Mark Adams, Tech head coach: Playing for the Jets in Little Dribbler’s was my first experience in basketball. I still remember those green uniforms. There was a church in Brownfield that we would all play at. We always played against older guys there. My dad also built a court in the back yard and put up some lights. That really gave us a place to play whenever we wanted to. My parents were really strict with our curfews – even in high school. My brother and I would have to be home before our dates would even have to be back home. Our curfew was early, but our buddies would come over and play basketball out there until past midnight. I’m sure the neighbors didn’t really love that too much, but it was great for us.
Corey Williams, Tech assistant: We played on concrete sometimes, but I mainly grew up playing on dirt. I like to think my ball handling skills got tighter because when you’re playing on a dirt court there are lumps and bumps. It’s not easy unless you start adjusting. I just enjoyed playing. I would stay as long as my mother would allow me to. I never wanted to leave. It was a blessing. She bought me a basketball goal that we put in my back yard and that thing got used like no other. We definitely got our money’s worth out of it.
Steve Green, Tech assistant: My dad was a high school basketball coach when I was young so my first memories in life are being with him in the gym and around his teams. There’s a lot of foggy memories now, but I do remember him coaching a guy named Gene Johnson. We were living in Seminole, Oklahoma. Gene Johnson went on to be a really good player at Oklahoma State. He’s the first player that I really remember. I went to practice with my dad all the time and would be running around in the bleachers. I was always around the game.
Al Pinkins, Tech assistant: Playing in the backyard with my dad is where it started for me. Cousins and neighbors would come over and we’d play all day and night. That’s what we did from sun up to sun down. It was really fun and always competitive. I can’t remember a day that we didn’t play.
Darby Rich, Tech strength & conditioning coach: I grew up in a small farming community in South Carolina. It was a football and baseball town. Basketball wasn’t an important part of our lives. When I was young though, a local high school team had a 6-foot-10 athletic guy who went on to play at Clemson. Horace Wyatt. My dad took us to watch him play when he was in high school. That was the show in town right then. It’s my first memory of basketball.
Rick Cooper, Tech Chief of Staff: My dad was not a sports guy, but he saw that I was interested in it. I was in elementary school and he wanted to teach me how to shoot. We went down to Bridgeport High School and he tried to teach me. It was a two-hand set shot.
Williams: I thought I was pretty good at basketball early on, but I think that’s every kid. We all think we’re pretty good at that age. I was able to compete at a high level though and played with some older uncles who were good. I mirrored them. I loved the game. I also loved baseball though. I just kept getting better at basketball even though I was pretty good at baseball too. Basketball kept growing for me. It taught me to be a part of a team.
Pinkins: My first dunk was in the seventh grade. I’ll never forget that. It was at Whigham Middle School in Whigham, Georgia. It happened so fast that I didn’t even realize I had dunked it at first. My team started going crazy. I was out ahead on a break and got the pass. I didn’t go up with the intentions of dunking, but somehow I did.
Cooper: I went out for the seventh-grade basketball team and got cut. I was a tall kid but still didn’t make it. That didn’t sit very well with me. Basketball was still very important to me and I wanted to learn more about the game. It was a major part of my life and something I didn’t want to give up on. I made the team in eighth grade. We played 12 games and I think I only got in two of them.
Adams: I always loved competition and sports. It gave us kids in a small town something to do. I played everything. Football, basketball, baseball and was a boxer.
Rich: In ninth grade, my high school coach picked me out of a gym class and put me on the varsity team. It was the first time I really knew that I could be good at basketball. That was when basketball became part of my life. I had never thought about it before, but my freshman year showed me there might be a future for me in basketball even though it had never been a part of my fiber before that.
Green: Sports were everything to me as a kid. I spoke at my dad’s funeral when he passed away and it was about how appreciative I was to have been a coach’s son. I got up every morning after his games and went to look through the scorebook to see what happened the night before.
Adams: My dad had an incredible competitive spirit in boxing, basketball and life. Even when we played chess and checkers it was really something. We were a competitive family in everything. Playing my sister in cards was a battle. Everyone in my family fought for everything. I think that’s helped me throughout my life.
