Craigwell vying for coaching posts

Former head coach of the Barbados national men’s basketball team Adrian Craigwell has expressed a keen interest in taking up the reigns once again.

After leading the Yellow Bumble Bees to glory in the 2019 People’s Youth Charity Tournament last Sunday at the St. Michael School, Craigwell revealed that he had recently applied for the positions of junior and senior national coach.

He said while his primary interest is the junior national team which has an array of talent, the veteran coach explained that he didn’t mind taking on the senior men’s side which he did in 2009 at the Caribbean Basketball Championship in Tortola, the British Virgin Islands.

Adrian Craigwell

“I put in my application and I hope that I will be successful. Primarily I would like to coach the juniors because I believe there is a lot of fire that can be lit under a lot of them. To me, they are a lot of skilful youngsters, but they need to play with a lot more passion,” Craigwell said.

Craigwell, who was also the assistant national coach to Dwight Rouse, Nigel Lloyd and Derek Aimey on separate tours for Barbados, said once given the opportunity he intends to make the national teams stronger.

With vast experience under his belt as an assistant coach as well to the Barbados senior women’s netball team, having accompanied them this year to the Netball World Cup in Liverpool, England, Craigwell said his desire is to see Barbados’ basketball players compete with more intensity.

A former player back in the 1980s, Craigwell said he inteded to bring a different philosophy on how the game should be played in an effort to make Barbados’ basketball stronger.

“If it is the junior national team then we are going to be in good hands for the future because my intentions are to have a different philosophy on how I would want them to play. I believe that most of the time the kids are playing a little too slow, they don’t play defence, they need intensity and it is all about set plays. If we could teach them about positionless basketball where they actually learn ball skills where they learn the game first and then go into a concept where the coach wants you to play hard,” Craigwell said.

Over the weekend Craigwell showed his knowledge as a coach when his team Yellow Bumble Bees, despite being down 37-39 at halftime still emerged 75-64 winners over the Blue Barracudas during the youth competition.

Craigwell said he wants to see the staging of a lot more tournaments that are specifically gear towards the youth. He explained that with such an abundance of talent in Barbados’ junior basketball, one or two tournaments a year is not satisfactory.

Additionally, he said while many are hunted down by overseas scouts, some of the players in this country need to work on their craft in order to reach their true potential.

“I believe that there could be another four or five more. We have a very large group of talented youngsters and just giving them one tournament a year is not good enough.

“At this point in time, it really is not really about scouts. To me, I think that we could do a little more development before that scouting interest comes in because in taking away the talent that we have now it doesn’t augur well for what we have. So, I would prefer for them to get a little bit better and then let the scouts come running,” Craigwell said.
morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb