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We need a foundation of what's important to us.

Something that we can constantly reference, that we can break on in huddles, that we can just constantly point at and recruit to and say, this is what's important to us.

Is it the answers to everything?

No.

But if you do these things at a high level, you're probably going to be successful.

So our motto is Habits.

The line we use all the time is first you make your habits, then your habits make you Sean Rossi is.

The Men's Basketball Associate Head Coach at Montclair State University where he has been on Head Coach Justin pot staff for six seasons, helping guide the Redhawks to a.628 overall winning percentage during their tenure together.

Rossi previously served as an assistant at Moravian where he helped guide the Greyhounds to two 20 win seasons and back to back landmark conference championships in 2018 and 2019.

Prior to Moravian, Rossi was the graduate assistant Men's basketball coach at Misericordia University before joining the staff there.

Rossi spent the 2014-15 season as the head men's basketball coach at the United States Military Academy Preparatory School where he led the team to a 25 record in his first coaching job, Rossi spent one season as the assistant men's basketball coach at Keystone College.

As a player, Rossi was a four year starter at Ithaca College where he led the nation in assists his first three seasons and is the NCAA Division 3 all time leader with 957 assists.

Rossi finished his career with 1,147 points and was a D3Hoops.com second team All American honoree as a senior.

A team captain for both his junior and senior seasons, Rossi led the Bombers to 75 wins in his career and two Empire 8 Conference titles in 2011 and 2013 while leading the team to the Sweet 16 of the 2013 NCAA Tournament.

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Make sure you're ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Sean Rossi, Men's Basketball Associate Head Coach at Montclair State University.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

It's Mike Clenzing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Sean Rossi, the Men's Basketball Associate Head Coach at Montclair State University.

Sean, welcome to the Hoop Headspot.

What's going on?

Mike, Thanks a lot for having me.

I appreciate it.

Absolutely excited to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into all the things that you've been able to do throughout your basketball life.

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?

What do you remember about some of those early days with the game?

Yeah, I'm sure just like a lot of people's experiences is, you know, it.

Basketball was in my life for as long as I can remember growing up in New Jersey.

My dad was a was a high school basketball coach at North Warren in Blairstown, New Jersey.

So again, dating back for as long as I can remember, I I grew up in the gym, running around in his at his practices or at his games, having his team come over to the house for a cookout, having his staff over and seeing them watch film till the sun came up.

It was just Basketball was obviously in my life for again as long as I could remember.

And then when I got to middle school, my dad coached me all three years from sixth to eighth grade, which was a really cool experience.

And then as I got into high school, my biggest role model became my sister.

She was a senior when I was a freshman and she was a really high level player.

Scored Over a thousand points in high school.

She ended up playing Division 2 on a full scholarship at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, on a really good team.

She was a starting point guard.

They were in the top 25.

So kind of trying to follow in her.

Her footsteps, using her as motivation.

I mean, she.

She also really fired up my.

My love for the game and then was lucky enough to continue on to.

To play in college.

But I would say the game was definitely introduced at a young age because of my dad and.

And him and my sister continue to.

To, you know, spread my love for the game throughout when I got older.

All right, let's take each one of those people sort of as a separate entity.

When you think about what influence your dad had on you, first maybe as a player, and then we can dive into it as a coach.

But just when you think about what the game is, what it means to you, how you approach it, what of that that's in you.

Did you take from your dad?

Yeah.

So I think that growing up, when you're really young, you don't have an idea of what's going on.

You just see a lot of big guys over your house, and you're watching your dad scream like a lunatic at practice, and, you know, you're.

You're kind of taking it all in, and you.

You realize, like, how family oriented the game actually is.

So, you know, growing up, I just.

The family atmosphere part of it, you know, my dad bringing me to practice, those guys coming over, you know, his players and his coaches, and treating me like family.

It just felt natural, and it was a really, really cool experience.

And I think, you know, as I continue to grow and get older and my dad kind of shifted towards, you know, still obviously being a parent, but now, like, kind of coaching me a little bit.

As I was.

As I was getting older, I.

I learned a lot from him.

I mean, he's definitely.

He shaped me as a player, shaped me as a coach.

And I think when I think back on what he taught me, I think that there's two things that stand out.

The first thing is how.

How hard he taught me how to play and how competitive to be.

And that goes from when I was in middle school all the way into college.

And I actually, you know, I have a funny story.

Like, I was playing in college.

This is just a good example of, like, how he demanded me to play hard at all.

But I was playing in college.

And it was my freshman year at Ithaca College, and we played Friday Saturdays.

So Friday night we had a home game.

And I played pretty well.

I think I had a double double in points and assists.

And we won the game.

And I was feeling pretty good about myself.

And I got in the car with my parents and we pull out of the parking lot where the gym is, and I'm feeling good about myself.

And all of a sudden he decides to pull the car into the next parking lot, shuts the car off, and he turns back at me and he says, if I ever see you jog back on defense ever again, or if I ever don't think you're playing as hard as you can play, I'm pulling your ass out of school that day.

And I'm sitting there like, oh, my God.

And my mom yelling at him, it's all right.

And he's yelling, it's not all right.

He's got our last name, he's representing us.

And I was just like, you know, I was taken back, obviously, but he was right.

That next, that next day we played at one o' clock, I'm telling you, I was the first person back on defense every single possession.

I was the best transition defender for a game in the country.

But it was just like, that's how it was.

Like, if you're going to do something, if you're going to play basketball or whatever you're going to do, compete as hard as you can and play as hard as you can, that's all you need to worry about.

So just bringing that fire to me, he had that as a coach and he demanded that out of his players.

And I think it, it obviously carried over into my playing career and my, and my coaching career then kind of to tie into his demand for, for effort was, it was, you know, you want to think maybe it goes hand in hand, but it does.

But he just, he didn't want me to have any fear of failure.

He just was like, I, I would be more upset with you if you decided to pass up the last shot.

If you're open, then take it and miss it.

You know, I want you to, I want you to be confident to take the last shot of the game, go to the free throw line late in the game and don't have any fear of missing it.

You know, in reality, it's a game, you're going to come home, you still have a loving family who loves you.

Like it's not a big deal, but I don't want you to be scared of missing the shot.

So those two things, you know, I try to instill into my players and, you know, I think the second One you would probably, you probably can relate to because, I mean, as someone who made nine threes at Kent State in the game, you obviously didn't have any fear of, you know, what shots you were taking.

You're letting them go, but that's how the game should be played.

I mean, it's a game of mistakes and you're going to miss shots, you're going to make shots, you're going to turn it over.

Just play as hard as you can and play fearless.

And that stuck with me as a player, but then obviously has stuck with me as a coach too.

Yeah, that's.

I think the ability to play confidently as a player to me is always really, really important.

And I think that's something that when you look at.

And this kind of goes to a, sort of in a different direction, but I think this is a good time to, to maybe talk about this.

As a coach, how do you instill that in your players where you don't have guys looking over their shoulder worried about, hey, am I going to make a mistake?

Because we've all been in situations either as players, as parents, as coaches, watching certain kids or watching certain players that they come in the game and every time they are doing something, they're always looking over their shoulder like, is that buzzer going to come for me if I don't make that mistake?

And obviously, different players we know have different, the length of their leash is different depending upon sort of where they are in the hierarchy of the team.

Your ninth man doesn't get the same, doesn't get the same freedom to take the same kind of shots.

Maybe your number one player does.

But as a coach, how do you try to instill that confidence that you're talking about, that fearlessness?

How do you give that to every player, maybe even a kid who is only going to get eight to 10 minutes in a game or six to eight minutes in a game.

How do you instill that in them?

