Knoxville Catholic’s B.J. Edwards receives top ranking.
KNOXVILLE — A local high school basketball star with an offer in hand from the University of Tennessee has received a top ranking from a national recruiting service.
Knoxville Catholic High School point guard B.J. Edwards is ranked as the No. 61 player in the nation by Rivals.com.
Edwards, a rising junior for the Irish, is a top national prospect. He helped Knoxville Catholic win the TSSAA Division II-AA state championship in March before COVID-19 brought a premature ending to high school sports in Tennessee and the country.
He was the state tournament’s Most Valuable Player and dished out 200 assists during the 2019-20 season for the Irish, who went 25-4 and edged defending state champ Briarcrest Christian School to claim their first-ever state championship in boys basketball.
Edwards is a four-star prospect in the 2022 recruiting class.
In addition to his offer from the Volunteers, he has also been recruited and offered by several schools including Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Auburn, South Carolina and South Alabama.
VFL Robert Ayers accepts coaching job at Knoxville Catholic.
KNOXVILLE — A former University of Tennessee football player is returning to Knoxville to be a high school coach.
Robert Ayers, who played for the Volunteers from 2005-08, has accepted a job as an assistant coach at Knoxville Catholic High School. He fills a vacancy for the Irish that was created when Kris White left the program to become the head coach at Moore County High School in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
White served as a co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach under head coach Steve Matthews.
Ayers, a Jersey City, New Jersey native, came to UT in 2004 as an outside linebacker. He redshirted and moved to defensive end in 2005 and was an All-Southeastern Conference standout in 2008.
Ayers, who attended high school in South Carolina, started as a senior for the Volunteers during his breakout senior season. He led the SEC with 15.5 tackles for a loss.
During the 2008 campaign, he also posted 49 tackles, three sacks, six quarterback pressures and an interception.
He was a first-round pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, the 18th overall pick, and was selected by the Denver Broncos.
Ayers played in Denver until 2013. He also played for the New York Giants (2014-15) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2016-17).
He signed a one-year deal with Detroit the following year and was released after just one day in training camp.
Ayers officially retired from the NFL in 2019 after recording 257 career tackles, 35 sacks, 14 pass deflections, eight forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries and one defensive touchdown.
Butch Jones’ impact of ‘new wave’ to install plays being implemented at Knoxville Catholic.
KNOXVILLE — A new wave of how to install plays is taking place at Alabama and will begin soon at Catholic High School in Knoxville.
The new wave consists of installing a play that is displayed on a jumbotron where players can watch it in real time at practice.
On the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days,” Catholic head coach Steve Matthews discussed how he intends to implement plays being installed with the help of the Fighting Irish’s jumbotron.
Photo by Dan Harralson, Vols Wire
Catholic’s jumbotron was donated by former Tennessee head coach Butch Jones and his family. Jones enters his third season as an analyst at Alabama in 2020.
“That was great by Butch and his family to get that scoreboard for us and jumbotron,” Matthews said. “He was watching us install and we were doing it the old-fashioned way of me lining everyone up. He called me over and said ‘Coach at Alabama, they install the play and then they put it up on the jumbotron where the guys can actually watch it’.
“These kids in this generation are visual learners. I am going to implement that this year because of the jumbotron he got us. I can talk about the play, install the play, then have my guys look at the screen and show it to them right on the field. He brought that up as one of the things Alabama does and I thought it was great.”
Photo by Dan Harralson, Vols Wire
“Tennessee Two-A-Days” is co-hosted by USA Academy head coach Rush Propst. Propst is also on board of the new wave of how to install plays in real time the way Alabama does.
“That is sort of the new wave in how to install,” Propst said of using a jumbotron to teach plays. “For me going forward, and having different ideas on how kids are in the 2020-21 campaign, how do they absorb the material and installs differently than they did five years ago.”
Propst won five state championships as the head coach at Hoover High School from 1999-2007. He had Jeremy Pruitt on staff from 2004-06. Propst then won two state championships and one national title at Colquitt County High School from 2008-18.
2019 was a season of reflection for Propst who was a defensive volunteer consultant at UAB. He plans to take many things that he has learned in the past year and implement them into his program going forward.
Propst discussed his time of reflection and learning in 2019 in comparison to Jones’ time at Alabama before he takes another head coaching position.
“Butch will land on his feet somewhere soon,” Propst said. “The good news for him, when you get fired, you can sit back and analyze your program and more of a slow mode because you have more time and no deadlines to meet. You are going around and you watch practices, study film, studying the way people are winning.
“I go back to the most impressive thing in my life was Eddie Robinson on the front row of a high school coach that was speaking and he was writing notes in a book. It was so impressive. I walked up to him and I said that you have been in this game a long time, what possibly could you have written down? He said you never stop learning in this game. So sitting out like Butch, and like I have done, and others have done, we always seem to come back stronger than we were when we left.”
Jones has also learned other elements of running a program during his time at Alabama that will help him going forward.
“He kept going on about how much that he had learned and is learning from Coach (Nick) Saban,” Matthews said of Jones. “He talked about the diet, the trainers, just how everything is done, and if he could do it again at Tennessee and everything that he could do different — and a lot of times it is just little things in the program. We talked about trainers, equipment managers, the strength coach and how they do things.”
Propst echoed Matthews discussing Jones evolving in preparation for his next head coaching position.
“It’s not just the X’s and O’s,” Propst said. “It’s how do we develop, how do we beat them better, how do we get them better medical care, how do we rehab differently, how do we practice differently, how do we install better.”
The entire interview with Matthews and Propst can be listened to here or below.
Future Vol Jaden Springer discusses playing at Knoxville Catholic.
KNOXVILLE — When IMG Academy basketball player Jaden Springer was introduced before the Ascenders’ game at Knoxville Catholic High School Saturday afternoon, the Irish faithful showered him with a chorus of “Rocky Top.”
After that, the Irish fans rooted hard for the University of Tennessee signee as their team fought valiantly.
KCHS would prove to be a formidable foe, but the Ascenders would leave Knoxville with a 68-53 victory before a spirited capacity crowd.
Catholic is one of the Volunteer State’s top basketball teams and Springer, a North Carolina product playing high school basketball in Florida, had his hands full on the defensive end of the floor as he had to guard Irish sophomore B.J. Edwards, one of Tennessee’s top prospects.
Springer, who will play in the McDonald’s All-American Game in May, scored 13 points in Knoxville. Edwards finished with 17 for Catholic, which has two more uncommitted Division I prospects in senior forward Akeem Odusipe and sophomore center Handje Tamba.
The Irish fans might have cheered the future Vol before the game, but once things got underway, Springer was booed on the final play before halftime when he was fouled on a 3-point attempt. He made all three free throws to give the Ascenders (14-4) a 35-23 lead at halftime.
Springer said he was thrilled to play in East Tennessee and said that he was friends with some of the players for Catholic (15-4).
“We play a lot of our games in front of big crowds,” said Springer. “But it was great when they sang Rocky Top.
“I know a lot of the Catholic guys because we all play AAU together. They have a great team and those guys are great players. The whole atmosphere and the whole experience were just great.”
Springer also noted that he didn’t feel any extra pressure while playing in Knoxville.
“There wasn’t a lot of pressure,” he said. “There never is when you have great teammates like I have.”
