Foreign Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

There's compartmentalization, there's basketball and then there's everything else.

And they know you may disagree at this one part of basketball with me, but you know I'm in your corner everywhere else, right?

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Jason Harris is entering his 10th season as the men's basketball head coach at UMass Boston.

Just the second full time coach in program history, Harris has led the Beacons to more than 100 wins during his nine seasons.

He also serves as an assistant coach for we are D3 in the TBT.

Jason has been active within the UMass Boston Athletics community in leading the fight for social justice, department diversity and inclusion.

In the summer of 2021, Harris founded the Student Athletes of Color organization to give student athletes of all backgrounds an inclusive space to talk about their experiences and learn from past student athletes.

Prior to UMass Boston, Harris served as the top assistant at Long island University from 2010 to 2015.

He entered the coaching profession as an assistant coach at Plymouth State University where he also had the opportunity to lead the program as the interim head coach for the Panthers during during the 20072008 season, Jason played his college basketball at Rhode Island College.

A three time captain for the Anchormen, Harris led RIC to the program's first regular season Little East Conference championship in 2005.

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Don't forget to grab your notebook as you listen to this episode with Jason Harris, men's basketball head coach at UMass Boston.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast.

It's Mike Klinsling here tonight without my co host, Jason Sunkel.

But I am pleased to be joined by Jason Harris, men's basketball coach at UMass Boston.

Jason, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

Mike, thanks for having me.

I'm glad to trade one Jason for another.

Hopefully we got the better one.

Excited to have you on.

Definitely looking forward to diving into all the interesting things that you've been able to do throughout your career.

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

Tell me a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

What made you fall in love with it?

We are going way, way, way back here, Mike.

But when I think about childhood basketball, my first memory is honestly watching my father play.

My dad was 6 foot 7 or is 6 foot 7 still?

And when I'm, when, when you're a kid, I mean, you might as well be Michael Jordan when he's 6 foot 7.

So growing up on the Air Force base, Hanscom Air Force Base and Yokota Air Force Base in Japan, I remember going to the base gym with my dad and him putting me on the blue mat in the corner of the gym and saying, sit there while I go play basketball and just watching him play and then, you know, from there getting your very first hoop in your room on the back of your door in the epic battles, the seven game series my brother and I would have and you know, just the knockdown drag out games that, you know, would make the Knicks and the heat in 1994 look like a, you know, flag football game.

Yeah.

Is your brother older or younger than you?

My brother's older than me, two and a half years older and he played Division 1 football so he always had the size advantage on me.

I always had to be a good shot faker.

So that made you chase.

You were always having to try to catch up with them and keep up with them and he was banging, I'm sure.

Which I would guess aided your development as a player.

How long did you guys live on a military base?

How much of that of your childhood was spent with your dad in the military?

So my father retired from the military base, I believe I was 11 or 12 years old.

And then we moved 2 miles, 2 or 3 miles off the base.

So I was still had access to the base gym and stuff like that.

But so up until my first 11 years of my life, the military was a huge part of my family and my day to day life and interaction.

How would you say that, that experience growing up, being on a military base with your dad as a member of the military, how do you think that impacted you?

I guess first as a player, but even more importantly, just as a human being in the way you sort of have developed.

Sure.

Well, I'll start with the human being part.

As a human being, it taught me accountability because when you, when you live on an Air Force installation, you know, I really don't exist.

I'm an extension of my father's Social Security number.

So if I were to get in trouble, my, my father's Social Security number gets in trouble, his rank gets in trouble.

And that's just kind of the how you learn growing up that you know, you're here as a representative of your father or whoever is your sponsor and you know, when you walk around, you have to represent them at all times.

So that kind of taught me there's everybody's, everybody's watching even when nobody's watching because it was a small Air Force base and you knew everybody.

So if you were at the youth center, you were acting up, you know, somebody was going to tell your mom before you even got home.

So that, that really shaped the accountability part of me, the player part of me.

You know, like I took a lot of, took a lot of lumps early.

You know, the moment, you know, you're old enough to kind of hit the rim and, and there's nine guys on the court and they need a 10th and you look like you could hold your own, then you're getting picked up.

And now, you know, you're on the big court now, playing with the, with the Airmen and you know, the 40 year olds and you're playing with grown men and, and on those Saturday mornings you know that there could be 30 people on the sideline and we'd play from 8am until noon.

And if you lost, it could be an hour wait until you had to play again.

So it was important that when you got on, you got a good 3, 4, 5 game run because by the time your team came back up, the run could be garbage.

Everybody could be tired, guys could have to leave.

And the flip side to that was if you were going to play with the older men, you had to play the right way.

You couldn't take bad shots, you had to run the floor, you had to rebound, you had to make good passes and you had to learn how to play the game.

So we've lost that a little bit with the training.

I think in basketball we don't have the uncles anymore.

The uncles aren't playing anymore.

And you know, kicking guys off the court, you're not playing the right way.

So that's kind of how I learned to play the game was against older guys who were trying to take my head off every time we played.

You ever have conversations with your players about the way that you came up in the game again playing that pickup basketball?

I'm like you, when I was growing up, I was playing at the park, I was playing with older guys.

I was playing in a situation where again, like you just said, if you lose, you got to sit for a long time.

I remember being 13, 14 years old the first time I started rolling up to like our neighborhood courts.

And I was always make sure there was a guy who was, oh, he was probably, he felt like he was really old, but he was probably like 37 or 38 and I was like 13 or 14.

And he and I would always be the first two guys at the court because when eight other guys showed up, well, here's our last two guys, the old guy and the young kid.

And that's how you got into games.

It's just, it's just a completely different way of growing up in the game than the way guys that you're coaching, I'm sure grow up in it.

Do you ever have conversations with them?

Just about, hey man, the pickup basketball culture and just some of that competitiveness and things that you just described.

Do you ever talk to your guys about that?

Sure, we talk to, we talk a lot about it.

And Mike, like you had just talked about, you know, you had to, you had to play a certain way to fit in.

And you know, we talk about it.

Just yesterday one of my players made the comparison of Shay Gilgis to Allen Iverson and their off the court impact, right?

So I had to kind of sit down and give him a little 10 minute dissertation about how the league actually changed the NBA dress code because of Allen Iverson.

So you know, he just had a huge cultural impact.

But you know, we're always weaving in and out of my NBA and their NBA and who's just tougher and who's is more skilled and you know, so it's a constant battle.

They don't think I know anything.

Um, they laughed that.

I think Reggie Miller was a prolific three point shooter and yet he was making three a game.

You know, like that's a, that's a quarter for, you know, Jason Tatum or Peyton Pritchard.

Pritchard might hit three in a game.

A quarter, you know.

Exactly.

The game has just changed so much.

But yeah, we've lost that nuance of, you know, that, that sense of urgency.

It's game point, you know, that's not a foul.

You know, we'll stay here all day long.

We'll sit here for, you know, 30 minutes to get game point because you're just not, you're not going to score.

They're going to foul you, they're going to foul you, they're going to keep fouling you.

And we're going to get, come to almost fight.

We're almost going to start fighting and then somebody's going to win, right?

And then the next team's going to come on and say, you guys got to hurry up, you're taking too long.

You guys are, you know, you're wasting time.

Oh, man.

It's good memories.

I just, I always say that my own kids and I have two daughters and a son, but I always feel like they missed out on something by not being able to just be involved in that pickup culture.

And it's always to me and I had a chance to play college basketball and did some good things as a player in, in, in high school and in college.

But I always say that some of my favorite memories are those memories just on the court.

Pickup basketball.

Some of the funniest stories from basketball in my entire life came from just the pickup situations and guys with crazy nicknames and just odd ways of playing and dudes that would show up that you're like, what's this guy doing?

And just pick up.

Culture just attracted such a wide range of personalities that kids just don't see that again when they're, when you're working with your trainer or you're always with your AAU coach, you don't get to see some of those, some of those characters in the game, let's put it that way.

Yeah, 100% and 100%, it's.

You meet all, all types of people.

And that was one of the other things with growing up on the Air Force, baseball, having the exposure to just so many different cultures and races and people that, you know, I had met, I had friends, I had like Indonesian friends when I was 13.

I don't know any 13 year olds with Indonesian friends.

And I You know, just friends from all over the globe.

