All Ball with Doug GottliebAll Ball - Indiana State HC Josh Schertz on Gottlieb’s FAU Upset, ISU Turnaround, Program Building
Doug is joined by Indiana State Head Coach Josh Schertz to discuss his recollections as a Florida Atlantic G.A. of FAU shocking the world and taking down Gottlieb and Oklahoma State in Stillwater in 1998, how he built a DII super power at Lincoln Memorial in rural Tennessee, how he landed the Indiana
State job, and his plans to build the Sycamores into a consistent winner.
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Hey, want to welcome in. I'm John Gotwin. This is all ball, So here we are and you're downloading this. It's a weekend of great college basketball. NFL football is over. Now it's time for kind of the rest of the world to dig in on the sport and kind of what an interesting year we have, right, I mean, you go coast to coast. UCLA was far below their normal standard, but very very young, and lots of questions about mixed future. And UCLA seems to have righted the ship on some level as their young players are coming of age. Still UCLA down Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State already makes a coaching change, Louisville. I mean, look, look, we're in a world in which there's at least a possibility that Ohio State, which is already open, Louisville likely to come open, Michigan and Indiana, Minnesota could all come open in one year. And what's this? Is it the expectations?
Sure?
Is it? Nil? I think so? And then of course it's kind of cyclical, right, Some leagues go through this. In one year You'll see MASSI about pupil and changes, and then you consider that next year it's going to be even more competitive more interesting in the Big Ten with UCLA, Washington, Oregon, USC coming in. Speaking of USC, heikes hikes Right, there's basically it feels like two different stories of teams that are struggling. There's a couple of programs I'd say sc Arkansas, Villanova and again in their league you see Santa Barbara that I feel like their teams put together with the proper or maybe even a ton of support with nil and yet chemistry issues have really derailed those programs. And all are coached by coaches that are well regarded, right, like Joe Pastick's done a good job at you see Santa Barbara. Now they have more talent at least on paper than everybody else, but can they get to fit together. Eric Musselman's been to two straight lead eights at Arkansas, right, So it's not like Eric Musselman doesn't know what he's doing, but man that they went from beating Duke and feeling like another great year at Arkansas to an absolute mess. Villanova still kind of hasn't figured out the ability to get consistent. So it's a really interesting year. But one team that has done well is Indiana State. That's where begin today Josh Sure as a new head coach or I don't know, it's a couple of years head coach at Indiana State, and at least for the time being, they're still ranked. Of course, coming off of a mid week loss after a nine game winning streak, I think it's a perfect time to sit down with the coach and catch up with him, as they had to Southern Illinois to try and kind of get right in the Valley. But a program that comes from I don't want to say shambles, but been down for so long in such a historically challenging conference. And obviously the conference has changed over the past couple of years, but still Indiana State not seen as one of the breadwinners in the valley. And in very short order, Jason Shirts has taken it from also ran coaching change to a top the league. And then of course you factor in what he was able to construct at Lincoln Memorial, great Division two program. I had to sit down with him and figure out his journey. The most interesting part is how our paths collided twenty five years ago when one of the great upsets maybe in the recent history of college basketball took place. So we'll start there. He's the head coach at Indiana State, Josh Shirts. Do you remember what happened on this floor before Atlantic?
I do. I was actually that Florida, Florida Atlanta coaching when we played you guys and stopped what was like a was it a ten year or something non conference home winning streak or something crazy?
And it was eighty one game yep, non conference home winning.
That's what I remember. I remember that. I remember that was. Look, we won six games that year. It wasn't hard to remember the wins, but that one, for some reason stood out a little bit more. I was that was my first year coaching. We went to a state and you guys were just so good, and it was just one of those things in competition. It was like one night and yeah, eighty one games. I remember just sitting there, No, no, okay, so what what did your record? Like? You began? I remember the loose ball. Gary Durant picked it up to finish it. I remember that play at the very end to win the game right on, like a scramble. One. Uh, you had a if I remember correctly, you had a gazillion assists that night.
Eighteen eighteen, actually.
Is it eighteen that would have felt like I was gonna get picked sixteen. But I knew it was a lot. I knew it was a lot.
But would you indulge me? And can I tell you the story of that game from the other side? Ye?
Yop.
So the late Brooks Thompson, who was a great player at OKLHOM State and became a very good coach. He had he hurt his back playing for the Orlando Magic, Hm, maybe the maybe the Nicks. I can't remember who he heard his back playing for, but he heard his back. So that year he was like a student manager. And if you knew Brooks, he was like one of the most ferocious shit talkers of all time all time. So that was his first scattering report ever, Oh god, and I believe the last report heard ever. So the way, the way, and I'll be interested to know we'll get into your own personal kind of coaching style. But one of the things coach Setting used to do was in those buy games, you'd walk in the locker room, you know, for the last time, and there would be a list of goals on the board. Then you know, it would be like, hey, we shoot eighty from the line, you know, over fifty from the field, you know, hold them under thirty under, you know we score over eighty. I still do it when I coach now, just the idea of, hey, let's don't don't worry about the scoreboard as much as these are the goals, you know. And and one of his things would be, especially against the team that was seen as an inferior opponent, was if you do these things tomorrow, you have off. If you don't, we're going at seven am, right right the carrot.
Yeah.
So so Brooks comes in and he's like, you don't need to watch tape. This is the shittiest fucking team him to ever take the floor the white I guess Gallagher IBA the court, the floor, the surface is the same surface they've always had to white maple. So this is the worst team the step foot on the white maple in the history of gallagher IB arena. We don't come out if you unite, if you don't come out and play your balls off, just fuck it. You don't play your balls off. We're practicing at six am tomorrow. Like he didn't have the authority to have a six am practice, you know whatever. But still we had at the time only three four scholarship guards or guards wings available that year, there was kind of imbalanced roster and we had Glenn and Alexander who was McDonald's American transfer of Markansas and he was eligible like three games later, right, and so that was so it was Joe Atkins, myself, Adrian petersoner best player, Decid Mason who want to play the NBA, and then we just had a bunch of big dudes, even some guys that are kind of like hybrid big guys. So, Rex, is that coach correct for you?
Was it was? It was Kevin Billerman.
Okay, So Kevin had a great game plan. Okay, I remember it. You guys would run flex and this is back in the I think it was forty five second shot clock air maybe thirty five second shot clock. Are you guys would run flex for like thirty seconds and then whoever our big guy was guarding would catch it and go one four flat at the end of the shot clock. Yeah, we we have, right, But you had like six four six five guys.
Gary Durant, Damon Arnett, those kind of guys.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So so they combined for like all, but I think six or eight of your points really, but I think that's like, so we're up. I want to say again, this is just off the top of my head, like forty four to forty two and a half and we come in and like again, this is where coach setting was pretty cool. It was like he let us kind of speak our mind a little bit. We're like, coach, we got to go zone, and he's like coage man guarders, man guard you man, Like coach, they're isolating our big. We gotta they gotta guard and our big. And the other part about our bigs were it couldn't fucking score if you lock them in the gym, right, they just couldn't. Unseen was a freshman, he couldn't. So the fact that we had a mismatching offense didn't matter because they couldn't score at all. Like it you know.
You on one end, but you were getting punished on the other end.
