JASON SMITH – TENNESSEE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1041

Website – https://www.twbulldogs.com/sports/wbkb/index

Email – jsmith@tnwesleyan.edu

Twitter – @TWUWBB

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Jason Smith is in his first season as the women’s basketball head coach at NAIA Tennessee Wesleyan University.  He previously served as the head women’s coach at Peru State during the 2023-2024 season and Cedarville University from 2021-2023.

Prior to Cedarville Smith had a ten-year run as the women’s head coach at Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn.  He produced an impressive resume at Bryan where he is the school’s all-time winningest coach.  Smith guided the Lions to an overall record of 219-85 including a 157-49 slate in the Appalachian Athletic Conference.  His teams claimed five regular season titles, four league tournament crowns, and made six appearances in the NAIA Division II National Tournament.  Following his final season, Smith earned his third consecutive AAC Coach of the Year honor after his team posted a remarkable 78-7 record during that timespan featuring a perfect 64-0 conference mark. He produced nine consecutive winning campaigns.

Jason previously served as the head men’s basketball coach at both Calvary Bible College and San Diego Christian College.  As an undergraduate at Kansas he was a varsity manager and film technician for Head Coach Roy Williams.

On this episode Mike & Jason discuss the importance of self-awareness and accountability in player development. Jason emphasizes that players often already know what they need to improve upon but may struggle to articulate it or take ownership of their performance. Smith reflects on the challenges coaches face when trying to instill a strong work ethic and a winning mentality in their teams, particularly in an era where instant gratification is prevalent. He shares insights from his coaching journey, including the need to foster a culture of love and acceptance within the team, allowing players to feel valued regardless of their role. The conversation highlights the significance of building trust and encouraging open communication between coaches and players to help them navigate their growth on and off the court.

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Be prepared with your notebook and pen as you listen to this episode with Jason Smith, women’s basketball head coach at Tennessee Wesleyan University.

What We Discuss with Jason Smith

• Support from administration is vital for a successful program
• Building strong relationships with players to foster trust and communication
• Teaching players how to win involves instilling mental toughness and resilience through practice
• Why self-awareness is crucial for players to understand their strengths and areas for improvement
• The importance of valuing every team member’s contribution, regardless of their playing time
• How creating a positive culture where players support each other enhances overall team performance
• How coaches can adapt their coaching styles to meet the changing needs of today’s athletes
• Honesty and constructive feedback are essential in coaching
• Effective coaching requires self-awareness and the ability to adapt to changing player needs and societal influences
• Players often know their weaknesses better than coaches realize; encouraging them to voice these can facilitate growth
• It is crucial to teach players that missing shots is part of the game, and confidence comes from practice and preparation
• Players need to understand their statistics to build confidence
• Building resilience in athletes involves helping them understand their value beyond playing time or statistics
• Cultural fit is crucial for success in a new coaching position
• Recruiting involves selling the program’s history and community support
• Having a winner and a loser during drills in practice is essential for developing a winning mentality
• Players today seek meaning and connection from their coaches

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THANKS, JASON SMITH

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JASON SMITH – TENNESSEE WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1041

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, but I am pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads Pod, Jason Smith, head women’s basketball coach at Tennessee Wesleyan. Jason, welcome back, man.

[00:00:16] Jason Smith: Yeah, thanks for having me back. I appreciate it.

The first time we did this was great and, and great to have an opportunity to do it again. I look forward to visiting with you, Mike.

[00:00:26] Mike Klinzing: Looking forward to the conversation for sure and getting an update on where you’ve been, what you’ve done in the intervening couple of years since we last talked. So let’s start there.

The last time we talked you were the head coach at Cedarville and since then you’ve been to Peru State and now at Tennessee Wesleyan. So just kind of give us a, I guess, the quick timeline of sort of the process and then we’ll dive into a little bit more detail.

[00:00:51] Jason Smith: Yeah, yeah. I’ll just kind of dive a little bit into the Cedarville issue.

I mean ultimately it just wasn’t the right fit for me or the institution, And I guess that stuff kind of happens and  you go in to a job process and you’re thinking yeah, this is a great fit. And then when you get in the middle of it, sometimes it’s just not we talked a lot about culture and creating culture.

The last time we were on this, on this call and you’re successful at one place and then you think you can just carry the same culture over to. This ain’t a new place. And I was a little naive about it, I guess thinking that this is just an easy crossover. And I found out real quickly that that, that process was not going to work.

I got a lot of resistance from administration, from players. And it was just a fight for a couple of years there and just realized  this probably is not the place for me to be and that’s okay.  it was a little frustrating when you pick up and move your family six or seven hours away and, and transport your family and change the route up their lives.

 it’s you’re affecting a lot of people there. And I can remember at one point my daughter, my teenage daughter saying, dad, why did you ruin my life by moving? That was rough.  that was the roughest part of it, watching her hurt a little bit. Cause she loved Tennessee and she didn’t want to leave Tennessee.

But so there was a decision made with me and my wife that it was just a good place, time to step away and, and move to something different. And honestly, Mike, I thought I was done coaching.  I thought, okay, I’ve ran the gamut of coaching and I fulfilled a lot and been successful. And, and I think my wife was a little tired of the whole coaching thing for a little bit.

And she was kind of looking forward to a different life. And so I actually went on regular job interviews for a little bit.

[00:02:32] Mike Klinzing: What were you thinking about? What were you thinking about doing?

[00:02:35] Jason Smith: Well, before I got, I mean, I originally got into coaching out of college. And then I got out of coaching for a little bit in my twenties and got into sales.

I was all my friends were making a lot of money and I wasn’t. And so they convinced me to get out of coaching. And so I got into sales and. So I know I could go into the sales business if I needed to find a job. So I started interviewing for some sales jobs. And  probably couldn’t make a lot, a lot more money than I’m making now and in coaching, but I don’t think I’d be as happy or I’d be miserable.