And then the bad part was, was every time you thought your team would be good, your best player would get shipped to Germany, you know, or something like that.

So there was always like, you know, a late trend, trade deadline, acquisition, or, you know, sell off at the end.

That's funny.

All right, tell me about a little bit about your high school career.

What's your favorite memory from playing high school basketball?

Oh, man, I have a lot of, a lot of great memories playing high school basketball.

It'd be tough for me to say, like, my best game ever was my last game in high school at 25 and 23, but it's tough for me to call that my, My best memory.

I think my best memory would have been my junior year.

We had a senior heavy team.

And this is for all those guys that transfer when they don't have the immediate, immediate success that they're looking for.

I was splitting time JV and varsity as a junior, and early on in the year, my first scrimmage, our senior forward broke his wrist and he was going to be out like a month and a half or something.

And my first three games I had 22 points, 18 points and 22 points.

And then after that I got sent back down to jv.

But one of my, one of my favorite memories was we were playing at Boston Latin and Torren Francis, who played at Notre Dame, played for Boston Latin.

And it was an earlier game, they flipped them so the varsity's would play at four and the JVs were playing seven.

And that's how, you know, I'm not lying, because these little details like this.

And so we go to Boston and we're warming up and you know, they got this schlock NBA player on their team, and the guys in the crowd, they're like, what are you doing?

You can't even dunk.

I couldn't.

I couldn't dunk at that age.

What, are you not going to do anything?

You're not going to do anything?

Just.

Just killing me the entire pregame.

Mike, When I tell you I went 11 for 12 and the only shot I missed was a putback bunny that I just smoked.

Just completely smoked, had 22 points, we won the game.

And the whole time walking out, you know, I shouldn't have bet, but I was 16 at the time, so I let him know, of course I can't, but I can get 22.

So that.

That was probably my favorite high school memory.

That and that and just making the team, right?

Making the team.

Because it's so much of your identity in a small town being on a varsity sport.

And there's a lot of pride with wearing that, that town across your chest, you know, and just playing for those seniors that, you know, when you were a little kid and you went to like the Thanksgiving Day game or you went to, you know, the Christmas tournament and those guys that you thought were LeBron James and NBA players, they were the best players you had ever seen.

And now you're there playing and now that you look out and there's some little kid and he thinks you're the best player he's ever seen.

So that was, you know, one of the most favorite moments as well.

Just kind of making it, making the team and, and just, you know, knowing I was going to be a part of the varsity team.

Now you have dreams of playing college basketball as a young kid or.

When did that get on your radar?

Honestly, I didn't.

I had no idea that Division 3 really even existed.

It wasn't until probably sophomore year when guys in my high school team started getting Division 3 recruitment, that I realized like that you could play.

I mean, I'm going to go to college anyways and I love basketball.

I might as well do them both together at the same time.

And you know, that was the best, one of the best decisions I ever made was going to play Division 3 basketball and not just going to be a walk on or a regular student at an SEC school and having some great experience.

But it's not the experience that I had.

And it shaped me so much as a man, a father, a husband and a leader that, you know, I, I don't even want to imagine what I would be like today at 43 if had I not played Division 3 basketball and had all those experiences.

What are one or two of the most important lessons you feel like you learned as a part of that process of being a student and an athlete at the Division 3 level at Rhode.

Island, Nobody's coming to save you.

That's the first one.

You're responsible for all the success and all the failures.

Every, every good thing that you've done and every bad thing that's happened to you, you've played a major role in them, right?

You may not be the only actor in them, but I messed up a lot in college and had a lot of learning and a lot of growing to do, and it took me a while to get that perspective.

So it's probably that, that you're, you know, you're your own savior, right?

If you want Things to change, then you've got to go out and you've got to make the change.

And you.

You'll attract change just by doing that.

And then the.

Then the second lesson, I think, would be just consistency and reliability, right?

You can rely on me.

Every single day.

I'm going to show up.

I'm going to be the same person every single day.

You can count on me.

Whether that's in the boardroom, that's in the locker room, whether that's just to pick the kids up from school, right?

Whatever it is, if I tell you I'm going to do it, I'm a part of it, I'm in.

You can count on me.

You went to school.

Was coaching at all on your radar?

Was that something that you were thinking about or what were you thinking about in terms of career when you first got to school?

So I wasn't thinking about coaching, but I'd be lying if I said when I was little and I.

And I saw John Thompson and I saw John Chaney, right?

And I saw Doc Rivers and I saw some of these other Blackhead coaches that.

Immediately.

Nolan Richardson, immediately I was like, oh, man, who are.

I love those guys.

I like those guys.

And.

And I always liked their teams.

I really know why I like their teams.

Maybe they just played with a different swag or energy or.

Or maybe it's just because the head coach was black and I saw somebody that looked like me, you know, and so for me, it wasn't something that I thought about until I got to college.

And I was having this conversation with somebody maybe last week, and I probably got subbed out for taking a stupid shot or just, you know, getting burned or just doing something stupid.

And it was my sophomore year and I was sitting on the bench, and it's like, God spoke to me that day.

And I looked up and I saw my head coach, Mike Kelly, who now works with IMG Academy, and I just.

And I saw him, and I saw him in a different light, and I saw, like, hey, this man is married.

He's got a small child, he's got another child on the way.

He owns his house.

Obviously it's profitable enough to be a career.

And he.

And he's having a ball, doing it right?

And I want to be like him because, you know, all the guys love him.

Like, we all.

We all think he's cool.

We all want to play for him.

I want to be like that guy.

And I was actually in school to be a police officer, so I got an undergraduate degree in criminal Justice.

And I got my master's degree in social science.

And that was the plan.

The plan was to be a police officer and impact my community that way.

And just God put it on me.

He put coaching on me.

And I've never been the same since.

Like, I got bit by the bug and I've tried to, to talk myself out of it.

You know, in the early years, I.

People tell me, what are you doing?

And I just, I, I don't, I don't.

Doesn't matter what they say to me.

God put it on me, and this is what I'm doing.

So once that became the plan, what were the steps that you had to take in order to make that plan a reality?

Once you got hit by that, what did you do?

What were the tangible steps you took?

So the first steps I took because I still had two and a half years of a career, so the first steps I took was to be the, be the guy that I would want to coach.

Right.

And I kind of always tried to be like that.

I was a three and a half year captain at Rhode Island College.

I don't say four, because I was ineligible because I, I didn't take care of my business for a semester.

Right.

So I, I take that out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's.

I'm sorry, what was the.

What steps did you take once you realized, hey, coaching is what I want to do?

What did you do?

Who'd you talk to?

What steps did you take?

I got you.

So, so again, so I tried to be that guy, the old, the supreme captain.

And by being that, the supreme leader, just ultimate team guy.

Always.

I think you kind of attract your coach always, because I have this conversation with guys that I see on the court all the time who I think would make great coaches.

But the guy was actually Jack Perry.

He was my senior year head coach.

Now he's the head coach at Southern New Hampshire University.

And Jack was really the one.

He's really my first mentor in coaching.

Jack was really the one to kind of set me in the right direction.

He made the first couple phone calls for me.

He got me my first couple interviews.

And he was the guy kind of on the phone telling me, don't be an idiot, this is what you need to do.

So Jack Perry was really the guy that got me to Plymouth State as the volunteer assistant.

And getting into coaching is so hard to anybody who's watching this, if you don't do it early enough when you can afford to volunteer, it's really, really hard to get into.

So I went to Plymouth State, and then I met my next mentor, which is John Scheiman.

Hall of Fame New England coach, still works at Plymouth State, just in a different capacity.

And John kind of taught me.

He was my first boss.

And he taught me really how to be a coach, right?

How to stop thinking like a player.

I still, in my mind, I still remember him saying, stop thinking like a player.

It's because you're thinking like a player.

You got to think like a coach.

So it's shifting my mindset to start thinking like a coach.

And then John had the faith in me.

He had to take a.

He took a year sabbatical.

And then my second year out of playing, I was an interim head coach at 24 years old.

It was way too much for me to handle.

But that's how you get baptized.

You get baptized by fire.

And then I think the most pivotal step for me after that was my original mentor, Jack Perry, coming back for me at Plymouth State and bringing me to Liu Brooklyn to be a graduate assistant.

And that really transformed my career and my life.

