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We wanted to get a certain number of passes this year, 230 passes.

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Jalen Archer just completed his first year as the coordinator of video and camp operations for the Southern Miss men's basketball program.

Archer spent the previous six seasons at Lancaster Bible College as an assistant coach.

While at Lancaster, Archer helped the school to an NEAC regular season championship, an NEAC Conference tournament championship, two United East Conference regular season championships, one United East Conference tournament championship, and two NCAA Tournament appearances.

Archer played collegiate basketball at both Valley Forge and Lancaster Bible.

His four year career included 114 games with 85 starts over three seasons at Valley Forge and one at Lancaster Bible.

He was named NCCAA Mideast Region Honorable Mention as a junior at Valley Forge.

At Lancaster, Archer led the team in assists, steals and three point percentage as a senior hey Hooped Score Major savings in the ultimate off season training solution during Dr.

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Make sure you have pen and paper handy as you listen to this episode with Jalen Archer, coordinator of Video and Camp operations for the University of Southern Mississippi.

Hello and welcome to the Hoopets Podcast, It's Mike Clemsling here with my co host Jason Sinkle tonight and we are pleased to welcome in from the University of Southern Mississippi, Jalen Archer.

Jalen, welcome to the hoop heads pod.

Yeah, thank you guys for having me.

Appreciate it, man, for sure.

Absolutely thrilled to have you on, Jaylen.

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

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

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

What made you fall in love with what?

Love with it.

What do you remember, man?

Well, man, basketball really saved my life, man.

I grew up in Baltimore, just me and my mom, my dad, you know, he lives around, but it was me and my mom growing up and just was an outlet for me, played football and basketball, but basketball really grasped my heart.

It was something that was a challenge for me.

I grew up, I got cut my 9th and 10th grade year in high school, so had to work hard and get to where I wanted to get to.

But it really saved my life ultimately, man, it took me away from things that weren't, things that I wasn't trying to be involved in and it just helped me and guide my life.

It gave me a lot of light life lessons.

It brought me closer to the Lord, which is the most important thing to me.

So it really just helped me and guided me in that way.

What did the day to day basketball scene look like for you in Baltimore as you're growing up?

Are you playing a lot of pickup ball?

Are you working on your game alone by yourself?

What did that look like?

So growing up, man, I really, I was talented, man.

I was talented.

I wasn't good.

One of the coaches here at Southern Miss, Nick Williams, man, he tells me it's a difference between being talented and good.

I was talented.

I was able to go outside.

I went outside a lot and played in my backyard, shot on my own.

I did a lot of like simulations.

So like I was the only child.

It's me by myself, man.

So I'm trying to simulate different things, different scenarios, playing different games with myself, you know, and that kind of helped me a little bit.

But I really didn't work on my game, man.

I played, played pickup with my friends outside and played in some rec leagues.

But outside of that, man, I was just hooping and that kind of helped my game, helped me see the game a lot better.

I think I had growing up, had a natural eye for reads and passes, which is cool, but Everything else I had to really work for.

Didn't really start working on my game until I was probably in a 9th, 10th grade working on my, you know, being in shape and in 10th and 11th, 11th, 12th grade is really when I started taking working on my game really serious.

So in that process, I would get up around 6:00 in the morning, I'd run to the gym, get a little lift in.

Didn't really love lifting.

And then I would typically watch some Kyrie Irving workout videos and do a lot of basket, do ball handling drills with a plastic bag over it, get a lot of shots up, come back home, eat, play the game a little bit, play 2K.

And then one of my boys would come pick me up.

I didn't have a car at the time, come pick me up, we'll go work out again, come home, go get some meat and then go hoop.

So I would do that for.

I did that two summers in a row going into my freshman year of college and then going into my sophomore year of college.

I did that for the most part.

When you got cut, how did you stay mentally strong and stay dedicated to the game?

I'm a, I would call myself a delusional.

I'm pretty delusional.

So I'm a 5, 7 guard, know what I'm saying?

And really, if you looked at my body type and stuff like that, I probably should have played football.

But I'm a delusional person.

So I, I have uncanny confidence about myself that I believe I can do anything.

So when I got cut, it was very humbling.

I, I would say I wasn't a humble kid when it came to that.

Very.

On the.

I was arrogant.

My uncle told me one time on the way home I was arrogant and I just didn't know how to take it.

But what that did for me, man, it opened my eyes to things, it humbled me and I had to get back to work.

So my Uncle Dorian would take me over to my rec center and I thought I was doing basketball drills.

He would have me run for hours on a track, around the track, forward and then backwards and then with the basketball.

So it was, I had to get in shape, man.

I wasn't in shape.

I was, I wasn't a good basketball player, man.

I just was talented, had a lot of talent.

And for me, man, it was just the delusion that I could do anything, you know, I can do anything.

I feel like, yeah, I can do it.

So I'm going to keep trying to push through and figure out a way I believe I'm better than guys.

I feel like I can, you know, overcome things.

So I just had to keep pushing.

For me, were you at all thinking like a coach when you're at this stage of your life, or was coaching just completely off the radar?

You were completely focused on being a player?

I'm gonna tell you the truth, man.

I've been doing what I'm doing now since I, man, I was like 11, 12 years old.

My cousin's dad, stepdad used to call me.

He used to say I was a gm.

He's like, man, when you get that Serbian kid or whatever, just make sure you call me.

So I would, I would, I would set up my own AAU teams.

I had a coach that I had and I was just trying to set up AAU team, try to get guys together and just hoop and try to find tournaments and stuff like that.

I've been doing that since I was a kid, man, going on Nike id, creating jerseys and all type of stuff, man.

So the coaching thing, maybe not, but developing a team and leading and different things like that.

Yeah, I feel like I've always had that passion, but it was just I was being able to play, you know, I was able to play and then being a point guard.

I think the best part about my game when I was young and even growing up is my eye.

I could see things happen before they did and that helped me a lot in coaching.

I have, I think I have a pretty decent eye for the game.

And that came from seeing a lot of guys growing up.

I don't know.

I played against Phil Booth when I was in fourth grade, you know what I'm saying?

My best friend plays in the NBA right now.

So I've been around a lot of high level guys for a long time and just seeing that and kind of taking it in, not knowing what I know now, but taking it all in and just seeing it and being able to now dissect the game and being able to read the game and articulate the game to others.

It's just something that I've developed in my time.

So it sounds like coaching was there.

You didn't necessarily equate it to coaching.

You didn't necessarily think, hey, someday I'm going to grow up and be a coach.

But it sounds like that coaching gene was probably always inside you there in some way, shape or form, as you said, in terms of leadership and getting guys together and putting a team and understanding what it takes to, to make that happen.

I think that that's definitely one way.

When you think about what coaching is, a lot of times we tend to focus on just the X's and O's piece of it.

But there's also that whole overarching.

I got to be a leader, right?

I got to be somebody that can put together a group of people and get them all rowing the boat in the same direction.

It kind of sounds like that's kind of where you were as a young player, even though maybe it didn't necessarily dawn on you that, hey, I'm going to get into coaching when I get older.

But that piece of it was always there.

Yes, sir.

For sure.

For sure.

Tell me about your college decision.

You go from a kid who doesn't make your high school team as a freshman and a sophomore to a guy who gets an opportunity to play college basketball.

Just walk me through the steps of how that happened, man.

So, man, and I give a lot of credit to my high school coach.

Me and him used to get.

He used to go back and forth, man, and it really just made me tougher.

