Well, since this is the first edition of my coaching journal, I guess I should give a little background on Trevor Browne Basketball. That means you all get a history lesson on the Bruin program for the past 15-20 years. If you don't like such things, wait till next week's edition. But……for those of you that will be reading my journals, this should give you an idea of the program, its history (coaches/players/etc…), and what I am trying to build upon. It's easy to just tell you about myself and my current team, but heck, every coach will be doing that on these journals so I thought I'd take you back to the beginning.

For years Bruin Basketball was in transition, constantly trying to find a winning coach/attitude/team. The school opened in 1972 and had marginal basketball success. The football program, under the direction of Bill Mitton became the pride of the school. The basketball program, like many that exist at successful football schools, was overlooked and usually for good reason. On a personal note, I graduated from Saguaro H.S. in 1989 and can remember traveling to Trevor Browne (a long trip). The games with Browne were 2 easy victories and we constantly talked about scoring 100 pts. This was Trevor's worst period of basketball.

Then, in the early 1990's Mike Ellsworth took over the Bruin program and started to build the team. Ellsworth, who has been loved or criticized depending on the year, showed fierce loyalty to his players and built a program that was known for it's____________ . (many words could go in the blank, including: intensity, street ball, presses, crazy coach, us against the world philosophy, defense, lack of defense etc…) People still don't know how to characterize Mike. Good coach/bad coach, good defense/bad defense, loyal/selfish. Regardless of your view of Ellsworth, he molded the program into a winner. In 93-94 the Bruins tasted success with stars Anthony Blakes and RJ Nelson. This squad was the best Trevor had seen in years and made it to the State Playoffs before losing to a powerful Saguaro squad. Anthony went on to shine at Wyoming and later with the Harlem Globetrotters. Somewhere, around 1996, Kevin Woodberry, Terrance Mcbride, Bruce Sharp, and Leondre Lewis entered the mix and gelled with such Bruin players as Byron Jackson, Steve Young, and BJ Smith. This is where I came into the program. I was the freshman coach for two years during this time. Our coaching staff, which has always been made-up of basketball-first guys who care deeply about their players was Ellsworth, Brad Pinter, and myself. Brad later took over the program at Camelback. I moved up to JV and a year later David Grace was added to the mix. As you can see Mike Ellsworth found very solid assistants to help him build the program. (this is a credit to him, as it is very hard to find basketball-first guys in our district who will devote as much time and passion to the kids as we have) Anyway, back to the story. By this time the Bruins had become a Metro power, constantly finishing 2nd behind Argie Rhymes' state-champion Carl Hayden teams. In 1998, Woodberry's junior year, the Bruins made it to the final 8, before falling by 1 to Shadow Mtn. The following year, Woodberry was selected as Arizona Republic's Basketball Player of the Year. He led the team to the Regional Title, going undefeated in Region play and then the Final Four of the State Playoffs where we lost to Salpointe. Kevin went on to a successful college career (first at Portland, then as BYU's starting pg.) He graduated as the leading scorer in school history (a record that Daren Jordan broke this past season). The next year, we thought we'd be rebuilding but thanks to Dannell McPhaul, Shon Redd, and John Vinson we managed to make a run and again made it to the final 8. This helped solidify Trevor as a maintaining basketball power. After one or two down years, the 2002-2003 season saw Trevor re-emerge as a power. Ty Morrison was the Gatorade State Player of the Year and was selected 1st team all-state. Daren Jordan, a sophomore who had taken over the point halfway through his freshman year was our leading scorer at 20ppg and Kyle Watts, Kaleo Kina, Terrance Williams, Jason Gaines, and Ralph Carrethers all played crucial roles as we racked up a 29-5 record. We reached #1 in the state during this season for the first time and again made it to the Final Four before falling to eventual champion Gilbert. The next year, we were ranked #1 pre-season and as high as #40 in the country by The Sporting News in their High School Hoops magazine. Kaleo, Daren, and Ty all averaged over 19 ppg and we went 21-8. The expectations were huge and we never quite lived up to them. The season concluded with a loss in the state playoffs to Horizon.

