Shownotes
Weston Jameson is the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at D2 Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. In just his second year at the helm in 2024-25 he led the Bison to a 22-10 record and the NCAA Tournament after winning the Great American Conference Tournament.
Prior to taking over the men’s program at Harding, Jameson was an assistant coach for the women’s basketball programs at Abilene Christian University (2021-2023), Arkansas State University (2020-2021) and Harding (2015-2020).
Before his first stint at Harding, Jameson worked as the junior boys head coach and senior boys assistant coach at Central Arkansas Christian School in North Little Rock in 2014-15.
Jameson was a three-year starter and four-year letter winner at point guard for the Harding men's basketball team from 2010-14. He had 474 assists in his time as a Bison, fourth on Harding's career list, and helped lead the Bisons to the 2014 Great American Conference Tournament championship. Jameson played in three NCAA Division II Tournaments during his career.
On this episode Mike & Weston discuss importance of establishing a great team culture over merely focusing on wins and losses. Jameson articulates that championship standards—a commitment to excellence, discipline, and energy—are the foundational elements that ultimately define the success of a program. Reflecting on his own coaching journey, Jameson emphasizes the necessity of cultivating a cohesive environment where players are aligned with the team's core values and motivated to achieve their utmost potential. This episode also delves into the nuances of coaching at different levels, including the transition from high school to collegiate athletics, and the unique challenges and rewards associated with coaching both men’s and women’s teams. With his wealth of experience, Jamison offers invaluable insights into the intricacies of building a successful basketball program grounded in strong relationships and shared aspirations.
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Grab your notebook and pen before you listen to this episode with Weston Jameson, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Harding University.
Website - https://hardingsports.com/sports/mens-basketball
Email - wjameson@harding.edu
Twitter/X - @coachwjameson
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Speaker A:But I do feel like from a culture standpoint, if our culture is where it needs to be, then whatever our ceiling is as a team that year, if the culture's right, we're going to reach it or get really close.
Speaker B:Weston Jamison is the men's basketball head coach at D2 Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas.
Speaker B: is second year at the helm in: Speaker B: ene Christian University from: Speaker B: chool in North Little Rock in: Speaker B: helped lead the bison to the: Speaker B:Jameson played in three NCAA Division 2 tournaments during his career.
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Speaker B:Grab your notebook and pen before you listen to this episode with Weston Jameson, men's basketball head coach at Harding University.
Speaker B:Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast.
Speaker B:It's Mike Clenzing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Weston Jameson, head men's basketball coach at Harding University.
Speaker B:Weston, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.
Speaker A:Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker A:I'm excited to be here.
Speaker B:We are thrilled to have you on.
Speaker B:Looking forward to diving into all of the interesting things that you've been able to do in your career.
Speaker B:Let's start by going back in time to when you were a kid.
Speaker B:Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.
Speaker A:Yeah, so I grew up in a small town in East Texas.
Speaker A:My dad was a high school basketball coach and a little two a school called Edgewood.
Speaker A:Twelve hundred people, couple stoplights.
Speaker A:And he was the head coach there for, I think close to 30 years.
Speaker A:And so from the time I was really, really young, I was going on bus rides and sitting on the bench and I was just in the gym after school every day.
Speaker A:So I guess my earliest memories, my mom would say, was like when I was a baby, pushing me around like the gym in a laundry basket, you know, so from the time I was in diapers, I've, I, I've been in the gym, got to, you know, got to watch a lot of basketball games, watch my dad, coach.
Speaker A:I, I've been, I've been invested and been in a basketball family since the very beginning.
Speaker B:When you think about the influence of your dad and just who he was as a coach and growing up watching him, and then you think about yourself today as a coach, what are one or two characteristics, things that you have taken with you that you think, wow, when I, when you do those things or when you see yourself acting in a certain way, you're like, oh, that's from my dad.
Speaker B:What, what carry down from your, from your dad's Legacy as a coach from watching him for all those years.
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, really like thinking about, you know, what do I want to coach, like, you know, how, you know, who do I want to be.
Speaker A:I think my dad was, was my primary example.
Speaker A:He's.
Speaker A:He's retired now, but really, even just in a small town in general, the people who influenced me the most were, were all of my coaches.
Speaker A:And so my dad is my basketball coach, but it was a small school, so you played everything.
Speaker A:So baseball coach, football coach, all those people.
Speaker A:But when I, when I'm thinking about just who my dad is and how he has influenced me, one is just his demeanor.
Speaker A:He was always really calm on the sideline.
Speaker A:I would just say he never got too high or too low.
Speaker A:Composed maybe is the best way to say it.
Speaker A:You know, I really, to me that's just a really valuable quality in a coach, is if you want your team to play composed, then, then, you know, it's helpful for you to be composed to.
Speaker A:And that's not to say that, you know, I never go crazy or never lose or anything, but just, I would just say just his demeanor on the sideline.
Speaker A:And then the other thing is just his consistency.
Speaker A:I feel like you knew what you were going to get every single day when you showed up to practice.
Speaker A:They're just.
Speaker A:He was the same person every single day.
Speaker A:And playing for him, he did a great job of.
Speaker A:You know, I know that it's special getting to play for a parent and, and those were some of the best years of my life playing for my dad, but he did such a good job of not taking it home with him either.
Speaker A:And so just, it was really special getting to play for him for four years.
Speaker A:And I appreciate how he balanced being my coach and also being my dad.
Speaker B:How old were you when you realized how lucky you were to be able to have access to a gym?
Speaker B:24 7.
Speaker B:When did that kick in that you're like, oh, yeah, not everybody has the same access that I do?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, I don't know that I, that I really fully appreciated it ever growing up, to be honest.
Speaker A:You know, I think now that I have three kids of my own and just now they're around lots of friends who don't, who can't just go to a gym anytime they want.
Speaker A:And even some of my, my good friends who are raising kids, we're in the same life stage.
Speaker A:And I'm just going, man, what a blessing it was to, to really, you know, get shots up anytime I wanted to just, you know, have have 24.
Speaker A:7 access to a gym.
Speaker A:So, you know, I don't know that it ever clicked until probably I had kids of my own.
Speaker B:When.
Speaker B:When you think back to.
Speaker B:Think back to your.
Speaker B:Your development as a young player.
Speaker B:So I'm thinking before the time that you get to high school and you're playing for your dad, but when you're in late elementary school, middle school, how much time did you spend with your dad on the court?
Speaker B:In other words, how much did he help you with putting you through different types of workouts and just kind of helping you figure out what you needed to work on and that kind of thing?
Speaker B:What was his style of helping you to advance in your career as a basketball player?
Speaker A:Yeah, I was actually just talking to someone about this today Who, Who.
Speaker A:Who's trying to figure out what that looks like.
Speaker A:What, What I will say that I.
Speaker A:That I truly appreciated about my dad was he wanted me to be as good as I wanted to be, but he wanted that to be my dream and not his dream.
Speaker A:And so he would always say, I will rebound.
Speaker A:You know, back then, we didn't have, you know, a gun or a doctor dish or anything like that.
Speaker A:So, you know, he was doing the rebounding.
Speaker A:But, you know, he said, I will rebound as much as you, as you want me to, or, you know, when it came to baseball, I'll throw you as many pitches as you want.
Speaker A:But he never.
Speaker A:He never just pushed me over the top.
Speaker A:He always wanted it to be something that I wanted to do, something that, you know, it was important to me and not him.
Speaker A:And so I feel like he had such a great balance.
Speaker A:I played several sports because it was a small town, but I think because of his approach, I just didn't burn out of anything because he was going to push me as hard as I wanted to be pushed.
Speaker A:And when we were in the gym, we were working.
Speaker A:If it was, hey, I want to be in the gym, then, then he was serious about it.
Speaker A:But it was never, you know, he understood, you know, the.
Speaker A:The dynamics of a young kid and the need to say, you know, hey, if you're not working, somebody else is.
Speaker A:And, you know, he knew when.
Speaker A:When to nudge me in certain directions, but it was never forced.
Speaker A:He always wanted it to be fun, I think, for me.
Speaker A:And he just.
Speaker A:He did a great job of handling that.
Speaker A:Just now that I have my own kids, just trying to find that balance of.
Speaker A:They're being raised in a gym, too, right?
Speaker A:And you want them to love the game and you want them to, but.
Speaker A:But Also, you know, just realizing it can't be my dream, it needs to be theirs.
Speaker A:And so now I'm navigating that as a dad a little bit myself.
Speaker B:Have you had a conversation with your dad since you've become a parent about the way that he handled that situation with you?