So uh, we come on in the second half and it's a little bit better. And then we're up and I catch the ball like sideline obi and you guys like surprise trap me, like the guy guarding the inbounder and the guy who's guarding me trapped me. And I try and rip and step through and I get the ball stolen. They go down, go down and lay the ball. It was one of the eight points scored by a guard. And I had a little cut under my eye, and like an asshole, like I got fouled, but instead of just going like pointing to it, I just go it's a fucking foul right there, you know, like I got to catch my eye. So again we're up three. Pet Nicole foul. Make both three throws down. One coach takes me out of the game. Now we have two big guys in who can't fucking guard anybody and can't score. And you guys throwing a three then get a steal. Now it's like eight. Coach puts you back in. The coach puts you back in the game. So then we come down the end of the game. I think it's a tie game, and you guys had the ball with a minute. I'm gonna say like a minute five to go, and late in the shot clock may it may have been like a minute fifteen, So late in the shock clock, he throw it into the post and Alex Weber are one center kicks it resets the shot clock. So now we got to play defense again. So when we play defense, we get Joe Atkins, who became an All American two guard the next year, gets a rebound. I'm out of head. Adrian Peterson, our best player, leaks out. He's out of him. But there's some traffic and I don't think Gary Durant, I think he made the lay in. I don't think he got he made the lay So what happened was though that your guys are sprinting back on defense, somebody else tripped and fell down. Okay, and Atkins instead of advancing the ball, he thought I was not open, so he dribbles it and one of your guys who had tripped, he dribbles off their foot. Gary Durant had missed a drive. He was on the ground. He gets up to run back on defense, and there's the picks it up, lays it in.
Yes, yep.
And then the last part is this and this is well, as it was almost game, it was like Tuesday, we throw it in a mid court call of time out and this right, we and then we don't we got it kind of a shot or whatever. But it's very interesting to me. Again, I'm my coaches was a great coach, and Sean Sutton, who was basically our offensive coordinator did an awesome job. But it's interesting how things change. We didn't have like an under five inbounds play. M hm, we didn't. We didn't have like go tos automatics based upon time. You know, all the things that coaches do now and they love all right under five years, what we do under three years, we do under seven length of the court, here's what we do like all of these things. And I go up and I'm just amazed. And when I coach, I love it, and kids like it too because they like the five four three two one thing didn't have one. Wow, we lose. And who did the cartwheel for the fla?
I think that was was that I want to say, it might have been James Turner or Kevin might It might have been Gary Durant or James Turner. Might have been James Turner.
Right, So then of course on Sports Center, you know, they have like it's basically like Zabruder footage because it wasn't a televised game. It's some local like court level. Gary Durant lays the ball in. Here's a backflip. Oklahoma State ranked eighth in the country, losing home first home loss non Conference home loss in eighty one games. Right, So we come in the next day and instead of you know, Brooks like hat in hand, my bad, you know, kind of one of us, they're showing that these motherfuckers did a backflip on your court. And and I want to thank Dusty May, I want to thank all those players, because turns out we lost to a final fort program.
Also an elite program. You loved. No one's gonna remember that. We were six and twenty that year, finished last place in the in the in the what was it the TVAC at that time, or whatever it was, the tack and uh and and Billerman got fired at the end of the year. No one will remember all that stuff.
Why did you get in Why did you get into coaching? Uh?
I loved UH loved competing. I loved being part of a team. I felt like it kind of blended those those things together. I loved I loved when I played being part of a locker room, going in with a group of guys, being unified, trying to accomplish something. Loved just the whole dynamics of being a part of a team. And then as I got into it, I really loved and and I didn't probably when I started, didn't know. But you know, as you go into it, Uh, the relational side becomes the holy grail, right, the relationships you developed with the players and and and while you're with them, and then of course when they leave, you know, it turns from like it's like like you do with your parents. You know, you go from you know, father's son to friends over time, right, and it's kind of the same thing. You go from player, coach to friends and they really become, you know, people that you value in your life and relationships because you get to know somebody when you coach them or on a team with them, play with them, whatever, on a deeper level, you know, because you see them at their best and at their worst and in success and adversity and failure and triumph and you know you you you know, blood sweat and tears with somebody's a different type of relationship. And then you know, and then the ability to help guys, you know, grow and get better.
Say, leave Florida Atlantic And what was it like to try and go find a job?
It was it was hard. I mean I had you know, so I got into it. I gave up, you know, I wasn't a very good player. Gave up my senior year of playing to go work at Floridatlantic as a graduate assistant. But I didn't graduate, so I was really a student assistant and they out with tuition, but I was, you know, I was working a lot for free. And at the end of the year, coach Billerman got fired and I was in there when he got fired. I didn't know anything. I was, you know, twenty two, twenty three years old, didn't even know how that worked. And next thing, you know, they they moved the whole staff except for me and one of the assistants. And so I go from I take a recruiting test, and I'm recruiting and working at Florida Atlantic as a you know, an assistant, but just me and me and one of the other assistants or the whole program. They they hired Sidney Green, who was who replaced Kevin Billerman. And when they hired Sidney, he brought me in, and you know, and and Sidney brought me in and and let me go from basically a volunteer job. He was like that the the players really liked me, spoke highly of me, but that our players were the opposite of winners, and so that must say a lot about me. Basically was the gist of the conversation was the players like me and they were you know, lose. Then that doesn't say much about me. And so I was out of a job. And Coach Billerman, to his credit, him to do anything for me. I mean he barely you know, we worked together for one year. He called a bunch of different people. He got me some options at Florida Southern at Lynn University. I decided, because I had a kid, I was, I had a son, a young son, I was going to stay in Boca. And that's what I did. I went to Lynn University, which was literally a mile away. I finished my degree that next year at at FAU while I worked at Lynn. And uh and that was so I stayed in Boca for for those next two years. But uh, but coach Billerman, you know, without him, I want to have that opportunity.
Who was at coach Lynn.
Andy Russo, who was carmel Oone's coach Louisiana Tech coached at Washington Wash had like Christian Belp and all those guys, but he had been a power five. Uh, you know, head coach had a lot of success, and he he hired me there at lynn first year is just as just an assistant. And then my second year after I graduated, I went as a graduate assistant. But in D two it's so different. You know. On my first year, you know, I was working as just getting paid five thousand dollars, but I was able to recruit new player development, you know, I mean scouting reports. I was doing everything because I was so small, And so my two years there, I was working out the bigs, working out the guards, doing scouting reports, on the road, recruiting like I was getting incredible hands on experience. No money, but a tremendous experience because it was really you know, my first year was me, him and one of the guys. My second year was me, him and a GA. So I got great experience those two years working with Andy, and he was he was just like Kevin Billerman, you know, experienced, older guy, knew his stuff and was really really good to me.
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Give me one thing from Billerman that you still say or do today.
I think, Uh, the probably the biggest thing for for coach Billerman that I take today is is how much he uh genuinely cared for the players and how much time he spent building relationships with them, Like he he was really invested in our guys. He was really investis And the other thing that I thought he did a good job of was, you know, he tried to put guys in their straint zones to play to there, you know, put them in positions to do what they do best. And those are probably two things that I take that that that you know, I learned from him very early on.
