Britt Moore is in his 9th season as the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Elizabethtown College where he has the Blue Jays off to a 10-1 start this year.

Before taking the head coaching position at Elizabethtown, Moore spent six seasons as the head coach at the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford, taking his Panther teams to the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference (AMCC) Tournament each season.

Previously, Moore was an assistant coach at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, for five seasons, including the final two as associate head coach to Rick Ferry. Moore started his coaching career as an assistant at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania from 2004 -2006.

As a player, Moore played in 25 games for Elizabethtown as a sophomore in 2000-01 and ended his playing career at King’s College, where he was a two-time letter winner from 2002-04.

On this episode Mike & Britt discuss the fundamental aspects of basketball that contribute to winning, such as rebounding and defensive effort. Throughout the conversation, we delve into the evolution of coaching methodologies, particularly the necessity of fostering a culture where players hold one another accountable for their performance. Additionally, we explore the challenges of maintaining a cohesive team dynamic amidst varying levels of player ability and acceptance of roles. Ultimately, Coach Moore shares insights into the intrinsic rewards of coaching, underscoring the profound joy derived from mentoring young athletes and witnessing their development on and off the court.

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Don’t forget to grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Britt Moore, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Elizabethtown College.

Website – https://etownbluejays.com/sports/mens-basketball

Email – moorebr@etown.edu

Twitter/X - @BrittMoore_

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At the end of the day, if you have five guys that go and play really hard, you'll find a way to win some games.

So I think we've really shifted to more eye test non analytical things to look at.

Not as much scoring.

You need some of that, but give me the guy that gives a little more effort and we'll figure out the other stuff.

Brit Moore is in his ninth season as the men's basketball head coach at Elizabethtown College, where he has the Blue Jays off to a 101 start this year.

Before taking the head coaching position at Elizabethtown, Moore spent six seasons as the head coach at the University of Pittsburgh Bradford, taking his Panther teams to the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference tournament each season.

Previously, Moore was an assistant coach at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania for five seasons, including the final two as associate head coach to Rick Ferry.

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Don't forget to grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Brit Moore, men's basketball head coach at Elizabethtown College.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast.

It's Mike Cleansing here this morning without my co host, Jason Sunkel.

But I am pleased to be joined by Brit Moore, head men's basketball coach at Elizabethtown College.

Brit, welcome to the Hoop Headspot, man.

Well, thanks for having me.

Appreciate it.

Looking forward to it.

Absolutely excited to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into all of the great things you've been able to do in your career.

Let's start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.

How did you get introduced to it?

What made you fall in love with it?

Yeah.

So grew up in western Massachusetts, Berkshire County.

So as a kid, played a little bit of everything, baseball, soccer, football, hoops.

And then as I got older, just kind of stuck with basketball.

By the time I got to high school, went to St. Joe's Central and Pittsfield, which has since closed down, but kind of became a little more basketball specific.

As a kid, I used to go to like the Williams College youth camp run by Harry Sheehy.

Was the coach there for a little bit, then jumped over to Dartmouth.

So as a kid, it's like you love hoops, you just want to keep playing.

You want to play as long as you can.

And it's just figuring out kind of what your path is going to be is kind of the next step for you.

Who was your first influence in the game of basketball?

Who would you say had the, had the biggest influence on you as a, as a young kid, as you were kind of getting into the game?

Yeah.

So first one that really pops to mind was 8th grade coach, guy named Tim Ryan, who was the first one to really be super, super passionate about it.

We had a travel team where I was and he kind of took over that and it just gave you the passion where it's like, all right, I want to do a little bit more.

Whether it's workouts on your own and kind of push yourself.

And then probably the biggest one when I was younger is high school.

My senior year we got a new coach, Billy dinicola, who had been an assistant at Williams for Harry Sheehy for a little bit, kind of jumped around and he came in and to this day is the most passionate coach I've ever been around.

Talked to so him and then a guy named Bill Hay, who's had played at AIC and then ton of success at Tectonic high school.

It's like their energy and passion really said, all right, I want to try to go play in college and get to that next step.

And they were definitely two of the hugest influence in the basketball world for my life.

As you started to get more serious about the game, as you get into high school, what did your process for getting better look like?

And then kind of compare and contrast, that's.

It's a topic of conversation that we often have on here.

Bridget, is just the way that the players that you're coaching today, the way they kind of grow up in the game and what they do compared to what you did as a player in high school to try to get yourself the opportunity to play at the college level?

Yeah, I would say 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th grade.

80% of what I did was just go out and shoot in front of my house.

So we had a basket on telephone pole initially, no pavement grass.

So part of the reason I'm not a great ball handler, I can shoot it a little bit, is just shoot, shoot, shoot.

And then my one birthday, we put in a little patch of pavement and then put in a new backboard, which was huge.

So honestly, most of it was just me on my own getting shots up.

And then as you get a little bit older and you're able to get to a park or a playground and play a little bit, that became something.

And then I did AU before my junior year, so give you kind of a look.

And one difference is I think when I grew up, you don't know.

You know, you get Sports Illustrated, you get street and Smith, some of the magazines, but it's like, you don't realize how good basketball is across the country, across the world, where kids growing up now, like, they know, hey, I know this kid.

I played AAU with them.

Like, my son had travel hoops yesterday in fifth grade, and Kitty goes against was playing in his AU organization.

And it's like they have a better feel of kind of where they land with some stuff.

Like who the top players in fifth and sixth grade.

And like, for me, you just.

You don't know.

Like, back in the day, I just assumed NBA scouts could have dropped by the driveway and give me a call and didn't actually work out that way.

Yeah, it's funny how that works.

I tell people, I've told this story before, but when I was being recruited and Kent State was where I ended up going, and they were recruiting me, probably, I think it was before, before my junior year, and they called me and they Said, hey, we want you to come down for an official visit and check things out.

And I'm like, you know, I only get five of these visits.

And I didn't, I didn't say this to them directly, but this is my thought process of, you know, I only get five of these visits and I gotta save one for North Carolina and I gotta save one for Ohio State, I gotta save one for Duke.

And I, I had no, because again, my high school coach had never had anybody that was recruited.

I was the oldest in my family, so my parents didn't know there was no, it's not like there was Internet or anything that I could go out and try to figure it out.

So I told them, I'll just come down for an unofficial visit.

I went down for an unofficial visit.

I still remember me and my mom sitting like in a Wendy's eating lunch because you know, they couldn't pay for anything, so we're buying our own lunch.

And then after that they stopped recruiting me and I had to go kind of at the end, during my, the end of my senior year, I had to kind of go back and say, hey, are you guys at all still interested in me?

And it just so happened that a kid transferred out and I ended up being like the seventh freshman in a class of, of seven guys.

And but there was just like, to your point, there was no information.

Like you had no idea unless you had somebody that had gone through it or you had a high school coach that was knowledgeable in the recruiting space, you just didn't.

There was no information.

Whereas again, like you said, your son in fifth or sixth grade probably knows way more about the recruiting process than you or I did when we were, when we were high school seniors.

Yeah, like he'll ask me to go watch Rod Wave Elite AAU and he knows kids that are in seventh grade from wherever playing on those teams.

So it is just, yeah, different.

I think part of it's good, part of it's bad.

Like for us it's just your self motivation and kind of self propelled is going to get you to where you get to.

And I think we were more willing to kind of work at it because as a kid you see all this info and it's like, man, I'll never be one of those top guys.

And we just didn't know any better where it's like we'll just keep working at it and wherever it ends up, we end up.

Yeah, that's so true.

I do think there's a point to be made there that you kind of the.

The delusion maybe that you had as a high school player.

Again, when you're looking at and comparing yourself just to the guys in your area, the guys that, you know, the guys that you play against all the time, that was kind of your only frame of reference.

And.

And I also think it.

It.

Yeah.

You know, you also, again, it's just like social media in every aspect, right?

You're seeing the best of what everybody has.

So even this kid over here, who's this?

And people are posting offers, whether they're real offers.

And so then there's just all this competition of like, I played against this kid and I'm better than that.

Like, I didn't know where anybody was going that I played against until maybe you read in the newspaper that, hey, so and so signed with this school.

And then all of a sudden you're like, what, where this, where this come from?

Whereas obviously today, you know, immediately, every single offer that a kid has is immediately available publicly for everybody to consume.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when I grew up, UMass was Calipari back in the day.

So, like, they were number one in the country and they were 50 minutes from my hometown.