Speaker B:Is that something that you guys have ever talked about?
Speaker B:Like, hey, what were you thinking about back in those days as you were trying to help me to be the best player I could be?
Speaker B:How hard was it for you not to push me?
Speaker B:Maybe a little harder or whatever.
Speaker B:I'm just curious.
Speaker B:Did you have.
Speaker B:You guys had an adult conversation with, around some of those topics?
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, we never have and that is something that we should do because he's retired now and he actually lives in the same town as me and we see each other quite a bit.
Speaker A:And so it's not like, it's not like we can't make that happen.
Speaker A:I just think he, he really, you know, I don't know if he had seen, you know, bad examples of, of just kind of crazy, over the top sports parents.
Speaker A:I'm not really sure what, what led him to that approach.
Speaker A:Maybe it was just the busyness of working in a small school and having to coach multiple sports and, and all of that.
Speaker A:But he always made himself available when I wanted to be.
Speaker A:But just, it was never, it never felt forced, it never felt like it was just a, you know, just a pain to do.
Speaker A:It was always something that I wanted to do.
Speaker A:And so that it was, he, he made it fun.
Speaker B:You ever find yourself as a parent, and I'm going to put myself in your shoes and other parents shoes that I'm someone who theoretically.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Knows what the pitfalls are of trying to push their kid too much and trying to get them maybe to do something on a day where they don't really want to.
Speaker B:And so I know all the dangers of that.
Speaker B:Yet I still, in my mind sometimes I still find myself going, gosh, like I have access to this gym or I'm going to do a workout with some kids or I've got camp.
Speaker B:Why, why didn't the kid.
Speaker B:Why don't you want to cut?
Speaker B:What do you mean you don't want to come?
Speaker B:Like I would have killed for this kind of access to a gym when I was your age.
Speaker B:What do you, what do you mean you don't want to come?
Speaker B:And I had to find myself constantly reminding in my own head.
Speaker B:And I, I was pretty good most of the time.
Speaker B:I never let it actually come out into the real world.
Speaker B:Most of the time that stuff stayed trapped in my mind, But I know how difficult it was for me sometimes to not push a little bit more.
Speaker B:And so I'm just curious for you as a parent, how do you think about that process?
Speaker B:And obviously you had a good example in your dad and how he handled your situation, but just, do you ever find yourself sort of having that good versus evil argument up in your mind on your shoulders as you're dealing with your own kids?
Speaker A:All the time, constantly, you know, and.
Speaker A:And you're watching them every day, just going like, if you want to be better, you need to practice, you know, and.
Speaker A:And tried to, you know, try to.
Speaker A:Trying to find a balance of that.
Speaker A:All my kids are young right now, and I feel like there is a lot of time, but at the same time, you know, if you.
Speaker A:If you wait a year or two, then you're just.
Speaker A:You're behind.
Speaker A:And so that's the reality of it.
Speaker A:I have tried to take my dad's approach as much as possible.
Speaker A:I do want it to be because the reality is they're going to spend a lot of time in the gym whether they want to or not.
Speaker A:That's just.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's our.
Speaker A:The rhythm of our family.
Speaker A:And so I don't want to push them in a way where, where I, you know, I want them to enjoy coming to see me and being in the gym with me and all of that.
Speaker A:Um, but it is, it is a challenge because they're getting old enough where they can participate in youth sports.
Speaker A:And as a dad, you want them to be as good as possible.
Speaker A:You know, you want them to be the best player they can be.
Speaker A:And, you know, that takes work and it takes time and it takes commitment.
Speaker A:And so just trying to.
Speaker A:I would say right now and again, my kids are 7, 6 and 4, so they're young, but right now, just trying to teach them, like, the value of hard work and the benefit of trying things that, like, maybe you're not very good at right now, but the only way to.
Speaker A:To improve is to.
Speaker A:Is to do it.
Speaker A:And so we're spending a lot of time working through some of those lessons at the moment.
Speaker B:You're just getting into it.
Speaker B:You are just heading in that direction of all the things that we're talking about here, and it's, It's a lot of fun.
Speaker B:I will say there's nothing more enjoyable than watching your kids play.
Speaker B:Whatever it is, whether it's basketball or something else, or it's playing the violin or Being in a school play, whatever it might be, it's so much fun to watch him.
Speaker B:And yet, at the same time, I think that you expressed a sentiment that I know, I feel, and I think a lot of people who are coaches and have kids and have had some success in athletics themselves, that I think we all feel that push and pull of how much do I push?
Speaker B:When do I push?
Speaker B:What does that look like?
Speaker B:And I always try to default to.
Speaker B:I always wanted to have the relationship when My kid is 25 years old.
Speaker B:I don't want them to have hated me because I made him go out on the baseball field and take 21 more grounders or get out on the basketball court and shoot 100 more threes or whatever it might be.
Speaker B:Ultimately, we want them to be their best, but we also want to make sure that we don't alienate them so that they're like, man, my dad was a pain in the neck.
Speaker B:I don't want to be around that guy anymore when they get older.
Speaker B:And so it's a.
Speaker B:It's a fine line to walk sometimes in your mind.
Speaker B:And so it's.
Speaker B:I know how difficult it is for me, and.
Speaker B:And I, again, theoretically know better.
Speaker B:And so I can only imagine for people that are trying to navigate it, who maybe don't have as much experience in sports and athletics as I do, how difficult it can be for.
Speaker B:For some parents to figure out where that, you know, where that line is drawn.
Speaker B:So you obviously had a great experience with your dad, not only as a kid and just the way that he helped to facilitate your development as an athlete, but then you get a chance to play for him at the high school level.
Speaker B:So when you think back to your high school experience, what was your favorite memory of playing high school basketball, and what do you think that you and your dad did?
Speaker B:Well, in terms of navigating that player, parent, child, sort of, again, the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker B:The triangle there of.
Speaker B:Of those three things put together.
Speaker B:So your favorite memory, and then how you guys went about sort of handling that, what did you.
Speaker B:What do you think you did well in that environment?
Speaker A:Well, I. I can start with maybe my least favorite memory and.
Speaker A:And then move to the best part.
Speaker A:But it was my junior year, and it was kind of at the stage where, you know, I felt like maybe I knew a little bit more than I did.
Speaker A:And we were in practice one day, and I was just.
Speaker A:I wasn't.
Speaker A:I really just wasn't acting right, and my dad kicked me out of practice and so really early into practice, and he's.
Speaker A:Like, don't come back in.
Speaker A:If you're gonna act like this, don't come back in.
Speaker A:And so I went home.
Speaker A:I walked in the door, and my mom said, you're home really early.
Speaker A:And I said, I got kicked out of practice by dad.
Speaker A:And she was like, I bet you won't do that again.
Speaker A:And I just sat at home until practice was over.
Speaker A:My dad walked in the house a couple hours later, and he goes, we good?
Speaker A:And I said, we're good.
Speaker A:He said, okay, I'll see you at practice tomorrow.
Speaker A:And then kept walking into.
Speaker A:Past where I was at, into the kitchen and had dinner.
Speaker A:But that was it.
Speaker A:Like, he didn't need to say anything else.
Speaker A:And I learned my lesson, and it did not happen again.
Speaker A:And so that was just a great example of him not bringing something.
Speaker A:I mean, he could have just chewed me out and.
Speaker A:And I deserved it, too.
Speaker A:And he just walked in and said, we good.
Speaker A:And that was all it took for me to know you're still the coach and you're the boss.
Speaker A:And I was way out of line.
Speaker A:And so really, you know, just.
Speaker A:The best memories, though, are.
Speaker A:Are experiencing success with your dad.
Speaker A:I mean, we won.
Speaker A:He was a very successful high school coach.
Speaker A:I think he won around 700 games and lost fewer than 200 in his career.
Speaker A:So it was a very successful program.
Speaker A:The standard was.
Speaker A:Was winning at this school for a very long time.
Speaker A:And just a lot of basketball tradition, we were in a good spot, but I think just experiencing all the joys of, like, big playoff wins and, you know, advancing to maybe, you know, different rounds of the playoffs.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:My junior year, we lost in the regional final in overtime in Texas, which we lost to the eventual state champion.
Speaker A:But there were eight teams left.
Speaker A:And really, we were probably the second best team in the state.
Speaker A:But just experiencing all the.
Speaker A:All the.
Speaker A:All the success, I would say, individually and collectively with your dad is really special.
Speaker A:Hugging him after big events, I've had.
Speaker A:I've had so many great coaches who have been great models to me, but there's nothing better than hugging your dad after a big game that you were both a part of.
