across the first week of the summer it looked rough but as he’s had more time to teach, his players have soaked in the lessons and started applying them.
“The first half of the Bluefield game this morning, the on-ball defenses was good, the rotations were good and the offense was fluid,” Evans said. “They were passing the ball and we were knocking down open shots and it looked exactly like we’ve been coaching. It was what we wanted to be. In the second half we got lazy for a three-minute stretch and had about six turnovers almost in a row. We were up two and went down 12 in two minutes. We can see what it’s going to be and that’s exciting but the patience to let it progress, it’s taxing especially since I don’t have a lot of time with them.
“They were dying to play games but I told them ‘You’re not going to look different unless you let me coach you first. You’re going to look exactly like you did last year if I don’t get to put in the new stuff and teach you what you need to know.’ For about three games they looked exactly the same and it was horrible so once we got some time in the gym and got acclimated to what we wanted them to do, they started looking much better.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94