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I came up with my philosophy as a coach of what I didn't like as a player.

Anything I didn't like as a player I don't do and so I don't like the same drills every day.

I don't like not competing.

I hate to run on the track so I don't do that.

Darris Nichols was hired as the men's basketball head coach at La Salle University on March 11, 2025.

Nichols most recently served as the head coach at Radford University, where he amassed two 20 win seasons in four years, going 68 and 63, including a 2013 record during the 202425 season.

Nichols coaching experience includes stints as an assistant coach at Florida, Louisiana Tech, Wofford and Northern Kentucky.

He was named as a member of ESPN.com's prestigious 40 under 40 list in the summer of 2020 as one of the most influential people in the game of men's college basketball.

Nichols was a four year standout as a player at West Virginia.

He helped the mountaineers to a 2611 record and to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2008.

As a senior, he scored 993 career points and dished out 399 assists while shooting 37.5% from three point range.

Nichols was also twice a recipient of the Big East Academic All Star and Sportsmanship Award.

After graduation, he played professionally overseas in Hungary until a knee injury cut short his playing days and launched him into a career in coaching.

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Take a few notes as you listen to this episode with Darius Nichols, men's basketball head coach at La Salle University.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

It's Mike Cleansing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Darius Nichols, head men's basketball coach at La Salle University.

Darris, welcome to the Hoop Headspot.

Mike, I appreciate you having me thrilled.

To have you on, looking forward to diving into all of the interesting things that you've been able to do in your career and also talk a little bit about taking over the program at LaSalle from Coach Dunphy.

Let's start though, by going back to when you were a kid.

Tell me a little bit about how you got into the game when you were younger.

Yeah, I mean, I got into the game because of my dad.

You know, my dad was, he was a small college all American at an NAIA school.

At the time, it's Maria College in Kentucky.

And you know, ever since, me and my brother, I have an older brother, two years older than me, Shane Nichols, who, you know, he just come from a basketball family.

I remember growing up in Radford, my dad taking us to the, you know, outdoor playground and just watching, you know, watching him play, everybody talking about how good he was and me and my brother just sitting over there.

We're young, we're just watching the games.

And so we've been exposed to, you know, we've been exposed to basketball ever since we were born.

And that's, you know, that's all we knew.

When you think about the influence of your dad, both on you as a player and on you as a coach, what are some things that stand out to you in terms of the way he went about his business and the way that you go about yours today.

I think the biggest thing with him is, you know, a lot of stuff that you, that you grow up and you model, it's not stuff that was verbalized, it's stuff that you saw.

And the biggest thing with my dad is we never heard him make excuses.

We never, we always saw him working really hard.

He worked two jobs, worked at a factory for over 30 some years.

But he also poured concrete.

He poured concrete on the side, like in the summertime, like the driveways, stairs, patios.

And, you know, just seeing his work ethic.

And I'll never forget, you know, it was summertime, and, you know, my dad expected me and my brother, you know, to work really hard on the basketball court.

And a few times he would come home during the summer.

Obviously, we're not at school.

You know, we're laying on the couch kind of hanging out, so he's watching us.

And the next day he came home, you know, same thing, hanging out.

He was like, okay, well, let me.

Let me take you guys and show you what I do for a living.

And, you know, me and my brother, we were pouring concrete with them, you know, 9, 500 degree heat in the middle of summertime, and was like, listen, you know, I don't make you guys get a job.

You know, basketball could be your job, but if you don't work at it, you know, you're gonna end up probably doing something like I'm doing.

Like, if you.

If you want to do this.

If you really want to do this basketball piece, like, you really have to work at it.

And so forever since then, you know, I saw what he did.

I saw how he poured into our family, and I was like, I'd rather be in the gym.

What did working hard look like then for you as a result of that influence?

So, in other words, how'd you get better?

What was your regime for becoming a good player?

Thinking about you as like a high school college player.

What were you doing in your off seasons?

Man, it was.

It was crazy because my high school coach, he was nuts to Rick Kormany.

So that was the head coach.

My dad was assistant coach.

So Coach Kormany would call me and my brother, probably in the summertime, probably around 6:37am and we would pick it up.

And he wouldn't even say who he was.

He would just say, while you guys lay in the bed, somebody's out working you.

Anyway, hang up.

And so we got, you know, we started saying, hey, between 6:37, Coach Cormy's call and don't answer.

So.

But, you know, then they kind of guilted us into getting to the gym.

And so I just worked out.

I just organized kind of my day.

I would go in the morning, work out at the rec center.

I would walk, I would dribble the ball the whole time I was walking, you know, to the rec center, work on my Handle.

I would.

I would come back, eat lunch, then go back to the gym, come back home, eat dinner, then go back late at night.

You know, there was nothing to do around for Virginia.

I was, you know, trying to be the best player I could be.

I don't.

I didn't know.

So throughout those days, like, I would.

I would be, like, intentional about what I was working on at certain times of the day.

Like, if I thought I was tired, I would try to do spot shots.

But back in those days, you couldn't do spot shots because you didn't have a rebounder.

You had to rebound your own miss.

So, you know, I tell the guys I coach now, I'm like, hey, we didn't have shooting machines.

We didn't have any of that.

Like, if you missed it when the creek.

So you gotta go get it so you don't miss.

But, you know, that was kind of my, you know, summertime regimen.

Like, I went to the gym three times a day.

You can't stay in the gym two or three hours at a time.

You have to break it up.

So that's.

That's what I did.

What about from a pickup basketball standpoint for you compared to the guys that you're coaching today?

I always think it's interesting, and I'm even a little bit older than you are, and I.

I spent a lot of time playing pickup basketball and playing outdoors and.

And all that kind of thing in terms of trying to get better, playing against guys of all different ages and whatever.

And.

And now, you know, guys grew up kind of in the AAU system, but just kind of compare and contrast the guys that you coach today versus sort of the way that you grew up playing pickup basketball and working on your game in that particular aspect.

I mean, you know, because like I said, me and my brother, we grew up watching my dad, and he was playing against, you know, Radford University students, you know, those college players, and the middle court was the best court.

That's where you wanted to get to the middle court.

And, you know, just watching him play and then finally getting to the age where, okay, I think I can play a little bit.

But it was, you know, those days where you had called next, you had to pick your five.

So what did you have to do?

When you sit on the side, you had to evaluate who can help you win.

And if they couldn't help you win, you may play one game, you may not play to the next day, or you play in the dark or whatever.

So, you know, the first time me and my brother got to play.

Well, my brother played before me because he was two years older.

So then when I got to play, it was like, how can I impact winning?

You know, I'm like seventh grade playing with college students.

I was fast, I was crafty.

I had to get dude shots, so that's how I could win.

That's how I could stay on the court.

That's what they needed me to do.

And so, you know, as I got older, you know, I started being able to score the ball.

I started doing more.

But it was a natural progression.

When you played against older guys, you know, you had.

You had to prove that you got win or, you know, you, you know, take your ball and you go home.

That was, you know, so for me, it was.

It was good.

And I don't think.

I think everything's too organized now for guys, and I think everything's already determined where it's like, okay, you know, Mike is ranked 20th in the country.

He's going to.

He's going to get on the court whether he feels like playing or not.

And, you know, back in those days, we didn't know who each other were.

We didn't have social media.

We have any of that.

And so what I've done now in my coaching, in our practices, I've taken what I went through and I put it towards my team.

When practice gets monotonous, I'll say, okay, today we're picking.

Okay, Mike's a gm.

Darris is a gm.

You have to pick.

We're picking teams today.

But when you pick teams, you have to say what you think Mike is going to bring to your organization, but what you're worried about Mike may bring to your organization.

So it's kind of like the old school approach of what we went through, right?

Yeah.

No, that's awesome, man.

I think that it's definitely something when you look at, I don't know if necessarily what players are missing today, but when I think about guys that I grew up playing with in the atmosphere like you're describing, that win or go home mentality is definitely one of the things.

And then the second thing is being able to evaluate yourself and being able to evaluate other guys in terms of, hey, is this a dude that I want on my team or is it not?

I mean, you know as well as I do that there's guys that you show up at the park or the gym and they might look like they have a lot of skill, and you just see them on the side and they're going between their Legs, and they're doing all this and that, and then you play with them for two minutes, you're like, I never want to be on this guy's team ever again.

