OKState.com recently did a short interview with newly-hired basketball coach, Brad Underwood. Coach Underwood enjoyed tremendous success in his three years at Stephen F. Austin University and I think he’ll do an excellent job at OSU.
The interview is a quick read so I can encourage to take a quick look. A couple of his thoughts really stand out as it pertains to coaching basketball.
First, on family:
With me, everything starts with my family. We incorporate family into our program, and that entails our fans and every part of OSU. I use the term family a lot. I want everybody to be a part of this and enjoy the opportunity.
Second, on his basketball philosophy:
It all starts on the defensive side for us. It’s aggressive, hard-nosed, tough man-to-man defense. You win games with offense, but you win championships with defense and rebounding. Those are old-school beliefs that still ring true today. We’re going to try to be extremely consistent in our efforts every single day. From an offensive standpoint, we’ve always been a team that scores around 79 to 80 points per game. We’re capable of playing very fast, but we’re an execution-based and efficient team. A year ago we led the country in assists per game, and this year we were second. I think that plays into being a well-rounded basketball team. I’m very big on selfless basketball, and that shapes our philosophy on the offensive and defensive side of the ball.
Regarding his philosophy, a couple of things stand out. He believes in defense and he believes in executing on offense. Nowadays, those tend to be old-school ideas … but they shouldn’t be considered ‘old’. Speed up the game all you want, but it still comes down to executing the fundamentals and taking good shots on offense. As he also mentions, it also comes down to being selfless, efficient, and playing hard-nosed basketball. All aspects we can incorporate into our basketball teams and programs.
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