Green: My senior year of high school we went undefeated and won a state championship. That year was up and down for me. I also played quarterback on the football team and we were really good. We were No. 1 in the state. But we got upset in the quarterfinals. That has to be the biggest disappointment I’ve ever had in athletics. Then we turned around and were on the basketball court the next Monday. We went 27-0 and won the championship. We should have won it in football. That still gets me.
Rich: I was fortunate to play on a high school team that went to four state championship games. We won two and lost two. All those teams built my love for the game. I gained a love for winning long before I understood personal glory. I’ve always been associated with winning teams more than stats or honors. It helped carry me over the years. It’s never been about me. As a coach, it’s what I try to filter into our players. From early on, my entire being is about being apart of something bigger than the individual.
Williams: My mom influenced me the most. She’s a little bit different. I could score 24 points and she would talk about the three free throws that I missed. She never let me relax. I was feeling good about myself when I scored 36 points in a game and she told me my defense was bad. Pointed out that someone blew past me once. She always encouraged me to be better. To have fun playing. There was no stipulations on anything. She wasn’t pushing me to get a scholarship or anything like that. She just wanted to make sure that I was competing and having fun. Her words made me love the game.
Pinkins: My dad coached me from the start. He coached everyone in our neighborhood. He never stopped coaching me, even when I was playing at North Carolina State. If he wasn’t at the games, we would talk right after them and he would coach me on things I did right and wrong. He was a huge influence on me.
Green: My dad was the head coach at Northeastern Oklahoma College when I started playing high school. His impact on me can’t be understated. He believed in me and pushed me to always think about ways to become better. We would sit for hours after games. My high school coach, Don Overton, had a big impact on me too.
Adams: I had a lot of really great coaches growing up. Coach Chuck Taylor in seventh grade and Glen Hallum in the eighth grade. He played here at Texas Tech. That was a great experience playing for a Red Raider in eighth grade. I was really blessed to have so many great coaches who had a positive influence on my life. It started with Chuck Taylor who knew so much about the game and Coach Hallum who played at Tech. Then it was James Prater who allowed me to do some of the coaching even as a player. He gave me a lot of confidence through a leadership opportunity. Leon Pope would be the next one in high school. His impact was huge because he made it so much fun for us.
Green: My first college job was as a graduate assistant for Eddie Sutton. I still think back on things that he said and the way he taught the game. I worked for Pat Foster. I worked for Don Haskins. There’s no doubt that I’ve worked for some dudes who could really coach basketball. I’ve been really lucky and tried to absorb as much as I could.
Rich: My high school coach Louie Golden and college coach Wimp Sanderson at Alabama played huge roles in me loving the game. Coach Golden discovered me and introduced me to so much about it. He was the first one to facilitate what has turned into my life’s work. Coach Sanderson took a chance on me to play at a program like Alabama. My skills were probably not good enough to play at that level, but he must has saw something in me and gave me the opportunity.
Williams: Leonard Hamilton and Eddie Sutton. Those guys had a huge impact on me. When Coach Sutton took the job my junior year he made me grow even more than I thought possible. He brought me off the bench that year after I had been a starter and it turned out to make me a stronger person and player. It was big for me mentally. Coach Hamilton believed in me from the start and made me believe in myself. They were huge for me in my life and great to play for.
Cooper: Wayne Jameson was a really good coach that I had. He was also the football coach. He helped me develop while I was really just getting started. This was in rural West Virginia. We had a really good team and he really helped us get better. We were 19-1 and had fun.
Adams: My twin brother is the best player I ever played with. He was a tremendous shooter and athlete. We were both competitive and made each other better. There were a lot of arguments and physical altercations because we both always wanted to win. He was three inches taller and 30 pounds bigger so we played different positions. He played center for us in high school. His skill around the basket was great with left and right-handed hooks. There wasn’t a 3-point line back then but he could hit that shot with the best of them.
Williams: Byron Houston was the best player I ever played with in college. He was a man amongst boys. He was tough and physical. He didn’t take any crap. Playing with the Bulls, Michael Jordan obviously had a huge impact on me too. Byron influenced me because he showed me what it was like to be tough out there on the court. He had a confidence that he was the best player on the court. He never thought differently. Michael Jordan was a beast. He just went after you. Everyone understood that he was the best player and that no matter what you tried to do it wasn’t going to be enough. Those guys had a big impact on my life.