It got me my master's degree, which has got me into a lot of room since then.

He taught me a lot of lessons.

Jack taught me how to work hard as a coach and just really to take this as a.

As.

Like, if you want to buy a house on this and you want to do this for 30 years, this is the way you have to work.

And so working with Jack Perry and Jimmy Ferry, who's now the head coach at UMBC, and Rich Gliesman, who's now a Division 3 head coach at McAllister in Minnesota, and just a bunch of guys, it's a process.

Nobody makes it on their own.

So once you start taking that step, it's having great mentors and great people in your corner that are going to help you kind of along the path, because nobody can do it alone.

What do you think you were good at as a coach right out of the gate?

And then I know the answer to this question usually is always everything.

But what's an area that you feel like over that first couple of years of your career that you really improved upon where you came in, kind of being like, man, I don't know if I know anything about this area of coaching that you feel like you improved.

So what was an area that you felt like, was a strength right from the beginning?

Then what was an area that you feel like you really got better on as.

As the first couple years of your career kind of progressed?

So I think a strength for me, right out of the bat was relating.

Relating to the players being relatable to them, but also being trustworthy enough for the staff to know that.

I understand there's a.

There's a separation between church and state.

I can relate to the players.

I can eat with the players.

I'm a grad assistant.

I can be around the players a lot, but at the end of the day, I'm not a player, I'm a coach.

And so relating with the guys and, you know, walking that line, but also understanding who signs my check and who I report to.

I think I was really good at that.

And I think all young coaches, you have to understand that, you know, the guys, you can have great relationships with them, but, man, them guys will throw you under the bus to skip a 6am run.

Okay?

So you've got to just let them know early that this is the deal.

Right?

I'll.

I'll.

You know, this is the deal.

These are the expectations.

I have a boss, you have a boss.

As long as we both respect it, then we won't have a problem.

And then in terms of something I got better at, yeah, I think, honestly, a little, the biggest thing that I got better at was understanding why my head coaches always did the things they did.

Because as an assistant coach, it's always, I wouldn't do that way.

This is dumb.

He should do this or he should suspend that guy or, you know, you got all the answers as an assistant coach.

So I think as a.

As a head coach, I learned or I got better at understanding.

There's a process.

And you know what?

When you pull on one string, it's attached to something else.

Right?

So you just can't start yanking on loose strings.

You really got to pick and choose your strings that you want to pull on.

You know, it's a long.

It's a long year.

It's just.

It's just a long year.

You got to pick and choose your battles.

And then in recruiting, I got.

I got better at closing and recruiting and just kind of identifying the ones we want to go after and just making them the top priority.

You don't have to cast a huge net.

You don't need 80 recruits.

You need a group of guys that you think you can get that can change your program, get you to the next level, and then.

And they want to be there as well.

Dive into the recruiting a little bit.

Talk to me about the process of how you generate your original list of guys that you want to consider, and then how do you narrow that down?

How much do you like watching guys in AAU versus high school?

Are you looking for different things with guys in each of those different settings?

Just tell me a little bit about going from the big funnel down to the guys that, you know, that you've identified that, hey, these are the guys we want to target.

What does that entire process look like?

Yeah, I think how we formulate the original lists is by recruiting the year before.

Right.

So while we're out recruiting right now that our 26 is, we're.

Hey, we're marking down a couple of 27s that we really, really like, and those guys are the start to our list next year.

And then when you start in, in the spring, like, everybody's doing spring showcases and things like that, then you're doing.

Then you're in the spring, and then I think the majority of your list gets made in July.

Like, like everybody, they're getting the majority of the list in July, and then they're trimming it down and maybe subbing a couple names in and out once the school year starts.

And then you've got your list once the basketball season starts, you know, your list of 20 guys that you're going to focus on and then maybe eight to ten that you, you know, you really, really like.

In terms of the setting that we like to see him in, I like to see him in both because, you know, you see guys who, on their AAU team, they may be a facilitating point guard, but on their high school team, they may be the scoring two guard.

You know, so you.

You can kind of see them in different settings.

You can see them with different coaches.

You can see them against different levels of competition.

Some guys may play in a weak high school league, but on an elite AAU team, and then some guys may, you know, play for their town AAU team or their dad's AU team, but play for an elite high school team.

So you kind of got to get evaluations on both because they change so much.

What are the intangible things that you like in a player?

Clearly, there's a level of talent that a kid has to be able to play, dad has to have to be able to play college basketball.

But everybody has their things that they like about players beyond just the talent.

So what are some things that you try to identify or some things that you like in the guys that you want to bring into your program?

Yeah, Mike, obviously you said there's a baseline for talent that everybody's got to have.

I like walking in a gym and knowing immediately, just by looking who I'm recruiting because he looks like a college player, but I've been fooled before with guys that look like a college player and they're not.

And then guys that look like, you know, they grab the waters at the timeout and they'll come out and give you 25.

So.

So it's a, you know, it's a little bit of both.

And then in terms of what I'm looking for, I. I think ultimately it's competitiveness, right?

Like, I want competitors, I want guys who will do anything to not lose, whether it's score two or get 20 rebounds or.

Or play the.

The other team's best player.

But from an offensive standpoint and a competitive standpoint, when the game gets tight or when the other team goes on a run, who's going to get the ball?

Are they.

Are you going to get the ball?

Are you?

Are you?

And when you go and get the ball, are you playing hero ball because you're the best player, or are you going to make sure that, hey, it's been two or three bad possessions in a row.

They're on a little bit of a run.

Coach, don't call the timeout.

I got it.

I'm going to get to the line.

I'm going to get us two.

Settle everybody down.

So it's that guy.

It's the guy who's the extension of me on the floor, and, you know, the guy that's going to be super competitive, because I want guys that are just like me, really competitive, care about basketball, and hate losing more than they love winning, right?

So once you get those guys, right, and you've identified them and you recruit them and you bring those guys into your program, then I could tell just from the conversation that we've had to this point that that competitiveness is important to you.

And so how do you continue to foster that, breed that, teach that in your program, through your practices, through what you do day in and day out?

What is building competitiveness like for you in your program?

Knowing with the idea that it starts with bringing in competitive guys, how do you continue to.

To feed that competitiveness?

Sure.

Well, what we.

We let them know what got you here is not going to keep you here.

You have to understand that our.

It's our job to try to replace you every single year.

And if you're not competitive, it's going to be really easy to do that.

All right?

And you.

It's.

It's also understanding that you can be competitive in high school and you can be just stronger and better and Your competitiveness takes you above everybody.

But when you step on the court and everybody on the court was their team's best player, was their league's best player, and then everybody's competitive now, that's when we really figure it out.

That.

And they just won't survive, Mike.

I mean, if you're not competitive, you're not going to survive in my program.

You're not going to survive in any program.

You're not going to survive, you know, in America because somebody's going to try to take your wife, your spouse, your house, your promotion, your parking spot.

You better be willing to compete every single day if you want to PE a place at the table.

Because if not going to compete, you can't sit at my table, can't be in my program.

And I'll pray for you because you're going to need it.

All right, tell me a little bit about how you design a practice, both in terms of just what's your process?

Are you sitting down by yourself at the computer after going through the film and putting together a practice plan?

Are you a pen and paper guy?

What does that writing or putting together the plan in that way look like?

And then what's your philosophy on kind of how you like to organize what you're actually going to do on the floor?

Do you have, like, a set way of, like, okay, this is the outline kind of every day where we do player development first, then defense, then offense.

Or are you kind of, hey, I give my team what they need on a given day, and sometimes it looks different.

So just talk to me a little bit about the whole process of how you put together a practice.

Sure.

I've worked for guys who had the scent.

You could literally tell, like, we're going to do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and then we're done?

And it gets monotonous towards the end of the year.

It's a long year, so the way I formulate a practice, it's a little.

A little chaotic.

It's from the moment practice ends until about an hour before the next practice starts.

I'm constantly putting things in, pulling things out.

It's a fluid situation.

We may work for a press day, and then I realize we have two of our guards in class in this practice block, so we might need to shift to a little bit of, you know, something else on that day.

But for the most part, I like our practices to be pretty.

Pretty uniform.

They're not.

Everything's not always in the same spot, but we're getting, you know, 20 minutes of, of shooting, we're getting probably 10 minutes of ball handling.