And I'm like, nah, I don't want to go to UMass.

I'd rather go to, you know, Duke or whatever.

And actually, it's crazy.

I gotta move the pump.

But I found.

See if we can see it.

I found that.

So I got it.

Very cool.

Put it down in the basement at some time.

That's very cool.

It's funny, it's funny that you say that about UMass because my dad was a professor at Cleveland State.

I was a jealousy.

I. I would have been 16.

So I was maybe a sophomore, and I think I was a sophomore in high school that year.

And just growing up, I went to a lot of Cleveland State games.

And I remember my dad at some point saying, maybe you'll play for Cleveland State someday.

I was like, come on, man.

Like, you know, I'm not, you know, know, I'm not going to Cleveland State.

Like, again, I was same mindset as you.

Like, I'm going to Carolina or I'm going to Ohio State or whatever.

And just again, you have no.

You had no idea back then what.

What was reality and what wasn't.

You just kind of, again, you Just kept plugging along and tried to do your thing and do it as, as best you could.

So definitely a different world.

Tell me about your high school career and just what's your favorite memory from being a high school basketball player.

What do you remember when what stands out is the, the one or two things that man really pop when you think about being a high school player.

Really a lot of it goes back to that shifting of coaches where Coach D and Coach Hay came in.

So we had been okay my freshman, sophomore, junior year, and then those two came in and when I think we had six seniors and we just kind of hit the ground running, we started, man, I don't even know, like 12 and oh, made a push to Western Mass.

Finals, which is one of the final eight teams in the state.

Ended up losing to team that was pretty good.

Had a kid that ended up going Princeton, then his brother played up at Amherst.

But that was probably the closest knit team I've been on in a long time, probably till recently.

So just kind of giving you that passion.

And the biggest memories I can remember walking out of the cage at UMass where they do the Western Mass.

Finals, and it's like you look up at the scoreboard, we lost by eight or whatever it is, and it's knowing you're never going to get that moment back, right?

And not knowing, are you going to play basketball again?

Like I wanted to play in college, there were some options there, but not hundred percent knowing where.

It's like there's some days that could have been the end of my basketball journey in all ways, but it's.

I've been lucky to kind of stick with it and still doing it to this day.

I think that's a really good point that you just made there.

And it's one that I think about a lot, both from a player coach and now as a basketball parent standpoint.

When you think about again, your career as a player is so finite, right?

And not that it's not finite as a coach, but people who are in the coaching profession, you tend to have a longer coaching career than you do a playing career.

And I always try to be mindful of just how fast it goes, right.

As a player, you like turn around, you blink and it's kind of over.

And you do get that moment of looking up at the scoreboard or walking into or walking out of the locker room for the last time.

And sometimes as coaches, right, we know that there's, there's another season coming.

And obviously at the Division 3 level, you guys are you guys are recruiting, you know, non stop throughout the year and always have to have one eye on, yeah, you got to have one eye on the next season and all that stuff.

But you know, I think that what you just shared as a player, I always feel like it's important for me to remember that as, as a parent and as a coach that yeah, we have another season coming, but those players, sometimes, you know, it's the end for them and just to, to be mindful of, of that and, and it speaks to again and I'm sure we'll get into this.

Just the relationships that you build and, and giving guys a great experience so that when they do eventually get to the end of it, right, they do look up at the scorebird in the locker room and they're appreciative of what they have and they're sad that it's, you know, they're sad that it's over, that they're no longer going to be a part of that.

And it's again, that's one of the things that when I think about the end of a season, that little story that you just told resonates with me because I feel that at the end of every season, whether it's my own as a coach, whether it was my own as a player back a long time ago or even now when I'm watching my kids keep trying to reiterate to them that this goes fast, make sure you make sure you latch on to every single moment and enjoy it and, and build relationships with your coaches and your teammates.

Because as we all know, it goes, it goes by fast.

Yeah.

Now we talked about that with our group, year in, year out, like there is, there's an expiration date on this group.

And regardless of how it's going, good, bad, great, you go on a national title, like there's an expiration date and a time where you as a group will no longer be together.

And you know, when it is super tight knit, it's hard because even though those relationships stay the same, they're changed.

Because it's not in the locker room, it's not daily at practice, it's not going through the bus rides, like all that kind of stuff.

It's things that you just, once they're gone, you don't get back exactly.

The intensity of, I don't think people who haven't been in a college locker room because the intensity of a season, just in terms of the amount of time that you spend together, the things that you go through to try to have a successful season.

And just, again, the bonds that you build through, going through the.

The difficult times and the good times, there's.

There's nothing like it anywhere.

I. I just.

I mean, again, I'm 55 years old, and I've never repeated those experiences that I had in a locker room in terms of the intensity of those relationships and just the bond that you build with people because of the things that you go through that are, again, difficult and yet rewarding at the same time, if that makes any sense at all.

Yeah.

And it's working through those tough times and getting through it where he's like, all right, I can trust this person going forward.

For sure.

Absolutely.

All right, tell me a little bit about your college decision, and then we'll.

We'll talk and walk through your college career and then kind of get to the decision to get into coaching.

Yeah.

So started at Etown College, played here for two years, and then got a little bit closer to home.

Transferred to Kings College in Wilkes Barre.

Part of that decision was my brother was coming out of high school and being where we're wearing western masks, he was looking Boston a little bit.

And then Kings was a little under three hours from home, so not too bad.

And he liked Kings.

And I just said, you know, I'm not going to split lit my parents and go to Boston and be kind of in between the two.

So I actually had not visited Kings before, you know, committing and sending everything in, and it worked out really well.

Like, there was another transfer that came in, Marty o', Hora, and then all the guys that there.

I mean, we still group chat and stay connected with, so it's been really, really good group.

When did you know that you wanted to coach?

Was that something that was on your radar early on as a player, or did it come when you're done playing?

I always say there's kind of two paths that I feel like most guys take.

Either there's one that you were drawing plays on a napkin when you were in fourth grade and trying to coach your friends and whatever team you were on.

There's that path that people kind of know, hey, I've kind of always been destined to be a coach.

And there's other guys that you're playing, you're playing, you're playing.

You're never really thinking about coaching.

Then your career ends, and all of a sudden you look around, you're like, I still need basketball in my life.

How can I do that?

And then they could get to coaching.

So I don't know if either one of Those roads describes the one you traveled or what's your story for getting into coaching?

Yeah, a little bit of both.

So I can remember like 6th, 7th, 8th grade, liking the tactical side of basketball, you know, some more of the X and O, and, you know, would try to throw in my 2 cents on teams I was with, which I'm sure was never great with total endorsement.

But then as I finished up, you know, it's one of those, like, all I knew was basketball for the most part.

So I remember reaching out to JPN Draco, who was coaching me at Kings, and said, hey, I think I want to get into it.

And his line verbatim was like, don't be an idiot.

Do something else.

And I'm an idiot.

So I decided to go for it.

And I got lucky.

Where there was turnover at Misericordia College at the time, now University, which was like 20 minutes north of Kings.

So their coach, Dave Martin, had jumped to the AD role.

They had a head coaching position.

They hired a guy, Trevor Woodruff, who I think was 29 at the time, offered an assistant job to somebody else.

They turned it down.

I went up, interviewed, and honestly, he was probably just looking for someone to get in the car and drive all over.

So I took that role and started with him.

And it's funny how it works out like he's now jumped over.

He's Bucknell women's head coach.

I was there with Eric Hart, who's now the AD at Brockport State, and then Enrico Mastriani, who was the head coach at Merriwood for a little bit, is now high school at AD at Abington Heights.

And it's sometimes you just fall into good situation good places where it's like those guys are lifelong friends.

Like, Rico's a huge Browns fan, I'm a big Bills fan, and we're talking trash yesterday.

Got the best of them there.

Yeah, absolutely.

So that kind of got.

What did you like about it right away?

I mean, clearly it was something that you had thought about and considered, but I think once you jump into it, there's obviously a lot of pieces that as a player, you don't necessarily know or understand or see what's going on behind the scenes.

So what did you like about it initially?

Right away you knew, hey, this is the right place for me.

I think Just carrying over, like, the team atmosphere.

Like, you're still part of something bigger than yourself.

You're still trying to accomplish a goal as a group, you know, And I just didn't know any better because that's all I've done.

Knowing where we were as a program, like, we're trying to build it back up.

Like, they've had a ton of success, and then it's, you know, they got young pretty quick.