The summer after that season, rumors circled that Ellsworth might leave to take over the Chandler program. This would give him a chance to coach his son Dane who would be a sophomore. At first I thought "Yeah, maybe, but we've heard these rumors before…" During my 10 years at Trevor Browne, Mike had been mentioned as a candidate or finalist for jobs at many schools but his loyalty to Trevor always prevailed. This time a new variable was included….coaching his own family. The lure was enough and Mike is now the head man at Chandler. I had already interviewed for the Central job (in June) and was a finalist along with Darren Bustos that summer. Central chose Darren, which turned out to be a blessing as I got to stay with the kids I had been coaching and take over the Bruin program. This meant that our entire coaching staff from 03-04 would now be varsity coaches as David Grace got the job at South Mtn.

My first year was much like Coach Grace's first year (if you read his journal last year). In fact we often talked of the similarities. We encountered many of the same joys, barriers, headaches, and hardships. The #1 difference between being a JV or Frosh coach and the Varsity job is all the extra off-the-court aspects of the job. What a Headache!!!! For the true X's and O's guys like myself that want to be out their with the kids (or in the classroom with the kids) the other particulars of the job can be a huge deterrent. You'll probably hear all about those in my journals and other coach's journals later this year. On the court, we played fine. We went 21-9 this year, losing 3 times to Deer Valley (all were good games), once to Mtn. Pointe, twice in the Whataburger Tournament to Texas schools, once to Hamilton, once to Alhambra (hurt us in the power pts), and then lost to Mountain View in the State Playoffs. Kaleo received a full ride to play ball for the Navy in Annapolis next year and was selected 2nd team All-State and Daren got a full ride to play for Oral Roberts and broke the school scoring record with 1834 career pts. I believe we are one of only four schools that have surpassed 20 wins each of the past 3 seasons.

This summer we hit the road with a new team. Instead of being guard-dominated like previous Bruin teams, we were big. (8 guys over 6'3) This meant transitioning from a constantly pressing team to one that mixes up defenses to fit it's strengths and it's opponents weaknesses. A big challenge this summer was getting the kids to understand that my agenda was different from theirs. The kids want to win and look good. I wanted to find out who played well together and what defenses we were good at and which needed work. We played the defenses that needed work a lot and that meant we weren't playing our best. But…..we got better at them. The kids wanted to always play our best defense and win, win, win, but I wanted to mix in the weak defenses so that we would be better prepared for the fall/winter. We took a big hit on June 13 (my birthday of all days) when our starting guard Louis Barraza left for the rest of the summer to play with the Mexican Junior National team in a big tournament in Argentina. We were 10-1 at the time and he had taken over as our point guard. It'll be nice having a 6'4 point guard (if we keep it that way). We played o.k. from then on, but mostly had one good half and one ugly half and would lose close. I think we went 3-7 the rest of the way. We are still learning how to get our big men involved. Trevor has always been an off-the-dribble, create, guard-centered school and thus our guards will need to learn how to let the big men do their jobs in the paint. Many of our faults on the court can and will be corrected with practice (we had no gym this summer at TGB). For the most part I was very satisfied with our progress over the summer. My only concern is in our attitude. This is a constant work in progress. Today's culture seems to be one of cut-downs. Kids constantly making fun of their teammates. I see this at all levels and in all schools. Not a lot of building each other up, just ripping on each other. I'd love to see my guys stop that aspect of their games and start being more supportive of each other. I'm working on it, my assistants are working on it, I think the team is working on it, so I guess we'll see in the Fall. The cool thing about this squad is that we have an amazing junior class which I get to work with for two years towards a state championship. We have some great seniors too, but the junior class has most of the players other teams recognize. I'll talk about the guys next time. Sorry if this initial journal was so long. I can pretty much guarantee that what follows will be shorter (hey its summer, high school leagues are over, what else am I gonna do!!!)

Trevor Browne H.S.