Our forwards are getting like a 15 minute breakdown.

You know, individual wise, we'll get some conversion work in, you know, some pressure.

A lot of two conversions.

Like almost everything we do is two conversions down and back.

You know, you play the possession and then down and then you come back and then you end it and you rotate.

And we do a lot of competing because ultimately, like, that's what we're here for.

We're here to compete.

So, like the first half of practice is skill development, maybe a little bit of implementation, and then the second half of practice, we get after it and we play and we've actually implemented, implementing a little bit of the eel mending kind of and practice a little bit.

Not so much on the target score, but just like how to execute.

And you got to keep playing, you got to end on a make things like that.

So it's been a little fun.

It's cool.

Obviously, again, as you grow, right, as a coach and you evolve and the game continues to evolve and you incorporate new things that you feel like add to what you're trying to do.

And so that kind of goes to my next question that I was going to ask you, which is as a head coach, right, you come in and in your case, you had been an interim head coach before, but you had spent a good number of years as an assistant coach.

And so then finally, like you said, you get your own program.

And as the assistant, it's easy to point, hey, do this, do that, or if it was me, I would have done that, or we should be doing this.

And then you get your own program and you realize, man, it's not quite as easy as it looked sitting over on that other seat in the bench.

So how long were you into your tenure at UMass Boston until you feel like you had a solid handle on kind of who you were as a coach and philosophically, how you wanted your teams to look and how you wanted them to play?

Obviously, over time you're tweaking it and it changes a little bit.

But when did you really feel like you came into your own as a head coach and felt like, all right, I got what I want, I know what I'm trying to do here.

I feel confident in everything that we're doing.

How long did it take you to get to that point?

I'll let you know when I get there, Mike.

I'll let you know when I feel like when I'm a finished product who's got a complete Handle on everything.

Ultimately, we are, we are coaching 18 to 22 year olds, right?

So there's always that variable.

But I'd say two or three years into it, I felt comfortable that anything that happened during the game, I would not panic.

Like they, like, you know, 20 nothing, right?

Because you've seen it all, right?

Like, I've seen a 20 nothing.

I've seen a start down 24 to 1.

So, you know, two or three years in, you've almost seen everything.

So you can kind of draw back on those things, even just to yourself, if you're not going to go to the team and use that as an example.

But honestly, I think, like, this year I'm expecting really big things for us, not, not just because of our team, but because of the growth I've made.

I feel like I had a great off season.

You know, I actually, I ruptured my Achilles in May.

I did about a week after Jason Tatum and I had, you know, surgery and just a complete rebuild of who I am as a person.

And just kind of relooked at the way I'm living life, the way I'm running the program.

And like, it almost has been like the best thing that's happened to me and since the birth of my kids, me rupturing my Achilles.

And that's amazing to say, but, you know, it's.

I feel like now, I feel like now the best coach I've ever been is today.

And I think tomorrow I could probably be better.

All right, so two questions related to that.

One, how'd you tear your Achilles?

And then two, how'd you go about the learning process both after the injury?

That kind of gets you to this point where you're feeling confident, but just in general, where do you go to learn?

How are you going about trying to improve your craft?

Are you talking to your mentors that you mentioned earlier?

How much film study are you doing?

Is there anybody that you like to watch when you're going, are you looking at European stuff?

Are you looking at NBA stuff?

Are you looking at other programs?

Just talk to me about your improvement process after you tell me how you hurt your Achilles.

That's no fun.

Even though it's turned out to seemingly.

Be a blessing, being an idiot playing in an over.

In an over 40 league, you know, like just, just for the exercise.

Middle of the two, three on both ends.

And I ruptured my Achilles.

But listen, you got one of the.

Two, you got one of the two, you got 1 of the 2 old man injuries.

So I, I was 42.

I'm 55 now.

I tore my ACL when I was 42.

That was the end of my career.

I never.

I never even got the surgery.

I just said, done, retired.

That was.

That was it for me.

So you and I are both.

It's always one of the two.

Anybody who keeps playing, inevitably you're going to do.

You're going to do one of those two things, man.

It's just the way it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it comes for us all, right.

It comes for us all.

But basketball has been so good to me that I have no complaints.

You know, it's just.

It's been so good to me.

It's time for me to.

To be more of a.

A father and more of a coach at home than a player, I guess.

And then what was the second part?

Oh.

So honestly, where I.

Where I went to rebuild myself was right where I'm at right now in the weight room.

You know, it started with my physical therapy and then my fitness after that.

I mean, I'm.

I just.

I've never been in the shape I've been in now since I was a player.

So you're talking 20 years it's been in here and just starting with myself.

And then once I felt strong and I felt like a better me, then I was able to kind of work on the program.

I was able to.

You know, YouTube's a great thing.

The Internet's a great thing.

We have access to so much stuff, you know, just so much development.

And, you know, you don't need to sit on the Internet and get the 10 plays.

You know, you just find something that is going to work for you to motivate you and your program.

Whatever it is for you, whether it's working out, whether it's, you know, knitting or quilting or, you know, watching film or just find whatever works for you, because ultimately, it's like your own health.

And if you're healthy and you feel good and you're working hard, everything else is going to fall into place.

Yeah.

There's no doubt that as a leader, if you're in a good spot, it allows you to take your team along with you as you get to that point yourself.

And so to go along with that thought, how do you think about developing leaders on your team?

What does that look like for you?

Or how do you think about that particular aspect of building a program and building a cohesive team?

How do you think about leadership?

Yeah, I think it starts with me, and I think it starts with them seeing me lead Every day, consistently, right?

Every single day.

Being the same consistent leader.

We talk about one day we're all going to be husbands, fathers, you know, the many different roles that we're going to have and just relying on the leadership lessons that we learn now, the accountability, the competitiveness, the reliability.

I mean, if you're stressing just those three things in life every single day, I feel good about the way my kids will leave this program.

You know, they had 18 years with mom and dad to try to iron out all those, you know, all those little, you know, idiosyncrasies or whatever you want to call it.

And I have four years, if I'm lucky, I have four years to.

To finish this product and get you into a man that's ready to go out into the world and be a representation of your family.

Name my program and, you know, things that I put out into the world.

So it's just a deliberate, every single day action.

Like, you know, the Greek mythology, Sisyphus, it's just pushing that rock up every single day.

You know, every single day it's the same thing.

You can't take a day off because that one day you take a day off, they're going to see it, they're going to see it and they're going to lose respect for you.

So you have to be the same guy every single day.

It's a really good point, and I think it's one that it's.

It's true in any job, but I think it's even more true in coaching or teaching that when someone sees you a unprepared or unenthusiastic on a given day or not full of the usual amount of energy that you have.

I think what it does in my experience, is it gives the players or the students an excuse for them to not be at their best on a given day.

It's like, well, you know, coach, two days ago you could tell, man, he just, you know, he didn't bring it to the table.

And so today I don't really feel like it.

And boom, now all of a sudden, you've kind of left that door open to not be at your best every single day.

And I think you made a great point earlier, just when you talked about working, working on yourself, right, and being in the best condition and just.

Just being healthy for you.

And then that allows you, I think, then to bring the very best of what you can every single day.

And I know that, look, we all have days where we feel better than others.

But what I've found Is, is that you really have to be intentional when you walk through the door of the gym and you walk out onto the floor.

That today I've got to look exactly the same as I did yesterday as the day before in terms of that energy, effort and enthusiasm as, as adults.

Not just as men, but as functioning, successful adults, we have to be great at compartmentalizing things.

So I have to go into basketball.

When I walk onto that court, I not thinking about anything else, not, not the argument my wife got into with me, not, did I close the garage door.

There's nothing else on my mind but UMass Boston basketball for these two plus hours.

And I asked the same from those men when they come out there on the court with me.

And as long as we were all locked in that for two hours, the other two hours you have the other 22 hours, you can think about anything you want, right?

But for these two hours, I need you to just think about this.

And one of the coolest things I, I ever did in basketball, I said a couple minutes ago, basketball has been really good to me.

I got to go to Africa two times with UMass Boston and run a basketball camp in Benin.

And I'm.

You're talking like kids were coming up to me asking me for, for my sneakers at the end of the camp, right?

And so like that just changed the perspective.

We take this so much for granted, this basketball, going to practice, we just take it for granted.

