Shownotes
Michael Rejniak has been the GM and Head Coach of the We are D3 TBT Team since 2018. The team competes annually in the TBT and is comprised of all former Division 3 All-Americans who are currently playing professionally.
On this episode Coach Rej and Mike talk about We Are D3’s run to the semifinals of the 2025 TBT showcasing the exceptional talents of former Division III players. We discuss the impact of this achievement, emphasizing the significance of providing opportunities for underrepresented athletes to shine on a larger stage. Throughout our conversation, we delve into the intricacies of preparing for high-stakes games, the importance of team dynamics, and the mental fortitude required to navigate the pressures of competitive basketball. Rejniak also reflects on the invaluable lessons learned from the tournament experience, both for himself and his players, highlighting the importance of relationships and personal growth within the sport. Ultimately, this episode serves as a testament to the former D3 players and the enduring spirit of teamwork that drives their success.
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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Michale Rejniak, the GM and Head Coach of “We Are D3”.
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Transcripts
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Speaker B:Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Michael Raniak, the GM and head coach of We Are D3.
Speaker B:Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.
Speaker B:It's Mike Cleansing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight, but I am pleased to welcome back to the hoopets pod coach Reg Michael Raniak.
Speaker B:We are D3.
Speaker B:Fresh off a run to the TBT semi finals.
Speaker B:My man.
Speaker B:All right, well, Reg, welcome back, man.
Speaker B:Take two.
Speaker A:Thanks, man.
Speaker A:You know, I.
Speaker A:You're my good luck charm.
Speaker A:We got to do this, like, right before the tournament run again next year.
Speaker A:Like, let's put it on the couch.
Speaker A:I need you.
Speaker A:I need you.
Speaker A:No, it's a good.
Speaker A:It was a good time.
Speaker A:Thanks for having me back on.
Speaker A:Look forward to chatting up with you, man.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:So let's start here and just give us an idea of an overview of what the experience was like for you and your guys.
Speaker B:We'll dive into more of the details game by game, and some of the particulars and specifics.
Speaker B:But just when you think about the totality of the experience, what's something that you personally took away from it?
Speaker A:For me and the guys in the division, kind of for us, it was.
Speaker A:It really was like one of those, like, kind of runs that was, like, kind of crazy, you know, and it was, like, life changing, like, for me, and kind of like, you know, you know, all of a sudden, like, I.
Speaker A: on my phone and there's like,: Speaker A:Like, what?
Speaker A:Like, that's.
Speaker A:That's crazy.
Speaker A:But, like, you know, like, so, you know, it was.
Speaker A:You know, it helped the guys, you know, make some more money in terms of contracts and things like that.
Speaker A:It helped us as a brand.
Speaker A:Kind of like, now we're talking to people that weren't listening before, you know, so, like, it's.
Speaker A:It's very helpful on.
Speaker A:On all fronts, and it allows us to kind of grow our platform and, you know, kind of what.
Speaker A:What we've been doing.
Speaker A:And, you know, it's just been.
Speaker A:It's just been awesome.
Speaker A:And, you know, it's.
Speaker A:It was funny.
Speaker A:Like, you know, you take three weeks to do the tbt, and then all of a sudden, like, I get home to relax, and then I go to my.
Speaker A:My wife and kids.
Speaker A:We go to Disney World in Universal.
Speaker A:So it's, like, really just starting to settle down, like, right now.
Speaker A:But, like, you weren't relaxed.
Speaker B:You weren't relaxing at Disney World and Universal with your kids.
Speaker B:That is not a.
Speaker B:No, that's not a.
Speaker B:That's not a relaxing vacation where you're laying by the pool, let's put it that way.
Speaker A:No, it is not.
Speaker A:It is like waiting in the sweltering heat of 96 degrees while.
Speaker A:While I'm waiting for the Donkey Kong ride that lasts 30 seconds.
Speaker A:That's what that was.
Speaker A:But no, like.
Speaker A:But it was.
Speaker A:It was a good run.
Speaker A:And, like, you know, now it's starting to hit me a lot of it, you know, and kind of, you know, what we were able to do and kind of look back and, you know, very blessed and fortunate and, you know, we got the awards, and that was nice, too, as well.
Speaker A:But, you know, it was.
Speaker A:I was really happy for the team, for sure.
Speaker B:In the moment, as the run is taking place and you just briefly hit on it in terms of the recognition, the ability to maybe get into some rooms that you couldn't get into before, the ability of your guys to be able to capitalize, to make some more money playing overseas professionally.
Speaker B:Is any of that.
Speaker B:Are you guys talking about that, Coaches and players talking about that together while the run is going on?
Speaker B:Or is that something that you're just focused on?
Speaker B:Hey, we're just working on.
Speaker B:We got.
Speaker B:We got to focus on the next game.
Speaker B:We're just trying to win.
Speaker B:How much of it is.
Speaker B:Big picture.
Speaker B:How much of it is just game by game?
Speaker A:It literally was game by game.
Speaker A:I really, you know, like, because to win that tournament, it is so difficult.
Speaker A:It is.
Speaker A:It is an NCAA tournament run in a span of a shortened amount of.
Speaker A:And it's with pros, so it's even more intense.
Speaker A:You know, it doesn't.
Speaker A:What I did, you know, what I tried to do.
Speaker A:Like, I was very blessed to have a, you know, Final Four run, you know, with.
Speaker A:With Coach Hickson at Amherst and.
Speaker A:And, you know, Goldie Goldsmith, who you had on, you know, from Middlebury, he was.
Speaker A:He was with me on that.
Speaker A:On that run, too, as well.
Speaker A:I just remember I was in my 20s at that time, mid-20s.
Speaker A:I just remember when.
Speaker A:When this was going on now, this time, I was like, I am going to embrace every second of this because it's.
Speaker A:It was kind of just trying to stay in the now and go game by game because, like, runs like that are very difficult to kind of replicate because you need.
Speaker A:You do need a lot of luck, and you.
Speaker A:You need good players, and you need good coaches, and you need good support all around.
Speaker A:So a lot of things need to align, and I just remember just kind of, you know, trying to embrace it moment by moment, game by game.
Speaker B:All right, for people who didn't listen to your first episode, first of all, go back and listen to the first episode.
Speaker B:But if you didn't listen to the first episode and you're listening to Reg for the first time, just walk everybody through the process for putting together the roster.
Speaker B:What's that like?
Speaker B:How do you guys put together who's on the team and figure that part of it out?
Speaker A:Yeah, so the whole we are D3 brand is.
Speaker A:Is we fill this niche between D3 and professional basketball.
Speaker A:And we're kind of in that realm, in kind of that realm where, you know, you know, back around eight years ago, wanted to start.
Speaker A:You know, I had a lot of players, you know, when I coached Division 3 that wanted to go play pro and to kind of give them a platform to play pro and to get better contracts.
Speaker A:Because everybody says D3 can't play or D3 is glorified intramurals and things like that.
Speaker A:So we wanted to provide a platform where they could prove themselves to better contracts, better teams, opportunities with agents.
Speaker A:And TBT gave us that platform where it's the.
Speaker A:You know, now it's like some $1.5 million tournament winner take all, you know, and there's 64 teams and you kind of battle it out in the summers.
Speaker A:But it's literally we're the only brand that really caters to Division 3.
Speaker A:The rest, like, we're going against heavy hitters of the blue bloods like Kansas and Syracuse and Yukon and all these kind of other big, big fish, and we're like the little fish trying to swim upstream.
Speaker A:So, you know, it's been going on for like, kind of now eight years, and we've kind of expanded the brand where, you know, we run pro combines now, you know, which helps kind of provide some more opportunities.
Speaker A:We got a lot of things on the horizon now with, like, agencies and so on so forth, and so just has continued to grow, you know, kind of as the years have passed.
Speaker A:But, you know, it's just been one of those things where, you know, we've just kind of filled that void to.
Speaker A:For Division 3 basketball players, you know, they just gotta play.
Speaker A:You know, a lot of them now kind of are portaling up.
Speaker A:You know, I don't know if that's even a right term anymore, but like portaling up to Division 1 and that's the kind of guys take, you know, where they kind of go up to Division 1 and we kind of help.
Speaker A:Help kind of on their journey.
Speaker A:But, you know, kind of we have kind of established ourselves as.
Speaker A:As the premier brand in those regards.
Speaker A:So it's been.
Speaker A:It's been a heck of a ride.
Speaker A:But, you know, the main thing is we're providing opportunities for players that.
Speaker A:To get looks where otherwise they might not.
Speaker B:Take me into the Mindset going into game one.
Speaker B:What are you thinking about as the tournament is beginning?
Speaker B:Clearly, as you said, you know what the road looks like, you know, the competition, who may or may not be ahead of you as you continue to advance.