We all know who those guys.

We all know who those guys are.

And so it's interesting, just when you start thinking about how players have to be able to learn some of those same things that maybe you and I learned on the playground or just trying to fend for ourselves.

And as you said, now you got to kind of give guys opportunities to do that, where coaches back in the era when you and I were playing didn't necessarily have to do those same things.

And I think that's part of what being a good coach is all about, right.

Is figuring out and being able to diagnose what does your team need?

What do my guys need to be able to get them to where I want them to go.

And so I think that hearing you talk about just how you're giving your guys a chance to be the GM and.

And not only just randomly pick guys, but actually have to think about and defend, why am I picking this guy?

Why do I want him on my team?

What's he going to bring to the table?

And then, okay, if he's good here and maybe not so good in this area, well, then maybe I got to get somebody who kind of fills in his weaknesses and compliments and all those kinds of things.

And how do I build a.

A winning team?

Right.

Which is what we did on the playground, trying to figure out.

Because you just wanted to play.

You were.

Yeah, you were.

You were a general manager, and then you had a play.

Yep, exactly.

You know, so another layer will add to it.

Is, okay, whoever's a general manager that day.

If we're playing 5 on 5 and your team loses, the only person that runs when you lose is the general manager, so that you don't pick your friends.

I like it, man.

That's good.

That is good stuff.

All right, tell me about your favorite memory from playing high school basketball.

I think my favorite memory was just the state championship runs.

You know, every year we got there, we didn't end up winning a state championship.

But it's different when you.

When you're in high school because you grow up with those guys.

You know, you're around them every day.

I thought that was important.

And how the community, like, really rallies around your team.

So those are my memories, was just, you know, the impact you see your high school having on the community.

Something that I think, again, when you're in a Basketball community.

Right.

And you see that there's still places and pockets where you have that same kind of community support and support from the, the students and staff and the school.

I think that's one of the best parts of high school basketball and get an opportunity to play in front of those kinds of crowds in your own community.

And I love you talking about just the guys that you grew up with, because so much of high school basketball, unfortunately, we've seen the sort of trickle down effect of guys jumping from school to school and this and that.

And it's just when you think about, and it sounds like your experience was similar to mine, that, you know, I mean, I kind of knew who my high school teammates were going to be by the time I was in third, fourth, fifth grade.

It was like, you know, you knew who those guys were going to be and then you got an opportunity to grow up with them and play middle school basketball and, you know, play high school basketball and play with them in the summertime on the playground and all that stuff.

And so, yeah, I think it's something that if you're in a community where that's, where that, where that's part of the fabric of what you do, I think that's a, that's a certainly a super special opportunity.

Not everybody gets that depending upon where you grew up and what your, what your high school experience was like.

So let's get to your recruitment.

Talk to me a little bit about decision making with college.

What were some of the factors that you were looking at and just what eventually made you settle on West Virginia?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing was, you know, being from small town like it was back in the day.

So you could do open gyms and anybody in the area could go to the open gym and people can come evaluate it, you know, so we used to have the best open gym.

As a Roanoke Catholic, you know, that was like 30, 35, 40 minutes away from me.

You know, J.J.

reddick would be there, Junior Reynolds, you know, my brother, the.

And so everybody would congregate Tuesdays and Thursdays.

You know, some of the, all the coaches in the country would go there.

So, you know, I was younger and then, you know, everybody was coming there.

John B.

Line was there when he was at Richmond.

And then.

So, you know, I committed early in that day as a junior because, you know, John B.

Line was a rich man, recruiting me since I was in ninth grade.

Then he ended up getting the West Virginia job, continued to recruit me.

You know, I followed the Big east, followed the acc.

Everybody in the ACC recruited me, except North Carolina, Duke.

It was crazy because I tell people now say it seems like everybody that recruited me ended up getting fired.

When I look back on it, you know, my guy Larry Shy at Clemson, he ended up getting fired before I made a decision.

Buzz Peterson, Tennessee end up getting fired.

I think Sydney Lowe, NC State, ended up getting fired.

And I'm like, now look back on.

I was like, you know, I mean, I didn't.

I don't know how many options I would have had, but a big part of me chose West Virginia because I wanted to get away from home, but I didn't want to get too far.

And Virginia Tech, you know, obviously it's 15 minutes from where I grew up.

They had a lot of coaching changes as I was going through, as I was going through high school.

So we played in the AU tournament up in Morgantown.

That was back in the days where, you know, the AU events were on campus and so we ended up winning it.

And so obviously all the people in the community, the state knew West Virginia was recruiting.

And I never felt, you know, I felt so much love from the university, from the whole state.

And I remember Bill Lilly.

Bill Lilly, he's at Glenville State now.

He used to be at Radford University when I was in high school.

Then he got on at West Virginia and he broke down a recruiting letter.

And you know, it was back before you had GPS and all that stuff.

So he wrote down notes and it said, okay, you take I81 south here, stop here, get you, you know, some gas up here at this store.

You'll pass through here, you know, you'll hit Summersville, avoid the speed trap.

Like he broke it down, wrote it all down.

And that stood out to me for a long time because, you know, it's really detail oriented.

He knew the route and I knew that was tom consuming and just connection there.

And you think about it like, so Mike Jones recruited me, Jeff Neubauer recruited me.

Those are the two lead recruits.

And Mike Jones ended up leaving as I was going into my freshman year.

He went to the University of Georgia.

And then so, you know, Jeff Dubauer kind of took over it.

And then you fast forward years ago and I'm taking over for Mike Jones at Radford.

And my dad coached Mike Jones kids at Radford High School.

So, you know, that makes basketball really a small world.

So my recruitment was all based off John B.

Line being relentless when I was in my gotcha.

What were you thinking about career wise, as you were heading into College.

Did you have any thoughts of coaching at that point?

Or what were you.

What was your mindset?

Or were you still kind of just thinking mostly as a basketball player?

I was like, every kid now is going to play in the NBA for many years, retire, lived a good life, and just figure out what I wanted to do after that.

And that didn't happen.

So for me, it was like, I told my academic advisor, I said, what.

What degree can I get where I don't have to take a lot of math classes because I'm terrible at math?

And she said, sociology, you only take stats.

I said, I'll do that.

So then I started taking a few of the classes.

I enjoyed it, you know, study of people, you know, different families, all that stuff.

And I really liked it.

And I was like, you know what?

Like, by my senior year, I said I could always see myself being like a social worker, like, doing something to help youth.

And, you know, that's kind of how I pick my major.

It's interesting when you think about, again, your mindset when you're 18 years old and trying to figure things out.

And I know, obviously with all of your experience coaching at the college level and having lots of conversations with kids that you've coached and helping them, trying to figure out, well, what's their.

What's their life plan and how are they going to go?

Where are they going to major in and what.

What direction are they going to take?

And, you know, I've got.

I've got two.

I've got two kids in college right now, and just.

It's interesting, kind of watching them work through the different options of like, hey, what can I.

What I.

You got all this.

All these possibilities laid out in front of you, right?

And you can kind of go in whatever direction you want to go.

And it's fun to watch kids be able to just kind of figure that out and try to.

Try to get to where it is that they want to be.

Because everybody's.

Everybody's different.

And the coaching world, typically, I think, at least in my experience with the.

With interviewing lots of different people, you have guys who were drawing up plays when they were in third grade on a napkin and kind of thought of themselves as a coach from back in the time when they were super young.

And then you have other guys who.

It kind of hits them a little bit later on, and maybe when they're playing careers over as they start to look around or maybe I know that eventually we're going to get to the injury that you.

That you suffered that, you know, kind of ended your playing career.

But eventually, guys get to coaching.

And so when you think about the opportunity to play for Coach Beine, obviously somebody who's well respected in the coaching community, what are some things that you took away from your time, playing from him, playing for him, that you feel like now have made you a better coach?

What's one or two things that you pulled from him?

I think his attention to detail.

Like, he's probably one of the most.

He's like.

He keeps it really simple.

Like, you know, like, the things that a lot of guys don't think about, like pivoting.

Like, we worked on pivoting every single day.

And, you know, when I called him to this day, he would say, hey, you know, are you doing donuts and waffles?

That's what he called them, you know, inside pivot, outside pivot, donuts.

And I said, yeah, we're pivoting.

We're just not calling them breakfast foods.

But, you know, he's.

