When parents of high school basketball players are sending their sons off to play college basketball, they want to know their kids are in good hands.

They won’t find a better person to ensure them of just that than ASU associate head coach Dedrique Taylor.

Taylor, who is in his fourth season on Herb Sendek’s staff, strives to be the consummate role model for the players who play for him, both on and off of the court.

“I look at myself as a regular professor,” Taylor said. “My classroom just happens to be a gym. My textbook just happens to be a basketball.

The same lessons being taught in the classroom are the same lessons that we are teaching in sports.”

Taylor came to ASU from the University of Nevada, where the Wolf Pack won 57 games in his two years in Reno.

But when the opportunity came up to work for Sendek, Taylor jumped at the chance.

“[It was] the opportunity to attach myself with Coach Sendek — that was first and foremost,” Taylor said. “I didn’t know him at all before we became partners together. I knew who he was, but I had never met him before in my life.”

Even though they had no prior working relationship, Sendek knew exactly what he was bringing to Tempe with him.

“Dedrique is a coach that parents want their sons to play for and to be around because they know he’s going to teach them the right way to do things,” Sendek said. “Dedrique really is the complete package.”

When it comes to producing assistant coaches who take the next step to taking on their own program, Sendek is an expert —he currently has eight former assistants as head coaches.

Taylor interviewed for the vacant head-coaching job for the Army this past offseason and was a finalist for the position, but he wasn’t selected.

“The best teacher you can have is experience,” Taylor said. “To be under the fire and go through that with somebody standing over you and watching every move you make, it was the ultimate experience.”

When the next opportunity arises, Taylor knows the Army experience will only help him be ready to interview again.

“If I am fortunate to go through that again, I will be a bit more prepared because I have already gone through it,” he said. “Just being able to prepare myself to go through the interview process and having to commit my thoughts to paper was probably the best benefit of going through it.”

Though disappointed he didn’t land the job, he said: He was also ecstatic to return to Tempe.

“I am extremely excited to be at Arizona State still; I’m in the right place,” he said. “If you are looking at head-coaching jobs, you want it to be an opportunity to be successful. For me and my career and position, I am not in a hurry to go anywhere because I love it here.”

In his role as associate head coach, Taylor is very hands on with the student-athletes and seeing them have success and watching their growth as men is what Taylor said he finds joy in most.

“The kids that come through here are the most rewarding,” he said. “That is where I place my happiness, how well they do here and then in the real world.”

Making the NCAA Tournament at Nevada and ASU are Taylor’s best coaching moments but not for personal reasons. That wouldn’t be Dedrique Taylor.

He values the moments when he the dreams and hard work of his players pay off.

“You talk to these kids about it in recruiting, and then they are able to experience what you told them would happen — that is one of the most amazing feelings that I’ve been able to experience as a man,” Taylor said. “Just that feeling to be on that court and see your kids experience what they worked so hard for was great.”

Reach the reporter at andrew.gruman@asu.edu.