Shownotes
Jason Smith is in his first season as the women’s basketball head coach at NAIA Tennessee Wesleyan University. He previously served as the head women’s coach at Peru State during the 2023-2024 season and Cedarville University from 2021-2023.
Prior to Cedarville Smith had a ten-year run as the women’s head coach at Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn. He produced an impressive resume at Bryan where he is the school’s all-time winningest coach. Smith guided the Lions to an overall record of 219-85 including a 157-49 slate in the Appalachian Athletic Conference. His teams claimed five regular season titles, four league tournament crowns, and made six appearances in the NAIA Division II National Tournament. Following his final season, Smith earned his third consecutive AAC Coach of the Year honor after his team posted a remarkable 78-7 record during that timespan featuring a perfect 64-0 conference mark. He produced nine consecutive winning campaigns.
Jason previously served as the head men’s basketball coach at both Calvary Bible College and San Diego Christian College. As an undergraduate at Kansas he was a varsity manager and film technician for Head Coach Roy Williams.
On this episode Mike & Jason discuss the importance of self-awareness and accountability in player development. Jason emphasizes that players often already know what they need to improve upon but may struggle to articulate it or take ownership of their performance. Smith reflects on the challenges coaches face when trying to instill a strong work ethic and a winning mentality in their teams, particularly in an era where instant gratification is prevalent. He shares insights from his coaching journey, including the need to foster a culture of love and acceptance within the team, allowing players to feel valued regardless of their role. The conversation highlights the significance of building trust and encouraging open communication between coaches and players to help them navigate their growth on and off the court.
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @hoopheadspod for the latest updates on episodes, guests, and events from the Hoop Heads Pod.
Make sure you’re subscribed to the Hoop Heads Pod on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and while you’re there please leave us a 5 star rating and review. Your ratings help your friends and coaching colleagues find the show. If you really love what you’re hearing recommend the Hoop Heads Pod to someone and get them to join you as a part of Hoop Heads Nation.
Website - https://www.twbulldogs.com/sports/wbkb/index
Email - jsmith@tnwesleyan.edu
Twitter - @TWUWBB
Visit our Sponsors!
Give With Hoops is a groundbreaking initiative that fuses basketball analytics with modern sponsorship. Built for teams who see data as opportunity, from AAU programs to college powerhouses. By tying on-court performance directly to community and sponsor engagement, Give With Hoops help programs raise more while deepening support from those who believe in the game.
Your step-by-step guide to getting recruited as a college athlete at the NCAA Division 3 level. This course is designed by former D3 Athletes to take you from zero interest from college coaches to securing your first offer and putting you on the path to committing.
Your first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job. A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies and, most of all, helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants. Special Price of just $25 for all Hoop Heads Listeners.
Empowering athletic coaches with financial education, strategic planning, and practical tools to build lasting wealth—on and off the court.
If you listen to and love the Hoop Heads Podcast, please consider giving us a small tip that will help in our quest to become the #1 basketball coaching podcast. https://hoop-heads.captivate.fm/support
Twitter/X
Podcast - @hoopheadspod
Mike - @hdstarthoops
Jason - @jsunkle
https://www.facebook.com/hoopheadspod/
YouTube
Transcripts
Foreign the Hoop Heads podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.
Mike Lindsing:I'll usually reverse the question right back to them.
Mike Lindsing:So what do you think you need to work on to get better, to get more playing time?
Mike Lindsing:And what my experience has taught me is 9 times out of 10 they.
Jason Smith:Already know Jason Smith is in his first season as the Women's Basketball head coach at NAI Tennessee Wesleyan University.
Jason Smith: oach at Peru State during the: Jason Smith:Prior to Cedarville, Smith had a 10 year run as the women's head coach at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee.
Jason Smith:He produced an impressive resume at Bryan, where he's the school's all time winningest coach.
Jason Smith: : Jason Smith:His teams claimed five regular season titles, four league tournament crowns, and made six appearances in the NAI Division 2 national tournament.
Jason Smith:Following his final season, Smith earned his third consecutive AAC coach of the Year honor after his team posted a remarkable 78.7record during that time span.
Jason Smith:Featuring a perfect 64.0conference mark, he produced nine consecutive winning campaigns at Bryan.
Jason Smith:Jason previously served as the head men's basketball coach at both Calvary Bible College and San Diego Christian College.
Jason Smith:As an undergraduate at Kansas, he was a varsity manager and film technician for Head Coach Roy Williams Hey Hoop Heads.
Jason Smith:Find your team's dream shooting machine this holiday season during during Dr.
Jason Smith:Dish Basketball's December end of year super sale.
Jason Smith:From now until December 31, you can unlock the biggest deal of the year.
Jason Smith:Buy one Dr.
Jason Smith:Dish CT plus get one for $2,000.
Jason Smith:This offer is only valid while supplies last, so hurry to secure your machines while you can learn more@drdishbasketball.com and follow their incredible content rdrdishbball on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Jason Smith:Mention the who Pets podcast and save an extra $300 on the Dr.
Jason Smith:Dish Rebel all Star and CT models.
Jason Smith:Those are some great deals.
Jason Smith:Hoop Heads get your doctor Dish shooting machine today.
Jason Smith:Hi, this is Bob Quillman, host of the Qcast and you're listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast.
Jason Smith:Prepare like the pros with the all new FastDraw and Fast Scout.
Jason Smith:Fast Draw has been the number one play diagramming software for coaches for years.
Jason Smith:You'll quickly see why FastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there.
Jason Smith:For a limited time, Fastmodel is offering Hoop Heads listeners 15% off Fast Draw and fast scout.
Jason Smith:Just use the code HHP15 at checkout to grab your discount and you'll be on your way to more efficient game prep and improved communication with your team.
Jason Smith:Fastmodel also has new coaching content every week on its blog, plus play and drill diagrams on its playbank.
Jason Smith:Check out the links in the show notes for more Fast model sports is the best in basketball.
Jason Smith:Be prepared with your notebook and pen as you listen to this episode with Jason Smith, women's basketball head coach at Tennessee Wesleyan University.
Jason Smith:Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.
Jason Smith:It's Mike Lindsing here without my co host Jason S.
Jason Smith:Tonight, but I am pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads pod Jason Smith, head women's basketball coach at Tennessee Wesleyan.
Jason Smith:Jason, welcome back, man.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, thanks for having me back.
Mike Lindsing:I appreciate it.
Mike Lindsing:The first time we did this was great and, and great to have an opportunity to do it again.
Mike Lindsing:I look forward to visiting with you, Mike.
Jason Smith:Looking forward to the conversation for sure, and getting an update on where you've been, what you've done in the intervening couple of years since we last talked.
Jason Smith:So let's start there.
Jason Smith:The last time we talked you were the head coach at Cedarville, and since then you've been to Peru State and now at Tennessee Wesleyan.
Jason Smith:So just kind of give us a, I guess the quick timeline of sort of the process and then we'll dive into a little bit more detail.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, yeah, I'll just kind of dive a little bit into the Cedarville issue.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, it ultimately it just wasn't the right fit for me or the institution, you know, and I guess that stuff kind of happens and, you know, you go in to a job process and you're thinking, yeah, this is a great fit.
Mike Lindsing:And then when you get in the middle of it, sometimes it's just not.
Mike Lindsing:You know, we talked a lot about culture and creating culture the last time we were on this, on this call.
Mike Lindsing:And, you know, you're successful at one place and then you think you can just carry the same culture over to the same a new place.
Mike Lindsing:And, you know, I was a little naive about it, I guess, you know, thinking that this is just an easy crossover.
Mike Lindsing:And I found out real quickly that, that that process was not going to work.
Mike Lindsing:You know, got a lot of resistance from administration, from players, and it was just a fight for a couple of years there and just realized, you know, this probably is not the place for me to be and that's okay, you know, you know, it was a little frustrating when you pick up and move your family six or seven hours away and.
Mike Lindsing:And transport your family and change, root up their lives.
Mike Lindsing:You know, it's.
Mike Lindsing:You're affecting a lot of people there.
Mike Lindsing:And I can remember at one point my daughter, my teenage daughter saying, dad, why did you ruin my life by moving?
Mike Lindsing:You know, so that was rough.
Mike Lindsing:You know, that was the roughest part of it, watching her hurt a little bit because she loved Tennessee and she didn't want to leave Tennessee.
Mike Lindsing:But so there was a decision made with me, my wife, that it was just a good place time to step away and.
Mike Lindsing:And move to something different.
Mike Lindsing:And honestly, Mike, I thought I was done coaching.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I thought, okay, I've ran the gamut of coaching, and I fulfilled a lot and been successful and.
Mike Lindsing:And I think my wife was a little tired of the whole coaching thing for a little bit, and she was kind of looking forward to a different life.
Mike Lindsing:And so I actually went on regular job interviews for a little bit.
Jason Smith:What were you thinking about?
Jason Smith:What were you thinking about doing?
Mike Lindsing:Well, before I got.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, I originally got into coaching out of college, and then I got out of coaching for a little bit in my 20s and got into sales.
Mike Lindsing:I was, you know, you know, all my friends were making a lot of money, and I wasn't.
Mike Lindsing:And so they convinced me to get out of coaching, and so I got into sales.
Mike Lindsing:And so I know I could go into the sales business if I needed to find a job.
Mike Lindsing:So I started interviewing for some sales jobs.
Mike Lindsing:You know, probably could make a lot more.
Mike Lindsing:A lot more money than I'm making now in coaching, but I don't think I'd be as happy or I'd be miserable.
Mike Lindsing:But what's funny is I.
Mike Lindsing:I went on a couple job interviews, and one of them particularly was for a window company selling windows.
Mike Lindsing:And my interview lasted about 50, 50 minutes, and 45 of those minutes we talked about basketball.
Mike Lindsing:You know, that's all the guy wanted to talk to me about, because basically that's all my resume is, you know, So I walked out of that interview and I came home and I said to my wife, I go, I don't.
Mike Lindsing:I don't think I'm done coaching basketball, you know.
Mike Lindsing:So we kind of sat down and made a plan going forward.
Mike Lindsing:What was what that looked like?
Mike Lindsing:You know, living in Ohio, not near any family or anybody.
Mike Lindsing:We'd been away from family for a long time.
Mike Lindsing:So we said, well, if we're going to get back into coaching, it's going to either be in Tennessee, because that was kind of Our second home or a zoomie closer to our immediate family, which was back in the Midwest, Kansas City area.
Mike Lindsing:And so I just started kind of putting feelers out there and started looking, applied for a couple jobs in Tennessee and nothing happened there.
Mike Lindsing:And then the Peru state job in Nebraska was still open and I kind of just reached out to the AD and, and just kind of went from there.
Mike Lindsing:Peru was about an hour away from my sister in law and a couple hours from my parents and my wife's parents.
Mike Lindsing:So.
Mike Lindsing:And so I interviewed, got the job and it was just kind of like, okay, that fit the criteria to get back to family.
Mike Lindsing:So we went back to Peru and, and so that.
Mike Lindsing:And it was just a good fresh start, to be honest with you.
Mike Lindsing:The good thing about it was I went to a program that hadn't won, hadn't had a lot of success, to be honest with you, Mike, I'd probably prefer taking over a program like that anyway, because I think you can build your own culture a little bit.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, when I took over Cedarville, they were kind of at the top.
Mike Lindsing:They kind of resisted all that change.
Jason Smith:Because we were doing easier.
Jason Smith:Easier to sell it, right when you have.
Mike Lindsing:Well, it was easier to sell.
Mike Lindsing:It was just everything.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:I don't want to get too specific necessarily, because the coach before me was a great coach and she still is.
Mike Lindsing:And nothing that, you know, you can.
Mike Lindsing:This business, you can coach basketball a thousand different ways, you know, absolutely.
Mike Lindsing:Even on court stuff, you know, she was a.
Mike Lindsing:I say she was a pack line defense person and I'm not, you know, so our girls were.
Mike Lindsing:Took them forever not to send the ball to the middle, you know, stuff like that, you know, and that was just one of the few minor things.
Mike Lindsing:But so everything, like my coaching style was different.
Mike Lindsing:I was a male, she was a female.
Mike Lindsing:How we, how I relate to my players was completely different than her.
Mike Lindsing:So there was just a lot of resistance.
Mike Lindsing:So.
Mike Lindsing:And then going to Peru, it was just a fresh start.
Mike Lindsing:A bunch of girls that hadn't won, that hadn't been coached very well, to be honest with you.
Mike Lindsing:And so I felt like, okay, there's an opportunity to come in here and just start culture from day one.
