Doug is joined by University of St. Thomas head basketball coach Johnny Tauer who is in his fourth year with the Tommies. In part one of this conversation, Doug and coach Tauer discuss Coach Tauer's coaching beginnings, his success at the Division III level and his philosophy at St.Thomas.
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Hey want to bulocome in. I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is All Ball. We got a great guest for you on these next two All Balls. Johnny Cower will join me. He's the head coach of St.
Thomas.
The Tommy's are in first place in the Summit League and he's built them from a Division III National champion to potentially a Summit League champion, and they're still not eligible for the NCAA tournament, something that obviously most people know that the transition years should go away.
They just should.
But we'll get into all things Saint Thomas in a moment.
Do want to update you.
Obviously, at the time of this recording, we've lost fifteen games in a row, and as tough as that sounds, and you know, you get people like, oh, that's got to be miserable. Don't get me wrong in the moment. In the moment, it can be. But it's a really fascinating process and I do want to use this pod to tell some of the story. First, I'll tell the story of this past weekend. You know, we had been steadily improving and we thought we felt like we played really well in spurts against Milwaukee and had a legit chance. So look, we felt like we played, we played well. We're a different team, like one of the things that's crazy about this year, And I think I'll take a pod probably at the end of the year and go back through so many different changes. But we've sort of been three or four very different teams in terms of our roster composition. And we added Yonatan Levy a Levy excuse me, who joined us from Israel, going back three weeks ago, and I remember, like when we got him, our plan was, hey, can we get him on the twenty first of December, that's when he was eligible to join us, But because of paperwork and trying to get out of Israel, then we're like, okay, well he'll join us at the twenty sixth when we start practice for the twenty ninth. But he didn't arrive until the thirtieth, and then we played him later. We played them two games with like two practices under his belt, and he wasn't in shape.
So then we had essentially.
A week to sort of get him into shape and to figure out what we wanted to run and how we wanted to play.
And remember, like I still had to figure out how to coach him.
Guys had to figure out how to play with him, and then we had to figure out what, you know, not what he does best, but what kind of condition he's in. And like, you can only condition somebody so much when you have you know, you have a mandatory day off and then you know, you got three or four practices and then you go and play on a Saturday. So we felt like we did a pretty good job preliminarily against Milwaukee. So then we have a couple days to prepare for three games and six days, I mean have three games.
In six days.
You got to figure out, all right, we have to be light in terms of our practice load so that we can't really condition guys then because they'll just break you down. But we thought, hey, maybe Tuesday. We played on a Friday, so we felt like, all right, we Monday we did individual workouts and a lot of film study and just kind of getting him sharper and how we want to use him. And then Tuesday we were set to have pretty tough low practice. Well, he heard his hip flexer on Tuesday lifting weights, so he barely practiced during the week. You go into a game against Robert Morris and it was a game time decision thing. So I'm like, of course he's gonna play, like his dad is flew in from Israel. His dad's a former national team player in Israel. It's got to play, and he just coach I can't go. And so now we're back to kind of playing how we played in the last you know, a month or so without Anthony Roy, our leading scorer, which is different, and it takes away everything we had kind of worked on. And we're up seventeen in the first half, but we suffered massive foul trouble, something we haven't had all year and we're at home, which was let's just say strange attended to foul differential and I'll just be you know, like, look, I can only be honest. I didn't think the officiating in terms of what was it call at one end and what was it called the other end?
Was it was fair and square? I just didn't.
I don't think there's some Grandma conspiracy or anything, right, there's nothing nefarious at work.
It just worked out that way.
And we don't have any depth of experience literally trying to play our more most experienced guys and are our best guys, and you know, people see the twenty eight nothing run and like they don't realize that there's a bunch of things. We missed five layups during that run, and we had to play, you know, we had to go deep into our are not so deep bench. And remember, like if you you're missing your top to your top three players, right, Anthony Roway not playing because he's injured, you on time Levy not playing because he's injured, and you're playing, you're playing on a seven or eight man rotation. Well, now you play five and your seven or eight man rotation becomes your nine to ten. And then when you have three people in foul trouble, you're playing then in eleven and they're just young and Robert Morris got a bunch of confidence and went on a run, and our guys collectively didn't react well. But here's where you know you have the right kind of kid. Obviously, I just was upset and beside myself felt like we'd had such good practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, assuming you're on a time with play, we feel like there's a good team in our locker room.
They were.
It was tough the day in between games. You have one day to prepare for Youngstown State, one of the best teams in our league coming in and you know they're coming off of lost to Milwaukee, so I'm sure they were like, hey, we got to get this one back. And we had kind of like a player's only plus me session, and I just established there's four things that are gonna win usay game. Defend rebound value the ball belief, Defend rebound valuaball belief, Defend rebound value the ball belief because we just have to be better. Defensively. We were we have to rebound the basketball better, limited better, but still gave up thirteen offense ruins value the ball. We had sixteen turnovers, many of them late, and that's what led to us losing. And then believe, and that's it's just hard to get them to believe that we are going to win games.
We had to believe it before it actually happens.
So you know, you're up ten with I look up nine twenty two to go, and I'm like, this is it.
We got them.
Just execute down the stretch and you know what happens is you see the fissures. It's not one play, but we run a play that there's a layup on the back end of it. We turn it over and then they pick up the pressure and we turn it over. And you know, they didn't shoot the basketball, and though they rebounded it well, really they won the game on those couple of steals and dunks that followed. So you'd think back to the drawing boards, and when you invest every amount of your mental emotional being into a group of young men and you're so close and then you come up short, it's devastating.
It's devastating.
But you know what, we had a practice yesterday and not really practice, this kind of team meeting again.
Watch film. They got shots up.
All those guys that played heavy minutes, got time in the pool, got time to rehab, got time to take care of their bodies.
And they're still all in.