He was.

He.

He's an elite storyteller.

Like, everything he does, there's a story behind it, and it gets your attention and it sticks with you, you know, the rest of your life.

And so, you know, he's always been really good at that.

And that's.

That's what always stuck out to me was like, okay, this is what we're doing.

This is why we're doing it, and this is why it's worked for me in the past.

And that's kind of what I've taken on from, you know, from him and my coaching.

What's your favorite story that he told?

Favorite story that he told?

I.

I don't know if the story that he told, but the thing that he was on me the most about was, like, you know, when I first got to college, you know, obviously, you're doing high school threes.

Um, you know, so I had a problem, freshman and sophomore year, of stepping on the line.

Like, I would always shoot long tubes, and he would lose his mind about that, like, you know, every day, you know, just saying crazy stuff to me.

It was long to whatever.

And I never forget, like, my junior year, you know, we're in Madison Square.

I hit a corner three to win the game and take us to the NIT championship.

And I was actually behind the line, so it was a three.

So they won us the game.

And after the game, he was just talking about it, and he's like, remember all the times, like, I was on you about, you know, shooting those long twos?

Like, imagine if it was long two, you know, it would have been.

Went to overtime.

But I just thought of the story, and he tells the story all the time.

I was a freshman, we were playing Wake Forest.

We're winning the triple overtime.

You know, Chris Paul, all those guys, you know, one of the best games in NCAA tournament history.

And so, you know, I'm sitting over there on the bench and I'm watching Chris Paul.

He's flying down the court.

J.D.

collins is getting a foul trouble, our point guard.

And I'm like, shoot, he's got four fouls.

I'm gonna have to go in there pretty soon.

Like, you know, this is.

This is the tournament basketball.

We're in double overtime.

Like, I gotta be ready.

So I go in, I make a few plays, I get fouled.

I think that game, I went 2 for 4 from the free throw line or something like that, maybe one for three, I don't know.

But I missed two free throws.

So we end up winning the game.

We're up in Cleveland.

And then after the game, you know, families are waiting, loading dock, whatever.

And so B.

Line, like, runs into my dad, and he's thinking, my dad's gonna crush him.

Like, you know, why didn't you play my son more?

Blah, blah, blah.

So B Line goes up to him, he says, hey, Bill, it's good to see you.

Like, I wish I could have got him in there more.

And then my dad goes, hey, nah, he ain't ready.

You gotta make more free throws.

So he tells that story all the time to, you know, to some of his players that he had.

And he was like, you know, you gotta have guys that come from families that people won't tell them the truth.

That is so true.

I mean, I think that when you look at.

When you look at people who have played, and I think you have the advantage of your dad playing college basketball and kind of having an understanding, right, of what it takes in order to be able to have success.

And I think that when you have somebody in your family, when you have a parent who has gone through it and it does.

This doesn't hold true every time, right?

Because there's.

There's parents that, right, have.

Have played.

Have played sports at a high level that sometimes can be just as crazy as anybody else.

But.

But I think a lot of times parents who have some level of achievement, they have an idea of what it.

What it takes and what it's all about.

And so they're sometimes able to give their kids good advice and to maybe not be as hypercritical of coaches when playing time is.

Is an issue because they kind of understand how you have to go about your business and.

Sounds like in.

In that story that, you know, despite what Coach Beeline might have expected from your dad, you know, your.

Your dad was continuing to give you that.

Give that same.

He was given that same idea that when you were.

You and your brother were sitting on the couch when he would come home, right?

He's like, yeah, you know, you got some work to do to be able to get to where you want to.

Where you want to go.

And as coaches, I think we all.

We all can appreciate those parents who have that.

Have that sort of.

That sort of mentality, right?

That it's the.

It's the work ethic and it's the.

The continuing to build.

And it's not just the, hey, I got my hand out, and just, you know, give me something for nothing, right?

You got to put your time in, you got to work, and.

And when you do that, then ultimately, then you get the opportunity to reap the rewards.

Tell me about the coaching change.

Coach Huggins comes in and what's that experience like?

Obviously, a different personality, and anytime there's a.

Anytime there's a coaching change in the program, while you're there, there's obviously an adjustment.

There's obviously.

You have to figure out, okay, what's this new guy all about compared to what the other guy was about that I've already built a relationship with?

So just talk to me a little bit about the transition from Coach Beeline to Coach Huggins.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing in the transition was, you know, it was a time where, okay, you got a new coach, you're not even thinking about leaving.

You can't leave.

So it was a period, like, of two weeks.

Like, we didn't have a coach.

Like, you know, and we hear rumors, we're hearing Bob Huggins, so we don't believe it.

And then people saying, oh, Bob Huggins.

So we're going to go.

Jordan Brand, like, Hugs is coming back.

So, you know, during those two weeks, like, we were all over the place.

Like, I was at home.

Then they named the coach.

So then I came back to school, and I'll never forget, so I called.

I called a team meeting over in my house, and then I told the guys, I said, hey, listen, like, I'm locked in.

Like, we have, like, for this to work, it don't matter who's coaches.

We have to buy in from day one, whatever it's going to be like.

And I Remember, like, you know, and we had some high level dudes on the team, you know, Daeshun Butler, who's with the Celtics, Joe Missoula, head coach of Celtics, Johnny west, you know, with the warriors on down the line, like.

And so we just made a decision, like, you know, we're going to buy in.

And then when Hugs came in and talked to us, it was like he knew us because he followed us, because he's from West Virginia, he played at West Virginia.

So he already knew a lot about us.

And you know, at the time, I thought it was the worst thing ever because I remember like, you know, he has his own balls.

He had the beeline balls.

So when he left, like, I remember, I remember to this day, like, you know, Joe Missoula walking out there, he's punting the balls, he's kicking B line balls.

You know, the rest of the freshmen, they kicking beeline balls, they're mad.

And then, you know, Hoax comes in, we give and we give him a chance.

And, you know, he gave us a chance because he, it wasn't like, okay, you're not my guys.

He said, you are my guys.

And it was just, it was good because at that time I was like, this is the worst thing ever.

You know, the coach that recruited me for all these years, he left.

But looking back on it as a coach and where I am now is the best thing ever, because I've seen it different ways.

That opportunity to be able to play for different coaches, to be able to.

And I know we'll talk about your various coaching stops here in a little bit, but the opportunity to work under different head coaches and see how things can be done differently and still be done successfully.

I tell people all the time that when I first started out, I played for the same high school coach my entire high school career.

I played for the same college coach my entire college career.

And when I started coaching, that was pretty much all I knew was what those two guys had done.

So any drill, any practice, anything that I put together was based off of only those two experiences.

And so when I look back on it, and again, it was a different era in terms of no social media, no Internet, no access to those kinds of things.

And I was arrogant enough back at the time to think I was a pretty good player.

So that's going to make me a pretty good coach.

And so I didn't put necessarily all the time, all the time that I put in as a player.

I didn't put the same time in as a coach to learn the game.

And I think that one of the things that, you know, I wish I would have done is just had more exposure to, to more coaches, just so I could have seen, hey, there's some different ways to be able to go about these things.

Or I wish somebody had kind of put their arm around me when I was a young coach and said, hey, young fellow, you might have been a pretty good player, but you got to go and you got to really study the game and learn it from the, from a coaching perspective.

And I think you obviously having a chance to play for two legendary coaches during your college career, I'm sure started to get your wheels turning in terms of, hey, maybe coaching somewhere where I want to end up.

Were you, were you at all thinking about why you were playing?

Were you at all thinking, thinking coaching as you got towards the end of your college career, or were you still just focused on, hey, I'm going to try to, I still going to try to play?

Yeah, no, I wasn't thinking about coaching at all.

You know, I was, you know, I had a few NBA workouts and I was hopeful to make a summer league.

So that, that's where my focus was.

And, you know, coaching never even crossed my mind.

Tell me about the opportunity to go and play overseas.

How does that come about?

Just what was your, what was your postgraduate process for, for trying to prepare yourself for a professional career?

Yeah, it was crazy because, you know, and I talked to him to this day, Matt Lloyd, who's with the Timberwolves now, I think he's president of basketball operations.

So he was with Chicago Bulls, he was scouting me.

You know, I did a workout with those guys and, you know, I was doing the lottery.

And the Bulls didn't think they had a chance of, you know, winning the lottery.