All Right, what about Russo?
Russo I think was was the big picture approach, understanding that you know, the whole program, medical piece and how everything ties together. You know, you have recruiting, and recruiting has to fit how you're going to play, and you got to have a vision for how you're going to build your team. It shouldn't just be you know, willy nilly when you go out and grab a guy, grab a guy, grab a guy. You know, the piece of the puzzle have to fit together and compment each other. And he had a good you know, gauge of trying to look at it from a ten thousand foot view of how to build a team, how to build a program, and how everything tied together.
So you leave, Lynn, what was what was the what was the plan?
Well, I got offered, which seemed at the time a lot of money. I got offered like twelve thousand dollars to move to Charlotte, North Carolina. And Bart Lundy was the head coach at at at Queen's University of Charlotte, and so we were Division two and I got like twelve thousand, five hundred and a dorm room. So I thought I was about to be rich it with more money than I made the previous three years combined. So it was it was pretty good. I went there, worked for Bart. My first year we were pretty good, and then my second year we were really good. We were number one in the country most of the year, went to the final four, and uh and so the second year, you know, we we had a really good year, and then uh, Bart got offered the job at high Point after my after my second year there, I think it was his fifth year, and so, uh, you know, I didn't really you know, Lynn, I was going to stay at you know, Bart I think, you know, they recruited Florida hard and uh. He he had some people down there. He knew Nate Dixon, who was his assistant, really recruited Florida, had gone to Stetson Division one. Bart was trying to find somebody that could recruit Florida. I'd been down there for a couple of years, and so for me, it was it was a no brainer and a great experience. I went with him, uh for for two years there, and then I was his associated coach at high Point for five years. So I was I was with bart the next seven years.
Now it was high Point D one when you guys, when you were guys were there.
Yeah. Yeah. So he left Queens to go to high Point, which was Division one. They had just finished the transition under Jerry Steele, the four year transition and coach Steel, who was obviously a legendary coach. He coached him through the transition and stepped away. Bartt was hired from from Queen's to high Point as their first you know, that was the first year they were eligible for the NCAA Tournament win the Big South.
High Points an amazing campus. It's like it's it's it's crazy now that's now. Was it like that then?
So when I got there, it wasn't like that at all at all, and then we Uh I was there my first couple of years, there was really nothing going on. I was almost like it was gonna it was going to close. And then the president stepped down, he retired, and they hired the guy who was a chair of the board at high Point, a guy named Nito Colbain, and uh and doctor Cobain stepped in to fill a void. And the deal was he was going to do it for one year and then, you know, turn it over to somebody else, and that's had to be I don't know. Nineteen years later, he's still doing it. And he single handedly transformed that university from a mom and pop like barely keep you know, the doors open, to like what you see today. And i'ven't been back in a couple of years, but even when I was there in my last couple of years, the campus was transforming. They were building. There was cranes everywhere, dirt being moved everywhere, they were knocking stuff down, rebuilding everything. And he took something that I mean, if you were to go back to nineteen years ago to now talking about what Dusty's done at FAU, doctor Cobain would get the same level of credit for me for what he's done for High Point University. As a in totality, it's amazing what he's been able to do.
Bart had great success at Queens, had success Highpoint obviously, He's had success Milwaukee as well. Yeah, what's allowed him to have that success?
I think, you know, there's a couple of things. One, you know, Bart is a guy that he understands, you know, a lot like coach Billerman did. He puts guys in positions to be successful like he can. You know, they run great stuff, get their best players the ball in their strain zones. He is, he is really demanding. He asks a lot of his guys. He pushes him, cares about him. I think he invests in them. He's a terrific recruiter. They get good talent. He understands what fits his system, you know, And and he gets his guys to compete, you know, he gets his guys to compete at high level. You know. We you know, it was weird because I worked for him for seven years and then when I was at Lincoln Memorial the last thirteen he took over back at Queen's. Well, Queen's came to our league, and you know, so we were, you know, we were playing four times a year. I mean we were there was many years. You know, we were I think eight years in a row. We finished one two in the league, and so we played a lot of high stakes games, regional championships, tournament championships, conference championships, and so. But his ability to put guys in their straining zone, his ability to recruit, and he recruits hard, gets really good players, and then he allowed, like I said, puts them in positions to do what they do best. And I think he's done a great job. But it's a great job building a relationships. You could tell his guys care about him and and that you know he's invested in them. And so he's been very successful every stop of the way. And it'll be the same at Milwaukee. You know, he's already shown I think twenty two wins last year and you know they've been beat up a little bit this year. But but he he'll do and continue to do a great job.
Okay, so take me through the Lincoln Memorial job. How'd you get it?
Nobody else wanted it. So it was I mean, you know.
It first first okay. So but again, you're at high point. Okay, you've been with the same guy, you having some success, Like were you looking everywhere he had you even know it was open, let alone know that no one wanted it.
Yeah, so I had. I had been at high point at this point for five years. I was the associated coach. We were pretty good. I think we were like maybe eighty seven and sixty six or eighty eight and sixty six and my dad eighty six five. In my five years there, we'd had pretty good teams, you know, we just hadn't got over the hump. It was uh, you know, we had Greg Marshall and Winthrop there who were kind of dominating the league. We got into a couple of championship games, never got to the NCAA tournament. But about my third year there, I was really antsy to get a head coaching job. Felt like, you know, I was obviously worked for some really good coaches. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do, and I wanted to apply them, but I couldn't get a job. As you know, I mean, the first one is always the hardest, right everybody says, well, you know, you have no head coaching experience. Well not that anybody before they became a head coach. So you know there's a lot of great Hall of Fame coaches, Eddie Sutton, all these guys that you know, they weren't head coaches until they became head coaches, right, So so you know, you got to get a chance. And I interviewed for some jobs Division two, couldn't get them. And so after my fifth year, they changed, you know, they let go of the athletic director. They brought in a new athletic director. They had I think talked to Bart about a contract extension that kind of got squashed with the new athletic director coming in. So not that it was you know, at the time, you're not thinking anything negative. I think we had won forty one games the previous two years or forty games the previous two years. But it was a little bit uneasy and I was looking I did really want to become a head coach and try to see if I could do it myself. And I wanted to, you know, I wanted to take control of my career, you know, if I could. And so Lincoln Memorial was a job that was in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee. Uh four thousand people in the town uh Dry County, you know, and uh I think the undergraduate you know, population time was about a thousand, maybe a little less. They were had finished uh you know, last most every year. They've never won twenty games at the NCAA level, never been to the NCAA tournament, you know, never. They had a really nice arena, and that was about it. And but I, you know, I was I wanted to try it, you know, and and and the the I guess the thing I thought was, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere, but you're you had close proximity to a lot of different things. You were four hours from Atlanta, four hours from Charlotte, three from Cincinnati, four and a half from Columbus, four from any and a half.
That's not that's not close to places.
But if in my mind it was close enough.
Yeah, four hours.
