University of Tennessee Athletics
Goins Perfect Fit for UT Transition Game
December 23, 2009 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 23, 2009
By Tony Williams, UT Media Relations
Junior point guard Melvin Goins was recruited and signed by UT head coach Bruce Pearl to shore up a position that did not meet his expectations during the 2008-09 season. After running and gunning for much of his first three years on Rocky Top, Pearl was forced to play more of a half-court game last season due to a lack of depth at the point guard position.
The fifth-year head coach stated often in the offseason that he wanted to get back to a transition game and that Melvin Goins was going to play an important role in that movement.
Goins is a perfect fit for the task because he's experiencing transition all around him at Tennessee. Born in San Diego, Calif., Goins has ventured far and wide in his basketball career. He played high school basketball in Humble, Texas; began his college career at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana; and transferred back to San Diego to Mt. San Jacinto Junior College before finally landing in Knoxville for the 2009-10 season.
Despite calling a different place home in each of the last four years, Goins has sharpened his skills at each stop along the way and learned to make the most of change. What has he picked up in his short time in Knoxville? How to live his life a little faster.
"The thing that gets to you about all of the moving is the pace," Goins said. "Not basketball, but the pace of life. I feel like I've taken something from everywhere, but the pace here is the fastest. This is not Southern California. The people here are great to me, but everything and everyone goes a little faster than I was expecting."
On the basketball court, Goins is at home in Pearl's frenetic style of play, but there are a few subtleties about the game that have changed for him. At Mount San Jacinto, Goins was a playmaker and a go-to scorer. At Tennessee, Pearl likes his point guards to be scoring threats. He also puts a premium on their ability to get others the ball, especially with talented big men Tyler Smith and Wayne Chism on the floor.
"At my junior college we liked to get up and down the floor and get a lot of shots. Here, we do the same thing, but we try and get the ball out of the point guard's hands as quickly as possible. The faster we move the ball the more mismatches we create. We're trying to do it more with ball movement than one-on-one playmaking."
Another transition for Goins has been in his role in the locker room. Point guards are often the de-facto leaders of a team because of their on-floor role, but Goins, and likewise senior point guard Bobby Maze, can cede to Smith and Chism, both of whom are in their third season as starters. Goins is also coming off the bench, something he's not used to from his previous stops.
"I'm comfortable with my role because we're winning games," Goins said. "Coach Pearl has always said that his 10 are better than your 10. I'm a competitor and I want to be out there, but we're playing a lot of guys to win games and I'm a part of that."
Goins will likely split time with Maze for the duration of the 2009-10 season, but the junior can become the primary point guard next season, a change he's likely to make without incident.
After all, that transition won't be his first one.