Speaker A:And so just things like that are still really great memories for me.
Speaker B:Tell me a little bit about the recruiting process for you and what that was like.
Speaker B:Obviously, it's a little bit different than normal recruiting process when your dad is your high school coach.
Speaker B:So he's got a little bit of experience, I'm sure, in the recruiting world, number one.
Speaker B:But then number two, when somebody's talking to your parent, they're also talking to your coach.
Speaker B:And so I'm sure that led to at least a little bit of a different experience than maybe what somebody might have who doesn't have that situation.
Speaker B:So just tell me a little bit about your decision eventually to go to Harding and just what you went through in making the decision and, and how the conversations with your dad went as you were going through the process.
Speaker A:Yeah, so, I mean, the first thing that I would say is my dad was willing to drive me anywhere, take me anywhere, give me, you know, whatever basketball opportunities.
Speaker A:He wanted to put me in a position to be successful if that was my dream.
Speaker A:And it was my dream.
Speaker A:And so he was, you know, he was invested in that.
Speaker A:So I played aau and I did the travel ball thing and all that recruiting looked very different when I was in high school.
Speaker A:That's been 16 to 20 years ago.
Speaker A:And so, and really, in.
Speaker A:In the town that I grew up in, there weren't just a lot of college athletes in general or college basketball players, and I was the oldest kid in my family.
Speaker A:And so I feel like we were all kind of learning this on the fly back then.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:You sent DVDs.
Speaker A:Maybe a lot of the audience, maybe not, doesn't even know what a DVD is, but you sent, you know, he burned game film on DVDs and, and send those all over the country.
Speaker A:I remember him driving me to camps and, and all those things.
Speaker A:Eventually that led to some interest from Harding.
Speaker A:Both of my parents are from the state of Arkansas, and so I, I was being recruited by a couple of schools in the state of Arkansas, and hard.
Speaker A:Harding was one of those.
Speaker A:I didn't really know a ton about Harding at the time.
Speaker A:I was familiar with it, but didn't know a lot about it.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:They had a really strong basketball reputation and really a great basketball atmosphere in general.
Speaker A:And so I don't know what I was looking for.
Speaker A:I don't, I don't really know, like, why I picked Harding other than just the gut feeling there.
Speaker A:You know, fortunately, I, I, There were.
Speaker A:I was kind of down to two schools.
Speaker A:And, you know, if I had known what I, what I knew now, I would have thought about, what's the play style like, does that fit how, like, the other school that was recruiting me picked up 94ft.
Speaker A:I mean, I'm a, I'm a slow, unathletic, short guard that, that I would have just really struggled playing in that system.
Speaker A:But, you know, I wasn't thinking through that, those things at the time.
Speaker A:And so so now as a college coach, I think, you know, I just have a way better understanding of questions I should have been asking or things that I, that, that we should have known that maybe we just didn't.
Speaker A:But fortunately, you know, whether it was luck or you know, the grace of God or whatever you wanted to say, I ended up at Harding.
Speaker A:I redshirted my first year.
Speaker A:I played for a guy named Jeff Morgan.
Speaker A:He was the head coach at Harding for 30 years.
Speaker A:He's now my athletic director and so I still get to work with him every day.
Speaker A:And, and so I played for him for five years, red shirting and then four years.
Speaker A:I had an, an amazing, I was an okay basketball player.
Speaker A:That's what I like to say because that's the truth.
Speaker A:I was very average, but I played with a lot of really talented people and I figured out if I could get them the ball in scoring positions and didn't care, you know, I could play on the, I could play as much as I wanted to.
Speaker A:So that's what I did.
Speaker A:I just, I just passed it to people who could make plays and I had a great career.
Speaker A:We won a lot of games.
Speaker A:But really I played with some amazing teammates.
Speaker A:I played for an unbelievable coach.
Speaker A:And so really Harding was a life changing experience for me on dand off the floor.
Speaker B:Amazing to hear you talk about just the lack of knowledge in terms of what the process was like and what kind of questions you were going to ask.
Speaker B:We're talking in the basic pre Internet, pre Google age where now you just go on and be like, hey, I'm going on a recruiting visit, what kind of questions should I ask?
Speaker B:And you could have a list of a thousand questions that you should ask immediately and experts that you could talk to and whatever.
Speaker B: raduating from high school in: Speaker B:I mean there was nothing like my parents didn't know anything.
Speaker B:I didn't know anything.
Speaker B:My high school coach didn't know anything.
Speaker B:We were completely in the dark.
Speaker B:And now we'll even go back further back.
Speaker B:You were talking about dvd, so I'm talking about VHS tapes that I'm sending out for people to be able to watch.
Speaker B:So we're going, we're going way, way back.
Speaker B:But it's just funny again, chat GPT people.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, I was just going to say Chad, GPT has made it, has made it so easy to, to, to figure out, you know, what questions I'm going On a visit to this school.
Speaker A:And what do I need to know?
Speaker A:What questions?
Speaker A:I knew none of those things we got back when I was being recruited.
Speaker A:The coaches can make one phone call a week to you.
Speaker A:That was the rule.
Speaker A:One phone call, no texting.
Speaker A:I don't remember that.
Speaker A:You could text, but one phone call.
Speaker A:And if you missed that phone call, you just had to wait until the next week.
Speaker A:That was it.
Speaker A:So you better answer the phone.
Speaker A:And now coaches can talk, you know, as much as they want, whenever they want.
Speaker A:Unlimited access, really, both ways.
Speaker A:And so the.
Speaker A:The recruiting landscape is just totally different now.
Speaker B:Really is just incredible when I think about the wealth of knowledge that people have at their fingertips today to be able to make better decisions.
Speaker B:And to your point, I think what's interesting is you said, hey, I ended up choosing to go to Harding by feel.
Speaker B:And in some ways, you think, well, okay, it might have been nice to have all that information, But I can honestly tell you that I've sent two kids to college so far, and both of them have made the decision not so much on anything besides walking on the campus and just saying, this feels like the right place for me.
Speaker B:Either because of the campus itself, because of the couple people that they met, they're not choosing the school necessarily because it has a perfect major for them, or there's not any real, like, super analysis or facts or data or any of this stuff.
Speaker B:It was more just this place feels like the right place.
Speaker B:And so even though you have a lot of data at your fingertips and you can go and you can find out what all the questions are that you should ask, a lot of times, still today, it just comes down to I feel at home here.
Speaker B:This feels right.
Speaker B:This is where I belong.
Speaker B:This is where I should go.
Speaker B:And both of my kids who have chosen schools, I'd say that that feel piece of it has been definitely, I would say, the majority of what they based their decision on in terms of where they ended up going to school.
Speaker B:So when you were headed to school, did you have any idea that coaching was where you wanted to end up?
Speaker B:Or were you thinking about something else in terms of a major, in terms of a career?
Speaker B:Because obviously, growing up with your dad as a coach, you've got coaching, you've been exposed to it, you know, at least what the life of a high school coach looks like.
Speaker B:So where was your mindset as you're coming into school in terms of.
Speaker B:Were you thinking about coaching at all?
Speaker B:Were you still just completely focused on being the best player you could be?
Speaker A:Yeah, My dream has always been to be a coach.
Speaker A:I've known from a young age that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker A:And really, I loved my life growing up.
Speaker A:I loved coaching.
Speaker A:I loved the idea of, you know, finding a small town to coach in, just like my dad, raising a family there.
Speaker A:I move at a much slower pace than, than most people.
Speaker A:And so coaching in a big city with, you know, fighting traffic every day, that just does not appeal to me at all.
Speaker A:And so the dream was always to, to coach and be a high school coach and, and coach in a small town.
Speaker A:And, and really, you know, if, if people are considering coaching, I obviously, you know, played in college, but man, if people are considering coaching, especially at the college level, which was never a dream for me, you know, I would encourage them to find a spot where they can get plugged into a program.
Speaker A:And really, you know, the higher level you go, the more connections you have.
Speaker A:And so, you know, even if you're a manager at a Division 1 school and you do a good job, like, you know, maybe two or three of those assistant coaches during your time there are going to be Division 1 or Division 2 or whatever head coaches one day, and you've made that connection to them and, and just your, your.
Speaker A:Your net can get really big really fast.
Speaker A:That was never my dream.
Speaker A:And, and really I was going to college to play basketball anyway, and I had no idea how college basketball even worked.
Speaker A:And that was not on my radar.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:When I finished playing, I actually taught 8th grade history.