Speaker B:But what's the.
Speaker B:We know what the scouting report looks like for a college team and the preparation that goes into that.
Speaker B:What is the preparation for game one?
Speaker B:Do you even know what your first opponent looks like heading into it?
Speaker B:Do you have any idea what that, what that's going to be?
Speaker B:Just talk to me about the preparation for the, for the tournament.
Speaker A:So like Game one, like when you're playing established brands, you can kind of look at film from the past and you know, say kind of know their style.
Speaker A:But the team we played, Lanes ho, they were mostly out of Central New York, very well coached.
Speaker A:They all division ones.
Speaker A:A lot of them played at Villanova and you know, Buffalo and, and things along those lines, kind of that, that area but with, but had Central New York ties and they were playing for a cause which was Lane's Hope.
Speaker A:And they used to be Jimmer Fredette's team.
Speaker A:So they kind of had that backing behind them.
Speaker A:And so it was a, essentially an all star team put together.
Speaker A:So when you go against an all star team, it's kind of like AAU essentially, right?
Speaker A:Like is more personnel driven than anything else.
Speaker A:So like when it came to our scout, you know, we clipped up clips of all their players.
Speaker A:You know, we have access to all their film and their pro film and now YouTube and you got synergy.
Speaker A:And so like we're kind of doing our research and you know, really a lot of it was prep work on tendencies like what does a player like to do?
Speaker A:And kind of made it like five essential, like one on one matchups, like, and kind of like saying like this your responsibility.
Speaker A:These are our kind of tendencies.
Speaker A:And this is kind of what we're focusing in on from a prep viewpoint for them because it's first game, you don't have another game to kind of look at new team, kind of, you know, Joe Cremo from Villanova, very talented player.
Speaker A:So I got, we got to know exactly what he likes to do in these scenarios and how he likes to act and, and kind of, you know, move without the ball and move within the ball.
Speaker A:And then you got Charlie Markart who's a D2 kid coming out of Long island, but he just led the Canadian League in three point percentage and you know, very efficient score.
Speaker A:So you kind of like piece together a scout report that way.
Speaker A:You know, and really, you kind of really focus on them a little bit, but really, you're more towards kind of what we do and kind of.
Speaker A:Kind of be more prepared for what.
Speaker A:What we got to be doing.
Speaker A:We were fortunate that week where we played two scrimmages and we won both of them.
Speaker A:So with those scrimmages, they really.
Speaker A:We learned a lot about ourselves, and I learned a lot about the team, and coaches learned about kind of like how to interact and, you know, what we got to be doing there.
Speaker A:That was very beneficial to prepare us for Game one, which is a lot of pressure because you've got it in a tournament like this.
Speaker A:You got to get momentum, otherwise the band aid gets ripped off really quickly.
Speaker A:And we've been there many times, and it took us like, you know, years to get our first win because there is a. I do think there's a formula for what we do and how we got to do it to get to where we're winning.
Speaker A:And I think this year it just all came together.
Speaker A:But that was a lot of pressure.
Speaker A:Last year we got a win.
Speaker A:So, you know, this year you can't go bouncing out in the first round.
Speaker A:You got.
Speaker A:You got the favorable seed.
Speaker A:So you want to make sure that, you know, year two, you know, you can continue to kind of earn your stripes here.
Speaker B:In terms of year to year, how consistent do you try to be with style of play and philosophy of how you're trying to go about doing things?
Speaker B:In terms of, okay, this is what we want to do offensively, as you said.
Speaker B:Yeah, you're trying to get a discovery report on the other team, but you're also trying to make sure that you got the things that you want to do, that you got those things down.
Speaker B:How much of that is a carryover from year to year.
Speaker B:And guys having an understanding who played on the roster the year before have an understanding of what you want to do as a coaching staff and what you're trying to accomplish as a team.
Speaker A:A lot of it.
Speaker A:A lot of it is.
Speaker A:And that's where we get our edge, because it's almost like I construct the team like it's an NCAA team.
Speaker A:So I got my returners that are very well seasoned bets like a Ty Nichols or Mark Sas or Demetrius Underwood.
Speaker A:Then we got a slew of guys in the middle that maybe have been with us one or one year, and then we got some newbies coming in.
Speaker A:In order for us to keep doing what we're doing, I gotta keep things relatively consistent.
Speaker A:So our play style, you Can I can tell you, like, it's all read and react stuff with different rules and things like that, but it's like every look down the court it looks different because there's different reads and these are pros that can do different things and we have our philosophical tendencies that we do, so that stays consistent.
Speaker A:But as far as kind of like the play and how it looks, we've instituted now like three years in a row where it's looked different year to year because the, the players kind of figure out different nuances of how to play with one another.
Speaker A:And you know, where a player likes to get the ball to score versus where they're uncomfortable.
Speaker A:So we kind of, you know, there's little tweaks here and there.
Speaker A:Like the packages we call like, you know, your, your out of bounds packages will look different.
Speaker A:Sideline stays the same because we're just trying to get the ball in, whatever.
Speaker A:But you know, overall, like, maybe an after timeout might be different, but as far as like who we play and what we do and, and how we play, that's, that's really stayed consistent.
Speaker A:Like we're not a prototypical D3 team where a lot of people will get thinking like, hey, they're just gonna shoot a ton of threes and if they shoot the threes, then, then, then they're going to win the game and if they don't, then they're going to lose.
Speaker A:That's really not what we, what we do.
Speaker A:We're actually like just average three point shooters, quite frankly, 32% for the tournament.
Speaker B:I was looking as I was reading.
Speaker A:Stats, nothing crazy, you know, and really our whole philosophy was like, hey, like we're going to take this shot if we get it.
Speaker A:But that's not really what we're looking to do.
Speaker A:You know, really it starts with us on the defensive end and I think that's where, you know, Wichita State, when we played them, they, I thought they did a great job on us defensively and you know, we kind of, you know, chose a, a bad day to have a bad day.
Speaker A:But you know, I think like that's where, you know, offensively and defensively, those.
Speaker A:I think we finally figured out kind of what works for our personnel and what we're about.
Speaker A:And it kind of really showed this year.
Speaker B:How many practices do you guys have leading up into this?
Speaker A:Let's see.
Speaker A:We do a lot of zoom calls.
Speaker A:So like, because everybody's coming in from overseas, you know, when it comes to July, so like we do kind of zooms, you know, kind of discussing, you know, tendencies and what we got to expect.
Speaker A:I'll send them some stuff.
Speaker A:I'll send them the scout way prior once we find matchups.
Speaker A:And so, like, we try and do as much prep work as possible.
Speaker A:I bring in the guys a week prior, and really it's more like, so that they can get acclimated to the area, but also acclimated with playing with one another.
Speaker A:And typically, our structure is we'll do a teaching practice in the morning, and then we'll let the chains off in the afternoon and they'll play.
Speaker A:In this case, it was scrimmages and things like that to kind of really start to, you know, where we can teach and kind of go back and forth.
Speaker A:But week prior, so, like, you're looking at maybe realistic, like, actual teaching practices, maybe about four or five.
Speaker A:So, like, that's where having the returners coming in really help.
Speaker A:And then obviously, you can get more momentum as the tournament goes on.
Speaker A:So, like, you can just get past, you know, game one.
Speaker A:Well, then you got two more practices, you know, and then you get past game two, and then you got two more.
Speaker A:Now you start to, like, almost, like, have an actual season where you can really start to kind of do some really cool stuff.
Speaker B:So watching the team from the outside and seeing the way that they play together, I know that one of the things, right, that coaches, I don't want to say struggle with, but something that every coach wants to have their team buy into is the idea that, excuse me, that no one cares who scores.
Speaker B:No one cares what their role is.
Speaker B:Everyone executes what needs to be done in order to help this team succeed, right?
Speaker B:That's the coach's dream of.
Speaker B:That's the kind of team that you want to coach, where every guy buys into the role that the coaching staff lays out for him.
Speaker B:And just watching it from the outside, that's exactly what this team looks like, that everybody slots into their role.
Speaker B:Everybody's comfortable doing what they do.
Speaker B:And so I'm just wondering if my perception as an outsider, watching that team, do those pieces fit together as smoothly on the inside as it looks like from the outside?
Speaker A:There's a lot of management in the.
Speaker A:In the.
Speaker A:In the locker room, like.
Speaker A:Like.
Speaker A:Because, like, you know, we try and get to that point, right?
Speaker A:And I think every coach wants that.
Speaker A:I think when it comes to getting guys to play together, like, when I'm watching the games and I've watched, you know, some of the games quite frank, I haven't, you know, fully watched, you know, some of Them, because I can't listen to myself talk half the time.
Speaker A:But the.
