Franklin’s last boys basketball game was a 28-27 sectional loss against Greenwood in March.
If Adrian Moss has his way, you won’t see a final score like that at a Grizzly Cubs game any time soon.
Moss, who starred at Franklin before going on to star at the collegiate and pro levels, was officially introduced Monday night as the new head coach at his alma mater. He succeeds Brad Dickey, who stepped down earlier this month after seven seasons.
“It’s just a dream come true for me to be able to go back to my former high school and be the head coach there,” Moss said. “If there was any high school that I would want to be a head coach at it would be Franklin, so it worked out perfect for me.”
“Many of us remember him wearing the Franklin blue as a tenacious player at both ends of the floor,” Franklin athletic director Bill Doty said in a statement. “Franklin fans will undoubtedly see his teams play with that same tenacity and fire.”
An assistant for the Grizzly Cubs under Dickey in 2017-18, Moss has long aspired to become a head coach. He spent the last two seasons working under close friend Garrett Winegar, first at Warren Central and then at Fishers, with the understanding that he would only leave if a head coaching job came up.
When that opportunity presented itself in Franklin, where his family still resides, Moss couldn’t pass on it.
Though the Grizzly Cubs have struggled of late, going 17-26 over the past two seasons, Moss isn’t going to accept the built-in excuse that there isn’t enough talent in town to succeed.
“You can develop players,” he said. “I believe that you can be a different player by the time you’re a junior. If you really work on the right things and you put that consistent work in — I’m a crazy work-ethic guy, so 6 a.m. shootarounds and all that stuff. These kids are probably going to be doing more than they’ve ever done before.”
Hard work allowed Moss to punch above his weight class through his entire playing career. Despite standing just 5-foot-8, he made a huge impact for the Grizzly Cubs during his high school years, averaging 21.4 points, 7.3 assists and 2.9 steals as a senior in 2006-07 and earning Daily Journal Player of the Year honors.
Moss played for two seasons at IUPUI before transferring and earning All-America honors at the University of Indianapolis. He then played four seasons of pro basketball in the National Basketball League of Canada, winning a championship with the London Lightning in 2013.
Injuries took their toll after a while, putting an end to Moss’ playing days, so he transitioned into coaching. He’s excited to succeed Dickey, who was recently named as the new coach and athletic director at Trinity Lutheran.
“Coach Dickey was a great coach; I learned a lot of stuff from him,” Moss said. “We played in two different eras, so it’s going to be a little mix of the old school and new school.”
That new-school approach, Moss says, will involve forcing the issue at both ends of the court. When discussing the style he hopes to play, the words “aggressive” and “attack” came up numerous times. Simply put, Moss wants the Grizzly Cubs to make opposing teams uncomfortable.
Though he’s already familiar with many of the players in the Franklin system and vice versa, Moss is hoping that he can grow their games by pushing them to do some unfamiliar things.
“You have to develop them and see if they can reach their max level. If you’re always in a box and you’re always forced to do something, you don’t know what level you can actually reach. So my thing is to kind of let the reins loose and then I can pull them back in as we go.”