Yeah, to your point, it's probably easier to instill it in the guys that are getting the bulk of the shots versus the guys that are coming in off the bench and maybe only getting one or two clean looks a game.

But yeah, I mean, and that's something that probably is habitual from high school and middle school.

Like, I just feel like a lot of times coaches want to control things and they're so controlling of the shot selection and stuff like that, which I totally understand.

But you do notice that, like when guys come from high school to Montclair State, they do, they do tend to look over their shoulder when they, when they maybe take a bad shot.

They shouldn't over miss a shot.

So it takes time obviously to kind of break that habit of just playing freely and worrying about that, that next shot mentality.

And I think, I think it just happens naturally through their career.

You know, it's a day by day thing.

You're not going to break those habits that, that early.

But we do a lot of times stress the fact that, you know, because we, we press for, for 40 minutes as well.

So coach Potts, our head coach, does the pressure and defense and I do the offense.

So he says it all the time.

He's like, if I'm going to ask you guys to pick up 94ft for 40 minutes, I got to be okay with you guys taking a couple of bad shots here or there like that.

The offense is your time to have fun.

But when it comes down to defense, like, I need you guys to pick up and I need you to play as hard as you can.

I need you to fly around.

So it's constantly being communicated to them.

We, we do a ton of playing in practice where it's, we won't stop it, you know, so a lot of times, you know, guys will do one or two transition drills where, you know, you stop it after the second, the second down and back or whatever the case may be.

We, we tend to try to just let it go and we decide when we're going to stop it so that it kind of like build the habit of them just moving on to the next play.

So, you know, you get scored on, get out quick and go.

If you get a stop, let's inbound it, let's outlet it quick and go dead ball.

Let's focus on the next play.

Like, don't worry about what's going to happen because, or what just happened.

Because in a game, and we say this all the time, if there's 100 possessions, there's, there's mistakes in probably 80 to 90 of those possessions.

And like, the average person watching might not know what's going on, but there is a mistake every single play.

So if we just sit there and start getting worked up about all the mistakes that are happening there, you cannot survive in the game of basketball.

So the biggest thing is like we try to tell our guys, if you take a bad shot, don't look over your shoulder.

What we will do is we'll correct it the next day during film.

We'll watch the film or we'll watch the film after practice and you'll kind of learn that way.

I mean, at the college level, everybody can play.

Everybody's smart, they're aware of what's a good shot versus a bad shot.

It's just sometimes the moment can get to them and they force something.

But we can fix that through film study so that the more repetition you get, the more experience you get.

You're going to know in live play whether it's a good look or a bad look.

But, you know, and I think it's, it's, it's also like not pulling guys out of the game after they miss a shot or turn it over.

Like, we don't, we don't sub off that.

We sub off energy, off effort.

So if we don't think you're playing hard enough, we'll take you out.

But we will never sub a guy out for missing a shot or turning the ball over.

And, you know, we had, we had games this year where our starting center, he actually led the country and made threes.

He made 180 threes and he had a game where he was 0 of 9.

And we were.

Every time I were drawing a play up for him because he just needs to see one go in.

So.

And he, it was the first time this happened.

But he actually thanked us after the game.

Like I, you know, I appreciate you drawing a playup for me after I just missed nine in a row, you know, and it's like, dude, we don't care.

I mean, it is, sometimes it doesn't go in.

It is what it is.

So just, just keep playing confidently, keep shoeing.

Eventually it's going to go in.

You're not going to miss every shot for the rest of your life.

And once you see one go in, you might rattle off nine or ten in a row and then you're not even going to remember what, what just happened, you know, in your drought.

So, yeah, I think it's just a day to day by the day, everyday thing, just trying, trying to instill that mentality in them to, to play freely and, and, you know, just, just play as hard as they can and don't worry about the results.

Of that, about what you said in terms of practicing and not stopping it on every whistle and at every single mistake and just kind of letting it go through.

And that gives the idea of guys that, hey, I got to play through this mistake.

I know I made an error here.

I know I maybe had something that I didn't see.

A decision was wrong.

And instead of sitting there and dwelling on it every time the players Know, man, I made a mistake.

I'm just looking over my shoulder to see the whistle, you know, to listen for that whistle, to be able to allow them that opportunity to continue to play through, through it.

And then whether you talk about it the next day in film, whether you talk about it when there is a stoppage or whether a guy comes out and then somebody can grab him and say, hey, remember, back on this, whatever, but it gets him into that mentality.

And I think that one of the things that I learned very, very early on as a coach, and I've told this story a couple times on the podcast, but my very first practice as a coach, I was coaching a JV team.

And my very first practice, stumps.

I have, whatever, 12 kids.

I've never run a practice before myself in my life.

So it's just me and 12 kids.

I remember I did the very first drill that we had that I put together for the kids and I watched it for like five minutes.

And Sean, I kid you not, I was like, oh my God.

Like, I, they.

There's like 500 things that they just did wrong.

How am I possibly ever gonna fix all this stuff?

I just remember in my head, just sitting there, like, almost like it was like getting hit in the head with a two by four of like all these mistakes.

I'm like, how, like, if I fix everything, I'm going to be blowing like literally the whistle is going to be.

I might as well just be constantly blowing it the entire time and never stop.

And it took me a long time that first year of coaching to sort of begin to figure out what's important enough that I have to change, what's important enough that I have to blow the whistle.

What do I need to focus on on this day and sort of be able to ignore on this day?

And I think that as coaches, that ability to instill confidence and to.

And to make players play in such a way that they're not afraid to make mistakes and yet still coach them right and help them to get better and help them to improve.

It's a fine line.

And I think that's where like science is, or coaching is more of a, more of an art in that respect than a science where I, you know, what, what works for you or works for me may not work for us vice versa.

And you just have to get a feel for what an individual player, what a team needs in terms of being able to give them what you, what you need to give them as a coach, and yet still giving them the freedom to, to be able to play, because ultimately, when they're out on the floor, you know, we're just standing on the sidelines, you know.

Yeah.

They ultimately have the control over it.

So it's just.

I think it's something that you learn over time as.

As a coach, young coaches.

I know that I.

I struggle with that, is trying to.

How do I.

How do I fix everything when I'm really fixing nothing, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, it absolutely does.

And that you're.

You're right.

It's.

It is a science because there's so many moving pieces to it.

I mean, everybody, you know, reacts and responds to coaching differently.

So you got to know how to teach certain guys certain ways, and you got to figure out, well, is that mistake?

Is.

Is that worth stopping it for?

Can we move past that and revisit that another time?

You know, if they made a mistake, how did they fix it?

So can we move past it because they fixed it.

You know, I.

It is.

It's a science.

It's really difficult.

And to your point, I mean, in a game, you can't blow the whistle and stop and start coaching them.

So let them figure it out in practice and let them work through their mistakes, see how they fix it, and then correct it after the fact.

And the more you do that and the more experience they get, then, yeah, they're going to get in a game and they're going to make a mistake and they're going to be able to fix it.

They've been there before.

So.

I totally agree with you.

It's a science.

It's really hard.

I was the same way as a young coach.

I mean, I was probably trying to coach every little detail, and you're.

You're all of a sudden missing the fundamentals that are going to actually make you win games, because you're so focused on these little details that you might not get in November, December, January, but by the time you get to February, you're.

You're probably going to figure that out and make a little run at it, so.

Totally agree with you.

Absolutely.

All right, let's work back to.

We talked a little bit about your dad's influence.

Tell me about your sister's influence.

When you think about how she influenced you, both as a player and now as a coach, what are some things that you took away from your experience with her?

Yeah, she was a lot of fun to watch.

Again, she probably laid the foundation in terms of, like, the effort part.

