USC women’s basketball assistant coach Beth Burns has produced a long and successful career in coaching. This past spring, she talked to USC women’s basketball analyst Cece Clay for nearly a full hour, touching on all sorts of hoops topics. Some of them were specifically about USC, but a lot of the conversation focused on the broader realities and challenges of coaching the sport.
In nearly an hour of engaging and interesting dialogue with Cece Clay, Beth Burns delivered a number of memorable quotes and piercing insights. The full interview tells the whole story, but this specific article is devoted to one particular point Burns made in this YouTube show, which is posted at Cece’s USC YouTube channel.
Beth Burns tackled the topic coaches frequently have to confront: Should coaches and programs recruit the best possible athletes and fit them into a set system, or do they need to recruit athletes with specific skills which fit a specific style of play? USC, under Lindsay Gottlieb and Beth Burns, has generally recruited a particular kind of player. USC won’t just grab anyone. The Trojans want specific traits in players because they want to coach within certain parameters. This is not a matter of imposing a scheme on a player without giving the player a certain degree of freedom, but it is a case of expecting certain things from players so that the processes of coaching and team-building go smoothly.
Beth Burns made an incisive observation on these tensions between coaching preferences and the styles of players. Burns told Cece Clay that as much as a coach might want to use a specific system or scheme, coaches must first evaluate the player in a practice setting and see precisely what the player is capable of. Only when getting an up-close view of a player can a coaching staff fully implement a plan.
A system can’t be pre-established before a player steps foot on campus. Coaching, according to Burns, is an organic relationship between the coach’s goals and the players’ abilities. Neither the coach nor the players can afford to be stubborn. The coaches have to work with the players’ talents, and the players have to be willing to be coached so that their abilities are maximized and fully displayed as a result of the guidance they receive.
This is the deeper reality of coaching. This is what Beth Burns brings to USC women’s basketball.
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Beth Burns offers incisive, detailed understanding of coaching styles and recruiting
Reporting by Matt Zemek / Trojans Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