It made me a better player.

But I really wasn't highly recruited in high school.

It was sometimes where coaches would come to the gym and just wasn't.

I wasn't there mentally.

But during my senior year, I was in the process of going to prep school in New Jersey, and then just something didn't sit right with me, man.

And my God brother was going to University of Valley Forge.

At the time was Valley Forge Christian College.

And I don't know, just something was just tugging at my heart to, you know, reach out to the head coach.

I've always grew up, you know, in a.

In a household.

I grew up going to church and spiritually grounded.

So it was something that was, you know, familiar to me, but didn't know where it was going to take me in life.

So during that process, going to prep school, it was, you know.

You know how prep school is.

It's.

It's a lot of money, it's a lot of investment, and different things like that just didn't sit right.

So I went up to the school, and again, this is just me being delusional.

I went up to the school, I played, had a day, you know, I just came off an injury and I played.

I thought I played pretty well, but my head.

The head coach that I had, he called me.

I was in Vegas summer league.

It was.

Might have been.

I went there on a Friday, Friday, Saturday, and I.

He called me back on maybe a Thursday.

I was in Vegas watching summer league.

And he said, I wasn't.

He didn't have a roster spot for me.

So again, delusional me, I'm going.

I said, it don't matter, I'm going to go anyway and I'm going to take those guys spots and I'm going, you know, I'm going to push through.

But, you know, week or two later he called me, somebody didn't take the spot and he gave me a spot.

So during that whole process, man, it was very tough for me.

My family wasn't fully on board because, you know, I was immature, man.

Very, very immature.

Kid was a Baltimore kid, man.

And I just, you know, didn't take a lot of things serious, especially school.

Not that I had bad grades, but it just was.

I just didn't take things too serious.

But this I did take serious and I did feel a calling to go there.

And it was a lot of back and forth with me and my family.

But ultimately, man, the Lord provided crazy thing like, didn't know how I was paying for school, Division 3 school.

So didn't know how I was paying.

I go into the office, my mom goes into the financial aid office, she comes back out and everything's taken care of.

Don't even know to this day, didn't ask how it was taken care of, but it was taken care of.

And I was fortunate enough to go there.

And I played there for three years and had a pretty solid career there.

What were you thinking about in terms of career wise and academically?

When you enroll, where was your mindset?

I wanted to win a national championship.

I wanted to be player of the year and I wanted to be a pro at the end of it.

So all my goals were kind of lined up.

I didn't really have anything else.

It was really just basketball, man.

I wanted to.

I love winning.

I want to win the national championship.

The school I went to, we was in the Christian College Conference.

Played D3 with D3, but in the same sub conference.

So in that conference, my head coach has a lot of pedigree, gets to national tournament every year, gets close to winning national championship.

So.

And one of my big brothers, he actually played there.

And my goal was to be better than him.

Like wanted somebody who was a mentor to me.

I had to be better than him.

Had to.

Had no choice, man.

Had no choice.

So I had to go win the national championship.

I had to go be player of the year or All American.

And after that go be, go play pro.

Cause that's the only way I could figure out a way to pay these Loans, had no other plan, you know, basketball, man.

That's it.

Understood.

Understood.

I.

I can completely and utterly relate to that story, Jalen, because when I went to school, making decisions, I think about my own kids now and the decisions that they made in terms of choosing a school.

And we're talking about campus and academics and programs and these things and buildings on a campus and all this stuff.

And when I made my decision, it was strictly who's giving me a Division 1 scholarship and ended up finding.

Going to the one place that.

That off that offered me that opportunity.

It had nothing to do with anything else to do with the school or whatever.

It was just all my decision making at that time was about me being a.

And it sounds like that's where you were in the same.

You were in that same boat.

So how do you end up in your last year at Lancaster Bible?

Which obviously becomes a huge part of your story, man.

So my head coach at the time, John Mack, who I ended up working for at lbc, which was cool, he got laid off in the middle year.

It was a weird, weird situation.

Got laid off in the middle of the year.

And at the end of my year, you know, I really, again, I didn't really get recruited too much in high school, so I wanted to, you know, get recruited a little bit.

So the portal wasn't a thing back then.

I wish it was.

It would have been nice, you know, that would have been nice.

But you had to do, for sure, do the traditional thing where you had to get some paper, sign and you had to tell people.

Had to find out that you're transferring and stuff like that.

So lbc, man, it was.

It was a God thing, man.

I can't.

I can't.

Like, this whole thing is just the Lord, man.

I can't take any credit for it.

I went on a visit and I just felt.

I felt.

I felt it, you know, like it was the community, how everybody was towards me and everything like that, and they wanted me.

So it was good to feel wanted.

Me and my head coach, Zach Fields, and we were close and it was.

It was just love and everything kind of aligned.

I was able to graduate on time, typically.

I had another semester, which was cool, you know, nothing bad, finances took care of in some ways, you know, it was.

It was a blessing, man.

I got a chance to play with some really good, really talented guys in a solid conference, you know, so.

Got a chance to win a championship, and it was.

It was a blessing to be there for sure.

Tell me about then the decision when you graduate to get into coaching.

What does that process look like in terms of you coming to the realization that, hey, I want the game of basketball to still be an important part of my life.

Coaching's the direction I want to go.

Did you bat some other ideas around?

Back and forth.

Obviously you said that you wanted to have an opportunity to maybe try to play professionally.

So tell me about maybe the pursuit, if you tried to do that at all.

Just what did it look like when you graduated?

When I graduated.

So my last year, I finished, you say.

Say I finished in June.

I went to Ohio for the summer in Canton, Ohio with my boy Connor Hu does gosh.

Corps training.

I went out there with him for three to four months.

Man, I was training, getting up in the morning, same routine, getting up in the morning, doing my lift.

We was in the gym probably three or four times a day.

It was insane.

It was crazy how much we were in the gym.

We would come home, we tried to, you feel me?

We tried to figure out a way to cook, but that wasn't.

That's not what, you know, it's not.

It wasn't in the cards, but really just in the gym a lot.

And then come the next year, following year, my head coach, Zach Fields and took another opportunity.

So head coach Andrew Wingren came in to lbc and at the time, I still want to play.

I'm working out.

When I go back to school, I'm working out a little bit.

Not as much as I was in the summer, but, you know, I worked out a lot.

I got a lot of hours in it.

So, you know, I'm prepared and I'm still preparing.

And I had an opportunity.

It wasn't nothing crazy.

I had an opportunity to go and it was in, I would say, September, mid to late September.

And I had to make a decision.

Well, my grandmother, you know, helped me, put me through school.

So what would I look like, you know, going to do something else when I didn't finish my degree?

And I felt like that was more important to me than going to play professional basketball at the time.

And, you know, it paid, you know, it was good and bad, you know, how everything kind of works.

But it was.

It was a good thing for me.

I got to finish my degree and then I get to start my career as a student.

I started as a student assistant.

I coached a lot of guys that I played with, and it was.

It was a good experience.

Got my first few opportunities to recruit.

Failed a lot that year.

I learned a lot that year, and it was just it propelled me, it helped me a lot.

Did you know right away when you started as that student assistant for that semester that you were in the right spot?

Did you know that right away?

Yes.

I mean, I knew, I knew I wasn't trying to do nothing else other than basketball.

Like I knew like it was like where my mind is now, where I want to go now, I couldn't, and where I am now.

I didn't think that was going to be the case.

You know, I was just kind of, you know, for me it's just kind of giving back to the game and staying around the game.

