CONWAY -- A grateful Mike Neighbors has fond memories of his time as a high school basketball coach.
Neighbors, who will start his second season as the head women's coach at the University of Arkansas later this fall, provided some insight to his fellow coaches during Monday's Arkansas Basketball Coaches Association Fall Clinic at Hendrix College.
"My job as a college coach doesn't exist without them," said Neighbors, who coached the University of Washington's women's program to a Final Four appearance in 2016. "They are important to a player's role. They are important to a player's maturity. And not just the preparation on the court but for them to be ready to be a college student.
"I try to give back. I try to do as many clinics as I can. If I can get one or two thoughts across to somebody or to help somebody, I've done my job."
Neighbors joined University of Auburn men's Coach Bruce Pearl and Southern Mississippi men's Coach Doc Sadler as the seventh annual event's featured speakers. All three demonstrated examples of drills that their teams run during practices.
"At clinics like this you get a little philosophy and you get entertained a little bit," said Pearl, who has led 18 teams to the NCAA Tournament in 23 seasons as a head coach. "I like to give them some real hard stuff they can put in. Today, we talked about zone offenses and other basketball priorities. It's things I try to do as a coach."
Neighbors stressed that team practices need to be "functionality fast," and that "practice chaos creates game calmness."
Sadler, whose Golden Eagles reached the finals of the Conference USA Tournament last spring, cautioned the high school coaches to not try to work on every facet of the game in every practice.
"Be good at four or five things," Sadler said. "If you're trying to be good at everything, you're not going to be good at anything."
Neighbors said meeting other coaches and learning their philosophies has kept him in the coaching profession.
"I listened to how the champions talked and the people that stayed around year after year," said Neighbors, who had coaching stints at Bentonville and Cabot high schools. "Some coaches would come and go but the people that were there every year I began to study their qualities and their characteristics and try to emulate those people. I learned there's no good way to do this thing. But you've got to do it your way and listen to what the best people are doing and make it your own."
In his four years at Washington -- two as a head coach and two as an assistant -- the Huskies made one Final Four appearance, two more appearances in the Sweet 16 and one appearance in the WNIT.
In his first year at Arkansas, the Razorbacks finished 3-13 in the SEC and 13-18 overall.
"Our expectations are to be better and just continue to improve," Neighbors said. "That was our goal of that team last year. Every single day we wanted to show up and be a little bit better than we were the day before.
"We want to continue that. Not get too focused on the scoreboard and the wins, losses and records will take care of themselves. If we just keep holding ourselves to some of those standards we set last year of course we'll raise them."
Pearl said coaches should "expect more from your players than themselves."
"The reality is that we get to keep our job as coaches because we win," Pearl said. "The reality is that the reason we coach is to make a difference for the kids."
Sports on 09/18/2018