So we as a staff said, all right, how do we go out and get better?

And really, just the hours you put in, the hard work and kind of seeing it pay dividends and then the relationship with the guys, you know, Mitchell is a younger assistant.

It probably takes, and I tell some younger assistants, probably takes two years where you're okay not playing.

So your first year, you're like, man, I could still be out there.

I could still play.

And it's like, you got to kind of get over that.

So it's like once I got through that piece and it's like, all right, I'm now a coach.

I'm not a player, you kind of take that next step of growth because it is a little bit different.

It is for sure.

What do you feel like you were good at right away out of the gate?

I do think I am pretty good in game, just helping the head coach with, like, offensive adjustment piece.

Like, Trevor is awesome defensive coach.

I think, like, I could just say, hey, let's run this, or put the ball in this guy's hands and give him a different look.

And, you know, we both have the personalities.

If you don't want to do it, he would just say no.

And I'm just taking a move on to the next thing.

Like, they're going to take it personal.

But I thought I was able to help with that pretty early.

I wish I could say the recruiting piece like, that took some time because you just.

You don't quite know how to do the sales stuff besides just basketball.

It's like when I was at Misery, I could talk basketball with the recruits, but I wasn't in depth in how to apply, how to get accepted, what your scholarships look like, what the realistic is one major you want.

Like, that hadn't really hit my radar just because I hadn't known how to do that yet.

Yeah, that makes sense.

How long as you go to.

And again, you've been at a couple different places, but as you go to each place, how long do you feel like it takes you to get a feel for the institution and that part of it where you feel confident saying, hey, this guy is going to be a good fit here versus there.

Like, when you get to a new place, how long does it take for you to get that feel of knowing again, you obviously as a head coach, you have your type of player that you're looking for.

We can get into that.

But just thinking about again, what fits the university, what.

What kind of kid you're looking for at that particular place, you know, would be a good fit, if that question makes sense.

Yeah, I think when you get through an academic year, you get a good sense of your current players, who you can recruit, who's interested in what the general student body looks like, where they come from.

And you can have some outliers, but it'd be really hard to go and get 15 guys that don't fit any of that mold.

Right.

Because it is easier if you have really good majors.

Like etown, we have engineering, which not every D3 has.

So it's like, all right, if this kid is engineering, we have a more legitimate shot then if they're going to do, you know, art or something where it might not be the best fit for us.

So I think within a year, you get a decent sense of what kind of kid you can get, and then it's just, all right, are they actually gonna pick our school?

What does their list look like?

Like, I know sometimes people recruiting don't worry about who's else are recruiting.

I'm like, I think it's important just because if we say, hey, what are you looking at?

And their list is Penn State, Maryland, Temple, you know, and they don't want to go smaller, then it might not be here.

You know, if they're looking more south, like just trying to get a sense what they want.

Right.

And we don't do too much sales stuff.

It's.

What are you looking for?

Here's what we offer.

And if it.

If it works out, then, you know, it could be a good fit.

How big is your initial.

Initial list?

So I'm talking currently now at Elizabethtown, when you put together that first list of guys that you start that you, you know, again, the big pool.

When you first start looking at a given recruiting class, how big is that list and where do those names come from?

A lot of it is just a.

You starting like in April.

So we'll kind of go out to Pittsburgh for like a hoop group event.

We're like 15 minutes from spooky Nook, so we'll do a ton of stuff there and just coming up with a list of 100, 150, 200 legitimate names, you know, and that gets pared down pretty quick when all the things we talked about, are they getting scholarship offers, is it too far, is it too close?

And that kind of narrows it down.

So we get into the school year, you know, the list becomes 75 to 100 legitimate recruits.

And, you know, we're trying to go get five to six guys that, you know, we think fit us on and off the court.

Um, and it's hard.

Sometimes you go for talent over fit, you know.

And does it work?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

And then other times you go for fit over talent, and it's like, man, they just kind of do everything we're looking for and end up having a really good career.

Yeah, I think it's always a challenge, right?

Again, recruiting is probably within.

Within the field of coaching, I would say it's the most inexact science of, of trying to get a feel right?

You just.

I. I think it's amazing when you look at and see guys and I. I think to.

Like, my son is a sophomore right now at Ohio Wesleyan.

And so looking back at the guys that he played AAU with or he played high school basketball with and against and just trying to figure out and look at guys that you thought, oh, this kid's gonna go and have a really good career and they're not playing anymore, or this kid, and he was borderline.

I'm not sure if he's.

I'm not sure if he's gonna be able to do anything.

And all of a sudden gets again, gets to the right place and is in the right system with the right coach, the right teammates, and all of a sudden having a really good career.

And I know, again, from talking to so many coaches just how difficult it is, right, to.

To figure it out.

And you're looking for.

There's some intangible things that I know that lots of coaches have their things that they look for, that they feel like are important that allow guys to have success in their program.

So when you think about that, forget about, obviously there's a certain level of talent or in a given year, you might be looking for something positionally to fill your roster.

But just when you think about the intangibles of guys that you're looking for at Elizabethtown, what are the things that are important to you that you feel is going to allow guys to have success in your program?

Honestly, it probably changed the last two years where when we go watch somebody play AU High School, we look more just effort level in non statistical plays more than anything, right.

Just as simple as shot goes and we're in transition like you jogging, are you sprinting?

Right.

Are you rotating?

Are you doing all those little things?

Because we can always coach some skill stuff like we can coach a little more ball handling, we can tweak a shot a little bit to get a little bit better.

But it's really hard to get somebody who doesn't play hard to play.

The effort it's going to take to win, right.

We can take somebody that plays hard and push them a little bit.

But I think the last couple years just.

All right, do they compete at a level that we want at practice?

If they do, what does their skill set look like?

What position do they play?

And you know, at the end of the day, if you have five guys that go and play really hard, you'll find a way to win some games.

So I think we've really shifted to more eye test non analytical things to look at.

Not as much scoring, you know, you need some of that.

But you know, give me the guy that gives a little more effort and we'll figure out the other stuff.

The opposite of what every high school basketball player and their parents think are important things, right?

Or at least 95%.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, my son's fifth grade travel and I've heard parents yell shoot 99 of the times.

I've never heard a parent yell rotate.

I've never heard a parent yellow box out, rebound in traffic, right?

Step to the ball, none of those things.

It's always shoot.

And like that honestly is the last thing that really matters in terms of winning.

If you can't do the baseline stuff, you don't get to the point where the scoring matters.

You know, you're going to, you're going to score 80 points, where you're going to give up 95 and lose.

It's always amazing to me that the number of people that are involved in the game of basketball and when I'm talking about it, I'm talking more just in terms of, in terms of players more so than coaches.

But I always feel like you can, it doesn't really matter to me what system you run or X's and O's, what you do offensively or defensively.

I think one playing hard solves a lot of those problems, regardless of what kind of scheme you want to play.

But then I always feel like the second thing is, is that so many people don't understand if you just move the ball on offense and you play a Style of play where everybody buys in and nobody really cares who scores and the ball moves.

And again, I don't care what kind of system you're playing.

But there's so many.

I mean, I don't even know what the percentage is, but there's such a huge percentage of players who just don't make the next easy pass.

Like, the ball comes to me and I just move it to the.

I just move it to the next guy.

Like, the number of dudes that just hold the ball and want to pound it and I want to.

Yeah, yeah.

It's.

I mean, it's all levels of basketball.

Like, I'm, you know, you're seeing, I'm sure when you're watching your son and you go watch high school games and, you know, even you watch college games and like, to me, it's so simple.

It just, Just move the ball to the next guy.

And if you do that, it doesn't have to be a no, look, thread the needle, back door pass to get a layup.

It just has to be move the ball.

And eventually if you do that, you're going to get, you're going to get an advantage.

And then defensively, right, if you just rotate and help each other.

The game, the game is pretty simple.

And yet I feel like.

And there's so many players that just don't.

Because again, guys, what do they hear from the time they're six, seven years old?

Shoot it, right?

Shoot it every time you get it.

And so then you just don't get.

You just don't get players that know and understand how to move the wall.

And when you do, that's when you really have something.

And you know, to me, when I'm looking at a player, I always.

I'm looking for somebody.

Like you said, the scoring part of it, whatever, it's.

Do you play hard and do you understand that basketball is a team game?

And it's not.

It's not just one.

It's not.

It's not me doing my thing, taking turns and, and then I just give the ball to somebody else when my, you know, whatever I'm trying to do expires and I can't do it.

