Larry Jewell

3, 2, 1. We're talking with Dixie High school head basketball coach Ken Robinson and coach, I know disappointed in the loss in your first time out, but that was a pretty good ball club you faced. It was a very good team. They played well yesterday and we did a couple things periodically during the game that kind of showed a little bit of promise, but more often than not we were not in sync. Looked like a first ball game. Don't have a whole bunch of experience coming back some though. Well, obviously Cody has a lot of experience and Doug has some experience, but once you get past those two guys, there isn't a lot of experience there at the Varshi level. And so it's going to take some time. You know, it's easy to sit and tell everybody that it's going to take a little bit of time and we're going to start out slow. But when it actually happens, it's frustrating at times. But I think that hopefully that we can come out and win or lose, we'll look better tonight. Let's talk about some of the promise. Cody looks at times like he felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders and he had to do it himself. But then there's a little bit of Cody of last year too. I talked to him specifically about that. I told him that just about on every shot I could actually see his shoulders shrugged down a little bit further and a little bit further and. And I just got to convince him to just come out and have fun and play and we'll do something different tonight. We'll take him off the ball and just let him do his thing and we'll take somebody else and have them run the ball club and see if that little bit of change kind of takes a little bit of the weight of coach always getting on him about the offense not getting started or communicate with the other players or do some of the leadership type things. If we can just kind of take a little bit of load off his shoulders and just let him play a little bit tonight. There's a little stretch in the second half where he had some steals, a couple of good lay ins. It almost looked like it was fun for him again at that point. Well, if nobody knew anything about him and came out and watched the ball game, they'd kind of pick him out and say, oh, that's a pretty good player there. You know, he looks like he's got some pretty good promise. But it's when we're expecting so much and when he expected so much out of himself that we expect him to pick up on this ball game where he left off last year. And sometimes it doesn't work out that way, but he'll get it going. There's some other players there and we've got to. And that's another thing, Larry. I don't think that he's the type player that's going to put this team on his back and carry him. I think that it's going to have to be a team thing. And obviously if Doug is not in the ball game, it makes a difference. And if Nate Larson is not playing to his capabilities, it makes a big difference and so on. If Mason doesn't have a good running game and doesn't shoot well, we're a different team. Obviously, when we shot the ball down in the 30% area last night, we're not going to win very many games scoring 48 points and shooting in the 30s from the field. So we've just got to do a better job of that. Hopefully shoot better and maybe on occasion have better shot selection. You mentioned Mason. With Mason Wells and Nick Larson, you have a couple of pretty good little guards back there. With Cody, you're referring to Nick. Nick Larson is our other little guard, the point guard that is going to get the start tonight and we're going to give him some opportunities to use his leadership. They voted him in as one of the team captains and He's a straight 4.0 student and just a great all around smart kid that I think that he can take that role and he can make us a better team. Let's talk about some of the others. We mentioned Nate Larson earlier. Nate showed some of the problems that it looked like he was going to have last year before injury and illness kind of put him on the sidelines. He really has been playing well and I think that he's another one that does not have a lot of varsity experience. He's just going to have to grow with the situation and hopefully as the season goes along, he'll get more aware of what the defense is doing, take advantage of what they give him because he can score from outside and he can go to the hole, but he's got to get more physical around the basket. He's got to get us more rebounds than he got last night. I'm going to ask you after the game, what did you tell the kids? One of those I told you sos or what? No, you really don't go in as a coach and get on them like that. Nothing to gain by. I guess the only thing I told them I Told you so was how good Richfield is. I told them that they would probably start out in the top three of the state on the preseason picks and that they were that class of a ball team and that we were going to have to play well and tried to get their intensity up, ready to play a little bit and kind of forget their own games and do what the team needed them to do. And so those are some of the things we were concentrating on last night. Obviously we could have got out of our extended defense earlier. I think that if it was a real pressing ball game, we probably would have done that sooner. But