She.

She played really, really hard.

She was fearless.

She was a huge competitor.

She worked really hard.

My dad luckily coached her in high school as the assistant, so he got a, he had a key to the gym, so we got access to the gym whenever we wanted.

And watching her work out and working out with her was pretty incredible.

Like, she, she didn't, she moved in a way that like every rep was, was full speed and, and it was something that I just tried to mimic and mirror and she, she was like tough on me too.

I mean, we would, when I was in eighth grade, ninth grade, she was in high school, I would work out with her and, and she would, we would play one on one and stuff like that and she would kill me.

Like she would, she, she put me on, she, she hit me one time with an elbow playing one on one with my dad there and I was bleeding out of my nose everywhere.

She didn't care.

Like she was tough.

And I just, I don't know, I, I, I watched that toughness.

I watched her daily approach to working at it.

And I watched her in game the way that, you know, she controlled the offense, controlled the team, was a leader and she was just, she was just a fun player to watch.

And I tried to just be like her as much as I could and unfortunately, I was not as good as her.

I mean she was, she was a really high level player.

But she taught me, you know, things as a point guard that I don't think I would have learned if I wasn't playing working out with her every single day growing up or watching her play.

But, but she was, she was a lot, a lot of fun to be around and work out with.

And she had my back big time.

I mean it was funny.

Like in high school, our, we grew up in Sparta, New Jersey, and our rival was Pope John.

Private school that don't know why they're in our league because they could recruit, but they're in our league.

So it was a huge rival game and she, she's home from college, at Rollins, from Rollins for winter break.

And, and we're playing Pope John my junior year and they used to chant every time we played, we played them.

They would chant, stacy's better every single time.

So they're, they're chance, they're chanting my sister's name saying Stacy's better and she's at the game.

And so I'm looking at the Pope John fans and I look over and I find my sister like during a dead ball and she, she's standing up in the stands with my jersey on with like a bandana on.

She's she's giving the middle finger to the.

To the Pope, John's fans, talking back, and I'm like.

Like, that's how she was.

Like, she was like, I don't care what you.

What you have to say, like, but, you know, it was just like, she was awesome.

It was.

It was.

It was.

It was like one of the better moments I've had in basketball.

I was just hoping I made my next shot after that, but that's how she was.

Like, she was an inspiring competitor, you know, who didn't care.

And I.

I try to take that approach to the game and, you know, as the coach, when.

It's a little bit different when you're coaching, but.

But yeah, she, again, kind of like my dad.

She just.

She taught me that work ethic and that.

That fearlessness that you need to.

To be good.

Where'd your love of passing come from?

957 assists as a college player.

That doesn't happen by accident.

How do you get.

What made you develop into that kind of passer, that kind of unselfish player?

I love passing.

I'll tell you a little story after you tell me yours.

Just, where'd the passing gene come from?

So my favorite player growing up was Jason Kidd.

I was obsessed with the Nets all throughout middle school.

They obviously had a really good team.

And it was just cool watching Jason Kidd operate the offense and how good he was in transition.

And it was cool seeing a guy be loved for being a facilitator.

So usually it's not.

That's not the case.

Usually you see guys that can score the ball really well, and kids idolize that.

And this guy was idolized because of his ability to pass the ball.

So I always thought that was, you know, something I wanted to try to be.

And then in high school, I think just like every high school kid who's a pretty good player, like, you try to take a lot of shots you shouldn't take.

So in high school, I was taking unnecessary shots for sure, thinking I was a scorer.

And then I got to college, and I was the only guy on the team who didn't score a thousand points in high school.

So I thought I could score.

And then I got to college, and I'm playing against guys that can actually score.

And I learned quickly, like, if I'm going to try to play as a freshman, it's not going to be because I'm scoring 15, it's going to be because I'm getting these guys that are better than me the ball.

So why don't I try to be the best at that.

And luckily I played for a guy, Nevada Smith, who's now at Marquette, and he was way ahead of his time.

I think he still is with what he does offensively, but we were playing really fast.

We were spacing the floor, we were shooting a high volume of threes, and I had a lot of talent around me.

And, you know, I played with five guys that scored a thousand points.

Two of them played professionally.

So I just realized if my niche is going to be getting those guys the ball.

And his system allowed me to do that.

And he did a really good job of teaching that.

And it was just a really good match.

It worked out really well.

I was definitely like a system point guard.

I don't.

I would not have had the passing success or playing success anywhere else, I don't think, if it wasn't for the guys I played with and Nevada Smith putting together an offense that was.

That was perfect.

So I just, you know, it was just more of a realization that I'm not a scorer and I need to get these guys the ball.

And I ended up getting good at it.

Can you try to pass along that mindset to point guards that you've coached?

Because obviously, again, it's not easy, right?

When most players grow up, the thing that attracts them to basketball is putting the ball through the basket.

It's the first thing that everybody wants to do.

As you said, that's usually the guys who get the glory.

But when you think about winning teams, I don't care at what level.

It's always the teams that are unselfish, that share the ball, that move the basketball, that play together as a team that end up winning.

And yet so many players don't see that, right?

They end up with that slight little bit of selfishness that they want to take the shot.

They just don't want to throw that one extra pass.

They don't want to make the next.

I would say the next easy pass, just move the ball to the next guy who's open.

You don't have to be.

Magic Johnson would look away passes.

And you don't have to be Jason Kidd penetrating and throwing the ball through seven sets of hands in order to get the ball.

The guys, it's just make the easy pass.

So how do you just think about sort of teaching that mentality?

Obviously, you can't teach the vision.

There's certain things that guys who are really good passers have that other guys just don't.

But I think the mentality and the mindset of a passer is something that when you see good teams and you see good coaches are able to pass that along.

So how have you tried to approach that with maybe at least the point guards that you've had the opportunity to coach over the course of your career?

Yeah, it's funny because a lot of guys nowadays don't even know how to properly pass the ball, even at the college level.

I mean, the amount of times I'm just trying to teach how to throw a proper chest pass, like, they just don't know how to do it.

They've never worked on it.

It's not something trainers work on.

So, or even a pocket pass.

Like they don't know how to come off a ball screen and throw a little low pocket pass to keep it below the bigs.

So teaching them how to pass first and foremost, they, they don't know how to.

And that takes some time, obviously.

But you know, I think it's.

It happens naturally in our offense where the point guards are, are facilitating a lot because we're playing fast.

So we're trying to advance the ball as much as we can.

So they're, they're obviously coached to try to get the ball out of their hands.

And then I think some of the actions that we get into, once the ball comes back to them, it, it naturally results in them trying to facilitate whether it's off a ball screen or off like a get action or something like that.

But I think it's something we, we work on.

Like when I'm working out with the point guards, we're passing in every single workout.

That was something I did with Nevada Smith when I was at Ithaca.

There would be times where we would go 20, 30 minutes without really taking a shot.

Like our shots were you coming off this ball screen and throwing an opposite corner.

And if you hit me in the hands, that counts as a make.

So we try to incorporate that as much as we can with, with our point guards and really with every position with the way we play, but specifically our, our point guard.

So, you know, the more that you, you teach how to pass, the more that you work on how to pass.

So then if it's your responsibility to try to incorporate that into the offense to some capacity to, to make them see it and recognize it.

So it obviously takes time.

We've had some unfortunate injuries with point guards since we've been at Montclair State.

We haven't played a full season.

Well this past year was the first time we played a full season with a point guard from Start to finish.

So every year we've been at Montcalar State, we've had one or both point guards tear an ACL or have some other type of injury and we've had to move our wing to, to the, to the point.

So this was the first year we had two point guards all year.