If I wasn't going play, I was going to coach and if I wasn't going to coach, I want to be in somebody's front office.

If I'm not going to be in front of somebody's front office.

I work with kids.

I just want to do something with the game at that time and at that time, man, you know, I'm 22, 21, 22 years old.

Money wasn't.

And I'm grateful that my mom instilled this in me.

Money wasn't.

It's never been a huge thing for me where I gotta go make a lot of money, you know, I'll kind of always figure things out.

So, you know, not having a lot of money, still broke, college kid doing these things and grinding.

I still didn't have a car at the time, so I'm using other people's car to go recruit.

Man, it was a grind.

But I really appreciate it.

I was recruiting kids I had no chance of getting a lot of times.

And I had to understand the talent discrepancy between a Division 2 kid and a Division 3 kid, you know, or kid that's at juco.

What is that going to look like next year when he's a freshman, when he can come back another year and you know, so it was a lot of things I had to learn, but it was, it was a good experience, man.

It was a great experience.

I wasn't training for anything.

It's funny that you talk about not being focused on the pursuit of money, right?

Because I think any advice that you can give to somebody who's trying to break into, especially college coaching, right, you got to be willing to work for nothing or next to nothing to kind of get your foot in the door for sure.

And if you're focused on thinking you're going to get a huge, well paying job as your first one, there's very, very few guys who are lucky enough to fall into that situation.

Many more guys have the spirit experience that you had where you're breaking in and you're a student assistant or you're a ga, or you're making, you know, you're.

You're a part time or you're a.

You're a volunteer, you're making nothing.

You're living in somebody's basement on a couch.

And there's so many guys that have those stories, as you well know.

Jalen.

Right, man, like, I've.

I've been through almost everything that you just said.

I've been through almost all of it, man, but doing so love it, man.

It's crazy.

So this is a blessing to be here for sure.

All right, tell me about what you were good at right from the beginning.

What do you feel like that first year?

What were your strengths as a coach?

Relating, you feel me?

I just finished playing, so every day I'm playing them guys one on one.

I'm able to talk the game.

Maybe I'm not seeing it as quick as I would if I was out there on the sideline, but really relating to the players and being able to be the bridge between the players and the coaches, I think that was my biggest thing at that time.

And then skill development, putting people through workouts and different things like that.

So those were my two biggest things.

Where was the area you felt like you needed to grow the most?

Where?

Maybe you.

When you looked at coaching when you were a player and you were like, well, all right, man, here's some things that.

When I was playing, I didn't even realize that coaches had to do.

Where was an area that you needed to grow a lot?

The hierarchy of coaching, understanding that I have a boss, and what he says is what it is, you know?

So me, I told you, man, I'm delusional.

So I think sometimes I.

I get out of.

You know, I was getting too ahead of myself in some ways, and I learned that quick that I can't.

I can't do that.

And a lot of times, me and the head coach, we didn't.

We didn't get along sometimes, man.

And, you know, I had to go back and apologize to him years later, but I have to.

I had to develop that in myself.

Where.

All right, man, you're an assistant coach.

You're not a player anymore.

And then separating the player and the coach, being able to do that.

And it was a lot, man, playing with these guys and friends with these guys, and it was, you know, it was tough.

It was tough to really navigate through it, but got through It.

And learned a lot.

Learned a lot from it.

During your time at Lancaster Bible, what would you say was the most enjoyable or fun part of being an assistant coach there?

I won in a championship, man, we won a championship.

And beating NYU in the first round of the tournament, it was crazy.

Coach K was there.

My head coach, John Mack, his favorite player, his favorite coach and team is Duke and Coach K.

So we were able to do that in front of.

In front of that, in that environment.

And how crazy that year was, that was the most rewarding thing for me was winning that championship just because of the process of the guys that we had three or four years that we had to really, really build.

Man, it wasn't easy.

We lost games, we lost championships.

We went down to the NCCAS and lost a regional championship, lost in the first round.

We lost in the national championship.

And the next year we had a group of guys that were mature enough to get it done.

So that was a very rewarding year, not just because we won a championship, but the progress that we made in our program.

Because after, you know, after that, that year we had.

It was a tough year that my first year as a student assistant was very tough, just program wide.

And it was just, you know, different.

Everybody has their things.

And when Coach Mack came in, we had to restructure everything.

We had to rebuild a whole different.

A whole culture.

So it took.

It took some time, and it was rewarding at the end of it.

What do you think is the key to building a good culture on a team?

Oh, man, for me, I have.

I have pillars that I live by.

And you have to have a team that works.

You have to have a team that wants to build relationships.

You have to think big.

That's the delusion.

You have to love.

You have to learn.

You have to seize every opportunity and you have to remain humble in all these things.

And with those, you have accountability.

You have to hold guys accountable.

And not just coaches, but players.

I tell kids now, this is your career.

This game is a business now.

So you want to.

You want to.

You know, a lot of guys are doing this to provide for their family.

You want to provide for your family, you got to hold that guy accountable.

Because if you don't hold that guy accountable, then he can disrupt what you want to do down the line.

So just making sure we.

Holding guys accountable, hold guys accountable and you working hard.

If you work everything, most things will take care of itself if you're putting in real work and doing those things.

So that's what I would Say is the biggest thing in building a culture.

How do you think about building relationships between coaches, yourself and the players and then how do you think about helping to facilitate those player to player relationships?

So sort of a two part question in terms of how do the player coach relationships get built and then how do you help facilitate the player, player relationships?

I think as a coach you just have to care, you just have to care about the kid.

A lot of these relationships you see and some have to be this way because of how this business is, are very transactional relationships.

For me, I want to have transformative relationships, transformational relationships where I'm not just your coach, but you can come to me if you have anything.

I want to be able to know what you have going on because if I can reach you, I can teach you.

And basketball is just a small sample of what this thing is that we're walking through right now in life.

So I think it's just really building relationships and caring about the kid and understanding, finding it's emotional intelligence, knowing what, how to get to certain people, what to say to certain people.

Some people I can really go at.

Some people will have to ease my way in and find a way to motivate them, learn them a little bit better and stuff like that.

But when it comes to player to player, I think you have to force it.

Discipline, you have to be disciplined and man.

For me, I have started AAU program and my kids, they run, they run for anything.

I don't, they can do anything.

And I make them run miles.

You can run down and backs, 22 17s, all of it.

And what that does is build a camaraderie within the team and also to having activities off the court.

Like we went paintballing and we went to escape room and competed against each other.

It always makes some competitive because that's how you kind of build that one.

You build some toughness, some dog.

And also you build a camaraderie like, okay, I can go to war with this guy.

If I can do this with this guy, I can go do that with this guy.

And then you can kind of see the guys that can't do it that'll wing their way out of that kind of culture.

So really just forcing guys and putting the players in situations that they have to, they have to come together, you have to.

That you have no choice, you have no choice but to come together in this moment.

If you, if you're an individual, you're going to, it's going to stand out, you're going to Stick out like a sore thumb.

So putting them in situations where they have to come together, going on retreats, doing things together, having different outings at different people's houses and stuff like that.

So just trying to understand.

I tell my kids all the time, like this game, the season you just had, you probably five years from now, you probably won't remember you playing against the second team in the league, but you will remember the bus trips, the hotel, the hotel conversations, the post game stuff like something that was funny in the locker room.

You'll remember those, but you won't remember your.

You might not remember your, Your game, your.

Yourself, your fifth game in your sophomore year, but you might.