Like it's just like it's air.

And then today I actually, I saw three of my former players today.

I saw Malik Lorette in the gym working out this morning.

That made me smile.

Then I came to work and right before practice, Manny Zayas, our senior point guard from last year, walks into my office and then a former senior from five years ago walks in with this four year old.

And that's special, you know, when you still have the connection with these guys, you know, eight years after you coached them like that.

That's real.

When guys are calling you telling you it's a boy, I got the job.

She said, yes, that's what I, that those are the phone calls I want.

There's no doubt about that.

And I think when you get the opportunity, there's no better, I always say there's no better phone call to get that starts with, hey coach.

Right?

Because it's somebody that you know.

And again, you're talking about guys that you may have coached 10 years ago or 15 years ago or again, I'm a 55 year old man and I Still am in contact with one of my assistant coaches from, from back when I played in college.

And I still call him, I still call him coach.

I could never, could never even imagine or think about calling him by his first name.

And then I just had an experience last week.

I had a former player of mine from when I was coaching in high school and he was elected his, the team that he played on in college was a, was inaugurated into his school's hall of fame.

So the team, the team made it into the hall of fame.

And so he had called me over the summer.

Let me know, hey, coach, I just wanted to let you know, man, my team know this and you know, I just wanted to let, just say hey, what a big part of my journey you were.

And then he and I had tried to get together for dinner and it didn't work.

It didn't work.

Like we, we had gone back and forth for like two months, couldn't make it happen.

And then we finally had a date set and I go and we're dry drive to the restaurant.

I'm sitting down and I'm waiting for him and I get a text from him and he says, coach, my wife, she's had a long day at home with the kids.

I don't think I'm going to make it to the restaurant.

He's like, but I live like a mile down the road.

Can you just come, can you just come over to the house?

So I went over to the house and he and I are standing on the porch and just for him.

And again, he's now, whatever, he's now 42 years old.

And for somebody like that, just the same way I felt like I could never call my coaches by their first name.

He just called me coach the whole time.

And to your point, there's nothing more powerful than that kind of conversation or just something that makes you smile because you think like you don't.

You realize in the moment, I think that you're having an impact.

But sometimes you forget right in the day to day grind of you're trying to figure out how to win games, you're putting together practice plans, you're doing all the other administrative stuff that you have to do as a college basketball coach.

And sometimes it's, it's easy for a day or a second or an hour to lose sight of the fact that you're having an impact.

You don't always see it right?

You don't always see it every single day, that impact that you're having.

And yet you go back and you Talk to those former players, and they remember stuff that you're probably like, I don't.

I don't remember when I said that, or I don't remember when you and I had that particular interaction.

But, man, those players take that with them.

And I think when you talk about basketball being good to you, it's all those things, right?

It's the people, it's the relationships.

That's what.

That's what ends up mattering.

And it's.

It's really.

It's really a cool phone call.

When you, when you get those.

When you get those calls that come in like that.

Yeah, If.

If a couple tough losses and a ruptured Achilles is the.

Is the cost for the.

All the years of basketball, I'll take it and I'll tell them my dream every single day.

I get to go to work and be a head coach in college.

Like, this is.

This is awesome.

And I mean, this is awesome.

Well worth it.

All right, let me ask you another practice question.

When you're putting together a practice, and let's say right now, obviously, we're for.

We're recording on October 22nd, so we're heading towards the beginning of your season.

But just in general, when you're putting together the lineups in practice, how do you like to put teams together?

Are you always having your five starters go against your second team, or do you have a top eight that kind of plays together and then goes against your next group?

Do you mix it up?

I know that's always a thing.

Like, when I look at.

Go ahead.

This is one of those things, like to foul or not foul.

Right?

Like, exactly.

When you're winning, when you're up three.

Right.

So I. I tend to go with my top guys.

Right.

I take my top guys.

I want them playing together because I find that when I try to balance the team, all I'm doing is just putting two guys with two guys that probably aren't going to play as much with three guys that are.

And then both teams are kind of running on 60%.

So if I can get my first team running on 100%, regardless of the outcome, I'm just.

I may not even stay in the drill the whole 10 minutes.

If I get the look I'm looking for, we'll get out of it.

We'll move on, you know, like, so I tend to keep my better guy or my top guys together.

Just for the cohesiveness, I may swap one out.

Like, today we had our.

Our number one point guard on the second team, and we Kind of switched those two just to, you know, just to see if the other guy could kind of get the ball to the, the guys that need to eat first.

Yeah.

I think it's just, it's always interesting to figure out how to balance it.

Right.

And, and to make sure that you.

Again, going back to what we talked about before, getting a competitive situation where guys are, are going at each other and competing and, and trying to make each other better, which ultimately is what you're trying to do.

I've ever been on is that second team takes like ownership to being second team and everything in your program becomes competitive.

Like, second team won't let first team guys eat first.

Right.

Because it's second team.

You know, like just things like that.

When you start getting really competitive and winning is what matters and your guys versus everybody else's man, when it comes down to you're fighting over eating, you got, you got it.

You got the competitiveness.

So how do you balance out that competitiveness, that competitive fire in a practice and then still make sure that you keep the cohesiveness when those guys step off the floor and they're in the dorm, they're in the cafeteria.

Because I know sometimes, right.

As a player, you know, right.

That there, there's a guy.

If I'm on a second group and there's a guy ahead of me, there's a part of me that, you know, I'm, I'm going after that guy because I want that playing time, I want those minutes that he's trying to get.

So how do you make sure that you maintain that kind of competitive.

So you're talking about.

But also when we walk into the locker room or we walk out and we're on campus, that we're still together as a group, rowing the boat in the same direction.

Two things.

One, as you get towards the end of preseason, everybody's on, on edge of fighting, right.

Because you guys have just been going out, you need to hit somebody else at that point.

So you can only change, keep it cohesive for so long and then you got to start playing other teams or it'll, you'll cannibalize yourselves.

Jay Wright has a wonderful quote that I, I love Jay Wright.

Everything he does, he's got a quote that I use all the time in my program.

It's status and roles.

Everybody in my program has the same status, but we don't all have the same role.

And you got to understand that, no, there's no second class citizens, but there's only five starters.

There's only one leading scorer, right?

And there's only 200 minutes.

So you've got to get past that, and you've got to be willing to get what you get, and you don't get upset, right?

And if you don't like playing, good, you should.

You should not like playing.

If watching is okay with you, we should talk at the end of the year, right?

But there's also, like, you should be upset not playing, but understand we're playing the five guys that give us the best chance to win.

And.

And if I want to be considered in that, then I just got to be trusted a little bit more.

And what do I need to do to be trusted?

I need to work harder.

I need to play just more solid, more basic, more simple.

Whatever coach is asking me to do, that's what I got to do more of.

How do you communicate those roles to guys?

Especially at this point in the season, right, where you're starting to figure out, like, hey, these are.

The guys are going to be on the floor.

Guys are starting to see, maybe, hey, I'm not getting as much opportunity in practice.

Maybe I'm going to end up at this point.

How do you make sure you're communicating that so that guys understand exactly where they fall?

Brutally honest, you know, just.

Just brutally honest with them.

You don't have to be brash about it.

You don't have to be mean about it.

But we try to be very, very honest and upfront in the beginning.

You can call me mean, but you're not going to call me a liar.

All right?

So as long as we all have the same expectations.

Mike, the way I see you playing is by rebounding, running hard, you know, rim running, whatever it is, right?

That.

Whatever I see you playing, that's how you're going to play these other two or three guys.

The way that they're going to help us win is by scoring, right?

And so we need you to kind of do some of these other things while they're on the floor and we're just really honest or.

Or the conversations we're having.

Hey, right now you're not in the rotation.

You're very, very far from the rotation, right?

And so for you to get into the rotation, these are the things that you got to do.

You got to have these conversations now, because if you lie to the kids, they're going to figure it out, you know, the moment you start playing games.

I always say, the night before our first game, our relationships change tomorrow, right?

Everybody loves me right now.

Everybody's on Board.

Everybody's a great player.

Relationships change in the morning when playing time gets handed out and we start subbing.

Right.

And so that's when you really find out who's really a team guy and who's, you know, who's a team guy when it's convenient.

Right.

There are conditional winners, for sure.

Absolutely.