But what’s funny is I, I went on a couple of job interviews and one of them particularly was for a window company selling windows and. My interview lasted about 50, 50 minutes and 45 of those minutes, we talked about basketball it’s all the guy wanted to talk to me about, because basically that’s all my resume is, ?

So I walked out of that interview and I came home and I said to my wife, I go, I don’t think I’m done coaching basketball, ? So we kind of sat down and made a plan going forward. What was, what that looked like. Well living in Ohio, not near any family or anybody. We’d been away from family for a long time.

So we said, well, if we’re going to get back into coaching, it’s going to either be in Tennessee, cause that was kind of our second home or as we make closer to our immediate family, which was back in the Midwest, Kansas city area. And so I just started kind of putting feelers out there and started looking applied for a couple jobs in Tennessee and nothing happened there.

And then the Peru state job in Nebraska was still open and I kind of just reached out to the AD and, and just kind of went from there. Peru was about an hour away from my sister in law and a couple hours from my parents and my wife’s parents. So, and so my interview got the job and it was just kind of like, okay, that fit the criteria to get back to family.

So. We went back to Peru and and so that, and it was just a good fresh start, to be honest with you. The good thing about it was I went to a program that hadn’t won, hadn’t had a lot of success. To be honest with you, Mike, I’d probably prefer taking over a program like that anyway, because I think you can build your own culture a little bit.

I mean, when I. Took over Cedarville. They were kind of at the top. They kind of resisted all that change.

[00:04:49] Mike Klinzing: Cause we were doing easier, easier to sell it, right? When you have, well, it was easier to

[00:04:53] Jason Smith: sell. It was just everything. Okay. I don’t want to get too specific necessarily because the coach before me was a great coach and she still is.

And nothing that you can, this business, you can coach basketball a thousand different ways even on court stuff she was a. I say she was a pack line defense person and I’m not so our girls were, took them forever not to send the ball to the middle stuff like that, .

And that, and that was just one of the few minor things, but and so everything I, my coaching style was different. I was a male, she was a female. How we, how I relate to my players was completely different than hers. So it was just a lot of resistance. So, And then going to Peru, it was just a fresh start, a bunch of girls that hadn’t won that hadn’t been coached very well, to be honest with you.

And so I felt like, okay, this is an opportunity to come in here and just start culture from day one. Coach these girls up cause they wanted coaching, they just weren’t being coached well. So they, they bought into the culture pretty quickly. Yeah. Which was exciting. It was a program that hadn’t won a lot, like I said, but they hadn’t been to the conference tournament in 13 years, I believe so we, we were picked to finish 12th in the heart of America conference preseason.

I think there’s 13 teams. We were picked to finish 12th. We ended up finishing seventh, right. And making the conference tournament for the first time in 13 years. So it was a great accomplishment and it was exciting for them to achieve some stuff that they’ve never achieved before. And that was exciting for them.

It was a great opportunity because it was great administration for me because they just allowed me to coach basketball didn’t have to get into a lot of other minutiae just go down and coach basketball. Very diverse group, probably the most diverse group of players I’ve ever had. And that was a great learning experience for me and taught me a lot about different cultures.

 we had native American kids, African American kids. We had. Kids at all socioeconomic backgrounds. So I think it was a great opportunity just to learn about different cultures and how they view life and how they view America and view basketball.  we dealt with some things that I’d never dealt with before, which was great, ?

And we dealt with it in a very professional way and it was exciting. So it taught me some things.

[00:07:16] Mike Klinzing: How important, and I can already tell what the answer to this question is going to be. Obviously, the administration at a school is critically important. I think it’s critically important at the college level, it’s critically important at the high school level that you have to have the support of the administration.

You can define support in a lot of different right ways, right? You got to have monetary support, you got to have them feeling that the basketball program is important. All those things are a huge piece of it. And when you go into an interview process, or you talk to maybe previous coaches in a program.

How do you try to get a sense of what that administration is going to be like before you take a job? How are you thinking about that in terms of what that’s going to mean for your ability to coach the team the way you want to coach it and run a program the way you want to run it?

[00:08:10] Jason Smith: I think every experience you have, you can, you kind of glean stuff from, and then you take it into your next position.

And so those questions come up when you’re interviewing. I think Depends who’s in charge. I mean, if it’s the AD or the president, I mean, at Cedarville, it was the president pretty much in charge. So getting a good feel for him and what his, what he was about was important. I made a couple of phone calls to some people that I trusted that knew him or knew of him a little bit, knew some background.

So a little bit of that went involved. The first date was more, I just, I, I had a great conversation with the AD for about two hours on the phone. And really just honestly asked a lot of personal questions. I come to a point where I, I almost want to know the person more personally than about their business sense.

Okay. So who they are as a person and how that’s going to carry over in their business world and how they’re going to how they’re going to manage you or not manage you basically. I was fortunate coming here at Tennessee Westland that I spent 10 years at Bryan college, just 30 minutes from here.

and competed against Tennessee Wesleyan in the same conference. So I knew my athletic director. I mean, I’ve known him for 10 or 11 years or, or more, so that was reassuring. So I knew going into what I was going to get into when I came here.

[00:09:30] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, obviously having the familiarity with Tennessee Wesleyan, talk a little bit about the decision to leave Peru, take the Tennessee Wesleyan job.

Obviously, as you said, Tennessee had kind of become your family’s second home. So I’m sure your daughter was probably happy to. Come back to Tennessee to some degree, but just tell me a little bit about the decision making process there. Your familiarity with the league, as you just talked about, but just, just tell me about the job search process, the, the interview process and, and making the decision to again, move your family.

Cross country, which I’m sure involved some more, some more conversations.

[00:10:04] Jason Smith: There’s no doubt. My, my daughter beat me to the punch actually. So she ended up coming to college here in Tennessee before I got here. So she, she goes to Lee, Lee university, which is about 30 minutes from us here. But so yeah, she got back faster.