So it's interesting.

No.

Yeah.

No, there was a great.

I think it was.

Can't remember former NBA player talked about that.

Like, there's two kind of guys in basketball, one that make a pass because they have to, right?

They don't have an option to score.

And then one that makes a pass to make a play for somebody else, like, kind of proactively finding them.

And the defensive thing you hit on the head, I probably was too technical defensively the last couple years.

And then coming into this year, we simplified it.

We're in the past.

We tell it, we're closing out to this shoulder to ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.

This year, I'm like, just get there.

Don't care how it happens.

Just get there.

Like, we're not saying inside, outside.

It's like, just get there.

And that's like, it gave them a little less out where they can say, oh, but you said it's like, no, you didn't get that.

You did or you didn't get there.

So it's like, we've tried to make it a little simpler, and it's like through that, the effort piece, I think comes in.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I talked to another guy.

There's a coach that I have on here all the time that Rob Bros, who's from Bowling Brook High School in Illinois and his program super successful.

And he said, we had a conversation about this.

I don't know, one of the last two pods that we did basically said the same thing.

He's like, when it comes to defensively, in terms of closing out and being where you're supposed to be, he's like, I really don't care how you get there or how you do it.

He goes, but I'm looking at.

It's kind of the opposite of.

Everybody always talks about the process.

It's almost like here, the.

The pro, you're doing the opposite.

Like, here, it's just the outcome is I don't want you to get beat by your guy, and I want you to have a hand up if a shot goes up.

Right.

And how you accomplish that as a player, I really don't care.

I just want to see what that ultimately, what the outcome is as opposed to focusing on, hey, you got to have your inside foot up, or I want you to have your.

Your left hand up on the shoot or whatever.

It's just like, hey, get it done and get the stop and whatever it is that you have to do in order to make that happen, just do it.

And yeah, it's.

It's interesting when you start talking about the difference in.

In terms of the technique and the, hey, we got to do it exactly this way versus let's just.

Let's just get out and give the efforts that's necessary to stop the other team.

Yeah.

And it looks great in practice.

You know, like, three years ago, you come in and we're Closing out, chopping the feed, two hands breaking down.

And then the game would come and people just shoot over the top and it's like, man, we got to fix that.

And I think just going simpler has made it easier where it's.

You just stop the shot.

All right, well then what's next?

How do we do the next thing together as a group?

Yeah.

It's interesting too, when you think about and hearing you say it all looked good.

Right.

And that's one of those things that when you talk about designing a practice or how you put together what you're trying to do and teach your team, right?

There's, there's things that you can do that looks beautiful, that look crisp.

If somebody walks into your practice, they're like, oh, look at that, they're doing it this way and everybody looks the same and it looks great.

And then you put in live action and it's dynamic and the situations aren't exactly the way that they're designed in a drill.

And all of a sudden it doesn't look the same.

And whereas if you create that chaos in practice, where it's much more like the game, you get better translation.

It sounds like that's kind of the direction that you've been heading is, is to make it.

Make the practices more chaotic and more.

And similar.

More similar to the game where you don't know what's going to happen.

Yeah, no, it is a little mayhem.

Now you walk through and we're going against pressing teams.

We'll have six or seven bodies out there.

Our swim coach gave us some pool noodles that we cut up.

So all of a sudden our guys are now 7ft when they're on defense smacking each other.

So it's like, yeah, a little more hectic is good because it's going to be hectic.

Like, it's funny, I went through our first practice plan book when I was at Bradford just to go through, like looking at some old plays we ran, see if any of them work, and it's like to a T. The first practice is like 2 minute drill, 3 minute drill, 4 minute drill, like everything mapped out.

And I look back, I'm like, man, what was I doing?

Like, that's too structured because the game isn't structured.

At some point you got to be able to flow a little bit and have some guys make plays.

And I think that's definitely been beneficial for us, you know, in the last couple years.

How do you balance.

This is a question that I'm always curious to hear the answer.

How people Handle this.

But when you're in a practice setting, right.

And you're in a more chaotic type of environment, right.

Where it's more.

It closely resembles game action.

Right.

Whether you're going a small sided game or you're going up and down, you're going five on five.

How do you balance stopping play and correcting or coaching something versus letting the practice flow and then talking about it after the fact?

That's one of the things that I know when I'm coaching, that I struggled with this when I first started as a coach 30 years ago.

And it's still something that I don't find to be natural necessarily, or intuitive because I find myself seeing this mistake or that mistake or this read where I would have maybe done something different.

And I always have a tendency to want to stop it probably more than I should.

So how do you think about that in your mind as you're going through practice?

The.

The balance between trying to correct and instruct versus not always interrupting.

So there's no flow to what's going on.

Yeah, a lot of it is trying to talk the guys on the fly, you know, so if we're playing and balls checked out and they're going full length, just grabbing a guy and saying, hey, you got to do blah.

And honestly, most of the time they know and it's just confirming it.

And probably 15 years ago I went to go watch high school open gym.

So this coach got a ton of flack where people said, oh, he wins, he has the best talent.

Which they were good.

But something he did is they would scrimmage like eight minute segments and he would just write down thoughts and then segment week done, and he would just rattle through them.

So it's like, they still got to play, he still got to fix, he still got to correct.

And honestly, since that day, it's like, all right, we don't.

We have to fix it, but it doesn't have to get fixed that exact second.

When we get done, you know, they're getting a drink.

Here are the big block things that we got to get better at, and we kind of hammer them out, you know, And I think as coaches, sometimes we want to prove we can coach.

So you're breaking down your angle on that closeout and the footwork and teaching them, it's like, does that really make a difference in that play?

So finding that balance between the two now, it can't be complete mayhem because you don't know what's coming.

But I do think coaching on the fly, like, you know, we only get X amount of timeouts.

So it's kind of game like where other teams shooting a free throw, we grab the point guard, hey, we got to run this set the next time down because of this.

I think if you do it in practice, it's easier to do come game time too.

Yeah, I agree with you there.

I do think that as, you know, as, as the game has evolved, right, Both on the floor, but then also in terms of just practice design and that kind of thing.

And that me thinking back to what you said a minute ago about looking at your practice plans from when you first became a head coach and how different those look then versus what they look like now.

I do think that practices today, when you go and you watch, whether it's a high school or a college level, they're much more similar to what the game looks like, right?

In terms of, instead of doing, hey, we're, we're going to break down drills and we're doing again, one on o closeouts where we're just working on chopping our feet, getting this foot up and getting a hand up and all those kinds of things.

I think about what I did back when I was a college player versus like what my son does at Ohio Wesleyan in terms of the practices and again so many more guys, right?

You teach out of, you teach out of the game.

And to your point about timeouts, right, you can't, in a game, you're not stopping the game and be like, hey, you gotta, you know, you gotta close out with this, you know, this in this particular way.

You just, you just can't, you just can't do that.

So you have to, you have to design a practice where again, you're, you're looking at those big picture things like you said, but you're not, you can't stop, you can't stop it every 15 seconds.

Every time you see something that maybe you would have liked the player to, to have done differently.

So, yeah, I get it completely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think it feeds into, do you want to play up and down?

Do you want to play with pace?

You know, and if you're going to do drill, drill, drill, set, set, set, then you probably want to be a slower team, you know, which is fine.

But it's hard to get up and down and play with pace.

If you're just going to do small segments and just run offense, do it again like that.

That just leads to a team that's a little bit slower, which is, you know, teams win that way.

I mean, Virginia won National title, but it's like that kind of blends in.

So I think sometimes you get caught between the two worlds, what you want to do and what you're doing in practice.

Absolutely.

How do you think about when you're heading into a season?

Obviously you have a style of play that you want to try to get your teams to do, and you have an ideal vision of what the teams that you're coaching, what you want those to look like.

How do you think about in your summertime planning as you're going into a season, knowing your personnel and what it looks like?

How do you think about just making those small adjustments in style of play?

Do you do a lot of that in the summertime or do you do it as you're getting into your season and kind of getting a better feel for who your guys are?

Especially when you have, whether it's freshmen or you guys got to transfer in or whatever it may be.

How do you just kind of take your system that you believe in and then tweak it season to season?

I think that's where like the eight additional practices we get now are definitely helpful.

So probably six of those eight we played to some degree.

So it might be five minute games, eight minute games, right down and back, down and back.

But it's like, I think I know what guys can do, but until you get onto the court in a practice, like, you have no idea.

