Q&A with Dallas Kimball HS boys' basketball coach Royce "Snoop" Johnson

By Steve Hunt
FOXSportsSouthwest.com

March 9, 2011

Playing in the Class 4A state tournament isn't exactly a new experience for Dallas Kimball HS or their head coach Royce Johnson. The Knights were in Austin in 2009 but thanks to a 51-42 win over Dallas Lincoln last weekend in the 4A Region II final, Kimball returns to the state capital and on Thursday night, will face Cedar Park in one state semifinal. The Knights are led by 6-foot-6 senior Jordan Williams, who spent his first two years at Lincoln before transferring to Kimball. However, Williams isn't the only weapon Johnson has. Kimball has a senior-laden lineup with the likes of Austin Franklin, Jarion Henry and Jalen Jones. Only Shannon Lilly is a junior. At 36-3 overall and one of the five best teams in 4A, Kimball might be as good a bet as any to win state.

Talk about heading to state.
Johnson: Oh yeah, everybody's very excited about going. I know a lot of guys, the media that have come over the last two days, they're looking at us saying we don't seem like we're that excited. We are. We're very excited. We're just trying to stay humble and stay focused because after the Lincoln win, everybody's trying to crown us before we get there.

You guys got a big win over Lincoln to get here. How much did it mean to beat them and LeBryan Nash to reach this point?
Johnson: To be honest with you, we really walked into that game not to sound too confident but we expected to win that game. We thought we could control it a little bit more. The game that we were really concerned with was the Woodrow Wilson game on Wednesday. Woodrow, just watching them on film caused a lot of match-up problems. We spent a lot of time on that and our kids and players felt like that was the one to win to get us to Austin. We had already played Lincoln twice and lost to them. We knew we had a lot of things we had to do differently. It was just a matter of concentrating and being focused for four quarters. We basically did it for three.

What do you know about your next opponent, Cedar Park?
Johnson: Not a whole lot. I've only gotten information from two people. They struggled early in the year. The thing that's intriguing me on that is finding out why they struggled? Was it the opponents, injuries or whatever? That's what I'm trying to figure out right now. I know they're a well-coached ballclub. Just of them being in the semifinals, they've got to have good coaching. They do multiple things. They're not one dimensional. They're a team that will run but at the same time, they will control the ball if they need to. When you're down there, I think you just need to be the type of team that finds what it needs to do find a way to win. You find a lot of those types of teams down in Austin.

How much has Jordan Williams meant to your club?
Johnson: Yeah, Jordan, one thing about him is we were familiar with him playing against him as a freshman and sophomore when he was at Lincoln. We knew that Jordan was an offensive-minded guy and a guy that could score. We had a guy like that last year that we lost with David Cates. We brought back our other four starters but lost David Cates. When Jordan came in, we didn't have to adjust anything. When Jalen Jones got cleared, then we had to make some adjustments because you have to decide if Jordan stays where he is or if he moves to the three. That was the only adjustment we had to make, find out what was better for our ballclub in the long run.

You guys have a pretty solid supporting cast too. Discuss.
Johnson: That's basically what we call the whole team. We call them a supporting cast. Everybody supports each other. We don't have any big [players]. All year, every time people referred to us, they referred to the Big Three, which was understandable and the kids understood that. Even those guys there, they never looked at themselves as the Big Three. They looked at the ability and knew the importance of those other guys. They already had their playoff wounds. The three guards that we start and then Tucker off the bench those guys played minutes last year on a team that was one game from getting to Austin. We never looked at it like they were the supporting cast and we had the Big Three. We knew that people had to pick their poison. If they want to take away those guys, then we can get them from outside. The rest of our guys are confident and they knew those guys could deliver. We never worried about how people were going to play us. We found out how they were going to play us and then we tried to expose them the other way.

What has your team's mood been so far this week in practice?
Johnson: I don't want to say loose. They're about like they were last week after we came out of the Woodrow game. They were confident but focused. I think those are the best words. There wasn't a lot of celebrating but a lot of good energy, a lot of good conversation in practice talking about the right things. Some of the experienced guys who went to Austin year before last were telling the other guys what to expect. I basically overheard those kinds of conversations. It's a good thing.