 I’m sitting at Peru and we’re close to family. And honestly I’m happy with the administration. I’m happy with the direction of the program. I’m happy with being in Nebraska city. It’s a good town where, I mean, the community was great to us. So there was no like intention to get up and leave.

 I wasn’t even searching for jobs, to be honest with you. And then all of a sudden I get a clip on, I don’t know if it’s social media or where I saw it at the. The head coach at Tennessee Wesleyan was being transitioned into the men’s golf coach. And, and so they were obviously going to look for a women’s basketball coach.

And I knew the coach and I coached against him for 10 years and knew him well. And so I reached out to him and just really congratulating him on his, on his career. First of all, and then we got to texting and I just asked him, I said, so what’s the deal, who do they know who they’re going to hire?

And he’s like, well, not yet.  they’re, they’re, they’re looking to hire a woman, I assume. And, and he’s, and I said, well, I guess that rules me out, ? And but he goes, well Jason Donnie, the AD there knows you well. So send your resume. And if you’re interested in.

See how it goes. And I got off the phone and just went to my wife and just started talking about it. And, and, and when she didn’t hesitate and said, yeah, let’s, let’s send the resume in. I knew it was let’s, let’s throw it against the wall and see what sticks. ? I think our family thinks we’re crazy ultimately like, but when you lay things out.

And you put it on paper that old Ben Franklin, the pros and cons, pros on one side, the cons on the other. And you lay it out. And we’ve done that a lot of times in our decision making process in our marriage and our jobs. There was, it was kind of just a no brainer to go back to Tennessee. One is we gain our tuition exchange back for our children to go so that our kids can go to college for free.

So, that’s a huge, that’s a huge benefit.

[00:12:16] Mike Klinzing: Oh, yeah. No question.

[00:12:16] Jason Smith: So, and then we’re closer to my daughter that goes to Lee my other son was talking about wanting to go to college in Tennessee. He hasn’t quite decided yet, but, and so Tennessee is just home. That’s where our kids were raised. So when we told our kids we’re going back to Tennessee, they were pretty excited pretty jacked out.

So that’s kind of how the process went. And then. AD called me, we talked for a good 45 minutes to an hour and, and he said, well, Jason, I would love to hire you, but I probably need to hire a female in this position. And I said, I totally understand. And I said, well, if you can’t find one, just give me a call.

And it was two weeks, literally two weeks, almost to the day and the phone, I look at my phone, my phone’s ringing and I see it’s his number and I answer it and he says, well, Jason, I couldn’t find one, couldn’t find one that will take the job. So do you want it? And I said, man, let’s talk some more, ?

So next thing  I drove down here to pick up my daughter from college and came over and visited with him and, and met with the president.

So  middle of May, I’m, I’m sitting in Athens, Tennessee recruiting for another school.

[00:13:33] Mike Klinzing: So when you make the decision and they offer you that job, what are some of the things that you do? attracted you, obviously your familiarity with the conference and you’d competed against them. So you had some idea of kind of what you were getting into, but what were the things specifically to this job in terms of the basketball side of it that made you feel like, Hey, this is going to be a really good fit for me?

When I come in here and I’m going to be able to establish the kind of culture I want to establish and do the things that I want to do with the program. What was it about Tennessee Wesleyan that made you feel confident that that was going to be a good place for you?

[00:14:13] Jason Smith: Well, the first thing is it starts with the word Tennessee.

Okay. And I don’t know, you’re, you’re no Ohio guy, Mike. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s all good. It’s all good. I’m just, the Northern culture just was not good for us. It’s just, there was just something about Southern hospitality. It’s just a different lifestyle and that we got used to and. Was a little taken back by some Northern culture.

So the first part was just getting back to Tennessee has been great. It’s just more of a relaxed atmosphere. Very, very much of a hospitality. I mean, me and my wife are real big about fellowship and hospitality and, and this place just invites that process. So that’s the first thing. So on a personal side, it was just more fellowship and more hospitality that we just needed.

It’s like when you. You don’t know you miss something until it’s gone. Right. And the biggest thing I can remember sitting in my office time after time and, and Cedarville was the thing that I would miss the most was love and acceptance. Okay. Something that I wasn’t receiving and I’m like, Holy smokes.

This is the first time in my life. I don’t really feel loved or accepted. Right. And that was all, that was hard. Okay. And so Tennessee is just naturally loving and accepting, or at least my experience. So on a personal side, that was it. From on a professional side, Tennessee Wesleyan has been a traditional powerhouse at the NAI level for women’s basketball for a long time.

Okay. They had great tradition. So we are, as we record this video or podcast right now, we’re 45 wins away from a thousand as a program. Okay. So that, that says something there’s not that many programs that are doing that in the country. The coach before me had won over 300 games. The coach before him had won over 500 games.

So there’s tradition of winning here at Tennessee West Lane for the women’s basketball side. So that’s attractive, right? So there must be a reason why they’ve done that. And I found out once you get here, you find out there’s just a great community within Athens, Tennessee. Okay. So the community here really supports our school and our institution.

And they’ve supported women’s basketball. I mean, we draw more fans than the guys all the time. So this, it’s been a kind of a, this local area here has been really good for girls basketball at some local high schools. So great community, great tradition in winning was important. Another thing that attracted me was a little bit, like I said before, was the coach before me had been successful, but I think he was just getting a little tired and just just wasn’t his teams hadn’t performed as well as they had in the past.

And our girls that I inherited they wanted just to be coached a little bit more, to be honest. They wanted somebody that was going to give them a little bit more attention and, and coach. And really that was the part that was exciting. Cause I, that’s all I want to do. I just want to coach basketball, ?

All these, a lot of these other schools want you to do all these other things and Tennessee Wesleyan has given me that opportunity just to come in and coach basketball and coach these girls up and, and love on it and care for them. And just, and show them and teach them the game of basketball.

They just hadn’t, they weren’t coached the last two or three years. So, so that opportunity to create that culture there’s an instant credibility with this group already because they know my success at Bryan College. Okay. So I think they’ve respected that and realize, okay that’s what we want, right?

