Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Cultivating Successful Basketball Culture
FARMINGTON — Farmington High School represents an institution where mediocrity isn’t acceptable in its athletic programs.
Johnny Taylor knew that when he applied for the head boys basketball coaching position with former head coach Beau Thompson stepping aside to take the athletic director position.
Coming into Colors Day Dec. 18 at home against 4A-1 foe, Berryville, last season’s conference Runner-up during the district tournament held at Prairie Grove, Farmington’s record stood at 6-3 fresh off a 76-56 nonconference victory over Class 5A Siloam Springs.
Taylor’s style differs from Thompson’s with a more fast-paced game with an emphasis on forcing the tempo. He’s quick to point out the solid foundation Thompson and assistant coach Adam Simmons already had in place as players adjust.
“I think a lot of the reasons we’ve had success is because they already knew the concepts,” Taylor said. “Coach Thompson and Coach Simmons taught more of a motion so they already knew a lot of the concepts.”
The new look Cardinals run a lot of different actions utilizing different personnel groupings in order to run different sets through different lineups.
“For me, that’s the funnest part,” Taylor said. “Being able to try to manipulate a defense and put guys in positions to be successful.”
Senior Carson Simmons benefited from the strategic planning by scorching Siloam Springs for 37 points with three teammates joining him in double figures.
Taylor introduced several new motivational concepts including a wrestling belt awarded to one player after each game, who drapes the belt over a shoulder, which signifies the team’s leading rebounder, and takes a photo.
“For us, everything we do, we want to celebrate small victories and basically we tried in the preseason to sit down and put together our positive plan,” Taylor said.
“That just goes along with part of our culture so right now the things that we’re doing, we’ve got the belt, we’ve just added a lockdown defender chain and also every day we have a practice pacesetter of the day, being that’s where every coach picks out two guys that they thought set the pace in practice and played really hard and did the things that we want to do with our culture.”
Taylor borrowed the idea of the lockdown chain from a Shiloh Christian assistant football coach Jacob Gill, and incorporates things the University of Arkansas does with its men’s basketball program.
“I think you can learn from other sports, from business and from studying people who have had success,” Taylor said.
Taylor also started a culture wall where displaying the most common things coaches want the players to think about, see, and read about as they enter the locker room.
“Basically, it’s just all about what can you do daily to improve and progress and mold the culture of celebrating the kids and promoting players,” Taylor said. “I think the biggest thing is how do we promote players and still in the same sense play as a team? I think the guys have really bought in to the things that we’ve done so far with that.”
Another visual aid features a shovel emblazoned with TGHT, which stands for “The Game Honors Toughness.”
It’s a motivational tool Taylor said a lot of people use that in their basketball programs. For the Cardinals, the shovel represents an “in the trench” guy doing things that necessarily are not going to show up in the game statistics.
“The guys that score points, it’s going to show up in the paper. We want to honor the guys that are doing all the little things,” Taylor said.
“We say on a good team one or two people will do the dirty work, on a great team everyone
is in the trenches and willing to do the dirty work. The dirty work for us is showing up every day on time, being bought in, being a good teammate, diving on the floor for a loose ball, playing defense,
denying someone the basketball, getting deflections, those types (of) things.”
Taylor tracks and charts deflections for each game, which embraces his philosophy to force
tempo. Deflections create steals and disrupt offensive sets.
“We want pressure on the basketball and then we want pressure on opponent’s guards,” Taylor said, adding most teams Farmington plays may not experience that style of defense regularly.
Pressure helps eliminate post feeds and keeps things tight on the perimeter.
“A kid is not a shooter if he can’t get his feet set,” Taylor said.
Every year the Cardinals will change some things to adapt to team personnel, but certain things won’t change.
Players, parents and fans alike will have something to look forward to as Taylor constantly refines his program.
“I try to live by ‘I’m not a knowit- all, I’m a learn- it- all,’” Taylor said. “We’re trying to utilize all the things that Northwest Arkansas offers.”