Mike Lindsing:Coach these girls up because they wanted coaching.
Mike Lindsing:They just weren't being coached well.
Mike Lindsing:So they, they bought into the culture pretty quickly, which was exciting.
Mike Lindsing:It was a program that hadn't won a lot, like I said, but they hadn't been to the conference tournament in 13 years, I believe.
Mike Lindsing:So we were picked to finish 12th in the heart of America Conference preseason.
Mike Lindsing:I think there's 13 teams.
Mike Lindsing:We were picked to finish 12.
Mike Lindsing:We ended up finishing seventh and making the conference tournament for the first time in 13 years.
Mike Lindsing:So it was a great accomplishment, you know, and it was exciting for them to achieve some stuff that they've never achieved before, and that was exciting for them.
Mike Lindsing:It was a great opportunity because it was great administration for me because they just allowed me to coach basketball, didn't have to get into a lot of other minutia, just go down and coach basketball.
Mike Lindsing:Very diverse group, probably the most diverse group of players I've ever had.
Mike Lindsing:And that was a great learning experience for me and taught me a lot about different cultures.
Mike Lindsing:You know, we had Native American kids, African American kids.
Mike Lindsing:We had kids at all socioeconomic backgrounds.
Mike Lindsing:So I think it was a great opportunity just to learn about different cultures and how they view life and how they view America and a view basketball.
Mike Lindsing:You know, we dealt with some things that I'd never dealt with before, which was great, you know, and we dealt with it in a very professional way, and it was exciting.
Mike Lindsing:So it taught me some things.
Jason Smith:How important.
Jason Smith:And I.
Jason Smith:I can already tell what the answer to this question is going to be.
Jason Smith:But obviously the administration at a school is critically important.
Jason Smith:I think it's critically important at the college level.
Jason Smith:It's critically important at the high school level that you have to have the support of the administration.
Jason Smith:You can define support in a lot of different ways, right?
Jason Smith:You got to have monetary support.
Jason Smith:You got to have them feeling that the basketball program is important.
Jason Smith:All those things are a huge piece of it.
Jason Smith:And when you go into an interview process or you talk to maybe previous coaches in a program?
Jason Smith:How do you try to get a sense of what that administration is going to be like before you take a job?
Jason Smith:How are you thinking about that in terms of what that's going to mean for your ability to coach the team the way you want to coach it and run a program the way you want to run it?
Mike Lindsing:I think every experience you have, you can.
Mike Lindsing:You kind of glean stuff from, and then you take it into your next position.
Mike Lindsing:And so those questions come up when you're interviewing.
Mike Lindsing:I think, depends who's in charge.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, if it's the AD or the president.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, at Cedarville, it was the president pretty much in charge.
Mike Lindsing:So getting a good feel for him and what his.
Mike Lindsing:What he was about was important.
Mike Lindsing:I made a couple phone calls to some people that I trusted that knew him or knew of him a little bit, knew some background.
Mike Lindsing:So a Little bit of that went.
Mike Lindsing:Involved the proof state was more.
Mike Lindsing:I just, I, I had a great conversation with the ad for about two hours on the phone and really just honestly asked a lot of personal questions.
Mike Lindsing:I come to a point where I, I almost want to know the person more personally than about their business sense.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:So who they are as a person and how that's going to carry over in their business world and how they're gonna, how they're going to manage you or not manage you.
Mike Lindsing:Um, basically I was fortunate, you know, coming here at Tennessee Wesleyan that I spent 10 years at Bryan College just 30 minutes from here and, and competed against Tennessee Wesleyan in the same conference.
Mike Lindsing:So I knew my athletic director.
Mike Lindsing:I mean I've known him for 10 or 11 years or, or more.
Mike Lindsing:So that was reassuring.
Mike Lindsing:So I knew I.
Mike Lindsing:Going into what I was going to get into when I came here.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Jason Smith:Obviously having the familiarity with Tennessee Wesleyan.
Jason Smith:Talk a little bit about the decision to leave Peru, take the Tennessee Wesleyan job.
Jason Smith:Obviously as you said, Tennessee had kind of become your family's second home.
Jason Smith:So I'm sure your daughter was probably happy to come back to Tennessee to some degree.
Jason Smith:But just tell me a little bit about the decision making process there.
Jason Smith:Your familiarity with the league as you just talked about.
Jason Smith:But just, just tell me about the job search process, the interview process and making the decision to again move your family cross country, which I'm sure involved some more, some more conversations.
Mike Lindsing:There's no doubt my daughter beat me to the punch actually because she ended up coming to college here in Tennessee before I got here.
Mike Lindsing:So she, she goes to Lee Lee University, which is about 30 minutes from us here.
Mike Lindsing:But so yeah, she got back faster.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I'm sitting at Peru and you know, we're close to family and honestly I'm happy with administration, I'm happy with the direction of the program.
Mike Lindsing:I'm happy with being in Nebraska City.
Mike Lindsing:It's a good town where I mean it.
Mike Lindsing:The community was great to us.
Mike Lindsing:So there was no like intention to get up and leave.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I wasn't even searching for jobs, to be honest with you.
Mike Lindsing:Then all of a sudden I get a clip on.
Mike Lindsing:I don't know if it's social media or where I saw it that the, the head coach at Tennessee Wesleyan was being transitioned into the men's golf coach.
Mike Lindsing:And and so they were obviously going to look for a women's basketball coach.
Mike Lindsing:And I knew the coach and I coached against him for 10 years and knew him well.
Mike Lindsing:And so I reached out to him and just really congratulating him on, on his career, first of all.
Mike Lindsing:And then we got to Texan and I just asked him, I said, so what's the deal?
Mike Lindsing:Who, you know, do they know who they're going to hire?
Mike Lindsing:And he's like, well, not yet.
Mike Lindsing:You know, they're, they're looking to hire a woman, I assume.
Mike Lindsing:And, and he's, and I said, well, I guess that rules me out, you know, and, but he goes, well, you know, Jason, you know, Donnie, the AD there knows you well, so, you know, send your resume and if you're interested and, and see how it goes.
Mike Lindsing:And you know, I got off the phone and just went to my wife and just started talking about it and, and, and when she didn't hesitate and said, yeah, let's, let's send the resume in, I knew it was, you know, let's, let's throw it against the wall and see what sticks.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I think our family thinks we're crazy, you know, ultimately, like, but when you lay things out and you put it on paper, you know, that old Ben Franklin, the pros and cons, pros on one side, the cons on the other, and you lay it out.
Mike Lindsing:And we've done that a lot of times in our decision making process, in our marriage and our jobs.
Mike Lindsing:There was, it was kind of just a no brainer to go back to Tennessee.
Mike Lindsing:One is we gain our tuition exchange back for our children so that our kids can go to college for free.
Mike Lindsing:So that's a huge, well, that's a huge benefit.
Jason Smith:Absolutely.
Jason Smith:Oh, yeah, no question.
Mike Lindsing:And then we're closer to my daughter.
Mike Lindsing:That goes to Lee.
Mike Lindsing:My other son was talking about wanting to go to college in Tennessee.
Mike Lindsing:He hasn't quite decided yet, but.
Mike Lindsing:And so Tennessee's just home.
Mike Lindsing:That's where our kids were raised.
Mike Lindsing:So when we told our kids we're going back to Tennessee, they were pretty excited, pretty jacked up.
Mike Lindsing:So that's kind of how the process went.
Mike Lindsing:And then AD called me, we talked for a good 45 to 45 minutes to an hour.
Mike Lindsing:And, and he said, well, Jason, I would love to hire you, but I, I, I probably need to hire a female in this position.
Mike Lindsing:And I said, I totally understand.
Mike Lindsing:And I said, well, if you can't find one, just give me a call.
Mike Lindsing:And it was two weeks, literally two weeks almost to the day.
Mike Lindsing:And the phone, I look at my phone, my phone's ringing and I see it's his number and I answer it and he says, well, Jason, I couldn't find One couldn't find one that will take the job.
Mike Lindsing:So do you want it?
Mike Lindsing:And I said, man, let's talk some more, you know?
Mike Lindsing:So next thing you know, I drove down here to pick up my daughter from college and came over and visited with him and.
Mike Lindsing:And met with the president, and next day, he offered me the job.
Mike Lindsing:So, you know, middle of May, I'm.
Mike Lindsing:I'm sitting in Athens, Tennessee, recruiting for another school, you know.
Jason Smith:So when you make the decision and they offered you that job, what are some of the things that attracted you?
Jason Smith:Obviously, your familiarity with the conference, and you'd competed against them, so you had some idea of kind of what you were getting into.
Jason Smith:But what were the things specifically to this job, in terms of the basketball side of it that made you feel like, hey, this is going to be a really good fit for me when I come in here, and I'm going to be able to establish the kind of culture I want to establish and.
Jason Smith:And do the things that I want to do with the program.
Jason Smith:What.
Jason Smith:What was it about Tennessee Wesleyan that that made you feel confident that that was going to be a good place for you?
Mike Lindsing:Well, the first thing is it starts with the word Tennessee.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:And I don't know.
Mike Lindsing:You're.
Mike Lindsing:You're an Ohio guy.
Mike Lindsing:Mike.
Mike Lindsing:I'm sorry.
Mike Lindsing:You know, but it's all good.
Jason Smith:It's all.
Jason Smith:It's all good.
Mike Lindsing:I'm just.
Mike Lindsing:The Northern culture just was not good for us.
Mike Lindsing:It's just.
Mike Lindsing:There was just something about Southern hospitality.
Mike Lindsing:It's just a different lifestyle that we got used to and was a little taken back by some Northern culture.
Mike Lindsing:So the first part was just getting back to Tennessee has been great.
Mike Lindsing:It's just more of a relaxed atmosphere, very much of a hospitality.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, me and my wife are real big about fellowship and hospitality, and this place just invites that process.
Mike Lindsing:Um, so that's the first thing.
Mike Lindsing:So on a personal side, it was just more fellowship and more hospitality that we just needed.
Mike Lindsing:It's like when you.
Mike Lindsing:You don't know you miss something until it's gone.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Jason Smith:Right.
Jason Smith:Yep.
Mike Lindsing:And the biggest thing I can remember sitting in my office, time after time in.
Mike Lindsing:In Cedarville was the thing that I would miss the most was love and acceptance.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:Something that I wasn't receiving.
Mike Lindsing:And I'm like, holy smokes, this is the first time in my life I don't really feel loved or accepted.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:And that was hard.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:And so Tennessee is just naturally loving and accepting, or at least in my experience.
Mike Lindsing:So on a personal side, that was.
Mike Lindsing:It from on a professional side, Tennessee Wesleyan has been a traditional powerhouse at the NAI level for women's basketball for a long time.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:They had great tradition.
Mike Lindsing:So we are, as we record this video or podcast right now, we're 45 wins away from a thousand as a program.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:So that.
Mike Lindsing:That says something.
Mike Lindsing:You know, there's not that many programs that are doing that in the country.
Mike Lindsing:The coach before me had won over 300 games.
Mike Lindsing:The coach before him and won over 500 games.
Mike Lindsing:So there's tradition of winning here at Tennessee Wesleyan for the women's basketball side.
Mike Lindsing:So that's attractive, right?
Mike Lindsing:So there must be a reason why they've done that.
Mike Lindsing:And I found out, once you get here, you find out there's just a great community within Athens, Tennessee.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:So the community here really supports our school and our institution, and they've supported women's basketball.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, we draw more fans than the guys all the time.
Mike Lindsing:So this.
Mike Lindsing:It's been a kind of a.
Mike Lindsing:This local area here has been really good for girls basketball at some local high schools.
Mike Lindsing:So great community, great tradition in winning was important.
Mike Lindsing:Another thing that attracted me was a little bit, like I said before was the coach before me had been successful, but I think he was just getting a little tired and just, Just wasn't.
Mike Lindsing:These teams hadn't performed as well as they had in the past.
Mike Lindsing:And our girls that I inherited, they wanted just to be coached a little bit more, to be honest.
Mike Lindsing:They wanted somebody that was going to give them a little bit more attention and coach.
Mike Lindsing:And really that was the part that was exciting because that's all I want to do.
Mike Lindsing:I just want to coach basketball.
Mike Lindsing:You know, all these.
Mike Lindsing:A lot of these other schools want you to do all these other things.
Mike Lindsing:And Tennessee Wesleyan's given me that opportunity just to come in and coach basketball and coach these girls up and love on them and care for them and just.
Mike Lindsing:And show them and teach them the game of basketball.
Mike Lindsing:They just hadn't.
