Living the dream. Those were among the first words spoken by Bryant Layman on Wednesday during an interview after being named the new boys basketball head coach at Crothersville.
Layman, who grew up in Madison, has always been around the game of basketball and has always been involved with some type of coaching, whether it be junior high or AAU.
He is currently the director of Second Chance, an AAU program in Jennings County and Decatur County.
Layman was coaching cross country and track at Jennings County, and last year after COVID-19 hit, he decided he was done coaching running and wanted to get back into coaching basketball.
“Crothersville came open, and with me being in the backyard, it was just a natural fit for me,” Layman said.
Needless to say, there’s a lot of excitement in the Layman household between him, his wife and his three kids.
“To be coaching again is amazing, but to get this job, it’s pretty overwhelming — a good overwhelming,” he said. “We’re just excited. We just feel like we’re at home. It feels like we’re putting the roots down in the community that we want to be in, and it was just a good, overwhelming excitement.”
Something that stood out to Layman about Crothersville is he believes the athletic director, Jacob Dunn, as well as the school and administration just want what’s best for the students both in the classroom and in athletics.
Layman played basketball all of his life, all through high school as well in Madison. But he actually decided to go run Division I cross country at Morehead State University before transferring to Daytona State College.
If you ask people in Madison about Layman, they know him for basketball. But if you ask people in Jennings County about Layman, they know him for running.
Now, the people of Crothersville will know him for basketball. Layman hopes to turn the Tigers into a team that can compete for a sectional title on a consistent basis.
“We’re going to play an up-tempo, fast-paced offense. We’re going to score a lot in transition,” Layman said. “I really want to keep our possessions short. I want to average 65 points per game, so I want to get our points per game up there.
“But it’s all going to start on the defensive side of the basketball. We’re going to play a lot of pressure defense. We’re going to play a lot of different defensive sets. We’re going to play a lot of what they call a pack line defense, where we’re really going to pack in that middle and play a man-to-man, zone.”
Layman has only met two players from the Crothersville roster so far, but he knows they’re a relatively young team, which he thinks can play into their advantage with wanting to play in a more fast-paced, free system.
The Tigers will begin practices in June, which will put them about a month behind where Layman would like to be, but he thinks they can make it up by working hard in practice.
Layman hopes to keep as much of the stuff there as he can, including current interim head coach Bobby Riley.
“We want to build upon it,” Layman said. “We want to create a perennial sectional title team. We want to be the guy in that sectional that everyone is trying to beat instead of the Trinitys, instead of the Edinburghs and some of the other schools that are in our sectional. We want to be that guy.
“As long as our coaching staff and everyone around the program and the fans and everything can believe in that, I know that we can deliver on that. We’ve just got to take that step to that direction.”