Texan Mosaic

by STEVEN GEHEGAN//Editorial Assistant

Justin Brown returns to South Plains College to help obtain the same glory that the men’s basketball team had the last time he was here.

“I take a lot of pride in being here and carrying on the tradition that was built here,” said  Brown, who is the new men’s assistance basketball coach. 

Brown played for the SPC men’s basketball team from 2005 – 2007, and was also an assistant under head men’s basketball coach Steve Green. When Brown was a player, he was able to help the Texans to a Western Junior College Athletic Conference title in 2007. He went on to play at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri, winning back-to-back Mid-American Intercollegiate Athletics championships.

During Brown’s time as an assistant coach at SPC previously, the Texans won 36 games without a loss on the way to a National Junior College Athletic Association title. After three years at Utah State University Eastern, in Price, Utah, Brown chose to return to SPC.

“It was like family with this place,” Brown says.

Brown loves the game of basketball, to the point of wanting to become a coach.

“I enjoy the game a lot,” Brown explained, “and I did not get a lot of opportunities to play the game.”

Brown really wanted to stay around the game he loves, which has led him back to SPC. Brown says that he has great respect for Green. He said he really enjoys being back at his alma mater, adding, “It’s a great place to be, and a great place to learn and work with a Hall of Fame coach.”

When asked about what it is like to coach alongside the coach that he played for, Brown said that he loves to coach with Green, and he loves all of the stories that he hears from Coach Green.

Something that Brown wants to achieve he is to be known as a coach who treats his players the right way and helps them grow as men, on and off the court.

Brown says that he will be able to help the players on the court, since he has been in many of the same situations that his players are in and can help them prosper.

Brown says that among his goals as a coach are to work “every day of every year, to hang a banner.”

But even more important to him is “to instill pride in our guys, and help them move on” after college. He says he hopes to accomplish this by “making sure to help them academically and get them into whatever field they want to be in, and skills that can be taken on to the real world.”