You're going to remember your, Your roommate, you're going to remember who was on, in your room on that road trip.

So these things have to be.

Put things in perspective.

You know, you got to put things in perspective.

And if you put things in perspective, the everything else will take care of itself, especially if you're doing the right things.

And what's your preparation?

What you said right there just rings so true to me.

And it also brings up something that I think about all the time.

And look, I played a long, long, long time ago now, but the idea that in the moment, right, the most important thing to me as a player, and I'm sure you could probably relate to this, the most important thing to me in the moment when I was playing was my performance in a game and whether or not we won or lost that game.

The things that you talked about, the conversations in the hotel, the bus rides, the relationships in the moment, those things were not that important to me.

Not that they weren't important, but you give.

Not focused on.

I was not focused on.

Like, hey, today in practice I got to build a relationship with guy X.

Or when we're hanging out and we're roommates on this road trip, I got to make sure that I'm bonding with this guy.

My focus entirely was on we got to win this game.

I have to play well.

And yet to your point, when I look back on my experience as a, as a player, I.

There's some games obviously that I remember, but the vast majority of games that I played as a high school and a college player, I have no, I have no recollection of those games whatsoever.

But what I do remember is all the things that you describe, right?

I remember the funny moments on road trips.

I remember the speeches that coaches made in a locker room.

I remember hanging out with my friends on a road trip.

You know, hey, we're all getting together in a room to do whatever, and those are the things that you remember.

But yet, in the moment, what you care about is your performance and the games.

And.

And so I think you make a great point in that you have to almost force right your team.

You got to force feed them together, getting them to spend time together, getting them interact with each other.

And then as you do that, that's when you build the kind of cohesive team that you need in order to be able to.

In order to be able to win games ultimately, which is, again, what we all want to do as both coaches and as players for sure.

Tell me about the AAU stuff.

How did you get that started?

If you were going to give advice to somebody who wanted to start their own AAU program, because there are obviously a ton of people out there that have done it, there's probably thousands more that want to do it.

What's the key?

How'd you have success doing that?

Oh, man, I had.

I have great parents.

My great parents.

I have great kids.

And I would say if you want to do it, gotta do it.

Do it for the right reasons, you know?

You know, a lot of times, AAU right now is a money grab like.

Like everything right now in basketball to.

To create revenue, generate revenue.

But if you want to do it, do it the right way.

Develop the kid.

You know, it's not just about playing a bunch of tournaments.

It's about development for me.

And again, I'm overkill.

So I wanted to practice four times a week, three hours each practice.

Don't miss my practices.

Make sure you on time in my practices.

And parents are not allowed in my practices, you know, um, but I had to dumb it down to three and still did three hours sometimes.

I was in there four, four days, but got what I wanted.

But you got to really develop the kid and not just develop their basketball.

You have to develop their character.

Because there's so many kids out here.

I tell my kids we were in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

So if you ever been in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, you don't have a 6, 7, 215 guy walking around.

That's not the case at all.

So you have, you know, what, do you know what?

You probably can imagine what it is in Langston, Pennsylvania.

So what is gonna.

What is gonna separate you?

How are you going to be different from a kid that wants to get a scholarship somewhere else?

You have to play hard.

You have to play harder for longer, and you have to have great character.

So that's really what we're in our program is called the Kingdom Select.

And that's what we, that's what we, we, we pride ourselves on is being different than other AAU programs.

The development piece for us is huge.

We, and, and this is a credit to the people I have around me and my kids and my parents.

We developed a family and I'm not around it anymore, but the people that have, that's running it right now is doing a great job and the kids are, you know, continue to work on their game and parents are still buying in.

And it's because of the family dynamic that we built and that, that has nothing to do with me.

That has everything to do with the dedication and the efforts of my parents and my kids.

So we just really, really stay in the gym.

Man.

In the summertime we stay in the gym.

Last summer we got a Vertimax.

Somebody gifted us with a Vertimax and we were in the gym all day.

We're in the gym all day.

And when I was in Lancaster, I trained guys, I trained high level guys.

And they're able to see that, you know, and some of them play with us.

You know, when I play, we had things on Sundays and Sunday morning, we'll get up and down, we'll have prayer and we'll just hoop.

And some of my guys come to that, they get a chance to see us as coaches play.

How we communicate, the reads that we make, how we advance the basketball, how we play defense, how we talk on defense, the little things that it's not really being taught in AAU because I have to win this tournament, I have to do this, I do all these things, I got to get the best players to win the tournament.

When those tournaments really don't matter, they don't matter.

You're trying to develop a kid 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 year old kid, maybe an 18 year old kid.

And how are you going to do that to put him in the best situation to be where he wants to be.

And our philosophy is we want to develop professionals.

And regardless if you want to play basketball or not, professional people, because being a professional basketball player and being a professional scientist or whatever it is, it's all the same.

You still have to have a routine, you have to have, you have to come to work every day, you have to be detailed, you have to be tight in everything that you do.

So whatever our kids want to do, we're just trying to develop them to be professionals.

And through, you know, the spiritual aspect of it, obviously that's how we, that's how we do it.

So if I had any advice to someone, do it for the right reasons.

If you're not doing it for the right reasons, I probably wouldn't do that.

I would probably just get to do.

I would just train guys and then, you know, throw a travel team together and just throw guys in tournaments, if that's what you want.

But if you really, if you really want to help the game of basketball and propel it forward, do it for the development, not just the other stuff.

How do you educate the parents and families on that philosophy?

Because one of the things that I found AAU basketball is that a lot of times, unfortunately, parents and families chase the wrong thing.

Like, you're talking about the tournaments don't matter.

We're talking about development.

And not just development as a basketball player, but development as a human being.

And too often in my experiences, I've seen people who have walked away from a program like the one that you're describing to a program where maybe they just sell, hey, we're this or we're that, or we've won X number of tournaments, or we have this and that.

How do you educate the parents and the families of these kids to make them understand that what they're getting from you is about much more than getting a medal on a Sunday night after you play a tournament?

Man, that's a tough question.

Just because it's very hard to educate parents in that.

Um, I know in my program, the older my kids get, the more parents want to be involved with things because, you know, you got some different anxieties.

Everybody has their different anxieties or, where's my kid going to play?

Is my kid like, my kid's not playing?

And why is my kid not doing this?

Why is my.

And, and I've had all of those situations.

I've coached, I coached a team.

I coached Andrew PA Elite before 16 to 17 under.

And I had kids, you know, leave my program, leave the program.

And we had the same philosophies, just different name when we did that.

And really, man, with parents, I, I stand clear, man.

I stand clear.

I let them be parents, man.

I don't, I try.

I tell them, I, I, I sit them down and I lay out, lay everything out for you.

I had a conversation with one of my kids the other day.

Ninth grader, laid everything out for him.

This is how you do it.

You want to go.

Told me you want to go play at Duke.

So fine, I'll tell you what you have to do to go play at Duke, you got to do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this laid it all out for you.

And now it's up to you, the parent and the kid to take what I said.

If, you know, want to have another opinion, that's fine.

I don't have any pride or ego when it comes to that stuff.

I'm doing it for you guys, not getting paid for this, you know, So I just try to.

I try to help as much as I can with it because I understand that now.

I'm starting to really understand over the last two or three years that parents gonna be parents, man.

And I'm not.

That's not my job to be someone's parent.

I'm coaching them.

And yeah.

So I lay it all out.

Usually to start the year, we have a PowerPoint presentation.