And they were, at first they, they were really struggling to, to make the right reads and make the right passes.

And then again, the more experience you get, the more you rep it out, the better you're going to be.

And I think one thing I try to, it's a cool little stat that, that I heard one time, but people don't understand like how fast the ball moves when you pass it.

So like the average, the average 15 foot pass in the NBA gets to its destination in 3/10 of a second, which is three times faster than the average player can run.

So like you're, you're, by not passing the ball, you're, you're, you're, you're not utilizing something that is a serious weapon.

And unfortunately I just feel like the way people train nowadays and even the way like maybe some teams play, it kind of leads to just the ball sticking and you're working on dribbling so much and they're just missing out on, on that weapon that the ball moves bodies on defense and it creates closeout situations.

And the more that we can move the ball and move bodies, the more of those closeouts we're going to get.

And once we get somebody on the run, we're going to keep them on the run because that ball is going to keep moving, you know, and we're going to, we're going to pass up.

Pass up good for great.

And I think at the college level it's a little bit easier because you can recruit that.

So you can recruit guys that have high iq, that have good vision, that are moving the ball.

So that's been successful for us.

I mean, I don't, I think we've led the conference in assist every single year we've been at Montclair State.

And if you, if you consolidate all the stats for the past six years we've been there, we're top 10 in the country in assist.

So it just the way we play and the guys that we have in the program, it just kind of happens naturally.

And you're, you're dead right.

I mean it's, it's the reason that we've won, at least to the level that we've won as, because our guys will pass up good for great and they're very selfless.

And they know that even though it's not equal opportunity sport, there's certain guys that are going to get more shots than others, but we want those shots to happen in the flow of the offense after the ball moves side to side a little bit and makes the defense shift around.

I just think that it's such an underrated skill, both as an individual and if you take that skill and spread it out across a team, the ability to be able to move the ball, to make the simple pass, to just get the ball to the next open guy.

If every player, every team would buy into that.

Basketball is such a beautiful game when the ball moves.

And it's amazing to me when you watch I don't care basketball at any level.

And there's some guys that you see and you're just like, oh yeah, like that dude gets it.

And then there's other guys that you see and you're like the, the magic of passing just completely, completely eludes them.

And so my little story, I think I told this one other time on the pod, but I was sitting with my daughter at a game this winter and we're watching and somebody made a really nice pass in the game.

And I just said, wow, that's a great pass.

I love that one.

And my daughter turns and she looks at me, she says, dad, the only thing you ever get excited about when you're watching a game is when somebody makes a good pass.

You never get excited when someone makes a shot or does anything else.

It's always a good pass.

I'm like, I love passing.

I'm like, I just one of those things that there's just guys who do it well, I think are fewer now.

Everybody can shoot the ball, you know, comparatively to you go back to whatever 30 years ago when I was playing and the number of guys that could shoot on a given high school team, you could probably again one or two guys maybe.

And now you look at high school teams, college teams, and it's rare that you don't have somebody on the floor that you put somebody out on the court that can't, that can't shoot the ball from three point range.

But still I think passing is just one of those skills that when you see it and when you have guys who have that ability to see the floor and then have the unselfishness to, to match up with it.

And it's also funny when you talked about just trying to teach guys how to teach guys how to pass, it seems crazy, right?

Because when you think about when you were a kid or I was a kid, and how many times you stood in a line and just threw chess passes back and forth at a camp or something that.

Where, you know, where you were just in terms of the fundamentals of passing.

And I remember maybe probably five, six, seven years ago, I remember when Michael Porter Jr.

First came into the NBA and he was playing with the Nuggets and told my one buddy, I'm like, I don't even think Michael Porter Jr knows how to throw a pass.

Like, fundamentally.

I don't.

Like I watch him and it looks like it's like a foreign concept when he has to like, pass the ball ahead on a fast break to somebody.

And so it's just funny to hear you say that even today when you're working with college players who are obviously playing at the game at a high level, that you still have to break down just the skill of, hey, how do I just fundamentally move my body to be able to actually make a pass?

Saying nothing of the ability to read and the basketball IQ and all those other things, but it's just.

I just appreciate good passing more than any other skill in the game because I think it's one of the rarest things that.

Something that has to be taught that players don't necessarily gravitate to naturally.

Yeah, totally agree with you.

Obviously, I'm biased with that.

I love passing myself and, you know, to your point, yeah, it's.

There's a.

There's levels to people that can pass.

Obviously, there's guys that can, can pass.

They, like, they know how to pass in terms of the fundamentals of it and all that stuff.

But then you have guys that actually have a feel for the game who, you know, there's a difference between people that can, that can pass and people that can throw people open.

You know, you see that with quarterbacks all the time in the NFL.

Like, some guys, some quarterbacks are throwing balls and they're throwing the wide receiver open.

They're not open.

So it's like you dribble at somebody in a back door if they're in line with the defender.

An average passer doesn't think they're open, but somebody that can throw them open is going to lead them with the ball, maybe put a little bit of English on it.

So it's.

It hits, it hits the ground.

It kind of stops and hovers in the air and allows the offense to go catch it.

Right.

So there's things that you can, you know, there's ways to Throw people open.

But that's.

Again, I don't.

The.

Trying to find the recipe and teaching that is like, it's really hard.

Some people got it, some people don't.

I mean, if I had to put my finger on one thing that, that maybe helped me growing up was just like.

I started watching film at an early age, I guess.

You know, my.

Some people think that's crazy, like, to make a middle school kid watch film of their sports.

But, like, I mean, my dad had me in.

In the room watching.

Watching film on our practices and games and stuff, and I loved it.

Like, it was cool.

Like, it.

It taught me different things to.

To see it on film because, you know, I'm a visual learner.

So when I saw it, I was able to then obviously fix it or.

Or visualize things.

And then in the game, I was able to kind of do it a little bit more naturally, I guess.

But, yeah, there's a big difference between people that can.

That can pass and then people that can throw people open.

Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

I think that intuitiveness.

I think film has something to do with it.

I think the amount of.

In all honesty, I think the amount of pickup basketball that you play, I think has a big impact on what kind of passer you can be.

Because especially in today's world, where kids so often are playing with a coach and a referee and a scoreboard, they don't get a chance to maybe be as inventive with their passing and maybe try some stuff that could result in a turnover.

That.

If you're just playing three on three in your driveway, well, okay, big deal.

But if you're playing in an AAU tournament with a scoreboard and a coach that's gonna yank you out of the game because you risk throwing a pass.

I.

I just think pickup basketball really is a great place if you approach it in the right way.

And just like anything else, you gotta approach.

If you want to shoot every time and pick up basketball, you can do that too.

But if want to work on your passing, you certainly have the ability to do that in a more free and sort of loose environment where I think developing that IQ and that feel for the game, to me, I think that's something that.

That players who.

Who play a lot of pickup basketball, I think they pick up a little bit on that passing stuff.

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Let's go back to this, what you just said there about watching film and when you're in middle school and obviously your dad being a coach and his influence that we already talked about.

Were you one of those kids that grew up, always knew knowing that you were going to be a coach or were you just strictly focused on being a player while you were playing?

What was your mindset as you were going up through high school and college?

Was coaching always in the back of your mind or were you more focused on I just want to be the best player I can be and kind of approaching it from a playing mindset?

Yeah, I think I was more so focused on just trying to become the best player I could be.

I think in the back of my mind I always thought about coaching just because my family was coaches.

You know, my obviously, like I said, my dad was a coach, my uncle coached, my grandfather was a coach.

Now, you know, they, they were more football guys, but still they were coaching.

So it was always kind of in the back of my mind that, you know, coaching is cool, I've been around it my whole life, but I was more so focused on let me see how good I can be, you know, as a player.