Green: Tinker Owens was the best athlete I grew up with in Miami. He wasn’t the best basketball player even though he played a huge role in us winning the state championship. He was the fastest, could jump the high, best athlete on the football team. He was a great friend and pushed me to be competitive.
Rich: Probably the best player I was teammates with was Robert Horry. There are a lot of great players I played with though. Eleven guys from our teams made it to the NBA. Some may have been a little more talented than him, but Robert was the whole package. He was physically talented and mentally strong. Even in college, he took and made the big shots. When the game was on the line, you knew he would come through for the team. It impacted my mentality seeing a player of his ability go about the game in an unselfish way. He played the game the way it should be played.
Cooper: I’ve been blessed to player with and coach a lot of great players. One of the guys who influenced me was a guy named Chris Springer. He was a couple years older than me and was a three-sport all-American. When he would get ready for practice he would really be working. The rest of the team was basically sitting on basketballs. He was focused and driven the entire time. Over the years, I’ve thought back to that and used it with my teams as an example. I had thoughts at the time that maybe he was just doing that before games because he thought he was really good. I really think now that he was really good because he prepared like that. His work ethic was rare and is one that I’ve used in my career for players who want to have successful results.
Pinkins: I’ll go lottery pick. Todd Fuller was my teammate at NC State and was picked 11th in the 1996 NBA Draft. He was a really talented player and a really good guy. He was a guy that influenced every team he was on in a positive way. Sometimes great players forget to be great teammates, but he never did. He was a really good leader and best overall player that I played with.
Williams: I grew up with my brother Donnie who was one year younger than me. From an early age, we developed a competitive nature because of our battles every day growing up. I never wanted him to beat me. He never wanted me to beat him. That’s how it was. We would get into fights because we didn’t want the other guy to win. If the other guy was winning, we explained it to ourselves that the other guy was cheating. That’s how competitive we made each other. It really impacted my competitive nature. I’ve never accepted losing and always wanted to be at the top of anything I was doing. My efforts were in line with that because of two little boys competing against each other every day. He made me better. Our relationship and battles had a profound impact on me as a person, player and today as a coach.
Cooper: We are a product of our experiences. It’s hard for me to point to specific factors that influenced me, but I do think that getting cut in seventh grade built a strong sense of determination inside me. I also think that when I was in high school and wanted to quit the track team in the middle of the year had an impact on me. My dad wouldn’t let me quit. He said I could quit the next season, but not that year. He taught me not to give up or quit on people. That stuck with me. It instilled values I still take pride in.
Green: It was always understood that I was going to play and that eventually I was going to coach. There were other ideas along the way like going to law school, but at the end of the day I always knew that this was what I was going to do. When you’re around the game your whole life it becomes who you are. My first set of keys were to a gym. I was there all the time at my dad’s practices, shooting around with guys a lot older than me who were on his team. Sports were everything to me growing up. That’s never changed.
Pinkins: I played football, baseball and basketball in high school. Won two state championships in basketball and one in football. I knew in high school that I wanted to be around athletics the rest of my life. I wasn’t sure if I would be a basketball coach then, but I knew my love for athletics would keep me in it somehow. My competitive drive as a young player led me here.
Rich: Growing up, I pretty much played every sport out there besides basketball. But I grew up trying to win. Numbers were never important. In football, it didn’t matter how many touchdowns you scored if your team didn’t win. In baseball, we didn’t know anything about on-base percentage or batting average. It was about winning. I grew up in a culture where winning took precedence over individual glory. That’s helped me as coach to try and get that message through to our guys that winning will take everyone to where they want to go.
Adams: We are all an accumulation of the choices we make and the environment we grow up in. I’d like to think I’ve made good choices and I know I had incredible family and other people who helped me along the way. I look at my life and the people God has blessed me with knowing that I should be really proud. I’ve been around a lot of great people and have learned from all of them. They prepared me for this challenge.