That was That was how I convinced myself to that we could go recruit all those areas and fine guys, and but it was, you know, it was it was just they had a beautiful arena and that was it. And they were coming off I think they had won one conference game that year, and and again, you know, just I think four or five winning seasons in the in the NCAA history, So it had been a hard place to win. And I don't know who else they were looking at, but I went up there interviewed, had probably the worst experience ever. But oh they they well they just brought me in and and uh so I get in and the the a d I couldn't get a hold of him on the way in, and uh we're supposed to meet and he's like, oh, well, go and he finally picks up. I guess he was out gardening or something. He's like, well, go eat at this restaurant in town. It was only like one in town. So he sends me to go eat at this restaurant. I go in this restaurant and Italia, my wife and I eat, and then we're supposed to go over to the arena. I go to the arena. He shows me the nice arena, takes us in the locker room. The ceiling titles are missing, I mean the floors, the carpet's frayed. I mean they can see the concrete below it. The lockers are all rusted and metal. I go he puts me in a meeting and I'm not going to mention names, but the women's coach at the time and the women's coach at the time, that's who he wanted me to meet with. He tells me, he's like, don't take this ship. He's like, whatever, he can't win here, you know, it's impossible, blah blah blah. Goes into this whole thing about what a terrible job it is and then I should leave that he's going to try to leave. And to his credit, before I coached a game, he took a high school job. He left LMU as a head coach women's coach to take a women's high school job. So he wasn't you know, bsing me at the time, and so so he tells me, don't do it. So then I got to go and I got to check into my hotel. Well, yes, exactly what. So I go to this hotel and this hotel has no lobby and it's like, if you need something, knocked on this door. So I have to knock on this doors and out door hotel. So I know a hotel, Yeah, it actually has a motel. I knock on the door and nobody answers. Knocking on the door again. This guy opens the door. He's got on a wife, beat her and tidy whities and my wife. And that was the hotel, the motel manager. So we take us to our I mean, it was just like, I mean, I get up the next morning, they take me to a nice breakfast at Shoney's uh and uh and and that was the big spot in town.
And so biscuits and gravy.
Question, yeah, biscuits. I was just like at the time, I was just so I wanted the opportunity. I took the job.
What did your wife? What did your wife say?
She I'm not even into it. She cried, I mean cried like when I told her I was taking it like she was devastated and really was probably cried most of the first two years we were there. I told her at the time, I said, look, I said, this will probably either I'll be able to win some games here and we'll be here for two years and I'll leave, or I won't be able to win and we'll just go back and go to Vision one as an assistant or something and I'll find a job. But like, we won't be here more than two years, you know, just and I was there at thirteen, so you know, it grew on us. But but yeah, at the time, I was like, oh my god, what did I get myself into? You move?
So did you buy a house? Do you rent? Can you rent the house?
Like?
What was that?
We rented an apartment because we couldn't afford. We had my house in high Point and I went from making I was making sixty three at high Point. They offered me seventy five to stay and I took fifty to go to LMU and I negotiated to get to fifty, so I took a pay cut and I still had my house in high Point. And if you remember about two thousand and eight, that was when you know there there was you know, the market crashed in two thousand and eight, the recession, right, So yeah, well this is two thousand and eight. So we have a house. Our house got, I mean it was I couldn't even tell you our house got. There was a tree in the backyard, it got struck by lightning, fell on our roof. We got a flood. The one of the realtors flipped a Swiss so it was a light it was it was actually the heat turned off the heat in the winter, the pipes burst flooded the house. I mean, it was like I could tell you. But we got an apartment, and the apartment it was so new, it had no stairs, it wasn't even finished yet. So we're living in an unfinished apartment. Like some of the dry walls up, some of it's not like we're like the first people in there. So needless to say, I don't know how she stayed with me on this deal, but we rented an apartment about five minutes everything in harri Get's five minutes, so five minutes from the school.
How long does it take you to build a winner?
The first year we got into five hundred, which was you know, I mean where we were a massive jump, you know, more than doubled our wind total. Second year, we win twenty for the first time in school history at the NCAA level. Year we started twenty two and oh and won the championship regular season tournament, went to the NCAA tournament. That kind of started that ten year run where you know, we we had I think we won about eighty eight eighty nine percent of our games over that ten year window.
Okay, so you take over a job you've never been a head coach before, and you didn't even finish your career playing, right, So when you first start uh talking to your team meeting, you know, are you're in meetings, how'd you kind of like find your voice?
Like?
Who did you? Did you feel like you were like Bart or you were like one of the other coaches? What were you like in those early stages?
That's interesting. I probably I probably was an amalgam of each of them, you know, Like you know, Bart was probably like, you know, the more like fire and brimstone, motivational, Billerman was more like laid back, and and then you know, and and Russo was pretty funny. I probably tried to early on try to be an amalgam of all of them because you're finding yourself, right, Like, you got to know who you are right like to address a team, to command a room, to create buy in, like, you got to figure out who you are, and ultimately that's the key to the successes. You can't be somebody else. But I probably early in my career was trying to, you know, have a little bit of humor, be a little bit of fire and brimstone, and also keep the mood the vibe a little lighter. I don't know that how successful I was at that early, but I think that's one of the biggest things is you got to figure out, like you know, at the end of the day, coaching is leadership and leadership whatever you're doing, whether it's coaching or any other deal, Like your number one job far and away is to get the best out of everybody that you're in charge of, right, Like, that's leadership. And there's a lot of ways to do that. You can do it through you know, fear, you can do it through you know really you know, being being super demanding. You can do it through connection. And I just found like for me, at the end of the day, the best way I can lead is through connection. Is to really try to connect with my guys to really everish. But early on, I think I was a little bit all over the place because I didn't necessarily have myself figured out yet.
How do you know if you're going to connect with a kid when you're recruiting.
The hardest part I think you have to you know, I always recruit by trying to At LMU, it became easy, and I'll say not easy, but here's why it became a little bit easy. Like when I look at somebody and you're recruiting them, to me, the most important aspect is their competitive character. Right, That's probably the hardest thing to gauge in. Somebody is truly like who they are as a competitor, and so whether that's you know, do they care deeply about the preparation piece. Do they really care about you know, all the things are going to prepare and to play they Are they a great teammate? You know? Are they coachable? Are they mentally tough? Are they somebody that care about that they played for stats? They play to win, right, And there's a big difference in all those things. At LMU, it became a little bit simpler because we wound up red shirting everybody. So we found out right away, like if you know, you're in this small town of four thousand people, there's it's a dry county, so you can't even drink if you wanted to, you got to go to Knoxville to get a drink. There's no clubs, no bars, there's barely any restaurants, and you're gonna red shirt and likely not play for your first couple of years. It really quickly eliminated a lot of people that you know, if you came to LMU, you were about the right things right Like for us, you were about basketball, you were about work, You were about trying to be the best player you can be. You were about winning. You want to be in a winning culture. You wanted the relational piece, like you wanted all these things that we could give you, and you were okay with the patients. And just a red shirt shows a level of humility that a lot of people don't have, you know, So to me, it was it got a little easier as we built that program to be able to discern who exactly fit and who exactly did it. But I think the best way is to be completely transparent. I think people recruit two ways. People recruit to get the kid. Some people recruit to make it work. Does that make sense? Like, you know, if you recruiting to get the kids, you're going to sell the kid. You're selling, you're selling, you're selling, and then you know and then try to figure it out and they get there. If you're recruiting to make it work, then you're actually going to be transparent upfront and honest on the front end. Because I felt like at LNU and I feel like in Indiana State, the only pathway to sustainable success is continuity. If I'm having to re engineer my roster every year the way we play, we're not going to be very good. So I began I probably early on I recruited to get the kid. I would just, hey, what do I got to do to get this kid? Okay, we're gonna you know, yeah, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do this, do this. I eventually figured out that you've got to recruit to make it work, and you've got to recruit. It's got to be the right fit both ways. And if it's not, you're going to be in this constant state of churning it over year after year after year. And that our pathway at LMU, and our pathway in Indiana State, quite frankly, is through continuity. And the only way to sustainability is because we can't even here, you know, we can't go out and recruit a bunch of power bud transfers and bring them in and reload every year. Our pathway is getting guys. You know, we call it corporate knowledge building, corporate knowledge, how we play, how we do things, Guys in this system get better year over year over year. If we pour into them for a year and then we lose them year, you know we're going to be starting at ground zero every single year. You can't and the way we do things, I don't think that's a model we could we could have, so that would probably be to me. The biggest thing is recruit to make it work, not recruit to get the kid and be as transparent and as open as possible about what it's going to be like.