And then as, as I got to school, got later on in my career, and you start obviously seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and realizing you're about to hit the real world, what are you going to do?

And that's when I started kind of thinking about it a little bit, like maybe this is something I can crack into.

I think the influence from the coaches I played for I really enjoyed my experience.

And we were doing a clinic my senior year at a local high school.

We're helping out their team, and I was running one of the drills, and my college coach, Jim Mullins, just said, you know, have you ever thought about coaching?

You're doing a pretty good job with these guys.

It's something you could look into.

So I, I was thinking about it already, and that kind of solidified it.

I said, yeah, I mean, I want to, like, why don't I maybe give it a shot?

And was.

Was graduating and unfortunately, the year before that, my.

The guy, Nevada Smith, who recruited me there, he had left to take a.

A head job at Keystone College in LaPlume, Pennsylvania.

And when I was getting done my senior year, I actually talked to him about trying to get into the.

Into the industry.

And, you know, long story short, he ended up giving me my first opportunity at Keystone when I graduated.

So what's it like going from playing from playing for somebody to coaching with them and going from player to.

To colleague?

How did you guys navigate that part of the relationship?

Yeah, I think he probably treated me the same.

He still coached me, like, every day pretty hard.

You know, it was, he was, he was fun to play for.

You know, he.

He obviously coach you hard and stuff.

So it was just a little bit, you know, more behind closed, closed doors.

His coaching was more so coaching me as a coach, you know, like, and.

And it was a little bit different, but I think he's still, you know, kind of treated me the same, which, which I liked.

You know, it was.

It's helped me become a decent player.

So I was going to, you know, take whatever coaching he had for me and.

But it was definitely weird going from at least player to coach, especially because when you first break into it, you're, you're, you know, I mean, we had guys on our team that were the same age as me, so it's a little bit.

Little bit strange in your first couple years because of how young you are, but it was.

It was a really cool experience.

I mean, unfortunately, I actually didn't end up working for Nevada Smith because I think maybe it was our fourth practice of the year.

He got a call from the general manager of the Houston Rockets, and they loved his offense, so they, they flew him out and interviewed him to be the head coach for their G League team.

And he went out there, came back the next day and got the job offer and was gone probably within two days.

So that's when I started working for Brad Cooper, who I.

I know you spoke with.

And that was pretty wild because he was.

He was only 25 years old, and I was only 22, so we.

We had no idea what we were doing, but it was.

It was a lot of fun.

Like, we had.

We had a really good experience.

I lived with him.

So, you know, we were constantly, obviously, talking basketball and trying to figure it out as we went.

But.

But, yeah, it was a big adjustment going from a player to coach.

I think, just really because of the age gap.

You don't, you know, you're so close in age.

You don't.

It's kind of hard.

It's a hard adjustment, for sure.

Yeah, definitely.

I think going from.

Right.

You're going from taking the orders to trying to give the order, so to speak.

And.

And I do think that one of the things that, over the course of the time doing this podcast, Sean, one of the things that I've learned and that a lot of coaches have said to me over time is that it takes a little bit of time in your career to be able to kind of find your voice, whether that's as an assistant coach first, where most guys start, or then eventually when you get your own head coaching job.

Obviously, if you've been an assistant for a while, you kind of thought about, hey, what do I want to do?

How do I want to approach this as a head coach?

But even then, finding your voice as a.

As a young head coach or a new head coach, I think sometimes takes guys a little bit of time to just sort of feel for, hey, what.

What am I going to be all.

About as a coach?

And again, when you're.

When you're 22 and you're coaching other guys who are 22 years old and you're looking at them and, you know they're looking at you, and it's like, well, you were just here where I was a year ago, man.

What do you, you know, what do you know?

And you kind of develop that authority almost that imposter syndrome, right?

You got to kind of put that behind you and just put your time in and put your effort in and make sure that you're, you know, your stuff.

And if you do that, I think most of the time that what you find is that players end up respecting you, despite whatever nagging doubts you might have in the back of your head, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, no, no doubt about it.

I mean, that probably.

It took me a while to figure that out, I think.

Which I'm sure probably takes a lot of coaches a long time to figure that part out.

But when I was, like, when I was at Keystone, yes, I was.

I think I made the same mistake probably at Keystone that I did when I went to West Point the following year, where it's like, you, you, you don't want to try to coach them hard because you think in the back of your mind, well, they might look at me and be like, dude, you're a year older than me.

Like, you were just playing.

Like, I, I.

What am I?

I'm not gonna listen to you.

And instead, what you try to do is, like, you try to, like, almost become their friends, and that's the worst mistake you can make because they respect.

As long as you're respectful in the way that you coach them, they're going to respect you more if you tell them the truth, if you call them out on things that they should be called out on versus trying to be their friend.

And I think that was a mistake I made early because you just have no experience.

You don't know how to say certain things or you don't know what to let go or what to call out.

And it takes time to try to figure that out.

It takes time to get the confidence to, to be a truth teller, you know, and, and, and, and tell it how you see it.

But, you know, eventually, over time, obviously, the more experience you get, you start to, you start to learn those things.

I think.

I mean, every stop I had, it was, it was worth it.

I mean, I learned something new at every single stop.

I mean, everyone's coaching trajectory is.

The stories are crazy, and every story is different.

Mine.

Mine was just as crazy, I'm sure, as a lot of people.

But, you know, like I said, I went to Keystone and I was supposed to work for Nevada Smith.

He leaves, and I work for, For Brad, Coach Cooper.

And so we were super young.

I was still making those same mistakes.

But like, when I was working with, with Coach Coop, the thing that I really took from him was, like, his demeanor.

He has an unbelievable demeanor about him.

Like, if you, if you watch him coach or just watch him in general, like, you could be going on a 15, 0 run, or the other team could be going on 15, 0 run.

And he looks the exact same.

Like, nothing rattles this guy.

And that's something I've always admired about him, and it's something my dad always admired about him.

So when I was there, and I was there for a short period of time because, again, I was like a volunteer.

So I was going to move on and try to find something, find something else.

But I take that, his demeanor, something that I try to mirror all the time and don't let you know, certain situations change the way I look or appear.

So when I, when I, when I left there, I went to West Point and I was supposed to just be a volunteer assistant for the prep school on campus.

And the head coach there at the time was Justin Jennings.

And the guy who was the head coach of Big army was Zach Spiker, who's now at Drexel.

So I got there and then of course there's movement on staff.

So one of the assistants leaves, Kevin App from Big army and he takes the head job at Williams Division 3.

So they asked me, they were like, do you want to try to volunteer for Big army and just help us out, or do you want to try to be the head coach of the prep school and volunteer there?

And I was like, yeah, I might as well.

I was only 23, but I said I might as well just try to be the head coach.

Like, who cares if I'm, if I'm not good, I'm not good, but it'll be a cool experience.

So Justin Jennings leaves.

So now the second guy, I was going to work for less and now I'm by myself at West Point coaching a team of, I think we had 10 guy, 11 guys.

One of them was the same age as me.

So this is pretty crazy because, you know, it's, it's a, it's a whole different world at the academies.

And I'm, I'm working, I'm working at a warehouse from 8 to noon, 8am to noon in Dover, New Jersey.

And I'm driving an hour and 20 minutes to get to West Point to go to practice at 3:00.

And you know, I, I, I, my, my time at West Point, I realized quickly that I had no idea what I was doing as a coach.

Nothing.

And get, and, and what, what happened was we had our first home game versus Air Force.

And Air Force flew out their, their prep school, their basketball team and the football team in a military aircraft.

It was awesome.