How do you maintain those good relationships with players as a head coach, as the guy who manages and controls the playing time?

Because I've had lots of conversations with head coaches, assistant coaches, where we know that the role of an assistant coach, it's a little different, right?

That you're the confidant, you're the guy that the players are coming to.

And then all of a sudden I, you know, I talked to first time head coaches and they're like, and the guys aren't coming to me anymore.

It's not.

The relationship has changed in terms of used to be I was the guy that they would come and share things with and talk about and this and that.

And then all of a sudden I'm the head coach.

And it almost feels like you get put on an island by yourself.

So how do you make sure that you maintain those relationship conversations that go beyond the role and what they're doing on the team?

How do you make sure you keep that good relationship with every player?

Ask them about their day, ask them about their mom, their girlfriend, how's class, you know, how you feeling?

You talk to them about everything else but basketball, you know, and you build those other relationships up and those other foundations up.

I tell you, the guys who have been in my office crying about life, you know, real life loss and real life trauma, I can, I can say anything I want to those guys, you know, because those guys, they understand that there's compartmentalization, there's basketball and then there's everything else.

And they know, you may disagree at this one part of basketball with me, but you know, I'm in your corner everywhere else, right?

Like when you're on my team, you're on my team, right?

And so, you know, that's kind of what it is.

You just have to have that relationship.

And they got to know that you love them.

It's that old.

They don't care how much you know to you.

They know how much you care.

That that corny line, everybody says it's truth.

It's truth.

And these are 18 to 22 year olds.

They're looking for mentors.

We were all 18 to 22.

Remember how lost we were?

I'm lost at 43 you know, like, so, like, it's.

It's my job to be.

Today I might be your Uncle Mike.

Tomorrow I might be your coach.

The next day, I might look more like a father figure or a disciplinarian to you, right?

So it's different roles for different guys, but being the same guy at the core every single day.

Whether you went over 19 last night, Mike, or you went 19 for 19, or you got pissed at me when I subbed you out, the moment practice is over, you can come talk to me.

We'll talk like men.

That it's.

We're men.

We.

We have to be able to disagree.

We have to be able to find common ground.

But at the end of the day, the common ground is my ground.

So you've got to come to my ground, right?

And if you're good enough, I'll meet you halfway, right?

Because that's what the program is.

It's.

It's.

That's what it is.

It's what coaching is.

Let's take it from specifically UMass Boston to the Division 3 level of basketball.

You've had an experience there as a player.

You've had experience there as a coach.

What do you love about Division 3 basketball?

What makes it so special, the experience for you as a coach and then for your players?

It's a little bit.

It's.

I like it because there's none of the politics of the.

Of.

Of the things that come with the higher.

The highest levels of basketball that we're seeing now.

All the complaints that you're seeing, there's none of that stuff here, right?

Like, we've had the transfer portal for 40 years.

We've seen kids leave in December and play for a conference rival in January.

You know, so some of these things that.

That the higher levels are dealing with, we've had them in our.

In our level, we've kind of ironed about, and we've accepted them for what they are.

What I love the most about it, though, is that I have kids that.

That might work third shift and then come to school and then practice and then go back to work, right?

And then I have guys who, you know, literally, they have.

Maybe not a driver, but, you know, they're coming to.

To a class every day in a cybertruck.

You know, like, it's just the different levels that we have.

It's a little bit like growing up on the Air Force base and having 10 different, you know, cultures on the roster at the same time.

And they all chose to be there, right?

Like a Division 1 I could have been your only offer.

And so that's why you can't here.

You guys all chose to come here.

You deposited here.

You're.

You're paying to come here.

So you're actually paying me to run you.

Right?

And that's why, that's what I love about it.

You know, I get fired if you guys are bad people, not bad players.

Right?

And so that, that part of it.

There's more mentoring at our level.

It's not as much like cut and dry.

Hey, you won 18 games, but we thought you should have won 22.

You're fired here.

It's like you're graduating a ton of guys.

You guys are great representatives of the program.

And then at the end of the day, you guys are also winning 17 games.

That's awesome.

You know, like, so it's a little bit more of the entire thing as opposed to just like wins and losses or boosters, you know, Makes total sense.

And it's.

It's definitely something that when I look at the experience that my son is a sophomore at Ohio Wesleyan and I look at the experience that he's having to this point where again, it's allowed him not only to be in a positive basketball environment, but also to be in an environment academically and socially that gives him the ability to branch out and do some things other than basketball.

And I always equate it back to my experience.

I played it, Kent, a long time ago.

So playing Division 1 basketball from 1988 to 1992 did not look anything like what playing Division 1 basketball looks like today in terms of the off season.

Maybe it did during the season, but my off season, our season would end and coach would hand us a two page ditto.

Hey, here's your workout for the summer.

We'll see it.

We'll see you in August.

And that was it.

There was none of this on court player development.

All this, like when the season ended, I did what Division 3 players now are doing, right?

I just went and worked on my game and played and did the.

Did whatever.

And.

And I look at that experience as being one that allows somebody to be well rounded.

And that's what I've found to be the most refreshing.

Part of his experience so far is just the fact that not only can he put a lot of time and effort into basketball, but there's also space for him to be able to put time and energy into other things that allow him to grow as a human being.

And that's one of the things that I really love.

Just in the experience that I've had as a parent of a Division 3 athlete, that's what's been.

I think the most attractive part of it to me is just that sort of holistic approach and development of not just the basketball player, but the person as well.

Yeah.

You know, all that is, it's all 100% true.

Another thing that I love about it is the like, for me, the confidence that I was able to gain from playing four years in college.

Right.

That's.

I don't, like, I don't know who I am if, if I just was a regular student somewhere.

And so that's why I love just the venue that Division 3 affords everybody.

It's just a chance to keep playing and keep working on ourselves through our, through our respective sports.

Yeah.

To be able to do something that you love.

Right.

I think there's so much misinformation.

I'm sure you see it more than I do, but you go out, you listen to parents talk at an AAU tournament or you see people having conversations and there's so many people that just because of social media, because you now know what every single player in your 10 county area who has a scholarship, who's posting this about that offer or this visit and all these things that so many people get way caught up in that stuff.

And there's such a.

Again, people are so uninformed about what it takes to play college basketball, how good you have to be, and then take it one step further.

What a privilege it is to be able to continue to play a sport that you love to play for four more years.

Or selfishly, for me, Right.

As a parent, now I get to go and watch four more years of basketball.

And with.

Whether my son's on the floor, he's not on the floor.

I get to watch a whole group of new kids, a new coaching staff.

I get to see a whole conference worth of teams and how those, how those coaches coach their team.

Like, it's just, it's such a privilege to be able to be involved in it.

I think so many people that are parents or players at the middle school, high school level, the lack of.

And again, I don't know if education is the right word, but just lack of understanding of what the different levels of college basketball are all about is really.

Man, it's.

We could definitely improve in that area, let's put it that way.

Yeah.

100%.

100%.

And I, I don't know if, like you said, I don't know if it's education or Just, you know, they're just getting bad information.

But the level is great, the opportunities that it affords.

Like I said, if you're going to go to a four year institution anyways, why not continue to have some sort of structure in your daily life?

Because you don't want, you don't want just a lot of free time in college with nothing else to do.

You know, it's not good.

And the level, like, you know, we saw it this summer with we are D3.

I mean, we just, we, we beat everybody in the region.

I mean, we beat Syracuse, we beat Yukon, D2 teams.

It doesn't matter.

The level doesn't matter.

You know, it's really, it really does.

Especially now.

Half those guys on that team transferred up and played and the other half would have if it was, if it was available, you know, so these are.

Go deep three if you have to right now.

And if you're that good, the other level will find you.

You know, it'll all work itself.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

There's no doubt about that.

All right, tell me about the We R D3 experience.

First of all, how do you get involved with it when coach.

Coach Reg and just talk a little bit about the experience?

Yeah, so I think my involvement with we are D3 was probably 20 years in the making when, when me and Mike Raniak got into coaching together at Plymouth State, kind of stayed in contact the entire time.

And when he started it, I was like, wow, that's a really cool idea.

You know, let me know if there's ever any room for me.

And, you know, it kind of went on for a couple years, him and Matt Droney at Babson.

And just one day Reg kind of reached out and Matt couldn't, couldn't make it that year.

