Godby High Boys Basketball Coach Andrew Colville Influenced by UCLA’s John Wooden

In order to understand the Godby Cougars boy’s head basketball coach Andrew Colville, you have to first know who has helped shape and impact his coaching career.

Throughout his journey as a coach, Colville looked up to former UCLA men’s basketball coach, John Wooden. In his career as a head coach, Wooden was named national coach of the year six times, he also won 10 NCAA national championships in a 12-year span while he was coaching at UCLA. Wooden’s record with the Bruins was 620-147 and he currently holds an NCAA men’s basketball record of 88 consecutive games won.

“The main role model I had growing up was John Wooden, the legendary coach from UCLA,” said Colville.

Similar to Wooden, Colville has helped put countless basketball players in college each year with full scholarships and, continues to maintain a successful program each year. He is also beloved by not only formers players, but also the community of Tallahassee for his work as a coach.

In 2015, Colville not only led Godby to an undefeated season with a record of 31-0 but also brought the 2015 4A-state championship title to Tallahassee.

Last year, the Cougars went 25-2 and made it to the playoffs, but came up short in the semi-finals with a 56-52 loss to the Ribault Trojans. The Cougars made it back to the playoffs this year but were eliminated after losing to the Rickards Raiders in the regional semi-finals, 67-56.

“A lot of people have a good team, not as many have good programs. You need to have a good program, not just a good team,” Colville said. “You just work with the young guys and keep your work ethic going. Our goal is to get to Lakeland. Some years it is easy with the talent we have. We’re young this year and on any given night I feel we can beat anybody.”

Colville talked about how and why you should treat every player on the team different. He also spoke about how he has changed over the years dealing with different players.

“I’m a little old school but I adjusted over the years, I worked for a guy name Monte Taw, that coached at the University of New Orleans, where I coached at the time,” Colville said. “And one day he said I treat everybody different. So, it is true you have to treat each individual differently because you got to get the most out of all of them because they are all not the same person.”

Colville also took his entire team to Las Vegas last year in December to experience other things outside of basketball. He talked about what it was like to take the team on a journey.

“To take them out west to see a different part of the country was the best because a lot of them may not have gotten this opportunity in their life,” Colville said. “I just wanted to get them out there to show them there is a different world out there.”

With his success at Godby High School, Colville continues to impact high school players just like his role model John Wooden.

By Dimetry Dixon, @DimetryDixonFS on Twitter. Correspondent for Franchise Sports a local media organization covering Tallahassee sports. www.franchisesportsonline.net

  Andrew Colville, Godby High School