They fly in, the whole school is at the game and Air Force is our first game there.

They're blasting us by 25 points and I call a timeout and I have no assistance.

And meanwhile, Air Force has the head coach who's been there for 20 years and four assistants who all have a lot of experience.

I call timeout.

It's a 30 second timeout and everyone's looking at me and I have no idea what to say.

I don't know what's going on, why we're getting our teeth kicked in.

And that moment, I was just like, every, I look back at every time I thought I knew everything as a player, and I'm like, I was like, I need to call my coaches and apologize for every time I acted like an asshole or something like that and thought I knew more than I did because it was that moment.

I was like, when you stand up in front of the team and you don't have answers and you have 10 pairs of eyeballs looking at you in front of a packed gym, it can humble you quickly.

And I was just like, I was like, this is unbelievable.

And, and what I learned there was the same thing.

I did the same thing at Keystone, where it was like, I tried to be a little bit too friendly with the guys, where it was like, all right.

Instead of doing these drills in practice, which I know I should be doing, because fundamentally, like, they're the most important things that we need to do, they don't like doing them.

I know they don't.

So I'm going to do something else here that they're going to enjoy more.

And then we started not executing things in certain games and not playing as hard in certain situations.

And then I, I had to go to the head coach army, big army, and coach Pfeikker and just say, like, you know what, what are some suggestions things I should do?

And he's, he said, have you been doing, you know, these three drills?

And I said, no, I got away from a little bit.

And he looked at me and he said, I'm gonna give you some advice.

And I think I'll take this advice everywhere I go.

He said, he said, good teams go back to the basics, but the great teams never leave them.

And I was like, yep.

I was like, yeah, I screwed up.

You make a good point.

So I learned, like, you gotta do the basic drills that are the foundation of what you do on both ends of the floor.

Like, you have to, you can change them up a little bit, but you have to hit on those fundamental foundations daily because those are the things that are going to help you win.

So I had spent the time at West Point.

I was a volunteer, like I said, so that was only going to be there for a year and try to move on.

I, I, that was something I really learned from there.

We had a, we had a great year.

We, we went 25 and we ended up playing a lot of high level prep schools, which was really cool.

But from there, I took a graduate assistantship position at Miseracordia University.

And this guy, the guy who hired me was Trevor Woodruff.

He was the head coach and then Dave Martin was the athletic director.

And the only reason I got involved at Misera Cordia was through Brad Cooper, Coach Cooper at Keystone.

He knew the ad, he, and he hooked me up with, with the interview and I got the job.

So I go there and I'm a ga.

I'm in grad school and it's, it's probably middle of September and the AD and the head coach call me to the back of the gym and I don't know what, what it's going to be about.

And the AD tells me he's, he's leaving to be the AD at University of Scranton.

And I was like, all right, that's awesome.

Good for you.

It's nearby.

It's a really, really great school.

And then the head, Trevor Woodruff, the head coach goes, yeah, I'm leaving too.

I'm going to be the head women's coach at the University of Scratch.

And I'm like, is there something wrong with me?

Where everywhere I go, the dude that hires me just leaves and goes somewhere else.

I'm like, this is unbelievable.

So he leaves and then the guy who ends up taking over, who was there previously, his name is Willie Chandler and He's actually the second all time Division 3 scoring leader.

He scored like 2800 points.

So he takes over as the, and he's again first year head coach.

So it's me and him and we had a great experience and he's an awesome dude.

He's great to work with, he's really funny, he's a great players coach.

And our first year we went 15, 11.

And then the second year we ended up winning the Mac Freedom Championship and went 28.

And the one thing I took from him like what I learned there and those two years was like that's where I learned really how to recruit and like the recruiting grind and how, how much time and effort you have to put into it.

Because we weren't just recruiting for a varsity team, we had a recruit for a JV team as well.

So a lot of these small private Division 3 schools, their, their enrollment numbers are really dependent on the athletic teams and how many guys you bring in.

So we were recruiting a large, you know, casting a wide net and recruiting a lot of kids to try to fill probably 12 to 14 roster spots every each year.

So I learned how to, how to grind, how to get on the road.

I learned how to talk to a Lot of different people from different areas of the east coast, different backgrounds, different, different family members.

And, and one thing I, I always give Coach Chandler credit for is like, he was never a.

I'm the head coach.

I'm too big time.

I'm not going to recruit with you.

Like, he was there with me every single time.

So he would come with me and we would recruit together.

And I think just like seeing him kind of be boots in the ground and doing it himself, like, it made me realize, like, if I, if I'm ever a head coach, I'm never going to be a guy that's just sending the assistant out somewhere to go recruit.

Like, I'm, I'm going to.

Because it takes, it takes all of us to try to try to recruit and get the best talent we can.

So when I was there, you know, I learned that grind and then I, obviously I graduated and from there I was like, listen, I got to go somewhere where I know the head coach is not going to leave.

Like, I can't.

I just want some stability here.

Even though I had great experiences, I want to work for the guy who hires me.

So there is their guy, Justin Potts, who grew up in the same town as me in New Jersey.

He was older than me, but I met him originally because when he started coaching, he would come back and speak at the kids camp.

So I, that's how, when I was in middle school, I got to know him a little bit.

So he was at East Stroudsburg Division 2 for 13 years, had a lot of success and he got, he, he played at Moravian College in Bethlehem, pa.

And he ended up getting a head job at Moravian.

He.

The, the year he got the head job was my first year at Misericordia.

So he, he inherited a program that was 5 and 20 the year before.

They, they really hadn't have won in a long time.

And in his first year he went 11 and 14, and then in his second year they won 19 games.

He went to the conference championship, lost University of Scranton.

So I got done at Misericordia and I saw what he did in two years and I obviously had known him a little bit and heard a lot of good things.

And I was like, I'm going to go try to work for that guy.

So met with him and they don't have a full time assistant job, so it's all intern.

So it's basically volunteer again.

So I'm like, once again I'm trying to call my dad.

He's like, you're not going to make any money again.

I'm like, I.

I guess, I don't know.

He's like, you got to do something, man.

He's like, you're 26.

Like you need benefits.

Like, you got to, you got to figure this out.

And it's a survival business.

Like people don't survive in coaching because unfortunately they can't find the full time role.

So I'm like, I'm like, coach Pot.

Is there anything on campus I can do, like any job?

So long story short, he gets me an interview.

It was called a student Experience Mentor.

I don't even know what this position is.

Seems like completely made up.

So I interviewed for this and it's basically a program director for all the graduate business programs.

And I just got my master's, so it kind of made sense.

So I interviewed for it and I don't get it.

I don't get the job.

So I finished second to a guy who was in admission.

So I'm like, I guess I'm going to go back to Misericordia and I'm going to be an admissions counselor for the undergrad.

I interviewed for that too.

And at.

At Misera, which she's going to be mad at me because I can't believe I left this out.

That's where I met my wife in grad school.

So she's gonna be pissed when I didn't mention that, but that.

So she was still in grad school finishing up.

So I was like, I'm gonna go back to Miseracourity.

I'll work in admissions and whatever.

So again, try to shrink this story as much as I can.

I'm on my first day as an admissions counselor on a Friday at Misera.

I get a call from Moravian, from the guy, the head director of admissions.

As my current director of admissions is overlooking me, teaching me something.

So I let it go, obviously.

I listen to the voicemail.

He's like, hey, good news.

The guy that we offered it to, he doesn't want to leave his undergrad position.

So we're going to offer you the job.

So I'm like, oh my God.

Like, I just took this job my first day and what do I do?

So I'm going back and forth with everybody I know, trying to talk to as many people that I can talk to to figure it out.

We have a open house the next day on Saturday.