we're trying to work on some pressing and trying to work on our own defense and I think that it made a difference the second half. I don't think their offense was quite as effective today. Richfield played Snow Canyon, Snow Canyon, zoned them all night long and really played them pretty well. And so that's just something that you learn about different teams. And we're just going to have to be the type that we can alternate and switch up on different things and hopefully do a better job executing when we are in certain defenses today against Wasatch. Good ball club, good ball player. And it happens to be some of the coach. Well, you know, it's a situation where they didn't look real good last night because of who they were playing, but their pretty good ball club. They've got size, they've got. They look deceivingly like they're not very quick, but they do good ball handling techniques as far as getting the ball to open people. We tried to press them a little bit last year and weren't very successful with it because their guards are big in size and they see the floor well and they get the ball down to open people. And so we'll just have to pick and choose and do a good job but not give up as many baskets on the inside as we gave up last night to Richfield. You're still encouraged about this team, aren't you? Very encouraged. Well, yeah, yeah. I shouldn't be in this business if I've given up on them. You know, that's a situation where you take the reality of the situation you look at. That's why we need a ball game at this time of year is because we can see okay, our number one problem is this. Our number one or two strengths are this. And let's build on that. Let's work on our number one problems. And sometimes it's a little bit of an eye awakening to see exactly where we need to go from here tonight against Wasatch. What will be the key for Dixie? I think the priority is going to be that we get our shot selection, that we get our offense going a little bit better if we struggle and don't shoot very well, and it's going to be a long night. The second thing is that so we've got to convince the guys to do a better job around the boards. Richfield hurt us last night on offensive boards, putting them back up and we're not convinced. We had our two and three men sitting out on the wings waiting to get an outlook pass to fast break, and it just doesn't happen that way. We've got to get guys in hitting the boards and if we'll concentrate on that and get out and get our offense going, and maybe this switch of putting Cody over on the wing might help us do that. You mentioned Nick Larson will start a point, Cody at the wing. What about the rest of the starting lineup tonight? Well, Mason will be over on the other wing, and then we'll go with Nate Larson and Doug Jolly inside. Nate and Doug could be a formidable duo once they get used to each other again. I'm trying to get them to become main buddies, you know, so that they really like playing together because they do have the potential to really work well together. Doug really does see the floor when he wants to and he can. He's a good passer when he wants, wants to, and Nate also can. Their athletic abilities and capabilities are there. If they want to decide they want to play with each other, they could really be awesome together like that. And it just becomes a case where they're more familiar with each other and they look for each other. Coach Ken Robinson, thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thanks, Larry. 3, 2, 1. We're talking with Wasatchette basketball coach Bill Farr. And coach, you have one of those unique situations where you get to coach your son, but he happens to be one of the stars of the team, too. Well, I've had three sons that have played for me in the 28 years I've coached. In fact, I've kind of got mixed emotions tonight. I've got my mil sense coaching his first ball game tonight in blinding, so I'm going to have a hard time concentrating. But I've got a veteran group of kids. I've got some seniors that have played pretty well. And one thing that hurt us yesterday and I've told my kids, excuses are for mediocre players. There's no, you know, Pineview's got a good ball club and Coach Christensen's done a good job over the years and the way they play defense, our point guard and our best defensive players out with a torn ligament in his wrist. He's in a cast or brace. And so that hurt us a little bit. And in the long ride down, we were seven hours in the bus fighting snow all the way down. But tell you what, even if we were arrested and had everybody, we'd have. It'd be a tough ball game with Pine View. But I don't think they're 20, 15, 20 points better. I think we're, you know, we can play with them when we get full strength and on a neutral type of situation, it's always interesting to get that first game out of the way, See where some of the. See where some of the dents in the car are, isn't it? Well, our problem was we Monday is when this kid hurt his wrist at practice. And so we didn't have any time to really, you know, make some adjustments and changes and you lose. Your Lindquist is a good ball player, excellent ball player, but I feel like he could have held him, you know, maybe to half the points he scored and we'd have done a little better