Interview with Head Men's Basketball Coach Jeremy Eggers (Text Transcript)

This is my fifteenth year of coaching. I’ve been a high school assistant coach for 4 years, a head coach for 5 years, I’ve been a division one assistant at Washington State University for a year and this is my 5th year here at BCC

What do you enjoy most about coaching?

Interacting with young men. The whole game all the elements that the game brings and teaching of the game. Watching young men learn and apply what you teach them and watch it be successful. [Here] at BCC and we sell the fact that we give them an overall program, its not just basketball.  We want these guys leaving here as good young men regardless of if they go on to play or not, with their degrees.  And they’re going to get all of that. They’re going to get every opportunity. We have study halls, I do all of the academic advising for them to make sure that they’re getting the correct classes and they are on the correct course to get their degrees. They’re getting the overall experience not just basketball but life, academic experiences…

How do you like coaching at the community college level?

I love the community college level. It’s college basketball, regardless of what people think of it outside of the community college environment. It is college basketball. It’s very competitive every year. One thing I really like about this level is you have to be prepared every day or you will not win. Because everybody is pretty equal, there’s a few teams with a little more talent here and there, but a lot of the time it’s who works the hardest, who plays the hardest [that wins]. So, I love that challenge to try and get our team prepared to do that every night, regardless of who were playing, regardless of who we have or who they have. It is college level it’s extremely competitive. One through twelve aren’t as deep as a 4-year school, but one through five [or] six a lot of times are. I like to think our top six or seven guys this year will be able to play after this, no problem. What level will depend on how they do and their improvements throughout the year or two, but it is definitely a competitive level, it is definitely a great opportunity to get them ready for the next level. With the kind of schedule we have, the kind of travel we do, we like to treat our program like a division one program at the two-year level as far as the time we put into it: the study halls, the weight training, the practices, the scouting reports, the walk-throughs—everything we do I know they do at a 4-year level.  When I was at Washington state we had scouting reports—we did everything the same. [At BCC] we don’t have as much time to do it in, we do it in a smaller version, but we do all the same things so when they leave here to go to a 4-year school, they’ve had that overall experience. [So] going to a new program and a new school is not a shock to them [where] all of a sudden they’ve got to do all of these other things they didn’t do before. Our job is to prepare them for that.