And you got to be willing to losing guys because of that, you know, you got to be wanted absolutely.
Would you rather lose them in the recruiting process or lose them in the middle of the season when they you know what I mean? Or you know, like right, I mean, like to me, if you know you were going to lose that guy anyway? And I tell my staff all the time, you're never going to get fired for missing out on good players. Ever, what gets you fired is taking bad players or bad fits, right, Like, You're never going to get asked for, Man, I missed on so and so, I missed on so and so we didn't get this kid. You're going to get fired because you took either guys who didn't fit, wrong players, those things, and when you look at it that way, you don't worry as much about losing guys because that's not really what's going to ultimately, you know, you know, move your fate either way. It's about the guys you take much more than the guys you lose.
Year three or twenty two and zero. Why not leave that year?
You know, there was there was opportunities. The thing that LMU did over my time was they really made the job better. Our chairman of the board at LMU, Pete the Busk, you know, he became like a over the years, a father figure to me, and they made that job to where if I was going to leave, it was going to be really hard for me to leave. And it wasn't a one year deal, but they every year came back and built it and said we're gonna do this, We're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. And so a job that started on my base salary was fifty thousand dollars finished where my base salary was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and we had one assistant a A and all of a sudden we had three full time assistants and two gas and our budget, which was the lowest in the league, became the highest in the country. And we built a nutrition room in a film room and and they put all these things in and you know, so we had the best resources, best job, and I had a what equated to a lifetime contract, had a five year rollover that at the end of the year. Uh, they could fire me and pay me a million dollars, or they could roll me over for five more years.
When did you When did you? When'd you buy a house? Uh?
After year three? After year three? When I when when we had that success and I was like, let's get out of this apartment and we moved into a house and it was just the right time, and you know it was, uh it turned into, you know, for me, a dream job. At that level, I felt like, uh, you know, it was kind of like, you know, Camelot, you told me I had I had a great president, great a d chair of the board, completely invested, and I've never been somebody who you know, I didn't feel like, oh man, I got to go to vision one to make something happen, you know, or I got to validate myself at this level, you know, like we're talking like I'm we're coaching against great coaches in that league. You know Bart's in there. You got a bunch of really good coaches inside of the South Atlantic Conference and Ben McCullum and all these guys. You're going against Jim Crutchfield, and there's great coaches. And I felt completely fulfilled there over over that tenure, and they just kept making the job better and better and better every single year. So while I had some Division I head coaching opportunities, I never felt like it was the right one for me to leave. There was one, you know, I was a Division one head coach for one day, but then the chancellor came in the next day and changed his mind and overturned the committee and the ad and they hired somebody else, and so I was. That was after the two thousand eighteen seventeen season. After seventeen whoe is that? I like? As I say it now, it was Arkansas Little Rock Chase Konk who had hired Chris Beard from Division two. Chase had hired Chris, they had success left, they hired the associated coach their two years, they moved on from him, and Chase brought me in a little Rock, and they just really clicked with him, connected with him, interviewed with him, and the committee got hired. And then the chancellor who I'd met with, came back and said that they were going to go a different route. So that was.
That, that's crazy. The COVID year was your best team? Right?
Yeah? Yeah, I think so. I mean with in a row when COVID hit, we had won thirty two straight, so yeah, it was a pretty good team.
Where were you? Where were you when when everything ends?
So we we we had beat Queens in the tournament championship on that Sunday in front of a packed house at Furman, which is where we did our tournament, you know, and Monday Tuesday, like there was crazy because that Sunday, I mean, nobody's even talking about COVID and we're in a packed house at Furman playing for a conference championship. Well, Monday Tuesday, we give the guys off, we come back Wednesday. Wednesday, we start hearing about that, you know, they may that they put out something that they were going to restrict attendance at the games, you know, because of COVID. I was like, that's weird because you know, but you didn't really know. Well, Wednesday night, I'm at dinner with my wife and kids, and I think that was that. Wednesday night was when go baar and all that stuff happens, and they the game, and I remember sitting on my wife, I said, I said, we're not going to play. They're gonna. They're gonna. I didn't think they would cancer them. I thought they would postpone it, but I didn't know what they would do. So Thursday morning, we're on these calls and they're like, no, we're going to proceed right now, we're proceeding. I was like, are we one hundred percent? You know, at the moment, and everything seemed like it was a go. So I know the guys in the locker room, I'm on the practice floor. We're practicing on Thursday. We play Saturday in the first round. You know, we're uh, you know, thirty two wins in a row, number one seed in the NCAA tournament, playing at home. And my associate D comes out and where he's like like I could see emotion of me. So I kind of slide over to the sideline. He's like, they canceled the NCAA tournament. I was like, they postponed it to win and he's like, no, they they've canceled it. And I looked at him, like and I couldn't even, like, I mean, believe it. And I had to. I stopped practice and I brought the guys in and he's like, he's I'm like, it's the season over. He's like, it's over. Like they're not going to replay. It's done. And I just like, I mean, like about like taking the breath out of you. And I brought the team in and I we had you know, four seniors on that team, and guys that have been close. I mean we've been to multiple final fours, you know with this group and had a group that, like I said, you know, thirty two straight wins, and you know, guys were just really emotional. I mean everybody was started crying. I taught the team. I went in my office and I cried for about ten minutes. I really did, and uh, I was just so sad for everybody involved. And then I went back to the locker room and I was like, we're going to go out tonight and uh, you know, celebrate, you know, before this all. And and so that Thursday night we went out and I brought the whole staff and Athletic Farmers staff, and I don't know what we spent, but it was a lot of money. Uh, you know, and uh and and and we just had a great night together. And then the next day I had to do individual meetings and the campus by noon was gone. It was it was ghost What goes down by New Riday?
What was life like in small town Tennessee during COVID?