job the first half. It would have been a better ball game. Now you've had a chance to get the team rested, get used to the Dixie center floor again. What are some of the things that you anticipate today for your ball club against Dixie? Well, we'll face a different type of club, I think, in that Dixie. If I know Coach Robinson, I've coached against him for quite a few years. When he was at Delden, when he was at Lehigh, they'll probably play that 2, 3 zone. And so now we're going to have to concentrate a little bit and shoot the outside shot a little bit more a day. We're not big anyway to get the ball inside, and I feel that's where our strength is. So we'll see if, you know, that works out, Get a chance to use where we feel we're strong and that's with our outside shooting and not have so much pressure. So that's a plus, I'm hoping. There's been quite a tradition at Wasatch. You've had a string of some very good ball clubs up there over the years. Do the kids sense that tradition when they step on the floor? Well, it's been good up there. We've had some pretty good teams. We've played back to back for state championships. We come in second each time, but we've been there and I think the kids take pride in what they're doing and we try to teach them the fundamentals and hope that they can execute and represent our school and our community in a positive manner. And likewise down here, there's three good high school teams down here also, and it's good to compete against the good teams and we always try to do that. We try to go on the road. Last year we came down and played all three of them, Snow Canyon and Pine View and Dixie. So we're used to the travel and playing those schools early on, and I think it kind of gives us an indication of where we're at today. You mentioned you're missing your point guard. How are you going to start against Dixie? We'll start with Spencer Edwards, who's a senior. He was our quarterback in football and he would see a lot of playing time anyway, but he's still not my defensive stopper, but he handles the ball fairly well on the point. And then Carl Berg, another senior that played a lot last year and a good outside shooter. And Brady Farm, my son, the other senior, he'll be on another wing. And then Kai Norfelt, who's a junior, he won't start, but he came in yesterday and he scored 17 points, so that was a bright spot for us. And then Dale Wimpe will start senior at one of the forwards and Matt Mahoney would be the center senior. And for those who may wonder, your point guard, who is out? How long will he be out? Well, we're not sure. Nathan Hatch, who is the. He was my point last year and my defensive stopper, he's got a torn ligament in his wrist. The bone is actually slid up on his hand and so he's in a brace right now. And then he'll go back in a week and see if it's starting to heal. If it isn't, then he'll have to cast it. So it could be four weeks, it could be just a couple of weeks. It just depends on how the healing is going and the doctor will look at that and then we'll know from there. But it's the type of an injury that makes it impossible for him to play because it's on his right hand. He can't pass the ball, you can't shoot, you can't do anything without your wrist, so it really hinders him and he just can't play. The key you mentioned, outside shooting, are there other keys that you see in this game today? Well, We've got to do a better job rebounding. Pineview, bigger than we are, did an extremely good job getting a lot of second shots and getting the ball in the paint. I haven't watched the film yet, but I'm assuming they got a lot of points inside the key area. So we've got to rebound better. That's going to be a key. Dixie's not any bigger than we are, but they've always been quick and they've got some good athletes. And if you're a good athlete, you don't have to to be big. You can do your job and go rebound. So we've got to do that today. Coach, I've got to ask you, you have your middle son coaching his first game today. Couldn't talk him out of coaching? No. And he wanted to play us, and I did make that, so that didn't happen. He and I just wouldn't be. It wouldn't be fun, I don't think. I guess it would be maybe if he'd been in it for a few years and do it, but I. He feels a lot of pressure. He's down at San Juan. Dennis Jones has been there a long time, and they've got a good tradition of basketball, and so he was real nervous, and we'll see what happens. Are you glad that he's into coaching? Yeah, but it's changed. Coaching has changed dramatically in the 28 years I've been in it. Kids have changed. Parents are not realistic. I'm just being blunt, I guess, but they're really not. It seems like the teen concept is left high school basketball. It's more of, you know, what can you do for my son? Get him a scholarship. How many points did he score? And that's sad because it's still for the kids, and I think we're losing a little bit of that. I'm sure there's still teams around that will play and play together and play the team concept, but I can see more and more going the other way to being individuals and not playing together. Coach, thank you for being with us. Good luck. Congratulations on a great career at Wasatch, too. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.