And it's, I. I never want to handcuff somebody before they get an opportunity.

So we kind of give them ultimate green light freedom on offense, see what they can do.

Right?

We just preach some of the defensive stuff, right?

The effort, the sprinting, the boxing out, the O boarding.

And it's like, we can do those.

We can live with some of the other mistakes and kind of work through it.

And I was thinking that the other day, driving, like, we put in sets every year that are terrible.

They don't work right.

We run them twice and they don't work.

And it's like, I still think that's the way to go because you got to push the boundaries.

And if everything you do works to a T, it's like, all right, there's probably another level that you can put in and another look.

And it's like, we want to find stuff that doesn't work.

And no, all right, we tried.

It doesn't.

This is why.

As opposed to kind of handcuffing it.

So we kind of have big, like most teams, big building block things of what we want to do and ultimately play and you say, oh, man, this guy's a better shooter on the move than I thought.

Right.

This guy is a better ball handler.

Like, our starting center is a kid from Father Judge in Philly.

So they're really good.

I think they're nationally ranked.

Him in high school is more of a role player.

We get him here and it's like he's dynamic with the ball.

He's a good passer.

He can dribble it a little bit.

If we had handcuffed him coming in, it's like he kind of fits in that mold again.

But, like, we gave him some freedom and, you know, he's able to do a little.

Little more than I probably would have thought coming out of high school.

Yeah.

Which is interesting, too.

It goes back to the recruiting piece, right, Of.

Of when you watch a player in high school with their high school team.

You watch them in aau and sometimes you get a different feel for the player depending upon the environment that they're in.

And I think one of the things that's interesting too is, you know, when you recruit a high school player, right.

Most of the players that you're recruiting at the high school level who are good enough to play college basketball at, whether it's Division 3 or Division 2 or Division 1, NAI, whatever, whatever, usually those players are the best players on their team, or if they're on a really good high school team, maybe they're the second or third best player or whatever the case might be.

But to your point, a lot of times when they get to college, you've got to be able to adapt to.

In a lot of cases, it goes the other way, Right.

A player who's been a star has to adapt to maybe having a little less freedom to be able to do things, because again, everybody on your team could play.

And then it's interesting to kind of go the other way.

What you just described, where here's a guy who maybe looked like, hey, in high school, he's got two or three other teammates who are maybe a little bit better than him, or maybe they're, you know, they're high level Division 1 players, whatever the case might be.

And then you get him into, you know, you get him, you're like, man, this kid's been playing with, you know, high level guys and he's capable of doing a little bit more.

And then there's guys who work, right?

I mean, I'm sure you see it.

There's the guys.

The guys who have success ultimately, I think, at the college level are guys who Keep.

Who keep grinding, who keep working, who keep getting better from the time that they, they get there?

So, yeah, I think it's interesting to just look at a player who you may think coming in that, hey, they're, they're this.

And then all of a sudden you look at them like, whoa, they, they, they can do, they can do a little bit more.

There's always an adjustment period, I guess, for players going both ways.

Yep, 100%.

Yep.

All right, let me ask you a little bit about just, we talked to some degree about practice design, but tell me just what's your process for putting together a practice?

Are you sitting down in your office by yourself and writing out the practice plan?

Are you meeting with your assistant coach?

How do you go about putting together that practice plan on a day to day basis?

Let's say it's at this point in the season when we're in the middle of the year.

What does the practice planning process look like for you?

So you can.

My wife will attest, I'm a huge list guy.

So I just got this old notepad and literally, as I watch film, I'll just mark down things I think we need to do for the opponent, right?

So on that, I kind of come up with a practice plan, and usually it's too much.

Then it's like, all right, how do we pare it down?

What do we have to do?

Obviously, my assistants are not full time, which makes it a little more difficult.

But, you know, we'll text and talk, post practice, what do we got to do?

And then say, all right, here are the big, right fundamental segments.

Here's what we got to work on, and then ultimately get to game plan for the opponent we're about to play.

So practice looks semi similar every day.

Like, we try to talk to the guys.

There's only so many shooting drills we can do.

You got to take pride in how you do it.

How do you miss?

How do you make?

What are the adjustments you got to make?

You know, when you watch Steph Curry warm up, he's doing the same footwork stuff around the rim every day of his life.

So it's like, if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for us.

So just taking pride in those little things.

And you know, one of the hardest things to coach is we all say game speed shooting, but it's hard to actually do it.

Practice in, practice out, have the guys do it, have the guys hold each other accountable.

But no, we kind of start off big list, narrow it down, and Come up with things we need to do to try to get a win.

You typically have the same order of things that you like to start with.

Player development, shooting at the beginning and then go to defense and go to offense.

Or does it vary just depending on the needs of your team on a given day?

Yeah, we do 15 minutes of warm up before we stretch every day.

So it'll be a combination of big guard breakdown, some game shooting stuff, you know, some ball screen breakdown, certain things that we know are going to come in the game.

So we'll do stuff we call six pack and four pack.

So it's six one minute drills or four one minute drills.

You know, it might be baseline drive, 45 cut, drive middle, baseline cut.

And it's like those reps kind of become innate in them as they get older.

We're like, I think we're a pretty good off ball cutting team and a lot of that is doing four pack every day.

Guys get into it, it's quick, it's quick reps and then we're stretching and then we're getting into usually like a passing drill that we make competitive.

Some shell stuff playing up and down a little bit, you know, and then any breakdown we need to do at the end.

Yeah, it makes sense.

I mean, I think again when you have something that you, you do that are kind of your staples, right?

And, and you know that your guys then start to look at it and say, hey, I know that this is something that's important that fits into what we do every single day.

And, and you feel that.

And as you said then it makes you okay, we're working on these cuts every day and, and we, then we execute those in games.

That's really what it's all about.

Again is that translation from, from practice to.

From practice to game, which is what you're, what you're obviously looking for.

Do you guys film practice?

Do you watch your practices or how do you, how do you do that?

We film them early.

We don't have like the huddle camera, anything to do it.

Okay.

Every day.

So it becomes a bit of, it becomes a bit of a pain.

I wish we had more of that.

But we film them early.

Whenever we do it, it's always, I always leave.

And I'm like, yeah, it's what I thought it was, right?

We stink in transition D right now.

We'Re not doing this.

Like it is good to show the guides and talk through it, but I always, I never watch it.

I'm like, man, I completely miss that.

But we do Watch some early practice film.

Then once you're getting into scrimmages and games, it's just easier to watch those.

Yeah, for sure.

Makes sense.

Tell me a little bit about your game, prep for a specific opponent.

Well, how do you go about what's your process for scouting a team?

What are the things that you like to look for that are important to you as a coach to understand?

And then what do you share with your guys that you feel like it's important for them to know heading into a game?

Yeah, it is wild now with synergy, how easy it is to just go through and figure out what teams do really well.

So like, you know, are they spot up team or they transition, Are they.

Whatever it may be, I try to find where the, where the mismatch is going to be.

Right.

What do they do well that we don't?

What do we do well that they might not?

What do we got to work on?

What are the weaknesses going to be?

You know, do they have a player that we don't match up with grade?

And just try to say, all right, where can their strength in this game be that we can try to neutralize and then vice versa, you know, where are they going to try to take away our player or set and what we can.

What can we do for it?

And we'll watch, you know, a ton of film as a staff and then we try to make it super succinct for the guys.

Right.

So our scouting reports, it may say shooter drive, right?

You know, take away right hand.

So it's not a ton on there, but it's enough where they got to be able to do it when the game comes and, you know, actually impacted.

Yeah, it's always interesting when you think about what you want to know as a coaching staff and what's important to you and understanding and preparing for an opponent and then what are the actionable things that you can share with your players?

And it probably varies, right, from year to year.

Even guy to guy probably could take more of that.

Take more of the film or take more of the scouting report and, and be able to utilize it.

And then other teams maybe not.

Not so much.

And so I always think it's just again, interesting to hear what guys have to say about how do we share that with our players.

Because obviously you're going through and preparing and as you said, with synergy, right.

It's so easy, it's almost probably too easy in some cases.

Right.

You could just keep watching film of your opponents over and over and over again.

At some point you're like, man, I get, you know, you get to the point where maybe I just need to.

Maybe I just need to stop.

And I've seen, I've seen enough.

Yeah, exactly.

Where you just, you know, it becomes almost to the point where you're, where you're overthinking it and, you know, and then obviously you want your guys to be as prepared as possible from a, from a game standpoint.