And I know that, you know, if you're listening to this, you're obviously invested in my conversations and in this journey. I know we're doing the right things. I know we're getting more out of some guys than anybody thought possible. I know that anybody who watches our games can see the incremental improvement in the things that we do improve most on the process is better. The results will eventually follow. When it happens, you'll know it. But there's no quit. And yeah it does suck, but this is this is part of it. You gotta go through it. And I remember, you know, Bill's self when he got the Kansas job, talking about he lost eighteen in a row his first year at or Roberts, and I just thought to myself, I can't do that, Like I just I can't do that. And now we're at fifteen and we have one more home game and then back on the road against really good opponents. So we'll get it going. And I am learning a ton, a ton, a ton, you know, about what we need to implement, how we need to implement, how we need to focus recruiting, how the bench should function, how my offense should function, how our defens function, things we need to work on, things that we need to remember, places that places that we can improve, and the things that we're doing right and things that work, things that work. So yeah, it's a lot, but it's I'm sure I'm going to look back in a couple of years and be like, that was the best thing that ever happened to me, best thing, And it didn't happen to me. It happens to us, and I think it's I think it's a fascinating exercise this first year getting the job late, choosing to take the best kids possible and and not and choosing not to cut any steps in. And we're not doing any shortcuts or we're just going to keep grinding, keep getting.
Better, be shortcuts. Live editions of The Doug Gottlieb Show weekdays at three pm Eastern noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio.
App Let's get to a guy that has also built and I make no bones about it, we're going to play them the next three years as well. But when I got the job and I saw the parts of our schedule that were already laid out for me, I was.
Like, oh yeah, yo, yeah, yah, yeah, yeah, yo, yeah yeah.
Johnny Towers, the head coach of Saint Thomas. I've watched him grow his program as a Division III juggernaut to now I think a Division I juggernaut, and we didn't want to play him out of respect for what they do and how they do it. It's not there's some aspects of Princeton in terms of two Guard, but they just know who they are. They find the right kids. They developed them and they play as a t and it's a beautiful.
Thing to watch.
And they can play fast and they can play slow, and they're tougher than all get out. And when you watch them play, how many of you watched them play in some of these by games, you're like, there, why would anybody play Saint Thomas? And the reason I didn't want to play them, the reason I didn't want to play them was because when you beat them, if you beat them, people say, if you beat some nobody, I know, people in the sport know, let's take out nobody. You beat somebody, who are they still a Division three team? People in the sport know how good they are. People outside of the sport look at and go like, who's Saint Thomas. If you lose to them, which we did this year, people think you got beat by somebody they've never heard of. So it's out of respect that I use this to pick his brain on his journey and his program. Let's catch up with the head coach of the first it's a place in the seven League, Saint Thomas, Tommy's here's Johnny Tower. Why do you go to Saint Thomas to play?
Like?
What was take me through that decision.
You know, I grew up two miles from campus. It was, you know, I went to a Catholic high school. It's a Catholic university in Saint Paul. My dad had gone there, and those were not reasons I went there. It was a really good basketball school, really good academic school. My dream, honestly was go to Princeton and play. I had watched them a lot in the late eighties and the early nineties, and I'm not so sure Princeton was interested in me as I was in them. So I ended up, you know, playing Division III basketball, and I just felt like Saint Thomas I had a really good sense I was going to be happy there. I knew it was a really it was a really good school, great basketball program, and just felt like the values the program. Coach Fritz, who recruited me, was a guy that you know, I thought I'd enjoyed playing for. So it was it was one of those things you don't know anything when you're eighteen, right, You're trying to figure the world out. But it just felt like a really special place and obvious it's worked out really really well.
Okay, so what how did you guys how did he coach? What was his style?
Coach was old school. He was the when he graduated in nineteen seventy one, he was the all time leading scorer. He was a post player, you know, never shout outside of two feet two thousand points a thousand rebounds. He liked to joke that they made the three point line for me on offense or defense, that I never went inside that are kind of either side of the lane or either side of the court, which probably isn't far from the truth. But he was, you know what I always say, I learned so much from him. He majored on the majors. You know, he grew up in a different era, and it was just kind of no nonsense, and you better take care of the ball, you better be unselfish, and you better guards as well as you humanly could, which for me was not that great, but I sure tried. And those three things have always stuck with me, Like, if you forget everything else, major on those three majors, and you'll probably have a chance.
Yeah, it's funny. We talked to argue, you know, three things, value the ball, guard the ball, rebound the ball. It seems it seems so easy.
Well, in all the other minutia we can get into his coaches and be curious about and we all love coaching. Those details and how do you get a little winning edge here there? But at the end of the day, to your point, like if you turn the ball over and you take bad shots and you don't defend or rebound, you got no chance. And so those were some of the things that coach he really he made a strong impact on me in those voices.
Uh, okay, So was he as analytical and data driven as you are? Like what I played for Eddie Sutton and John McLeod and heck, I mean neither of them ever drew on a whiteboard in terms of drawing up a play like that wasn't there was no like at os we did two for ones, like there's so much we didn't do well at oakleom to say. We won a lot of games, so there is a certain methodology to it. What was what was he like?
You know, that's a that's an interesting question. I'd say he was. I still remember as a freshman he was not overly into analytics.
You know.
When I went into psychology, he always jokingly called it psychological BS because it was a different error, right, where like you didn't talk about your feelings. You weren't. I mean, it was just go out there and do your thing. And he was so I but I remember as a freshman he went up to the chalkboard, it wasn't even a whiteboard, and he drew up sixty five possessions and he basically said, look it, here's how many turnovers we can have, here's how many shots we're going to get. He broke down the four factors Dean Oliver's book Basketball on Paper, and he didn't do it as in depth statistically, but it was a very simplistic and very I think elegant way of as an eighteen year old that made a lot of sense to me, Like we get the ball a certain amount of times, offensive rebound, steelis possessions, turnovers giveaway possessions. Let me listen to my coach and do what he's, you know, trying to get us to do. And so I think in that sense he was ahead of his time. But he was also I mean, he was our athletic director as well. Before that he was director of admissions and before that director of financial aid. So coach Fritz was never a full time coach, so he really, I mean he he looked at it like from four to six pm we practiced. But it was just a different era, right, I mean we didn't watch film. We had one monitor that was a third of the side of some by computer monitor. And so you know, like you say, Coach McLeod, Coach Sutton, Coach Fritz, those guys, I think it was just a different It was a different era. But because we didn't have all the technology, I think those guys were really really good at majoring on the majors.
