Coaches Corner for March 18th: Brian Surratt, Madrid Boys Basketball

With us on Coach's Corner here in KWBG, going to wrap up the Madera Boys basketball season. Head Coach Brian Surratt joining us. The Tigers, a really strong season finish up 20 and five.

And I tell you what, Coach, I knew coming into this season that there was a nice nucleus that was coming back from last year. I had three question marks. I think that's probably fair to say. I'm sure there's some other Tigers fans that had some question marks.

You, though, didn't have question marks. You told me this team was going to gel. You told me this back in November, actually. If I would have told you 20 wins this season, would have you been surprised? No, I kind of thought that that would be our benchmark.

I knew going in that and I told people, you know, we're going to lose some games. Just our youthfulness is going to catch up with us a little bit at times. And and, you know, we're going to lose some that maybe we shouldn't lose.

But in place of tough games that are going to be hard to win with. Just having young guys early in the season. And that's kind of how it went.

You know, we had a couple losses before Christmas and some tough games and, you know, learn some lessons in those and and, you know, kind of came out of the regular season about what I thought we would come out of it that.

And then I was hopeful in the postseason, you know, if we could position ourselves well enough to get three home games, we'd be able to make it back to that sub state gaming and give us ourselves give ourselves a chance to get back to state.

And that's pretty much exactly how I played out. Well, I'll tell you what, you got some real nice minutes this year and some real nice. And it's funny because saying this out loud doesn't make much sense.

I mean, I can kind of say it with Jevon and and Emerson, because they played so much basketball for you. But you got some youthful minutes that were strong minutes. I mean, they felt like senior minutes from a Bogartist, from a Fowler, from a Newell Owens.

I mean, these are kids that shouldn't have been playing like they were, coach. Man, they were playing kind of like veterans at times. Yeah, they just need to get some experience and confidence in themselves, which is exactly like I said, how I figured to see them in play out.

We maybe, you know, get tripped up a little bit early as we learn some lessons and learn how to play at the speed that you play at a varsity level.

I'd take care of a basketball and, you know, players need to gain confidence in what their game is, you know, how do they fit into the team. What are their best attributes to the basketball player? You know, how can they have impacts on the game?

I mean, you kind of figure those things out as the season goes on. So that's a good and the bad thing about playing young players is, you know, you have to go through these rough patches, but at the same time, there's going to be tons of growth.

And so, you know, the good thing for us is, you know, outside of Emerson, we have everybody back for two more years. And so you think about the growth that they had this season. What does that growth going to look like next season? And then moving on to the one after that.

So, you know, it's a really good thing that we were able to get all these young guys the time on the court that they got this year. And, you know, I'm hopeful that it's going to pay off next season.

I think the crazy part to Brian, and I know this would be easy to say with Jevon, I know that football is probably going to be his path. But I think if he wanted basketball to be his path, that could also be his path.

But where I'm going with this is these kids all have a passion for basketball, don't they? Yeah, they all really enjoy basketball. They've been around our program for the last several years since they've been in sixth, seventh grade.

They've been coming along with us and coming to practices and, you know, kind of being our managers and stuff like that. And so they've been around it. They've seen, you know, what it takes to be tone winners.

They've been a part of that winning, you know, even though a lot of them didn't get a lot of minutes last year, they're still all state champions coming back from the season before. And so, yeah, they have a passion for basketball.

They've seen it be successful, which is a big thing, you know, getting over that hump and having some success and people believing that while it really can happen here or to me has been a good thing for these guys.

And I think, you know, I'm hopeful that, you know, this loss that we had with this the end of the season doesn't sit so well with a lot of them. But it'll kind of be a motivating factor for next season.

When we talk about next season and obviously, you know, a lot of growth is going to happen just from maturing and just turning from a sophomore to a junior or a junior to a senior or however else you want to look at, even some younger kids coming up.

Brian, where are we working on this summer? What are some things you need to see from this group this summer? And I know we don't always get into is a ton of skills this summer. Really, it's just getting a bunch of court time.

But what do you want to see from these kids coming up this summer? Oh, you know, we need to continue to develop our shooting. I think that was one thing that we, you know, really heard us this year was our inconsistency with hitting outside shots.

We got a lot better as the year went on, especially towards the end of the year. We started making some more. But we need to consistently be hitting shots out there. The guys that we have are capable shooters.

They just need to, you know, continue to work at it and gain confidence and and, you know, get more the more shots you get up, the less you think about shooting the ball. I think we think about our shot a little bit too much right now.

And so we need to just get to where you're comfortable taking that shot immediately and not thinking, you know, this is a good shot or a bad shot.

So, you know, that'll be a focus this year or the summer is to to really work on our shooting and continue to develop that so we can spread the floor out a little bit and allow our big guys a little more room to work.

And then, you know, we just we need to pick up the intensity a little bit more on defense.

That was really the big catalyst for us last season with winning state is that defensively, we were one of the better basketball teams in the in the state is not the best in that category, too. So we couldn't, you know, wasn't just scoring.

It was like we can get stops when we need stops and make it difficult for other teams to score. And this group needs to do a little bit better job of that.

If we want to accomplish things, we want to accomplish and, you know, for us that's getting back to state, that's competing and, you know, getting back to the state championship game and giving ourselves a chance to win it again.

Brian, final thing for me, the conference is going to look a little different next year as well. We've got a couple of schools that will be exiting. And so that obviously changes the schedule a little bit.

What are kind of some thoughts, I guess, from you when it comes to what the schedule may look like coming up next winter? Yeah, I mean, there's there's some good things and bad things.

I mean, for the conference itself, it makes things a little easier knowing that you're going to play everybody twice. So that would be different, you know, playing everybody on the other side a second time, a home and away.

You know, so it clears things up as to who the, you know, so-called real champion is when they're coming down to ties and things like that. You say, well, everybody played everybody the same.

I think, you know, you're going to lose some non-conference games, which is sometimes difficult to schedule. So there's some good to that, too, because we have struggled to find opponents that are willing to play us without having to travel a long way.

It's just, you know, everybody is trying to do us best with their programs and their minds. And so it gets a little difficult. You know, not everybody's in place where they feel like they can compete with us. And so they're, you know, a little bashful about playing us.

So that that that will maybe help that a little bit. At the same time, it's our conference is really good.

And so it's going to make things, you know, the season even more difficult, which is a good thing, too, because you can help you develop, helps you get to where you want to get to at the end of the season. When you play, when you're playing tough games all the time.

The downside of it is that, you know, the state doesn't take that into consideration. And, you know, so we play a tougher schedule.

It doesn't always work out in your favor when it comes to seedings and things like that, because they're really just looking at wins and losses for the most part.

And so, you know, you got to make sure that we are focused and ready to go next year and try to take care of business and do our part to position ourselves in a good spot. And I'm looking forward to it. And I think, you know, it'll be a good thing.

And then it'll change again the year after the second one, never made me to leave. So, you know, it's it'll be an interesting thing, but it's going to be good for us and good for the conference overall. Brian, as always, thank you so much for some time.

Always appreciate conversations before and after games and coaches corners as well. And I know I'll see you around the spring and summer, but thanks for some time. We'll look forward to talking again in November. Yeah, thank you for covering us, Ryan.

We appreciate you going to the games and the conversations that we have. You know, with the coaches corners, stuff like that. So I know our fans listen to you. My sister-in-law lives up in Minneapolis and she listens to the games quite often in comments on how good a job you do.

So we appreciate it. You bet. Brian Saratigan joining us. Madrib Boys Basketball here on Coaches Corner.