We want to win the conferences over year after year after year. And so he’s done that before. And so they’ve, they’ve bought into that process and they’ve listened and they’ve worked their tails off. They’ve been a great group to work with. I mean, they’ve been fun. They’ll do anything you say that they’ll, they’ll go through the wall for you.

We’re, we’re just, we need to get a little bit more talented, but I can’t ask for anything more than this group’s given me so far. So hopefully that answers that question for you a little bit, but on the administration side of things is I’m like, my boss knows who I am he, he’s known me for More than 11 years.

So he knows so it’s easy for him just to let me go coach basketball. He doesn’t micromanage me. So there’s a trust between me and him that are, that is very comforting when you go to bed at every night knowing that your boss has got your back on every single detail. Right. Oh, cause that doesn’t happen everywhere.

[00:18:51] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. No question about that. Tell me about. some of the first conversations you have with the returning players. So obviously those are players that you didn’t recruit to the school that I’m sure when ever a new coach gets hired you’re a little bit, they’re a little bit nervous because they don’t know what the new coach is going to think and they got to kind of figure out what their place is.

And obviously they told you as you said a couple times that They wanted to be coached. They wanted somebody that was sounds like maybe more invested in them, but what were those conversations like? What were some of the things that you were trying to learn from those initial conversations with the returning players?

[00:19:30] Jason Smith: Well, you kind of want it. I kind of wanted to just get to know them. First of all, that’s my first thing. Anytime I go somewhere, I want to get to know them and I’ll usually send them a questionnaire with some questions of getting to know them a little bit. So I can sit down and read those and so I put those in a file.

And so we, so when I can meet with them personally, I can go back to, it’s hard to remember everything about a person, but especially some of you didn’t, you didn’t recruit, right?

[00:19:59] Mike Klinzing: So I, so

[00:20:00] Jason Smith: I keep it on file. And so then I can go back and look, Oh, okay, I was right. That’s right. I forgot about that, about you and your life, but so the first thing is just a questionnaire and then and then getting with him personally as a team I remember when we went with them.

The first time in the locker room they were just so attentive, right? They were, they just wanted to take everything in and what I was saying. And I think they wanted to know, they wanted just to know how to win. Does that make sense? There’s no, they, they had this desire to win or they still do have a desire to win, but they didn’t know how to win.

Okay. And that was very clear within our first team meeting that they just didn’t know how. And so I took it on as that’s just my job to teach them how to do that, right? And so we laid down just a plan together of how, on a daily basis, I’m going to teach them how to win basketball games. And so we, I lay out my culture, what my core values are, and, and then we laid that down.

together and just walk through it. And it was probably an hour to two hour meeting. But it was really easy because our locker room at Tennessee Wesleyan’s got basketballs on the wall there for every conference tournament they’ve won or every regular season they’ve won and every national tournament appearance they’ve won.

So there’s just basketballs with the years on the wall. Well, it stops at 2016, right? And I can sit there and say, that’s because of me. And what we achieved at Brian, cause we took the rest of them from 2017 on. Right,

[00:21:46] Mike Klinzing: right. Okay.

[00:21:46] Jason Smith: And I’ll, I say, I say that to him not as a braggadocious way, but I say it to him like, Hey ladies, there’s a re there’s something happened here.

Okay. And we’ve got to recapture that here. Okay. And start putting these basketballs back on the wall. So it was a good visual for them to understand that. Because at Brian, when I first started at Brian, we were, we were Last in the league, right? When I started there the year before, and I believe I have to go back and double check, but I believe I started my career at Brian Owen nine versus Tennessee Westland.

Okay. So they were the best team in the league when I got to Brian. So they were the big dog that we were chasing to become. And we eventually beat him and got our monkeys out the back and then we started beating them more regularly But so it was an easy visual for our players to look at and say, okay, coach Smith is obviously knows how to win.

We, we probably should listen to him a little bit. Okay. Because they, they’re, they were self admitting that we don’t know how to do this. Right. Which is the first thing you need to do is admit that you have a problem and, and I think that was the biggest difference in my experience here than at Cedarville.

Okay. So. Our girls here at Tennessee Westland are humble enough to know we need, we need some help here. They knew how to play basketball, okay? And they, they know how to work hard, they know how to go hard. They just didn’t know how to actually win. And I, we’re still in that process, don’t get me wrong.

We’re still in that process trying to figure that out, but they’ve taken huge steps to figure out how to win right now.

[00:23:30] Mike Klinzing: So how do you take that initial meeting? And the idea of I’ve got to teach them how to win and then translate that onto the practice floor, into the program, into the mentality, what does that look like?

Just give me some concrete examples day to day of things that you try to instill in them that It’s going to help them to get to that point where they do know how to win basketball games.

[00:23:57] Jason Smith: Well, you got to win all in the little things. Okay. So the only way I know how to do it is you have to win drills in, in practice, right?

So you have to put competitive drills, either individual drills or team drills that have a score that you have to accomplish or meet or a time you have to meet and you have to win those drills. And so if you’re winning little drills in practice. Then you learn how to win. Okay. So if you’re not winning drills in practice I don’t know how you’re going to win a game.

 what I’m saying? I just don’t know how. I mean, this isn’t rocket science, Mike. I’m telling you, I’m not the smartest guy in the world. If I, this isn’t that hard to figure out. It’s like, you’ve got to win drills in practice, ? And so any shooting drill, any team shooting drill that you do, you better have a time and score on it.

And track it, or you’re just wasting time, in my opinion, because you’re not teaching your players how to win. You’re just teaching your kids to throw the ball up against the rim. Right. And I learned this a long time ago. I don’t remember how, who taught me that, but in the early on in coaching, I did some drills that didn’t have time or score, and some of those drills would take eight minutes when it should have taken two minutes, right?

 then I learned if you put the time and score on it, they actually achieve it, ? So we just started from day one. They, they didn’t do a lot of preseason conditioning from the old coach so that was just a must. We started day one, just hammering them from, from them going from zero conditioning to, Oh, crud, I got to do this.

