All-Area Coach: Red Devils come full circle under Coggins
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Vic Coggins can remember when he took over as the Bowdon High School boys basketball coach.
Expectations weren’t exactly high, nothing like they were for this past season, when Coggins, the 2009-10 Times-Georgian Coach of the Year, led the Red Devils to 20 wins for the first time since 1994.
“I feel like we just have come so far in four years, you know. When I took this job, I was kind of told that we needed to start over, kind of build,” Coggins said. “The first two years were tough. But these guys have worked hard for four years.”
Watching his team’s defensive improvement, though, may have been the most rewarding — and pivotal — part of Bowdon’s strong season that netted it a No. 2 seed out of Region 6-A.
“One of the things we were really bad at when I got here, with our young guys especially, we didn’t play much defense. And I told them, you know, we’re going to have those off nights,” Coggins said. “But we can always play defense. We can always rebound the ball. And this year we had such a huge turnaround and played so much better on the defensive end.”
Senior standout forward Darious Moten also took note of how much better the Red Devils were on that end of the court.
“We really stepped up the defensive intensity this year because that’s something that we always had a problem with in the past,” Moten said.
The switch to a much quicker playing style also paid dividends for Bowdon.
“We talked about doing it a little bit last year,” Coggins said. “This year we really felt like we had a chance to play a faster-paced style and more aggressive defense.”
Moten said the up-tempo approach had many benefits.
“A lot of the past years we didn’t really have the athletic capability to just run and go the whole time. But this year he let us know from the beginning every time they in-bound the ball, we’re going to be up on them, whole game, full-court,” Moten said. “And that really allowed us to score a lot more points because we started to score more off of turnovers and also hold teams to a lot less points.”
Coggins was also impressed with the maturity of his team throughout the season.
“I’m proud of our entire group. We grew up a lot. We played a lot smarter basketball this year,” Coggins said. “We still had some stretches where we turned the ball over too much, but we’re going to continue to work on that. But I’m proud of this senior group.”
He said seniors Terell Thornton, Moten, Tony Wyatt and Eric Slaughter deserve so much credit for the year the Red Devils had.
“Those guys came out, and they’ve worked hard for four years,” Coggins said. “And I’m just so proud to see them go from where we were to where we are now, and we just hope to keep building on that momentum from those guys.”
Expectations weren’t exactly high, nothing like they were for this past season, when Coggins, the 2009-10 Times-Georgian Coach of the Year, led the Red Devils to 20 wins for the first time since 1994.
“I feel like we just have come so far in four years, you know. When I took this job, I was kind of told that we needed to start over, kind of build,” Coggins said. “The first two years were tough. But these guys have worked hard for four years.”
Watching his team’s defensive improvement, though, may have been the most rewarding — and pivotal — part of Bowdon’s strong season that netted it a No. 2 seed out of Region 6-A.
“One of the things we were really bad at when I got here, with our young guys especially, we didn’t play much defense. And I told them, you know, we’re going to have those off nights,” Coggins said. “But we can always play defense. We can always rebound the ball. And this year we had such a huge turnaround and played so much better on the defensive end.”
Senior standout forward Darious Moten also took note of how much better the Red Devils were on that end of the court.
“We really stepped up the defensive intensity this year because that’s something that we always had a problem with in the past,” Moten said.
The switch to a much quicker playing style also paid dividends for Bowdon.
“We talked about doing it a little bit last year,” Coggins said. “This year we really felt like we had a chance to play a faster-paced style and more aggressive defense.”
Moten said the up-tempo approach had many benefits.
“A lot of the past years we didn’t really have the athletic capability to just run and go the whole time. But this year he let us know from the beginning every time they in-bound the ball, we’re going to be up on them, whole game, full-court,” Moten said. “And that really allowed us to score a lot more points because we started to score more off of turnovers and also hold teams to a lot less points.”
Coggins was also impressed with the maturity of his team throughout the season.
“I’m proud of our entire group. We grew up a lot. We played a lot smarter basketball this year,” Coggins said. “We still had some stretches where we turned the ball over too much, but we’re going to continue to work on that. But I’m proud of this senior group.”
He said seniors Terell Thornton, Moten, Tony Wyatt and Eric Slaughter deserve so much credit for the year the Red Devils had.
“Those guys came out, and they’ve worked hard for four years,” Coggins said. “And I’m just so proud to see them go from where we were to where we are now, and we just hope to keep building on that momentum from those guys.”
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