Speaker A:They played so fluid together because they were playing for a common goal.
Speaker A:Like for these guys, these players, for my staff and I to play on Fox Sports and to continue to win, that provides them a platform that they've never had.
Speaker A:So, like, that is enticing in and of itself.
Speaker A:And when we're winning, what are you gonna say?
Speaker A:Like, when we're taking down these tournaments, it's very easy.
Speaker A:If we got bounced first round, they'll come with torches and they'll burn my house and the staff's, you know, house down.
Speaker A:But, like, it's, you know, it's that week of practice that's, That's a bonding moment for us.
Speaker A:But then when game one happens, you know, then roles start to get established, you know, so you have to talk.
Speaker A:You know, Coach Hickson at Amherst used to always say, you got to weed your garden daily.
Speaker A:And these are pros, so you got to do a lot of weeding.
Speaker A:A lot of weeding.
Speaker A:And like, honest communication.
Speaker A:And they might not agree with it, they may not understand it, but they at least.
Speaker A:And, and I always say this, it won't be equal, but will treat you fair.
Speaker A:And I think, like, that's, I think they respect that, you know, and we'll have honest conversations and, you know, if they don't, you know, disagree with it, if they disagree with, then they're more than welcome to go to other teams and things like that.
Speaker A:But at least here they know that we treated them fair.
Speaker A:And I think like, that's where that playing together, they genuinely like each other.
Speaker A:We do a lot of personality vetting when we're bringing guys onto the team because you bring in one bad apple, it's going to ruin the whole thing real quickly.
Speaker A:So we do a lot of kind of.
Speaker A:It's almost like my staff and I almost like interview these players.
Speaker A:And these are guys that we talk to their college coaches and we talk to their pro coaches and how do they handle themselves?
Speaker A:And like, what do they do when.
Speaker A:Certain.
Speaker A:When they don't get the time that they want or they do and how do they react in certain moments?
Speaker A:So we do a lot of that on the backside.
Speaker A:So I'm pretty confident in their personalities prior.
Speaker A:So, like, they kind of know what to expect.
Speaker A:And you know, we, we always.
Speaker A:Year in, year out, you're.
Speaker A:If you're a returner, your role could change from one year to another year, you know, but, you know, it's one of those things where these are guys that are true pros and, you know, kind of.
Speaker A:They're.
Speaker A:They're really good, you know, personalities to have.
Speaker A:So it's easy when they're playing.
Speaker A:We do a lot of that vetting prior to them even taking the quarter, inviting them to the team, quite frankly.
Speaker B:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker B:For sure.
Speaker B:All right, let's go to game two against Bayheim's Army.
Speaker B:Obviously, a huge win beating the alum from Syracuse.
Speaker B:I want to frame my question about that game around the Elam ending and what it's like to coach in a game with the Elam ending.
Speaker B:What does that feel like?
Speaker B:Is the strategy different?
Speaker B:How do you think about that as a coach?
Speaker B:As opposed to the way we normally coach, right where you got the clock, and when the clock hits double zero, the game's over.
Speaker B:The El amendment, obviously, is different.
Speaker B:Talk to me about how it's different from you, for.
Speaker B:From your perspective on the sideline.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:If you've never coached in it, It's.
Speaker A:It's like, crazy.
Speaker A:It makes players and.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And rightfully so.
Speaker A:Coaches do crazy things because when that clock hits, like, four minutes, you.
Speaker A:You add eight points to the winning score.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So if you're a team that's down, you gotta, like, really kind of really lock in defensively.
Speaker A:If it's.
Speaker A:If you're up, then you want to continue to do what you're doing, you can't.
Speaker A:What I've seen happen, you can't go like hero ball and just start chucking a ton of threes.
Speaker A:You'll lose.
Speaker A:You will lose.
Speaker A:You gotta stay focused.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:It's a different mindset.
Speaker A:It's almost like the three quarters in.
Speaker A:In tbt, you play four quarters, which, by the way, basketball should.
Speaker A:All levels should go to four quarters.
Speaker A:But anyways, I digress.
Speaker A:So it's like three quarters is like your normal game.
Speaker A:Then the mindset of fourth quarter as kind of the first up until leading up into Elam ending is a little bit different.
Speaker A:And then Elam ending is different.
Speaker A:Basically, all the tools I've been trained and coached with my entire career, stretching out the clock, fouling, everything, like, all the tools that we all learn are basically thrown out and basically said, all right, you better hope you've talked about this with your team so that they know they can coach themselves essentially on the court as well.
Speaker A:Because furthermore, if you're in the bonus, if the other team is in the bonus and you foul, okay, they not only get one.
Speaker A:They get one free throw, but then they also get possession of the ball, which is.
Speaker A:Which really penalizes you, and you can't do much.
Speaker A:So it's one of the.
Speaker A:When we were going into that Elam ending against Bayheim's army, we talked about it, like, we almost.
Speaker A:Against Lane's Hope, and this showed up again down the road when we played Fail Harder, we were up big against Lane's Hope, and we started doing some crazy stuff, crazy stuff where it's like, wow.
Speaker A:And it happened later.
Speaker A:But I think because of that, we were a lot more composed against, against Bayheim's Army.
Speaker A:And, you know, in that game, I saw one of, like, the most special performances I've ever seen in my, you know, coaching career by Ty Nichols.
Speaker A:He was the best player on the court versus all of Syracuse, and hit game winner.
Speaker A:And every shot he took, I was like, that's in.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:Like, it's like, it's, like, easy as a coach when that's going on.
Speaker A:But, like, what I knew at halftime of that game when we, we didn't look well, I feel like we were down 13.
Speaker A:We came back.
Speaker A:I knew when we were.
Speaker A:Let's see, we out rebounded them or.
Speaker A:Sorry, we out rebounded them.
Speaker A:We had, like, three or four more turnovers than them, and we shot the ball worse than them, and we were only down by a couple or something like that.
Speaker A:We're down by six or something.
Speaker A:So I knew, like, when looking at that box score at halftime, I was like, we have a chance here because we didn't play our best, and we took their best shot and we're only down 6.
Speaker A:We should be down by, like, 90.
Speaker A:So, like, I knew kind of.
Speaker A:And that's how I felt against UConn, too.
Speaker A:Very similar kind of type of deal.
Speaker A:But so, like, I knew going into that second half, if we came out and punched him in the mouth, I felt like they would start to bend a little bit.
Speaker A:And we did.
Speaker A:Like, we started kind of doing some things that the I, I felt they weren't ready for.
Speaker A:And, and so, like, you know, we were ended up, you know, kind of kind of shocking the world there.
Speaker A:There was a great headline on the Syracuse newspaper, which I, I, I printed out, and I'm going to frame it, and it says, literally devastating, but it goes D. And then the three vestating.
Speaker A:Freaking awesome.
Speaker B:That's awesome.
Speaker A:That's awesome.
Speaker A:And then Buddy Bayheim's, like, walking off the court, it says, it hurts really bad.
Speaker A:Oh, it was beautiful.
Speaker A:But nothing better than great locker room material, for sure.
Speaker B:All right, so clearly, anybody who saw the ending of that game, the game winning shot, the reaction of your team?
Speaker B:What's the locker room like after that game?
Speaker B:When you guys walk into the locker room collectively as a group after winning that game, what are the conversations?
Speaker B:Like, what do you say to the team?
Speaker B:What's the mood?
Speaker B:Obviously, you're.
Speaker B:Obviously you're happy, but, yeah, now I gotta think that's giving you confidence, right?
Speaker A:Like, hey, 100%.
Speaker B:Yeah, we just knocked off.
Speaker B:We just knocked off Syracuse.
Speaker B:Let's go.
Speaker B:Let's go chase another Big east team.
Speaker A:Let's.
Speaker A:Let's get another one, and let's.
Speaker A:Let's win the region.
Speaker A:Because I felt like Bayheim's army was predicted to win the whole thing.
Speaker A:And so, like, I knew when we went toe to toe with them, I knew we had something special.
Speaker A:And for us, as a program, we really lack that signature win.
Speaker A:So to get that was.
Speaker A:Was awesome.
Speaker A:In Syracuse, like, six years prior, I lost to them on free throws in a heartbreaker.
Speaker A:So it was kind of like, you know, it was awesome to come out of that arena and kill ticket sales.
Speaker A:Like, that was awesome.
Speaker A:Like, literally there was, like, six fans, and it was my mom, my dad, my.
Speaker A:My best man at my wedding, and my kids.
Speaker A:It was awesome.
Speaker A:And my wife, of course.
Speaker A:But so, like, that was just so special.
Speaker A:But it was one of those things where the mindset was kind of really, like, super excited, but, like, really kind of level, quite frankly, like, it kind of, like, didn't hit us.