What did you when you went to college? What do you think you wanted to do?
I you know, every aptitude test that ever took that I should go into actuarial science. Unfortunately, wasn't that good verbally, so I didn't even know what actuarial science was and I never really found out. So I thought about finance. A lot of people at Saint Thomas that business is the most popular major, and honestly I was. I was so clueless at the end of my sophomore year and I'm like, I'm going to take a psychology class, of sociology class, and accounting class. And I was acing accounting. I was acing sociology and I was getting a D plus in psychology and I loved it. And so it was one of those forks in the road where I'm like, all right, everything I know says I should go into business. That's what my dad does. I thought I could get a good job in the Twin Cities. But I was just like, I think I want to go into psychology. And so I turned it around in that class, and you know, I wanted to study motivation, and so I ended up just being fascinated by what makes people tick. Went to graduate school, got my PhD at the University of Wisconsin, studying competition and intrinsic motivation. So a lot of my coaching philosophy, you know, some of the stems from the great coaches that I played for, and then a lot of it stems from my research at the University of Wisconsin and my grad advisor, Judy Herrick Kevitch, who is just one of the most brilliant human beings you could ever meet, and so kind of to marry those two interests and passions. And here we are twenty five years later, still coaching and not teaching right now. But I taught for twenty one years at Saint Thomas.
Yeah, it's always interesting me. I haven't brought that up when people ass they asked by you know, like well you have a radio job, you have like you do realize that lots of coaches have had multiple hats, you know, But I guess it's maybe the visibility of it. I'm not really sure, but it's it's interesting. You know, what do you hates? When my dad went to Ohio State, dad favorite class he ever took what he haes taught one classes semester. So, uh, it is interesting on how the multi hats. Uh, somehow we've kind of gotten lost on how that's I mean you you so when you first came back after you got your pH.
Yeah PhD in social psychology?
How long did that take?
Five years?
Why?
Why did I do that?
Why would you get a doctorate in psychology?
Why?
That's a great question is my I have three sons and a daughter, and as they like to joke, yeah dad, you're a doctor and not the kind that helps people.
You know.
Well, I knew I loved the life of professor. I looked at my you know the old adage like what you think you want to do, go look at somebody's done it. For twenty years, and do you like their life? Like if you scale this out? And I just looked at professors and the chance to help other people, hopefully, the autonomy of studying whatever it is you want to study, the chance to teach and read and think, like literally all summer long, what's your job to think and read and talk to people? And so I just thought the life of a professor seemed so wildly you know, creative and curious. And I knew I wanted to coach someday, but I didn't want to be just a coach where you get to a point you're like, I don't know if I have another tool in my toolbox. And so probably today analytics, I probably would have gone and got a PhD. And statistics, you know, given today in the way that the environment shifted. But I just I love social psychology. I mean it's sort of like I don't know if you're a Seinfeld fan or curb your enthusiasm anything like that, but I describe it like that, like social psychologists scientifically studying things that sign felt covered. I always joke I want to teach a class called social scientology, and my students would get so tired of me showing Seinfeldt clips and they started dating me a little bit. But that, you know, that's life, and it's what we do as coaches though. It's how you build teams collectively, how you motivate individuals, and so, you know, I don't know if that's a great answer, because yeah, I was broke from age twenty two to twenty seven. I mean, you're not making any money as a teaching assistant and you're taking out debt and you're hoping to get a job that you're applying where one hundred other PhDs are going for the same job in academia. So I don't know if it was the smartest rational decision, but I just knew it was something I was passionate about. And to my parents' credit, I think they probably thought I should have done something else, and we had some heart to hearts, and I remember my mom and dad. My dad was just kind of, well, if you're convinced this is it for you, better work your butt off, because you know, if you're if you're great at something, you'll probably always find a job. But if you're not, I mean, you major in psychology, you could end up, you know, not ending up in the field of psychology.
So yeah, that's fascinating.
So how did it come to be? I'm going to go back to my own modern coach basketball.
I mean, it was really a fluke. So I in ninety eight, I wasn't near done with my doctorate and one of my mentors at Saint Thomas, a guy by the name of Ward Winton, was a social psych professor of mine, and he passed away unexpectedly. And so it's not like you just say, oh, I'm a psych guy, I want a job back in my alma mater, like I'm a social psychologist. He was a social psychologist. All of a sudden, there's a position. So I applied and I did not hear back from They had no interest in me, nor should they have, because I wasn't close to being down with my PhD. And so I kind of moved my attention somewhere else. And turns out somebody backed out on the job. They ended up posting it again the next year. I ended up getting it. I interviewed. It wasn't a tenure track job at the time, so I thought I'd be there five years, and they turned it into a tenure track job, and along the way, I started volunteering as a coach, and so I was an assistant for eleven years while I was a full time professor. It was teaching, research committee work coaching, and it was, you know, it was like doing two full time jobs at once, much like you're doing now. And there are a lot of days you didn't know left from writing up from down and I'm confusing scouting reports with research papers. But it really was one of those eleven year spans in my life where I look back and I'm like, I couldn't do it now. And maybe that just makes me a lot older, but I think back to that eleven year window and it was unbelievable in terms of how much I learned, and that probably how many hours I put in. But it also I think helped prepare me for you know, what I'm doing now.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Doug Gottlieb Show weekdays at three pm Eastern noon Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
How did you guys play when you're an assistant? How did you guys play in comparison to how your teams play now?
