Former MHS assistant Tadlock a state championship coach in 1st year at Raymond

Published 11:15 pm Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Tony Tadlock heard the chatter.

The first-year Raymond head coach and former assistant boys basketball coach at Meridian was staring at a 9-6 record heading into a Jan. 5 matchup against Lanier. Raymond, which won the Class 4A state championship in 2017, was accused of being overrated. Tadlock, though, told his players to trust the process, and they did.

In 2018, Raymond didn’t lose a game, and the Rangers captured their second-straight Class 4A championship last week in a 64-52 win against Corinth in the title game at the Mississippi Coliseum. None of the Rangers’ losses this past season were against 4A competition, and Tadlock’s team sent the message that it’s still the team to beat in 4A.

“It’s an amazing feeling, knowing all of the work that you put in,” Tadlock said. “We started off 9-6, and a lot of people wrote us off, but I told my guys to trust the process, and I give my players all the credit. I told them we would get it done, and after Christmas, we found a way to win 20 straight.”

Tadlock first came to Meridian as an assistant coach for former Wildcats coach Randy Bolden, and he stayed on during current Meridian boys coach Ron Norman’s first year during the 2016-17 school year. Last May, he took the Raymond job, his first head coaching job at a school with high expectations following the previous season’s state championship.

“I knew we had a chance to be pretty good,” Tadlock recalled of when he first saw the team practice. “The thing that concerned me was we lost three starters from the team that won it, and I knew we needed to beef up the schedule. We kind of snuck up on people the year before I got there, so this year, the bull’s eye was on our backs.”

If there was going to be a championship run, there would have to be a trust between the coach and players, something Tadlock brought up with his new team right away.

“My first day on the job after we had tryouts, I went into the locker room and had a player’s only meeting,” he said. “I gave a spiel about family, togetherness and brotherhood, because I knew we had to be closer on the court and off the court into order to have a run. Those guys bought in immediately, and I knew the sky was the limit.”

Meanwhile, Tadlock upped the competition level in the non-divisional portion of the schedule to include teams like Forest Hill, Callaway and Canton, which all made the final four in the Class 5A playoffs. Tadlock also scheduled another familiar opponent: Meridian, a Nov. 21 matchup that the Wildcats won 57-50.

“That’s something we want to continue, not only because it’ll make us better, but because I enjoy seeing those guys,” Tadlock said.

In fact, Tadlock said having the opportunity to work for both Bolden and Norman at Meridian helped form him into the coach he is today.

“Playing for Coach Bolden at Pearl and coaching with him for five years, he was a mentor,” Tadlock said. “He allowed me to be hands-on in my time as an assistant — he didn’t treat me as an assistant. Coach Norman was the same way. He didn’t try to change things up a lot. I credit a lot of my success to those guys.”

Not only that, but coaching at Meridian gave Tadlock two advantages: knowing how to deal with expectations, and knowing how to coach when the team reached the Big House.

“There were expectations at Meridian, so I was already used to that when I got (to Raymond),” Tadlock explained. “Obviously, they were coming off a state championship, but the experience I gained from Meridian definitely helped with that.

“A lot of people walk (into the coliseum) wide-eyed, but being from Meridian, those were our expectations. It was like being at home again. Us winning state the year before at Raymond, those guys had the same mentality. There was no nervousness; they were just walking into another building. That was our home away from home.”

While he’s enjoying being a championship coach, Tadlock said he’s not about to rest on what he accomplished this past season.

“We’ll take a couple of weeks off then get right back into it in the weight room,” Tadlock said. “We already have our summer league planned out, as well as different camps. We’re just getting ready to make another run. We’ll enjoy this for a couple of weeks, then get back to work again to try for a three-peat.”