DETROIT (6/26/2020) -- Longtime local basketball coach
Tim Webb was announced as part of head coach
AnnMarie Gilbert's women's basketball coaching staff in late May and arrives at the University of Detroit Mercy having spent the majority of his coaching career in the city of Detroit.
Webb played high school basketball in his native Pontiac, later helping his Pontiac Northern high school squad to back-to-back state titles (2001-02) as an assistant coach and was an assistant coach on three Class A state championship squads with Detroit Country Day (2015, 2017-18). He has also spent time as an advanced scout in both the MLB with the hometown Detroit Tigers as well as in the WNBA.
Webb, who starred at nearby Rochester College as a player, was the associate head coach at Oakland Community College and his appointment with the Titans is his first job in Division I.
In getting to know Webb a little better, DetroitTitans.com interviewed him via a phone interview. Check out his full answers:
Q: Just talk about your excitement level in being part of coach Gilbert's staff?
Webb: "This is very exciting. Coach Gilbert is a proven winner. It's been exciting to learn more in these few weeks under her and actually coaching with her. I've been coaching for 20 years and again, just learning from her, I'm learning more and more stuff every day. It's definitely an honor and I'm humbled to be part of this movement as we go forward to turn this thing around."
Q: How did you meet or cross paths with coach Gilbert?
Webb: "Years ago, as her daughter (Jada Walker) just committed to Kentucky and my daughter (Kaela Webb) is a rising junior at Providence. They were in the fifth grade and third grade maybe, I was coaching against her daughter at that young age. She (Jada) was the smallest person on the court, but she was very good. We just figured out who she was and actually as they got older, then they started to play in the same AAU program and just over those years way back then, we just built our relationship and we always talked basketball. Our kids were involved in the same things, we just had so many things to talk about, so we continued to build that relationship over the years. All of the time, we talked basketball and we sharpened each other and that's where it started."
Q: Obviously you know the city of Detroit pretty well. How will that help you be a coach in Detroit as well as in recruiting the city and state?
Webb: "As far back as my daughter started coming up, I've been building those relationships since then, with different high school coaches and different AAU programs. I've been able to establish a great rapport with many coaches. I see them all of the time. We brought many of those kids from those AAU programs to Detroit Country Day. All of the coaches I would meet, I've been watching kids play from that young age all the way up until today. So I can tell you just about where every one of those kids are. I've built relationships with the families. I've definitely been able to build many relationships with both high school coaches as well as AAU programs."
Q: Talk a little bit about your coaching style, your influences and some of your philosophies as a coach?
Webb: "I coach with a lot of fire, energy and passion. That's just my personality. But I'm also a teacher of the game. I spend a lot of time in the film room, trying to help kids get an understanding of how to play the game the right way and correcting their mistakes and helping them grow. Again, over the years, spending that time as a teacher and I think one of my big influences is helping people understand how to play the game of basketball."
Q: You've been a scout in the WNBA and in baseball as well. Talk about that will help in your role?
Webb: "I was an advanced scout. I was watching other teams. I was scouting everything that other teams were doing, from tendencies to how often they were doing certain things. In baseball, you study a pitcher's tendencies or what type of movement he had (on his pitches). It's the same thing in basketball. All coaches have tendencies. Again, spending all of that time in the film room and being able to pick up on those habits, picking up on those tendencies, it translates into basketball."
Q: Can you tell us about the kind of player you were on the basketball court?
Webb: "I was a floor general, a scoring point guard. I had to know where everyone was on the court. I was hard-nosed. I felt like I had to put the ball in the hole, I felt like I needed the ball. As a coach, I bring that same fire and passion. I'm straight-forward with the kids. I'm being honest. I pushing them to get to that next level. I believe that if you're straight-forward you get straight-forward. That's how I was as a player and it has kind of moved on to my coaching style, as well. I loved to shoot the three. That's what I did and I'm a teacher of that."
Q: Are there some coaches in the industry that you kind of look up to?
Webb: "I wouldn't say there's a specific coach, because again I'm a sponge, I'm learning every day from everybody. You never stop learning. I've been coaching for 20 years and just in the short time that I've spent with coach Gilbert, I'm learning stuff every day. I think as a player, one of the things that my college coach did was, he put us in the presence of great coaches, like Don Meyer. He's an old great coach who has passed, but I can say that I spent time with Don Meyer, actually sitting in his house and talking basketball at a young age. Those are the experiences that I've had, but again I'm learning from everybody, every day. You never stop learning. In this game, if you stop learning then you stagger. I'm learning from any and all.
Q: You've won a lot of championships as a coach. Do you have any favorite memories, team or moment among all of them?
Webb: "I would say that the Country Day team, that's probably my favorite team, the 2017 team. I just believe that we would have competed with anybody in the country. That was such a great team. Again, the memories I have, my daughter was on all three of those state championship teams that we won. That was great to experience that with her. I have really great memories of those teams. There were great players on those teams and we displayed that. As a player (at Rochester College), it's funny, my coach, we are all still in a group chat. He can send a joke at any time and everybody responds. We still have that bond to this day. A lot of us on the championship team (in 1997), we are now coaching. After all of these years, he can still bring up something about when we were 19 or 20 years old and talk about it. Those were great times."
Q: You mentioned some of the great players on the Detroit Country Day teams and you're going to coach one of those players again in Maxine Moore. Just talk about her and her development and watching her grow?
Webb: "This is funny. When I talked about coaching my daughter and coach Gilbert's daughter, Max was also on those teams as well. I can remember when Max was in middle school, I remember saying, 'Max, you can't play this way or this way, your high school coach isn't going to allow you play like this.' When we got to Country Day, I can remember saying those exact same things like, 'you need to step it up because when you get to college, your coach is not going to allow you to play like this.' And here we are, I am her college coach. That's funny that Max has been a part of my life and coaching for so long. We never would have thought that we would be here, coaching her still. I've been coaching her just as long as I have been coaching my daughter. It's really exciting to be able to be at this level coaching her."