And he said, hey, do you want to hop on?

And I just immediately said yes.

And then I had to tell my wife, so I had to tell, I had to tell her I was going to be gone for a week in, in July.

And so now every year she just knows I'm gone for a week in July and then, and then this year it was three weeks in July or three and a half weeks in July.

But it's just, it's been a really cool experience to be able to go back to being an assistant coach for a week a year.

It just, it kind of allows me to work on that part of myself again.

And a little bit of humble pie for me since, you know, I'm the center of my program's universe for, you know, 50 weeks out of the year, but for two weeks, you know, I got to go hold the clipboard, you know, and it's, it's good because it's a reminder to me where I started that, you know, 24 year old kid walking to 6am workouts down the street in Brooklyn every day.

And it just kind of brings me back to there and it reminds me how bad of an assistant coach I was at the time, you know, so now after being a head coach, I'm able to be at a better assistant coach than I ever was before.

What makes a good assistant coach?

In your mind, how have you thought about being an assistant to Reg as you're going through the process?

What, what makes somebody a good assistant in your mind?

For one, I try to be really honest with Reg and I, and I give Reg a lot of credit for not firing me every time I'm too honest with Reg.

But you know, to, to balance it.

What makes a good assistant?

Probably the same thing.

What makes a good life partner, right?

Good husband, good wife.

It's not meeting 50, 50.

It's not 50, 50.

It's meeting you where you're at.

So if Reg has only got 80%, then I'm.

If Reg is giving 80, then I only got to give 20, right?

If Reg is only giving 30 that day, then I got to fill and give that other 70.

I've got to be the part that Reg isn't that day.

So, you know, maybe if Reg is, is not seeing something, maybe I say, hey, this is what we got to see.

Maybe if, you know, whatever it is, I just got to be willing to be whatever Reg needs me to be that day to keep going.

Because I, you know, I need a house with a yard.

And so the only way I'm getting that is if we get six wins.

And so I was close to it this year, but, you know, close doesn't close.

Close doesn't get me a yard.

So I talked to Reg a lot about the run this summer and just going through and the teams that you guys were able to beat and kind of what the conversations were like as, as you guys were going through that whole experience.

Just give me your perspective on what the locker room was like after a couple of the big wins.

What were you guys talking about, both as a coaching staff, but with the players and just give us a sense of what it was like on the inside as you guys were doing what you did from the outside.

People would say, oh man, I bet they were a little bit surprised, but I got the, you know, got the idea from Reg that clearly that wasn't necessarily the case.

You guys felt pretty confident that you could compete and give yourselves a chance to win.

Yeah, I'm usually the.

The realist in the group.

So, I mean, we were in, like, May, and Reg and Top Shelf were talking about we could win the whole region.

And I'm like, what do you got?

What are you guys talking about?

What are you guys crazy?

And then, you know, the field comes out and I'm like, all right, okay.

All right.

We could.

We could make it weird.

But in the actual.

So, like, there was complete belief that we could win the entire tournament, not just our region.

And that started with, you know, the head of the organization, Mike Rack.

And I think that that kind of dripped its way down through the entire program.

They got out there about three days before me in training camp.

So when I showed up, you know, everything, they were kind of already in motion.

And the belief was there.

I mean, I walked into a gym full of guys who were there to not waste time.

Right.

They all took times away from whatever short window of off season they had to come play in this event, and so they were going to be sure that they didn't waste any time or any opportunity.

So the belief was there.

I mean, talk about a group of professionals.

We didn't have a single kid mope about playing time one time.

You know, the conversations are different after games.

Guys, you can have like, hey, why didn't I play?

I got it.

I get you, coach.

I get it.

I don't care.

We got an opportunity, another opportunity to be scouted.

Another opportunity to keep making money.

And ultimately, like, as long as everybody in the program understands, if we just keep going, you have another opportunity to play.

And that was.

That was really cool to be around.

14, I think we keep saying it.

14 captains.

We have 14 captains on our team.

How hard can it be to coach a team full of 14 captains?

Literally, you just get out of the way.

I mean, me, Reg and Top Shelf just get out of the way and let these.

Let these captains captain.

That's what it was.

Yeah.

That's what most of the coaches.

So I'd be.

Sit out of the way.

That's right.

Gotta have the right team to be.

Got.

Be able to get out of the right way.

Right.

For you don't always.

You're not.

You're not always blessed with 14 captains on your team.

Let's put it that way.

I don't.

I don't think I've.

I don't think I've Ever been.

I don't think I've ever been on or coached a team or played on a team that's had, that's had 14 captain.

There wasn't at least one guy that you had to massage a little bit to get them to understand exactly what their role was and what they were, what they were going to do.

But I mean, clearly just, I think.

That tremendous opportunity, I think that part is, is Mike.

Because Mike, I give those guys credit.

Mike.

And top shelf.

This is a 12 month operation for those guys.

I kind of hop in at the end of my season and hop back out when D3 is done.

So they do so much of the stuff that you don't see.

Really the stuff that I do is more of the stuff that we see.

But they're doing 90% of that work behind closed doors and those conversations and what, you know, the expectation is.

But nobody's going to give up a week of their off season to come.

Be the 14th man.

Everybody's a captain, everybody's competitive, everybody thinks they're talking about somebody else, but they're all willing to accept whatever that rotation is.

What does that look like in terms of guys that are at that level when it comes to their preparation for practice and games?

And what did you learn from those types of players that you could bring back to your program in terms of the way they kind of went about their business during that run?

Is there anything that you took from a player, the group as a whole, that you could bring back to your team and say to your guys, hey look, I just went through this with guys who have played at an extremely high level.

If you want to get there, you could try this or here's some things that they did.

Was there anything that you took like that?

Yeah.

So it's funny you said that.

We're actually sent my first text out.

We're going to start with Ty Nichols, but we're trying to do a zoom series with all those guys on the.

We are D3 team with, with my, with my program.

Just to kind of get that mind frame into their mind frame for former Division 3 players that made it to be pros and at the highest level that you know at, at, at one of the highest levels.

But I would say the thing that struck me the most was that none of those guys are there by accident or by mistake.

They all put in an immense amount of time.

Even when practice was over, those guys would be going to the gym and getting in an hour workout on their own, like on the court, getting shots.

I Mean, these guys were just working their tails off.

The guys that didn't play were working their tails off to be ready and to be in game shape.

So that's the thing.

It's like you come to a college practice, you.

Your best player may not always be your hardest worker.

Right.

But we are D3.

I mean, all.

All of those guys worked extremely hard during practice.

They worked extremely hard on their own time.

And that was like the one adjustment was just kind of having to tell Mike, like, Mike, a lot of these guys, like, they, like, they don't even.

We just need to tell them when to be there and when we're done.

And then like, whatever that.

Whatever Ty Nichols needs to do to get ready, let Ty Nichols do it to get ready.

Right.

And same thing with Marcus all the way down the line.

You know, it's just kind of like, let these guys go through their.

Whatever their process is, whatever works for them, letting them get to their process.

And so I kind of take that back.

Like, if a guy warms up a way that I don't love, but he's really effective, maybe that's just the way he warms up.

Right.

And so it's.

There's not one way to do this thing.

There's multiple ways to do this.

It's just about the result.

If you get the result, I don't really care how you got there, as long as we get the intended result.

It's a really great point.

And I think sometimes.

Right.

That's hard to accept as a head coach sometimes when you have your way of.

This is how we like to do things.

And maybe there's a guy that doesn't necessarily fit that exact mold of warmup is a great example.

Right.

I think everybody has a player.

If you think about yourself, there was probably things that you like to do that you felt prepared you to get ready to play.

And it might not have always been exactly what your coach may have wanted.

If you had like a scripted warm up, you had this and it's like, man, I just want to get some shots up and that's how I'm going to get warmed up.

Or I just like to, whatever, go full speed and get some layups going to the basket.

Or maybe I like to go one on one with a live defender because that's what works for me sometimes.

You can't always fit people into a box.

So I wonder if you've thought about that in terms of your individual guys on your team and maybe sort of.

I don't know if accepting their Quirks is the right way to say it, but as long as they're able to get the job done within the confines of what you're trying to do, how do you think about that as a head coach?

I think it's it.

You could use that.

Also, like, if a kid is having a bad day at practice, right?