And I lay everything, our mission, our vision, our culture, everything that we're going to do.

What the standards are and what their kids are going to be doing, where tournaments we're going to be playing at.

And a lot of times when you do that, when you lay things out to people and you are detailed with what you're doing, people will buy in.

Obviously, you have to know your stuff.

I know have different questions.

And the one thing that I think I've done a lot better at and people challenge me on it, is delegating, giving people other responsibilities, letting people do things that I'm not very good at.

And I think that helps.

Helps it too.

But really just laying things out for my parents and allowing them to take the information and whatever, however they want to react to the information I give them, that's off my hands.

I gave you the information, do what you please with it.

But this is how we're going to do things, and this is what your kid is going to be doing.

So.

Put it that way, telling them the truth.

And then the parent either wants that for their kid or they want something else.

Right?

And so then what ends up happening, I'm guessing, is the people who stick around are the people who buy into the philosophy that you're laying out for them.

And so then you end up with the right people in your program.

And it's like people always say, right, our program, we do things a certain way.

And the way we do it may not be for everybody.

And you may be one of those people that.

It's just not for me.

I'm not for everybody.

And I'm not.

Not at all.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I think that's one of the things, right, as a successful coach, that you're not always going to make everybody happy.

If you're making everybody happy, then chances are nobody's happy because you're not really making any.

You're not making any tough decisions and you're not holding anybody accountable.

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Is this for you to find out more?

Tell me about the opportunity at Southern Miss.

First of all, how do you find the opportunity and then just walk me through the process of how you end up, how you end up at Southern Miss.

Mike, man, I'mma keep saying it.

It's not me, man, it's the Lord, man.

I have nothing to do with nothing that's going on here in my life.

I don't know how I got here.

I don't, man, I'm walking it right now.

But my freshman year when I was at Valley Forge, I had a coach, Zay Carson, who was blessed to be in a position where he's here at Southern Miss as an assistant coach.

And he called me when a position, oh, when this position opened and asked me if I wanted it.

And at the time, man, I was ready to, I wouldn't say throwing the towel with it, but I was getting there, man.

I was getting to the point where I was like, man, I'm not going nowhere.

I'm very stagnant.

I've been at the same place for five years and a lot of times that's how coaches, you know, move up, made that place for a while.

But you know how the toughness, the tough seasons Keep piling on and different struggles keep piling on and piling on.

And you talked about it earlier, not having a lot of money and having to do different things.

It was just piling on, man.

And it was then when he called, I was.

When one of my boys was at Waffle House.

I remember the call like it was yesterday, man.

At Waffle House.

I just got there, pulled up Coach Car Zay called me and told me about it, man.

And I was sitting there with one of my former teammates and we just, you know, we celebrated it.

And still, man, you know, when you go through decisions like that, it's back and forth like, do I want to leave my kids, do I want to leave this, Do I want to leave the comfort of where I'm at to go do this?

And that's really how I got here, man.

To dying, to my comfort and, you know, stepping out in faith and being here.

But coach Jake Carson, man, he gets all the credit.

Shout out to him.

Shout out to him.

When you get there.

What are the day to day responsibilities?

From day one, when I first got.

Here, I, you know, I'm.

You got to just learn for me, I'm helping with workouts.

I came in the summer.

I came up on my own, me and Zay.

Zay helped me out a lot, man.

Came up on my own.

He helped pay for my flight to come up there.

And we start working guys out.

I work guys out and I'm just observing, doing whatever I can to help Coach Ladner, whatever I can to help the guys, whatever I can help coach Nick Zay, whatever I can do to help guys.

And that's kind of how it started.

And yeah, I mean, that's really what the summer was.

Helping out with workouts, help them practice, and then at the end, you know, cutting up film for guys and sending it to them, sending the coaches and then having guys come in the afternoon and working out.

So it was a grind for sure.

But it was something I really appreciated and I really appreciate Coach Ladner for giving me the opportunity, man, because I could still be Coaching Division 3 in Pennsylvania right now.

So tell me the difference, just from a standpoint of responsibility.

Division 3 versus Division 1.

One of the things that I hear a lot from guys who start at the Division 3 level is because obviously the staff is a lot smaller.

Smaller.

Most schools, you're lucky to have one full time assistant.

And so those assistants and that head coach have a lot more responsibilities, things that they have to take care of because there just isn't anybody else to take care of it.

Then obviously you come to a Division 1 staff where you have a lot more people that are on staff.

So the responsibilities are divvied up.

Obviously the program, the budget is much bigger.

But just walk me through some of the differences that you notice just in terms of staff, how the responsibilities are delegated, that type of thing.

You know, Division 3 is, you know, we don't have a lot of staff.

So it was me, it was coach Mack, me, Hunter Gerber, who was another assistant in our ga, Jackson Wit.

But here you have coach Ladner, you have, you had coach Juan Cardona, you had coach Nick Williams, you had coach Jake Carson and then me, and then you have two gas.

So your staff is a lot bigger.

You have a lot more help and a lot more experience.

I would say for the Division 3 staff, we had, you know, Jackson just finished playing, Hunter two or three years removed from playing.

So, you know, it's just a lot less, it's a lot, it's a lot more responsibility you have to do as a Division 3 coach.

Like I did, every scout from when I was, my first year as a GA until I left did almost everyone and I had to.

But at Division one level, you know, we divvy them up, different coaches do different scouts.

So that's one response.

That's one thing.

It's more managers.

We have one manager at LBC and we have about five to seven managers at Southern Miss.

That's a lot of guys that help out.

Yeah, it's a lot of differences, man, but it's all a grind when you look at it.

It's all a grind.

You still have a lot of things you have to do at this level.

You have higher level players who require higher level things.

So you have to, you know, accommodate the higher level players in some ways, you know, getting them, getting them places and different things on camp and lbc.

Our stuff, our gym is on campus so they can walk.

We gotta, you know, we gotta do different things for guys.

Sometimes guys don't have cars.

We gotta go pick guys up.

It's a grind.

It's a grind for sure.

But it's, it's good though.

I love what we do here with how we work and our guys want to work.

Our program is built off of that and it's a grind for sure.

And that's what we, that's what we, we wanted to be.

How good were you with the film and just the mechanics of being able to do the things that you do.

As a video coordinator coming in from Lancaster Bible.

And just what did you then learn as a basketball mind from sitting there and watching and cutting up all the film, both of your own team and of opponents and all the things you had to do?

Because the number of guys have talked to me about spending all that time in the film room, just the.

The level of understanding of the game from an X's and O standpoint.

They all say, man, my.

My knowledge in that area just skyrocketed from the time that I spent in the film room.

So tell me first about how much experience you came into the job with and then what you were able to gain from this past year just being.

Being in the film room.

So much so.

I mean, Division 3, we didn't have as many resources as we do.

Like, we didn't really work with sports code.

We just.

Really just worked with synergy.

So this year, had to learn sports code.

We have just play, you know, didn't really work with that.

I did all my scouts on Microsoft Word, so it was a learning curve for me.

Early on, I had some things I had to work through, and we got them worked through.

But in terms of just the knowledge of the game, it was good, man.

It's good to have conversations with coaches in our offices, game planning and different things like that.

So I had my hand in almost every scout again, so.

Which was cool, man, because, I mean, I love the game.

So just talking through how to guard, you know, certain people, how to guard certain actions when certain people are coming off of them, and that stuff was pretty cool.

And then just seeing the minds of different coaches and not just in our league, man, like Chris Beard, man.

