Coach Scott Eggleston Leads Rebels’ Charge

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Coach Scott Eggleston, the new head coach of the Fannin Rebels boys’ basketball team took a few minutes to talk with FYN about his coaching career and the future of boy’s basketball at Fannin County High School. Eggleston will be entering his 30th year in the coaching profession, 11 years as a college assistant and 19 as a high school coach. The Iowa native will be taken over the basketball program, after local legend, Johnny Farmer, retired.Eggleston spoke about his plans for building a successful program.

“I’d say the biggest thing is we’ve got to develop better skills. With what we’re going to run offensively we’ve got to get them to shoot the ball well, and shoot the three.”

Eggleston, who has spent most of his career building programs into winners, was extremely gracious to his predecessor.

“You can’t argue with anything coach Farmer has done in his life. It’s hard to follow somebody like him. To be honest it’s the first time I’ve ever followed somebody who’s had success. It’s going to be a new experience for me. For me, my forte has always been building programs. At the schools I’ve been at, they’ve either been down a little bit or coming off some losing seasons.”

The Rebels will be entering the season without much experience, which Eggleston views as being one of the biggest hurdles that Fannin will have to overcome.

“Will Patterson is the only one that played last year. So it’s going to take us a little bit to get them some game experience, which I think is going to be our biggest weakness. These kids haven’t played at the varsity level, and like I told them this summer, there’s nothing I can do to teach you that the only way you can get experience is by going under the bright lights.”

Eggleston had high praise for his team’s effort during his brief time working with them so far.

“They bought into it [the program] this summer. They’re good kids.”

Eggleston, obviously new to the area, said that he plans to study film of “last year’s games” in order to gain a better understanding of teams’ tendencies. He also plans on utilizing coach Suzianne Pass, the head coach of the girls’ varsity basketball team, as well as Coach Farmer.

“He said he doesn’t want to be around much, but I want him here as much as he wants to be.”

Eggleston’s philosophy is to win with defense and rebounding.

“I’m a defensive guy. We’re going to start out, and everything we’re going to do is going to be based around man to man, not saying we won’t zone, but success in the past has always been playing people man to man,” Eggleston said.

“Height doesn’t scare me as much as trying to rebound. We’re going to work hard on being that little feisty team that shot goes up you’re going to get hit, and we’re going to get a rebound.”

It looks as though the Fannin faithful can look forward to a scrappy team that plays tough nose defense and crashes the glass the whole game repeatedly rebounding.

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