Speaker A:I coached junior high football and junior high basketball at a school in Little Rock, and I did that for a year.
Speaker A:My wife was in grad school at the time.
Speaker A:She's a speech therapist now.
Speaker A:But I was, I enjoyed that.
Speaker A:I thought, this is what I'm enjoy.
Speaker A:I love the classroom.
Speaker A:I like history.
Speaker A:I'm an.
Speaker A:I am a nerd.
Speaker A:I like to read.
Speaker A:But I enjoyed that.
Speaker A:That side of, of my job.
Speaker A:I enjoyed the coaching side of my job.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:The assistant women's basketball job at Harding opened up a year.
Speaker A:A year.
Speaker A:Well, the year that I was doing that at the school in Little Rock, the assistant women's job opened up and I had some people reach out and go, would you be interested coming back to Harding?
Speaker A:And I was like, well, I love Harding, but I've never thought about coaching in college, and I've definitely never thought about coaching women's basketball.
Speaker A:That was, that was not in the plan.
Speaker A:And I ended up talking to the head coach, Tim Kirby, who I worked for for five years, but he said he said, you know, what, you know, what are you.
Speaker A:What do you teach?
Speaker A:And I said, I teach eighth graders.
Speaker A:I teach them all day.
Speaker A:This was around the time of spring break, and the classroom was getting kind of rowdy.
Speaker A:Everyone was, you know, it was just.
Speaker A:It was getting a little challenging.
Speaker A:He goes, hey, you know, if you came back and coached here, you wouldn't have to teach.
Speaker A:And I said, well, I may try out what.
Speaker B:What.
Speaker A:What coaching in college looks like.
Speaker A:And so I did that.
Speaker A:I. I coached women's basketball at Harding for five years.
Speaker A:I loved every second of it.
Speaker A:I had no idea that I would have liked it so much, but I ended up doing that for five years.
Speaker A:Harding is special to me, and I got to coach a lot of special players.
Speaker A:And so that was my transition to college coaching.
Speaker A:That wasn't.
Speaker A:That wasn't something that I dreamed about doing.
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker A:The kind of.
Speaker A:The only reason that it happened is because I had played here, and Coach Kirby was familiar with me, and I'm really fortunate that he decided to make that phone call to me.
Speaker B:You think while you were playing, I'm always curious to ask guys who have a playing career while you were playing, did you find yourself thinking about the game from a coaching perspective in addition to.
Speaker B:As a playing perspective?
Speaker B:I always feel like when I was playing, I was kind of focused on what I was supposed to do, my role.
Speaker B:I was focused on how I.
Speaker B:How what I did was going to impact how the team was going to do.
Speaker B:But I wasn't necessarily ever focused on sort of the bigger picture of looking at how coach was managing the team or why were they making more of these big picture strategic decisions?
Speaker B:Because I just was so focused on my own performance and how my own performance played into whether or not our team was going to be successful or not.
Speaker B:So when you think back to your time as a player, do you feel like you were thinking the game as both a player and a coach, or did that coaching kind of leave until you.
Speaker B:Until you got done playing?
Speaker A:I really tried to think like a coach.
Speaker A:I feel like just growing up in a coaching household, you know, I had access to, like, how coaches thought, you know, after games, hearing, like, I would be in the coach's office when I was a kid, and the coaches are, you know, my dad and the other coaches are talking through things.
Speaker A:I always tried to really think through the game.
Speaker A:I would have.
Speaker A:I would have liked to have thought of myself as a player, as an extension of the coach on the floor.
Speaker A:And so, you know, again, I wasn't.
Speaker A:I wasn't tall or athletic or quick or.
Speaker A:I didn't.
Speaker A:I had very.
Speaker A:I had no.
Speaker A:Really no skill.
Speaker A:So I needed to be smarter than everybody else.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And so, you know, as a player, I was trying to think through some of those things.
Speaker A:I feel like maybe this is more of a.
Speaker A:Of a modern approach, but I, you know, like, generationally, you know, the way people talk was, you know, a long time ago, what the coach said was.
Speaker A:Was true.
Speaker A:And you didn't question it, and you didn't.
Speaker A:And I feel like I was kind of right in between where we're at today and kind of the old school approach to where there were times where I felt comfortable asking my coaches, you know, why are we doing it this way?
Speaker A:Or what are you, like, why do you want to call this here?
Speaker A:What are you seeing?
Speaker A:And I felt like my coaches were really approachable in those ways in high school and in college.
Speaker A:And so, you know, I. I do think.
Speaker A:I do think I was trying to.
Speaker A:You know, it wasn't like.
Speaker A:I remember a team ran the Princeton offense, and they ran it really well in college that we played against.
Speaker A:I played them all four years of my career.
Speaker A:And as a player, if you had gotten on the board with me and said, hey, I want you to draw up Princeton, I mean, I couldn't have done that.
Speaker A:There was no way I could have done that.
Speaker A:And so I wasn't really thinking through, like, the X's and O side of things, but, you know, I was trying to think through.
Speaker A:Thinking through the game of basketball and trying to figure out, why are we doing this here?
Speaker A:What's the reason for that?
Speaker A:Just.
Speaker A:Just to.
Speaker A:Just to really think through what my coaches wanted.
Speaker B:You talked a few minutes ago about making the decision to first, after you graduate, to go and coach and teach at the high school level and kind of following your dad's footsteps, and then you get the opportunity to go back to Harding to coach on the women's side of the game.
Speaker B:So two pretty big transitions there.
Speaker B:One going from coaching males to coaching females, and two going from coaching at the high school level to coaching at the college level.
Speaker B:Talk a little bit about each one of those transitions, those changes.
Speaker B:So going from high school to college and then going from, in your case, I guess, boys basketball to women's basketball.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, one of the.
Speaker A:One of the challenges at the high school level, especially if you're at a smaller school, is you're just sharing athletes.
Speaker A:And so, you know, maybe you have on your basketball team just a couple of people who are basketball only and the other people are, you know, playing a fall sport or playing a spring sport or basketball really isn't something that they just love to do.
Speaker A:That was.
Speaker A:I loved, I loved where I coached, and I loved who I got to coach at the junior high and high school level.
Speaker A:But, but I realized when you're growing up, the, the, the, the town that I grew up in, it was a basketball school.
Speaker A:So people, you know, people love to play basketball.
Speaker A:And, and then, you know, at, at the high school I was at, it maybe wasn't necessarily a basketball school.
Speaker A:And so, you know, you just had a couple of people who were all in on basketball and you had others who played and were good and all that.
Speaker A:But, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't their passion.
Speaker A:It wasn't what they wanted to do all the time at the college level.
Speaker A:They're there to play basketball, you know, and, and they're there to, you know, get a degree and all the, all the other good things.
Speaker A:But, like, they're being recruited to play college basketball.
Speaker A:And so I loved the, the 247 basketball.
Speaker A:Just like, you know, we're practicing and we're watching film and we're doing individual workouts and, you know, it was all basketball all the time.
Speaker A:And as someone who, who loves basketball, that was enjoyable for me.
Speaker A:I really didn't.
Speaker A:I don't know that I understood that when I was making the jump.
Speaker A:I don't know that I knew that that's what I was getting into.
Speaker A:But it was a lot of fun to go from, you know, basketball only being a piece of what I did at the, at the high school level.
Speaker A:Because you're teaching class all day and you're doing parent teacher conferences and, you know, there's just.
Speaker A:You have lunch duty and all that too.
Speaker A:At the college level, man, I'm in the office all day and I'm scouting or I'm recruiting or, you know, it's just all basketball all the time.
Speaker A:So, so that, that, that was a really, a really fun part of the transition, you know, coaching guys and coaching girls.
Speaker A:So I coached junior high and high school boys, then I made the jump to college women, and now I'm coaching on the men's side at the college level.
Speaker A:And so I've kind of gone.
Speaker A:I've yo.
Speaker A:Yoed a little bit.
Speaker A:I do think it's very different coaching, coaching guys and girls.
Speaker A:I don't know, maybe some people would say it's, it's.
Speaker A:It's been a very different experience for me.
Speaker A:What I would say is, is There are challenges coaching guys and coaching girls and you're just kind of deciding what challenges you want to deal with.
Speaker A:A lot of times, you know, on the guys side, you know, we're, we're dealing with maybe, oh, you know, oh, well, maybe let me start with on the girls side.
Speaker A:On the girls side, a lot of the challenges might be like locker room drama or talking about people or you know, maybe it's just more just kind of those, those types of things.
Speaker A:On the guy side, you know, maybe the challenges are guys thinking they know, like girls are extremely coachable.