Miserable that I'm supposed to work.

So I work the open house after we get done.

And at this point I decided I'm going to go to Moravian.

But I didn't tell him his recorder yet.

So I'm working the open house and the whole admissions team is eating pizza after we're all hanging out.

And they're joking about a guy who worked for the admissions department who only worked for 12 days.

And they have a nickname for him and everything that's like a play on how fast he left.

And I'm sitting there and I'm like, I'm gonna blow this dude's record out of the water.

Like, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna resign after a day.

So I went in there on that Monday.

I met with everybody and I sent in my letter, letter of resignation.

I end up going to, to.

To Moravian, obviously, and working in the grad department.

And then I was working like from 8 to 4:30, but I would always leave early to go to practice and try to run over there as much as I can to do workouts and stuff.

I was just trying to survive, right?

Just trying to figure it out.

But it was at Moravian where I feel like I finally started to like, grow as a coach and figure some things out.

And Coach Potts is one of the best coaches I've ever been around, ever, as a player or coach.

And the thing that separates him, which I tell people all the time, is his emotional.

His level of like, emotional intelligence is off the charts.

Like, I've never seen a guy operate a room so smoothly and.

Or figure out certain situations so differently each time.

Like, he's so good at figuring out, like, what's going on, what's the situation, how should I respond, how should I react?

And that's a huge part of coaching, obviously, like, how to build connections with your players, how to build relationships, how to handle certain, certain situations.

Because 90% of the job is obviously not on the court.

It's everything that's happening off the court, whether it's financial aid, struggles in the classroom, struggles at home with family.

Girl just broke up with somebody, you know, something like anything like that.

And he's just so good at navigating all this stuff and managing it all while building these relationships that are making guys want to run through a wall for him.

So I just, when I first got there, he probably doesn't know.

He actually doesn't know this.

And I think it's actually illegal in pa, But I was recording every time he spoke to the team, and I was, I was writing down notes.

I would go back to my office and I would type out everything he said to the team.

And I would just like, study it because it was incredible to me.

I'd never seen somebody operate this smoothly this well and control a room so well.

And you know, I, I, he, we were there for two years together.

We won back to back championships, we won the first ever NCAA tournament game in school history.

And then that's when Montclair State called and offered him the head job.

And he called me and he was like, hey, I got some good news.

Like I got the job and they actually have a full time assistant and, and told me the salary and I was like, this is my moment.

Like I, I finally got a full time job.

Like I was ready to pack up and go to, my family lives in North Myrtle Beach.

I was getting ready to go down there and just teed up every day on the golf course and sail off in the sunset.

And now all of a sudden he gets this job out of nowhere and they have a full time assistant.

And it's funny because Moravian was his alma mater and he's again he's, he's really connected to the school and he had really good relationships with our guys and he wasn't sure if he was going to leave.

And I, I think I wanted him to get, take the job more than his wife did.

Like I was, I made a PowerPoint for him.

I was like, coach, we gotta go.

Like we need this selfishly because I wanted to be the full time assistant.

But long story short, he took the job and that's how we end up getting to Montclair State.

And so we've been together now for eight years and you know, he's just awesome guy to work for.

Montclair State's an unbelievable university and we have really good guys on a team and it's a fun place to be.

So yeah, long, long story there.

But that's how, you know, kind of how my coaching trajectory went.

Well, I think that there's two pieces of universal advice that come out of that story that I've heard sort of throughout the lifetime of this podcast from young coaches.

Getting into it is one, if you want to get into college coaching, you have to be able to work for nothing, which obviously you have that base covered.

And then two, you have to be willing to move and jump around to different jobs and be able to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you and work your way up and do the best job that you possibly can in each one of those positions and eventually then you're going to find your way into a paid position if you're doing what you're supposed to do at Each of those earlier stops.

And I think that, you know, your story does a, an amazing job of illustrating and hammering home those two points.

Because when you look at you from the outside, right, I read your bio and learn a little bit about you and find out, okay, your dad's a high school coach, so you got coaching in your background.

Obviously you had a tremendous amount of success as Division 3 player.

You're the kind of guy, point guard, passes the ball that you're kind of the prototypical type of player.

If you just look at it from the outside, right, who is going to become a successful coach?

A guy who thinks the game, A guy who understands offense and getting their teammates involved in all those things.

And, and here's a guy who is sort of tailor made for the profession.

And you went through all the same steps that anybody else went through, right?

You had to put your time in where you're not making a lot of money, you're a ga, you're getting your education paid for, maybe you're getting a little bit of room and board, but you're certainly not making a salary.

You don't have a full time assistant coaching job.

And then all of a sudden, boom, you get connected to somebody that you've known for a long time.

They get the opportunity to move on, you get the opportunity to move on.

And now, boom, all of a sudden you're in a position where you're getting paid, you're in a full time position.

And it's something that was a long time coming and it wasn't something where you just snap your fingers and you graduated and all of a sudden, boom, I'm a Division 1 assistant coach somewhere making, making good money and on my way up the ladder.

It's something that you got to put your time in, you got to put your dues in.

And so many people, I think, who don't understand the coaching profession, they only see, you know, what's on TV on Saturday afternoon, right?

They see the, the big, huge programs and they see the guys that are on tv and they don't see all the guys that are such outstanding coaches that are putting the time in and they don't understand how long and how much effort it took for the guys who are in those positions to be able to, to get there by doing the best job that you can.

I think your story really illustrates both of those points really, really well.

So let's talk a little bit about building the program at Montclair.

When you guys think about the type of culture that you've put Together.

Obviously you talked a little bit about Justin's ability to read the room.

And so I'm sure that translates to recruiting and bringing the right guys in the door and getting the right guys in your locker room.

But once you have them there on campus, what do you think's been the key for you guys over your tenure together there at Montclair of putting together a winning culture?

Yeah, obviously a lot of that's like the buzzword in coaching the culture, trying to figure it out, and it's like, nearly impossible to define.

It's something that obviously happens daily and it takes really a lot of time of doing the same things every day, you know, and making sure you don't get away from the things that are, that are really important, that are going to make your program successful.

So when we got to Montclair State, we said we need a foundation of what's important to us, something that we can constantly reference, that we can break on in huddles that we can just constantly point at and recruit to and say, like, this is what's important to us.

Is it the answers to everything?

No, but if you do these things at a high level, you're probably going to be successful.

So everything, like our, our.

Our motto is habits.

So everything we talk about is, is habits.

So first off, like what we.

The.

The line we use all the time is, first you make your habits, then your habits make you.

But then we took the word and we kind of broken down into an acronym.

So like the H is heart.

We want guys that, that have a lot of heart that want to compete, that, that love what they're doing every single day.

I don't care if it's in practice or playing pool against a teammate, like, just compete, want to win, have some passion in it.

If you do that, no matter what you do past, you know, in college or after college, if you do it with passion, you're probably going to be successful.

So that's the H.

A A is appreciate.

Appreciate the opportunity to play in college, you know, and I, I'm pretty sure that the percentage is still the same.

But if you play college basketball, you're a 3 percenter.

So only 3% of the nation plays in college.

I think of that 3% around 1.7 play scholarship basketball, 1.3 play Division 3.

So you're part of the, you know, the, the elite of the elite.

You know, if you become a 3 percenter in your, in your future business or whatever you go into, you're going to be really successful.

So appreciate the Opportunity, you know, have your appreciation up really high and your entitlement really low.

The B stands for brotherhood for us, you know, just look out for each other, whether it's on the court and, you know, maybe someone's talking from the other team and, you know, go over, pull them away from the situation, you know, make them focus on what's important or especially off campus, if something's going on, you see somebody on our team about to get in a bad situation, take them away from that, you know, make sure you look out for each other on and off the court.