Mike Lindsing:They weren't coached the last two or three years.
Mike Lindsing:So that opportunity to create that culture, there's an instant credibility with this group already because they know my success at Bryan College, okay?
Mike Lindsing:So I think they've respected that and realized, okay, that's what we want, right?
Mike Lindsing:We want to win the conferences over year after year after year.
Mike Lindsing:And so he's done that before.
Mike Lindsing:And so they've.
Mike Lindsing:They've bought into that process and they've listened and they've worked their tails off.
Mike Lindsing:They've been a great group to work with.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, they've been fun.
Mike Lindsing:They'll do anything you say that, you know, they'll.
Mike Lindsing:They'll go through the wall for you.
Mike Lindsing:We're.
Mike Lindsing:We're just.
Mike Lindsing:We need to get a little bit more talented, but I can't ask for anything more than this group's given me so far.
Mike Lindsing:So hopefully that answers that question for you a little bit.
Mike Lindsing:But does.
Jason Smith:Absolutely.
Mike Lindsing:But on the administration side of things is like, my boss knows who I am.
Mike Lindsing:You know, he.
Mike Lindsing:He's known me for more than 11 years, so he knows.
Mike Lindsing:So it's easy for him just to let me go coach basketball.
Mike Lindsing:He doesn't have to micromanage me.
Mike Lindsing:So there's a trust between me and him that is.
Mike Lindsing:That is very comforting.
Mike Lindsing:When you go to bed at every night, you know, knowing that your boss has got your back on every single detail.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Because that doesn't happen everywhere.
Jason Smith:Absolutely no question about that.
Jason Smith:Tell me about some of the first conversations you have with the returning players.
Jason Smith:So obviously those are players that you didn't recruit to the school that I'm sure whenever a new coach gets hired, you're a little bit.
Jason Smith:They're a little bit nervous because they don't know what the new coach is going to think, and they got to kind of figure out what their place is.
Jason Smith:And obviously they told you, as you said a couple times, that they wanted to be coached.
Jason Smith:They wanted somebody that was.
Jason Smith:Sounds like maybe more invested in them.
Jason Smith:But what were those conversations like?
Jason Smith:What were some of the things that you were trying to learn from those initial conversations with the returning players?
Mike Lindsing:Well, you kind of want it.
Mike Lindsing:I kind of wanted to just get to know them, first of all.
Mike Lindsing:That's my first thing.
Mike Lindsing:Anytime I go somewhere, I want to get to know them.
Mike Lindsing:And I'll usually send them a questionnaire with some questions of getting to know them a little bit.
Mike Lindsing:So I can sit down and read those.
Mike Lindsing:And so I put those in a file.
Mike Lindsing:And so we.
Mike Lindsing:So when I meet with them personally, I can go back to.
Mike Lindsing:It's hard to remember everything about a person, but especially something you did.
Mike Lindsing:You didn't recruit.
Mike Lindsing:Right, right, right.
Mike Lindsing:That's why.
Mike Lindsing:So I keep it on file and so then I can go back and look.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, okay.
Mike Lindsing:I was right.
Mike Lindsing:That's right.
Mike Lindsing:I forgot about that.
Mike Lindsing:About you and your life.
Mike Lindsing:But so that's.
Mike Lindsing:First thing is just a questionnaire.
Mike Lindsing:And then.
Mike Lindsing:And then getting with him personally as a team.
Mike Lindsing:I remember when we went with them the first time in the locker room, they were just so attentive.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Mike Lindsing:They were.
Mike Lindsing:They just Wanted to take everything in and what I was saying.
Mike Lindsing:And I think they wanted to know, they wanted just to know how to win.
Mike Lindsing:Does that make sense?
Mike Lindsing:There's no.
Jason Smith:It does.
Mike Lindsing:They.
Mike Lindsing:They had this desire to win, or they still do have a desire to win, but they didn't know how to win.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:And that was very clear within our first team meeting that they just didn't know how.
Mike Lindsing:And so I took it on as that's just my job to teach them how to do that.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:And so we laid down just a plan together of how on a daily basis I'm going to teach them how to win basketball games.
Mike Lindsing:And so, you know, we.
Mike Lindsing:I lay out my culture, what my core values are and.
Mike Lindsing:And then we laid that down together and this and just walked through it.
Mike Lindsing:And it was probably an hour to two hour meeting, but it was really easy because our locker room at Tennessee Wesleyan's got basketballs on the wall there for every conference tournament they've won or every regular season they've won and every national tournament appearance they've won.
Mike Lindsing:So they're just basketballs with the years on the wall.
Mike Lindsing: Well, it stops at: Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing: we took the rest of them from: Mike Lindsing:Right?
Jason Smith:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:And I say that to him not as a braggadocious way, but I say it to him like, hey ladies, there's a re.
Mike Lindsing:There's something happened here, okay?
Mike Lindsing:And we've got to recapture that here, okay.
Mike Lindsing:And start putting these basketballs back on the wall.
Mike Lindsing:So it was a good visual for them to understand that because at Brian, when I first started at Brian, we were last in the league, right.
Mike Lindsing:When I started there the year before.
Mike Lindsing:And I believe I have to go back and double check, but I believe I started my career at Brian Owen nine versus Tennessee Westland.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:So they were the best team in the league when I got to Brian.
Mike Lindsing:So they were the big dog that we were chasing to become and we eventually beat him and got our monkeys off the back and then we started beating them more regularly, you know, but so it was an easy visual for our players to look at and say, okay, Coach Smith is obviously knows how to win.
Mike Lindsing:We probably should listen to him a little bit.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:Because they, they're, they were self admitting they.
Mike Lindsing:That we don't know how to do this.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Which is, you know, the first thing you need to do is admit that you have a problem, you know, and, and I think that was the biggest difference in my experience at here than at Cedarville, okay?
Mike Lindsing:So my girls here at Tennessee Wesleyan are humble enough to know, you know, we need.
Mike Lindsing:We need some help here.
Mike Lindsing:They knew how to play basketball, okay?
Mike Lindsing:And they.
Mike Lindsing:They know how to work hard, they know how to go hard.
Mike Lindsing:They just didn't know how to actually win.
Mike Lindsing:And I.
Mike Lindsing:We're still in that process, don't get me wrong.
Mike Lindsing:We're still in that process trying to figure that out, but they've taken huge steps to figure out how to win right now.
Jason Smith:So how do you take that initial meeting and the idea of, I've got to teach them how to win and then translate that onto the practice floor, into the program, into the mentality?
Jason Smith:What does that look like?
Jason Smith:Just give me some concrete examples day to day of things that you try to instill in them that is going to help them to get to that point where they do know how to win basketball games.
Mike Lindsing:Well, you got to win it all in the little things, okay?
Mike Lindsing:So the only way I know how to do it is you have to win drills in practice, right?
Mike Lindsing:So you have to put competitive drills, either individual drills or team drills that have a score that you have to accomplish or meet or a time you have to meet, and you have to win those drills.
Mike Lindsing:So if you're winning little drills in practice, then you learn how to win, okay?
Mike Lindsing:So if you're not winning drills in practice, I don't know how you're going to win a game.
Mike Lindsing:You know what I'm saying?
Mike Lindsing:I just don't know how.
Jason Smith:I mean.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, this isn't rocket science, Mike.
Mike Lindsing:I'm telling you, I'm not the smartest guy in the world.
Mike Lindsing:If I.
Mike Lindsing:You.
Mike Lindsing:This isn't that hard to figure out.
Mike Lindsing:It's like you've got to win drills in practice, you know, and so any shooting drill, as any team shooting drill that you do, you better have a time and score on it and track it, or you're just wasting time, in my opinion, because you're not teaching your players how to win.
Mike Lindsing:You're just teaching your kids to throw the ball up against the rim.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Mike Lindsing:And I.
Mike Lindsing:I learned this a long time ago.
Mike Lindsing:I don't remember how who taught me that, but in.
Mike Lindsing:Early on in coaching, I did some drills that didn't have time or score, and some of those drills would take eight minutes when it should have taken two minutes, right?
Mike Lindsing:You know, then I learned if you put the time and score on it, they actually achieve it.
Mike Lindsing:You know, so we just started from day one, they they didn't do a lot of preseason conditioning from the old coach, you know, so that was just a must.
Mike Lindsing:We started day one just hammering them, you know, from, from them going from zero conditioning to, oh, crud, I gotta do this right.
Mike Lindsing:It was a, it was a shock to their system, but they wanted it.
Mike Lindsing:You know, they never complained about it.
Mike Lindsing:They just go, whoa, this is a lot different.
Mike Lindsing:But so it's stuff like that and then just showing up and letting them know that you care about them and, and know that you're there.
Mike Lindsing:You know, if you just show up and you spend time with them and care about them, put your arm around them and treat them like human beings, you know, that goes a long way as well.
Jason Smith:What's the process that you use for fracking the scores and the time in practice?
Jason Smith:Because I know one of the things that I always struggled with as a coach, I don't care.
Jason Smith:Whatever level that I coached at was whenever I was trying to score something myself for an example.
Jason Smith:And again, sometimes I was on a high school staff, sometimes it was just me as an AAU coach.
Jason Smith:And I'd say, okay, we're going to play this game to 10 and maybe offensive rebounds are going to count as two points and then this and that.
Jason Smith:And I'd get like a minute into the game and I would completely have no idea like what the score was or what was going.
Jason Smith:And.
Jason Smith:And so oftentimes I would find myself abandoning that.
Jason Smith:So I'm always curious how coaches, and obviously at a college level you have a bigger staff and whatever it may be, but just what's your process for keeping track of all those competitive drills within the practice to make sure that you're getting the value that you're describing?
Mike Lindsing:Well, if you're fortunate to have a big staff and a bunch of managers, it's really easy.
Mike Lindsing:You know, you just, they're, they're running on the clock, they're running the scoreboard.
Mike Lindsing:But I don't know if I told last time on the podcast, I assume I have a typed out practice plan every day, and so it's sitting at the scores table.
Mike Lindsing:So who's ever keeping score, they know what's going on.
Mike Lindsing:And I told you before, it's the same template that I got from Roy Williams when I was a student manager for him.
Mike Lindsing:I'm still using the same template, right?
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:You know, all these years he's retired and his template's still carrying on, but so it's the same thing.
Mike Lindsing:So it's just typed out.
Mike Lindsing:So they know.
Mike Lindsing:But but some of the drills are pretty easy to keep track of.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, like even tonight, we're on the road tonight at a shoot around at.
Mike Lindsing:And you know, we don't have a clock and my assistant coach isn't on this trip.
Mike Lindsing:And so we just do a drill.
Mike Lindsing:We call it Wisconsin shooting.
Mike Lindsing:They've got to make 52 pointers and 25 threes in three minutes, you know, so the timer's on my, my phone.
Mike Lindsing:The three minute timers on my phone.
Mike Lindsing:It's usually on the clock, but it's on the phone tonight.
Mike Lindsing:And then I'm just counting myself, you know, I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, so this isn't, I mean this is this YMCA business, man, this is not hard.
Mike Lindsing:I, I really don't think so, but it's just competing.
Mike Lindsing:Then we did another drill.
Mike Lindsing:The beauty of having it on your phone sometimes is you, you can help them succeed, right?
Mike Lindsing:Instead of like we were short on a drill tonight by about two or three buckets and I just extended it by another 10 seconds.
Mike Lindsing:They didn't know, you know, so they thought they achieved the goal, right?
Mike Lindsing:And they didn't.
Mike Lindsing:And I've got time.
Mike Lindsing:And then so sometimes, you know, you gotta get your players some win sometimes, you know, so they don't know it was 10 seconds late and they'll say, listen to the podcast, you know, but yeah, so it's, it's just really just that having enough managers would be great, right?
Mike Lindsing:And assistant coaches.
Jason Smith:So yeah, yeah, it's just that's one of the things that, like I said, I've always tried to do and I've never been really good.
Jason Smith:It's one thing tracking shots, it's another thing, like I said, if you're going three on three and I'm trying to incentivize a particular action or a particular piece of it and be like, well, was that an offensive two?
Jason Smith:And then you know, after like, like I said, like two minutes, I'm like, hey, does anybody know what the score is?
Jason Smith:I have no idea what it is.
Jason Smith:As I'm trying to, as I'm trying to coach in the, in the midst.
Mike Lindsing:Of, well, if you make it competitive, if you make it competitive, right?
Jason Smith:Yeah, they know, they know what it is.
Mike Lindsing:They know.
Mike Lindsing:Like if you tell them, like we did a drill the other day, I said losers got eight lines, you know, they don't want to run eight lines.
