Coach Brandon Clifford has resigned as the head boys basketball coach at High Point Christian Academy:
“I’m disappointed with how things ended — we obviously didn’t play well,” Clifford said of the Cougars’ 64-47 loss to Charlotte Providence Day. “But that had little or nothing to do with this decision. People aren’t going to believe that, and I understand that. This was more about looking back and realizing that it’s time and I had taken things as far as I could.”
from Joe Sirera post at www.greensboro.com(HS Xtra)
HPCA finished (24-6) this past season and their season ended with that 64-47 loss to Providence Day, this past Saturday at Ravenscroft High School, in Raleigh…
Coach Clifford and HPCA had a loaded squad with tons of talent, but they brought in so much talent they set themselves up for disappointment and failure…Anything less than a NCISAA 3-A State Basketball Championship this past 2015/2016 season would be considered the team having under-achieved…They had to win that title or the ending means you came up short and to me that is putting too much pressure on a young coach, his players and his basketball program….How can that be any fun?
Does that mean Coach Clifford was not successful? No, he did a very good job, but in some ways when you put together/assemble a team with that much talent, you become more of an administrator than you are a coach….You turn the players loose and let them play and hope the outcome is good and when you do that, it takes some of the fun out of coaching, because you are no longer coaching, you just have a team with a wealth of talent and you let them go out there and run up and down the court and make sure all of the towels are in the corner when the team leaves the bench area after the game and goes back to locker room to get ready to head home…
You rack up the wins, but when you lose, you really hear about it….With talent overload and the All-Star type unit, you have yourself an AAU team playing on the highest level together, but they are a high school team and there is no room for error…You can’t make mistakes because you are supposed to be perfect, you have assembled the “perfect team”….
Well for the way things went, it was probably a perfect time for Coach Clifford to get out…He is a better man than this and deserves to be in a better setting…There is nothing wrong at with High Point Christian Academy, but what it became in the past year was maybe just TOO much…
Find a team that you can build from the bottom up with your own men that you have on hand and already in place, and that might mean more to a coach in the long-term grand scheme of things…
Just a few thoughts and not trying to take anything away from Coach Clifford or the kids he had at HPCA….It just didn’t work out it looks like from the outside looking in that Coach Clifford was not happy at the end and he was ready for a change…Maybe I don’t know what I am talking about, but I do hope the best for Coach Clifford and I hope he finds a new coaching stop that fits him in a better way…The man(Coach Clifford) can coach the Big Men, he is a Big Man and he played a Big Game over at Page back in the day and he was an East-West All-Star with a ride to UNCW and the young man Clifford could play some ball…
With the Big Man position changing in basketball maybe that is part of the problem….Got to find a way to make the game fit and adjust….We will have to find out more about that….
Everybody needs a change now and then and it was and is time for Coach Clifford to move on and maybe he doesn’t need to be in the State Powerhouse setting or with a program that is loaded from the start…Maybe it is time to start over and build a team from scratch…Some coaches have to be in that pressure cooker and for some, you reach the stage where it is time to step back and see where you really want to be…
I could ramble on about this all day long, but our intention here should be and needs to be that of wishing Coach Clifford the best in his future endeavors and his next coaching stop along the way and let’s do that by saying, Good Luck Brandon Clifford…
Now let’s turn our attention back to the story at hand that Joe Sirera has laid out at the News and Record when you CLICK HERE and my apologies again for hitting that rambling button, but nobody asked me what I thought, so I thought I would tell you any way….Good job Joe Sirera and Best of Luck Coach Clifford…
By the numbers:153-67…Coach Clifford’s record in 7 seasons at High Point Christian Academy