Speaker A:And I think, like, that's what kind of kept our focus for Yukon and kind of moving forward.
Speaker A:It was kind of.
Speaker A:It was like, really awesome.
Speaker A:But then it was like, all right, now we got to win the whole kind of region type of thing, because we now had a path ahead of us.
Speaker A:Because, quite frankly, when you got Syracuse and Buddy Boeheim and Jimmy Boeheim and you had Frank Mason, who was the national player of the year at Kansas, on their team, you have to go through them.
Speaker A:You, quite frankly, can't look past anything but the possession ahead of you.
Speaker A:So it was.
Speaker A:But it was.
Speaker A:The locker room.
Speaker A:Mojo was great, but it was.
Speaker A:It was more like, to be honest, like, celebrate.
Speaker A:We celebrated that night.
Speaker A:We had beers together as a team, which is different than also college.
Speaker A:Like, you're allowed to celebrate with these pros.
Speaker A:And, you know, we took them out afterwards because, you know, wins like, that don't happen too often.
Speaker A:And so, like.
Speaker A:But then the mindset was like, hey, let's.
Speaker A:Let's.
Speaker A:Why not?
Speaker A:You know, everybody says, why not us.
Speaker A:It was like that, why not us Stuff, you know.
Speaker B:So two days in between games, right?
Speaker B:So what does it look like?
Speaker B:What's the itinerary from the win against Bayheim's Army?
Speaker B:Turning around and playing stars restores University of Connecticut.
Speaker B:What are you guys doing in those.
Speaker B:Whatever, less than 48 hours.
Speaker B:What are you guys doing during that time?
Speaker A:A lot of mental reps, you know, quite frankly.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And like, you know, it's one of those things where the way our team was constructed, like, we have players that, like, fit certain roles.
Speaker A:Like, we had three different types of bigs.
Speaker A:Like, one was a finesse big, kind of like in Alex Sobel, we had Christian Parker was kind of like a young buck who kind of like finished around the rim, could shoot the three a little bit.
Speaker A:And then he had David Murray, which was kind of like a big, strong dude that can set screens and, you know, really talented.
Speaker A:So, like, three different types of big.
Speaker A:So at the way I.
Speaker A:We constructed, it was like each game might call for a different type of player depending on how the game is played and things on those lines.
Speaker A:So you gotta make sure, like, you know, your.
Speaker A:Your time.
Speaker A:We talked about weeding the Garden.
Speaker A:Your time might not get called against Bam's army, but it's going to get called against Yukon.
Speaker A:And so, like, you know, when we called on David Murray against Yukon, he did a great job, you know, because he, you know, he did a.
Speaker A:It's one of those things where, you know, during those days of prep, it's.
Speaker A:If you didn't get any burn against Bayheims or whatever, we still got to get you a sweat going.
Speaker A:We got to get.
Speaker A:Get some sweat going.
Speaker A:We got to make sure we're, you know, you're fresh and ready to rock.
Speaker A:And then also on the flip side, if, you know, if you did get a lot of burn like Ty did, it's more like, hey, like, you just chill and, you know, listen to your beats and, like, you know, rap to yourself or do whatever you got to do, you know, you know, get some treatment or whatnot.
Speaker A:So that you're managing the injuries or the bumps and bruises, because when you get hit with a screen by those big guys, those are some big screens to fight through for sure.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:It's kind of you're trying to.
Speaker A:The back half of the roster, you know, stay fresh and let's get a burn and let's get some sweat.
Speaker A:For the guys that played a lot, it's kind of managing kind of their bodies.
Speaker A:And then also we're all doing mental reps on what we got to do to prepare, you know, and to prepare them as much mentally as possible.
Speaker A:Scout film.
Speaker A:What do they do well, what do we got to do well?
Speaker A:And then furthermore, they had a couple players kind of come in on the fly that we had to get to know real quick that didn't play.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:It's like, TBT is like adult sometimes AAU basketball, where it's the wild, wild west, and you're like, dude, where is this dude coming from?
Speaker A:For.
Speaker A:For.
Speaker A:For other teams, they can do that.
Speaker A:For us, it's like, we got what we got.
Speaker A:So, you know, it's a lot of mental stuff during those.
Speaker A:During those days, just like how you would on a normal NCAA weekend.
Speaker A:Like, you're kind of doing a lot of that stuff.
Speaker A:You want to get in the gym so that they're not hanging out in their hotel rooms all day and get some shots up and kind of manage it that way.
Speaker A:And, you know, so it's kind of.
Speaker A:That's another, like, weeding the garden piece.
Speaker A:You're talking with guys talking about what they saw, talking about how to work.
Speaker A:What can we do better as a team and as a staff, and how do you feel?
Speaker A:You know, I need you to keep kind of really pushing us because your role is valuable.
Speaker A:And all of them, like, every coach says this, but when you're a player, you don't necessarily believe it, but every role is so important.
Speaker A:And for roles to.
Speaker A:To buy into roles and to be selfless, that takes a lot of sacrifice.
Speaker A:And you're going to have to, you know, just kind of bite your tongue a lot of times, like, because I'm sure there are other.
Speaker A: Hindsight's always: Speaker A:I tend to.
Speaker A:I go with what, you know, my staff and I feel like, you know, was the best in that moment.
Speaker A:So it's a lot of those conversations.
Speaker A:Be like, I know you're good at this.
Speaker A:I know you do this well.
Speaker A:But right in that moment, that's, you know, what we.
Speaker A:What I felt the team needed.
Speaker A:And at the end of the day, a coach's role should service the team to get the win.
Speaker B:You know, did you sense in those conversations in between the Syracuse and UConn games, did you sense kind of a quiet confidence building in your guys?
Speaker B:Like, could you feel that as a coach, as you were Having the conversations as you're working with your team, as you're thinking about where you're at, did you start to feel like, hey, I think these guys are really starting to believe that we can.
Speaker B:We can do that, not only do what we've already done, but there's.
Speaker B:There's still more ahead of us?
Speaker B:Did you start to sense that?
Speaker A:Yeah, and I. I think, like, if you sense that within the team and you sense that within the staff.
Speaker A:And now, like.
Speaker A:Like, whether it be me and how I'm talking or whether it be Coach Harris or Coach Clark or Coach Lorquette, like, now all of a sudden, like, I'm a big energy guy, you feel on.
Speaker A:You feel energy in a room.
Speaker A:You know, you feel it.
Speaker A:And then when it starts from coaches, players, guys, we have around us the sponsorships, the constant, you know, nice messages we received from, like, you and from other media outlets and from, like, you know, people we don't hear from, like, all of a sudden now, like, you start to kind of roll and, like, you start to kind of.
Speaker A:You know, the belief is.
Speaker A:Is there.
Speaker A:You know, it's always been there, but it's very difficult to have belief when you don't ever resume.
Speaker B:Now it's real, right?
Speaker B:So before, there was belief, but it was.
Speaker B:It was belief that believe.
Speaker B:But then it's like, hey, I really believe.
Speaker A:I really started to feel like we were going to be like the Tommy Fleetwood of the tbt.
Speaker A:Like, we always.
Speaker A:We always come in second in that golf tournament, but, you know, we believe we can win it, but we haven't won it yet, you know, types of stuff.
Speaker A:So it was.
Speaker A:It's very easy to say you have belief, but when you start to have a resume to believe it now, you really start to have actual belief.
Speaker A:So, like, the.
Speaker A:The confidence, I, I think, was starting to grow, you know, within the staff, within the players.
Speaker A:And when you're all kind of pulling the rope at the same time, it just makes it easy.
Speaker A:Like, I knew.
Speaker A:I knew against UConn, like, I. I was that, ironically, that was probably the most comfortable I was before a game.
Speaker A:Like, you know.
Speaker A:Cause, you know, paranoia sets in.
Speaker A:Game one, you're playing Bayheim's army.
Speaker A:Game two, I was eerily calm against UConn, you know, because just I knew what they were.
Speaker A:I watched them a couple games.
Speaker A:I knew their personalities.
Speaker A:I knew how the strategy of the coaches.
Speaker A:I knew kind of that.
Speaker A:That, you know, they roll up in a bus with their logo on it.
Speaker A:So I know that they're entitled, which is you know, like, we're staying at a, at a Holiday Inn or Best Western or whatever we were staying at.
Speaker A:And they're staying in, at the Marriott downtown.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You know, they're eating like 10 steak dinners and we're eating at Tully's in Syracuse, which has great chicken strips, by the way.
Speaker A:It's amazing.
Speaker A:But like, because they gave us 20% off the bill, which was amazing.
Speaker B:Nice.
Speaker A:But like, that's, that's where, you know, it's like I was most confident against, against UConn just because of their makeup and kind of how we matched up against them and things on those lines.