Chris Beard, is he one of them guys, man, I like how hard his team plays, the defense philosophy, the way they do things, how, you know, they're so disciplined in everything they do.

Troy was very disciplined in everything that they did.

Scott Cross does a really, really good job over there.

And there's a lot of coaches.

I love how TJ at Texas State, how.

How hard they play, so you get to see how a lot of coaches, what their things are.

And for me, man, I'm a student, so I'm just.

This year, man, it was.

It was cool.

I got to soak up everything on my synergy.

I have a lot of actions because, you know, I had to clip those actions.

So seeing different actions and understanding really where the game, the direction the game is going more so than, you know, trying to get the knowledge because really, the game's going to evolve.

The game is going to continue to evolve.

And where is the game going?

Where the guys doing right now, like you this year, you see a lot of spade, you see a lot of staggers, you see a lot of back screens.

They call it the page action.

You see a lot of horns.

So you see a lot of different things.

Everybody kind of runs this very similar stuff.

But now who, what coaches.

What I'm watching is what coaches are demanding.

What.

Some coaches allow their guys to just play free.

You just got to play defense and rebound.

Some coaches want their offense to be so, you know, you're going to run it this way and, you know, militant in offense.

And then defensively, you know, it's not.

It's a little looser.

You know, guys aren't in stances and different things like that.

Guys don't box out and different things like that.

So for me, man, it's just really soaking up that knowledge.

And because I want to be.

I want to be a head coach, so I got to figure out, okay, this guy's doing this.

You're trying to really scout the coach, really more so than the players and understand the philosophy of the coach and seeing how he does things and what they value and different things like that.

So that's where my mind goes with it.

And again, I appreciate all the.

All of it, man.

And.

And the learning was just.

It was.

It was a really good.

It was a good experience for me for.

About the idea of eventually wanting to be a head coach.

I always think this is an interesting area to dive into some.

With somebody who's currently an assistant coach and has never been a head coach before, how do you collect things that you may want to incorporate into what eventually becomes your program?

So whether you're clipping out specific X's and O stuff from the video that you're watching, whether you're keeping a notebook and writing down things that you like, things that you've seen, what's your process for sort of putting together together that Jaylen Archer portfolio so that when there is a day comes when you get an opportunity to interview for a head coaching job and you can talk about, hey, this is what I want my program to look like.

How are you starting to gather that material together and put it into a cohesive package that you can then again eventually use to sell yourself as a head coach candidate?

So for me, man, I gotta.

I had this whole year.

I mean, I.

I take notes, I have my philosophies, I have everything that I kind of want.

Now you guys, this year, man, I really.

I did it.

I Did a lot.

I mean, and before, you know, with the AU program, I told you, I don't run it like an AAU program.

I run it like a, like a college program.

Because why would I run it like AU program if I don't want to be an AAU coach?

I want to be a, I want to be a high level head coach.

So I run my program like that.

And now I have my mission, my vision, all the pillars that I have.

And you know, now it's about, you know, crafting it.

Like this year I'm crafted my, my mission, I recrafted my vision.

I put together different philosophies, like nil philosophies.

And with the nil philosophies, you have to have some type of parameters when guys aren't doing the things that they're supposed to do as athletes.

You have to have fines, you have to have different things like that offense philosophy.

How do I want to play offense?

I think the biggest thing, and we talked about it earlier, is your culture.

How do you want your day to day look like when you're not on the court and even when you are on the court, what does that look like and what are you holding guys accountable to?

That's the most important thing.

The culture is the most important thing.

You have to, you have to have that.

The X and O's, you know, X and O's is pretty easy.

You can go on YouTube and find that defense velocity, you can go on YouTube and find that and you can coach that.

But it's really about what you want to teach.

So for me, I come from a coach that, you know, he likes to play 94ft.

He plays a fast paced, up tempo defensive style.

Game offensively is free flowing.

Coach John Mack at LBC free flowing.

So a lot of my philosophies come from that.

Now for me, I like, I like multiple defenses.

I don't think you can, you have to keep guys off balance.

So this year we ran a 1, 3, 1 that I really liked.

I liked it a lot.

And studying stuff like that a few years.

When I first my student assistant year, I was studying Ron Harper's 32 zone.

So didn't really get too much into that.

But you know, Penn State, Harrisburg, when I was in that conference, coach Don Friday, he runs a 2, 3 zone that I really like.

So it's just different things.

And offensively, you know, the game is, the game is transforming again.

I don't know if people are seeing what's happening.

The high ball screen is still A thing, but now is moving towards cuts and back screens and playing in transition.

Like, the guy I've been watching a lot lately now is the guy.

What's his name?

Tomas from the Grizzlies.

The assistant from the Grizzlies.

He was with Paris.

Paris last year.

How he kind of, you know, uses cuts and different things like that.

So the European game is actually the way the game is going.

So for me, it's just now studying.

Okay, how do I want my.

My motion offense to be?

Because I think that's where I really want to play in more in the motion instead of, you know, calling a bunch of sets.

But I'm also seeing the value of having those different, you know, 10 to 15, maybe 20 different things that you can get into that you can just play in concepts out of.

So for me, man, I just, you know, I just continue to write my notes.

Continue to write my notes.

If I'm.

If I think about something, I might write it on my phone and then write it down and practice.

Sometimes I'll, you know, if coach says something I like and see something and something comes to my mind, I'll grab my pen, I'll write it down.

So right now I'm just continuing to soak up information just to be a sponge.

That's why I learned at a young age, be a sponge, be a sponge, be a sponge.

You know, my uncle told me that as a young.

Just continue to be a sponge.

And right now, just soaking up every.

All the information I'm seeing and observing, writing them down, having my philosophies now.

Now what I have to do now is.

And this is what I'm telling you the delegation parts mean, man, I gotta now type it and put it all in a format like that, which I would prefer one of my friends helped me with.

I asked them, and they not trying to help me with it, man.

I'm like, yo, I have all of it.

Just you.

All you gotta do is type it.

You only got.

You don't got going through anything, you know, just type it for me.

And.

But eventually I have to go and have to do that and put it.

Put it in a book format and then go from there.

But I'm.

I'm taking my notes, man.

I'm just preparing for my opportunity.

And whenever the Lord lifts that has the opportunity for me, I'm gonna be prepared for it, you know, preparing my staff mentally.

I do all that stuff, man, every day.

Every day, man.

So recruiting philosophies, what.

How my point guard is going to Be.

I'm a combo, man.

I just, I love it, man.

I love, I love that, that part of it.

And like I said earlier, just since I was a kid, man, so I'm living a dream right now.

Five years, man.

AI, you're just gonna wave, you're just gonna wave your phone or the top of that box, man.

AI will write your whole report for you and get it all, get it all put together.

You'll be ready, you'll be ready to go for sure.

Tell me a little bit about the, Tell me a little bit about this, about staff meetings at Southern Miss.

What does it look like when you guys are sitting down together in the coach's office?

Whether it's going over practice, preparing for practice, watching film after a game or preparing for an opponent.

Just kind of take me inside what the coach's office looks like, what the conversations, how they flow and kind of how Coach Ladner runs, runs the staff.

High level conversations, man.

Coach Ladner does a really good job of getting us all together and preparing us for what we're going to do in practice and in games.

As a staff assistants, we get together too.

We talk all the time.

We're super close, man.

Me, Nick Williams, Zay Carson, we're, we're super close, man.

We talk all the time.

I was just on the phone with Nick before I got on, before I got on here, and we just talked basketball all day.