And during that year they did, and they drafted Derrick Rose.

And so I wasn't thinking about getting drafted.

I was just trying to get on the summer league roster.

So you draft Derrick Rose.

You don't need me on a summer league roster because, you know, rookies all go to summer league.

So the Bulls were really interested in me.

And then Derrick Rose gets drafted.

And then so I was, okay, that's out the window.

And so, you know, I just worked out IMG over summer.

The crazy thing out is working out img.

I, you know, I still have those contacts.

I mean, today a lot of those guys that were working me out that were there, you know, they're either still there or they're still involved in basketball.

But we, you know, my agent ended up Looking over some different deals.

I ended up signing a deal in Hungary and playing for Ottomaramu Ashe.

And it was a good, really good team.

And so I'm over there, over there for a few months.

I get hurt late January, late January, late January, February, whatever.

So we're getting, you know, close to playoffs.

We're good.

We're number one in the league, and I get hurt.

And I'll never forget, like, you know, my.

My coach was like, oh, you're rookie.

You got to play through.

You got to play through it.

And, you know, I'm literally playing through games and my knees locking up and I don't know what's going on.

I'm like, hey, I can't straighten my knee right now.

Some.

Some days it was fine.

Some days will lock up.

And so I remember going to.

So I would go to get an mri, and I'm in a Hungarian hospital, and I'm like, you know, it's like, it don't look the same as the hospitals that we have.

So they do mri.

I send it back home to my doctor at home, and he's like, they're saying it's acl.

He's like, no, this is not acl.

So you can barely read it.

So I ended up.

I said, just send me home, like, whatever.

Because if I did the surgery over there, if I did surgery over there, the team would have taken care of it.

So I went home.

I ended up having to have micro fracture surgery, you know, with Tracy McGrady, had all those guys, like, I forgot the guy, Brandon Roy, you know, career ending injuries.

So I ended up having that.

And so at the time, I had insurance, like just in between time when I was not overseas.

But that insurance didn't cover professional athletes.

It was small, small fine print didn't cover professional athletes.

And so, you know, I had the surgery, but then what happens?

I had to pay for it all out of pocket.

So the money, the little bit of money I made while I was there, quickly gone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm like.

So I'm like, okay, what I do now?

So I'm like, I'm rehabbing.

I was like, yeah, whatever.

Season almost over.

I'll sign another deal.

You know, our team ended up winning it, but I wasn't there.

But they know I'm a winner.

And I go to West Virginia.

I'm like, I need free rehab.

Where can I get free rehab?

So I go to West Virginia and I'm working out there.

I'm living on my teammate's couch.

He's a walk on.

Me and him came in the year together.

He's finished up med school, and at this time, I don't have any more money.

I ran out.

They all went to surgeries.

So I'm like, shoot, I got to make some money.

So one of the donors that I'm really close with, he offered me a job valeting cars at his hotel.

So, you know, I'm still hobbling around.

My knees not right.

You know, I'm parking cars.

I gotta run to get the car, but I run to the spot where they can't see me any more than I walk.

So that seems like I'm working really hard, so I get a bigger tip, and I tell people, like, a year before, I was a starting point guard.

Now I'm pulling up people's cars.

So they all know me, and, you know, so they're helping me.

But at the same time, it's a humbling experience because everybody's like, you're not playing anymore.

I'm like, got hurt.

Got hurt.

So, you know, that's when I ended up back in Morgantown.

And when do you go and approach Coach Huggins about the idea of coming on and helping to coach?

So I didn't approach him.

So I was.

I was rehabbing, and I was actually rehabbing, and then my other knee started acting up, and I was like this sudden.

You don't feel right.

So I had to get that cleaned down.

I had to get that scoped.

And so I'm like, okay, this is a little setback.

So it was fine.

But at the same time, I was like, I don't know if it's.

If it is fine.

You know, my body doesn't feel right.

And so I started going over to the Pratt.

To the practice facility at the Coliseum.

So I started going over there, just watching, you know, watching practice, hanging out.

So Kevin Chappelle, who was a grad assistant, he was a grad assistant when I played, and he was still the grad assistant.

And he goes, hey, man, like, I'm out after this year.

Like, I got to get a hedge.

I mean, I got to get assistant job.

So, like, if you want to be.

If you want to get into coaching, like, the GA spot's yours.

Like, you just got to talk to Uggs.

And I'm debating it, man.

I'm, like, fighting it.

I'm, like, you know, struggling, like, because I think a lot of people in.

A good friend of mine, Marty Smith, wrote a piece, athletes Die Twice.

And so you die when, you know you die when your sports over, and then you die your natural death.

So it's like, shoot, that's like, you know, the first death of, like, my career is over.

So I'm struggling with that for months.

I go over there, I'm, you know, hanging around the team, and I'm like, I kind of like this coaching stuff.

And then, you know, hugs goes, you know, if.

If you really want to get into coaching, like, it's yours if you want it.

He said, but I think you should get into coaching.

So that's.

That's how it happened.

That's parking cars and board.

So what'd you like about it initially?

What was it about coaching specifically?

Was there one aspect of it?

What piece of it did you like other than just being around the game?

I like the fact that I can impact.

It goes back to my degree and what I wanted to do, like sociology study people, like impacting youth.

And then I said, okay, how can I stay involved in the game of basketball but also impact youth?

And I was like, you put the two together.

That's coaching.

So that's what.

I just like seeing dudes get better.

So you come back and obviously you're working in your same program with some of the coaches that had coached you, and you're getting to go kind of behind the scenes sort of in a way that maybe you hadn't thought you would ever get the opportunity to do.

What.

What surprised you that maybe you didn't realize when you're playing in the program that the coaches spent a lot of time doing that you were like, man, I had no idea.

While I was playing with this going on behind the scenes, I didn't know.

How much managing they had to do of personalities, because all I know is myself, my personality, and the teammates I'm around.

It's like, okay, I didn't know you had to deal with so.

And so's mom.

I didn't know she was a pain in the ass.

I didn't know, like, you know, I didn't know all that.

When I'm watching coaches, they're on the computer playing around.

They're driving nice cars, they come to practice.

Then all the new gear.

They got shoes that I've never seen.

So I'm thinking, like, I should do that.

They don't do it.

They don't do anything.

But I'm like, you didn't see how much managing goes on.

It is amazing how, as players that.

And I know I can speak to this same thing.

Like, I had no idea what a coaching staff actually did.

I Mean, if you would have told me that.

Yeah, maybe the coaches have a meeting for 15 minutes to talk about practice.

And then, you know, I'm showing up for a 3 o' clock practice at 2:45.

They were probably rolling in about 2:30, you know, and then practice ends at 6 and I'm getting my shower in.

And as soon as the shower.

As soon as the shower rooms cleared out there, you know, they're out of there right after me going home and eating dinner with their family.

I had no idea what those guys were actually doing.

And so I always think it's interesting.

Again, unless.

Unless you grew up in a coaching family where you.

You've actually seen, like, the coach's life from the inside.

I think most players, they really have no idea what.

What a coaching staff does day to day.

They have no.

They have no clue.

Yeah, yeah.

And then even, you know, my dad, like, you know, my dad, he's a high school coach, and, you know, it's no shot of high school coach.

I think high school coaches are some of the smartest coaches in the world because they don't.

They don't have time to overanalyze everything like we do.

You know, they have other jobs.

But, like, my dad's like, you know, when I was at Radford, he saw what we did.

He was like, you know, y' all just ride around on the golf course all day.

What y' all doing?

Like, I'm like, well, we got to get players.

We're not a school district, so we have to bring them in here.

That's funny.

That's good stuff there.

Oh, man.

All right, walk me through your various stops as an assistant after you leave West Virginia.

Just kind of talk a little bit about maybe what you learned along the way at each one of the stops.

And obviously, you were at some different levels starting out at Northern Kentucky.

When you go from a school that's transitioning from D2 to D1, then you have some time at Wofford, you go to Florida.

Just to walk me through some of those.

Some of the lessons you learned as an assistant coach.

Yeah, my time in Northern Kentucky was really, really beneficial because, like I said, like, you were.

We were D2, and so D2.

We didn't have many recruiting roles, so I can.

I didn't go out on the road more than a Division 1 assistant, so I built a lot of contacts, you know, that year, you know, going to Chicago, Milwaukee, you know, Cincinnati, Ohio.