Speaker A:And, and we had a couple things that we did during that game that I, that I was really happy that we executed to perfection.
Speaker B:So you get that game and now you're on to the quarterfinals and obviously at this point now you've beaten two big time, big name programs.
Speaker B:And just talk to me about the mindset after the Connecticut game.
Speaker B:Are you now thinking that it's realistic?
Speaker B:We, we really got a shot.
Speaker B:And again, you can't obviously look past, past any opponent.
Speaker B:But, but is it becoming real that you're like, holy cow, we're in the quarterfinals.
Speaker B:Like, we, we're one of the last eight, we got a chance to win.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It starts to become real.
Speaker A:And then also like the mental grind, it's, it's really one thing, I think that we take different things from every experience that we always go through.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But like, one thing that I took through this experience was just the mental grind of it.
Speaker A:It is a, it is a grind like from scouting, logistics, team management in a span and roll that, crank it up to 90 on the, on the main skid row.
Speaker A:Because it's like for a million dollars right now.
Speaker A:One thing we had to plan with was after Syracuse, we win the region, now we gotta fly all the way to Wichita.
Speaker A:Okay, so people, people, you know, in tbt, like, they, you, you get money per round, but that money is gone for flights, for meals, hotel rooms, right?
Speaker A:You don't win, you don't get money until you actually, like, win money.
Speaker A:Like Wichita State, the aftershocks, they didn't have to move, so they pocketing that money, right, that they win.
Speaker A:But we're not, we're trying to make sure, like Ty Nichols from Springfield, Massachusetts can get out to Wichita.
Speaker A:Like, and, because, because we need them there.
Speaker A:And like these players, we gave them a couple days at home.
Speaker A:So, like, a lot of them drove those that have flights, we got on their flights home so that they could Relax for a couple days, just get some, a recharge, a mental recharge.
Speaker A:And I went home for a day, got to see my wife and kids.
Speaker A:And then, you know, then you fly out to Wichita, you know, and then all of a sudden, like, it's like, all right, mindset flip again.
Speaker A:We got that.
Speaker A:I wanted the players to get some home cooking, right?
Speaker A:You know, whether they need to see their wives, their girlfriends, their family members, be familiar in their sleep, in their own bed at night, and then time to get back to work, you know?
Speaker A:And so, like, it is, like, now you start to think, like, hey, like, this is a final push where we could do, we could do something.
Speaker A:I just need you.
Speaker A:I just need you for another 72 hours or whatever it was.
Speaker A:Then let's make a run.
Speaker B:Mental grind or physical grind?
Speaker B:Tougher.
Speaker A:Mental.
Speaker A:Mental.
Speaker A:I, I think, I think if your mind goes, it breaks any man.
Speaker A:I think it breaks any man.
Speaker A:I, I think physical, physical.
Speaker A:You, if you have a good mindset, you have good heart, you know, you're, you can push your body to do amazing things.
Speaker A:Like, I watch all those shows on Discovery Channel where, like, your kid's trapped under a car and the guy, like, lifts the car, right?
Speaker A:Like, that's physical.
Speaker A:It's like, crazy.
Speaker A:But like, I, I, I think the mental grind is so much tougher.
Speaker A:And I think, to be honest, that's what, that's what gets our profession.
Speaker A:I think that's where you're starting to see, like, what we saw this past year, like, the mental grind of recruiting a new team each year with Nil and Portal.
Speaker A:Like, Larena from Miami was like, peace, I'm out, Deuces.
Speaker A:You know, Jay Wright was done with it.
Speaker A:And I think that mental grind, I think the mental grind and then you add in stress of you have to win because of an ad.
Speaker A:You know, every year, I think the, the mental grind will, will, will break, break people for sure.
Speaker B:I could not agree with you more on that piece of it.
Speaker B:When it comes to coaching, especially at the college level, I, I look at the, the landscape of college basketball right now and what coaches have to go through every single year to put together a roster.
Speaker B:It's one thing in the past when you go through and you got to get a recruiting class, or maybe you have a big group that makes it all the way through their four years, and now you got to have a four, five, six player recruiting class, and that's tough.
Speaker B:But now you're talking about teams are turning over 50% of their roster almost At a minimum, every single year.
Speaker B:And so you have to build your culture every single year.
Speaker B:You have to build in the guys who know what you're going to do.
Speaker B:Like, you know, again, most of the time, right?
Speaker B:Most of your team in the past, almost all your team is returners.
Speaker B:So when you start calling out drills, when you have protocols and you have things, the freshman, the new guys just kind of look to the returning guys and you just follow along and it all kind of goes smoothly.
Speaker B:Now you got to reteach that every single year.
Speaker B:Yeah, every year.
Speaker B:And you've got the money piece of it.
Speaker B:I can't imagine what it's like trying to manage a locker room with Nil and this guy is saying, I make this much money and this guy's getting that much money.
Speaker B:And then you talk about playing time and all the other things.
Speaker B:Like, I know a locker room's hard enough to manage without the money part of it.
Speaker B:And then you take it.
Speaker B:Look, the guys you're dealing with, right, are professional players who have been in situations, at least where money is involved in the process.
Speaker B:When you talk about college kids, you're talking about 18, 19, 20 year old kids who have little to no experience dealing with 25 bucks in their pocket, let alone the kind of money and the numbers that are being thrown around today.
Speaker B:And to ask those kids to handle it, but then on top of it, ask coaches to manage that.
Speaker B:Yeah, the stress level from that standpoint has got to be unbelievable.
Speaker A:It's, it's gotta be unreal.
Speaker A:Like I see it, even with, with us and we are D3, like we get money like players, you know, some players are more mature than, than others when it comes to dealing with money.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And now you're making a business aspect into a game.
Speaker A:So now like with college, with us, it's a business, you know, and like certain players may or may not understand, like, hey, that money went towards flights.
Speaker A:It's not like, hey, because we won, you get 10 grand, right?
Speaker A:You know, like, that's not how it works.
Speaker A:You know, if you want to handle all your flights and pay out of pocket, we'll give you a stipend by all means.
Speaker A:But like, see, like understanding that piece.
Speaker A:These are, you know, overseas pros.
Speaker A:Typically, unless you're top level, they're not making a lot of money unless they're playing, you know, really high Euro basket.
Speaker A:Like you might get your, your apartment taken care of, car, maybe some meals, and then you're basically making 500 bucks a month maybe, you know, depending.
Speaker A:And then you kind of grind your way up.
Speaker A:So that type of, you know, you're making that much money in college, not like a crap ton more than that.
Speaker A:And then you got to manage all the other logistics.
Speaker A:Like, I mean, Pitino like said he's like not recruiting any high school kids and quite frankly he doesn't need to because he's got a financial backer to do that.
Speaker A:You know, I think it's like the vitamin water guy, you know, and I, and I think Caliperi Caliper is the smartest one out of all of them.
Speaker A:He went to the Purdue chicken guy or Tyson Chicken or whatever.
Speaker A:So he, he knew when he was going from Kentucky to Arkansas, like they had a money like type of deal.
Speaker A:And that's kind of what, what, that's what we're in right now.
Speaker A:And you're going to see the same.
Speaker A:Now I'm going on a tangent, but you're going to see the same teams in the NCAA tournament now every year and you're going to see the same Final Four pretty much, you know, relatively a cycle of like 12 dudes going to be kind of the same kind of as we kind of go through because we're all trying to figure out this landscape that's absolutely crazy town.
Speaker B:I remember when I was playing, getting my 300 meal stipend for over Christmas break and being like, hey, can I pocket?
Speaker B:I think if I can get by on 200 bucks of meals over that, over this month of Christmas when everybody's gone, I got 100 bucks to buy myself a pair of shoes.
Speaker B:This is like the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker B:And so now to imagine, to imagine the money that's being tossed about at again.
Speaker B:And obviously it varies depending upon the level we're talking about the, at the very highest level we're talking about money that I can't even begin to fathom an 18 or 19 year old kid being given.
Speaker B:But even at the lower levels of Division one or division two, in some cases the money that's out there just, I mean if somebody.
Speaker B:$1,000 when I was playing college basketball would have been.
Speaker B:Somebody's gonna give me $1,000 to do this.
Speaker B:Like, I, I mean, yeah, I'm getting my scholarship and I'm getting my whatever.
Speaker B:But yeah, I can't even, I honestly can't even wrap my head around it.
Speaker A:It's the idea, it's crazy.
Speaker A:I bought ramen noodles super on the cheap and then I use the rest of it to play poker to help kind of Navigate.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:That sounds about.
Speaker B:That sounds about right.
Speaker B:Yeah, that sounds.
Speaker B:That sounds about right.
Speaker B:All right, so you get through the quarterfinal game and now you get to play the home team again.
