DESHLER —Basketball has taken Brian Pounders around the world, but now it has brought him back a little closer to home.

Pounders, a 1998 Belgreen graduate, was hired Monday as the new head boys basketball coach at Deshler High School in Tuscumbia.

He had been assistant coach and head junior varsity coach for three years at 6A Gardendale. He also spent three seasons as an assistant at Montevallo University.

Pounders, who prepped for his father, Steve, was a star athlete on the basketball court and as a member of the school’s track team before playing two years at Northwest-Shoals Community College. During his time at NW-SCC, the Patriots won the state junior college tournament.

He was later a manager and graduate student under former head coach Mark Gottfried at the University of Alabama, where he was part of one SEC championship team and another that reached the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament.

Before moving to Montevallo, Pounders was a graduate assistant at the Univeristy of North Alabama.

“I have coached high school and in college, and I count those years together,” he said.

“For four years I was a graduate assistant and graduate manager at the University of Alabama, one year at UNA and for three years as an assistant at the University of Montevallo. I’d say 11 in all.”

Though the world of college basketball took him to places like Madison Square Garden, Rupp Arena and the Georgia Dome, there is certainly no area that he feels more at home.

“North Alabama is my home,” Pounders said.

“I grew up here, my family is here and I love this area. The Deshler job, being such a rich tradition program and school, was just a perfect fit for me. I have always followed the program from afar and knew what their expectations were and I am excited to be a part of contining that tradition.”

He said that while the boy’s basketball team at Deshler lacks some things, they make up for it in other areas of the game.

“We’re going to hopefully play as hard as we can,” he said. “We’re not going to be very big. We’re small, but we’re athletic. We’re also going to be pretty strong.

“We’re going to try to run up and down the floor, be aggressive on defense with a lot of man-to-man and trapping, we’re going to try to press a lot and speed up the tempo of the game into our favor.

“We want to keep it out of a slow pace half-court situation, that way we can use our athleticism to our advantage.”

Having a father who has as much basketball coaching experience as Pounders does can be a real advantage as well, especially if all goes according to his plan.

“I want [my dad] to come up and help me,” Pounders said. “He’s going to be an assistant working with me, and I know he’s going to be dabbling some in real estate.

“He’s won a lot of games and taken six teams to the Final Four, so I need to use that expertise at my disposal, and he already said he would.

“That could be very beneficial for me, and I think that’s something he would enjoy as well.”

Pounders will be an assistant football coach for the Tigers this fall.