So that was good for me.

But the best thing for me was.

Cause I could still play.

Like, I mean, I couldn't play a professional level, but I could still get out there and practice and all that stuff.

And so, you know, my boss, Dave Bezel, who was really good for me, he just said, you know, you were a really good player.

The thing that you can't do is expect them to know or be able to do what you could do.

You have to teach.

And that's the best lesson I got, you know, and I needed that at the time where I was going from player to coach.

And so that's.

That's the best thing that I've learned.

Like, and still to this day, like, don't expect them to know what you know.

Like, even if you get a transfer that's transferred five times, they still, you know, you don't know what they've been taught.

Did you.

How long did it take you.

Were you frustrated early on by things that you kind of picked up or knew intuitively that you took for granted that guys would know?

Did you ever get frustrated with the fact of, man, how come this guy just doesn't get this?

Whether it's just from a mentality standpoint or something fundamentally or something from a.

A basketball IQ or feel for the game, how long did it take you before you kind of felt like, okay, I know.

Like, I know this.

I.

I kind of just had figured it out over the course of my playing career.

Now I got to be able to teach it.

At what point did you start to, I guess, put those frustrations aside and realize again, just what you said there, that I.

Not only do I have to know it, but I have to be able to teach it to my players, if that question makes any sense.

I think probably.

I think probably my second year in Northern Kentucky, I really understood that.

You know, when I was in Northern Kentucky, I had two dudes on team older than me.

So, you know, it was about, you know, building those relationships and asking questions.

I think as coaches, we don't ask enough questions.

And, you know, that's something I learned at an early age.

Like, if you're going to attack a situation, you got to know enough information about how to attack it.

Where'd you go early on to learn beyond just the coaching staff that you were working with?

Where were you going to try to learn more about the game?

How were you studying?

How were you trying to improve your craft early on?

At that time, I was going to a lot of clinics.

That's back when people.

You didn't have a lot of live streaming.

You didn't have A lot of access.

We have so much access to learn without leaving your desk.

Yep.

And you know, I first got into coaching, like you had to, you know, actually go to a clinic and all that stuff.

And I think that people should still do that because then you still, like in between sessions, you're still connecting with different people, you're still building relationships that you never know where to take you.

But I was, you know, I've always been the guy that listens to podcast clinics.

You know, I subscribe to pretty much everything.

That doesn't mean I'm going to read it or listen to it, but if I see it and it draws my attention, I'm going to.

Because I think sometimes you can be around the same people for such a long time that you have, you start developing like, you know, common interests or common thoughts.

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Tell me about the jump to Wofford.

It was good, you know, because Mike Young, you know, he's from Radford, from my hometown.

Small world.

His, his aunt was my elementary PE teacher.

His dad was my middle school principal.

His cousin was my high school principal.

My brother played for him.

So going to Lawford and I was only there for a year, we ended up winning the league that year.

It was the biggest thing to me that stood out was how he just navigates college campuses.

Makes people feel important, makes them feel a part of it.

Just, just a great coach and a great dude.

From there.

Louisiana Tech.

Yeah.

So it's funny, like, how I got on Louisiana Tech is.

Was that.

It was when I was in Northern Kentucky.

So I was in Northern Kentucky.

I go recruit the Hutch, the junior college national championship.

So I go out there, I don't even know what I'm looking at.

I'm trying to recruit Marshall Henderson.

He's already committed Ole Miss.

I don't know what's going on.

So Mike White, he's.

He's there.

Bill Armstrong is an assistant at Ole Miss.

So obviously Andy Kennedy, you know, Bob Huggins, they work together, that whole connection.

So I knew Bill Armstrong.

I didn't know.

I didn't know Mike White.

So Bill.

Bill hits me and he says, hey, let's go out to dinner.

Like, I was like, who's going?

He's like, me, you and Mike White.

I'm like, who's Mike White?

He's like, oh, he's Louisiana Tech.

So we go.

We eat dinner.

And a lot of times when I meet new people, I try to write a handwritten note to them, like, after I meet them, whatever.

And, you know, you fast forward that.

This was my first year in coaching in Northern Kentucky.

You fast forward that.

You know, he has a spot open on the staff.

Bill Armstrong pushes me.

My name keeps coming up.

Jordan Mincy's already on staff Louisiana Tech.

I've known Jordan since I played, and, you know, I ended up getting a job.

It's amazing how the connections work in the coaching world and how important it is to just continue to build genuine relationships over the course of time of your career and really get to know people, because what you find.

And this is something that whenever I talk to coaches on the podcast, that inevitably somebody has a story similar to this one that you're telling that they met someone somewhere at some point.

Maybe that person saw them coach, or maybe somebody that they know saw them coach.

And then when there's an opening, boom, all of a sudden those conversations are being had, and suddenly an opportunity that you didn't necessarily think was going to come your way all of a sudden comes your way.

And I think that it's a great lesson for young coaches, right, is to.

To make sure that when you're out there and you're talking to people, that, again, you're looking to build genuine relationships.

Not just be able to put your hand out and try to have somebody do something for you, but really trying to get to know someone and appreciate what they do.

And when you do that, again, it may not be that direct relationship.

It may be that, you know, one or two connections down the line where it ends up paying dividends for you at some point.

And then obviously, as you advance in your career now, it can go the other way.

Right now you have guys that you maybe met that you can recommend to different coaches and positions.

And.

And the coaching world, I think, is those relationships end up being.

Being really, really important.

When you think about being an assistant coach, if you had to give a young guy starting out in the college, in college coaching, one or two pieces of advice about what it would take to be a great assistant coach, what are the two things that you would define as being a great assistant?

Focus on making your suggestions.

But then if the head coach or the staff doesn't go with your suggestion, do not become better.

Just move on.

Do not shut down.

Just continue to say, okay, well, coach, what do you think about this?

What do you think about this?

A lot of times you see assistants become opinionated where if the coach doesn't do what they think, like, they, you know, mess up staff chemistry.

So, I mean, your job is to make suggestions.

Your job is not to make decisions.

That ability to be able to not take it personally.

Right.

Is something I think is a tremendous skill for an assistant coach.

And it's one of the things that.

And I'm sure we'll talk about this as we talk about the transition for you from going from an assistant to a head coach.

One of the things that I consistently hear from head coaches is that that transition from being a guy who makes suggestions to all of a sudden being the guy who has to make all those decisions and take input from the assistance.

Almost every head coach that I've ever talked to, especially guys who are young in their head coaching career, they all say that.

Man, I didn't even realize how many decisions a head coach has to make.

And not only related to decisions on the basketball floor, but just decisions off the basketball court that impact how the program is going to be run.

And I think sometimes as an assistant coach, sort of like we said, players don't always necessarily know what the coaching staff is doing behind the scenes.

I think a lot of times if you've only been an assistant coach, you don't necessarily have an appreciation for all of the decisions that a head coach has to make.

I don't know if the word pressure is the right word that, that you would use in that circumstance, but there's certainly a lot of.

And again, I don't think pressure is the right word, but I think there's certainly Just a lot of weight in terms of the decisions that a head coach has to make to be able to have a successful program that maybe assistant coaches who haven't been in that chair before necessarily understand.

So maybe you can speak to that.

Just when you took over as a head coach, just the difference between the decision making process versus the suggestion making process, I think it's, I think it's.

A whole bunch of different processes.

I think, okay, you're sifting through a whole bunch of suggestions like, because you have a whole staff who's coming at you with suggestions like non stop or ideas or to dos.

And then it becomes, okay, what decision do I make?

And usually a lot of times your decision is probably wrong, or you may be like, okay, I don't know about the decision.

So then it's more about your response.

So it's not the decision, it's the response to the decision.

And a lot of people don't understand that.

And it's like, it's one thing I didn't understand.

I understood it as assistance, but I didn't understand how many, how many conversations you have in a day with different people.

Because it's a whole nother layer.

Like when you become head coach, you're talking more to administrators, you're talking more to donors, you're talking more to alumni.

So your conversations as an assistant are mostly, you know, recruits, players, current players and your staff.

But as a head coach, you, you're piled into a whole nother group of different conversations that you have.

What's an example of a decision that you make?

And then how you react to it is how the situation turns out.

Can you give us an example of something that kind of fits that description that you just gave us?