Uh? Well, Tennessee was always trying to be open before everybody else, so you know, there was you know, but it wasn't you know, it was a weird time like there was there was you know, My wife and I would go and we would walk the campus. The campus is beautiful, Lincolnore's campus one of the most scenic campuses in the country. There's all these rolling hills and it's just an amazing place. We'd go on these four mile walks every day. She and I. You know, everything was was shut down, so we just you know, going and and and grocery shopping. But it was almost like you go from this pressure cooker and then it was just like, I mean, it was just incredible and you just you know, you're really not going to work you're staying at home. I got to zoom with some really good people. I mean, you were Its almost like a it was like a sabbatical in the middle of a Yeah, I mean it's almost surreal even to talk about. It was like a sabbatic.
No, it's it's it's interesting because obviously, you know, like, look, you guys had a chance to win a national championship, and there's so many things. I mean, Santague State that they had an incredible team. My brother, my brothers, well it used to was a Grand Grand Canne Last three and he was a Dreary college and they were they were the best D two team, the women's team. Right, they didn't get a chance. Molly didn't get a chance to compete. But like you got a chance to be a dad, husband, you had to be home, Like there was a there was I kind of wish there was like two weeks every year we could do that. I just like just two weeks.
I do too.
It It was I agree, because I don't know, you're the same way, Like our lives are so regimented. You know, we're up early, we're going here, we got this. There's just a to do list. You're knocking it out. You got all these things, irons in the fire, and then it was like nothing, and it was like, oh my god, like this is actually like it was. I mean it was. It was a terrible, terrible time. But in terms of like re energize, we're getting to really get down to what's important, like the amount of family time you spend, the amount of time you spend with your wife getting up in the day and be like, hey, what do you want. We're going to go for a walk. You know, we're gonna have some meals together. You know who's going to cook what? You know? Watch some TV. I remember when The Last Dance came out that was.
Literally everybody watched. It was like, oh my god, give me somebody give me work. I gotta wait till next week. You know what reminded me of so this is uh when I the Last Dance thing reminded me when I was in Russia playing my wife at the time and I we we would get a cassette tape with Survivor. Remember when Survivor first came out this two thousand and we would try and only watch it, like watch one a week. We try like we're only going to watch one a week. This just and I remember just like, oh man, you sure we don't want to watch the second one?
Sure?
Like now Last Dance, you didn't have a chance to watch the second one. But still it was the same idea of just give me. Oh I love it and taste so good. I just need more, give.
Me more games more, because you had nothing. You had nothing new, I mean, nobody was. It was like it was like every Best Game seven. Like you literally built your day around Last Dance coming on, like, oh what are we gonna you know, let's finish dinner here, do this, we can be at the TV. And it was. It was incredible. It was incredible, And like I said, it seems like a just a whole you know, it seems like it was so long ago, but it really you know, obviously it wasn't. And uh, you know, Tennessee opened up pretty quickly. But that was a great time, uh from a standpoint of you know, being able to just reconnect and and and really get back to like the things that are most important in your life. And like you said, it'd be cool to have a two week where hey, everything shuts down, there's nothing and just you lock in and to it. Because it really does. It does give you life.
Uh what was that next year?
Life for it? Yeah? I one more year at Lincoln, So I had one more year. My last year at Lincoln was was twenty twenty one.
Did you guys have crowds that year?
Very limited? Very limited crowds? You know, you sat like spread out in the baseline. We had, you know, games canceled, we had, you know, it was it was like everybody, I mean, you'd be playing, you know you and it just shows how funny it is like as coaches, you know, we're scouting, we're watching all these hours of film and going over this opponent. You'd be playing, Hey we're gonna play uh so and so oh wait they can't play. All right, let's play this team. We want to play this team today. Like no scout, you know, like you're just you're just drawing stuff out of a hat. You know, like you'd play teams that you didn't even know you were playing. Team would cancel, you'd call somebody be like, hey, you know, do you want to play today at seven or tomorrow? Oh yeah, we'll play, you know, and and all right, let's do this. And so we we kind of Hodgepodge of season together. We got you know, we we had we had a couple of shutdowns, and then we had one at the you know, our campus had an outbreak towards the end of our season, and we got we had a you know, epidemiology is running our COVID team at LMU, and you know, we had exposures, and so he shut us down with exposures. It became a whole thing. You know, we wound up not being able to play our last two regular season games. And then you know, our our commissioner at the conference, who's you know whatever. Trying to be nice on the podcast, but yeah, the South Atlantic Conference commissioner is not the brightest guy in the world. They they knock us out of the tournament. So because they said, we you know, our clock started whenever. And so we wind up even though we didn't have a positive, we had a shut down because of the exposures. They shut down like ten teams on our campus at the same time. So we wind up going into the NCAA tournament the next year. We haven't played in twenty six days, we haven't played a game, and we're playing in the NCAA Tournament in the first round, and and so we we win, we win our region, go to the Elite eight, win the Elite eight game, and then we lose on a tip out. We're up to with seven seconds left, ball out of bounds, They miss, ball gets batted, and Zach Tucson, from about thirty feet maybe a little longer, knocks it in over Devin Whitfield at the buzzer to lose by one of the lots are playing in the National Championship game, and you know, all that stuff about me coming to Nastate had come out already, and it was just a that was just a devastating you know that that was because of the circumstances, was worse the National Championship loss or any other loss, just you know, because everybody knew I was leading. It was just such a devastating way for it to And it would have been poetic to having the National Championship because at that point, you know, it's over one way or the other. It's the last game on the deal, and you know, and that group to get within a millisecond of the National Championship just shows you know, I mean to come off with twenties five to twenty six. Day break and play in the NCAA tournament. You're playing for your life. Like it was incredible. It doesn't, I mean, you know, it just stiff. You would never think of.
Okay, So how did the Indiana State job come to be?
So the the week that we were supposed to be in the conference tournament, we weren't. Uh So we were practicing and you know, that's all we can do. And I get a I got an email from a search firm guy just you know, hey, you know there's a Missouri value school that's you know, probably going to open. Would you be interested? And you know, I sent it to my agent. I didn't know, you know, at what school it was or anything, and so I just pour it on and uh the hem wound up coming back and saying that, you know, it was Indiana State. And I talked to the search firm guy, but they weren't at the time one hundred percent sure what was going to happen. So we just had a conversation and you know, kind of he spent an hour just trying to get to know me and whatever. Well, Indiana State uh, playing in their conference tournament. They lost on a Saturday, and I interviewed with them on Sunday that next day after when they had decided to make the change. And then I wound up, you know, on that Tuesday, you know, going in and signing an MoU up in Lexington, Kentucky, and I met them, you know there. It was just but you know, it's funny. I got I got about ten minutes from the hotel to go meet with them to sign the contract, and you know, I was driving up there with my wife and I looked at her and I was like, I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to go to dannea state. And she was like, all right, let's go home. So we literally exited off the interstate and started driving back to Harrigan. And I called my old a d who was with me at LMU, who wasn't there at the time. And I was.
Like, the one who was gardening or the next one.