Right. It was a, it was a shock to their system, but they wanted it they’d never complained about it. They just go, whoa, this is a lot different. But so it’s stuff like that. And then just showing up and letting them know that you care about them. And And know that you’re there if you’re just show up and you spend time with them and care about them, put your arm around them and treat them like human beings,  that goes a long ways as well.

[00:25:57] Mike Klinzing: What’s the process that you use for tracking the scores and the time in practice? Cause I know one of the things that I always struggled with as a coach, I don’t care, whatever level that I coached at. Was whenever I was trying to score something myself, for an example. And again, sometimes I was on a high school staff.

Sometimes it was just me as an AAU coach. And I’d say, okay, we’re going to play this game to 10 and maybe offensive rebounds are going to count as two points. And then this and that, and I’d get like a minute into the game and I would completely have no idea like what the score was or what was going on.

And so oftentimes I would find myself abandoning that. So I’m always curious how coaches, and obviously at a college level, you have a, a bigger staff and, and whatever it may be, but just what’s your process for keeping track of all those competitive drills within the practice to make sure that you’re getting the value that you’re describing?

[00:26:57] Jason Smith: Well, if you’re fortunate enough to have a big staff and a bunch of managers, it’s really easy you just, they’re, they’re running on the clock, they’re running the scoreboard. But I don’t know if I told, last time on the podcast, I assume, I mean, I, I, I have a typed out practice plan every day.

And so it’s sitting at the scores table, so whoever’s keeping score, they know what’s going on. And I, I told you before, it’s like, it’s the same template that I, that I got from Ruralee Williams when I was a student manager for him. I’m still using the same template, right?  all these years he’s retired and I’m, his template’s still carrying on, but so it’s the same thing.

So it’s just typed out so they know, but but some of the drills are pretty easy to keep track of. I mean, like even tonight we’re on the road tonight at a shoot around it and  we don’t have a clock and my assistant coach isn’t on this trip. And so we just do a drill, we call it Wisconsin shooting.

They’ve got to make 52 pointers and 25 threes in three minutes so the timer’s on my, my, my phone, three minute timer’s on my phone. She’s only on the clock, but it’s on the phone tonight. And then I’m just counting myself I’m counting one, two, three, four. I mean, so this, this, I mean, this is the, this YMCA business, man.

This is not hard. I really don’t think so, but it’s just competing. Then we did another drill. The beauty of having it on your phone sometimes is you you can help them succeed, right? Instead of like, we were short on a drill tonight by about two or three buckets. And I just extended it by another 10 seconds.

They didn’t know.  so they thought they achieved the goal, right. And they didn’t, and I’ve got time and that, so sometimes you got to get your players some wins sometimes so they don’t know it was 10 seconds late and I’ll say, listen to the podcast but yeah. So it’s, it’s just really just the having enough managers would be great, right.

And assistant coaches.

[00:28:52] Mike Klinzing: So, yeah, yeah. It’s just, that’s one of the things that, Like I said, I’ve always tried to do, and I’ve never been really good. It’s one thing tracking shots. It’s another thing. Like I said, if you’re going three on three and I’m trying to incentivize a particular action, a particular piece of it.

I mean, like, well, was that an offensive really too? And then after like, like I said, like two minutes, I’m like, Hey, does anybody know what the score is? I have no idea what it is as I’m trying to, as I’m trying to coach in the, in the midst of, well, if you make it competitive,

[00:29:22] Jason Smith: if you make it competitive, right, they know

[00:29:25] Mike Klinzing: what it is.

They know, like if you tell

[00:29:26] Jason Smith: them like we did a drill the other day, I said, losers got eight lines they don’t want to run late lines. So trust me, they know the score and they’re going to tell you when you don’t get it, right. For sure. So, yeah,

[00:29:38] Mike Klinzing: absolutely. Talk to me a little bit about, we talked about the returning players.

Let’s talk about the recruiting process. So you get the job and as you said, immediately you’re on the road, you start recruiting. What does that look like as a new coach at a new program? How do you go about selling yourself, selling Tennessee Wesleyan when you’re brand, you’re brand new and you’re trying to sell the program?

Because again, there’s not that you don’t have a track record. The track record is not at Tennessee Wesleyan. So what’s the sales pitch? What do the conversations look like with kids, families, coaches? How does that play itself out?

[00:30:20] Jason Smith: Yeah. The first thing is I jumped into this and I had 13 players here, right?

So I already had, I didn’t have to go out and replace the whole team overnight. So I had 13 returners. They want to carry 15 here. So I was asked to go recruit a couple of kids who’ve for this coming season, And we did, we found a couple of kids late, right? We found a JUCO kid, and then we also found a freshman and a high school senior.

And as we speak right now, my, my, my freshman is probably a freshman in the conference, the kid I recruited here late. She started every game for us so far, averaging about 15 and a half points a game. And yeah, she is a freshman of the conference. Of the year right now in our conference. So great pickup late for us.

And it’s going to be an all conference kid probably for four years so I got a little lucky to be honest with you. I don’t know how that kid was still available from a local high school. I mean, so yeah. And a great kid. I mean, a culture building kid, high character.  she leaves, she leads our team Bible study.

So it’s, it’s unbelievable what I walked into of recruiting her. So. But what we’re selling here, I mean, I, a little bit of, obviously I got to sell a little bit of what I did at Bryan and we’re trying to do that here. And I think people in this area know that all the high school coaches, they coaches around here know that.

So I had all these same contacts. So when I’m reaching out to them, it’s not like they don’t know who I am and what I accomplished in the area. So that makes it a little bit easier. But at Tennessee Wesleyan tradition of winning basketball here, like some of the things I touched on before community the community, when you walk into Athens, Tennessee, you’re going to be immersed in a great community here that people are going to come to your games.