Mike Lindsing:So trust me, they know the score, right?
Mike Lindsing:And they're going to tell you when you don't get it right for sure.
Mike Lindsing:So, yeah, absolutely.
Jason Smith:All right, talk to me a little bit about, we talked about the returning players.
Jason Smith:Let's talk about the recruiting process.
Jason Smith:So you get the job and as you said, immediately you're on the road, you start recruiting.
Jason Smith:What does that look like as a new coach at a new program?
Jason Smith:How do you go about selling yourself, selling Tennessee Wesleyan when you're, you're brand new and you're trying to sell the program?
Jason Smith:Because again, there's.
Jason Smith:Not that you don't have a track record, but the track record is not at Tennessee.
Jason Smith:Wesley.
Jason Smith:And so what's the sales pitch?
Jason Smith:How what are the conversations look like with kids, families, coaches?
Jason Smith:How does that play itself out?
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, the first thing is I jumped into this And I had 13 players here, right?
Mike Lindsing:So I already had, I didn't have to go out and replace the whole team overnight.
Mike Lindsing:So I had 13 returners.
Mike Lindsing:Um, they want to carry 15 here.
Mike Lindsing:So I was asked to go recruit a couple kids for this coming season.
Mike Lindsing:And we did.
Mike Lindsing:We found a couple kids late, right?
Mike Lindsing:We found a juco kid and then we also found a freshman and a high school senior.
Mike Lindsing:And as we speak right now, my, my, my freshman is probably freshman in the conference.
Mike Lindsing:The kid I recruited here late, she started every game for us so far, averaging about 15 and a half points a game.
Mike Lindsing:And yeah, she is a freshman of the, of the year right now in our conference.
Mike Lindsing:So great pickup late for us and it's going to be an all conference kid probably for four years, you know, so I got a little lucky, to be honest with you.
Mike Lindsing:I don't know how that kid was still available from a local high school.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, so, yeah, and a great kid.
Mike Lindsing:I mean a culture building kid, high character, you know, she leaves, she leads our team Bible study.
Mike Lindsing:So it's, it's unbelievable what I walked into of recruiting her.
Mike Lindsing:So.
Mike Lindsing:But what we're selling here, I mean a little bit of, obviously I got to sell a little bit of what I did at Brian, and we're trying to do that here.
Mike Lindsing:And I think people in this area know that all the high school coaches, AU coaches around here know that.
Mike Lindsing:So I had all these same contacts.
Mike Lindsing:So when I'm reaching out to them, it's not like they don't know who I am and what I accomplished in the area.
Mike Lindsing:So that makes it a little bit easier.
Mike Lindsing:But at Tennessee Wesleyan tradition, you know, of winning basketball here, like some of the things I touched on before.
Mike Lindsing:Community.
Mike Lindsing:The community.
Mike Lindsing:When you walk into Athens, Tennessee, you're going to be immersed in a Great community here that people are going to come to your games, they're going to cheer for you.
Mike Lindsing:We have this old gym, okay.
Mike Lindsing:But it is, it's old and small, but it is loud and rocking, okay?
Mike Lindsing:And so it was always one of my favorite gyms to play in in the conference.
Mike Lindsing:So we're selling that.
Mike Lindsing:We're selling an opportunity to come into a great atmosphere.
Mike Lindsing:The two of the loudest games I've ever coached was in this building, was in our gym.
Mike Lindsing:And, and so, and then the great thing is I have seven seniors, so we graduate seven kids.
Mike Lindsing:So I'm selling opportunity, I mean, immediate opportunity for some kids to come in and play right away, which I would say some of the people that I'm competing against for players can't say that, you know, so, so some incoming freshmen, if we, you know, are going to have some opportunities to play right away next year in our program and, you know, if you like that, come to Tennessee Wesleyan.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I mean, I, I deal with enough players to know that playing time is a big deal.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, kids leave programs 90% of the time because of they're not getting playing time.
Mike Lindsing:So, so I'm selling opportunity to play right away is a big one.
Jason Smith:Putting together your staff after you get hired, who do you talk to first?
Jason Smith:Where do you go?
Jason Smith:How do you put together?
Jason Smith:What's the philosophy of the type of staff that you're trying to build?
Mike Lindsing:Man, I think the staff at our level is probably the most difficult thing to handle.
Mike Lindsing:It's nothing like Division 2 or Division 1.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, it's, I mean most of these schools, smaller nai schools don't have huge budgets.
Mike Lindsing:So it's not like we can just go grab anybody we want.
Mike Lindsing:Um, and, and then you gotta, you know, the people we want.
Mike Lindsing:You're gonna have to move cross country probably.
Mike Lindsing:And that's just not gonna happen for a small paying job.
Mike Lindsing:It's just not gonna happen.
Mike Lindsing:And then each school is gonna dictate probably what that looks like.
Mike Lindsing:You know, is it a full time, part time?
Mike Lindsing:Is it just a grad assistant?
Mike Lindsing:So I think that's something that's important when you're in the interviewing process to figure out what, what kind of staff you can put together.
Mike Lindsing:So at Tennessee Wesleyan, we share an assistant with our men's team.
Mike Lindsing:Right now is one.
Mike Lindsing:So he's, he's working part time with us, part time with them, which is fine.
Mike Lindsing:I did that at Bryant College and that's doable.
Mike Lindsing:Then I have, currently, right now I have a volunteer assistant as well.
Mike Lindsing:She works on campus.
Mike Lindsing:She played college basketball at Faulkner and her husband's assistant baseball coach.
Mike Lindsing:So she's involved with us, um, as a volunteer.
Mike Lindsing:Hopefully going forward we can get hurt maybe full time.
Mike Lindsing:And then I coming in late, I didn't have an opportunity to really find a graduate assistant that I'd want to.
Mike Lindsing:But we will get a grad assistant going forward.
Mike Lindsing:Um, so each opportunity, you know, each school is going to operate differently.
Mike Lindsing:Um, and that is probably the most difficult thing at our level is finding assistant coaches the are capable.
Mike Lindsing:I've been pretty fortunate at Brian.
Mike Lindsing:I had my first assistant at Brian.
Mike Lindsing:She is now a high school basketball coach in Tennessee.
Mike Lindsing:My second assistant, Brian, he's a head women's coach at a D3.
Mike Lindsing:My last assistant at Brian is now I'm coaching against.
Mike Lindsing:In my league.
Mike Lindsing:He's at another school at Johnson University in my league.
Mike Lindsing:So I got a coach against him.
Mike Lindsing:And then my assistant at Cedarville, she's at one of the top high schools in Indiana now as the head coach.
Mike Lindsing:So I mean I, I was.
Mike Lindsing:I've been pretty fortunate, you know, to find some really good assistant coaches, but I would say it's lucky.
Mike Lindsing:And then my old.
Mike Lindsing:My assistant at, at Peru, he is now the Peru head coach.
Mike Lindsing:He took over when I left, so.
Mike Lindsing:And I.
Mike Lindsing:Mike, I think that's part of my job though, especially in my career too.
Mike Lindsing:It's not just coaching basketball, but it's teaching younger coaches how to coach and hopefully helping them go on to be successful.
Mike Lindsing:I almost get more kick out of their success than mine by any means, except for my buddy at Johnson.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I don't.
Mike Lindsing:I want him to.
Mike Lindsing:I want him to win every game, but the games he plays against us.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:But the sad thing is he beat us the other night by three, so.
Mike Lindsing:But it was.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, we won't talk about that anymore.
Jason Smith:Gotcha.
Jason Smith:I do think that that ability, right, to pour into your assistant coaches and then see them go on and have success as a head coach, when you think about what's meaningful about what you do and obviously there's the relationships that you build with the players and seeing their growth and development.
Jason Smith:But I got to imagine that as a head coach, when you see your assistants that you've been with for however number of years that they end up spending with you, to then see them go on and, and have success and look back and you know, how important the coaches that you worked under, how influential they were on who you are.
Jason Smith:And so to be that person for someone else, I would Guess has to be tremendously gratifying.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, very much so.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, I, I, I wish them the best and I hope they are very more successful than me.
Mike Lindsing:You know, ultimately, as you get older in this business, I think you set your, your own personal goals aside.
Mike Lindsing:At least I know I have.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, that's another thing I told my girls when I walked into that meeting was, hey, I don't, I don't need to pad my resume.
Mike Lindsing:My resume padding and building up is over.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I don't need to win another basketball game or another title to me for me to walk away from basketball and say it to be successful.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:I told them I want to teach them how to win so they can experience the joy of it and the joy of achieving something great.
Mike Lindsing:Because I know what it feels like, I know how gratifying it is and, but at the same time, I don't need it.
Mike Lindsing:Like, it's not what drives me on a daily basis.
Mike Lindsing:I'm not saying I don't want to win every game.
Mike Lindsing:Don't hear me wrong, Mike.
Mike Lindsing:But it's not the thing that, that drives me every day anymore.
Mike Lindsing:But watching my assistant coaches succeed and watching them do something that you taught them, you know, and say, oh, thank you, coach, for sharing that with me.
Mike Lindsing:And it's a lot of the time, it's like something that's totally oblivious off the court stuff.
Mike Lindsing:You go like, oh my gosh, I forgot I, I taught you that.
Mike Lindsing:You know, so that's, that's funny.
Jason Smith:And that is so true.
Jason Smith:I mean, I think this is a conversation, Jason, that I have with people all the time, whether on the podcast or off, just in terms of the silly things that we remember that maybe a coach said to us or a teacher or our parent, that if you went back and you talked to that parent or that coach or that teacher, they would have absolutely no idea that, no idea they said they said that particular thing to you.
Jason Smith:And yet those are things that we all carry.
Jason Smith:I know I have things that I carry with me that coaches said to me over the course of my playing career that they would have no idea that they ever said those things to me.
Jason Smith:That here I am as a 54 year old man that I still reference those things and they still motivate me even to this day.
Jason Smith:And they were probably said to me 40 years ago.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Jason Smith:That to me is just incredible.
Jason Smith:And it speaks to the power of what we do as coaches.
Jason Smith:And you think about the influence that you have on players and the fact that somebody that played for you is.
Jason Smith:Is carrying something that you said to him that you'd have no recollection of or same thing with an assistant coach.
Jason Smith:Right?
Jason Smith:It's just like you said, all of a sudden you're like, oh, yeah, I do remember that.
Jason Smith:We talked about that.
Jason Smith:Or that was something that maybe we even just do it.
Jason Smith:I don't want to say unintentionally, but it's just something that we do that maybe you don't even really talk about.
Jason Smith:And now all of a sudden you look at your assistant coach and their program and they're doing that same thing.
Jason Smith:And you probably could ask me like, hey, where'd you get that?
Jason Smith:They're like, well, this is just the.
Mike Lindsing:Way, you know, that's the way Coach Smith did it.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah.
Jason Smith:Yeah, it's the way Coach Smith did it.
Jason Smith:And that's how.
Jason Smith:That's how I'm going to do it.
Jason Smith:Because that, that was success for us when we were there.
Jason Smith:And I think that's really, again, it's kind of an amazing way of passing down what makes someone a good coach and a good program builder.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, it's.
Mike Lindsing:It is exciting.
Mike Lindsing:At this part of my career, you know, what I've.
Mike Lindsing:It's.
Mike Lindsing:What I think most coaches need to understand is the world's changed, okay?
Mike Lindsing:This, these players have changed, and you better change with them a little bit, okay?
Mike Lindsing:And you, you know, you hear these old school coaches.
Mike Lindsing:Well, you know, these old school coaches aren't coaching anymore.
Mike Lindsing:You know what I'm saying?
Mike Lindsing:It's like they're all getting out of the business because they can't relate.
Mike Lindsing:And part of it is the generation has changed, right, because of technology, social media, all that business has changed how people view things and how they think.
Mike Lindsing:And so what I've learned is all these, this generation is looking for meaning, right?
Mike Lindsing:And, and if you can't provide them some sort of meaning to connect with them, they want nothing to do with you, okay?
Mike Lindsing:They literally are looking like, what.
Mike Lindsing:What can you give me?
Mike Lindsing:Like, that's how, that's just how they've been raised, right?
Mike Lindsing:And if you can't get across wisdom and meaning to them in a way that's effective, they're gonna, they're gonna shut you down real quick, you know?
Mike Lindsing:And I think my Cedarville experience really taught me that in a practical way.
Mike Lindsing:I knew it.
Mike Lindsing:But actually walking through it realizing, like, no, they're not getting any meaning that we're trying to get across to them.
