T.J. Zurliene is ready to pick up where Greg Goodley left off.
Zurliene took the reins of the Eldorado High School boys’ varsity basketball team on May 29, less than a month after Goodley resigned from his alma mater after 14 years coaching in which he racked up 277 wins. Now, the former Fairfield High School and University of Southern Indiana product will pick up the clipboard and try his hand as a head coach.
“I’ve been around basketball my whole life and know a lot of people that have too. They’re people that I can trust to pick their brain,” Zurliene said after the school’s second open gym session of the summer, which featured about 35 high school students. “I’m a young coach got a lot to learn and I’m ready to learn and take it all in from all the older coaches.”
Zurliene said he will bring a coaching philosophy that will be similar to the style he played in high school and at college under Bruce Pearl and Rick Herdes. The new head coach of the Eagles said he plans on pushing an up-tempo offense that will rely on converting fast-break opportunities in the open court, while running a motion offense when the team needs to ease the pace.
On the defensive end, Zurliene said he hopes to implement Pearl’s patented 1-2-2 press, which oftentimes speeds up an opposing offense into making sloppy and uncharacteristic mistakes.
“I want to get up and move. It’s going to be a fast pace game offensively and defensively. That’s the way I played throughout my career and I think that’s the way we need to play,” Zurliene said.
And even though Goodley is gone, he will still have a presence. Zurliene said the long-time Eldorado head coach is a good influence and someone who gives him positive feedback whenever he picks his brain.
Luckily, Goodley did not leave a bare cupboard for Zurliene’s first year on the sidelines. Eldorado returns four varsity players including one of its leading scorers, Cody Lane.
Zurliene said having Lane on board will help ease the transition as a first-year head coach.
“It’s a huge burden off of me as a first-year head coach to have a kid like Cody Lane,” Zurliene said. “By far he is one of the best talents I’ve ever seen play basketball at the high school level. He’s got the strength of a guy that would be a junior in college … he had as a junior in high school.
“To have a guy you can give the ball to and say ‘Go score,’ makes it so much easier for the rest of the guys on the court, too.”