Speaker A:I mean, I know girl has ever, you know, like whatever dream of talking back or you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:I mean it was just, they were very, they were very, they were so easy to coach and they wanted to, to do the right thing.
Speaker A:And guys, they think they know more than you.
Speaker A:And so every day I'm just going, oh man, like this is the way we need to do it.
Speaker A:And, and trying to explain those types of things.
Speaker A:So there are challenge there, there, there are positives and negatives to both sides.
Speaker A:I've done both and I've loved both.
Speaker A:And I think just trying to figure out what lane, what, you know, just adjusting to the lane that I've been in.
Speaker A:I, it took me five years to, you know, at Harding, and then I went a couple of other spots as well on the women's side.
Speaker A:But my wife played college basketball too.
Speaker A:And so we met at Harding.
Speaker A:We were in school together.
Speaker A:I always try to say that having coached women's basketball, we run school together.
Speaker A:But you know, she was a great, just a great person to throw stuff off of.
Speaker A:Just going like, hey, I'm dealing with this.
Speaker A:What advice would you give me?
Speaker A:She was great.
Speaker A:She's been great in those situations.
Speaker A:And then coaching on the guy side again, there, there are challenges with that, but there are also some, some, really, some things that are really easy.
Speaker A:Like for instance, if we have never practiced something, we show up in, there's, there's a game and a team, a team shows up in a 2, 2, 1 press.
Speaker A:And we've never worked on a press break for a 2 to 1.
Speaker A:I can just go, we're going to get in this alignment.
Speaker A:And they go, we got it coach.
Speaker A:We're good.
Speaker A:We, we, we can figure it out.
Speaker A:And on the girl side, it just, I, I, it was, it never felt that easy.
Speaker A:It was like we have to practice every situation and every scenario and give, if they do this, then we do this and, and the guys are, are, are they they're more.
Speaker A:They're.
Speaker A:They can just.
Speaker A:They can just go, we know how to do it.
Speaker A:We got it.
Speaker A:So I've enjoyed both.
Speaker A:It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker A:I love what I'm doing now, but I also love my time coaching women's basketball as well.
Speaker B:Tell me about the lessons that you learned in your various stops as an assistant that once you got an opportunity to become a head coach that you feel like benefited you as you stepped into that head coach's role.
Speaker B:Give me one or two things from being an assistant that you learned that you felt like, man, learning this as an assistant is really going to help me or really has helped me once I got to take over my own program.
Speaker A:Well, I worked as an assistant college basketball coach.
Speaker A:I worked for three really good.
Speaker A:Really good coaches and really good bosses.
Speaker A:As.
Speaker A:As a.
Speaker A:My.
Speaker A:My first stop was at Harding for Tim Kirby.
Speaker A:And really what I learned from him was just the ability to empower assistance, the value in that I was really learning.
Speaker A:I mean, I didn't know how to be a college coach.
Speaker A:I'd never done it before.
Speaker A:And every year I just felt like I got a little bit better and I wanted a little bit more responsibility.
Speaker A:And I would just say, hey, what do you think about.
Speaker A:If we did this as a program?
Speaker A:And he was.
Speaker A:He would always go, great.
Speaker A:You do it.
Speaker A:You do it.
Speaker A:Like, if.
Speaker A:If it's important to you, you take.
Speaker A:You take charge of it.
Speaker A:But I love the idea.
Speaker A:And so when.
Speaker A:When.
Speaker A:When you do that over five years, you end up growing and learning in a lot of different areas.
Speaker A:But he was so good at empowering me to grow, to learn, to improve.
Speaker A:There were times where I would go coach.
Speaker A:Sometimes I just throw random things out there.
Speaker A:You do not have to agree to this like you are.
Speaker A:You can just say, no, that's a dumb idea.
Speaker A:That is perfectly.
Speaker A:It will not hurt my feelings at all.
Speaker A:But he was so great about.
Speaker A:If.
Speaker A:If I thought it was important, then he thought this is important to him, so it should be important to me.
Speaker A:And so I grew a lot working for him over five years just because he.
Speaker A:He was empowering.
Speaker A:And so as.
Speaker A:As a head coach, I mean, that.
Speaker A:That has.
Speaker A:I wasn't.
Speaker A:I've been an assistant coach the majority of my career, and.
Speaker A:And this is year three as a head coach.
Speaker A:But I really want to empower the people who.
Speaker A:Who.
Speaker A:Who are in our program.
Speaker A:If this is your.
Speaker A:If this is what you're good at, I want you to.
Speaker A:To feel like this is your responsibility.
Speaker A:You know, one of the things currently is, I call the offense, I think our assistant coach.
Speaker A:We have one assistant.
Speaker A:That's Life at Division 2, one assistant coach.
Speaker A:But he's a really.
Speaker A:He's a.
Speaker A:He's a really good defensive coach, and he handles all the defense, and that's his thing.
Speaker A:And of course, we talk through how maybe I want things done or things that are important to me, but this is his thing, and I want it to be important to him.
Speaker A:And so working for Coach Kirby at Harding on the women's side, empowering assistants.
Speaker A:I worked.
Speaker A:My next job was at Arkansas State.
Speaker A:I worked for a guy named Matt Daniel, who was a.
Speaker A:A longtime Division 1 head coach and at a few different places and had a lot of success.
Speaker A:He's retired now from the college game.
Speaker A:But really working for Matt, I learned how to be organized and efficient.
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:If you.
Speaker A:If people who are listening to this know Matt Daniel, they know he is.
Speaker A:He is so detail oriented that nothing, you know, I was just.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:I was just way too go with the flow or way to, you know, we can figure it out on the fly.
Speaker A:And he wanted a plan for every single thing.
Speaker A:And so I just learned to be extremely detailed, that everything was important.
Speaker A:I mean, there's a story that.
Speaker A:That this didn't happen when I was at Arkansas State with Matt, but it makes me think of this Tom Herman, who was a college football coach.
Speaker A:He was.
Speaker A:He was actually a coach at Rice at the time.
Speaker A:And there was a really good quarterback in Houston.
Speaker A:And he and his dad just showed up for a campus visit.
Speaker A:They just showed up to Rice.
Speaker A:Very highly recruited quarterback.
Speaker A:They do a tour of the facility.
Speaker A:It's not organized.
Speaker A:It's messy.
Speaker A:It doesn't look good.
Speaker A:And they ended up leaving that day.
Speaker A:And Tom Herman, he goes, I knew we had no chance.
Speaker A:Not that we could have gotten this kid anyway, but I knew when he left, we just weren't prepared in a way for us to get this kid.
Speaker A:And Andrew Luck ended up going to Stanford and becoming the number one pick in the NFL draft.
Speaker A:And, you know, all of those things, but it's just like, let's run our program in a way where it doesn't matter who shows up on what day.
Speaker A:Uh, it's going to look like we know what we're doing and we're prepared for everything.
Speaker A:And so Matt was extremely detail oriented.
Speaker A:I learned a lot about running a program from him.
Speaker A:And then my last stop was at Abilene Christian.
Speaker A:I worked for Julie Goodenough, who.
Speaker A:She's been a Division 1 women's basketball head coach for man, probably over 25 years and is a brilliant offensive mind.
Speaker A:I mean, a lot of really pretty much everything that we do offensively comes from my time working with her at acu.
Speaker A:She's.
Speaker A:She was doing dribble drive.
Speaker A:I would just say, you know, she was on it kind of from the beginning, I feel like.
Speaker A:And I knew that as a.
Speaker A:As an assistant coach, scouting dribble drive teams were always challenging for me.
Speaker A:I loved the pace at which they played.
Speaker A:I loved the ball movement.
Speaker A:I love the gaps, the spacing.
Speaker A:It just looked like a really fun way to play.
Speaker A:And so working, working for her at acu, I just learned the ins and outs of dribble drive.
Speaker A:And she's also had a lot of success.
Speaker A:Everybody I work for has been really successful as head coaches.
Speaker A:But I would just say just the way she ran a program to things that are important to her.
Speaker A:This weekend in our program at Harding, we're going.
Speaker A:We pair each of our players up with a Harding basketball alumni, and that's their mentor.
Speaker A:And I got that from acu.
Speaker A:Our.
Speaker A:Our girls at ACU were paired up with mentors, but it.
Speaker A:It's been a.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:She.
Speaker A:There were just so many.
Speaker A:Just different culture ideas from my time at acu, where I just.
Speaker A:I've implemented at our program here.
Speaker A:And so just really, I've worked for really good people.
Speaker A:All of.
