McCoy hired at South Houston

By Jason McDaniel
Chronicle correspondent
Patrick McCoy doesn't want to waste any time taking the boys basketball team at South Houston to the playoffs.
The first-time head coach is tired of being out-done by his wife, Clear Lake softball coach Krisy McCoy and if he fails to keep pace he'll probably hear about it from her family in the area.
McCoy graduated from Sam Rayburn, where she was a three-sport star, and has many relatives who graduated from Pasadena ISD.
So far she's beaten me to the punch at everything," he said. She got a head job before I did and she made the playoffs for the first time at her school, which was just the second time for them in 20 years, so she's constantly talking to me about how much better she is than I am and I'm trying to catch her."
McCoy was hired to replace Barry Gibson, who took a job at the new high school in Conroe ISD, in mid-May, and it seems he certainly has the pedigree to get the Trojans into the postseason.
The 36-year-old graduated from Clear Lake, where he played basketball, in 1991, then went to Stephen F. Austin.
He spent the past four years as an assistant at Clear Brook, the last part under Jason Pillow, and previously was an assistant under David Bosley at Pasadena Memorial and Lynn McDonald at Clear Lake.
I've coached under some very good coaches and I learned a lot from them and some of the other people that we scouted," McCoy said. Coach (George) Carlisle at Creek did a lot with his good teams over there, and I learned a lot from him, and having played under Coach (Bill) Krueger at Clear Lake and just being around the game of basketball, I've been able to absorb a lot of things that have helped me develop my philosophy of the game."
McCoy wants his team to play at a faster pace next season. His goal is to transform a squad that averaged about 50 points per game in district last year into a fast-breaking, high-scoring group.
We adopted more of an up-tempo game (at Clear Brook), and I used to go and play more of a slow-down game," McCoy said. At Memorial we did some of that and at Brook before Jason got the job they were more of a slow-down, defensive-type team.
We really embraced the up-tempo style and trying to score. Obviously we still played defense but we tried to score 60, 65 points a game and beat the defense back, and that's something that I definitely want to take into South Houston."
An up-tempo style should suit the Trojans just fine next season.
Anthony Davis, who led the team in scoring and rebounding, is an athletic Division I caliber player, and guards Lacey Mose, Rudy Robinson and Calvin Mitchell have the ability to explode to the rim if turned loose.
McCoy also has second-leading scorer Andres Molina back, and he has his eye on talented incoming freshman Elton Dyer, a 6-foot-2 guard who broke the district high jump record as an eighth-grader.
So far we've had a great turnout in open gym this summer," McCoy said. Our kids are working hard in the weight room and we've had most of them there every day, so I'm very pleased with what we're doing.
I know that they're giving up a lot of their time in the summer to try to get better. I told them what my expectations were and they're buying into what we're capable of and what it will take to reach our goals.
We can be the first team since 1997 to go the playoffs and we can win 18-plus games if our kids embrace that up-tempo style and really get after it defensively."