Sean C. Morgan
Sweet Home High School Athletic Director Steve Brown will get back into coaching this year when he takes over the girls varsity basketball team this month.
Give him a choice between football and basketball as his favorite sport, it’s basketball, Brown said, “mainly because it’s indoors, and it’s dry usually,” although he isn’t looking forward to the long bus rides.
He has more than 10 years experience coaching at the high school level, he said. A few years were unpaid in Los Angeles at Manual Arts High School, which won the 1987 state championship while he was there.
That team was scoring 100 points a game over about 10 games, he said. He was just helping out to 3A next year.
“I love basketball,” said Brown, who is in his second year at SHHS. “I wanted to apply at the very start.”
But he wasn’t sure if it was allowed with his new position, he said. It turned out it is, so he applied this year.
He succeeds teacher Kerstin Brosterhous, who left the district this year, with a program that has struggled to win games for several years, and he’s got ideas to start changing that.
He will continue focusing on fundamentals, he said.
“I love teaching from the ground up,” Brown said. “I will attempt to be as fundamentally sound as we can be.”
That means he’ll be working with the team on passing, shooting and rebounding, he said. “I want to be as aggressive as we can but under control.”
Brown is looking at the long term, he said. “I would love to stay as long as I can, as long as they’ll have me. My goal is to try to get back to the winning atmosphere. I see some potential.”
Numbers in the win column isn’t everything though.
“It’s not the end of the road,” he said. “It’s the road itself. What did you learn on the way to the goal? How did you get there?”
He wants the team to do the best it can as well as not being satisfied with losing, he said. “I love practice. I love being able to teach and seeing people improve. If you’re better at the end of the year, that’s a success. I just want to be competitive.”
He wants to build the program at all levels and get things going below the high school age, he said. “Everybody knows that’s how you build a program. Until people find success, they’re not going to give up weekends and summers.”
That’s the mindset the school needs to change, he said, going into each game with the idea they not only can win but will win.
He’s optimistic, but “it’s going to take a lot of work,” Brown said. “I think in your practice time, that’s when you put them in situations.”
The team can run drills that handle a variety of game situations, training the players so well they follow the training no matter how stressful the game situation, he said. Free throws and defending last second shots become automatic.
“We want to pressure the ball to get easy shots,” Brown said. That means high-pressure defense. He wants to “force the issue,” and he wants to do it all game long.
“My goal is to win the fourth quarter,” Brown said. The game will be up-tempo with a lot of pressure, and that can only happen if people are in shape throughout the lineup.
“I guarantee we’ll be in shape,” he said.
When defensive pressure doesn’t produce a shot, the team will set up an offense and use picks and rolls to find a shot.
“If you can run a pick ’n’ roll effectively, it works,” Brown said. He wants to get some push from everyone on the team. He’ll move everyone around the floor, with the 5-4 girls learning post too. A 5-4 post is defended by a 5-4 opponent unless the other team wants a mismatch, which the Huskies can use to their advantage.
“‘I’ll take a 2-footer over an 18-footer any day,” Brown said.
Fundamentals and physicality are key, he said. On the boards, if a girl is blocking out, a taller defender still can’t get near the ball without giving up a foul. If the player knows how to screen out right, she can even let the ball bounce in front of her and still grab it.
“I think there’s a very good nucleus that we can build on,” Brown said. “And it all depends on if we can mesh together to make that happen. My goal is to build a foundation and get people believing in girls basketball.”
Brown said he is thankful that his wife Debra is letting him coach again, he said. When they were younger and living in Bend, he coached at La Pine, and he would see his children on Sunday when they were going to bed.
Coaching takes a lot of time, and “she’s been a good lady.”