Mike Lindsing:So I've got to figure out how to, to make that thing work?
Mike Lindsing:And so I engaged in some different conversations at Peru and we've definitely done that here at Wesleyan.
Mike Lindsing:But.
Mike Lindsing:But if you find a group of kids that don't care about what you have to tell them, you're going to fight uphill every single day, right?
Mike Lindsing:Because they find no meaning from you.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Mike Lindsing:They'll just go to the Internet and go, whatever.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, I can figure this out.
Mike Lindsing:I don't need Coach Smith or coach whoever to tell me how to do these things.
Mike Lindsing:I can find this on my own.
Jason Smith:Coaches Game Changer is making your game feel more valuable than ever.
Jason Smith:New this season to Game Changer Film Room allows team staff to analyze full game videos, add comments to specific moments, and quickly share feedback with other coaches, team members or families.
Jason Smith:The one U Sports app automatically skips downtime in the game film, condensing event video into active play so you can focus on the moments that matter.
Jason Smith:The best part, it's completely free for coaches.
Jason Smith:Download Game Game changer now on iOS or Android and take your coaching to the next level with Film Room on Game Changer.
Jason Smith:Game Changer Stream Score Connect.
Jason Smith:So funny.
Jason Smith:So I'm going to tell you a story.
Jason Smith:So tonight I'm sitting watching my daughter play a high school basketball game and I'm actually sitting with my mother in law and my mother in law at one point in between, I think it might have been at halftime or it was either in between the halftime or in between the two games.
Jason Smith:She, she turns to me and she asked me, she says, well, how did your teams do when you were at Kent State?
Jason Smith:And I don't think I've ever really talked to my mother in law about my, my basketball career that ended 35 years ago.
Jason Smith:And I said, well, you know, I started explaining, I said this or that.
Jason Smith:And you know, I said at one point I felt like we would kind of turned a corner.
Jason Smith:But then our coach sort of shifted gears.
Jason Smith:We had been having some success playing smaller, probably playing a more modern style of basketball and shooting threes.
Jason Smith:I said I was the small forward.
Jason Smith:I was getting beat up by the 6, 7, 220 pound guys as a, as a little 6 3, 175 pound, two guard back in, back in college.
Jason Smith:And I said, and then he kind of flipped the script and went back to kind of the way we had played before because he didn't like that we were shooting so many threes and we were having a few too many turnovers, more than what he liked.
Jason Smith:And she, she said to me, she said now did, did you Guys, go talk to him about that and try to, you know, try to share your opinion that you thought maybe he shouldn't, you know, switch from the way that you guys were playing.
Jason Smith:I'm like, no, no, I'm like that.
Jason Smith:I'm like, that conversation never, never could have taken place, never would have taken place.
Jason Smith:And it goes to what you're talking about in terms of the way that, that athletes and players have changed and the way coaches have changed too.
Jason Smith:Right?
Jason Smith:There's, there's much more of a conversation to be had between players and coaches where, and look, it's not just the players who get benefit from that.
Jason Smith:You as a coach get benefit from that because you get to get a feel for what the players are seeing, what they're feeling when they're out on the floor.
Jason Smith:But I just told my mother in law, like that that conversation was not, it would never even have crossed my mind to have walked into the coach's office or had a conversation over on the sideline like, hey, coach, do you think maybe that what you're doing, maybe we should be doing something different?
Jason Smith:That conversation just never would have taken place back when I'm playing in the late 80s, early 90s.
Jason Smith:No, it's a completely different era.
Mike Lindsing:And I don't think it necessarily takes a place a lot.
Mike Lindsing:It's not initiated from the players still.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:It's, I think it's only initiated from the coach.
Mike Lindsing:And if you do it enough, I would assume the players will catch on.
Jason Smith:Right.
Mike Lindsing:My, my point guard that I have now talks to me.
Mike Lindsing:You know, she's, I can talk to her during a game and she, which I like, you know, I'll say, what do you, what do you, what are you thinking here?
Mike Lindsing:Like, what do you feel like?
Mike Lindsing:What's a, you know, what's a good, what's a good play for us right here?
Mike Lindsing:And you know, and every once in a while she'll, she'll tell me and every once in a while she'll go, I don't know, Coach, what do you want to run?
Mike Lindsing:You know, and so, which is fine.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, I can, I can, I can come up with anything to tell you to run, but I kind of, I just want to get a feel for her because she's playing the game, right?
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, I'm not playing the game.
Mike Lindsing:You know, and there's things you can't see and you can't completely get a hold of and not sure.
Mike Lindsing:Actually, you know this when you watch film, you go back.
Mike Lindsing:Oh my gosh.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:I don't I don't remember seeing that during the game, so.
Jason Smith:Right.
Mike Lindsing:So the players.
Mike Lindsing:I think it's good to have that feedback, but players, for the most part, still understand that there's a.
Mike Lindsing:This relationship from the coach that they don't necessarily want to do that.
Mike Lindsing:So that.
Mike Lindsing:I don't think that's changed.
Mike Lindsing:I think it's just has to change initiating for me or the head coach or the assistant coach just to actually reach out for that information.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Jason Smith:And be open to it.
Jason Smith:Right.
Jason Smith:I mean, I think you have to be open to.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, definitely open to it.
Jason Smith:To get that feedback from players.
Jason Smith:You know, that's the big thing.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Jason Smith:You.
Mike Lindsing:I think you have.
Mike Lindsing:I think being transparent and allowing them the opportunity to take ownership of it is huge.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Because when.
Mike Lindsing:When it's successful, it's like, that's when they're The.
Mike Lindsing:The trust builds, and they're like.
Mike Lindsing:They know that you trust them.
Mike Lindsing:But most kids, even today, still are afraid of failure.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:So they're afraid to put themselves out there and take ownership of it sometimes because they're afraid, like, if it goes wrong, like, if I decide to run this play here and it doesn't work, it's all on me.
Mike Lindsing:Right, right, right.
Mike Lindsing:And so a lot of kids are still afraid of that.
Mike Lindsing:But if you recruit enough winners, what I found out is the kids that really want to win, they're willing to take that ownership and say, hey, this one's on me.
Mike Lindsing:That was a bad call.
Mike Lindsing:And as a coach, you have to do that yourself.
Mike Lindsing:You have to be transparent enough to say, hey, that was a bad call by me.
Mike Lindsing:You know, that was on me.
Mike Lindsing:Now, you can't do that on every single play or you'll get ran out of the house.
Mike Lindsing:But I think you have to be a little bit humble and transparent to them to know, hey, you got to take ownership.
Mike Lindsing:We talk about that a lot, about taking ownership of your.
Mike Lindsing:Of your successes, taking ownership of your not successes, or we don't necessarily call them failures because you know how many mistakes people make in a basketball game.
Mike Lindsing:That's the beauty of basketball, Mike, which people don't quite understand.
Mike Lindsing:It's like that play's over and the next play is happening.
Mike Lindsing:And by the way, that play ends at about half a second later, and then another 30 plays are.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, so it's not like football or baseball where you got to sit around and mope about your mistake for a little bit.
Mike Lindsing:Basketball is.
Mike Lindsing:Gives you the opportunity to forget about it instantly and go make a play at the very next Second, and if you can get a kid to understand that, I think, and your whole team understands that, you're going to have a heck of a basketball team that's going to work hard, you know.
Jason Smith:Absolutely.
Jason Smith:That's a mental toughness thing, right?
Jason Smith:Is the ability to put behind, put behind making a mistake or missing a shot.
Jason Smith:It's one of the, it's interesting.
Jason Smith:That's one of the conversations that I have.
Jason Smith:My daughter's a freshman in high school, and so, you know, her and I go and work out and shoot, do things.
Jason Smith:And she's has a tendency like she'll miss a couple shots.
Jason Smith:Like, I can't shoot.
Jason Smith:I'm like, you just miss.
Mike Lindsing:Unbelievable.
Jason Smith:You missed three shots in a row.
Jason Smith:Like, what do you mean you can't shoot?
Jason Smith:Like, you just shot 60% on this last round.
Jason Smith:Like, what do you mean?
Jason Smith:What do you mean you can't shoot the ball?
Jason Smith:And it's just interesting to kind of look at her psyche and try to help her to talk through that and work through it and get her to see that, like, just because you missed one or you missed two or you missed three, like, my thing is always like, each shot is its own entity.
Jason Smith:Like, you make one, then you got to shoot the next one the exact same way.
Jason Smith:You missed one, you got to shoot the next one the exact same way.
Jason Smith:And that's a difficult mentality.
Jason Smith:I think it's a process.
Jason Smith:And I'm sure you see it as a college coach that especially when kids come in as freshmen, they have a certain level of confidence, a certain level of being nervous about it.
Jason Smith:And as you said, being scared to take that accountability and that responsibility.
Jason Smith:And then obviously as they spend more time with you in your program, you be, you're able to grow some of those mental skills that help them to, to be successful as they go through their career.
Mike Lindsing:Well, you know, like, I think it was Jordan Peterson that says, like, one of the most important characteristics traits I have is a self awareness, right?
Mike Lindsing:And there's a lot of people that just don't have self awareness.
Mike Lindsing:So being able to evaluate yourself properly, okay?
Mike Lindsing:And when I say properly, I don't mean in, in a degrading, bad self image way, like which, like your daughter says, I can't shoot, that's a bad self image, right?
Mike Lindsing:So trying to evaluate yourself and to say, you know, it's here's where I screwed up and how do I fix it?
Mike Lindsing:And then the self awareness to know most.
Mike Lindsing:And it's crazy when you think about it because stats are stats, but Even self awareness of knowing what good stats are.
Mike Lindsing:Most of my college basketball players don't understand that, so you have to teach them that.
Mike Lindsing:Okay, so when you, when you look at a kid and goes, I can't shoot.
Mike Lindsing:And I said, well, yeah, but I miss shots.
Mike Lindsing:I don't shoot anymore.
Mike Lindsing:Like your daughter said, well, you know, a good three point shooter is going to miss six out of ten.
Mike Lindsing:Six or seven out of ten threes.
Mike Lindsing:You know, they're going to make three and a half to four is a good, you know, if you're making three and a half to four threes out of ten, you're a good shooter.
Jason Smith:Absolutely.
Mike Lindsing:So you're going to miss six to seven of those.
Jason Smith:Yep.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:And guess what?
Mike Lindsing:If you're, if you're making three and a half to four, I'm gonna let you shoot it as many times as you want.
Mike Lindsing:And they're like, you will coach.
Mike Lindsing:And I said, yeah, because that's a good percentage.
Mike Lindsing:I mean so, and so and then you break down a post, a post person, you know, a post player and their percentage and you go, and if you're over 50%, 52% post player shooting, you're like, you know what, you should shoot it every time you catch the ball.
Mike Lindsing:I should?
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, you should because you're shooting 52%.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:And then, but the self awareness to even know what that means for most players, it really, I mean, so when I was telling these new kids here, some of these, these stats, I just told you the looks on their faces like, oh my gosh, I can.
Mike Lindsing:Coach is going to give me the freedom to shoot the ball.
Mike Lindsing:Yes.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:If you can shoot it that good.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:It's nuts.
Mike Lindsing:So I think you have to retrain their brains.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:And retrain how they view the game versus reading social media.
Mike Lindsing:Or look, because you always see the, you only see the good clips on Twitter.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Or X.
Mike Lindsing:I'm sorry.
Jason Smith:Absolutely.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:That's all you see.
Mike Lindsing:You don't see all the misses.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:And you don't see all the misses on Facebook and you don't see all the grinds and Facebook very often.
Mike Lindsing:You, you just see all the successes in the game.
Mike Lindsing:So.
Mike Lindsing:And those play into poor self images, especially for females.
Mike Lindsing:And it's hard.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, raising daughters is not easy.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:In today's world because they're being bombarded with self image issues all over the place.
Mike Lindsing:And that shows up on the basketball court as well.
Jason Smith:Makes me think of two conversations that I've had on the podcast.
Jason Smith:One was with Mark Hendrickson who he was, he's one of, I think, maybe five people that have played both major league baseball and professional basketball in the NBA.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Jason Smith:And what, what Mark said to me was because I asked him, well, what makes a professional athlete like the best pros that you've been around in either sport?
Jason Smith:What are some of the things that make them different from the average player?
Jason Smith:And he said, the one thing with pros that he noticed more than anything and he felt like this was a skill that he had.
Jason Smith:And it goes back to what you said about self awareness.
Jason Smith:He goes, pros can very, very, very quickly diagnose when they do something wrong and diagnose it clinically, not diagnose it from a, oh my gosh, I'm missing correct.