No coach was he? I mean, you know, and you got to remember the guys who were coaching in the seventies eighties. The three point line wasn't around right, and he was I think he was pretty flexible in terms of adapting to the three point line. I'd say we played slower, and then in about two thousand and seven we started playing faster. In fact, it happens a fluke. You've had games like this. We're playing Wenona State, who was the they won two out of three D two national championships, and we had a young team and we went down there and they ended up going thirty eight and won that year. In eight they won the national title. The only game they lost was to Division three Saint Thomas, and we pressed at the end of the game. We were down ten with two minutes left. We ended up miraculously winning an overtime, and I remember talking to coach Fritz the next day and he's like, you think we should press more often? And that's sort of when we started pressing. And there have been different iterations. I would say that was probably a turning point. Offensively, I'd say we went more to this system. We started running a lot of two guard offense. Back in five I was a young assistant. He allowed me to run the offense and coach Bee lines teams at West Virginia just caught my eye and I was like, that's how I want us to play, that's what And coach Maker, who's my associate head coach. Now, he was an assistant coach on those B line teams. So it's a crazy story because he and I didn't know each other at all, and yet here I'm watching them in the sweet sixteen and Pittsnagle and Gansey and I'm like, that is beautiful basketball. And over the years he and I became friends. His wife and my wife ironically graduated from Little Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota together the same year. So like there's all these connections, and they move back here. After he left Marist, we got kicked out of our conference. We jumped from D three to D one, and before you know, he and I are having coffee as we did quite a bit and more like, maybe you guys aren't moving, maybe you'll just stick around here. And so I think our offense has evolved over the years, but I've just always wanted to play fast, free, up tempo a lot of guys and be really efficient and those are all not easy things to do, but over the years, I think we've just developed kind of a culture and probably an understanding of the players that allow us.
To do that. What's this movement like, moving to Division one from Division three?
It's been wild. I mean, you know, for years, my buddies would say, don't you ever want to coach Division one? And I certainly wasn't against it, but I was also like, hey, I'm up my alma mater. We're winning a lot of games. It's a school I love, my parents come to every game, we got young kids. There were just so many compelling reasons that I wasn't just going to go do it for a label of Division one. And I thought we had really really good players that I loved coaching. But this has been really it's been really fun, really cool at this point in my career, knowing that, you know, we had a stretch in there, I think we won twelve straight conference titles, two national titles, and then all of a sudden, we go from that to being the underdog pretty much probably every single game in our first year and starting five Division three players former Division three players. So year one was very much a baptism by fire and how can we just be competitive? And every game we won was like winning the Super Bowl.
You know.
We won ten games that year. The next year we still started four former D three guys, and so I think we've had this progression over four years where we went from ten wins to nineteen to twenty and now this year we're fourteen and five. But it's also been a I think a great pressure test of our culture. I always talk about that first year, and we did some really cool things. We led the country in fewest turnovers. We almost broke the all time record for fewest turnovers in the history of college basketball. And that was nothing we did on offense. Is just our guys being acutely aware that they better not turn the ball over. We're going to lose by forty and they knew it. We knew it. But I think we also lost twelve straight games that year. So when you think about that that year, to me, I look back with gratitude might not be the right word, but I do think we were fortunate that we had all these guys who had lost eight total games in three years of Division III basketball, and here they go losing twelve straight games, and never once did I worry about our locker room fracturing. Never did I think what are they going to do if we lose another game. Nobody was happy, nobody accepted it, but it was the kind of thing where it's like, this is who we are and this is the team we're blessed to have this journey with, and so I just I'll always look back, Doug on those guys, and you know, there were nine of them that first year who would jump from D three to D one, and they went from thinking our goal is to win a national title and we were ranked in the top five in the country three straight years to COVID ending a year, COVID wiping out the next year in Division three completely, and then boom, they're plopped in Division one. And instead of looking at that like what are we going to do here, they were like, Okay, let's make this the coolest opportunity. None of us dreamed to play in Division one. Let's go do it. And so that's a long, winted answer, but it has been a wild journey, and I think we're really excited at Saint Thomas about where we're at and what we're building.
So there is hope when you lose a bunch of rope that's good, that.
Wouldn't do honestly, and that it was hard. Don't get me wrong, I got an ulcer that year. I had vertigo, and that's the truth. You can ask my wife. Like the months of January and February, I was hanging on because it was like you're just you're doing everything you can to win, and you have perspective like we were underdogs. We all knew it. But yeah, there was a night in South Dakota I couldn't stand up in my hotel room. It was like the room's spinning, and I'm like, what's going on? I developed an ulcer. I mean it was it was a rough year that way, and yet you know, you try to step back and have perspective like, Okay, this is basketball. It's a game, and I'm coaching kids who are all in. It's not like they're not trying. They're trying with everything I have. And we ended up winning that year, the last two out of three after that twelve game losing streak, and so that was just you know something where Senior Day, it was one of the most memorable senior days ever. It was packed house and these kids who had been through so much for four and five years. I mean, none of them were on scholarship. That first year, we had two kids on scholarship the whole team, and they were our ninth and tenth man, and so nobody's on scholarship. And here we are on senior night with some of them brad students who came back for a fifth year to pay their own tuition to play Division one basketball and take red classes, and they're getting a standing ovation. And we ended up winning that night. And so it was one of those things like you know, you the journey, and I could go on and on because that year was one I hope we never lose twelve straight games. But I will tell you that, in many ways is the most confident I've ever been in our culture. Knowing the guys who were there, they were bought in, and I think, you guys, you're going to see that over time. You really are.
Oh, I know, there's no question. I mean, I had we sent our group to read in elementary school two days ago, and I got like three teachers texted me and like, your kids are incredible, and I was like, yeah, we we got a trimmed a little fat, and we got we only got good ones, you know, and it's it's not enjoyable to lose. But guys that are in on the way you want to do it and for them to still feel like like we've had good practices where you where check it on them morale and they all think, hey, we can actually be pretty good at this thing. Now that we got some of the stuff figured out. We've made some additions. We made so much subtractions and the overall energy and focuses is good. You know. It's interesting. I went to the Bucks Magic game last night, and you know, in the media the other job, right, there's this narrative that the reason people aren't watching the NBA as much is because they shoot so many threes. And I kind of find that comical. And I'll tell you why. We're about to say Major a little older than me. I grew up watching basketball, and I can tell you that no one watched that much NBA back then because it wasn't on really as often. But if you go back and watch, it's not like regular season NBA was all that gould to watch, you know. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like a good post move, but throwing it into pat Ewing and he gets double teamed and he passed to pass the pass it one more around the perimeter and somebody shoots, or you throw back into Patchwing and he shoots a fade away Like. I don't think that's actually pretty a ball as guys are playing now. I think there's other factors as to why people aren't watching, mostly just a proliferation of the sport on TV. It's always on, it's everywhere. There's nothing special about it. Let me get your perspective, because you don't you run B line stuff, but you have your own twist on it. You have maker stuff to it. There is a value in the three point shot. You like so many people, You guys don't value the middies neither do we? Uh? What what are you? What are your thoughts on how the trends in basketball and where things are going?