They’re going to cheer for you. We have this old gym, okay, but it is, it’s old and small, but it is loud and rocking. Okay. And so it was always one of my favorite gyms to play in, in the conference. So we’re selling that. We’re selling an opportunity to come into a great atmosphere. The two of the loudest games I’ve ever coached was in this building, it was in our gym.

And so, and then the great thing is I have seven seniors, so we graduate seven kids. So I’m selling opportunity. I mean, immediate opportunity for some kids to come in and play right away, which I would say some of the people that I’m competing against were players can’t say that.  so, so some incoming freshmen, if we are going to have some opportunities to play right away next year in our program.

 if you like that, come to Tennessee Wesleyan.

[00:33:00] Mike Klinzing:  there you go. I mean,

[00:33:03] Jason Smith: I deal with enough players to know that playing time’s a big deal. I mean, kids lead programs 90% of the time because of, of they’re not getting playing time. So so I’m selling opportunity to play right away is a big one.

[00:33:20] Mike Klinzing: Putting together your staff after you get hired, who do you talk to first? Where do you go? How do you put together? What’s the philosophy of, of the type of staff that you’re trying to build?

[00:33:31] Jason Smith: Yeah, I think the staff at our level is probably the most difficult thing to handle. It’s not, it’s nothing like division two or division one.

I mean, it’s, I mean, most of these schools, smaller NAI schools don’t have huge budgets. So it’s not like we can just go grab anybody we want. And, and then you got to the people we want, you’re going to have to move cross country probably. And that’s just not going to happen for a small paying job.

It’s just not going to happen. And then each school is going to dictate probably what that looks like.  is it a full time, part time, is it just a grad assistant? So I think that’s something that’s important when you’re in the interviewing process to figure out what, what kind of staff you can put together.

So at Tennessee Wesleyan, we share an assistant with our men’s team right now is one. So he’s, he’s working part time with us, part time with them, which is fine. I did that at Bryan College and that’s doable. Then I have right currently right now, I have a A volunteer assistant as well. She works on campus.

She played college basketball, Faulkner, and her husband’s assistant baseball coach. So she’s involved with us as a volunteer. Hopefully going forward, we can get her maybe full time. And then coming in late, I didn’t have an opportunity to really find a graduate assistant that I’d want to, but we will get a grad assistant going forward.

So each opportunity each school is going to operate differently. And that is probably the most difficult thing at our level is finding assistant coaches that are capable. I’ve been pretty fortunate. At Bryan, I had my first assistant at Bryan, she is now a high school basketball coach in Tennessee.

My second assistant at Bryan, he’s a head women’s coach at a D3. My last assistant at Bryan is now I’m coaching against in my league. He’s at another school at Johnson University in my league. So I got to coach against him. And then my assistant at Cedarville, she’s at one of the top high schools in Indiana now as the head coach.

So, I mean, I, I was, I’ve been pretty fortunate to find some really good assistant coaches. But I would say it’s like, and then my old, my assistant at, at Peru, he is now the Peru head coach. He took over when I left. So and I, Mike, I think that’s part of my job though, especially in my career too.

It’s not just coaching basketball, but it’s teaching younger coaches how to coach and hopefully helping them go on to be successful. I almost get more kick out of that, their success than mine by any means, except for my buddy at Johnson.  I don’t, I want him to, I want him to win every game, but the games he plays against us.

Okay. But the sad thing is he beat us the other night by three, so. But it is, yes. We won’t talk about that anymore. Understood.

[00:36:16] Mike Klinzing: Gotcha. I, I do think that that ability, right, to pour into your assistant coaches and then see them go on and have success as, as a head coach, when you think about what’s meaningful about what you do, and obviously there’s the relationships that you build with the players and seeing their growth and development, but I gotta imagine that as a head coach, when you see your assistants that you’ve been with for however number of years that they end up spending with you to then see them go on.

Have success, look back and  how important the coaches that you worked under, how influential they were on who you are. And so to be that person for someone else, I would guess has to be tremendously gratifying.

[00:36:59] Jason Smith: Oh, very much so. I mean, I, I, I wish ’em the best and I hope they are very more successful than me.

 ultimately as you get older in this business I think you set your, your own personal goals aside. At least I know I have. I mean, that’s another thing I told my girls when I walked into that meeting was, Hey, I don’t, I don’t need to pad my resume. My resume padding and building up is over I don’t need to win another basketball game or another title to me to, for me to walk away from basketball and say it to be successful.

Right. I told them I want to teach them how to win so they can experience the joy of it and enjoy it. Achieving something great. Cause I know what it feels like. I know how gratifying it is. And, but at the same time, I don’t need it. It’s not what drives me on a daily basis. I’m not saying I don’t want to win every game.

Don’t hear me wrong, Mike, but it’s not the thing that, that that drives me every day anymore. But watching my assistant coaches succeed and watching them do something that you taught them and say, Oh, thank you coach for sharing that with me. And it’s a lot of the time, it’s like something that’s totally oblivious off the court stuff.

You go like, Oh my gosh, I forgot. I, I taught you that,  so

[00:38:20] Mike Klinzing: that’s, that’s funny. And that is so true. I mean, I think this is a conversation Jason that I have with people all the time, whether on the podcast or off, just in terms of the silly things that we remember that maybe a coach said to us or a teacher or our parent.

If you went back and you talked to that parent or that coach or that teacher, they would have absolutely no idea. No idea. They said, they said that particular thing to you. And yet those are things that we all carry. I know I have things that I carry with me that coaches said to me over the course of my playing career that they would have no idea.

That they ever said those things to me that here I am as a 54 year old man, that I still reference those things and they still motivate me even to this day. And they were probably said to me 40 years ago. That to me is just incredible. And it speaks to the power of what we do as coaches. And you think about the influence that you have on players and the fact that somebody that played for you is, is carrying something that.