You talking about like the response?

Yeah, yeah, the response.

So when you make a decision, then how you respond to the results of that decision?

Yes.

Like, you know, for example, you know, you suspend the kid or you, you know, so that's the decision.

The response is, okay, the response is, you lose by 30 or 40 at PIT, as opposed to 20.

But then you're like, okay, well, the response, the response is, hey, you know, now you go back to the player and you say, hey, well, this is what it is.

And at the end of the day it's like, were you going to lose that game anyways?

Probably, you know, probably.

But the response is, hey, did we do the right thing?

I think that doing the right thing, I go back to.

It's funny that when I hear you say that, I went back to an interview that I did, I think it was maybe my third podcast interview.

And it was a guy who was a local high school coach here in the Cleveland area, and he talked about sort of his framework for making decisions.

And it's something that has stuck with me ever since.

And whenever I hear coaches talk, whether it's on a podcast interview or just in general, I think back to what he said, and what he told me was, is that as a head coach, you got so many decisions to make that nobody else in the program understands exactly what all those decisions are.

Your assistant coaches don't necessarily get it, because, again, they're not having the same level of conversations with people as you are as the head coach.

And people on the outside certainly have no idea what those decisions are all about.

Parents, even players.

And what he said is he goes, ultimately, when you make a decision, not everybody's going to be happy with that decision.

You're going to probably make somebody unhappy, especially if you're doing the job well.

And what he said, he always tried to frame it with, was, when I go to bed at night, I want to be able to lay my head down on the pillow and know that I did what I thought was the right decision.

And that doesn't mean that he didn't take suggestions.

That didn't mean he didn't listen to other people.

But ultimately, he took all that stuff and he weighed it, and then he made a decision.

And then to your point about how you react to it, it's going back and laying down at night before you go to sleep and saying, did I make the decision that I felt was the best for my program, or did I let outside influences cloud my judgment or affect me?

And I really.

That really stuck with me in terms of what I think successful coaches have to be able to do.

Well, is you got to be able to take input.

But then ultimately, you have to make the decision that you think is best, because you, as the head coach, have to live with it.

And it's your name, ultimately, that's attached to that decision, regardless of where the input or the suggestion came from in the first place.

I don't know if that resonates with you or makes any sense.

It does.

Especially in recruiting.

You know, in recruiting, especially in Florida.

Okay.

You.

You know, the pressure is to recruit top 100 kids, top 50 kids.

Well, a lot of times, I mean, we recruited.

Think about this.

Say we recruited Shay, Gilgis, Alexander, not.

Not ranked, nothing.

And everybody in Canada, United States at the time was saying, why would you take that guy he ain't good enough to play Florida.

Well, he's committed to us for a whole year, and then everybody started seeing him, and then he decommitted and went to Kentucky.

So imagine, like, it's like you're clouded with noise of what other people think.

And as a head coach, like, you have to just do what you want to do, what you believe.

It's so true.

And I just think that, again, right, it's.

It's easy sometimes to allow those outside influences, or whether it's public opinion or just the opinion of lots of people, right, in terms of recruiting, you're sitting around, you're talking to coaches, you're watching guys, and it's.

It's sometimes if you have an outlier, right, somebody that you think is a lot better than maybe what other people do, or.

Or maybe there's a guy that everybody's consensus is super high, and you're like, no, I don't know about that guy.

For whatever the reason may be.

And I think ultimately, right, you got to stick to your convictions and do what you believe, because sometimes, Sometimes beauty's in the eye of the beholder.

And that's how you find.

That's how you find those.

Those hidden gems.

Tell me about getting the head coaching job for the first time at Radford.

Obviously, for you, it was an opportunity not only to become a head coach, but also to come back home and be right there in an area where you grow up.

So clearly a special opportunity for you.

So tell me how that chance crosses your desk.

What do you remember about the process of getting that first head coaching job at Radford?

Man, the process happened fast.

And it was, you know, that job was the last job field in that cycle, so it was in May.

And I just remember, you know, Mike Jones, you know, taking the USC Greensboro job, and then, you know, Robert Lindenberg, him and the president, Dr.

Kemphill, flying down, beating with me.

And then, you know, we got to eat.

And I say, okay, well, you know, when's the press conference?

They said, tomorrow.

And I was like, tomorrow.

So then I had to rush home, get a suit.

You know, I didn't have any red ties.

It was all orange and blue for Florida.

And I'm just sitting there and I'm like, I don't know what to say.

So I called my guy, Brett Ledbetter, I'm talking about, okay, I need to say this in press conference, all this.

And I remember calling my mom at dinner, and I called her, and it was around Mother's Day, and I said, hey, what are you doing tomorrow?

And she said, I'm not doing anything.

I said, well, I'll be.

I'm coming to the Dent Center.

Meet me at the Deadman Center.

She's like, oh, you in town?

And then she was like.

I was like, yeah, I'm in town.

She's like, how long you in town for?

I said, I don't know.

However long they'll have me.

And then I said, hey, I just became the head coach at Radford University.

I said, happy Mother's Day.

And she just broke down and was excited.

That's awesome.

That is very.

That's very, very, very cool.

So it's funny that when I was growing up, there was a guy, facilities guy at Radford, and me and my brother used to sneak in and, you know, play pickup with the college students and all that stuff.

So I get the job and I see the facilities guy, the one that used to kick me and my brother out, and I was like.

I told Shane, I said, hey, look, he's still here.

So I took a selfie with him.

I say, up now.

That's.

That's awesome.

When you took over the program, they had been losing and it was a rebuilding situation.

Tell me a little bit about your philosophy when it came to that rebuild, what it looked like, what were some of the most important things that you felt like you needed to do right away to be able to start to turn the tide, to get the program going in the direction that you wanted to go?

So my philosophy was different.

And this is part of coaching, like my whole plan, you know, everybody's got a packet, oh, this is how I'm going to play with.

I'm a head coach.

My whole plan of how I wanted to play ended up being totally different than that packet I put together.

So I got the job in May.

It was the last job filled.

The portal was dried up.

I did a meeting with.

I did an individual meeting with all the guys and then the next day they went home for a summer.

Didn't come back to the end of June.

And I'm like, I don't even know who these guys are.

So I didn't, I didn't.

I added some new guys.

You couldn't really bring them in.

The COVID was still going on, so it's like, whatever.

So you couldn't visit them.

So I was just like guessing.

So, you know, we brought that team in then that next year.

I'm just talking, I'm like, hey, this, this is not how I want to do things.

And I'm having a conversation with Billy Donovan.

I'm talking to him like, hey, you know, if he was back in college, like, what would be your emphasis?

Like, with this transfer portal, nil.

All this stuff, like, what would be.

He said, just find the toughest guys you can find.

Just find, like, evaluate toughness.

Like, you know, the rules are.

The rules are different.

You can't.

You're not gonna have a guy for four years.

Basically have him for seven months.

The guys are 25, 26 years old.

You can't practice with them for four hours.

Just find the toughest guys you can find.

And so that's what we've done.

What does toughness look like for you?

How do you define it and how do you look for it when you're recruiting players?

I think the ability to move on to the next play, whether it's good or bad.

I think being consistently good every day, not being great, I think that's a big thing.

Positive energy, like, off the court, I didn't like, like, my year one.

I didn't like the energy that our guys, like, walked around with on campus and all that stuff.

Like, I think that's toughness.

I think, like, walking around, speaking to people, holding the door open, like, that's.

So that.

That's kind of what it looks like for me.

How do you get to the bottom of that when you're recruiting a kid, when you're watching them play, whether it's high school, aau, when you're interviewing people around them, when you're talking to the kid, what are the sign.

What are the signs?

What are the things that you're looking for that help you to identify, hey, this kid is going to have the kind of toughness that I'm describing.

A lot of times you can't see it on film.

And that's the problem.

That's what you're evaluating in the portal.

So it's got to be conversations.

And so what I've done over the years is I have a list of, like, questions that they've asked in the NBA combine on the.

You know, the speed date and all that stuff, the interview process.

And so we ask those questions, and so those questions are more in depth.

They tell the story.

And, you know, when you call another coach, they always tell you all the good.

I said, give me.

Give me the bad.

I want to know the bad.

Like, I can figure out the good.

Give me the bad.

I can see the good on film.

Hey, I need the bad.

So we.