Yeah, that's it's a fascinating question. I get in a lot of arguments my but my buddy is our cohort, and they'll talk about, oh, there's no defense in the NBA, and it's say, well, it's hard to answer that question because the spacing is so ridiculous. That I read the other day a good article and said, you know, part of it. If there's a problem with the NNBA, part of the problem is they've cracked the code right in terms of geometry and spacing and having one or two guys who are so incredible with the basketball, how are you going to guard that? Right? So if you superimpose, and I don't know how you do this, but let's take the Bulls in the nineties when they won six titles, and you have them guard the Warriors from twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, I don't know. Curry's coming down the floor at twenty eight thirty feet pulling. Well, that's going to change your defense. Right. When I was in grad school at Wisconsin, I was so fortunate Dick Bennett. Those were the five years he was there, so I got to watch him put in, you know, drill after drill transition defense. I still thought the years he was there was unbelievable because they were not the most talented team by any stretch. They made it to the Final four in two thousand and they've been to the tourney twice in fifty years at Wisconsin, and they went three out of his five years, and people were complaining they didn't love the style. I'm sitting there like, Okay, you've been to the tournament twice in fifty years, you've been there three out of five. Now do you like winning? But I think back to those transition drills, and it was what get ten feet in the paint and then fan out and guard people. Well, if you did that today, you'd give up one hundred and fifty points. And so I love how basketball looks today. I think the creativity, the skill set, the spacing, it's really impressive. I do think at some point they may need to move the NBA line back if you want to have a little bit more balanced, because there is a there is an element where you shouldn't shoot mid range twos unless they're wide open and it's probably your best player and it's probably late shot clock. Like other than that, why would you ever do that if you've got three leech shooters who can who can all shoot at forty percent? So I love watching the game. I do think this wouldn't be popular because you'd have to widen the floor too. But I think if the arc or twenty five or twenty six feet in the NBA, that would that would bring back an element of critical thinking in terms of what's a good two versus a lousy three, and how you compare those two, because I think a lot of NBA teams would say lousy threes from our best players are fine, will take them. See.
I think the number one way to change it is to actually call fouls in the low post the way they call the fouls and the perimeter, you know, I mean it's to me, I compare it in the football sense of you know, the reason that running backs wear down so much is they haven't changed any of the rules on hitting running backs when you hit them the ball. But the quarterback you can't hit n ar below, can't hit necker above, can't ever touch your helmet, you know. And once they throw the ball, you have like a half second. You can't touch them. You can't throw them to the ground right and then wide receivers five yards you can't touch him, can't hit them when they're when they're defenseless, et cetera. Such running backs nothing changed. Well, if you watch the NBA game, even you watch the college game, in the low post, if you're posting up, you can get away with a whole lot more than if you're facing up. And that's by design right.
It was.
It was to bring back a freedom of movement in the NBA and make it more watchable. If they really want postplay to return, they got to get back to calling actual fouls in the post. I like that that becomes the march to the free throw line.
I don't know if that's what we want right Well, you saw last night probably Fordham and UMass. I think they shot one hundred and twenty some free throws. No, it's triple overtime, seventy nine files. I'll tell you the other thing that really bothers me, and it's hard, this is subjective, but I think we reward how to control ball handlers who are initiating right late in the game with teams putting their head down driving it. And so that to me too is where we You know, we talk about rhythm, speed, balance, quickness, and any of those are interrupted to following the defense. But I just see a lot of auto control ball hands who are rewarded for initiating contact and then throwing a shot up.
Yep, yep, I've seen that. I've seen all ends of it. I also it's just amazing, like what is a foul and then when the ball goes up. Obviously we struggle rebound the ball, but I mean what people are able to get away with just in rebound it. There are no rules. I tell our guys all the time, like, listen, there are no rules, literally, just the rules. Go get the ball. Don't care, go get the ball.
Our rebounding struggles we probably mirror each other a little bit. Neither one of us has a huge team. I stopped practice today and one of our kids got called for a file on a defensive rebound and he was kind of debating it with one of our young assistants. I was like, hold on, I would love to see us get called for a foul on a defensive rebound. SI just hit somebody box out hard enough, because you're right, it becomes, I hate to say, like football, but when it does become like football, it becomes a big advantage for the teams that have got the size and the weight. And that's not your team or our team.
No, how do you handle the portal.
You've benefited some from it, you know, bringing a really talented Division two All American up, but then you've lost guys. You know you had a couple of years ago, you had a really talented freshman you lost to a high major. What are your thoughts on the portal transferring without sitting out and how that's affecting your program specifically.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that where we're going to put that genie back in the bottle. I do think if they forced people to sit out for a year, it would actually fix a lot of things. Right the nil that stuff's not going away, and there's some good things about it, certainly, but it would require people to really recruit the right kids and evaluate the right kids rather than you know, you look at the Horizon League where you are, the Summit League where we are a lot of the All conference kids every year just jump because they sort of think that's what I should do. And sometimes it's the right thing. Sometimes you end up not playing very much, you end up in a bad fits to them. I mean, it's there's a lot of risks to it.
And so.