Let's talk a little bit about the culture of your team and how do you go about building the relationships within your program?

So you building a relationship with your players, trying to foster relationships between your guys themselves.

Just how do you go about creating the type of culture and environment that you want to be in every single day with your guys, in practice, in the locker room, on road trips, in games?

How do you build that?

I mean, it's, it's a hard long term to keep it the same year in, year out.

Right.

So you have things that you're trying to emphasize, but you know, honestly, like, some years is a little bit better, some is a little bit different.

Right.

And it's not ever anything I think we preach as a staff.

I think part of it is a little out of your hands, which is why recruiting becomes so important.

Like, what are the personalities in the locker room?

How do they mesh?

This year we've been really lucky, where I think we had pretty early role acceptance, which I think is the hardest thing.

Like, that's everybody wants to play, everybody wants to contribute, not everybody can.

And I think when culture dips a little, it's just that it's guys that think they should play.

Nitpicking the guys that are playing.

I don't think it's more complicated than that, but it's really hard to fix.

Right.

So we've had some things in the past where, you know, guy 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 are all pretty similar.

And guy 12 could be like, well, I could be guy 9.

And you don't have a ton besides daily in practice to say that, well, this is why.

But in their mind, they always have a case for it, and it does become difficult at times.

So this year our biggest piece is, I think, the roles coming into the season.

If you would ask guys, who's our best scorer, who's our best defender, who's the best rebounder?

We had to go big.

Who would you play if we had to go small?

I would think for the most part, our guys would give you a pretty succinct list.

It wouldn't be Far off what we have.

And I think that's helped us, you know, have some success to this point.

And honestly, the guys that don't get in the game are as important to that, too.

Like, they know, all right, I'm here for practice, I'm here for scout team.

If I get an opportunity, that's great because, I mean, we did well, but I'm probably not going to play today.

So am I still energetic on the bench and am I still into it because I want us to win?

And that's easy to say.

It's really, really hard to do and get the buy in.

And it's just we're lucky this year where we have it, but we've had years where it's a little different and it is tough and it's.

I, as a coach, I don't know how to fix it on the fly in some ways when it isn't going well, unless you're just winning games and you can just tell them, hey, we're 24 and one, you got to deal with it.

Yeah, exactly.

How big do you like your roster to be?

What's the typical roster size you like to carry?

We are 15 right now.

We have one freshman who got hurt early in the season is out.

Last couple years we were creeping to 20 and I think it just created a little more of that gray area of who can play and who can't.

And I think it just starts to impact some stuff.

So I think 15, 16 is our goal going forward, in all honesty.

Yeah, it makes sense.

I. I think again, back to my son's situation.

And like I told you, he's a sophomore.

And last year, at the beginning of the year, he played in a game or two at the beginning, before there was a kid that was out that ended up coming back.

And then my son eventually realized that he wasn't going to play any minutes.

And it's funny how his, I don't even know how to say attitude was, but just the mindset, right, of the first eight to 10 games, like, he played in a couple of them, didn't play in others.

And you kind of go into the game and he's thinking, hey, you know, am I going to play?

You know, and then if he didn't play, then he was kind of.

He was kind of upset after he didn't play and you get this thing.

And then you got to like, the second half of the season, then he kind of realized he wasn't going to play.

And then it just kind of shifted to what you talked about, right, where, hey, now I'm part of the scout team.

Now I'm on the bench and all those things.

And he kept a good attitude the whole time.

And again, he's.

He's heard me talk to him since he was 8 years old about all the things that, you know, any coach would want their players to be able to do.

But it's just interesting, again, right, that you have to have guys that do accept what their role is.

And when guys accept what those roles are, they understand those roles, and everybody buys in.

That's when you have that team chemistry, and that's when you have.

Right, You're.

You're winning and things are going well, and that's when your bench.

Everybody's up and there's enthusiasm and it's.

And it's genuine, right?

It's.

Anybody can kind of, you know, we've all.

We've all been around teams, right, where it's.

Where.

Where it's fake, you know, where it's fake energy, and sometimes you do have to fake it to make it.

But I. I do think that when you get guys, like you said, when they buy in right from the beginning, it makes things a lot easier.

Do you have conversations with your guys preseason as you're heading towards game one in terms of, hey, here's what your role is, here's where we see you.

And again, not that you're locked into this is the way it's going to be for the rest of the season, but what does that process look like?

Because part of, for me, I always think of getting guys to buy into their role is making sure that they understand what you're thinking as a coaching staff, as opposed to trying to guess kind of what their role is or how many minutes they might play.

Yeah, so we did it in between our two scrimmages this year.

Again, I don't want to handcuff guys early.

So it's like, we're going to give you a scrimmage to try to do what you think you can do, right?

Then we get through that scrimmage, we have some film on you, and it's like, all right, this is kind of where we see you fitting.

It doesn't necessarily mean that's where it's going to end, but this is what we need from you today.

And the other thing that I think sometimes is hard for guys to truly accept is there isn't infinite minutes.

Right.

We have a couple guys that are all league caliber well, they may play 34 that night.

Right.

So that leaves six at a spot that you would be at.

Right.

If somebody else is a little ahead of you, that may be zero.

So that's.

I think they hear it.

I don't think they listen to that, where there is only so many minutes we can divvy up.

But I think this year, it's like, we had a couple guys where it's like, maybe they think they can play more.

And they were like, no, I think this is where I am, and if I work out, I'll get a crack.

And I think it was made that easier, made the kind of next step a little bit easier.

Yeah, no doubt about that.

I do think that buying in and being able to understand having guys who are realistic and understanding where they're at in the pecking order, again, it just.

It just fits, right?

And then when you have good guys that buy into it, and again, it goes back to what you talked about, right.

In terms of the recruiting and the relationships.

And it kind of gets back to my original question of building that connection, not just between.

You know, we often talk about, right.

How do we as a coach build relationships with our players?

But I think sometimes it's just the environment that you create allows the players to become closer and to be even more connected.

So when you think about your relationship with guys and, again, going even beyond the basketball court, what does that look like?

Do you have formal conversations with guys or where you're sitting down, or is it just, again, the, hey, we're talking every day before practice, after practice.

You know, I'm.

I'm.

I'm having those kinds of conversations with players when it comes to building those.

Building those kinds of relationships that you're looking for.

Yeah.

We try to tell recruits in the process, like, we will be.

We might not be the best coaches you're gonna talk to in the recruiting process.

We're.

We're gonna be the most successful.

Right?

You can text me, you can call me.

Good or bad, we're here for you no matter what.

Right.

24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The only time I'm a little hesitant is when I go on vacation.

I'm on the beach in sea aisle.

Maybe you don't need to text me something dumb unless it's serious.

But, right.

If I walk by the gym and two or three guys are shooting, and I'll go in and just say, hey, how was your weekend?

What's up?

Right?

You get to know their family, you can ask a little more in Depth.

Now they don't want to talk to me every day about stuff.

Like, I know there's a little bit of a boundary, but I think just building those relationships, you get to the court, like, we have a good group of seniors, and I have implicit trust in the five of them where they can come to me and say, hey, coach, we should take off Thursday.

We're all tired, and you're like, all right, cool, we're on it.

We try to build that where it's all of us doing it together, not just, this is my way and this is what we're doing.

This is why.

The toughest thing I have found the last couple years is internally the team holding each other accountable.

I feel like that has shifted probably the last five to six years, where when I played, when I coached early, when I was coaching at Albright, coaching at Pitt, Bradford guys just got on each other, right?

In open gym, they would just jump down each other's throat if somebody's laid on a rotation or one on one.

And for whatever reason, the last couple years, they're a little hesitant to do it.

So coming into this season, we try to make it a little more cut and dry.

Here's how you hold your teammate accountable, right?

We have three things they can say to a teammate if they're not doing it right, and that's it.

There isn't, you know, complaining if they're not right.

Like, you can say one of three things, and they gotta then take and say, all right, I gotta get better.

So I think that's been something that's definitely helped us is in the past.

I would say, you know, we got to hold each other accountable.

And I don't think I did a good enough job setting them up to succeed, knowing what to say.

So we've just tried to make it really simple, right?

And one of them is just effort.

So if you're not trying hard enough, I can turn you and say, yo, effort.

And you gotta.

You gotta do better.

Like.

But I'm not nitpicking you because it seemed like guys didn't.

They didn't respond to it.

They didn't like it, right?

