Why David Collie is Nashville boys high school basketball all-decade coach of the 1980s

Anyone who claims David Collie was only able to build the East Robertson boys basketball team into a state power because he had great players needs to remember it was Collie who made those players great.

Not long after taking the position in the late 1970s, Collie put a system in place at East Robertson that allowed him to develop basketball players at an early age. By the time they were old enough to join the high school program, even as early as freshmen in many cases, those players were already indoctrinated into his program.

It was a system Collie used to lead East Robertson to its first TSSAA Class A state championship in 1983 and then three straight titles from 1987-89. Only two teams — Hume-Fogg (1921-23) and Linden (1955-57) — had ever won three straight state titles before that point.

East Robertson advanced to the state tournament seven times in the 1980s and averaged an astonishing 31 wins per season. The program lost just 45 games over those 10 years.

Collie's profound success at East Robertson is why he was selected as The Tennessean's 1980s All-Decade High School Boys Basketball Coach for the Nashville area.

The approach Collie created began with having tryouts in the spring for all incoming seventh graders to see which ones he felt had basketball potential. Collie convinced school officials to allow him to take the players he selected and place them in a physical education class the following fall.

Collie taught the class, which basically served as a basketball practice throughout the school year, then coached the junior high games on Mondays and Thursdays. That allowed him to continue to coach the high school games on Tuesdays and Fridays.

"For 12 years, if they played for me all the way through school, I coached kids for six years — two years in junior high and then four years in high school," said Collie, 77. "Having those kids six years really made a difference. We had such a close-knit community. All the kids knew each other, all the families knew each other.

"On the '87 and '88 teams I had six kids that were either brothers and or cousins."

Collie got the class for the young players scheduled just before lunch. Most days the kids would continue to practice after the period ended and show up late for lunch.

"We would go and eat lunch right as the lunchroom was shutting down so we got a little extra time in there playing basketball," Collie said.

The system proved to be successful when East Robertson advanced to the state tournament in 1982, and more and more kids in the tiny Cross Plains community wanted to be part of the program.

They worked hard preparing for spring tryouts knowing what to expect, hoping to earn a spot in Collie's program. They knew they had to be in top physical condition to be able to run hard in his up-tempo style of play.

It was a style some dared to claim wasn't fundamentally sound, even as East Robertson dominated the decade.

"The word was, 'East Robertson's just going to score a lot of points. They don't play any defense,'" Collie said. "Well, if you look at it the other way, you have to get the ball a lot of times to score a lot of points. Eddie Greer (a local high school coach who won 704 games) had a comment that I really loved. He said, 'We shoot it so fast because we want to get back and play defense.'"

Collie's fast-paced offense set a state tournament scoring record on the way to winning the 1988 championship. That team featured Carlus Groves, who went on to play at Tennessee. It set the record for total points (238) and average points per game (96).

"I went back and checked recently and at Vanderbilt (Memorial Gym), where a lot of people don't like to play, we shot 60% on threes and 57% from the field in the finals," Collie said. "It was just unbelievable and it goes back to them having played so much together. They just knew what each other did. In another game in that state tournament against Clarkrange one of Carlus' cousins, Anthony Cook, had 32 points because they were packing it in to stop Carlus and Marcus Bell."

Collie later coached at Riverdale and Columbia before retiring in 2003 with 655 career wins. He was inducted into the TSSAA Sports Hall of Fame in 2004, the East Robertson Hall of Fame in 2020, and the Basketball Coaches of Tennessee Hall of Fame in 2022.

Collie spends his time today coaching his grandson's junior high school team and serving as a starter at Vanderbilt's Legends Golf Club.

Reach Mike Organ at 615-259-8021 or on X @MikeOrganWriter.