Speaker A:All of them helped me grow as a coach and, and really prepared me to be in this position.
Speaker A:And I don't know that I would have been ready had I not been at each of.
Speaker B:Now, those are great lessons without a question.
Speaker B:And I think when you hear each one of those things and you think about how those play into your ability to be a successful head coach.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:One is the ability to pour into your assistance and help them to grow.
Speaker B:Two, you're talking about being detail oriented, and three, you're talking about building culture.
Speaker B:So those are all clearly, if you're talking about building a successful college basketball program, those three things are hugely important.
Speaker B:Tell me a little bit more about that mentorship program.
Speaker B:I'm curious, just how do you get your alums?
Speaker B:What's the process for reaching out to them, figuring out who's going to get involved?
Speaker B:I haven't heard anybody doing anything like that.
Speaker B:I've never talked to anybody on the pod who's had that program in place.
Speaker B:So I'm just curious.
Speaker B:Tell me a little bit more about it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So, you know, what we do is, I really think through me and me and the assistant coach, we really think through who is a great.
Speaker A:Who is a great match for our player.
Speaker A:And so we're thinking through what do they want to do career wise?
Speaker A:That's probably the most important thing because ideally we're pairing them up with someone who is doing what their dream job is.
Speaker A:Now, if you were to ask everybody in our program, what's your dream job?
Speaker A:They would all say pro basketball.
Speaker A:So I say, all right, you can't.
Speaker A:It can't be pro basketball.
Speaker A:That's not it.
Speaker A:That's not.
Speaker A:That's your dream.
Speaker A:But after pro basketball.
Speaker A:And so, you know, I'm thinking, you know, we're getting feedback from them.
Speaker A:And so maybe that's be a coach or do something in the business world or sell insurance or, you know, whatever.
Speaker A:And so really I'm thinking through who in the Harding basketball family is doing what they want to do and then who can show up.
Speaker A:Really, the way we kick it off is you have to be here in person.
Speaker A:And we're going to do a mentor lunch where they.
Speaker A:They're going to meet their mentor in person.
Speaker A:They're.
Speaker A:They're hooked up with them for the.
Speaker A:That's their mentor for their year.
Speaker A:And then ideally we're going to.
Speaker A:We're going to talk through what the pairing was like, and then if that's a great match for them, then they're just going to keep that.
Speaker A:So this is year three for me.
Speaker A:And we have some people coming back for their third straight year because they were matched up with someone a couple of years ago.
Speaker A:That makes sense for them.
Speaker A:And so really the whole goal is, you know, we want to pair them up with someone who, who has been in their shoes as a Harding basketball player, who has been in their classes, who has been in their dorm room, but someone who is.
Speaker A:Who's a great role model for them.
Speaker A:Now, our mentors are various ages.
Speaker A:We have people who are retired all the way down to people who are 25 years old.
Speaker A:And so it's really intergenerational, but really just putting people in front of our guys so that they go, when, when.
Speaker A:When I'm 25 years old, I would love for my life to look like that, or when I'm 35 or 45 or 65.
Speaker A:And so it's been a really cool thing that we've done.
Speaker A:There have been a lot of benefits of it.
Speaker A:It's great getting people back to campus who maybe giving them a reason to come back to campus, but really people have wanted to.
Speaker A:Have wanted to partner up with us on this, and I've been really pleased with just the effects of it over the last.
Speaker A:Over the last two years and now going on year three.
Speaker B:Tell me a little bit about.
Speaker B:Obviously, you have experience at Harding as a player.
Speaker B:You've been there as an assistant coach, so you have an idea of what it's going to take to build a successful program.
Speaker B:So when you take over the men's job, what is it that you see as some of the key things that needed to happen in order for the program to get where you wanted to go?
Speaker B:And where are you currently in the process of accomplishing those things that you had in your mind when you first took the job?
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, it's really special getting to.
Speaker A:Getting to coach at the place you played at.
Speaker A:Recruiting is such a big part of our jobs as college coaches.
Speaker A:And to recruit to a place that you love.
Speaker A:You know, college coaches have to recruit because it's their job.
Speaker A:But it's really special getting to.
Speaker A:Getting to recruit to a place that changed your life as a student and as a player, and then offering that opportunity to.
Speaker A:To kids who, you know, that if they were to pick Harding, it could totally change the trajectory of their life like it did for me.
Speaker A:And so I feel like just getting kids on campus and talking through, hey, here's what Harding did for me.
Speaker A:I feel like that.
Speaker A:That connects to people in a way where.
Speaker A:Where maybe if I'm just recruiting as my job, you know, it's just.
Speaker A:It doesn't have the same effect.
Speaker A:When I, when, when.
Speaker A:When.
Speaker A:When we took over at Harding, Coach Morgan, who I.
Speaker A:Who I played for, you know, he.
Speaker A:He retired as the men's basketball coach.
Speaker A:He's now the athletic director.
Speaker A:And so Harding was just maybe going through a little bit of a rebuilding phase.
Speaker A:They had finished at or near the bottom of the conference for.
Speaker A:For a couple of years.
Speaker A:And there, There are reasons for that, but, you know, really just kind of working through the things that were important.
Speaker A:You know, one of the biggest things that.
Speaker A:That has.
Speaker A:Has been really important is just the culture being what you want it to be as a head coach.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's been a huge challenge.
Speaker A:You know, this is my first head coaching job, so I really didn't know, you know, what, what, what were going to be kind of the easy and difficult parts of the job.
Speaker A:Fighting for the culture you want every single day can be exhausting as a head coach, but, man, you just have to do it.
Speaker A:The things that are important to you, they have to be important to your Guys, I love culture.
Speaker A:To me, you know, we don't talk about winning championships.
Speaker A:We do talk about championship standards.
Speaker A:These are things that championship teams do, but it's never about wins and losses.
Speaker A:It can't be about those things.
Speaker A:But I do feel like from a culture standpoint, if our culture is where it needs to be, then whatever our ceiling is as a team that year, if the culture's right, we're.
Speaker A:We're going to reach it or get really close, you know.
Speaker A:And as a coach, you know, I try not to evaluate how our success on wins and losses, although, you know, you get hired and fired based on that.
Speaker A:I understand that as a college coach, that's part of the job.
Speaker A:But to me, to me, the teams that underachieve, underperform, don't hit their ceiling.
Speaker A:It's because there's something off, and it's not because of a lack of talent.
Speaker A:Everybody that we play has really good basketball players.
Speaker A:Our conference is really balanced.
Speaker A:It's a great league.
Speaker A:And so I feel like getting the culture piece right from, from day one is.
Speaker A:Is really important.
Speaker A:And, you know, in the, in the transfer era right now of college sports, you're getting so many different people in your program that have different standards and different values, and they may think their definition of playing hard is not your definition of, you know, or their definition of a good teammate is not your end.
Speaker A:So we're.
Speaker A:We're having to just really get the culture things down.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That's so important.
Speaker A:Year one, when we took over, it was just getting the.
Speaker A:Getting the culture what we want to be, getting the competitiveness level at a place where we felt like it needed to be.
Speaker A:Year one, which was two years ago, we made the conference tournament for the first time in seven years.
Speaker A:And so that was.
Speaker A:No one in our locker room had ever played in the conference tournament before.
Speaker A:And so we won enough games to qualify.
Speaker A:It was, you know, below what we would want our standard to be, but it was still really special getting to getting that experience.
Speaker A:We lost in a close game in the first round to a hot.
Speaker A:To the team that won the conference tournament and a really good team.
Speaker A:And then this past year was year two, and everyone came back.
Speaker A:Nobody entered the portal.
Speaker A:I really liked where we had gotten the culture to.
Speaker A:That stuff just matters.
Speaker A:And we ended up winning the conference tournament, making the NCAA tournament.
Speaker A:This past year, we won 22 games.
Speaker A:And so it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker A:It's been a lot of hard work.
Speaker A:I don't want to glamorize it all the guys who won a championship last year, there were hard conversations along the way in pushing people, you know, just going like, don't settle.
Speaker A:Don't be average.
Speaker A:Don't.
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker A:And so I don't want to say it was always rainbows and butterflies, but then to celebrate with a group of guys and to hold a trophy and.
Speaker A:And really, just watching that transformation over a couple of years has been really special.
Speaker A:And so now we're moving into year three.
Speaker A:We've lost a lot of players from the championship team.
Speaker A:People graduated.
Speaker A:We had a couple of guys who are playing at the Division 1 level now from.
Speaker A:From that team.
Speaker A:And so there's.
