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Howland’s Bogan catching up
HOWLAND
Since having been named Howland’s boys basketball coach recently, Bill Bogan is a bit behind.
But his June hiring shouldn’t be a serious drawback to the Tigers’ fortunes in December.
“It’s not where you start, but where you end up,” the new coach said of being behind on summer workouts.
Bogan was head coach at Badger for 11 years, before spending the last six as an assistant at Harding.
He was board-approved on June 1 and has already worked with the players.
“We’re not going to try to catch up right away,” Bogan said of the predicament of the timing of his hiring. “We’ll make up, then focus and make sure we’re ready to go in December.”
Evaluation will comprise the bulk of the early sessions.
“There will be some new systems to play on both sides of the ball, so it’ll be a little different summer for the kids and myself,” Bogan said. “I’m going to do lot of evaluating and not as much as they’re used to and not as much as I’m used to from a teaching standpoint.
“We’re getting a little of a late start.
“The camps and summer leagues will start soon. We haven’t had that three week-or-so time frame where a lot of coaches put in some instruction or tweaking. We will put our noses to the grindstone and, like I said, we aim to be ready in December and not June.”
Aside from open gyms, coaches are permitted 10 days of actual instruction before August.
“You’re allowed as many open gyms as you want in June and July but only 10 days of actual instruction — whatever you want to run,” Bogan said. “We’ll make the most of our 10 days.”
The 47-year-old Bogan who lives in Warren said that one of the allures of the Howland job is the availability of basketball minds at the school.
“There are so many good sports minds at the building and the facilities. I’m looking forward to picking some of those minds,” he said. “It’ll be exciting to be able to learn from some of the best in our area.”
Under Steve Arnold at Harding, Bogan said that he had no specialty.
“Steve was a good guy to work under. He knew we [assistants] had been head coaches and had a pretty good knowledge of the whole game,” Bogan said. “I worked with post players a lot and did a lot with our shooters, especially after [assistant coach] Dale [Blaney] left after last year. We all contributed, putting our minds together for what would work best for the kids at Harding.”
The Raiders finished 18-5 in early March after losing the district championship game to Garfield Heights.
Bogan said that he’ll attempt to mold Howland into a unit that plays solid, man-to-man defense and uptempo offense.
“We’ll try to be hard to score against around the basket and force teams out of their shooting comfort zone. It won’t be a lot of trickery, just solid defense,” he said.
He’d like to emulate the offense developed by Mentor coach Bobby Krizancic.
“Bobby likes to go up and down the floor and create a lot of possessions and he likes to shoot the 3 or layups. It’s constant up and down the floor basketball.”
Bogan told his players what he expects in practice.
“We don’t waste a lot of time without a basketball. We don’t just run to condition. If we’re sprinting, it’ll be with a basketball while working hard to learn the game,” he said.
In his 11 years of coaching at Badger, the Braves reached the district finals in both 2001 (Division IV) and 2002 (Div. III).
“We were two kids over when we won the district final in 2002,” Bogan said of being on the high side of the divisional cutoff the year his team lost to Loudonville in a regional semifinal.
That was the furthest a Badger boys team had gone since the 1980 and 1981 seasons when both Bogan and Dale Blaney played.
When they were seniors in the spring of 1981, Badger reached state, but was beaten in the semifinals by a bucket. The Braves finished 26-1.
Bogan also coached at Champion under Garry Rowland from 1989-94 as the junior varsity coach and varsity assistant.