No, the gardening one retired. He's a good dude as well, but he retired after it was the guy who replaced the gardening guy. And so and so I'm driving back and I call Matt Green. I'm like, I said, Matt, I said, I'm you know, I'm turning the job down I'm driving home, you know, when I just was like, it doesn't feel right, you know, I think I'm going to stay at LMU. And he taught to me for about fifteen or twenty minutes as I was driving home about why it was the right thing for me to do. If he had said, hey, no, I agree you should, but he did it, and and so I spent about twenty minutes, fifteen twenty minutes talking to him, and then he convinced me to take it. So then I had to turn back around and I sent Indiana State a texta just saying, hey, I'm running late. And so I got there a little a little later. And you know, it was a combination of things. At the end of the day, you know, LMU, I had a new president, new ad, and the president and I, you know, weren't great. I thought the you know, the commissioner of the league was you know, like I said, you know, that whole thing with the COVID dealer had rubbed me the wrong way. The president wasn't he wasn't a bad guy at all. He was not athletic guy. And we had a new a D. So it just felt like if I was going to do something it was the right time to do it. And then the chance to be in the Missouri Valley, to me from D two was a jump that a lot of people don't get to make. You know, the normal jump is, you know, you go D two to a low major, low major, you do well, you go to the Missouri Valley and then you know, and so I was going to skip some steps. And I knew how good a league the Valley was in terms of the competition, the coaches, like at the time, I mean, you know, you had Porter Mojor, you had Ben Jacobson, Darren de Breeze, Bryant World. I mean, I knew all those coaches and how good they were, and it was like, man like how you know, like that would be just an amazing challenge and a place that in Indiana State a lot like LMU, people said it was impossible to win at you know, when I talked to people said, oh, you know, you know, you can't win at a high level there. You know, it's not you know, and and you know, so that was kind of the deal. But I knew that you know, you know, Greg and his staff that you know, I was replacing it had done a good job and they'd certainly want something, and so I didn't. I didn't look at it as bleak as other people did. But that was kind of the the caveat of coming was the opportunity to compete against you know, these coaches in an unbelievable league and one of the best mid major leagues in the country, you know, bypass some steps. Really challenged myself and then Charrard, who was my athletic director here. You know, the thing I told us is that it had to be a work environment like the one I was in, where I was empowered and support every single day. And he, you know, was he said that absolutely, you know, we'll give you the freedom to do it the way you want to do it. We won't micromanage and and you know it'll it'll work or it won't, but but you don't have to worry about that. And so once we kind of came on all those terms, it just seemed like the right well even though you know, it wasn't really a bump paywise, it was a small bump, but not you know, not.
Really that lifetime deal wasn't about money.
It was no, it's not about money. It was about the chance to pursue growth and challenge myself and see if I could do it at this level. Basically, I was leaving something I was incredibly comfortable. I have a natural aversion to change, Like that's just how I'm wired. I get very comfortable, I like, you know, And I had poured myself into that place. We had an amazing culture, a championship DNA. You know, we had just come up short of the national championship on a buzzer beater. We had great teams coming in the pipe. I mean since I've been gone the previous two years. My assistant as the head coach, I think he was fifty eight and ten his first two years and won back to back regular season championships. And they're in position to do it again this year for a third shit year with a lot of guys. And that's with most of our better players come in Indiana State, So you know, that's with the guys who were scout team guys when I was there. So it was instead of be successful, it was just the challenge and the opportunity that was presented here to do it at this length.
What is that like to bring your guys up a level? But also there's some guys that you can't bring up a level. What's that process?
Oh it's hard. I mean, it's tough. You you want to you know, I probably, in hindsight, you know, like I probably undervalued the cultural piece I could have maybe, you know, probably could have probably brought a couple more with me. But I also didn't want to leave LMU depleted. Ether it was kind of a feel, you know, I didn't. I love that place. I love it, Lincoln Memorial. We had guys that I mean, my hope originally was they were all going to come back, but a couple of guys were like, we're transferring to Division one now. If you don't want us, we'll go somewhere else. But you know, so I was like, all right, I got a you know, two of our All league players. Last year we won twenty three games where you know, LM you guys, can I see a McCauley and Cam Henry are two All Conference players were LM you guys in the Missouri Valley. So you know, it was it was it was tough com stations with players because more people wanted to come than we could take. Like I said, hindsight, being twenty twenty, I probably would have taken more because I think the hardest part when you take a new job is you know that you can't transpose culture and that you know you have to start from scratch. And the more guys you have that understand you and understand what winning looks like and understand the way you operate, the better because you know that that year was funky. And recruiting anyway, if you remember, like when I got the job, I couldn't go recruit zoom and campus. Yeah, nobody come to campus. It was remote. Everything was we were doing FaceTime, driving in golf carts of I mean, zooms and FaceTime. That's how we recruited. And so most of the people that I recruited because I took over a team in April that had two players on the roster. So most of the people that I recruited I never met until they came to summer school. I had never even had an in person cut or seen them play live, like I just saw everything was on the film. So it was the most awkward thing. And you know, in terms of uh, yeah, I mean just like you don't you know, the whole recruiting process that I value was completely opposite of what I'm used to, and so these people there was there was a number, more than a handful. Was first time meeting them in person was coming to summer school and the first time seeing them play was our first practice.
When did you know this group was going to be different, this group is going to be special?
Felt it in the summer, just the vibe you can get. I mean, you know, when you're recruiting, you know you have hopes for what your team could be, how the pieces will fit. But I would say there's two types of forecasters, right, those that don't know and those that don't know. They don't know, so you hope you have an opinion, but you're not, you know, you know, and then watching them play the portal is the harder one because you you know, you feel like you can get the tangible things. But it's the cultural one that's harder because it's like speed dating. You know, you go from this process so high school guys and now you got this short runway with the transfers to figure out, you know, does it fit. But you know, like I said, the intangibl piece is the harder part. But when they got here in the summer, I felt like we knocked it out the Park with the transfers in terms of okay, yeah, they're good, but they also fit us culturally. We got that part right, and we knew it was a weird time because we lost eighty three percent of our scoring from last year. We only had four scholarship guys back on the whole team because we had six we had six or I guess five scholarship gos back. We had six seniors that were true COVID seniors that had exhausted the COVID year, and then we had two guys that didn't play much who transfer. So we had eight new scholarship players for high school, four transfers, and it was like, you know, we had our three leading scorers all graduated, you know, Cavasier and Cooper Nice and cam Henry so and five our top eight. So it was like but you could tell early on, you know, Isaiah Swope and Ryan Conwell and and those guys fit and and then the guys who were returning, the Robbie Abulo's, that Julian Larry, the Jason Kents, you know, their growth and the system was going to be significant. And you know, and and so I could see in the summer that if we could stay healthy. Uh, the guys liked each other. We got the culture piece right. Uh, there was good chemistry. The pieces fit together on the court well. They amplified each other versus got in each other's way, which was nice. And we had talent, but it was talent the compent each other.
How do you build that relationship piece when you have guys coming in and out of the portal.