The I is invest.

Invest into yourself first and foremost.

If you invest into yourself, you know, academically, invest on the court, invest socially, invest professionally, obviously it's going to help you be successful, but if everyone's investing, it's going to help the whole.

The whole team.

Obviously, the T is toughness.

That's probably what we try to harp on the most.

Not really the physical toughness for us, it's more so the mental toughness.

So something we say daily or at least weekly is, you know, can you be the same guy every single day?

That's really hard to do, especially when you're sore or something's going on at home or, you know, you're struggling academically.

Like, can you still come to practice and bring, Bring energy, be a good teammate, put in the work that you need, you know, to be successful.

Despite all these different distractions happening on in your life, can you be the.

The same guy every single day?

And like, you know, like.

Like Coach Pot says, and I'm.

I'm learning it now because I'm a.

I'm a father now.

My son's 2 years old is, you know, we say all the time, like he says all the time.

I got two.

Two little girls at home.

I'm married.

Like, it's hard to be the same guy every single day, but you got it.

You have no other choice, you know, so.

And then the S is sacrifice.

Everyone's going to do it.

You know, as coaches, we sacrifice being away from our families a lot, you know, recruiting or being at practice.

And then the guys on the team, like, your sacrifice is going to be diving on the floor for a loose ball or waking up early for 6am Morning lifts in the preseason, sacrificing minutes, because the way that we play, no one's going to play 35 minutes a game.

So, you know, those are like the foundation of kind of what we try to drive every single day to help, you know, push us forward.

So constantly, like, you Know, if you see a guy who's kind of not bringing much energy or something's going on, like, you'll hear guys at practice start yelling habits to them, try to make them remind them what's going on.

And then I think what's really important is there's three.

There's three different relationships in every program, and you really got to focus on these relationships.

So there's player to player relationships.

How do your players interact with each other?

What's important to them?

What do they value?

There's coach to coach relationship.

So how do we interact with each other as a coaching staff?

How do we, you know, what do we value?

And then there's.

There's player to coach.

You know, what, what.

How do we interact with each other?

You know, what do we value?

What's important to us?

And what I've discovered is that programs where all three of those different relationships are all on the same page and all share the same values and all share the same desire to try to want to be really good.

Those are the programs that are really successful.

And I think that's what.

That's what culture is.

It's having a foundation that you drive every single day that you don't let you know, you don't let that foundation go away at any moment.

And then you have those three different relationships that you're constantly focusing on.

So that when, if someone's watching you, your team from the outside, after they see you play or see you practice, they're going to say, you know, I've never seen 25 people all moving in the same direction.

Like, you guys are connected.

You.

You're.

You're playing for each other, not for yourselves.

Like, you can tell.

And we've.

We've been fortunate.

We've had people say those things to us.

And I think that's why we've, you know, we've been successful at Montclair, is why we were successful at Moravian.

And, you know, one of the hardest things to do is to have sustained success and be good year in and year out.

And the programs that can do that, it's.

It's really hard to do.

So, you know, that's.

That's my.

Our opinion of kind of what culture looks like, but that's something that you got to do every single day.

You know, it's.

It starts from Coach Potts.

But our.

I say we told the guys after season, our social media intern this year was like, lights out.

Like, he was.

He was rebounding for guys on off days.

He was.

He was jumping in on drills and practice.

Like, this dude was as committed as me and coach Bot like, or the guy who played the most minutes.

Like, you realize when you have successful years that it takes everybody all moving in the same direction.

And at least those are the two areas that we try to focus on to try to keep driving that.

That culture that's going to make you successful.

I love that idea of the three different relationships.

I think so often when we talk about culture and we talk about relationships, I think we often think about the coach player relationship, right.

That you want to have that connection between coach and player.

And I think a lot of times the player to player one is the one that maybe gets neglected in terms of the teams that I've been around that have been successful both way back when I was a player, and then thinking about teams that I've coached or teams that my kids have been on, the ones that are the best teams and the ones that are the most enjoyable to be a part of are the ones where the players get along with each other, where the players support one another, where the players push one another, where the relationship is.

Is positive in all respects.

And I think sometimes that does get overlooked because obviously as a coach, you don't have necessarily direct control over that player to player relationship.

But I think it goes back to what you talked about with habits and just with the environment that you create.

I think you can foster those positive relationships between players just by the way you go about your business.

And I think the other two relationships, coach, coach and then player coach, obviously impact how the players interact with one another.

But I do think that's kind of an underlooked, you know, an overlooked.

An overlooked relationship that not a lot of people talk about when it comes to.

To building a successful environment in a positive, positive culture.

All right, Sean, before we get out, I want to ask you a 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 then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day, what.

Brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy?

Yeah, I think my biggest challenge, which has been my biggest challenge for the last two years, and it'll be my biggest challenge now forever, is being away from my son as much as I am, you know, and my wife, of course.

But I mean, to put into perspective for you, like, I.

I commute an hour and 20 minutes to Montclair State.

So if we have an 8am workout, which we do basically every single day.

I'm leaving at 6am I'm leaving before my son gets up.

I'm getting there at 7:30.

Then usually at Division 3 it's hard to get gym time so we're practicing thing if we're lucky, from three to five, but usually from four to six or five to seven or six to eight.

So by the time I get home, he's usually asleep.

So you know, the past two years there would be, there's weeks where I go four or five days without seeing him.

And you know that's, that's upsetting.

Obviously, you know, we're, we're dedicating our responsibilities to help the guys on our team and you know, we're around other parents, kids all day and I'm not even seeing my own, my own son that often.

So that, that's always a huge challenge.

And I'm lucky because Coach Potts, like I said, has two little girls.

Our other assistant has, has two sons.

And so he's a family guy.

So he gives me the, you know, a lot of freedom obviously, but there's sometimes you can't, you can't get around it.

So that's my biggest challenge moving forward.

It always will be just the time that you have to spend away from your, your family during season.

And then I think the biggest joy that's, that's super fluid every single year.

I think we spend so much time investing into these guys and trying to figure out life with them and make them successful.

And when you start seeing the successes come to fruition year in, year out, like that's what gives you the most joy.

So like for example, like we had, we had two guys this year graduate who were both first generation college graduates in their family.

So like seeing, seeing them make it and thinking back of all the times like we struggled together in study hall or individual meetings and, and finally like their family who no one had graduated from college is at the, after graduation and celebrating like, and seeing how much, how pumped they are and how excited he is like that, that stuff is awesome.

And you know, you don't, I don't know if there's many other industries where you get those, that feeling of really trying to help people and seeing those successes come to fruition.

But you know, every year you have stuff like that happen and it just kind of reminds you like what's really important, this is why you're doing it.

So, so yeah, you know, those, that's my biggest challenge and probably my biggest joy.

Both of those are well said.

Both comes back to people, right?

You're talking about being able to balance coaching with your family and then being able to have an impact on the kids that you're coaching every day and do that through the game of basketball.

I always think that that's something special that those of us who have coached, you know, you get to use something that you love to be able to have an impact on people.

And I think there.

There's something really powerful there.

Last thing before we wrap up, Sean, Share how people can get in touch with you.

Follow what you're doing, whether you want to share, email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

Yeah, so I'm actually not a huge social media guy.

I think everything I have is private.

But, you know, if you want to get in contact, email is probably the best way.

Emails, Rossi S R O S S I s at Montclair Edu.

You know, I love, I love jumping on zooms, talking offense and all that stuff.

So, you know, would love to.

Love to connect with some people that want to talk about some.

Some offensive stuff.

Sean, 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.