I mean, then we make A decision based off that.

But we also, we also study numbers a lot.

You know, for us, we play with too big.

So big thing for us is a big.

The average of 5 points per game for a team that like, is different than us, you know, it may be different.

So if we find a kid that's top 30 in the country in offense, rebound, and that's a big thing for us, we're going to go get them.

So we study numbers, not points, not just points per game, but like other individual numbers.

And we try to piece it together.

And you're looking at a kid and you start trying to think about how they fit into the way that you want to play.

That kind of gets to what you were just talking about, right?

That you might have a kid that has a particular skill that can fit into what you guys want to do schematically, offensively and defensively.

How important is it for you to have conversations with your guys, both in the process of recruiting them, but also once they're on campus?

Because what I always think is interesting is for so long, right, Guys who end up playing college basketball, there's a good chance that with their high school, they were the best or one of the two or three best, depending on what kind of high school program they're playing in, players.

And yet when they get to the college level, right, there's very few guys that just get the ball handed to them and say, hey man, go ahead and do your thing.

And this show is all about you and you can kind of do what you want.

It's more, right, you got to figure out how guys can fit into the system.

And maybe a kid who's a star in high school or is star on an area you team now, all of a sudden they got to come into a program and they got to be able to.

To play a role.

They may not be the man on a particular team.

So how do you evaluate that?

How do you look at, well, hey, this kid has this particular skill, or this kid is the best player on the team, but how are they going to fit into what we're trying to do?

How do you think about that in terms of a kid transitioning from maybe being a star player at the high school level to being a player that can contribute and utilize their skills, but maybe do it in a different way as more of a role player in a college setting?

If that makes.

Again, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think first of all, you evaluate competitiveness and toughness.

So once that checks off, then you try to manage expectations and Kind of the way we do it is, you know, during the summertime, I'll ask guys individually, hey, how many points you gonna give us?

And then we'll tally them up.

And, you know, we usually equaled up, like, €1 is equal to 197.

So I went in there first team meeting, and I like, you know, messing with first team meetings.

I said, hey, listen, after this year, I'm going to retire.

I'm going to travel the world.

I'm going to speak to different countries about how we scored 197 points per game.

And then looking crazy like, what are you talking about?

I'm like, well, I mean, based on Yalls numbers, that's how many we're going to average this year.

So after this year, I'm done.

So it's like just.

It's being real with them.

It's like getting ahead of the problems before they become problems.

And it's not that I don't want them to think they're gonna score that, but what happens?

How do you act when you don't Reaction, Right.

It's what you were talking about before.

Same thing.

You as a coach, right?

You have to be able to react.

How do you react to the situation being different than what you thought it was?

Exactly.

How do you continue to build the competitiveness that you're looking for in a player that you bring into the program?

Obviously, that piece of it is clearly important to you.

How do you build a competitive practice environment?

What does that look like for you in terms of your drills, in terms of the way you structure practice?

What are some things you try to do to build the competitiveness within your team?

Well, first of all, we travel with a rebound to bubble.

His name's Dennis, named after Dennis Rodman.

There's one player on the team that's responsible for him, and we don't leave until Dennis is on the bus.

We're playing because rebounder travels.

So I think you got to do creative stuff to, like, really get these dudes to buy in to what you're trying to, you know, what you're emphasizing.

I think another thing is too.

We do a lot of drills where we have a scoring system that doesn't involve scoring.

So, you know, we'll put play five and five with the bubble up, put Dennis in there.

And you only score points for paint touches, offense, rebounds on offense, on defense, you score off defense, rebounds and deflections.

So you just try to do creative stuff to make them think, okay, there's way more to the game of basketball.

Than scoring.

So then they get competitive in different ways.

I think that's really important.

Just saying competitive in different ways, right?

Because I guess one of the things that when you think about competitiveness, if someone first just says it to you, it's a competitor wants to win, right?

And so typically when we think of winning, right, it means you got to score more than the other team.

And scoring more means I got to make more baskets.

And so often players translate to is, I just got to outscore any person that that's across from me.

And you don't think about all those little things that go into winning and losing a game.

There's obviously much more.

Clearly, putting the ball in the basket is an important part of winning games.

But there's so many other little things that you can incorporate and make sure that if your team is doing those little things, it just gives you that small edge.

And if you can train that and if you can hone that competitiveness in all those areas every single day, going to end up with a team that's competitive not just as a team that loves to score and score 197 points, but a team that's going to compete on the boards, a team that's going to compete defensively, a team that's going to do all those little things that it takes to be able to outscore your opponent when it comes time for games.

When you're planning a practice, do you like to have the same practice structure every day?

In other words, are you kind of going, let's say offense, special situations, defense, defense first every day, shooting first, player development, just do you have a set rhythm to your practices or do you kind of like to go with whatever your team needs on a given day?

You kind of plan it around that.

No, I want complete chaos.

I don't want them thinking, okay, well, you know, the first two drills are these peer pressure drills.

And you know, that's opportunity for me to get loose.

I may do that for two days out of the week, but then the third day it may be okay, we're getting right to it.

And so now guys aren't sitting around in the locker room or pre practice just kind of, you know, messing around.

So I like to, I don't like.

I came up with my philosophy as a coach of what I didn't like as a player.

So anything I didn't like as a player, I don't do.

And so I don't like the same drills every day.

I don't like not competing.

You know, I hate running on the Track.

I hate running on the track, like, so I don't do that.

And so our practices are complete chaos.

You never know what's going to happen, I think, in the game.

Like, you know, some people, you know, when I was a raffle, you had everybody in the gym.

You know, indoor track, volleyball, dance, everybody's in the gym.

And people said, do you mind if we practice while you practice?

No, I mean, when we play, there's gonna be over here.

So, like, I want complete chaos.

Makes sense, right?

I mean, I think a lot of times we think about having a practice setting where it's quiet, we can hear, everybody can do those things.

And there's times where obviously it's important for you to be able to have a controlled environment where guys can hear what's being said and can dial in and focus.

But yet, to your point, right, the chaos is how you're going to play the games.

When there's a crowd and there's people doing whatever and there's.

There's more.

There's more pressure, there's more things going on, there's more things that are being thrown at you, and you got to be able to deal with them.

So I can see where having that environment where it's chaotic as a result of practice and just keeping guys on their toes, right, Instead of them knowing, like, okay, it kind of becomes almost that mindless routine of, all right, I know we're going to start out with these two drills, and we're going to start out with defensive shell, and then we're going to go to this and that, and.

And it kind of becomes this monotony.

Whereas if you're throwing something different at them every day, keeps them on their toes, keeps their mind fresh and keeps them ready to attack and ready to go because they.

They just never know what's.

What's going to happen.

So I think that when I hear you say that, and I think about to your point of trying to do things as a coach that you would have liked to do as a player, and then avoiding the things that as a player, you were like, oh, I can't believe we got to do this.

Trying to avoid those things, right?

Because especially in today's world, right, it's different, I think, than the world that you played in or the world that I played in, where maybe there was a little bit of we could take the my, my way or the highway type of coaching.

I think today players much more want to know the why behind what you're doing.

And.

And so I think that when you start talking about being able to have practices that are engaging for players, that the players want to be a part of, that they want to compete.

If you can do that as a coach, you're.

Man, you're on your way to success because you're going to get the most out of your players, which ultimately is what you're trying to do is figure out what buttons do I need to push, what situations do I need to put my players in, do I need to put my team in to be able to have the most possible success that we can?

And I think that requires what you said, which is you got to think about how do I inject chaos into it, to be able to.

To get them to react and be at their best when everything's kind of going chaotic around them.

Yeah.

The opportunity at La Salle, what attracted you to it?

Obviously, a historic program taking over for Coach Dunphy.

What.

What made it attractive and how did you.

What was the process like?

The thing that made me attracted to it is because everybody said it's hard.

Hard job, Hard job.

Okay.

I enjoy that.

You know, I mean, Raffer was a hard job.

So that's what attracted me to it.

And not only that, it was, you know, the athletic director, Oshpori, you know, president Dan Allen, like, those guys are really, really aggressive, and I think they fit my personality of what we want to do here.

So just the conversations, initial conversation with them was like, okay, there's a.

There's alignment there, you know, brand new arena, you know, in a basketball city, you know, following, you know, hall of Famer Dunf.