Speaker B:And you got Wichita State.
Speaker A:Oh, we play fail harder next.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That was the quarterfinals, right?
Speaker B:Yep, yep.
Speaker B:So talk a little bit about winning that game and then you get to this.
Speaker B:Then you get to the semis against the Aftershocks.
Speaker B:But give us the rundown on the.
Speaker B:On the fails harder game.
Speaker A:Yeah, like.
Speaker A:Well, we were part of basketball history in the fact that we are literally in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest Elam ending ever in history.
Speaker A:Which is a perfect storm of you being up really big.
Speaker A:We were up really big.
Speaker A:And then the other team just basically having everything coming back to being up by one and then literally me like being like, wow, this could be the greatest collapse in history.
Speaker A:And basketball gods take me as you see.
Speaker A:But like that was for three and a half quarters.
Speaker A:That was about the best basketball we've played.
Speaker A:Like it was masterpiece.
Speaker A:We're up by 29.
Speaker A:And then Elame ending happened and we started doing some crazy stuff and everything started to shift.
Speaker A:So like to come out of that game, I honestly feel like yes, we won and wins a win, all that types of stuff.
Speaker A:But that game, that was an extra 40 minutes or we played.
Speaker A:So like essentially almost another game and a half.
Speaker A:About a game.
Speaker A:We played a game and a half of basketball at a pro level.
Speaker A:I feel like that hurt us against Aftershocks because we didn't take care of business when we should have.
Speaker A:Um.
Speaker A:And we're coming in.
Speaker A:We came in a lot mentally fatigued again from that mental grind because in the fail harder game we were in the bonus.
Speaker A:So if we found they're.
Speaker A:They're one point away.
Speaker A:They had to get to 94 and they're at 93 and we're at 92.
Speaker A:And so we had to get some six stops without fouling.
Speaker A:Like, that's crazy.
Speaker A:That is crazy.
Speaker A:Six stops without fouling.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And there was four reviews, media reviews by Fox Sports and we lost all of them.
Speaker A:So that's cool.
Speaker A:So they all went the other way.
Speaker A:And so, and then we ended up, you know, I have one timeout and we, you know, I was like, we gotta kind of do this, this, this, you know, Demetrius Underwood had a great take, which on the replay was goaltending, but they weren't going to call it goaltending.
Speaker A:And Christian Parker had the put back.
Speaker A:So like that game was so mentally taxing.
Speaker A:For everybody.
Speaker A:And I think that hurt us against Aftershocks because I think, like, we didn't show our best against Aftershocks, we didn't play well.
Speaker A:I felt like, you know, we played a good quarter, but, you know, it just wasn't.
Speaker A:I felt like we didn't show our best.
Speaker A:And, you know, like, that's the thing in a tournament like that.
Speaker A:You want that game to happen.
Speaker A:You know, game six or game five, you don't want it to happen game one.
Speaker A:So, like, I felt like in that arena.
Speaker A:And Wichita State is very rabid about their basketball.
Speaker A:Very.
Speaker A:They don't care whether you played for Wichita State, whatever, because they.
Speaker A:They're like kind of a.
Speaker A:A conglomerate.
Speaker A:But that arena, the way it is shaped, you know, it's a.
Speaker A:It's a circular arena, Coke arena, and just the noise comes down on you.
Speaker A:So against.
Speaker A:Fail Harder against, you know, Wichita State Aftershocks, I have to go to all hand signals so to call the plays and kind of what we do and all that types of stuff.
Speaker A:So that's kind of like.
Speaker A:We tried to mimic that going into practice and, you know, we cranked up music and things like that, you know, try and get used to it.
Speaker A:But for those guys to play in that environment between after the game, you know, fail Harder and kind of in that, we kind of looked like a little bit dazed and confused, you know, kind of in certain moments.
Speaker A:But I felt like.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Because then if we win that game, then we got to go somewhere else again.
Speaker A:So it's like we gotta.
Speaker A:I gotta talk to TBT and we gotta fix that.
Speaker A:But that's where I felt like kind of.
Speaker A:We were a little bit dazed when we came in.
Speaker A:And that's where we're kind of going back to your question earlier.
Speaker A:It wasn't physical with us.
Speaker A:It was the mental piece from the, you know, game before, from the tournament run.
Speaker A:And I think that's the biggest thing that we kind of learned throughout this run is now we got to prepare mentally even more.
Speaker A:So what it looks like to kind of.
Speaker A:If you're going to take this run all the way.
Speaker A:Everybody says they want the run, but are you prepared of everything that it's going to take to get through that run?
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And we learned a lot about ourselves.
Speaker A:I learned about a lot about myself as a coach, how to kind of manage the team.
Speaker A:My staff and I, you know, we were kind of lockstep the entire.
Speaker A:But after it.
Speaker A:It was like, what just happened, you know, so Aftershocks was kind of like a.
Speaker A:They had A lot of things going on for them.
Speaker A:You know, we played five row games, they played five home games, six home games.
Speaker A:It's a lot easier to win, you know, when you have that arena behind you, so.
Speaker A:But, you know, they were very talented.
Speaker A:You know, one thing is we're not the underdog anymore, so everybody prepares well for us, you know, so it's kind of like knowing that and the players do.
Speaker A:But that's where having the returners kind of back next year are going to even further help us.
Speaker A:Yeah, Aftershocks was crazy arena, you know, they got all the promos going.
Speaker A:You know, it's.
Speaker A:It's a.
Speaker A:It's a great place to compete for sure.
Speaker B:The aftermath of that game, whether immediately following it or in the days or weeks after that.
Speaker B:I know you talked about just kind of feeling like even now, you're just kind of coming down from the whole thing, but haven't had a chance to reflect yourself.
Speaker B:And then I'm assuming having conversations with your coaches and some of the guys that, you know, that you had an opportunity to coach through the whole experience.
Speaker B:What are some of the key things that you've taken away besides just again knowing that next year going into.
Speaker B:You got to continue to prepare for that mental grind.
Speaker B:What were some of the conversations like that you had?
Speaker B:What were some of the key takeaways from the run?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think how special it was.
Speaker A:Like, I've gotten so many texts, emails, like, a lot of the D3 guys said it's the greatest run that our division has ever had.
Speaker A:That's crazy to me.
Speaker A:I think just the conversations of how do we capitalize on this as a brand?
Speaker A:And I think, like, you know, when it comes to corporate sponsorships now, when it comes to expanding the opportunities, because, you know, we've been involved with all the players that we really want, but now even more players want to be a part of us.
Speaker A:And, you know, kind of how do we expand our brand to kind of help service the division, but also, like, you know, what do we do really well and what are some things that we need to improve on?
Speaker A:Like, I think one thing that we need to iron out specifically is.
Speaker A:Is just clarification of where do funds go?
Speaker A:What do we need to do so that we can continue to.
Speaker A:Within the construct so that, like, players did, like, want to know, like, hey, like, where did this money go?
Speaker A:And I was like, well, that went to this.
Speaker A:And so like, just being clearer, communicating in those regards, but also with the staff and myself, like, my assistant, David Clark, like, he's taken now, like becoming a super sports agent certification.
Speaker A:You know, Coach Harris is continuing to develop the combine and also kind of his gear and what we do and like, the logos and everything like that.
Speaker A:And, you know, I myself am kind of like, furthering to try and benefit everybody and to try and help kind of where do we pick, you know, different kind of avenues to kind of grow.
Speaker A:So it's kind of coming down and kind of like, you know, you're reflecting on everything.
Speaker A:A lot of the players now, it's, you know, September, they're going to their respective teams if they're not already there right now.
Speaker A:And a lot of the players that didn't have contracts prior now have contracts, and they're like, Sami Willoughby's now in Finland, whereas if he's not with us, I don't know if that happens, you know, or, you know, Sobels in France and ties in Greece and living the great life there, and Marcus is overseas and Demetrius is in Slovakia and things on those lines.
Speaker A:So, like, all these players are now kind of going out, you know, and they're kind of now seeing what.
Speaker A:What the pro avenue is like.
Speaker A:And I think it's one of those things where it's tough to appreciate it when you're in it and when you're.
Speaker A:When you're in the run, when you're with me, you know, and the team, it's a lot easier to take a step back now or when you have different perspectives.
Speaker A:And that's what I'm taking in.
Speaker A:The players and coaching staff be like, wow, like, that was really special, you know, so, like, that's kind of what we've.
Speaker A:Kind of all the dust is settling, and you're kind of processing everything and how you can improve to get better.
Speaker A:Because, like, you know, we're still not satisfied.
Speaker A:I think we can still win the whole thing, you know, so, like, what do we can do to improve?
