A new era has begun for Wando’s boys basketball as School Principal Chas Coker and Athletic Director Mark Buchman held an introductory press conference on April 25 for newly hired coach of the Warriors, John Reynolds.

The Citadel alum was a player for four years and an assistant coach under longtime Bulldog head coach, Ed Conroy. At the Citadel, Reynolds earned All-Academic Southern Conference honors. He has most recently served as associate head coach at the Citadel in oversight of recruiting, strategic planning initiatives, scouting and skill development.

Reynolds also has spent time at the University of South Carolina having served under former head coach Frank Martin. In his time as Director of On-Campus Recruiting, he played a big role in the recruitment of eight future NBA players in 5 seasons with the Gamecocks. He helped Martin on his staff to win 75 games and to three top-six finishes in the Southeastern Conference.

Diving into the game plan for the Warriors, Reynolds gave his input on where his emphasis will be specifically as head coach.

“There’s not one area that you can kind of be deficient in and hope to, to build a great team. So, we’re going to be scrappy defensively. There’s going to be things I hope to be, you know, really disciplined and have a real clear understanding of what our principles are,” Reynolds said.

Defense is just a little piece of a big puzzle for Reynolds. The overall goal is developing players’ skills.

“I would say probably what we emphasize more than others is the skill development piece. We’re going to be really specific in it. We’re going to have standards that we hold our guys to,” Reynolds said.

To develop the skills of his players, Reynolds uses benchmarks and goals for players to track their progress.

Reynolds spoke on the structure of showing growth and progress within the program in his methodology.

“Our whole philosophy is going to be,…to build the best and most well-rounded basketball players that we can and then give them a system that they can go play freely and use those skills,” Reynolds said.