You said to him that you’d have no recollection of or same thing with an assistant coach, right? It’s just like you said all of a sudden you’re like, oh, yeah, I do remember that We talked about that or that was something that maybe we even just do it I don’t want to say unintentionally But it’s just something that we do that maybe you don’t even really talk about and now all of a sudden you look at your assistant coach and their program and They’re doing that same thing.

And you probably could ask me like, Hey, where’d you get that? They’re like, well, this is just the way it’s the way coach Smith did it. And that’s how, that’s how I’m going to do it. Cause that, that was a success for us when we were there. And I think that’s really, again, it’s, it’s kind of an amazing way of passing down what makes someone a good coach and a good program builder.

[00:40:09] Jason Smith: Yeah. It’s it is exciting at this part of my career.  what I’ve, it’s what I think most coaches need to understand The world’s changed. Okay. This, these players have changed and you better change with them a little bit. Okay. And you you hear these old school coaches, well these old school coaches aren’t coaching anymore.

 what I’m saying? Like they’re all getting out of the business because they can’t relate. And, and part of it is the generation has changed, right? Because of technology, social media, all that business has changed how people view things and how they think. And so What I’ve learned is all these, this generation is looking for meaning, right?

And, and if you can’t provide them some sort of meaning to connect with them, they want nothing to do with you. Okay. They literally are looking like, what, what can you give me? Like, that’s how, that’s just how they’ve been raised. Right. And if you can’t get across wisdom and meaning to them in a way, That’s effective.

They’re gonna, they’re gonna shut you down real quick and I think my Cedarville experience really taught me that in a practical way. I, I knew it, but actually walking through it, realizing like, no, they’re not getting any meaning that we’re trying to get across to them. So I’ve got to figure out how to, to make that thing work.

And so I engaged in some different conversations at Peru and we’ve definitely done that here at Westland. But if you find a group of kids, That don’t care about what you have to tell them. You’re going to fight uphill every single day. Right. Cause they find no meaning from you. Right. Don’t just go to the internet and go, whatever.

I mean, I could figure this out. I don’t need coach Smith or coach whoever to tell me how to do these things. I can find this on my own. What’s so funny. So I’m going

[00:42:08] Mike Klinzing: to tell you a story. So tonight I’m sitting, watching my daughter play a high school basketball game, and I’m actually sitting with my mother in law, and I’m sitting And my mother in law at one point in between, I think it might’ve been at halftime or it was either in between the halftime or in between the two games, she, she turns to me and she asked me, she says, well, how did your teams do when you were at Kent state?

And like, I don’t think I’ve ever really talked to my mother in law about my, my basketball career that ended 35 years ago. And I said, well, I I started explaining and I said this or that I said at one point I felt like we had kind of turned a corner, but then our coach. Sort of shifted gears.

We had been having some success playing smaller, probably playing a more modern style of basketball and shooting threes. And I said, I was the small forward. I was getting beat up by the six, seven, 220 pound guys as a, as a little six, three, 175 pound two guard back in, back in college. And I said, and then he kind of flipped the script and went back to kind of the way we had played before, cause he didn’t like that we were shooting so many threes and we were having a few too many turnovers more than, than what we had.

What do you like? And she, she said to me, she said, now, did you, did you guys go talk to him about that and try to try to share your opinion that you thought maybe he shouldn’t switch from the way that you guys were playing out? I’m like,

[00:43:33] Jason Smith: no,

[00:43:34] Mike Klinzing: I’m like that. I’m like that conversation never, never could have taken place, never would have taken place.

And it goes to what you’re talking about in terms of the way that, that athletes and players have changed and the way coaches have changed too, right? There’s much more of a conversation to be had. Between players and coaches where, and look, it’s not just the players who get better from, from that. You as a coach get better from that.

Cause you get to get a feel for what the players are seeing, what they’re feeling when they’re out on the floor. But I just told my mother in law, like it, that, that conversation was not, it would never even have crossed my mind. To have walked into the coach’s office or had a conversation over the side, like, Hey coach, I, you think maybe that what you’re doing, maybe we should be doing something different.

That conversation just never would have taken place back when I’m playing in the late eighties, early nineties, it was just a completely different era.

[00:44:29] Jason Smith: And I don’t think it necessarily takes a place a lot. It’s not initiated from the players still. Okay. It’s, I think it’s only initiated from the coach.

And if you do it enough, I would assume that the players will catch on. Right. My, my point guard that I have now talks to me I can talk to her during the game and she, which I like,  I’ll say, what do you, what do you, what do you think in here? Like, what do you feel like? What’s a what’s a good, what’s a good play for us right here.

And and. Every once in a while, she’ll, she’ll tell me and every once in a while, she’ll go, I don’t know, coach, what do you want to run, ? And so, which is fine. I mean, I can, I can, I can come up with anything to tell you to run, but I kind of, I just want to get a feel for it cause she’s playing the game, right?

Yeah. I’m not playing the game,  and there’s things you can’t see and you can’t completely get ahold of and not sure actually this, when you watch film, you go back. Oh my gosh. Okay. Oh, I don’t remember seeing that during the game. Right. Right. Right. So you. The players, I think it’s good to have that feedback, but players for the most part still understand that there’s this relationship from the coach that they don’t necessarily want to do that.

So that, I don’t think that’s changed. I think it just has to change initiating for me or the head coach or the assistant coaches to actually Reach out for that information.

[00:45:48] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. And be open to it. Right? I mean, I think you have to be open to Oh, definitely open to it. To get that feedback from players that’s the big thing.

[00:45:54] Jason Smith: Yeah. You, I think you have, I think being transparent and allowing them the opportunity to take ownership of it is huge. Right. Because when it, when it’s successful, it’s like, that’s when they’re, the, the trust builds and they’re like, they know that you trust them. But most kids, even today, still are afraid of failure.

Okay. So they’re afraid to put themselves out there and take ownership of it sometimes because they’re afraid, like, if it goes wrong, like if I decided to run this play here and it doesn’t work, it’s all on me. Right.

[00:46:26] Mike Klinzing: Right. Right.