We we've been I mean we've been fortunate. We've only lost two out of our twenty three undergrads the last two years total. One of them was aner rody to Virginia, and so I think we're I think typically we're going to stay recruiting a lot of high school kids, but it is the reality that you're going to lose kids, and sometimes you're going to lose them unexpectedly. And that's why to me, I don't I don't think any of us have the answers, but trying to build it with kids who really want to be at your school for the right reasons, and that you got to sif that out in the recruiting. You know, battles where sometimes you got a kid here who's a little more talented than this kid. But if this kid is dying to be at Saint Thomas and I think he's going to be here four years, that carries a lot of weight to me, you know that. I think in this era, I think every kid has in the back of their minds someday I may transfer. I don't know that we had that in our r or we went to school like that. You didn't think that like that that way. And then I think selling not selling, but you know, finding the right fit where kids are looking at in this case Saint Thomas saying this basketball program, the journey you're on, the academics, the location, the alumni network, the opportunities I have, those are all reasons I want to come here, so if something's hard, they're not just going to transfer because it's tough. Because honestly, in D three, it was easy for me to tell guys like, hey, the freshman, Doug, if you're good enough, you'll play. Most freshmen don't, but you will if you're good enough. As a sophomore, I think you're going to be, you know, playing a lot, but as a junior and senior, you're going to be one of the best guards in the country at our level. And to me, that was always a nice way of framing up. Here's going to be your development over the course of four years, and I think that's more challenging to do, certainly for all of us in the Portal era.
I agree. You know, it's it's you know, we we have freshmen, and you're like, you're really excited about incoming freshmen, but the reality is one of the reasons we're strugglings. We have too many freshman and it's like, hey, you guys are great, but I gotta go get some old, older kids too. You guys just played South Dakota and I know they pressed and they run and they trap, and you guys scored one hundred and nineteen points. What was that like? To coach?
It was crazy. I mean because we you know, we like to get up and down, but we're not. I wouldn't say we're frenetic. I think we'd like to play fast. It was Mayormember. At one point, looking up at the clock, I'm like, Dad, we got ninety points. We're scoring all and there were still ten minutes left in the game. I mean it was it was unlike any game. And they play really fast, but they're also not playing Grinnelle. I mean they're just they're playing up tempo. And both teams shot it unbelievably. I mean halftime was sixty to fifty one, and I felt like we were playing decent defense. I think both teams. I think both teams for the game shot over fifty percent on threes. There were a lot of fouls called. We went thirty five or forty one from the line. So it was it was a crazy game. Give up one hundred and four points and I didn't walk out. We didn't play great defense, but we also didn't play horrible defense of it. I do feel like the trickle down to the NBA, just the spacing, the number of shooters that people are putting on the floor. I know in the Summit League our games, I feel like this year and when we're for four games in, but I feel like the numbers people are putting up are higher scoring than in the past, and I think, you know, there's a lot of factors to that. But it was, yeah, I don't know. I don't know we've ever given up one hundred regulation win or lose, to be honest with you. In fact, my old head coach, coach Fritz, we were talking about earlier, texted me right after the games that you know, I always loved an old defensive battle because he would that would have he would not he looked up and you know he was coaching before there was a shot clock. If he looked up and was sixty to fifty one, that was a good final score. Like we held people of fifty one for the game. We won sixty to fifty one, an old smash moulk game. That was a good game.
Okay, So now I get really difficult as you go to Omaha and it's like a crutches got a really interesting team. They went through a stretch for they lost. I think they lost like nine of eleven or something, I mean something terrible. Right, Yeah, it's nine of eleven and now they've they've turned around and you know, only one D three. But outside of that, I think they've won seven to zerw including beating Denver, beat Kansas City, beat South Dakota State. What what's your temperature on the Summer League? This is the first place showdown you guys got on the road in Omaha. But what's the Summit League like this year?
Yeah, it's gonna be interesting because and we played denverron Saturday, so before we play Omaha's got to buy before we play them. We played Denver on Saturday. But yeah, if you had said before the year, I mean Omaha beat both US and Omaha were in North Dakota and we swept North Dakota and North Dakota State that first weekend in North Dakota State. Both of them are good, but North Akota State has been Their offensive numbers are like a video game right now, and they're really really good. And then both of us we're able to beat celt Dakota State at home. So No, Crutch is a great team. They got a balance of really tough, strong veteran front court, guys, and they've got good guards who can shoot it. So they got they got a really nice mix and they're tough. They kind of got his personality where they're just they go out there and compete. I watched them last night, the whole game against Denver, and they just it's not flashy, and all of a sudden, you look and they're up twenty. So he's got a really nice team. Celtdakota State. North Dakota State have been the perennial powers along with Oral Roberts, and so it's going to be I think a pretty wild race. I mean, it's fun to be at this spot four games in, but like I tell our guys, I mean it's you know, anybody who starts paying attention to the standings before the season's done, you're kind of missing the mark, Like we don't control the standings anything like that and sounds cliche, but you better take it a day at a time or you're gonna lose a lot of games.
Isn't the big fight in the league to get the tournament out of the dakotas.
Well? Some might the Dakotas might say, no, that's not a fight at all. Just keep it there, I think. I mean, hey, it's a big advantage. We played there last year yourself to go to State in the Semis and they were the top seed. We were the four seed. And you know, there's ten thousand people there in nine, nine hundred and eighty of them are Jack Rabbit fans, and you know that's where the league headquarters is that we draw. Well, it's a it is a great event. So I think there's a healthy tension between It's one of the most highly attended, maybe the most highly attended, you know, mid major. But it's a decided advantage for you know, two or three schools without question, and so I don't you know, I don't know where that ends up going. But we're new to the league. I just I try and go along with just about everything and just heay, we're happy to be here.
Yeah, I know. I called my LEGE commissioner about about an officiating deal a week and a half ago, and I like, I didn't I don't know when the time is to call, when the time is not to call. And I was like, hey, I don't want to be just ticky wheel here, but it's fun talking about something here. And Julie was great. She was like, now you're got to stick you like central call all the time. I was like, oh, it's like she's like, don't call, don't call the time. Yeah, a new guy. You just kind of tread tread lightly cold it game that you've ever coached in, like where you like got out the bus or gott a can be at home in Saint Paul or now obviously in the Dakota's are back even the D three day.