And instead of just jumping them right away because you don't like what you're seeing, have a conversation with them first.

Like, hey, Mike, having a tough day today?

Is everything okay?

And you might say, hey, no, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great aunt died, right?

And then, oh, okay.

All right.

So now I know today's not the day to yell at you because, like, you just.

You missed the layup or something, right?

I'm going to just work.

I'm going to focus on other things with you today.

What if I go to you and I say, hey, Mike, why are you.

Why are you in the locker room for the whole warmup?

Like, I don't get it, right?

And you say, because I like to get into a space where I'm mentally prepared.

I'm stretching.

I'm mentally prepared.

And I'll say, oh, that's how I was.

Oh, okay, great.

I just hadn't seen it in a while.

And so now that we've talked about it and you're not being disrespectful, it's just, we needed to talk about it, right?

And most of our problems in life could be fixed if we just talked about it and actually listened instead of waiting for you to finish so I could talk again, you know?

So it's just talking to him.

I may not like it.

I may say, hey, nah, I don't.

Can you try it my way?

And then if you try it my way and you play great, that's the new way.

And if you play it, try it my way and you play awful, I'm going to go, oh, yeah.

I'm going to get out of the way now, Mike, do what you need to do.

That's a hard balance to strike, though, right, as a head coach, because clearly, again, part of what being on a team is, is that we're all in this together.

We're doing through it.

We're going through the same things.

We're all trying to be in a similar place.

And if one guy's off doing his own thing, you can't.

You can only tolerate so many Dennis Rodmans in your program before things start going a little haywire.

So, as you said, you got to get Guys, let me ask you, where.

Do you draw the line?

Do you draw the line with sneakers?

Then, like, if everybody's wearing the team sneaker.

See, that's a.

That's a hard one.

Like, it depends, right?

Because here's my thing.

So, like, I'm old school, so I love the idea of everybody.

We got a team shoe, right?

Everybody's.

Everybody looks the same.

We're in uniform.

We got it.

Then I look at my son and my daughter.

So my son's playing in college, my daughter's playing in high school.

And like, my daughter's high school team, they're green.

And she's looking at pink shoes and aquamarine blue shoes.

And I'm like.

I'm like, look, why don't you get these?

It's funny because my.

My basketball camp this summer, I had.

I bought green coaches shirts, and so there was some.

Some Devin Booker shoes that are like the perfect color of green that match my camp shoes.

So I bought a pair for myself for camp, and I'm like, I told her, I'm like, why don't you get a pair of these Bookers?

I'm like, these are.

I'm like, I love these.

They're a great color.

They match exactly.

It's like, those are boring, dad.

Those don't.

You know, those.

Those don't look right.

I'm like, you're.

You're going to buy pink.

Going to buy pink shoes.

But it's one of those things that, right, As a coach, it probably shouldn't matter to you that much, right, what kind of shoes that a kid wears.

But at the same time, you look at it, you say, man, there's.

There's a part of you that, again, because I'm old school, I. I'd probably.

Here's what.

Here's probably how.

Here's honestly how I would probably handle it.

I'd probably approach the leaders on my team and say, hey, you think everybody would want to get team shoes?

And.

And I'd maybe give them some options of like, hey, let's look at these, whatever, and if they said, yes, good, let's go for it.

If they said, nah, coach, you know what?

Everybody wants to go with a different shoe, then I think that's something that you probably walk away from.

But to your point, right, I think what you're trying to get at with me is as a head coach, there's not just a line of, is it a team shoe or is it individual shoe?

There's literally thousands of those decisions that you have to make.

Every single day where there's a line and you as the head coach have to draw the line.

That goes back to what you said about being an assistant, where you like, hey, man, let's just have everybody get team shoes.

Well, you don't know.

There's, as you said, you're pulling on lots of strings, and when you pull on one, something else is going the other direction.

And so I think you have to find out ultimately what works for you.

Right.

What works for you as a head coach may not work for me as a head coach.

And so you got to figure out for yourself where that line is.

And I don't think, you know, until you're in that seat actually making the decision.

Because when you're sitting on the side as an assistant or you're a parent or you're a fan of the program, you can be like, well, why is he doing that?

Well, until you're sitting there and you understand not just the decision itself, but the ramifications of that decision, I don't think anybody really knows what they would do.

Yeah.

And then.

And then, like, as the assistant who says, you know, know we all got to wear the same shoes, then your best player says, they hurt my feet and it makes my back hurt and I can't run in them.

And I like.

And I've always worn the Kyries, and.

And then what do you do?

Right.

What do you do then?

Because then if you're going to give on in on that one, then now your whole, like, this is the way we do it.

It was all false.

Yeah, it was all over.

Right.

And so you have to be flexible in life.

I mean, you're a parent, I'm a parent, you know that we can say anything we want, but there's a reality to it.

And don't say anything you're not willing to, you know, so that's one thing I learned, right?

Don't say if you make it last, you're gonna run until you puke.

Because if your best player is last, you better be willing to run your best player until he pukes.

And then you better be willing to deal with whatever comes with after that.

So whatever you're gonna say, you better be willing to stand on.

Don't say anything you're not willing to stand on.

So I don't care about the shoes.

Wear whatever shoe is going to help you run.

Can.

Can.

Can you play hard in those shoes?

Sold, man.

Can you play as hard as you can?

That's all.

That's all we can.

That's all we can ask.

All right, final two, part question, part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do each and every day, what brings you the most joy?

So, first part, biggest challenge, second part, biggest joy.

I think the biggest challenge is staying in the moment, right?

So when you have success not looking too far ahead and just staying in the moment, and it's the old.

Like, it's never.

It's never as good as you think.

It's never as bad as you think, it's usually right somewhere in the middle, and it's just kind of staying even keel.

But with staying even keel, not selling myself short on the dream and the ultimate goal, which is a national championship, Right.

Like, I don't think anybody thought Jamie Cosgrove was going to win a national championship last year, right?

But Jamie Cosgrove thought he was going to win a national championship last year.

And so you have to be delusional.

So part of it is balancing the delusion with also staying right exactly where I am.

And it's that balance of crazy and realistic and finding that fine line and just riding that rail the entire season, you know?

And then the best part is the thing that I love the most about coaching, and this is going to sound sick, but it's when you just got your ass kicked or you're.

You've lost two games in a row and nobody wants to be in that gym that day.

No, they're waiting for you to walk in there with the scowl looking like Bill Cowler, you know, like, nobody wants to be in there.

And that's when I love it, because that's work time.

Because now everybody in the program's going to listen now because the.

Whatever.

It wasn't working.

Right.

Right.

So let's get back to the things that we do well, which is play hard and compete, be solid, be disciplined.

Right.

Every single day.

Let's get back to being those things consistently.

Right?

And then we'll.

We'll start going back to where we can.

Because when you've got nothing, there's nowhere else to go.

Right?

And so once you've lost a couple games and guys are.

You're in the real dumps, man.

That's the best time to coach college basketball.

That.

In the winter break at Division 3, because you got no class.

There's 38 people on campus, right?

And it's.

You're running the campus, man.

You guys are NBA players for Six weeks.

You just work out, eat food and play basketball.

All basketball, all the time.

There's nothing wrong with that.

It's well said.

Exactly.

All right, Jason, before we get out, I want to give you a chance.

Share how people can connect with you.

Find out more about your program.

Give me social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

Sure.

You can find me on Twitter at coach Harris Umb.

You can go on our website, UMass Boston.

You can just Google UMass Boston Beacons athletics.

Go to our men's basketball page.

You can fill out a recruiting questionnaire.

It all gets formulated and sent right to me.

You'll hear back from somebody on the staff shortly thereafter.

And then whatever it is that you're working for this year, whether you're a coach, you're a player, and you never know this.

You'll never have this collection of talent in your room.

You have right now.

You might have more, you might have less, but you'll never have this exact amount of talent attack this year.

You never know what's going to happen.

Man, this is the year UMass Boston is going to cut down some nets.

I'm right now, I'm telling you right now, Mike, this is the year we cut down some nets.

We play eight days against Harvard, you know, so we're not ducking anybody.

Division 1 we play UMass Amherst.

We play a great schedule located in the city, but we're not a city campus.

Come check us out.

Good stuff.

Jason, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us.

Really appreciate it.

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

Thanks.

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