When I was at Kings playing, like, we could get on each other all game and you leave and it's over.

So we just try to make that a little more simple.

I think that has helped us.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

I do think that depending upon your background in the game as a player, what role you've played on your teams, who your coaches are, your Teammates have been that that's not something that necessarily comes naturally to every player.

I think some guys do it well, and I think some guys maybe are a little bit more hesitant.

I think back, that's probably one of my biggest regrets.

When I think back again a long time ago to when I was a player, I think that's something that I always held myself to a really high standard, but I'm not sure that I always did a great job as a leader of doing that with teammates and trying to get guys to buy into what was happening.

And if I look back on my career, like I said, that's probably one of my biggest regrets.

And it just was something that, at the time, I think I wasn't necessarily always comfortable with that.

And now I look at it and I say, man, I wish.

I wish I would have done that more.

And to your point, I think as a coach, you try to facilitate that and try to make it a.

A space and have them to model, right, what that looks like.

You got to be able to show them that, hey, just because I say to Britt, hey, man, you gotta.

You gotta play harder, that doesn't mean that, you know, Brit, you're.

You know, I don't like you anymore.

And we're.

We're not, you know, we got.

We have some kind of rivalry.

It's just, hey, we all right?

We're all working for the same thing, right?

It's not.

It's not me versus you, and, hey, I'm working harder than you, and you got this and that.

It's.

It's.

Collectively, as a group, we have to hold ourselves to a standard so we can achieve what we want to achieve as a team.

And I think some guys have that mindset, and I'm sure you've seen this, right?

Some guys have that mindset naturally, and they're able to do it pretty easily.

And then other guys, takes a lot to be able to get them to that point where they're comfortable doing that.

Yeah, no.

And what we found is whatever's going on in the game, it usually gets back to one of the three things we talk about.

So if I get beat, straight line drive, either my effort wasn't good enough and I can't do it, or I'm incapable.

And, like, then I need to communicate and say, help.

So it's like, one of those two things can help fix it.

But if I didn't do either of them, like, I'm set up to fail.

So we found this year, like, we're getting beat.

We can say the guys, hey, effort.

And they're like, yeah, it's not good enough.

Right.

And then it kind of ramps up a little bit.

And I think it's made it just a little, little simpler to coach and a little easier for them to really, like I said, hold each other accountable and problem solve on the fly some.

Yeah, it makes sense.

I mean, I do think again when you can get that right, because now you have.

It's not just you and your coaching staff looking for some of those things.

Sometimes guys out on the floor can have a sense of what's going on and they may notice something that somebody on the sideline doesn't notice.

That's subtle, that can make a difference.

And I do think when you have that on the floor, but you also have it right in your locker room.

Like, guys know what's going on in the locker room in terms of who's bought in.

And maybe if you got a guy that's starting to stray a little bit or nitpick, as you talked about, guys can get to that person.

And if you have good leaders.

And it sounds like for your team this year especially, right, you got five guys that, as you said, you trust and you've built with them over the course of their four year career that now they're, they're extensions of what.

They're extensions of what you want from, from.

From the entire team.

Right.

It makes it a lot easier.

Yeah.

And we'll see it in, you know, we'll do a shooting drill, then practice and like somebody throws a bad pass, the other guy will kind of give him, give him one of the words and be like, no, it's not good enough.

So I definitely think it's, it's help because it does give you a baseline that you got to get done daily.

Yeah, no question about that.

All right, let me think.

Let me ask you this question.

When you think back to your first experience as the head coach, first time, right.

And getting in there, and then you look at where you are today, what's an area that you feel like you have grown the most in as a head coach from that first season way back when it Pitt Bradford to where you are now in terms of just again, take it whatever direction you want.

But what's an area that you feel like you've grown the most.

Last ex and O play?

Impact and more just effort.

Oh, boards like things that actually impact winning as opposed to, you know, do you run a play that looks pretty.

So for us it's like, all right, we have certain Things that we want to hit, right?

X amount of O boards, X amount of steals, limit turnovers.

So it's like that's a lot of that falls in like the effort piece, the sprinting piece.

Just a constant giving everything you have.

So I think early on, as a young head coach, like, it's so much they're just trying to piece through it.

So you just think, all right, if I can coach good offense, we're gonna be good.

And it's like in reality it's like, no, you need a lot of the effort pieces to come in and then the offense makes a difference.

So I think just understanding what can help impact having, having a chance to succeed in games.

All right, so let me ask you this.

So let's say I'm a first time head coach, whether it's at the college level, it's at the high school level.

And what I want my teams to do is play as hard as they possibly can.

I want my guys to give maximum effort.

What have you learned over the course of your career about coaching effort or getting the most effort out of your guys?

Getting them to play hard?

What are some keys to, to doing that?

How have you evolved as a coach to put a bigger emphasis on the playing hard part of it as opposed to the, the shiny new play part of it?

I think that's where stopping in practice, right?

If guys like, we call it the volleyball area, like no man's land.

So if you're jogging between the volleyball line and volleyball line, you're not impacting the play yet.

You haven't, oh board, you haven't gotten back.

You're in no man's land.

So it's like stopping in practice and then that's where film comes up.

You know, you put on a clip and it's like, is that as hard as you could run, right?

Did you crash smart and did you just run in there recklessly?

And players give you, you know, they give you honest feedback, they'll be like, no, I could have done this.

So it's like, all right, cool.

We're not gonna, you know, jump down your throat.

Like, cool, you got it.

Just don't do it again, right?

We're just trying to get better from it.

So I think that's where knowing what their kind of max level can be and kind of pushing them to get.

There, crazy to me again, how valuable the film is.

And right now I'm looking at film from parent standpoint, right?

I'm a parent coach of of my kids.

I have a daughter who's a sophomore in high school.

And I watch film with her all the time and going through and just doing exactly what you talked about.

Like, it's funny that you talk about between the volleyball lines and running hard.

It's one of the things I talked to her.

Like, she'll, she'll spend, you know, a shot will go up and she'll stand at the three point line and watch.

And I'm like, are you getting back on defense?

No.

Like, are you going to the offensive boards?

No.

I'm like, well then what are you doing?

And if you talk to her without the film, she'd be like, yeah, I'm going to, you know, I'm crashing the board.

So I'm, I'm getting back and I can show her multiple instances in the game where you're not.

And it's such, it's amazing.

Again, just, it's such a good teaching tool.

And I think that it's something that, if I was talking about coaching effort and I, again, I always like to hear what coaches have to say about, about teaching that.

I do think that the film doesn't lie when it comes to, when it comes to effort.

And clearly you can tell when you watch something is a guy sprinting between the volleyball lines.

That's a very simple thing to measure someone's effort.

And when you watch it with the player, like you said, they know, right?

It's very rare, especially when you get to the college level.

Guys understand when they make a mistake, right?

They're, they, they have a pretty good understanding of what you're trying to accomplish as a, as a team and what they're supposed to be doing as an individual player.

And then clearly guys have a pretty good understanding too of when they're, when they're playing hard and when they're not.

And to your point, the film, when you can just point it out to them and say, hey, is this the standard?

Is this what we're supposed to be doing?

Very clearly they know that it's not.

And then they can hopefully get out on the practice floor and correct it.

When you're watching film with guys are usually doing it before, right?

Before practice or when, when do you, when do you guys, when do you watch film with your guys?

Part of it is, are we practicing before?

The women are after.

So we try to, I try to be in the gym as little as we need to, right?

So if we're practicing six and women are four to six, we'll come in at five, 40, watch film, get to practice, right?

If we're at four and guys are running from class.

You know, we may do it right after practice, but I think in some ways less is more with that.

Right.

We don't need to come in an hour before, watch 30 minutes of film.

They go sit in the locker room and we come out and we practice.

Like we want to do it quick, succinct, right.

And when it's done, it's done.

You know, they're done.

They can go.

So we try to make it impactful, but not something where they're like, oh, we got to do film again today, and they're kind of rolling their eyes.

It's like they know there's going to be some value in it because it's quick.

Right.

It's the same.

And we're getting to the next thing.

Have you changed that since you first started as a coach?

Because I do think that over the last, the evolution of coaching from 20 years ago to today, in terms of having a better understanding, like you mentioned earlier, talking to your seniors, of, hey, guys are tired, maybe we don't need to practice on Thursday.

You go back 20 years ago, and that kind of conversation between players and coaches, I would say was pretty rare.

Whereas today I would say it's pretty common.