Yeah, I think you have to be really committed to it. It's something that I think when you're you know people, you know, I have, you know whatever, a number of assistants that are head coaches now at the Division two level, and you know, we'd always talk about, you know, in the transition, what are the biggest things you know and and and being a head coach? And I would always tell them number one. And if you get number one wrong, the rest will be irrelevant. But is evaluation right? You got to be able to evaluate talent. If you recruit bad players, everything else is irrelevant. You've got to get the right talent and the right type of people. And then the second piece to me is you've got to be able to build relationships with guys. And it's so much a coaching well, beyond x's and o's, is those one on one conversations, those group conversations commanding a room. You know, guys, psyche, the mentality your team like that to me is so much more important than the x'es and o's, you know, in terms of being successful as a head coach, is your ability to have relationships with guys that can withstand the burden the truth right that you can be honest with people and it doesn't you know, they don't get offended or insulted because they know that that there's a genuine relationship there. And so you just got to be really intentional about it. And you've got to be in recruiting really intentional about hey, look, this is what we're about. And if you want this, this is not your place. Like hey, in our system, you know, the five is the hub. If you want the ball in your hands all the time, probably not going to be what you want. You know, we're never going to pay a guy in an nil more than our returning our better returning players. So if you want that, you know, I mean there are certain things that are you know through lines that that man, you know, it's not going to be. You know this, if you want to come here. But I think you have that transparency and then you have the intent day to day of like, all right, this is who we're going to be.
So that's your really you know, you're not gonna pay anybody more than a return.
Yeah. If if if we have a returner that like our better returners, to me, that's the best the ability to bring guys back. That corporate knowledge is far greater than going out and getting a new guy. Now, if we got a guy like Isaiah Swope for Ryan conwell, like we knew, you know, our market was going to be set by a and we weren't going to pay in an nil somebody incoming more than we're going to pay our best returning player.
Yeah, I'll give you. I'll give you a stat that that will help you in the future. In the NFL. The NFL, the hit rate on free agents in the NFL, where they have all this tape and they have you know, they have your college shape whatever, is like thirty three percent, whereas in the draft in the first round it's actually in the between fifty five and sixty percent in terms of hit rate.
I think, right, a great point.
So it's it's you know, right, It's like what you said, evaluate and then uh and then you know, build on what you have, but build on builthough I have because the grass.
Is I agree. Well, that's the thing. People. Look, if you're if you're selling nil to people, you ask people to donate nil. It's a handle lot easier to say, look, you saw this guy, you know how good he is. This is what it's going to cost. You know, we think to retain and that's kind of the way it is. Now. You've got to build your collective. You know, everybody else know what's it going to you know, how do we keep the team together? And but I think you know, guys will stay if there's a relationship, if they feel like the system you know you're there. They're getting to do what they do and do what they do best all the time. But you're right, I mean, the the free agent piece is so overvalued of going out and you know, getting this guy, getting this guy, getting this guy, and thinking that all your problems are going to be solved in the portal. Because everybody says this, they say, well, just get old and stales and I get that. To me, where people miss the boat is what about getting old together? Yes, what about shared experiences? What about you know, what about those things when you go through things together with guys that give you, like your team to Oklahoma State, like your shared experiences over many years.
I'll give you. I'll give you an example. Okay, so one we went through that loss to you. Right fast forward a year and a half later, we're in NCAA tournament. We're in the sweet sixteen. We're playing Seaton Hall, and we had a set called cyclone we'd run in our first two years. We never practiced it, didn't put it in at all. And the way they were guarding our ball screen ball screens were playing against Tommy Amaker and Seaton Hall in Syracuse, and I turned. I turned to Brian mount Naught. He was now a coach at Wasaw High School and outside of Tulsa, and I was like, hey, we should run cyclone, Like all right, let's do it. So we just called it and then we come over to the bench and Sean Sutton started again like office like, y' all run cyclone, Like yeah, okay, just like we all knew it all worked and we'd all kind of been through it. Like but by the way, that's also that's the whole college experience, which where I do think we're we're diminishing all right, last thing, because I know you're busy. You gotta go. You guys had been zooming along, You get ranked, and then you lose. What's the it's challenged like from like you said, yes, you've been building towards this, but this is a new team. And whatever your own internal thoughts were on how good they could be, you kind of got everybody's attention nationally. But now you lose, so all that other work you had done gets called into question. What's it like now to try and get him back on Trent?
Well, it goes back to that that number one thing of you know, relationships and psyche. I think when something like this happens, losing losing happens, right. I mean, you're in a highly competitive deal. Sometimes you wins down to lose. Losing the way we did shouldn't happen in terms of not being ready to compete, not playing together, right, And I told the guys this, look when you hit adversity, uh and and it's one loss, but it's adversity because it's February fifteenth and all that it can be an albatro us and and and completely break you down and bring you down because you disconnect, you go your separate ways, and that becomes you know the what what splinters you? Or you know, it can be a springboard. Right, we just won nine in a row. We weren't playing great the last few games, but we were winning because we were fighting and competing and we were getting honestly a little bit of luck in there too, right, you know what three spins, how the play goes in, So you know I told them going in, you know, uh, we're playing with fire and and we got burned on Tuesday night. It can be a springboard if it reminds us how much we need each other. It can be a springboard if it gets us back to being fully locked in in the tente of the details of the game. Uh. It can be a springboard if it eliminates any kind of complacency or entitlement about you know what we deserve what we're owed, because you know, entitled teams win nothing, and understanding that every single time you step you know, games are decided in between the four lines on the wood. It doesn't matter what you're ranked, or what social media says or what somebody projects you like it's decided on the wood in between those four lines, and when you get out there, nothing can save you. Like it's in the arena. Out there, you're putting yourself out there, and you've got to be ready to meet those challenges and the last pieces you know, yes, the ranking and the exposure and the expectations. But I'll say this, like, if you can handle expectations and performing under pressure and those things, then you're not designed to be a champion anybody. You're not designed to be elite anything you do, because if you're elite, part of being elite is you got to deal with expectations and pressure and people you know, saying this judgment, all those things. If you can't handle those things and perform, you're not designed to be elite. And it's a reminder that we talk a lot about there are cultures. There are winning cultures and cultures where you can win, and I think they're very different. If you're in a culture, a winning culture, you're a weather vane for results, right, Like, you know, hey, we won, everybody's fired up. We lost. We're practicing at five am. You know, we're pissed we won. There's music playing, Guys, are all adapted, they're up, you lose. The whole vibe changes. Right. In a culture where you can win, you have processes and standards and principles and values in place that allow you to weather storms, allow you to handle success, and allow you to respond appropriately and move on. So we'll see the goal is to build a culture where you can win. I think we've done that here, But like I tell them, you know, don't don't tell me, show me. So we'll see tomorrow night in Carbondale and how we respond. I love our locker room. I love the character the guys in there. I have all the confidence in the world that you know we're going to respond the right way. But you know, show me, don't tell me. And let's see if we really have a culture where you can win in those processes and standards. And we kind of got checked and now we're able to reconnect back to who we are and we remember how much we need each other and the competitiveness. You got to earn that thing every night. Don't worry about rankings, pressure, expectations. Lock into your preparation, lock in and play into a standard and block all that out and lean into each other, leading the team pour into one another.
Awesome. Well, I can't wait to see you guys take the ploor against the slokeis tomorrow night. I really appreciate value your time, and let's catch up again before the NCAA tournament and see how they responded.
I appreciate that. Doug, thanks so much for having me on.
All right, that's it for this edition of All Ball. Remember you can check out my daily radio show and podcast just typing Doug Gottlie. Wherever you got this podcast, you can check it out, download it or listen to the radio show. That's three to five Eastern time, twelve Topecific on Fox Sports Trader, the iHeartRadio app. I gotta leave this his Elball