Jason Smith:I've got to figure that out.
Jason Smith:It was more just like I know that my last two shots have been short.
Jason Smith:I know what I have to do to correct that.
Jason Smith:And they can immediately make that correction because a, they're self aware and B, they're ultimately, they're not concerned about the perception of who they are.
Jason Smith:They know what they need to do in order to have that sustained success.
Jason Smith:So he was like, self awareness.
Jason Smith:And then that ability to self correct without losing confidence and without everything, the sky is falling.
Jason Smith:It's like I just have to figure it out and calculate it.
Jason Smith:So that was interesting.
Jason Smith:And then I recently had a conversation with Marty Voster.
Jason Smith:So he's a GA in the Akron University women's program, but he worked this past summer with the LA Sparks and he was their video coordinator this past summer.
Jason Smith:And I asked him, I said, well, what makes a WNBA player when you work with worked with them versus when you work with players at the college level.
Jason Smith:And he sort of echoed in a different way, but sort of the same thing that Mark said, which was they are so well adapted to analyze their own performance, they'll go and whatever, watch film or they get done with the game and they know exactly what they did wrong and then what they have to do to fix it.
Jason Smith:And they have the mental toughness to not allow one poor performance or one poor practice or one poor drill to deter them from what they know they need to do in order to have that kind of success.
Jason Smith:And I think both of those two things go hand in hand.
Jason Smith:And it speaks to what you were talking about in terms of you're trying to teach the girls on your team to a, first of all, be self aware about what they can and can't do.
Jason Smith:And then once they understand that, to be able to continue to do it.
Jason Smith:Even if you get a little bit off track, if you have a bad shooting game, doesn't mean you're a bad shooter.
Jason Smith:It just means, hey, I had one game, now I got to get back and continue on my same path and be able to do what I do.
Jason Smith:And that requires some resiliency and some mental toughness.
Jason Smith:I just thought those were two things that sort of jumped out at me after you were talking about that ability to be self aware.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, very much so.
Mike Lindsing:I think those are broad hit right on a.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, I haven't worked on the professional side of things, but I can tell you that I think that on a skill set wise, I think the.
Mike Lindsing:After watching enough college basketball lately, on a skill set, the diff.
Mike Lindsing:The hugest difference I see is just the handling of the basketball.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:Just how much control the pros and the high D1 players have with control of the basketball in their hand at all times.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Obviously their footwork and their athleticism and all that is.
Mike Lindsing:Is huge.
Mike Lindsing:I know that.
Mike Lindsing:But just the amount of control they haven't with the basketball, especially on the men's side, I mean, it's unreal.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, I watch one of.
Mike Lindsing:I watch our men play and then you watch, you know, Iowa State, Marquette play the other night, you just like, holy cow.
Mike Lindsing:The control that those guys have with the ball in their hands is just unreal.
Mike Lindsing:It's just the difference, right?
Mike Lindsing:So they're not getting the ball knocked out of their hands at all moments, you know, so it's just huge.
Mike Lindsing:And I think that shows up on the women's side as well.
Mike Lindsing:Just the strength with the hands and being able to control the basketball through traffic is, is a huge difference.
Mike Lindsing:So when our players can't do that, they literally can't do it, a lot of them, you know, so it's hard to build confidence in an area when there's a lack of skill there.
Mike Lindsing:You know, that makes sense.
Mike Lindsing:No, it does.
Jason Smith:And I think those two things, right, go hand in hand.
Jason Smith:The.
Jason Smith:I always say to especially parents of younger kids, sometimes somebody will come to me and they'll say, well, you know, Joey lacks confidence.
Jason Smith:And that's, that's why they don't do as much in the game.
Jason Smith:I'll see him in practice or, you know, when they're working out, whatever, and they're super aggressive and they're going to the basket and they do all this stuff and they're super confident.
Jason Smith:Then they get in the game, they just don't want to do anything and, and My response to that is always, well, what they have to do is they have to build their skill.
Jason Smith:Like, you can't have confidence in something that you don't have.
Mike Lindsing:If I don't exactly.
Jason Smith:If I don't, if I don't handle the ball, then of course I'm not going to have confidence to do that.
Jason Smith:What I have to do is I have to become a better ball handler first and then the confidence flows from that.
Jason Smith:But especially with parents of.
Jason Smith:I think I'm thinking about like upper elementary kids.
Jason Smith:So like fourth, fifth and sixth graders.
Jason Smith:I remember when my kids were that age, I would have lots of parents coming up to me at various times that came to my camp or whatever and they would ask me, they'd say, I just, you know, did you watch so and so play?
Jason Smith:And he's just not playing confidently.
Jason Smith:I'm like, well, because he can't do or she can't do some of the things that.
Mike Lindsing:Correct.
Jason Smith:You think they should be doing as a parent, it's not because they're not confident, it's because they don't have the skill level to be able to do those.
Jason Smith:So you don't want them being confident doing that because they're going in and who knows what's going to happen when they, when they drive in there if they don't have the ability to do it.
Jason Smith:So.
Mike Lindsing:And I like the one where they, the players will tell me, like, coach, you just don't have any confidence in me.
Mike Lindsing:You're not building any confidence in me.
Mike Lindsing:And I'm like, well, you're two for 25 from the three right now.
Mike Lindsing:Like, how am I supposed to build confidence in you when you can't shoot the ball?
Mike Lindsing:I mean, does that make sense?
Mike Lindsing:Like, right.
Jason Smith:No.
Mike Lindsing:At some point you have to build confidence in yourself.
Mike Lindsing:I can't make the shot for you now.
Mike Lindsing:I can tweak your shot a little bit if it needs tweaked or give you some pointers, but I can't put the ball in the bucket for you.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:So at some point I think players have to build their own confidence in many ways.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Jason Smith:There has to be evidence.
Jason Smith:Right?
Jason Smith:There has to be evidence.
Mike Lindsing:Definitely have to be evidence of it.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah.
Jason Smith:For, for you as a coach, there has to be evidence, but for the player there has to be evidence.
Jason Smith:And I think again, this goes back to self awareness.
Jason Smith:And I think about players that I've seen that I've worked with, that my kids have played with and against.
Jason Smith:And when you look at it like to me the confidence is Earned because of the amount of time that a player puts in working on their game.
Jason Smith:And that's how you really build confidence.
Jason Smith:If I go into a season and I know in the summer that I've worked out two days a week and maybe I've shoot for 30 minutes twice a week, how confident can I be in the type of player I am when that is the amount of workload I put in versus another kid who spent all summer in the weight room and spent every day getting up shots and working on their game and, and playing and putting themselves in position.
Jason Smith:Like those players have then earned the right to be confident because again, they know they've put in the work.
Jason Smith:But then you have some players who, they're not self aware with what they've done, right?
Jason Smith:They, they think, ah, you know, things are, things are great, like I'm ready to go.
Jason Smith:And then you ask them, well what'd you do this summer?
Jason Smith:And they tell you and you're like, whoa, whoa, you know, how did you think that that was going to translate into any kind of success?
Jason Smith:And it's just, as you well know, everybody comes at this game from a, from a different standpoint mentally and kind of in their viewpoint.
Jason Smith:And I just always, as someone who, I think I've always been kind of self aware of what, who I am and what I am.
Jason Smith:So I've tried to instill that in my kids and obviously it's not always easy to do, but I'm always amazed when you see kids who aren't self aware and I'm just like, who is, is anybody talking to this kid and telling them kind of what's going on and where they need to work on and what they need to improve or what they should be doing.
Mike Lindsing:And it's, I don't know the answer to that.
Mike Lindsing:No, Mike.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:Because no one likes to talk about the truth in today's society.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Jason Smith:That is true.
Jason Smith:That is true.
Mike Lindsing:But he's afraid to be confrontational and, and get in somebody's face and say, hey, here's what's going on and you need to work on this.
Mike Lindsing:They rather just praise them up and, and say good things about them, which is good, don't get me wrong.
Mike Lindsing:I mean it's good to encourage people, but at the same time I think to being truthful with kids is important.
Mike Lindsing:You know, people ask me like, do you do private lessons for coaching?
Mike Lindsing:And I said I will do private lessons for somebody.
Mike Lindsing:I think that is serious.
Mike Lindsing:That could actually play at a good high school level or college level.
Mike Lindsing:But I'm not going to take your money if you have no chance of doing that, because I think it's a waste of time, it's a waste of hard earned money.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I'll work out a kid a couple times and then if I realize this kid has no shot at ever playing basketball, I'm going to look at the parent and go, I'm not wasting your money.
Mike Lindsing:Okay, we're not going to do this.
Mike Lindsing:If you want to do this, you need to find somebody else.
Mike Lindsing:But my advice to you is spend your money somewhere else on your kid.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Mike Lindsing:Get them involved in something else that they're gonna be more successful at, you know, but so I think that's important.
Mike Lindsing:So no one's telling the truth to these kids.
Mike Lindsing:And I think you can tell the truth in a loving way, in a way that it actually hopefully gets them on the right track versus just continuing down a path that's going to be unsuccessful, you know, so as a college coach, it's frustrating to get a college player that doesn't have some basic skills.
Mike Lindsing:You know, you're like, wait a second, who's, who's been teaching?
Mike Lindsing:I mean, you know, some of these kids, their shot forms are unbelievable.
Mike Lindsing:I'm like, who taught you how to shoot like that?
Mike Lindsing:And wrong question.
Mike Lindsing:I probably shouldn't have asked that question because the next question is my dad, you know, so you're like, oh my gosh, I just insulted her dad.
Mike Lindsing:You know, so, so I don't, I don't ask that question anymore, you know, so the frustrating part is like, the, like, how does a college basketball kid shoot like that?
Mike Lindsing:Or when do they learn how to shoot like that?
Mike Lindsing:So that's a little bit frustrating sometimes, but that's just part of the process at our level, I think.
Jason Smith:Yeah, that trust and that ability to tell the truth, I think is something that, if you're a good player, I think you want somebody to tell you the truth.
Jason Smith:Now you don't necessarily want them to scream it at you or, oh, no, put it, put it, you know, put, put it in that way.
Jason Smith:But I know that, like, I think about my son who he's a freshman in college this year and he has from the time he started taking the game seriously in eighth or ninth grade, like, he's just craved somebody to tell him, like, hey, what do I need to do to get better?
Jason Smith:What do I need to do to get more minutes?
Jason Smith:What do I need to do to, to be a more impactful player?
Jason Smith:And when he had coaches that didn't Give that to him, he would get frustrated that he'd go and ask and say, hey, what do I need to do to whatever, earn more minutes or what do I need to do to have a bigger role?
Jason Smith:And if the coach said to him, hey, you're doing, you're doing a great job, you know, keep it up, keep doing what you're doing, like, he'd come home to me and he'd say, like, you know, dad, like, I, I don't, I don't.
Jason Smith:There's nowhere I could take that.
Jason Smith:There's nothing, there's no actionable advice there that I could take to get better.
Jason Smith:And conversely, when somebody would say, hey, you need to be better catching the ball in the high post and ripping through and scoring, he's like, okay, I can take that and I can work on that.
Jason Smith:I know what I need to do in order to improve that skill.
Jason Smith:And I think that again, that's an ability of being self aware and being confident and enough to know that no matter how good you are, there's always something that you can improve upon.
Jason Smith:And I think to your point, a lot of kids don't ever hear that from coaches, especially when you think about how much the training business has exploded.
Jason Smith:If I'm a trainer, there aren't that many trainers who have the philosophy that you just laid out, right.
Jason Smith:That if somebody's going to keep paying them, they're going to keep taking the 50 bucks an hour or whatever it is, regardless of what that kid's potential is.
Jason Smith:And so I think that you make a great point that by the time kids get to the college level, that may be the first time that they hear the truth.
Jason Smith:And you think about the transfers both in the college level, but also at the high school level.
Jason Smith:There's high school coaches who, they don't want to lose the kids.
Jason Smith:And so how blunt and truthful can I be with a player who's one of my best players if I think that if I coach this kid hard and everybody else is telling them how great they are, and I'm telling them, hey, you got to work on your left hand or hey, you're your jumper's release needs to be faster or whatever, and then that kids be like, well, I don't want to listen to this, I'm going to go and chase the.
Mike Lindsing:Next thing, transfer somewhere else.
Mike Lindsing:So, yeah, oh, I get it, I get that.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:So there's, there's a lot going on there.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, there's a, I know there's a, a kid I, I've recruited.
Mike Lindsing:She's going to a D2.