Speaker A:Whether it be from a coaching perspective, from a management perspective, and, you know, you know, what pieces do we need to add to the team to take it to even another bump to that, it's kind of, you know, I want to be able to sub tie Nickels out.
Speaker A:I do.
Speaker A:He shouldn't need to play like 90 billion minutes a game for us to win.
Speaker A:So finding kind of like that piece to kind of, you know, help give him.
Speaker A:Give his legs a rest and things on those lines.
Speaker A:And so it's kind of just kind of how do we now mold and get better on all fronts so clearly.
Speaker B:Continuing to build the team right to get to the point where you feel like, hey, we can, as you did this year, make a deep run into the tournament every year.
Speaker B:Give yourself an opportunity to be able to compete for winning the whole thing.
Speaker B:So clearly on the court, that's.
Speaker B:It's clear the direction that you want to go with that.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's ultimately what you're trying to do.
Speaker B:How you do that.
Speaker B:There's different methods and the process, what that's going to look like.
Speaker B:But I'm curious as far as the platform and the off the court things.
Speaker B:And you talked about being able to maybe get in the room with some people that you weren't able to get in the room before.
Speaker B:So if you could take the proverbial magic wand and say three years from now, here's what I'd like the off court we are D3 to look like.
Speaker B:What's one or two dream scenarios of things that if you could make it happen.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Money is money aside, connections aside, what does that look like?
Speaker A:I would like us to be an agency that services everything I don't like.
Speaker A:I think TBT provides us with a great platform and it's an awesome summer experience, all this stuff, and very blessed that they have us and they've been very supportive of us.
Speaker A:But our identity can't just be attached to tbt.
Speaker A:So that's where the combine comes in.
Speaker A:I would, I would love for us to fill completely that void of graduating player to professional opportunity.
Speaker A:I would love to completely fill that.
Speaker A:And so because like, one of the biggest things that I still see is the best players still struggle to get agents and a lot of pro teams won't talk to a player unless they have an agent.
Speaker A:So there's certain agencies that we've developed relationships with throughout the years that are really accepting of our best players in our division and things on those lines and they place them and the players do great and they're fine.
Speaker A:It's just getting that foot in the door type of thing.
Speaker A:So I would love for us to be that where like, hey, like we take these players no matter what division, quite frankly, just underrepresented or whatever, and be able to connect them, be that void of an agent where we can now connect them with teams.
Speaker A:That would be the ideal kind of dream scenario because that way we can still, we're still staying true to what we believe in and the principles and kind of what we do and kind of growing in those regards.
Speaker A:And I've also thought about, We've talked about this a little bit.
Speaker A:Is also kind of branching out to the women's division.
Speaker A:I think that that's a growing overseas professional women play women's basketball overseas, and now Division 3 Portaling women or whatever.
Speaker A:Like, they.
Speaker A:It sounds weird, but like, you know, like, they, like, they've been now starting to start to get some opportunities over and especially like, kind of with the boom in the WNBA and what that has been, I think there's been a talk about us branching, you know, gender as well, and I think that'd be kind of cool.
Speaker A:So I. I think if I had my magic wand to be that.
Speaker A:To kind of service kind of that, you know, what's crazy is I've also, you know, had so many calls from pro teams and you know, and.
Speaker A:And so like, I'm kind of, you know, potentially entertaining that down the road as well.
Speaker A:Um, but I think, like, that's been really cool, you know, the.
Speaker A:The accolades that we got.
Speaker A:Like, that's a credit to the players and the staff.
Speaker A:I. I'm just the guy that stands with the hands in the pockets with the weird stance.
Speaker A:So like, that's.
Speaker A:Unless.
Speaker B:Unless you're.
Speaker B:Unless the arena's loud.
Speaker B:Then you got.
Speaker A:Then.
Speaker B:Then you're signaling, right?
Speaker A:Yeah, then I'm signaling and still hands in pockets.
Speaker B:Okay, there you go.
Speaker A:Little did they know our number one play call was hand in pockets.
Speaker A:No, but.
Speaker A:But I think, like, that's where, you know, I'm kind of like, you know, I think, you know, to have, you know, NBA teams, you know, call us and G League and things of that, it just, you know, it was really special and to have coaches kind of reach out to me and it's been awesome.
Speaker A:It's kind of like why, why you do this podcast?
Speaker A:Like, with all the hoops community, they kind of all showed up and showed out for us, which was cool.
Speaker A:And you know, for a couple weeks in the summer, we kind of made people be entertained then.
Speaker A:It's pretty, pretty cool.
Speaker A:Like the parties that my town was having, watching us on tv, I was like, oh, I wish I was there.
Speaker A:That was a good, good one.
Speaker A:Good, good rager that the adults had.
Speaker A:But no, it's been so, like, if I had a crystal ball, I'd be kind of maybe gender, you know, kind of going over the women's basketball realm and also kind of servicing just kind of being that one stop shop for kind of everybody in.
Speaker A:In those scenarios.
Speaker A:Because I still see that that's the biggest problem.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That needs to be kind of.
Speaker A:We need to figure out.
Speaker B:Makes sense.
Speaker B:I mean, it's kind of like putting an umbrella right over the entire process of like, hey, yeah, right now we kind of got this piece.
Speaker B:There's a little bit of that piece over here.
Speaker B:Maybe there's somebody else that we're connected to that's doing this over here.
Speaker B:If we can just kind of bring all that under one roof to be able to be, as you said, the one stop shop so that somebody can go start to finish through the process with the same people, with the same representation, you can totally see the value in that.
Speaker B:And then obviously when you start talking about doing the same thing on the women's side as the men's side, again, providing that value and being able to do that, I certainly think that there's, that there's value there.
Speaker B:And then the second thing and goes back to what you talked about, just the amount of support that you felt.
Speaker B:When you look at, again, people forget how many Division 3 colleges there are that are playing basketball across the country.
Speaker B:And then not only are you talking about the current coaching staffs, the current players, but you're talking about anybody who's an alum of one of those programs or a former coach that is having sort of that groundswell behind you of all those people that to be honest.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Again, Division 3 is often underrepresented.
Speaker B:When people think about college basketball, they're not thinking about Division 3 very often.
Speaker B:More often than not, they're thinking about the big boys, the blue bloods, all the teams that we talked about earlier.
Speaker B: positive way that again, like: Speaker B:It's crazy.
Speaker A:I took a screenshot of it.
Speaker A:It's nuts.
Speaker A: And then it was like: Speaker A:I was like, oh my God.
Speaker A:And like it's, it's so you talk about mental taxing.
Speaker A:That's it too.
Speaker A:And all the social media, like, I got it.
Speaker A:We got a taste of what it like meant to be like the 12th guy on the Celtics or something like that, like intense.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And, and what one of the best messages that I got.
Speaker A:So like we, during the run, we ran a GoFundMe, which was phenomenal with support because that money really helped us with hotel rooms and meals and things like that.
Speaker A:One of the donations that came in was like, it was like $137 or 39.
Speaker A:I'm blanking on the number.
Speaker A:And I was like, oh, somebody must have mistyped or whatever.
Speaker A:Like, like when I'm on like my phone and my big thumb sitting.
Speaker A:But the, the message was from a son whose dad was a, a, a D3 football coach and he coached for that amount of years, 39 years.
Speaker A:And he just wanted to say thank you for bringing the, the service to the division like my dad did.
Speaker A:That's like pretty damn cool.
Speaker A:That's cool.
Speaker A:Like, so like that's like the types of stuff that, that, that we received.
Speaker A:And I sent him a nice note back and I was like, you know, that's very touching, you know, and, and it was just really cool moment like in that.
Speaker A:And, and like the whole run was filled with moments like we had Nathan Hardy, who is Justin Hardy's brother, and Hardy Strong is our premier sponsor.
Speaker A:They will always be our sponsor with us.
Speaker A:And, and we had him after game one place the placard on the bracket.
Speaker A:That's a pretty cool moment.
Speaker A:So these, these moments, it's not necessarily the games, it's those moments that, that, that make it really cool and really special, for sure.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's funny that you say that because the last couple episodes reg that I've had with coaches, that's been one of the big things that for whatever reason we've hit on is that theme of what's the experience like.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Because again, game to game, and obviously we spent a lot of time tonight talking about each one of the games and how important those wins are and just the opportunity that then affords you as a team and as a group and an organization, everything that goes along with that.
Speaker B:But then ultimately, right, as you look back on it, yeah, you're gonna remember the wins, but you're also going to remember that experience and you're going to remember what it's like as a team, what it felt like.
Speaker B:As much as you're going to remember a specific shot or a specific play or specific practice.
Speaker B:And I think that to kind of bring it all back around to themes that have run through the course of my interviews with coaches at all different levels is the day to day is important.
Speaker B:The day to day.
Speaker B:We talked about it, the pressure to win at the college level.