Speaker A:So now, now I feel like we're, in a lot of ways, we're kind of back to year one, which is just making sure that the culture and standards are where they need to be.
Speaker B:How do you build that culture and those standards into your daily practices?
Speaker B:So if you want to maybe expound a little bit just on how you go about planning a practice, and then not only from an X's and O standpoint, but also how do you try to build in those culture and standard things that are so important clearly, to being able to have a successful program?
Speaker B:So just talk through the lens of planning a practice.
Speaker B:What is incorporating that culture and standard on a daily basis?
Speaker B:What does that look like?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, every program is different.
Speaker A:I think every coach has things that are important to them.
Speaker A:And if I were to give you my list of things that are.
Speaker A:That are important to me, I don't know that it would match up with necessarily anybody's list anywhere else in the country.
Speaker A:But the things that are important to you, you better emphasize them, you better incentivize them, and you better let the people know when they're doing those things.
Speaker A:Well, I mean, that's what, you know, somebody very early on said to me, when you find somebody doing things the way you want them done, man, everybody needs to know that.
Speaker A:And so, you know, there.
Speaker A:There's just certain values in our program where, when people are.
Speaker A:Are meeting our standard for those things we want the rest of the team to know, this is what that looks like.
Speaker A:And so we say edge in our program.
Speaker A:Those are our four core values.
Speaker A:It's an acronym.
Speaker A:Energy, discipline, grid excellence.
Speaker A:But we're going to highlight the guys who, from an energy standpoint, are doing things the way we want them done.
Speaker A:They're communicating at the level, at a championship level.
Speaker A:Their effort, their body language.
Speaker A:Body language is a big deal.
Speaker A:I mean, again, when you're getting guys in from.
Speaker A:From different programs.
Speaker A:Some.
Speaker A:Some.
Speaker A:Some things that.
Speaker A:Other that.
Speaker A:That guys have been allowed to do, we just go, we don't do that here.
Speaker A:You know, we don't complain about officiating here.
Speaker A:We don't.
Speaker A:We move on to the next play.
Speaker A:And so the e. Part of that, the energy part of that, we're gonna.
Speaker A:We're gonna highlight those guys and reward those guys who are doing things the way we want them done.
Speaker A:I could talk about discipline, I could talk about grit.
Speaker A:I could talk about excellence.
Speaker A:But we define each of those things and what those things look like and why those things are important.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And it's more than just on the floor, too, right?
Speaker A:What we're saying is people who are disciplined on the floor, that's really important.
Speaker A:But people who are disciplined off the floor are going to be more successful in life.
Speaker A:And here, all the.
Speaker A:Here are all the benefits of.
Speaker A:Of living a disciplined life.
Speaker A:And the same with grit and the same, you know, so it's more than just the basketball piece.
Speaker A:But I would just say from a.
Speaker A:From a coaching standpoint, I would really think through what are the things that are important to you?
Speaker A:And that can't be a very long list, because if you have these four things here and these six things here and these three things here, and that if I want.
Speaker A:I want people to be able to walk into our gym and ask our team, hey, what are.
Speaker A:What are the.
Speaker A:What's the most important thing?
Speaker A:And I think everybody on our team would say edge, even though it's still pretty early in the year and all that.
Speaker A:I think they would know that, because I just want the messaging to be really tight, to be really succinct.
Speaker A:And then when we see people who are doing those things, we just go, this is the way.
Speaker A:This is what it looks like you're.
Speaker B:Getting prepared for this season or any season.
Speaker B:And you just go through your process of preparing yourself to get ready to share with the team what you want to do.
Speaker B:And obviously, you've had an opportunity to work with them in the summer and into the fall.
Speaker B:But as you're kind of putting together the plan and you're getting to know your personnel, as you said, you had some turnover from the previous season.
Speaker B:As you're starting to get to know that personnel, what are the conversations like between you and your assistant coach in terms of, hey, how is it that we want to play?
Speaker B:What do we want our team to look like offensively and defensively?
Speaker B:How much of it is.
Speaker B:This is our style of play.
Speaker B:And obviously you're trying to recruit guys that are going to play the way that you want them to be able to play.
Speaker B:But yet, year to year, there's probably some tweaks and some things that you have to do based on personnel.
Speaker B:So just what's the process that you go through?
Speaker B:What are the conversations like in terms of putting together what's our team going to look like on the floor this year, offensively and defensively?
Speaker B:How do those conversations go?
Speaker A:Well, first, I'm really fortunate that the assistant coach is a guy named Bradley Spencer.
Speaker A:And Bradley and I were teammates at Harding for four years.
Speaker A:And so getting to work with.
Speaker A:When.
Speaker A:When.
Speaker A:When I thought this could be a possibility of.
Speaker A:Of maybe coming back to Harding, I. I really just wanted to make one phone call.
Speaker A:And fortunately, when I called Bradley and asked if he would be interested, he.
Speaker A:He jumped at it.
Speaker A:And so now this is year three of.
Speaker A:Of us working together.
Speaker A:Every year.
Speaker A:There have been.
Speaker A:There have definitely been tweaks that we've made.
Speaker A:I. I have.
Speaker A:In fact, you know, I have made way more mistakes as a head coach than gotten things right.
Speaker A:And so, you know, I feel like just learning this.
Speaker A:This.
Speaker A:We tried it.
Speaker A:This wasn't the way to do this, or I thought this was a good idea.
Speaker A:It wasn't.
Speaker A:I think, you know, even just having the.
Speaker A:The ability of someone to offer that kind of feedback to you where.
Speaker A:Where he's just going like, hey, I don't know if this is the best way to do it, and you go, yeah, you're right.
Speaker A:This was.
Speaker A:Why did I think this was going to be.
Speaker A:It wasn't a good.
Speaker A:So we've had tweaks every year.
Speaker A:You know, fortunately, we are able to recruit to how we want to play.
Speaker A:But year one, we inherited.
Speaker A:I mean, we inherited the roster, really.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:We had the roster that we had, and we were kind of trying to.
Speaker A:We did change up stylistically, how we played, and so that was an adjustment.
Speaker A:Now into year three, I feel like our roster looks a little bit more like, you know, we've been able to recruit to that a little bit more, but at the same time, you have to coach.
Speaker A:You have to coach the players on your team.
Speaker A:And at the high school level, that's definitely true, but the college level, you know, it would be nice.
Speaker A:You know, I don't coach at Kansas or Duke or.
Speaker A:Or Arkansas or where, like, you know, everybody that we want, we don't necessarily get either.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So you're having to.
Speaker A:Maybe you want them to do these three things, and they can only do two out of those three things.
Speaker A:And so you're having to, you're having to coach the guys that you have.
Speaker A:I think for me, just evaluation is such an important piece of the coaching process.
Speaker A:There are always ways to get better.
Speaker A:There are always things just the aggregation of marginal gains, right?
Speaker A:Where if we can get 1% better in something, man.
Speaker A:In a, in a, in a.
Speaker A:So many of our games come down to one or two possessions that that could be the difference in winning and losing college basketball games every spring.
Speaker A:We're going to just sit down and do a very thorough program evaluation in, in all areas of our program.
Speaker A:There was something when I got hired that I thought was a good idea academically in our program.
Speaker A:It was a terrible idea.
Speaker A:We tried it.
Speaker A:It didn't work.
Speaker A:And you know what?
Speaker A:There's a better way to do it.
Speaker A:And so it's not just the on the floor stuff.
Speaker A:It's the off the floor stuff too.
Speaker A:I just have, from an organizational standpoint, you know, in our Google Drive, we have all of these different folders of things that are important to running a program.
Speaker A:And so there's an offensive folder and a defensive folder and an academic folder and an off season folder.
Speaker A:And just, you know, I'm thinking we're just going through all of those areas and talking through recruiting folder.
Speaker A:You know, what do we like that we're doing?
Speaker A:What can we tweak?
Speaker A:There's a.
Speaker A:There's a good exercise that one of my bosses did called Start, stop and Keep.
Speaker A:And I'm going to work from, from the end to the front.
Speaker A:So you know the keep part, what are we doing that works?
Speaker A:You know, if it's not broke, don't fix it.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:So what do we need to keep doing?
Speaker A:All right, what do we need to stop doing?
Speaker A:So, you know, my very first year, our team has.
Speaker A:We communicated in a group meet and I said everyone needs to like, like the message when a coach sends it in the group meet.
Speaker A:That was a dumb idea.
Speaker A:I learned really quickly I did not want to police that all the time.
Speaker A:And so there, there are definitely some things that we needed to stop doing.
