Tyler Phillips knew at an early age that he wanted to be a basketball coach.
“This is all I ever wanted to do since I was 12,” the Seymour High School varsity coach said. “I had a very influential teacher and coach in middle school. I think he coached me in everything. He was my favorite teacher, and he held me accountable, and he pushed me to be better.
“Right there, at the seventh-grade level, I decided this is all I wanted to do. I wanted to be with kids,” he said. “I want to push them to their potential. I love the game of basketball, and I love being around kids, so being a teacher and coach is the only thing I could do. It wasn’t an option. It’s what I was supposed to do. I’ll do this as long as the good Lord will let me.”
Phillips graduated from Mitchell High School in 2003, where he was an All-Patoka Lake Athletic Conference basketball and baseball player. He also played football and ran track for one year.
After enrolling at University of Southern Indiana for one year, Phillips transferred to Indiana University.
While playing at Mitchell, he became friends with Brandon Allman from Brownstown Central. Allman coaches the Braves’ freshman basketball team and boys and girls golf teams.
“We got to know each other while in high school,” Phillips said. “We were always matched up together. We were always guarding one another. We were together at USI. We became friends early on and share a lot of common interests. We’ve maintained that friendship over the years.”
Phillips, who was a practice basketball player at USI, began his coaching career while attending IU.
“I had a chance to start my coaching career when I was 20,” he said. “I coached fifth and sixth grade at Mitchell. I’ve coached all the way up from fifth grade to varsity.”
After graduating from IU, Phillips began his teaching career at Mitchell High School, where he taught remedial math and English. He also was the middle school football, basketball and baseball coach for two years.
He then went to teach at Central Middle School in Columbus for two years and was the junior varsity basketball coach at Columbus East under Brent Chitty.
Phillips returned to Mitchell Junior High School and was the JV basketball and baseball coach for two years before spending two years at South Spencer.
He’s now in his third year of coaching at Seymour.
Phillips said he has tried to learn things from each of the coaches he has worked under.
“A lot of what I do as far as culture and atmosphere is from coach Chitty,” he said. “I really respect what he does. The guys I played for and some of the guys I’ve coached against, I’ve gotten their styles. I wish I’d have had the opportunity to work for a few more guys. I worked for two, coach Chitty and Doug Thomas at Mitchell. I saw two different styles there.
“I’ve tried to take what I like from them and put my own spin on things, and hopefully, these young guys under me will do the same thing.”
The Owls have records of 9-15 and 12-12 under Phillips.
Losing seven seniors to graduation, he has a young group to work with this season.
He said attending clinics in the spring and playing in leagues and shootouts during the summer is important, and preparing for this season, his coaching staff had to teach the players new offensive and defensive schemes.
“We needed more practice time than play. We played 17 or 18 games in the summer. It was all shootouts,” he said. “Next summer, I’ll have six juniors and a sophomore coming back at the varsity level, so next summer, we’ll probably go play every weekend somewhere. We’ll be in a position where we can do that. My thing with shootouts is we try to go away from this area. We don’t want to play teams we play all season.”
He said having knowledgeable assistant coaches is important.
“Once a week, we call it ‘best on best practice.’ I’ll take the top 11 or 12, and we’ll practice in the mornings, and the freshmen and JV will go together on that day. The other five days that we practice, the varsity and JV are together,” he said.
“I always try to build in time so the JV can work on what they need to work on. The JV is my future, and I don’t want them to think that they’re just practice dummies or anything like that,” he said. “Coach Chitty, every day, he would give me 20 minutes in practice where he told me to work on whatever I needed to work on. He gave me the opportunity to coach. I wasn’t an assistant manager or anything like that. I was head JV coach, and he let me run that team how I saw fit, and I try to do that with my guys, too.”
Phillips said he doesn’t want to micromanage his coaches. He wants to let them coach.
“I try to give them an opportunity to do that,” he said. “I count on them a lot just from the standpoint of they see the game differently than I do. I don’t want five or six assistant coaches see the game how I see it.”
Scouting opponents is important to Phillips.
“We want to see them live at least once, and we want to see them on film at least twice,” he said. “We take the schedule, we’ll go around the table and we’ll take a game until they’re gone so each coach has four or five games. That’s their responsibility. I show them how I want the scouting done, but after that, it’s on them. They have a very big role in helping us get these kids ready.”
Phillips said he was impressed with the Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium the first time he came to scout while coaching at Columbus East.
“Coming in to scout Seymour, I had always heard the lore about this gym,” he said. “It’s one of those things you don’t understand until you do it. I was awestruck the first time I came into this gym for sure.”
He said he enjoys coaching there because of the history.
“I’m a geek when it comes to Indiana high school basketball history,” Phillips said. “The Seymour gym and the Seymour program is historical and as traditional as it gets. When I was given the opportunity to become the head coach of this program, it really meant a lot to me just because where this program has been and hopefully where I can take it.”
Over the past 15 to 20 years, Phillips said the game has changed.
“I think the game is a lot quicker. It’s a lot more physical,” he said. “The size and the strength of these kids today is daunting. When I was in high school, kids didn’t look like they do today. I wasn’t a short high school basketball player in 2003, but I would be today.
“The athleticism and the speed and the physicality of the game has increased dramatically. Scoring away from the ball has really gone away. It’s more off the dribble, and I think that’s a credit to the NBA. Kids watch the NBA, and they’re unsaturated with it. They see these guys shooting 25-foot 3s and dunking, and they think that’s all the game is.”
The structure and speed of the game have done a complete 180, he said.
“Indiana basketball under coach (Bob) Knight was motion offense and screens away from the ball. I don’t remember ever in high school running a ball-screen offense, and everybody is ball screens now,” he said.
How coaches get the players ready to play has changed, too, he said.
“I came from an era where basketball coaches were scared to death for their kids to lift because it might mess up their shot,” Phillips said. “You’re seeing now that these kids are so physical that somebody is going to get hurt if they are not lifting. I think it’s changed for the better.”
Phillips said he found out teams take on the personality of their coach, so he has to be careful with his words and actions around the team.
“My relationship with Jesus Christ has really changed that outlook with these kids from the standpoint that I try to get them to understand that at the end of the day, if we lose on a game-winner, we’re still going to get up tomorrow morning, life is going to go on,” Phillips said.”Yes, we want to win, but it’s a piece, it’s a part of our lives that defines who we are.
“With that said, let’s go attack with a great attitude, give 100 percent effort and let the chips fall where they will. My philosophy is that if I can get these kids to play loose and free of fear, they’re going to have a lot more chance of being successful than if they go out there timid, nervous and uptight.”