Speaker B:There's things that you have to do, players have to perform, coaches have to perform.
Speaker B:But the honest truth is, 20 years down the road, how much are you going to remember any one specific game?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:There are some that stand out, but for the most part, a lot of that stuff kind of runs together into one big thought process of what was that experience like?
Speaker B:And for us to sit here tonight and talk about your experience this year in the TBT with the guys that you were able to have the experience with and then to feel that support of all of Division 3 being behind you and getting the opportunity to showcase the players and just showcase how good Division 3 basketball can be and how good it is, that's an experience that you can't, you can't duplicate that.
Speaker B:And to be able to create that environment for the guys on your team and your coaching staff, but then to carry everybody along with you, to me, that's really what it's all about.
Speaker A:100 and I, I think like, it's like, it goes down to like.
Speaker A:So I have two kids, a daughter and a son, a 12 year old, 9 year old.
Speaker A:And you know, we want sport to teach our kids life lessons, right?
Speaker A:Because of those moments and the experiences they're going to remember relationships with teammates and things like that more so than the wins.
Speaker A:That doesn't change because I'm 43, like this, this.
Speaker A:I learned so many lessons through sport on a daily basis.
Speaker A:It's just right now, God and basketball are teaching me a lot and I'm like learning it right along the way.
Speaker A:And that doesn't change when you get older.
Speaker A:Like I'm going to remember a lot of the experiences and lessons that I learned from the players teaching me, coaching staff teaching me, you know, more so than the, than the beating UConn.
Speaker A:But I will remember Syracuse because Jimmy, because Coach Behem didn't shake my hand.
Speaker A:I will remember that.
Speaker A:But like, that's another podcast.
Speaker A:But then, but then, but that's where like, you know what I mean?
Speaker A:So like it's one of those things like, you know, that's why we're lifelong coaches, lifelong educators.
Speaker A:For the same reason when you're coaching, it's about relationships.
Speaker A:It's always been about relationships.
Speaker A:If you're a true coach, it will always be about relationships.
Speaker A:If it ever is about winning, if it's ever about money, then you're not in it for the long haul and you'll be out.
Speaker A:But I think, like, for those of us that, you know, are in it for the right reasons and for those, you know, I, I'm equally as excited to coach my daughter's AAU team.
Speaker A:This, this, this, this spring I have, we have workouts starting on Sunday.
Speaker A:I'm excited.
Speaker A:I'm gonna be in a gym that maybe holds like maybe 10 kids.
Speaker A:So like to go from like 30,000 to 10 kids, awesome.
Speaker A:But like, you know, it's one of those things where, like you said, the lessons, the memories, the moments, it's not games, it's moments.
Speaker A:For sure.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you take that too as a parent, right?
Speaker B:I think as a parent I find myself trying to think about my perspective and how my perspective has changed on what's important over the course of time.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:As as a young kid and when I was playing, I always tell people the day to day of my performance was what was most important to me.
Speaker B:How was I going to play in this game?
Speaker B:How was I preparing to be at my best and help my team win and the wins and losses?
Speaker B:My mood, my identity, what I was all about was so tied up in how we did, how I performed that day to day was the most important thing.
Speaker B:And yet when I look back now, the day to day, like I couldn't tell you whatever.
Speaker B:I played a hundred and some college games, I maybe remember probably, probably no more than 10 that I could give you any kind of real detail or information about whether we won, we lost that game, what year it was.
Speaker B:You know, again you play conference opponents eight, nine, ten times over the course of your four years.
Speaker B:I have no idea how we did in this game that year against who, but I could tell you what the experience was like.
Speaker B:I could tell you what my teammates were like.
Speaker B:I could tell you what the funny story on the bus.
Speaker B:I can tell you what happened in the hotel when we were here or there or whatever.
Speaker B:And now as a parent, I look at it and again, you have to as an athlete, right.
Speaker B:Prepare day to day as a coach, right.
Speaker B:With your team, you have to prepare your team as best you can to prepare to help them to win.
Speaker B:But yet ultimately it's going to be about the experience.
Speaker B:And 100, that's, that's the lesson that you want them to take away.
Speaker B:But part of getting a good experience is you have to put the work in.
Speaker B:And that's something that I think there's, there's a balance there, especially as a parent or as a coach is right.
Speaker B:Like if you want to have a good experience, well, guess what?
Speaker B:If you stink and you never work at it, your experience is going to be very good.
Speaker A:Not going to be too fun?
Speaker B:No, it's not gonna be too fun.
Speaker B:If you work hard and you put effort into it and you do the right things, that's gonna lead to more success and generally Speaking more success is gonna lead to a better surrounding experience.
Speaker B:Cause you're gonna be around other people who work hard and all the different things that we could go into.
Speaker B:It's a whole other pod, but you get what I'm saying.
Speaker A:Coaches, former, former players would pay any amount of money just to be put on the line and run a 17 or a ladder in a practice.
Speaker A:Yeah, I would pay a lot of money.
Speaker A:I would blow my Achilles out and I would have a blast doing it.
Speaker A:It's like, I think, you know, it's, it's those, those moments of, of embracing the grind and I miss those as a player, which is why I've been a coach for life.
Speaker A:You know, it's because it's, it's so special and as a parent to remember that and to try and you know, say, hey, yeah, I know it's about, you know, you know, winning and you gotta want to win, don't get me wrong.
Speaker A:But like, you know, just take time to smell the roses a little bit because it don't get much better than this for sure.
Speaker B:I always tell people the thing that I miss so much in my life today is I'm often tired, where my kids will make fun of me or my wife will get mad at me because I'll sit down on the couch and two seconds after I sit down on the couch, I'm asleep.
Speaker B:But what I, what I miss more than anything is being physically drained and exhausted from playing four hours of pickup basketball or going to a three hour practice or playing a game and just coming home and back to the apartment or back to my dorm and just sitting there and being like, being physically exhausted.
Speaker B:And I miss that feeling maybe more than anything as an athlete.
Speaker B:I miss being physically exhausted where I can just sit on the couch and feel like I don't have to move for the next four hours.
Speaker B:And I'm going to be perfectly satisfied just sitting here because I'm physically exhausted.
Speaker A:And furthermore being able to heal from that.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:Now think about that.
Speaker A:Like you can do that now, but you're going to be on the, on the, on the on, on it for the week.
Speaker A:Like I got, I got a softball in my leg from my, my daughter pitching.
Speaker A:She's a pitcher too as well, along with hoops O.
Speaker A:And I caught it right in the shin.
Speaker A:It's about the size of a baseball right now.
Speaker A:And that was like about a couple of days ago.
Speaker A:It ain't looking good.
Speaker A:So like it's the healing too to be, to be physically exhausted and wake up the next day and be able to do it again and, and not walk like you're bow legged.
Speaker A:I get it.
Speaker B:That's some old man talk right there for you, Reg.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker B:All right, before we get out, share again how people can get in touch with you.
Speaker B:Follow what you guys are doing.
Speaker B:At we are D3.
Speaker B:After you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.
Speaker A:Yeah, all the socials.
Speaker A:So like for me it's at Coach Reg, R E J on Instagram and X and at for We Are D3.
Speaker A:It's at We Are D3TBT.
Speaker A:You know, we're all over, you know, we DM us, respond, you know, happens, you know, you'll.
Speaker A:We'll see all of our stuff.
Speaker A:We're kind of taking a little bit of break from socials just because.
Speaker A:But yeah, DM us.
Speaker A:And you know, I'd love to.
Speaker A:I always love talking.
Speaker A:Oops.
Speaker A:Anybody wants to like, you know, hire me as an agent, I'm a free agent.
Speaker A:So by all means reach out.
Speaker A:But like, you know, really, you know, everybody has been great support but loved hearing from everybody and, you know, thanks again, Mike for all that you do.
Speaker A:And I really, you know, enjoy, you know, talking hoops with you and the relationship that you and I have kindled this year.
Speaker A:You know, we'll have to do an episode for our one year anniversary, that's it.
Speaker A:Before next year's tbt.
Speaker A:But you know, really appreciate all that you do too.
Speaker B:We'll call that one the Four Leaf Clover episode.
Speaker B:I think that's what we're going to have to.
Speaker B:I think that's what we'll have to go with, so.
Speaker B:Well, hey again, congratulations on the terrific run this year.
Speaker B:It was a lot of fun watching you guys and, and seeing what you were able to accomplish.
Speaker B:Kudos to you and your team and your coaching staff and to everyone out there.
Speaker B:Thanks for listening tonight.
Speaker B:Really appreciate it.
Speaker B:And we will catch you on our next episode.
Speaker B:Thanks.
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Speaker B:Visit coachingportfolioguide.com hoopheds to learn more.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.