D three days, well any time. I don't think I've ever gone to North Dakota where it's nice, Like even when we played there three weeks ago, it's like it looks like it's going to be decent there. I'm telling the players, I've never seen it. We get to Grand Forks, that's like negative ten, but I remember so Concordium Warhead in our old conference that's right across the border in Minnesota, Fargo Moorhead, and we got snowed in. I remember, you know where it's negative twenty. There's fifteen inches of snow coming down, so we couldn't we couldn't get out of town. I think the game was postponed today, and you're just you're kind of trapped in more Head Minnesota, so that would that would be the one I remember most vividly my I think it was my freshman year at college. It was twenty twenty below well I think it was probably twenty below but more and it was a snowstorm, so we were literally trapped, you know, trapped.
I don't I don't know what twenty below in the snowstorm be. I will tell you that we have had very little snow here in Green Bay, very little, and it does it feels being being cold without snow. Is there's a little bit of dry humping, Like what's the point. I don't really I don't enjoy I don't necessarily enjoy cold, period. But when it's cold and there's no snow, now, now you just make me mad.
There's no in February. Are tough when there's no snow, I would agree with. Do you get a nice little cover on everything? And it looks I mean esthetically, it looks pleasing like our campus is beautiful. You take a picture when there's some snow there, it's even I think more beautiful. But yeah, January, we got to get through to it. And basketball season makes it a lot more palatable, right, I mean, I look at it I didn't coach junior and fed war would get really long, and instead you're hardly coming up for oxygen and you know Marsh will be here.
Yeah, my daughter's at Oaklhom State and she she's like, you know, it's really cold, Like what's it? Like? I said, honestly, I I have a heated garage. I turn on my car before I'm like from my bedroom, like make sure my car I am so soft.
And then I have a like an.
Arrangement with school security where when it gets cold, I'm parking by the loading dock because it's like seventy two steps from my parking spot and it's seven steps from the loading docks. I did seven step today, so like fourteen steps total I can handle. You know, that's not that bad. But and yeah, you're in the gym the whole time. You're like, hey, it's sixty eight degrees. That's why I tell recruits all the time. You know, the weather here in the winter, sixty eight in the locker room, sixty in the weight room, sixty eight in the gym. So it's sixty eight degrees every day, every single day. Well, what about you, You've been doing this a long time you've obviously transitioned to Division one, and now you guys have a chance. I do think the Division one transition rules radict because you should be eligible to be in the tournament. I think you know what you should you your first year, maybe not, but after that, Like, what are we actually doing here? I don't understand. I don't understand do we why have rules? If you can pay players, why do we have all these other rules? And I've been somebody who I've been. I don't believe in paying players outright, I don't, and I do believe that there's a right way and wrong way to do things. But you know you can't call a kid here, you can't see a guy there. Middle school I know you coach au middle school kids can't use your gym because they're recruitable athletes.
Like it does?
None of it matters when you can pay players.
Yeah, even I look at the camps you can run, right, we can't have seventh and eighth graders of camp most of July and August. It's like none of us are recruiting seven to eighth graders. Nobody's hardly recruiting high school kids anymore, much less seven than eighth graders, and so yeah, there's a lot of rules that don't make sense. Now, we did get a good ruling yesterday. I don't know if you saw that, but they've shortened that window from five to four years for D three to D one and four to three for D two to D one. So if this is a year four for us, if we meet a bunch of compliance sort of checkpoints through the next several months in June, then we would be eligible for the tournament next year. So that's you know, that's certainly better than it was then. We knew what we were signing up for when we did this. I mean, there wasn't a pathway to go D three to D one if they hadn't made an exception for us. But yeah, I at this point I would agree with you teams moving up moving up a division from D two to D one. I don't think they have some ridiculous advantage. I can see where you'd want to make sure that all the compliance and all the rules are being followed. But it's a little like the tax code right at this point, where how do you keep track of everything? And you know, we're just a data time.
But Johnny, you're saying you don't pay taxes? Is that what you're when you're sharing here in the alpall pod?
No that I wouldn't want to go into text and be an accountany You're.
Like other rules, rules, rules, just don't pay them. Who cares? Who cares? So let's say you make the tournament next year? Is this it for you? Like? Is Saint Thomas because your dad went there? Because you went there because you've risen from being a professor and assistant coach to head coach there? I guess is this it? Or is there a higher ring that you want to grasp towards?
Uh? You know, I probably feel the same way I didn't Division three. I would love it if I coached my whole career at Saint Thomas, if they if they'll have me, you know, I would love to keep doing what we're doing. I do think we're building something special, you know, two hundred million dollars arena that opens next year. I think we've got a really bright future and a chance to be an incredible mid major. But that said, I mean, you know, is you never say never, right, You're always gonna You're always gonna look at what possibilities are out there and what are the best things for your family? And I do know it would take something pretty incredible for me to leave Saint Thomas. I mean, we get we get such good kids, and it's just it's it's a lot of fun going to work every day. I've done it twenty five years and so yeah, I'd never say never, but it would take something. And I feel good about that. My wife founded a charter school. So Chancey opened a network at charter schools. Co founded them thirteen years ago. Is that a cat or a dog?
That's a dog.
Okay, I got here, so we sat.
Very hairy dog.
My cat only likes it. It's not my cat, it's Chancey's cat. But it only likes me when I'm zoom on zoom call. So I'm actually shocked that the cat it can tell Like when I used to teach, it would only come around me when I was teaching. But she founded a charter school teen years ago. It's called Prodeo Academy, and so I mean that is her, you know, that's her baby. She started from scratch and they've got twelve hundred kids that go to the school. They get unbelievable results, and so it's we're just we got a lot of fun things in the Twin Cities, and you know, it's it's always nice to have options, but it's always, i'd say, really nice to have your feet in the spot that you feel good about.
Okay, So this dog is Vince Flambardi, the Combarty. He's uh, my guy, he's a sheep a doodle. So Dennis didn't tell you the story?