Speaker A:And it's the same with year two where there are some things that we evaluate that we go, wow, we don't need to do that anymore.
Speaker A:And then what are some things that we're not doing that we need to start doing?
Speaker A:And something else that has been really good for me is our seniors who are graduating.
Speaker A:I've done this exercise with them as well, and they have really great ideas.
Speaker A:And so, you know, just getting the players perspective on start, stop and keep has been really helpful because ultimately you want these things to be good for the players.
Speaker A:You want to do things in a way that the players are bought into that.
Speaker A:And so just doing that start, stop and keep exercise with the players.
Speaker A:I've gotten a lot of really good feedback, not all of it positive.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Just some constructive feedback from some of them going, I think there's.
Speaker A:This is a better way to do it.
Speaker A:And so I think, I think the evaluation piece, not just offensively and defensively, just all across the board, has been really valuable for us.
Speaker B:Have you.
Speaker B:Start, stop, keep.
Speaker B:Just in my own life, I've used it just personally to try to improve myself.
Speaker B:And I've also used it when it comes to my basketball camps as well.
Speaker B:To.
Speaker B:It's just a very easy way to kind of think through the process and it makes it very, very simple.
Speaker B:So I could see again, when you're talking about the value of trying to figure out, hey, I'm evaluating my program, it's a very simple framework to work through.
Speaker B:And yet again, I found it to be very effective than the times that, that I've used it, used it both personally and professionally.
Speaker B:So I think that's really a good way to approach things.
Speaker B:And like I said, it's just a simple method for getting that evaluation piece done.
Speaker B:Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to ask or answer this one final two part question.
Speaker B:So part one, when you look ahead to the next year or two, heading into year three, obviously, but as you head into this next year or two, what is going to be your biggest challenge?
Speaker B:And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do each and every day, what brings you the most joy?
Speaker B:So your biggest challenge and then your.
Speaker A:Biggest joy Just, just from a personal standpoint and maybe from a program standpoint as well, you know, the, the challenge that I was not expecting was coaching with expectations and really wrestling with that too.
Speaker A:The last couple of years, I feel like, you know, we were picked my first year, I think we were picked last in the preseason poll.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And you do better than that.
Speaker A:And people would say you had a good year and that kind of thing.
Speaker A:And even last year we didn't really have a target on our backs.
Speaker A:I think people thought we would be better, but you know, we won 22 games and made the NCAA tournament and, and so just coaching, coaching and, and really just day to day, I mean, I know our, I know our guys feel that, too.
Speaker A:Just that it's.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's a little bit weird going from, you know, do, you know, hunting to.
Speaker A:To you got the target on your back.
Speaker A:Now I'm really wrestling with just the challenges of that because, you know, really, at the end of the day, we want our guys to stay aggressive, and we got to be the ones hungry.
Speaker A:And so I feel like I'm just coaching from a little bit of a different perspective this year, so I know our team feels that, too.
Speaker A:We just.
Speaker A:We just hung a banner up.
Speaker A:We have a new trophy up.
Speaker A:We got championship rings, right?
Speaker A:And so there are all these constant reminders of the success that you had last year, but that was last year, too.
Speaker A:And, and people, you know, our season hasn't started yet, so people still want to talk about it, but, you know, it can.
Speaker A:I. I understand why Nick Saban went on the rat poison rant several years ago.
Speaker A:I. I know that, you know, that that's what it can do to you when you just hear about all the good stuff all the time.
Speaker A:And so that.
Speaker A:That would be my answer to the.
Speaker A:To the first question, the second question.
Speaker A:Man, I love what I do.
Speaker A:I love where I get to do it.
Speaker A:I love who I get to do it with.
Speaker A:And so I wake up every single day excited to come to work, excited to.
Speaker A:To do, to.
Speaker A:I feel blessed that I get to.
Speaker A:To do the job that I.
Speaker A:That I have.
Speaker A:And really just the relationship building.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:We have a great group of guys.
Speaker A:We've been very intentional.
Speaker A:You know, there's.
Speaker A:There are probably going to be teams who are more talented than us in our league, but I have three young kids.
Speaker A:Our assistant coach, Coach Spencer, he has three young kids.
Speaker A:Our athletic trainer has four young kids.
Speaker A:Our strength coach.
Speaker A:We got.
Speaker A:We got a lot of.
Speaker A:We got a lot of kids in our program.
Speaker A:And to me, it's just so important who our kids are around every day.
Speaker A:I've, you know, going all the way back to the beginning.
Speaker A:What I learned from my dad, just the value in coaching, coaching people that you enjoy coaching.
Speaker A:He.
Speaker A:I remember a really talented player moving in, and he.
Speaker A:And I was young, but he left like he never made it to the season.
Speaker A:He and his family moved out, and he was so good.
Speaker A:And I said, dad, you know, we would be so much better if he was around.
Speaker A:And he was like, we'll be just fine without him.
Speaker A:You know, we'll be just fine without him.
Speaker A:I found that just coaching people that I.
Speaker A:That I enjoy being around every day, man, it just makes such a Big difference in my mood, the mood of the locker room.
Speaker A:I love coming to work every day.
Speaker A:And so really, you know, I don't know if.
Speaker A:If that just totally answered your question, but I love what I get to do, where I get to do it, who I get to do it with.
Speaker A:And so it just makes every day lot of fine.
Speaker B:There's nothing better than that.
Speaker B:That last sentence, wish you could wrap it up, right, and give that as a gift to everybody in the world, right?
Speaker B:You get to do what you want.
Speaker B:You get to do it with who you want.
Speaker B:You get to do it where you want.
Speaker B:If, if anybody could have that as a wish for whatever your profession is, life would be pretty good for just about everybody.
Speaker B:So I think you've got things right, Weston, when it comes to that.
Speaker B:So before we finish, I want to give you a chance to share how people can get in touch with you, find out more about you, your program, reach out.
Speaker B:So whether you want to share, social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.
Speaker B:And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.
Speaker A:Yeah, I love connecting with other coaches.
Speaker A:Just something that I learned early on.
Speaker A:There was a situation where I should have reached out to someone and I didn't.
Speaker A:And then from that point forward, I was just like, never be afraid to reach out.
Speaker A:Never be afraid to ask questions.
Speaker A:I found the college coaching world, I found 99% of people to be really generous and really open and, and.
Speaker A:And wanting to help.
Speaker A:That's just the basketball community in general.
Speaker A:Even the work that you do, right?
Speaker A:Where people.
Speaker A:People love to talk about basketball and love to share ideas, and people want to grow and improve and so just, just don't.
Speaker A:If you listen to this.
Speaker A:But, but I'm not your cup of tea, but there's somebody who is.
Speaker A:Don't be afraid to reach out to them and try to build a connection because coaches are extremely generous.
Speaker A:So that's what I wanted to say first.
Speaker A:My email is wjamieson W J A M E S O N at Harding Edu.
Speaker A:That's the best way to get in touch with me.
Speaker A:You can also follow me on.
Speaker A:I guess it's X now and not Twitter, but X.
Speaker A:Maybe it's the best way to connect with me.
Speaker A:I think my handle is Coach W. Jameson is my guess.
Speaker A:But yeah, just shoot me an email or reach out on social media and I would be happy to answer any questions or connect with.
Speaker A:With anybody who's interested.
Speaker B:Weston, you just spoke the truth about the basketball community, and it's one of the things that I don't think it surprised me about the podcast, but it's certainly something that has been reinforced by all the great people that I've been able to have on and share the game of basketball.
Speaker B:And I think what it comes down to is we all love the game so much.
Speaker B:We want to see it continue to grow and get better.
Speaker B:And so that's why people are so willing to share.
Speaker B:And plus, now we're not.
Speaker B:In the days of VHS or dvd, you can't hide anything.
Speaker B:Even if you wanted to, you can't hide it from people.
Speaker B:So it's, it's, it's all out there for the it's all out there for the taking, no matter what.
Speaker B:But I do think that the basketball coaching community is just, it's an incredible community of people who just care about the game and want to see it grow.
Speaker B:So to you, I say thanks for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us.
Speaker B:I really appreciate it.
Speaker B:And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.
Speaker B:Thanks.
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Speaker B:Each section of the Portfolio Guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner.
Speaker B:The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify and add to your personal portfolio.
Speaker B:As a Hoop Heads POD listener, you can get your Coaching Portfolio Guide for just $25.
Speaker B:Visit coachingportfolioguide.com hoopheads to learn more.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads.
Speaker B:Podcast presented by Head Start, Basket.
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