But just in terms of the amount of time both on the practice floor and in the film room, has that evolved for you?

You're thinking in terms of, hey, maybe it's better to keep guys fresh and go a little bit shorter versus I know, again, I, I, I've said this many times.

When I was first started coaching and we, I was an assistant varsity coach.

And this is when me and my two other coaches that coached with me, we were all young and single and didn't have families, you know, like, it just.

And we practiced for like three and a half hours with these high school kids.

And I look back on it as we went along, and I'm like, what were we getting out of those kids in the last, in that last however much time you want to say.

90 minutes.

Getting out of them.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, what are we, what are we getting?

What are we getting out of that?

So as your thinking on that evolved over time, as you've been a head coach, do you find yourself doing less stuff on the floor and trying to be more efficient?

I guess is my question.

Yeah, I mean, we don't, there's not a lot of hangout time at our practice.

You know, like probably most colleges, it's drill to drill.

We're moving right.

And that's been the benefit of 15 guys on the roster is, you know, we'll do it what we call Holy Cross ball screen drill.

It's just, you know, a daily rep ball screen drill.

And I'll have it on the plan for six.

We get to minute four and it's like, man, we've all got eight reps of it.

Like, we're good.

Let's just go to the next step, right?

And just saying, all right, you know, we, we can move on.

We've.

We've done enough of that today.

Let's get to the next piece.

So honestly, I don't know if we've gone two hours in the last month, right?

We get to like 1:40 and it's like, all right, let's do a shooting drill and get out of here.

Like, we're good, right?

And we have some guys that are playing big minutes, you know, when they're, they're invested, like they do their own film work.

Like the kid.

We have E.J.

finney.

I've never met somebody who's watched more film now.

Like, he'll just watch random games.

He'll watch, you know, his buddy at Williams played Bates or something.

And like, we're on the bus, he's already watching the game back.

So he's the other side.

Like, sometimes you gotta scale him back because it's like he's done so much.

He'll know the other team sets and he's like, we got to cover this, this, and this.

It's like, ej, you might be able to do it.

The other guy's minds will explode.

So we got to pick two or three and go from there.

But it's a good group.

And yeah, he's looking to get into a GA gig.

Yeah, we do.

We got a couple guys looking to get into coaching.

So it is, it's like, I'd rather have that than the other way.

And the film thing, some guys are gonna watch it, some aren't.

Like our probably best defender this year, he came in because he was gonna be late for practice.

So I came in to watch film with him prior, and I'm like, have you watched any yet?

He's like, no.

He goes, you know, I'll guard him.

And I'm like, okay.

You know, it's like he's an elite on ball defender.

He gives maximum effort.

I'm like, cool.

Like, I'm not gonna fight you with it.

Like, it works for you is what it is.

And like, he's just gonna go out there and play really hard.

And usually good Stuff happens.

Yeah, Process, right?

You got the, the process.

He's gonna get, he's gonna get there.

Everybody's, Everybody's process is a, everybody's process is slightly different.

So you figure out how you're gonna, you know, how you're gonna do it and what works, what works for you as a player.

And, and I think again that that speaks to your flexibility as a coach.

Right?

You go back again, this is the evolution of the coaching.

When I was 29, I probably would have lost my mind.

Yeah, for sure.

Lost my mind.

Been like, you don't watch film, you know, you're not going to start and do something stupid.

And it's like, now we played him and he played great.

And isn't that, isn't that the end result is just kind of get the.

Best out of them for sure, right?

And it goes to, I always think, right, it, it comes back to whether you want to call it relationships, whether you want to call it understanding who your players are and then collectively understanding who your team is and what they need.

I do think that, you know, that's the, there's obviously some science to coaching in terms of the X's and O's and the strategy and all that kind of stuff.

But then you have the feel of it, right?

Like, what does this guy need versus what does this guy need?

And you have to really kind of try to understand those aspects of it.

And that's how you end up getting the most out of each individual guy and then collectively out of your team is just having a better understanding.

And it's something that, I think when you look back at the coaching profession that it used to be, this is the way we do it.

Everybody has to fit into that box.

And if you don't fit into that box, then like you said, then there can be whatever.

There's consequences for not fitting into the box.

And I think now guys are much more understanding of.

You gotta, you gotta figure out what works for, for each individual player and for, and for your team.

And again, ultimately to get to the outcome that you want there, there's different paths to get there as opposed to just that one path.

No.

And I think we as a staff, if we make mistakes, we let them know, right?

So if I mess up teaching a drill, it's like, ah, man, I got five push ups, so I'll jump down and do them.

And literally we won on the road at Shenandoah.

I don't know, two Sundays ago and I started and post game I said, listen, I wasn't Great coaching today.

Like, I just couldn't.

We tried some adjustments.

I didn't love how they work.

Like, we were just a little clunky on offense to the last three minutes.

We kind of hit a rhythm, and it's like, yo, I wasn't good enough.

I'll be better.

And I think when you do those kind of things, they're like, all right.

It's not just our fault all the time.

Like, they can take some blame, and, you know, it's like we just keep working at it and try to be the best we can come February.

Yeah.

That human vulnerability, I think, is valuable.

I do think that when players see that it's not just always on them, that a coaching staff takes.

I don't know if even responsibility, but just recognizes that we're all.

We're all fallible, we all make mistakes.

I think that there's.

I think there's definite value.

I think there's definite value in that for.

For both sides, in terms of just putting everybody in the same group.

Right.

The.

The danger with any team.

Right, is where it becomes us against them.

That's what I always worried about as a player.

It's what I always worried about as a.

As a coach, and is if you get in a situation with your team where it's players over here, the coaching staff over here, and it's us against them, even though both sides want to win, but they.

There's.

There's conflict and they disagree with how to do it, that's when things get dangerous.

And I just think that by.

By being vulnerable and.

And recognizing that as a coaching staff, we do occasionally make mistakes, and there's things that maybe we would have done differently if we had a chance to do them over again to.

To recognize that and to.

And to, again, just admit that that's the case.

I think it's tremendously valuable for a team, you know, moving forward.

Yeah, no, we've been lucky.

Our guys, you know, we've won a couple games where our centers have played a combined 12 minutes, because it just doesn't.

You know, you're just better with guards.

You need to play quicker.

You need to switch teams pressing, and it's like, they're good with that.

There's days we got to go a little bigger, and I think guys have been bought in with whatever it takes in that particular moment.

And I think, Tori, that.

That vulnerability is us as a group just.

All right, this is what we need.

Cool.

Let's all buy in and just keep going.

Yeah, absolutely.

When everybody's on the row in the boat and they're right in the same direction.

I think it's, I mean, again, that's what it's.

That's what it's all about.

All right, I want to ask you a final two part question here, Brit.

Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

Yeah, I mean, biggest challenge.

We're working on it now.

Right.

We've had what I would say are some pretty good teams here.

We haven't been able to break through.

Right.

We've probably fallen below our baseline of success.

So we haven't gotten to the playoffs.

We haven't done some of the things that I think if you asked me six years ago, it's like, yeah, we definitely can do that.

So the next couple years, it's like, can we, can we finish out this year the right way and just keep taking it practice by practice, game by game, rep by rep and getting better?

And then every, you know, like, I'm in the office today and I love it.

Like, there isn't.

Somebody told me the one time, like when people ask about my job, like they're actually interested.

They're not just saying it because they're at, you know, a wedding and they're just doing it for small talk.

Like they're actually curious.

So.

Right.

I've been really lucky where I'm invested in what I do.

I like going to work.

Right.

I don't love the long bus trips and losses at times, but it is an enjoyable career and opportunity.

And it's, you know, we're like, our athletic hallway is awesome.

Everybody we work with is great and you just kind of have that passion and that fire.

And part of it is just working with college kids and kind of helping them through those four years and get to the next step.

So now really lucky opportunity to do it and, you know, just really thankful that be at E Town and coaching this group this year.

So that's good stuff.

And I think that's that that sums it up well, both our conversation and, and what it's all about.

Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share.

How can people connect with you, Find out more about what you're doing with your program, share social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

Yeah.

So email more br towntown Edu on the website too.

Let me make sure I got Twitter down X profile.

Probably the easiest one is just at britmore Underscore and those probably the two easiest ways to get a hold of me.

You know like access will do a lot of honestly recruiting reach out high school and then email get a good amount of those too.

So you know we love connecting with high school guys, AAU guys and just kind of starting those relationships.

Brit, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule this morning to join us.

Really appreciate it.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

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