All day, man.

We talk basketball all day.

So we just, you know, come together and, and do things like that.

We just always want to find ways to be better.

I'll even call them and mess with them sometimes, man.

And they, my brothers and, you know, I appreciate everything that they've done.

But we, you know, we get together, we try to, we try to lay out what we want to do every day and I try to tag it.

Delegation work.

In terms of staff roles for you guys, is there one guy in practice that's looking at the defense, one guy that's looking at the offense?

Is everybody kind of coaching everything?

How do you guys delegate what gets looked at by which staff member?

During practice this year, Coach Wong Card donated our offense.

And then defensively, like, we just, we try to get after it.

We try to all get after it, Bring energy on that side of the floor.

Coach Juan Cardona did a really good job.

He incorporated a lot of my offensive stuff that I've learned this year came from him.

A lot of pro stuff, you know, a lot of pro style stuff, European things, playing out the staggers, playing in the 77 action.

You know, we ran a lot of different things this year and it was, it's good, it was good to learn.

But defensively, coach Nick Williams, he led that for us.

He brought a lot of energy to it, had a lot of great ideas and it was, you know, it was great to learn from ball screen coverages, coach our whole coaching staff, man, like I was blessed to be around some intelligent dudes, man.

Our season didn't go the way we wanted it to, but I was, we had a lot of highly intelligent guys in our coaches room.

When you think about working with the high level of player that you have at Southern Miss, so you come from the Division 3 level, you come up to the Division 1, you're working with individual players who those guys just like you, right?

Thinking back to when you were a player, you had goals, you had dreams, you wanted to be able to maximize your skill level, your talent as a player.

And yet your job as a coaching staff is to help those guys develop individually, right, so they can meet their individual goals.

But also it's your job to put that together and make it a cohesive team.

So when you think about the player development there at Southern Miss, what do you think that you guys do really well?

What did you do well this year on the floor to help your guys develop individually but then also be able to, to coalesce into a, into a team that played together and played to win.

Our guys off the court, they watched, they like to watch film.

We had a lot of guys that really studied the game, I would say.

And then in the mornings we make sure our guys get up and we have skill development in the mornings.

So for me, it's just really specifically working on things that they're doing, spots that they're at on the court.

Especially for me, being there, being watching so much, I watch knowing where God's spots are, knowing how teams are guarding them, knowing the counters to those things, and just, you know, doing things the same way every day, you know, win or lose.

Again, it was a tough year for us in terms of record, but our guys, our guys did get better.

We have a lot of guys that's going to have a lot of pro opportunities.

We got two guys overseas right now, so.

And those guys like, like I said, they like watching film, they like watching what they do and what they don't do.

So I would say that was the biggest thing in terms of development.

When you're cutting up film for whether it's the coaching staff or for an individual player, how much do you try to balance out showing guys, hey, here's something that you did incorrectly or something that you might have done differently that you can improve upon that you're looking at.

And then how much do you show them, hey, here's what we were talking about, and here's you executing what we talked about and doing it well.

Do you try to strike a particular balance between positive film, negative film?

Does it just not matter day to day?

You just kind of pick out what you see and try to use it to help the player get better.

I'm just curious for me, man, not do how to do a better job of this.

A lot of my stuff is what you're not doing for sure.

Like.

But like I said earlier, man, eq, man, you gotta know your personnel.

Kyp, know your personnel.

And sometimes some guys, you.

You have to.

You have to give that positive reinforcement to.

But some guys.

And you just let them have it.

You guys, Some guys just gotta, you know, gotta let them have it.

One of my favorite kids, man, one of my favorite guys.

And I talked to him.

He went back home.

John Wade.

John Wade iii, man, he was a guy that.

We went at it, and it's not in a bad way where I see something, I see something.

And he's a highly intelligent guy, and he sees something, and we'll just agree to disagree sometimes.

And sometimes I'll go to him, be like, oh, I see what you're saying.

And sometimes he'll come to me like, I see what you were saying.

A lot of times he'll be like, no, no, no, I see.

I see what you're saying, though.

I see what you're saying, though.

But with him, you gotta.

You just gotta show him what he gotta do better.

And a lot of times he watches the games two or three times anyway, so he already knows.

So, yeah, man, this for me, I gotta find.

I have to find that balance, and I'm learning, and I will.

I will find it.

All right, give me something.

I don't want you to give away all your trade secrets, but from an analytics standpoint, what's something that you and the staff like to look at that you feel is an important measure for how your team is performing in a given area, a given game, whatever.

Just give me something that.

A metric that you guys like to look at that you think is important that leads to winning?

What we looked at this year, where we hung our hat on this year, especially offensively, was passes.

Coach Juan, he really wanted to track how many passes we had.

We wanted to get a Certain number of passes this year.

A lot of times we got it sometimes and other times we didn't.

And you can see the discrepancy of the score when we didn't get our passes and how our offense flowed when we did and we didn't get our passes.

But we like to, obviously, like everybody else, kills.

How many stops, three stops in a row.

You can get the charges.

We try.

I mean, obviously the game has changed at this level.

Can't even track charges.

But the biggest thing this year was passes, passes and how many passes we could, we, we could get in a game.

In the possession, what was the goal?

What, what was the number in a game?

230 passes.

All right, so what's that average out to per possession?

It was 60 possessions.

We did it for 60 possessions.

I want to say it was about.

He wanted at least.

It's like, I want to say more than five.

About 10 to 12, maybe.

I remember correctly.

Okay, I'm guessing then that the points.

Yeah.

So then the points per possession, when you have that many passes in a possession, I'm guessing was significantly different than if you're throwing one or two passes.

On possession and you want it.

And we wanted to shoot threes, so.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just like everybody else.

Right.

That's one thing that I don't think is going away.

Whatever, whatever, whatever the game is evolving to, unless the line somehow changes.

Then I, I think that the three, the three, the threes are here to stay in whatever form.

You got to get to the midi though, Mike.

You got to be able to get to the mid range.

The mid range opens up everything.

See, here's the thing, Jaylen.

I, I still can't, I still cannot watch games and watch a three on one break or a four on two break and see dudes just widen out into the corners every single time.

Like, okay, I get it sometimes if you're a really good shooter, I get that.

I get that three is worth more than two.

But there's so many times that I see teams that if guys would just cut in on the 45, that they'd get layups.

And instead, yeah, instead they don't run as hard because they only have to get to the three point line.

Whereas if they would just sprint and get to the basket, I, I still watch that and I sometimes I just can't believe that, that what I'm watching is the same game that I played.

That's one of those instances.

I'm just like, I, I just don't understand how a layup on A fast break that's almost uncontested.

How that isn't worth more than a three, I just don't.

I don't know.

It doesn't make any sense.

It's not the same game, man.

It's not the same game.

People don't get to the elbows anymore.

They don't, they can't shoot bank shots anymore.

It's a lot of different things, man.

That's a whole nother rabbit hole we can go down.

I don't even want to go there.

Yeah, the game is definitely different.

I say, I say all the time, like I don't think in a time I played and again, I played a long, long time ago.

So I don't know if my experience is even relevant in any way, shape or form, but I don't think I ever took the ball to the rim and from the rim threw the ball back out to a player standing behind the three point line.

And now you see that all the time.

And it's just the game has changed and evolved.

It's so different from what it used to be and it's going to continue.

That's the cool thing about basketball, though.

