McMinn Central Winning With Tough Defense

McMinn Central girls basketball coach Johnny Morgan has tallied over a thousand wins during his incredible career.

The key to his success is defense. He expounded on his defensive philosophy with News 12’s Brian Armstrong.

Morgan: “It’s not hard to get them to buy in because they’re going against the, hopefully they’re going against the best defense that they’ll see all year, every day in practice.

McMinn Central Girls Basketball prides itself on playing a full game of relentless defense. It’s not a matter of, okay, are we up?

Morgan: “Are we scoring? You just play the same all the time. And it’s one of those, uh, it’s a five on five game.

When you play as intensely as they do and as press as often as they do, the team knows it’s not just a battle of one on one.

Morgan: “You’re not trying to guard somebody by yourself. You get out there and, and, uh, you’re, you’re putting pressure on the ball handler and if they beat you to the bucket, then you got teammates that’s going to help you.

Your teammates help you out with that. So like, if I need a break, then I’ll tell my teammate, Hey, switch with me on this position or something. And they’ll switch with me and they’ll take like a point guard for that top.

Having said that, the girls need to be in top conditioning shape to play that style of press defense.

It’s definitely tiring. We’re always going. Um, but I mean, it pays off in the end for a lot of teams mostly and that mantra on defense leads to buckets on the other end.

Morgan: “Don’t think you’re the one that’s going to score. You’re the one that is setting the pick for somebody to score. You’re the one that’s making the past. So let’s just make sure that to make it a team game and whether we’re missing shots, we’re missing layups. We didn’t shoot well from the foul line. Yeah. Uh, you know, nothing’s going right for us. We’re gonna play the thing out. Our defense definitely is a big part of our offense. Sometimes when we’re not making shots, our defense helps us, like, get the ball up the floor and make steals and get open layups for us.