Oh is this the Did Dennis pick this dog up in Atlanta?
Yeah?
Oh my.
I was standing and all of a sudden, he's like, coach, I gotta go, Like where are you gonna go? There's not that many games in town. He's like, it's not a game. Oh my goodness. This is so you talked about a team player, right, So so.
This is a great So Dennis Harrington's my assistant and he came to us from from a year's staff with Saint Thomas and he's awesome. So Dennis, I had my daughters, my daughter Harper and her friend in town for one of the recruiting weekends. So Dennis is like, hey, coach, I'll go. I'd love to go out on the road. I'm I great. So he's in.
Atlanta, so.
I have another sheep adoodle and a rescue that my ex wife has. And so when we when I moved here, she moved to Oklahoma, and I wasn't crazy happy over the summer, but she was like, I didn't have my dogs. I'm like, I'm the dog guy. And so my daughter's here and we're looking at burna doodles online and there's a burn and it's like Salt Lake City, like four thousand dollars. I'm like, this is ridiculous. So I happened to see on Instagram this's cheap of dudels for sale. So I'm doing a little research on this kennel and reading and I see that it's in like South Carolina. So I didn't remember where dan Bo was going because there was an event in South Carolina. He was going to Atlanta, but I couldn't remember where he's going. So I texted him and said I said something to line of hey, I need you to get me a dog, and he's like, he said, I'm on it, coach, and he starts listing off names of the players that he that are the most competitive. He likes because we've been talking about recruiting dog like tougher kids like dogs right no no, no no no, no no no. And I said, like, where are you right now? And he had apparently just left the gym to go like go to the seven eleven to get like a probably to get like an iced coffee or something like that and get a snack. So he thought like I was spying on him. I was like, no, where physically are you. He's like, I'll be back at the gym and like five minutes, coach, don't be like no, no, no where, drop me a pin where you are? Because I was trying to see. It's like it's Saturday night, and I knew his flight was late Sunday, and so he was flying out at like six and I think the event was like noon. I was like, what are you doing tomorrow afternoon? I got nothing? So I was like, will you go pick up a dog for me? He's like he you know, So he drove. It was supposed to be an hour. He claims it was longer because it was like two hours to where they are and where he is, and they met it like a loves truck truck stop or something, and he gets his dog. So the dog is awesome. Everybody likes the dog, except well there's a couple of people, but Dennis, because Dennis only he doesn't even really like his dog, but he likes his dog because Molly likes the dog, and he loves Molly, and so then he loves But he's he's like the guy I'm kind of like this with my kids, Like I don't like everybody's kids. I love my kids, you know, And he's Key's like that with dogs. But Barty loves Dennis. The feeling is not reciprocated. He still has some PTSD from uh because the flight was delayed. It's a puppy. He had to go to pet Co and he got like a carrier. He's the best. He got all that stuff done in one night.
I thought it was some sort of test, like all right, let's just see what this guy will actually do, Like how training Dame? Remember that with Denzel Washington on the job, I'm like, is Dennis ethan hawk right now? And Doug is Denzel And it's like, let me just see how hard you're gonna work for the Green Bay Phoenix. So no, that was I was with him. We were watching the same game, and all of a sudden, he's like, hey, I gotta go, like where are you going there? He's like, no, so hey, he came back with a big recruit for you though, right, that's it. He did.
He's very popular. He's not going to transfer portal. Everybody likes him so great. Grades aren't great. He did okay and obedient school, but grades aren't great. But he's it's a constant source of entertainment because every time Dennis comes over, the dog goes crazy and Dennis is like, I don't I don't really like you.
So it's very there's probably some psychological theories of attachment where this dog feels a very powerful Yeah. Right, it's not being no question.
So yeah, So do you use your psychological like do you actually ever do a psychological breakdown on your players?
Not very much formal stuff. We've done a little personality stuff before with them, but I probably try to steer a little more clear, like they know my background and most of the freshman years, you think that you're a psychologist can read your mind, and so I try and disabuse them. But that I was like, no, that's not what it is. It's just about how you know, how do you think about the world, And I I think probably it permeates the way I think, but we don't do a bunch of psychological stuff, if that makes sense. But you know, the way I look at the world, for good or bad, is very much like designing a social psych experiment. And there's correlational studies, there's experimental studies, and how do you tweak a variable here or there? Team building, I think there's a ton of psychology in that, but it's you know this, it's as much or more art than science. You know, so you can you can do all the studies you want, you can read all the books you want. At the end of the day, you got we got sixteen guys on our team, we got seven coaches, and it's like, how do you build that dynamic? And every year parenting and coaching, I always I always say, the night you go to bed thinking you got it figured out, there's no chance in the morning things are good, like something will have happened. And I think when I learned to sort of embrace that in coaching, just knowing even when things are going great, somebody's got an issue. Right There's a kid in the team going through something tough. There's a kid who strugg them with school, there's you know, just the dynamics of it all and it's what makes it so special. But yeah, to answer your question, I'm being overly loquacious right now, but I think it's probably every day what we do, but we don't explicitly talk about it a lot.
All right, that's it for part one of our.
Of Our All Ball with Johnny Tower, the head coach of Saint Thomas. Reminder of the Doug Gottlieb Show, airs daily three to five Eastern twelve two specific plus. We have it's called in the bonus. It's a bonus our podcast. You just download it where if you download this podcast, you see Doug Gottlieb, you know the general content you get.
Hey, and if you're listening to this, feel free to send up a prayer to the Big Fellow. We just we just got to get one for these kids. Man. You know, if you've ever.
Been a part of a team when they're not struggling with belief in what we're doing, they're struggling, I think, a belief in them selves.
And that's hard. It just is.
And when you know, when you have that number of losses consecutively, they just gotta believe and finally get one more basket. Than your opponent. So if you want to say a quick one to the fella upstairs to help your boy out in GB, I would I would love it. In the meantime, thanks so much for listening. Tune in next time we'll get to part two with Johnny Tower. I'm Doug Gottlieb.
This is all ball