I mean, I think you're seeing it right when you're watching film and you're looking at it and you're seeing so many different coaches and you're seeing what they're doing offensively, you're seeing what they're doing defensively.

As you said, you can start to see those trends of things that I'm starting to see a little bit more of this.

And I'm starting to see not just one team, but maybe now there's two teams and somebody starts taking from somebody else and the game just continues to evolve and change.

And I think that's what makes it a great game.

That's what makes it so interesting.

That's what makes like doing what you're doing and just getting to sit and be able to dissect that film and look at what people are doing all over the country.

That's what makes the game of basketball so great, man.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

All right, so tell me about where you're at for this coming off season, what that looks like for you guys in terms of preparing your current roster, dealing with the transfer portal, trying to manage your roster.

What are those conversations look like for you guys right now at this point in the season when you guys have just kind of finished up and you're trying to figure out what's our roster going to look like for next year?

Obviously the portal just opened up.

So how are you guys trying to think about managing your roster?

We got to get players, man.

We just.

We just got back from.

We just got back from Hutchinson, Kansas, last night, man, or this morning.

So.

Got to get players to grind, man.

I'm on the phone all day trying to find guys and helping our coaching staff with, you know, film and finding guys myself and helping our coaches find guys.

So we just got to find guys that.

That fit what we want to do and, you know, win.

We want to win, so we got to get guys.

This is.

I mean, that's.

That's it, man.

The transfer portal is crazy, though.

We got to talk.

Talking to agents and handlers and all these things, man.

It's a.

It's a.

It's a different game.

No different game than Division 3, but I'm.

I'm starting to really like it a little bit.

It's nice.

Cool.

Yeah, it's definitely.

It's definitely one of those things that's.

I think, you know, when you look at the way that college basketball is different from five years ago, I don't think anybody five years ago could have even remotely thought that the game would be where it is right now.

And I guess when I'm having these conversations, it's always easy, right, to spin sort of the negative and be nostalgic of, oh, I wish it was the way that it was before, and whatever.

And you hear a lot of people talking negative about the.

Where.

Where the game is.

But I do think that there are some positives.

So what have you seen that you would say are some positive trends as a result of the portal and nil.

What are the good things?

What are some things you like about it?

What I like about it is that you are.

You can find kids that are traditional kids, and the conversation is, it's not as hard as I thought it was going to be to find those type of kids, like, you know, who's.

Who in terms of somebody who wants a bag and somebody who wants an opportunity.

I talked to a kid the other day that just was like, man, like, how I think about this whole portal thing and the money and everything is you have a kid, you know, maybe a kid might being.

Our conference right now, our conference kid, whatever gets offered, say, 300,000 to come play.

300,000 to a school, a high major school is very, very low on your totem pole, really, you know, when it comes down to it.

So you're going to be a role player.

You're going to get a lot of Money to be a role player or a guy that can, can fill, you know, gaps, spot, minute guy maybe.

But what are you getting on the back end?

You know, and we want to, for me, I want to find the guys that want to get that money on the back end where again, we're developing pros.

So in college, these college guys aren't really pros yet.

And it's not that they aren't talented or skilled, it's their mind or they don't have pro minds.

They still kids, they still develop.

And you're giving a 19 year old 500k.

Like if I was 19 with 500k, I would be going crazy.

Crazy.

I went crazy at 19.

So just finding those kids that want the money in the back end where.

All right, like yeah, you'll probably get some money.

You know, everybody's going to probably touch something or most people touch some type of money.

But what you're making right now, that's not even where you're.

You're going to get to when you come to play for us.

We want to get you to double, triple, quadruple the money that you're making here.

So those are guys I'm looking for, man.

I'm looking for guys that want to quadruple their money when they leave here.

That a discussion that you have collectively with the entire team in terms of the nil situation within your locker room?

Or is that something that's more kept between an individual player and the coaching staff?

Or is it something that you discuss in terms of everybody as a whole group?

I'm just curious again because I'm sure you have different guys making different amounts and getting.

And so how do you navigate that as a staff?

It's something I'm curious about.

You know, that's a tough one because I.

We don't really talk too much about.

We don't.

We don't really talk too much about it.

What guys make.

And we don't do that within our, within our locker room.

Yeah, we don't really do that too much.

Our staff knows.

Our staff and individual knows what they're making.

But it's individual.

It's individual between coaches and individual.

Got.

Got it.

Which makes.

Which make.

Which makes sense.

Which makes sense.

All right, Jaylen, before we get out, I want to give you a two part question to wrap things up.

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

And then the second part of the question, which I probably can already predict the answer, but the Second part of the question is what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy in what you get to do day to day.

The biggest challenge.

The biggest challenge, man, is navigating through everything that.

That this game is becoming.

Becoming.

You know, for me, I'm.

I'm.

I'm a purist.

I'm a purist of the game, and I love the game the way I.

I know the game.

And now just navigating through all of the different things.

I'm still learning different things, and at this level, which isn't difficult.

It's just something that I got to work through.

That's what I would say is the biggest, you know, hurdle, struggle, that I'm just navigating through the nuances of the game and really learning it and adjusting and really adapting to it.

I think I'm adapting and adjusting to it, but now it's.

What's the word?

What's the.

Accepting it, you know, accepting it for what it is.

You know, the biggest joy I had doing what I do is helping others.

I would say helping others and bringing the best out of people, whether it's how, you know, however.

However they need that.

But it's really just trying to bring the best out of people.

That's really what brings me the most joy.

Seeing, like, for example, I was.

I was on the phone with my cousins today, and they were.

They're two guys that I helped mentor in the last two summers, and they've grown up so much, man.

They've.

They developed so much as men, their demeanors and the way I go at them.

I.

You can't.

A lot of people can't handle me.

Like, I'm not for everybody.

I go at you and I tell you the truth.

And whether you, you know, I tell them my way, I don't, you know, I don't really sugarcoat things.

And now they're.

They're giving it back.

And I love that, you know, because, you know, that's.

That's growth.

And, you know, I remember when they, you know, did things that, you know, that they wouldn't be super proud of right now, but I'm very proud of, like, their growth and seeing guys like that growing day in and day in and day out and just, you know, seeing them become men and professionals and a lot of it.

Some guys growing closer to the Lord.

This year we did.

I did Bible studies with a few guys and seeing guys grow closer to the Lord.

And that's what really brings me the most joy, is seeing guys grow and yeah, grow closer to God as well.

Right?

I mean, impact, having an impact on the people that you're able to influence and to be able to use the game of basketball in some small way, to be able to do that, I think is a powerful thing, right?

The game that you grew up back as a kid in Baltimore, loving the game and now you get to use that game to be able to have an impact on the people around you.

That's it's a powerful way to live your life.

And not everybody gets to be, be able to use something they love to be able to have the impact on other people.

And I think when we do get to do that in some small way, whether it's you through your coaching and the mentorship and AAU and all that stuff, or it's Jason and I through this silly podcast, you know, getting a chance to use the game of basketball to be able to have an impact, I think is a powerful thing.

Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how people can get in touch with you, find out more about you, find out more about the program at Southern Miss.

So whether you want to share, email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @CoachJ.

Archer.

If anybody wants to reach out to me, they can DM me.

Usually I'm good with getting back to you text.

Sometimes I'm a little late, but I will usually get back to you.

But that's, that's the two main ways you can get in contact with me and yeah, man, I appreciate you guys for having me and allowing me to share on this platform.

It's a blessing.

I appreciate you guys for sure.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jayla.

Appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on and join us.

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

Thanks.

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