Mike Lindsing:Actually, she's committed somewhere else.
Mike Lindsing:But she, she has a trainer and her trainer puts a lot of her, her workouts on, on social media, on X, you know, and, and I watch her shoot a lot on there and, and her three ball is flat.
Mike Lindsing:Like almost every single one of them is flat.
Mike Lindsing:Then I watched her play about a week ago in a high school game and she's out there shooting threes and her shot's still flat.
Mike Lindsing:And I'm sitting there going, she's spending a lot of money with a trainer that's putting her on social media and she got a D2 scholarship.
Mike Lindsing:But guess what?
Mike Lindsing:Her shot's still flat and it still needs correction.
Jason Smith:Right.
Mike Lindsing:And I'm like, wait a second.
Mike Lindsing:Like, is anybody going to tell this kid?
Jason Smith:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Hope maybe her college coach will.
Mike Lindsing:I don't know.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:But it doesn't seem like anybody else is telling this kid this.
Mike Lindsing:And I feel bad for her in a way because she's gonna have, it's gonna hit her and when she gets to college, it's gonna affect her if she doesn't fix it.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Jason Smith:Absolutely.
Mike Lindsing:And, but there's a way to handle that.
Mike Lindsing:I don't, I mean, there's a loving way to handle that process with her and with, with kids.
Mike Lindsing:Going back to what you said earlier about your son and I have players ask me that, come into my office and ask me that same question all the time and I try to turn it back to them.
Mike Lindsing:To be honest with you, Mike, I'll usually reverse the question right back to them.
Mike Lindsing:So what do you think you need to work on to get better, to get more playing time?
Mike Lindsing:And what my experience has taught me is nine times outta ten, they already know.
Jason Smith:Sure.
Jason Smith:Absolutely.
Mike Lindsing:They already know.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:And it ma to help and to make them voice it and to come out of their mouth.
Mike Lindsing:I think it's an important step.
Mike Lindsing:It's again, it's like you're admitting you have a problem.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:It's like, okay, I'm an alcoholic, so now I gotta fix it.
Mike Lindsing:Um, so when they, when they say to you, like, well, you know, I need to get better defensively.
Mike Lindsing:Great, you do.
Mike Lindsing:Let's break that down now.
Mike Lindsing:Like how?
Mike Lindsing:What, like in what aspect do you need to get better defensively?
Mike Lindsing:Okay, well, you know, my lateral quickness or, you know, I need to be a better on ball defender or whatever, whatever that person says is probably 1,000% right.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:So they already know the issues, but getting them to voice it and then kind of come up with a plan to give them.
Mike Lindsing:All right, here's the plan for this, for you to get better in this.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:You know, I had a kid that was recovering from an ACL injury, so I said, what's a freshman, actually?
Mike Lindsing:So I said, what's your.
Mike Lindsing:What do you think your biggest obstacle for you to get on the basketball court?
Mike Lindsing:And she goes, well, my.
Mike Lindsing:My lateral quickness, you know, since my ACL has not been as good as it was.
Mike Lindsing:And I said, well, great.
Mike Lindsing:You're 1,000% correct.
Mike Lindsing:What's the plan to change that?
Mike Lindsing:Are we just going to come to practice every day and expect it to change through osmosis, or what's the plan?
Mike Lindsing:You know, so we drew up a plan so she's spend more time with our athletic trainer doing extra work, and it's starting to ship, starting to pay off a little bit, you know, So I think getting them to voice the issue and then actually coming up with a plan to help them.
Mike Lindsing:And you and I know this.
Mike Lindsing:Like, sometimes the plan, nine times out of ten, again, doesn't happen faster as fast as they want it to, you know, like, so your son, it might take him a year or two for it to totally kick in because he's a freshman and he's a boy playing with men probably right now.
Mike Lindsing:Um, so it might take him a little bit to grow into his body to actually catch up with that.
Mike Lindsing:And some kids aren't willing to wait through that process.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Mike Lindsing:They're not willing to do it.
Mike Lindsing:Yep.
Jason Smith:And a lot of times they have bad advice around them, too, you know, and they might.
Mike Lindsing:That's.
Mike Lindsing:That's 1,000% true, you know, but at some people.
Mike Lindsing:And some people are just built differently mentally.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Mike Lindsing:I mean, my.
Mike Lindsing:My story I tell everybody and I told to my players again the other day for the kids that aren't playing right now, that much.
Mike Lindsing:I told him the story about a kid that I had at Bryan.
Mike Lindsing:She came in as a freshman at Bryan, and we had 15 kids in my varsity, and she started day one probably 15th on the depth chart.
Mike Lindsing:And I told her, hey, you're going to play in some JV games for us and practice with varsity.
Mike Lindsing:And she's like, all right, anything I got to do, coach, I'll do for you.
Mike Lindsing:And she did that.
Mike Lindsing:She didn't get into.
Mike Lindsing:She didn't get into a varsity game, Mike, until the eighth game of the season.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:And that was sparing minutes when I got her in by the 17th game of her freshman year.
Mike Lindsing:That's only nine games later after that.
Mike Lindsing:She was in the starting lineup as a freshman and she never left the starting lineup for the rest of her career at Brian.
Mike Lindsing:And she averaged four points a game for her career because she was the best defender I've ever coached.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:And she started out 15th on the depth chart, right?
Mike Lindsing:And so I, I reminded my players that the other day, like, where you're at now may not be where you're at later.
Mike Lindsing:The problem is the later may not be nine games from now.
Mike Lindsing:It may be 19 games from now, it may be 20 games from now, could be 25, 30, 40 years from now.
Mike Lindsing:But a lot of kids aren't willing to go through the muck and the adversity and the waiting.
Mike Lindsing:They're so geared into self gratification instantly that they can't.
Mike Lindsing:And I was telling you that on the phone the other day when we were talking.
Mike Lindsing:I think I'm not raising happy children in my house and that's not important to me, okay?
Mike Lindsing:It's really not.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, their happiness is meaningless in many ways to me, okay?
Mike Lindsing:Because that's.
Mike Lindsing:They're going to be leaving my house and that they want to be happy in their life later.
Mike Lindsing:That's their responsibility.
Mike Lindsing:But it's not my responsibility to raise happy children.
Mike Lindsing:My responsibility is raise strong kids and are willing to that can fight through anything in life that's going to be thrown at them, you know, so, so when they leave my house, they're ready to do it, tackle whatever the world gives them, right?
Mike Lindsing:And hopefully they will be happy.
Mike Lindsing:Don't get me wrong, but.
Mike Lindsing:And it's the same thing with our players, right?
Mike Lindsing:So.
Mike Lindsing:And your son's the same way.
Mike Lindsing:Like, fighting through adversity and fighting through these challenges is only going to make him stronger and a better person.
Mike Lindsing:It's going to make him stronger in his marriages, strong in his, his jobs, strong in his relationships, you know, and I think kids can't see that.
Mike Lindsing:I think they recognize it later in life because I get these emails from X players like, oh, thanks coach, you know, thanks for doing that.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I hated you before, but, you know, thank you for, you know, pushing me through that.
Mike Lindsing:So I don't need the self gratification instantly from him because I know it's coming at some point, you know, but.
Mike Lindsing:But I think it's important, you know, because I had a kid quit this week on our program and I think it's, I, it's just sad to see kids do that, you know, and not fight through some adversity and, and Just because something doesn't go exactly the way they wanted it to.
Jason Smith:Yeah, there's no doubt about that.
Jason Smith:And I do think that part of what that is all about is the people that are in their ear, that are around them, whether that's a parent, whether that's.
Jason Smith:Whoever it may be.
Jason Smith:I think that the messaging that players need in those particular circumstances are always, well, what's within your control.
Jason Smith:And there are some things that you can control.
Jason Smith:There's some things that you can.
Jason Smith:You can't control whether a coach plays you or not, but you can control how hard you play and what kind of attitude you bring and what kind of enthusiasm you have in whatever it is that you're being asked to do.
Jason Smith:And I think that if you, if kids have those messages and they can start to internalize those, then you get to the point where you're going to have a team full of mentally tough and resilient players.
Jason Smith:Even those kids who maybe aren't don't have as big a role as.
Jason Smith:As they might want at a given time.
Jason Smith:And it's hard, though, because again, today in our society, so much of everything that we do is just based on what am I getting right now in the moment and how quickly can I get it?
Jason Smith:And the idea that maybe I have to be patient sometimes is lost on certain population, on a certain population of kids, because again, part of it is what.
Jason Smith:What society messages to them.
Jason Smith:But also, again, I think what you hear at home is.
Jason Smith:Is so critically important in terms of being a good team member, being a good teammate and being a part of a team and understanding where it is that.
Jason Smith:That you're at in your journey and whether that means you're the star and you're getting 15 shots a game or you're the player that's number 15 on the bench that never gets up and does anything except cheer for their teammates.
Jason Smith:There's value to be found in all those roles.
Jason Smith:And it's really important as, again, people who are around those players from a parent standpoint or a friend standpoint or a trainer standpoint, that.
Jason Smith:That the messaging.
Jason Smith:The messaging is clear.
Jason Smith:I think that.
Jason Smith:I think the kids who are getting good messages, those are the kids that do end up fighting through it and making it however you want to define making it.
Jason Smith:I think those are the kids that end up having the kinds of careers that, that you and I would love every college basketball player to have.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:I think the challenge is them personally trying to find value in themselves and how that connects with a team.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Cause I hear this all the time, even from the kid that quit this week, was like, I just don't feel I don't see any value in what I'm doing here.
Mike Lindsing:I'm not helping the team at all, right?
Mike Lindsing:And, and my point to that is everybody on our team brings value, okay?
Mike Lindsing:And it can't just be about playing minutes, because that's impossible.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, think about this, Mike.
Mike Lindsing:It's a.
Mike Lindsing:It can't be, because what happens when you get hurt?
Mike Lindsing:You're not on the floor playing, so all of a sudden you just have no value to us.
Mike Lindsing:All of a sudden that's just a stupid comment, right?
Mike Lindsing:When I say stupid, that's.
Mike Lindsing:I probably should say ignorant, not stupid, but that's just an ignorant comment because everybody brings some sort of value to a team, right?
Mike Lindsing:And so trying to address that with each individual player, you know, as we meet with them individually and say, hey, outside of just playing minutes, what value do you bring to us, you know, and help them to address that so when things don't go right, you can bring them back to.
Mike Lindsing:Well, you remember, you know, this is what you bring to our team.
Mike Lindsing:This is who we don't have this if you're not here.
Mike Lindsing:And, and I think it's really easy to forget that when you're not playing or you're not playing well, all of a sudden you think you're in.
Mike Lindsing:You bring no value.
Mike Lindsing:You know, there's no reason I should even stick around here.
Mike Lindsing:And I.
Mike Lindsing:And again, it goes back to.
Mike Lindsing:I felt it.
Mike Lindsing:I felt like that I wasn't being loved or accepted, okay, in a place.
Mike Lindsing:And it hurt, man.
Mike Lindsing:It was just not a good feeling.
Mike Lindsing:Right?
Mike Lindsing:And so these kids are in the same place.
Mike Lindsing:They're 18 to 22 year old kids.
Mike Lindsing:They.
Mike Lindsing:Every bad decision that they make and we make is usually because of either fear or insecurity, right?
Mike Lindsing:And so I know that.
Mike Lindsing:I know when these kids are making bad decisions, they're either afraid of something, they're fearing something, or they're insecure.
Mike Lindsing:And trying to help them manage that process, I mean, that was, I think that was part of the challenges at Cedarville.
Mike Lindsing:You know, our kids were just fear of.
Mike Lindsing:Fear of change, and they fought it.
Mike Lindsing:You know, that was their kind of their flight or fight or flight mechanism, you know, so helping them to understand that everybody has value is.
Mike Lindsing:Is challenging.
Mike Lindsing:But I think we, as coaches, we got to remember that because it's easy just to think about winning a basketball game.
Jason Smith:Yeah, I agree.
Jason Smith:I mean, I agree.
Jason Smith:I think that's one of Those things where there's a disconnect when the playing time's not there, that a kid just feels like that the only way they can contribute to their team is through playing time.
Jason Smith:And obviously, every kid wants to play.
Jason Smith:And that's why you play the game, right?
Jason Smith:To be able to get an opportunity to get on the floor and help your team.
Jason Smith:And yet, I think, as coaches, that when we do have those conversations and try to make sure that, look, everyone's role may not be the same, but everyone's value as a human being is the same.
Jason Smith:And that's something that, again, I don't think kids always see.
Jason Smith:And sometimes in the midst of a season, that can get lost.
