On Friday, Emery High announced that former student athlete Dave Justice will be the new boys’ basketball coach.
Justice has remained close to Emery as he teaches special education math and financial literacy at the school and remains involved in athletics. He has had the opportunity to be an assistant football and basketball coach at different times in the past several years. He coached the JV football team last year and will continue in that role with the addition of his new head basketball coach responsibilities.
“I was excited,” Justice reflected on his feelings when the offer was made. “It’s humbling and it’s a great opportunity. We’re super excited to get to work with the kids and coach the game that I love in basketball.”
Although the Spartans are losing six seniors, there are some underclassman that will be back in the fold. “I’m super impressed with the kids. I think we have a lot of talent coming up,” commented Justice.
The new skipper then moved on to the scheme he plans on implementing. “Our bread and butter will be our 2-3 extended. That’s our plan going into it; you need to be flexible. We want to run multiple defenses, like man, traps, full court, but our bread and butter will be that zone defense.”
He continued, “For the offense, we want to focus on our motion offense. Move the ball, dribble drive, set a lot of screens, dribble handoffs, but the biggest thing we want to build is a culture of ball movement.”
One focus for the Spartans under the new regime will be to increase the competition level. “We want to implement a culture of competition. We want to compete everyday in practice. No one is guaranteed a spot. We’re competing in drills, conditioning, weight training, etc.” He concluded, “We want kids that want to compete and get after it.”