You know, we did that in Florida chasing the ghost of Billy Donovan.

You know, it's just exciting.

It's exciting for me.

Like, you know, I love.

I've always been a situation where I've been an underdog.

So, you know, I love the situation.

Obviously, a ton of history there with the Big five and the city of Philadelphia and how much of you dove into sort of the history of.

Of all the different rivalries within the city and, and just the special opportunity that you have to recruit the city of Philadelphia and to compete in that kind of environment with so many other really good programs.

What's that been like so far?

It's been great.

I mean, you know, the city of Philadelphia has been great.

You know, I have a lot of contacts here from years of recruiting, so, you know, a lot of people have been supportive of me and I'm just.

I'm just excited.

Like, I'm.

I'm ready to start practicing, ready to start Playing the.

The big thing about it's funny being in a city because, you know, the last city I was actually in was when I was in Northern Kentucky at Cincinnati.

And so I'm used to like having to get in the car, driving three hours to a high school game, driving back the same night, you know, being a raffer, driving four hours to Richmond, coming back the same night, or staying over, watching, you know, stopping the Fork Union.

And you know, the beauty of it is like, obviously you're going to recruit more than Philadelphia, but okay, we're in the middle season.

You can really, you know, put your roots into the area.

And so that's refreshing, especially, you know, a city with the basketball history ass.

Absolutely.

Talk to me about the conversations that you had with your returning guys when you come in as a new guy.

Just like you experienced that as a player back at West Virginia when you come in to lasalle, you got a roster of guys that are coming back that you've got to be able to have a conversation with them, figure out where you go, where they are in their career, how they fit into what your plans look like, what, how'd you go about that?

What were those conversations like for you?

Honestly, it's different.

Like when I was at Radford and I got the job, you had a team meeting because like the transfer portal wasn't what it is now and it was the last job field.

So then I get this job and most of the dudes are already in the portal, you know, so like Kellen Perry got the job last year, Arkansas, there is no team, so I brought one back.

So it's like, all right, you just starting all over, but I just look like the way I've looked at it anyways over the last probably three years, everybody's on one year deal anyways.

Has that been an easy adaptation for you in terms of compared to where you started, where guys.

It was more likely that maybe you were going to have guys that were going to be able to stick around for four years.

Now, as you said, because of the portal, because of nil, because of just the landscape of the way things are, it's a much more short term relationship.

So how has that impacted the way that.

And I go back to what you've said a couple times, right, thinking back to majoring in sociology, that you want to be able to have an impact on young people.

And I know that I've had coaches kind of on both sides of this debate in terms of the portal and sort of the, the not necessarily always having the ability to have a kid for.

For four years.

And some guys are like, yeah, it feels like I can't have the same impact.

And other guys are like, I just try to have the biggest impact that I can in the year or the two or whatever, however many years it is that we're together.

How have you kind of approached that in terms of the impact that you can have on a player as a coach and not necessarily on the floor in terms of their basketball, but just in terms of their life and the relationship that you build with them?

I look at it like this.

I'm impacting more kids now because if you have a kid for four years, it's not as many.

If you have nine new kids every year, you impact them more positively.

So what has made me do is spend more time with them while they're on campus as opposed to, you know, so.

So gonna be.

He's gonna be there next year.

So it's made me spend more time with them.

And I appreciate that.

That makes sense.

I mean, I think that the more you can pour into a kid and the more you can find out what makes them tick and find out that earlier, then the easier it is for you then to reach them and to have an impact on them both on and off the floor.

I think that's.

That's really important.

When you look at where you're at right now, having only been on the job for a short period of time, what do you think over the next year or two are the biggest keys to having success in your first year?

And I'll leave it to you to define what success looks like.

But what are you looking to be able to do here in this first year that you can look back on a year from now, next May, and say, hey, we had a successful season.

I think the biggest thing is.

You.

Know, we have, what, 13 new guys.

13 new guys.

Last year, had 11.

Just building the team chemistry as best we can.

The thing is, like, my first goal was to win the big Five.

I know how important it is to the people in the city of Philadelphia.

Doing that in year one would be huge.

Mano got a tough draw, but I'm excited about it.

I don't know, I just think, like, we.

We have natural.

We have certain goals that we do that equal success.

One of them.

One of them is offense rebounding.

One of them is free throw rate.

And so usually when we do those two things, like, we're usually successful to.

Be able to do that, obviously, you have to go through and work through that in Practice, you have to emphasize it so often that you get what you.

What you emphasize and try to get your players to buy into those things are going to allow you to have that kind of success.

And sounds like that's the type of foundation that you're trying to build.

What does the summer program look like for you guys?

How are you laying that out and designing it to sort of get a jump start on, you know, when the guys get back to campus on the fall?

Obviously they're going to be around in the summertime.

But what do you guys do?

What's the summertime routine look like?

We have a few guys here right now.

The whole team get here around June 14th.

But the summertime for me is all skill development and all teaching them how to play together.

Because you know how it is when you get to the season, once plays break down, because everybody scouts, everybody's got video.

You don't have to drive for video exchange anymore.

It's synergy.

How do you.

What do you do when a play breaks down?

Do you know how to play with each other?

So the whole summer, I don't put any offense in.

I'll do defense, but I don't put any offense in.

I just put our basic motion concepts and just teach them reads and how to play with each other, like moving off the ball, all that stuff.

So we'll do that the whole summer because I think that's what the game comes down to.

What do you do when the play breaks down?

So that's.

That's what we've done the last two years.

I think when you think about college, college practices way more than the NBA.

The NBA, you know, they just play way more in college.

Like, there has to be a balance.

I don't think we play enough in college basketball to understand.

Especially when you have a whole bunch of new guys to understand each other.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I mean, I think, right.

It goes back to the very beginning of our conversation when you think about pickup basketball, right?

You.

You eventually.

You keep showing.

You keep showing up at the park with the same guys night after night after night, and eventually you learn they're like, hey, man, this dude is a guy I want on my team.

And then like I said earlier, here's a guy that I never want to play with him.

If he asked me to be on his team, yeah, I might.

I might just sit another one so I can.

So I could be on a.

You know, be on somebody else's team.

And I do think that that, that ability to feel and understand the game and how to play with other guys is so, so important.

And to your point here, you have to develop that relatively quickly because again, your team is turning over far more frequently than it was 10 years ago, where you might be able to say, okay, man, I got a really good freshman class here, and yeah, we're going to take our lumps when we're young, but, man, by the time these guys are juniors and they played together for two, three years, things are really going to get rolling.

And now you can't even have that internal conversation with yourself anymore because the odds of that happening are pretty slim.

And so I think to what you're saying, there is, you've got to be able to build that team chemistry.

You got to be able to build that feel for playing together.

How do you do that?

You got to do it through your practices, and you got to be able to get guys together so that they can get that feel for one another.

All right, I got one final two part question for you.

Part one.

When you think ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every day as a head college basketball coach, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

I think the biggest challenge is always going to be.

I think your biggest challenge is always going to be your resources.

But there's.

There's different type of resources.

And when I say resources, obviously we're in the nil's, you know, climate.

And so your resources is going to be money, but some of your resources could be a benefit to you, can be people.

So I think resources could be a big problem.

But the problem is, I mean, I mean, the beauty of it is, is like, evaluation is still a big part of this.

You can pay the wrong players, people are still paying the wrong guys.

You know, the beauty of it and what I look forward to every day is just hanging out with the guys.

Like, not even on the court.

Everybody talks about, oh, on the court.

Like, I just like hanging out with them in office, like, just talking, especially a group of new guys that I'm, you know, getting to know.

And then I find the beauty.

And I just had graduation with our guys and all the guys.

And I went back, saw the guys that were after graduation, and then when they tell me, coach, I just wish I came here to start.

You know, that's big for me when I hear that.

I wish I came here for a start.

You know, I get a little emotional with him, but I say, well, you came here for start.

You would have transferred on me too, so love you.

That's awesome.

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

How can people connect with you?

Find out more about your program.

Share, email, website, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

I'm on.

I'm on Instagram, Twitter, hit me up, DM me.

I don't even know my handles, but just type in Darius Nichols and there's no you in it.

It's Darius.

So we'll get all of it in the show notes.

We'll figure.

We'll figure it out and put it out there for everybody.

Darius, 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.

Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast, presented by Head Start Basketball.

Sam.