ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 23, 1996 TAG: 9603250011
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY COX
Great joy bathed the little city of Bedford this week when Liberty High's Minutemen marched home undefeated with the school's first Group AA boys' basketball championship trophy.
Despite Liberty being geographically removed from the New River Valley, there was still a strong rooting interest here in the Minutemen.
Liberty's coach, Mark Hanks, is a Pulaski County native who was both a player and an assistant coach for the Cougars. Hanks coached under both Allen Wiley, for whom he also played, and Wiley's successor, Pat Burns.
Wiley had helped put Hanks together with another Wiley protege, Christiansburg coach Gerald Thompson, when Hanks was first entering coaching.
Wiley talked to Hanks earlier this week.
``I told them that he couldn't get much better than 25-0 [Liberty's record],'' Wiley said.
Burns recalled a discussion last year with Hanks in which they had gone over the ins and outs of slowdown tactics. Burns had slowed it down years ago when he had George Wythe in the AA semifinals and almost pulled off a huge upset over Martinsville, then the most ferocious, take-no-prisoners, bunch of basketballers in the state - at any classification.
Liberty ran all year until the state tournament when it won three slow games in a row to take the crown.
The deliberate tactics surprised those who saw the Minutemen take a high-octane approach to their other 22 games. The biggest shocker of all, though, was that Liberty had managed to win the state with no player taller than 6-foot-2.
``The players just had confidence,'' Hanks said. ``They started talking about winning the state when they were still playing football. Finally I said to them, `How are you going to win the state when you have no player taller than 6-2?'"
Hanks may not have let on to his players, but he knew it was possible. Wiley had won lots of games time after time with players of unimposing size. One year, he had a Pulaski County team in the regional finals with no starter taller than 5-11 and that, lest you need to be reminded, is AAA ball.
Of course, one of the players on that Pulaski County team that year was Gary Clark, a guy who went on to make a nice living (and still does) playing professional football.
``Good guards are the key,'' Burns said. ``If you have good guards, you can win. You have a team of five Stephon Marburys the Georgia Tech sensation], and you can win big.''
Hanks had three excellent guards in J.J. Coles, Gregg Reynolds and Robert Carson and two or three others who could play guard for most high school teams. A coach has to know what to do with talent, though.
``Mark has a good mind for basketball and he's done an excellent job,'' Burns said. ``We're real proud and happy for him.''
Thompson had another former assistant coaching in this year's tournament aside from Hanks: William Fleming boss Marshall Ashford, who had worked with Thompson as a volunteer assistant when Thompson was still the Shawsville coach. Ashford, incidentally, later coached both boys and girls at Floyd County.
``Both Mark and Marshall were freebies as volunteer assistants,'' Thompson said. ``That's two pretty good freebies to have had, I'd say.''
Ray Cox is a sports writer for The Roanoke Times.
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