Bearcats Basketball Coach Rickey McCullough takes a more hands-on approach. He travels to opponent’s games and watches them play live.
“I’m watching their personnel,” McCullough said about watching other teams’ players. “I’m trying to match my kids up with their kids and figure out who will be our best match-ups on offense and defense.”
McCullough studies how they play, whether a team is fast and if they’ll need to press them or not. He’s taking notes in the stands, jotting down information that will help lead his team to a win.
The Bearcats face off against Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, Fla., for the first game of the season. Tuesday night, McCullough went to watch the Trojans to study their style of play. All the travel might get exhausting, but according to him, it’s how you win games.
“I’ve always done it, and I like doing it,” McCullough said.
That’s not to say McCullough doesn’t watch film, though. Over the past week he has been watching film of Thomasville. He watches to see who they have coming back. It’s all about matching up players.
“And you get to play these guys in the summer too, so you’re familiar with they’re personnel,” McCullough said. “But you want to get a feel for them. So you watch them play and go from there.”
The Bearcats and Lady Cats play every team in the region twice this season. McCullough uses that to his advantage, learning everything he can during the first game, fixing any problems his team might have against them.
“So we watch film and know they’re sets,” McCullough said. “But they know yours too. They know all of your out of bounds plays and so forth. It gets to be a chess match.”
While watching film, McCullough takes notes on what he calls a Bearcat Performance Chart. Each player is given a series of numbers based on their performance, like how many points they scored or rebounds they had.
When added up, the numbers show how well players did in relation to one another.
This early in the season though, McCullough still has to watch his own players for a few games to get a feel for where they stand.
“We don’t know what we’re going to be good at yet on defense, so I play a lot of defenses,” McCullough said. “But they’ll find something they can hang their hat on, and we’ll get good at it.”