Salt Lake Community College interim men’s basketball head coach Todd Phillips had the ‘interim’ tag in his job title removed on March 12, as he was offered and accepted the full-time coaching position at SLCC.
In his interim year which just concluded, the Bruins began 12-0 and Phillips led them to a 22-9 overall record and a 9-6 finish in the Scenic West Athletic Conference. Phillips coached the team to the No. 2 seed in the Region 18 Basketball Championships, where they fell to No. 3 North Idaho College in the first round. The Bruins began the season 12-0 under Coach Phillips.
“I’m excited–it’s an honor to be the head coach here,” said Phillips, who came to SLCC after working as an assistant coach for three years at Lewis and Clark State College. “The SLCC job is big time in junior college and I really appreciate our athletic director, Norma Carr, for all of her confidence in me.”
Phillips hails from Twin Falls, Idaho and grew up in the shadows of one of SLCC’s rivals, the College of Southern Idaho. He began as the interim head coach at SLCC following the departure of legend Norm Parrish, who is now the Director of Basketball Operations at the University of Utah. Phillips was an assistant coach under Parrish for three seasons prior to being named interim head coach.
“We’re very excited to have Todd. He’s done a great job as our interim head coach,” Carr said. “I expect good things from him and I know he’ll develop the guys in our program not only as athletes, but as students as well.”
Phillips feels that in following Parrish as coach at SLCC, there are big shoes to fill. Though he admits that this season was a good one for the Bruins, he’s definitely not satisfied. Phillips and the SLCC coaching staff are already back hard at work, focused on getting the Bruins back to National Championship form.
“This year was a great learning experience for me. Sometimes the best way to learn is to go through the fires and figure out what you can do better and I’m excited about going into this second year,” Phillips said. “This job never stops. We’ve got to go out and get some recruits that make us excited to get this bad feeling (of the season being over) out of ourselves.”