Jason Smith:And I think it's just important for everybody to kind of realize that.
Jason Smith:Again, I think the best.
Jason Smith:The best coaches, you know, who've built those kinds of relationships with players, that's really what we're talking about here, is having the type of relationship where the kid knows that you don't love the player scoring 20 points a game any more than you love the player who's number 15 on your bench.
Jason Smith:Both of them can be equally loved, even though their roles are different, if that makes any sense.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, it makes total sense.
Mike Lindsing:What they don't understand a lot of the times is the kid that plays 35 minutes a game, that scores 30 points a game for you, are some of the kids that I've disliked the most, you know what I'm saying?
Mike Lindsing:Like, they're really hard kids to like sometimes, you know?
Mike Lindsing:And the kid that never plays, that works her tail off or whatever.
Jason Smith:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:Comes to my office and is fun to talk to, I like a lot.
Mike Lindsing:So they.
Mike Lindsing:They always equate playing time to how you like them.
Mike Lindsing:And it's just absolutely wrong, by the way, you know, but that is.
Jason Smith:That is true.
Jason Smith:Sometimes your best player is the hardest one to coach.
Jason Smith:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Hardest one to coach.
Mike Lindsing:And you just like them the most because of their personality difference or whatever.
Mike Lindsing:Like, that just happens.
Mike Lindsing:And so it has nothing to do with personality or likability in many times.
Mike Lindsing:But I think of this quote from.
Mike Lindsing:I don't know, I'm.
Mike Lindsing:This is going to sound kind of crazy.
Mike Lindsing:I like musicals.
Mike Lindsing:I don't know.
Mike Lindsing:That's nuts.
Mike Lindsing:But I do.
Mike Lindsing:I like from the Greatest Showman.
Mike Lindsing:It says, no one ever made a difference by being like everybody else, you know, and so I.
Mike Lindsing:I don't want carbon copy players, you know, so everybody has a different skill set or a talent or a gift to bring to a team, which makes it a Team.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:Like if everybody same, we'd be easy to guard, you know, and easy to play against.
Mike Lindsing:I mean really would be easy to.
Jason Smith:Easy to scout, right?
Mike Lindsing:Oh, easy to scout.
Mike Lindsing:There's no doubt.
Mike Lindsing:So we're looking for kids to be the best of who they are and the best.
Mike Lindsing:Best them, you know, and the best we ask them to be the best you can be, not the best what somebody else is going to be.
Mike Lindsing:Um, so yeah.
Jason Smith:All right, let me ask you this final question.
Jason Smith:It's going to have.
Jason Smith:I'm going to go, I'm going to go flip side.
Jason Smith:So there's going to be two parts to it.
Jason Smith:So okay, what ha.
Jason Smith:What has gone as close to script as you thought when you took the job?
Jason Smith:In other words, what's gone when you drew up the plan or you thought hey, this is how I think this is going to go.
Jason Smith:What's gone closest to being on script and then the second part is conversely, what's something that you thought hey, this is going to go this way.
Jason Smith:And it ended up actually going and zagging the other way.
Jason Smith:So what's gone how you've expected and maybe what's been unexpected at Tennessee Wesleyan?
Mike Lindsing:The first, I guess the first thing that's kind of condescript is our players are kind of who they are.
Mike Lindsing:You know, like I've got so many of them that returners, 13, seven seniors, you know, they're pretty ingrained in to who they are as basketball players.
Mike Lindsing:So here's.
Mike Lindsing:And I'm going to give you the positives and one negative with that process is that our, our kids work hard, they'll do anything we ask them to do.
Mike Lindsing:They play hard culture wise.
Mike Lindsing:They love each other, man, they get along with.
Mike Lindsing:I've never had a group of kids actually love spending time together more than this group.
Mike Lindsing:You know, you can just pass by the locker room and there's just giggles and laughter and, and excitement to be around each other.
Mike Lindsing:I guess that's a.
Mike Lindsing:Maybe that's a little bit unexpected.
Mike Lindsing:I didn't expect it to be totally like that.
Mike Lindsing:But so great group that away and they work hard.
Mike Lindsing:I don't have to get on them forever not going hard.
Mike Lindsing:I don't think I've yelled at them maybe one time for that issue.
Mike Lindsing:I mean so seriously, they're self motivating in many ways.
Mike Lindsing:The one challenge, I guess the negative, which turns out I kind of knew what they were.
Mike Lindsing:We're sometimes offensively inept a little bit.
Mike Lindsing:We're not the best offensive team.
Mike Lindsing:I mean we'll run Our offense, boy, we'll run our offense.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:But the ball just does not go in the bucket at an efficiency that I'm totally happy with, if that makes sense.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:Um, the other night we went second for 17 minutes of the game, the second quarter and seven minutes of the first seven minutes of the third quarter, we went three for 29 from the field.
Mike Lindsing:Okay.
Mike Lindsing:In those 17 minutes and we still won the game.
Mike Lindsing:So that tells you we were defending a little bit.
Mike Lindsing:And so that was the day before Christmas or the not Christmas, couple days before Thanksgiving.
Mike Lindsing:So the whole Thanksgiving break I was like racking my brain on how am I going to fix this.
Mike Lindsing:Like, I'm going to have to put a new offense in.
Mike Lindsing:I'm going to do all this stuff.
Mike Lindsing:Then.
Mike Lindsing:Then I actually went back and watched the tape and realized, oh, no, our offense was great.
Mike Lindsing:We ran our offense, we got great looks.
Mike Lindsing:Ball just did not go in the bucket.
Mike Lindsing:Okay?
Mike Lindsing:And so now our girls will go chase it down.
Mike Lindsing:We'll go get the offensive board, you know, so, I mean, I'll give them credit for that.
Mike Lindsing:Um, but.
Mike Lindsing:And my boss told me that, that there's just going to be times when this team can't score, you know, and so that was kind of gone to plan, to be honest with you.
Mike Lindsing:The good thing is that they'll defend Mike.
Mike Lindsing:So we're still in games.
Mike Lindsing:Even when we can't score, we're still in games.
Mike Lindsing:So that's one thing that's gone to plan.
Mike Lindsing:The one thing that I didn't know how, what would happen is how well I was going to be received here.
Mike Lindsing:To be honest with you.
Mike Lindsing:I knew being the rival school and they kind of hated each other in many ways.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I.
Mike Lindsing:Brian is kind of a five letter cuss word over here, you know, so it's just kind of a rival.
Mike Lindsing:And coming over across the river, it's like 30 minutes away from the other school that I coached at.
Mike Lindsing:So coming on this side of the river and I didn't know how I was going to be received by administration, alumni, the team.
Mike Lindsing:And I would say I've been, I've been flabbergasted.
Mike Lindsing:So every alumni that's played here has been welcoming, have been supportive.
Mike Lindsing:They're glad I'm here.
Mike Lindsing:They've seen change in our basketball program already that they're excited about.
Mike Lindsing:So that's been again, goes back to the love and acceptance part.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I feel like, okay, because I didn't know.
Mike Lindsing:I've been.
Mike Lindsing:I was burned a little bit before.
Mike Lindsing:I was A little apprehensive, so.
Mike Lindsing:But that this community has been great, been loving and accepting and.
Mike Lindsing:And thankful to be here.
Jason Smith:One of us instead of one of them.
Jason Smith:That's the way it goes.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, no doubt, no doubt.
Mike Lindsing:Yeah.
Mike Lindsing:Yep, exactly.
Jason Smith:All right.
Jason Smith:Before we get out, Jason, I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you.
Jason Smith:Find out more about your program, social media, email, whatever you feel comfortable with.
Jason Smith:And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, my gosh.
Mike Lindsing:I think this is the last time you did this.
Mike Lindsing:I'm not it.
Mike Lindsing:I'm not a social media guy, right?
Mike Lindsing:Like, I literally.
Mike Lindsing:I tell people when I'm done coaching basketball, I will be completely off social media.
Mike Lindsing:I'll be off the grid.
Mike Lindsing:And.
Mike Lindsing:And I don't even know what our website is.
Mike Lindsing:I mean, that's a.
Mike Lindsing:It's actually tw.
Mike Lindsing:Bulldogs.com is our website.
Mike Lindsing:Okay, There we go.
Mike Lindsing:Our.
Mike Lindsing:I'm gonna have to go find our Mike.
Jason Smith:We'll put it all.
Jason Smith:We'll put it all in the show notes.
Jason Smith:Jason.
Jason Smith:Yeah, we got you.
Mike Lindsing:Won't you take care of me, Mike?
Mike Lindsing:I need.
Mike Lindsing:I need an assistant for that, right?
Mike Lindsing:We got.
Jason Smith:Yeah, exactly.
Jason Smith:You're supposed to have, like, you know, you're supposed to have a.
Jason Smith:Just a digital assistant, right, that does all this stuff.
Jason Smith:They just take care of making all your graphics, your game day graphics, your.
Mike Lindsing:Oh, I know.
Jason Smith:It's all putting all that stuff out there.
Jason Smith:That's what you.
Jason Smith:That's what you need somebody that's just into all that stuff.
Jason Smith:So I get.
Mike Lindsing:That's why I don't have a grad assistant this year.
Mike Lindsing:So my grad assistant would probably do that.
Mike Lindsing:I had a great one at Brian that did all that stuff for me, so it was great.
Mike Lindsing:Makes it nice.
Jason Smith:Well, you know, you know, Tennessee Wesleyan.
Mike Lindsing:You go to Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs, you'll find us.
Mike Lindsing:You'll figure us out.
Mike Lindsing:We're.
Mike Lindsing:Like I said, I only have one Twitter or X account.
Mike Lindsing:That's as Tennessee Women's basketball account.
Mike Lindsing:I don't even have my own.
Mike Lindsing:I don't even have my own single and never will.
Mike Lindsing:So sorry about that.
Mike Lindsing:But that's just me because I want to hold myself accountable to what goes on social media.
Jason Smith:Well, you know what?
Jason Smith:You know what skill set you're looking to hire for when you hire that ga.
Jason Smith:You know what?
Jason Smith:You know one particular thing that they're going to have to do?
Jason Smith:Well, right, they're going to have to do.
Mike Lindsing:They got to do social media and they Got to do.
Mike Lindsing:They got to know how to work synergy a little bit, you know, there we go.
Mike Lindsing:That's it.
Mike Lindsing:You know, if they can do those two things and want to get paid not very much money, they can come work for me.
Mike Lindsing:And, and guess what?
Mike Lindsing:I'll give them responsibility.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I tell everybody, I'll tell everybody if you come work for me, I'm going to, I'm going to give you some accountability, you know what I'm saying?
Mike Lindsing:I'm going to teach you some things and if you want to be able to run some stuff, you can run some stuff.
Mike Lindsing:You can talk to all my assistant coaches, man, like, first game of the year, I said, you know, you just, you start sending subs in the game and they're like, seriously?
Mike Lindsing:Yeah, just start sending them.
Mike Lindsing:Like, what happens if I send the wrong person?
Mike Lindsing:I said, I'll get him back out, you know, no big deal.
Mike Lindsing:And it took them a while.
Mike Lindsing:It took them a while, but now we're like seven games in and they're like, they're just sending people to the, to the table, which is great.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I love it.
Mike Lindsing:And I just tell them, I said, if it doesn't go right, you just have to be willing to say, you know, my bad.
Mike Lindsing:You know, I said we're good with that.
Mike Lindsing:But if it goes well, I'm going to give you a high five and say, good call.
Mike Lindsing:Right.
Mike Lindsing:And we'll do the same thing.
Jason Smith:But yeah, love it, love it.
Jason Smith:All right, we'll send your resumes to coach Jason Smith.
Jason Smith:You'll be awesome.
Jason Smith:There you go.
Jason Smith:Got that job opening for a GA next year again.
Jason Smith:Jason, can't thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump back on for a second time and talk about the variety of topics that we touched on tonight.
Jason Smith:It was a lot of fun, take a lot of value in the conversation.
Jason Smith:So thank you and to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.
Jason Smith:Thanks.
Jason Smith:Your first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job.
Jason Smith:A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies and most of all helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants.
Jason Smith:The coaching portfolio guide is an instructional membership based website that helps you develop a personalized portfolio each.
Jason Smith:This section of the portfolio guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner.
Jason Smith:The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify and add to your personal portfolio.
Jason Smith:As a hoop heads pod listener, you can get your coaching portfolio Guide for just $25.
Jason Smith:Visit coachingportfolioguide.com hoop heads to learn more.
Mike Lindsing:Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.