[00:46:27] Jason Smith: And so a lot of kids are still afraid of that. But if you recruit enough winners what I found out is the kids that really want to win they’re willing to take that ownership.

And say, Hey, this one’s on me. That was a bad call. And as a coach, you have to do that yourself. You have to be transparent enough to say, Hey, that was a bad call by me.   that was on me. Now you can’t do that on every single play or you’ll get ran out of the house. But I think you have to be a little bit humble and transparent to them to know, Hey you got to take ownership.

We talk about that a lot about taking ownership of your, of your successes, taking ownership of your success. Not successes, or we don’t necessarily call them failures because  how many mistakes people make in a basketball game? That’s the beauty of basketball, Mike, which people don’t quite understand.

It’s like that play is over and the next play is, is happening. And by the way, that play ends at about half a second later and then another 30 plays are, I mean, so it’s not like football or baseball where you got to sit around and mope about your mistake for a little bit. Basketball is, is. And it gives you the opportunity to forget about it instantly and go make a play at the very next second.

And if you can get a kid to understand that, I think, and your whole team understands that you’re going to have a heck of a basketball team that’s going to work hard, ?

[00:47:48] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. That’s a mental toughness thing, right? Oh, no doubt. Is the ability to put

[00:47:52] Jason Smith: behind making a

[00:47:53] Mike Klinzing: mistake or missing a shot.

It’s one of the, it’s interesting. That’s one of the conversations that I have, my daughter’s a freshman in high school and so her and I go and. Work out, shoot, do things. And she’s has a tendency, like she’ll miss a couple shots, but I can’t shoot. I’m like, you just miss, you miss three shots in a row.

Like, what do you mean you can’t shoot? Like you just shot. 60 percent on this last round. Like, what do you mean, what do you mean you can’t shoot the ball? And it’s just interesting to kind of look at her psyche and try to help her to talk through that and work through it and get her to see that, like, just because you missed one or you missed two or you missed three, like my thing is always like each shot is its own entity.

Like you make one, then you got to shoot the next one the exact same way. You missed one, you got to shoot the next one the exact same way. And. That’s a difficult mentality. I think it’s a process and I’m sure you see it as a college coach that especially when kids come in as freshmen, they have a certain level of.

Confidence, a certain level of being nervous about it. And as you said, being scared to take that accountability and that responsibility, and then obviously as they spend more time with you and your program, you’d be, you’re able to grow some of those mental skills that help them to be successful as they go through their career.

[00:49:12] Jason Smith: Well like I think it was Jordan Peterson that says like one of the most important characteristics race have is a self awareness, right? And there’s a lot of people that just don’t have self awareness so being able to evaluate yourself properly. Okay. And when I say properly, I don’t mean in, in a degrading bad self image way, like, which like your daughter says, I can’t shoot.

That’s a bad self image, right? So trying to evaluate yourself and to say it’s, here’s where I screwed up and how do I fix it? And then the self awareness to know most, and it’s crazy when you think about it because stats are stats, but even self awareness of knowing what’s good stats are.

Most of my college basketball players don’t understand that. So you have to teach them that. Okay. So when you, when you look at a kid and goes, I can’t shoot and I said, well, yeah, but I missed shots. I don’t shoot anymore. Like your daughter said well a good three point shooter is going to miss six out of 10, six or seven out of 10 threes.

 they’re going to make three and a half to four is a good if you’re making three and a half to four threes out of 10, you’re a good shooter. Absolutely. So you’re going to miss six to seven of those. Yep. Okay. And guess what? If you’re, if you’re making three and a half to four, I’m gonna let you shoot it as many times as you want.

And they’re like, you will coach. And I said, yeah, because that’s a good percentage. I mean, so. And so, and then you break down a post, a post person a post player and their percentage and you go, if you’re over 50%, 52 percent post player shooting, you’re like,  what, you should shoot it every time you catch the ball.

I should? Yeah, you should. Cause you’re shooting 52%, right? And then, but the self awareness to even know what that means for most players. It, it really, I mean, so when I was telling these new kids here, some of these, these stats I just told you, the looks on their faces like, Oh my gosh, I could, coach is going to give me the freedom to shoot the ball.

Yes. Okay. If you can shoot it that good, right? It’s nuts. So I think you have to retrain their brains. Okay. And retrain how they view the game versus reading social media or like, cause you You only see the good clips on Twitter, right, or X, I’m sorry. That’s all you see. You don’t see all the misses, right?

And you don’t see all the misses on Facebook and you don’t see all the grinds and Facebook very often. You, you just see all the successes in the game. So and those play into poor self images, especially for females. And it’s hard. I mean, raising daughters is not easy, right, in today’s world because they’re being bombarded with self image issues all over the place.

Bye. And that shows up on the basketball court as well.

[00:51:55] Mike Klinzing: Makes me think of two conversations that I’ve had on the podcast. One was with Mark Hendrickson, who he was, he’s one of, I think, maybe five people that have played both major league baseball and professional basketball in the NBA, and what, what Mark said to me was, cause I asked him, well, what makes a professional athlete like the best pros that you’ve been around in either sport?

What are some of the things that make them different from. The average player. And he said, the one thing with pros, he noticed more than anything. And he felt like this was a skill that he had it. And it goes back to what you said about self awareness. He goes, pros can very, very, very quickly diagnose when they do something wrong and diagnose it clinically, not diagnose it from a, Oh my gosh, I’m missing shots and I’ve got to figure that out.

It was more just like, I know that. My last two shots have been short. I know what I have to do to correct that. And they can immediately make that correction because A, they’re self aware and B, they’re ultimately, they’re not concerned about the perception of who they are. They know what they need to do in order to have that sustained success.

So he was like self awareness and then that ability to self correct without. losing confidence and without everything, the sky is falling. It’s like, I just have to figure it out and calculate it. So that was interesting. And then I recently had a conversation with Marty Voster. So he’s a GA in the Akron university women’s program, but he worked this past summer with the LA sparks and he was their video coordinator this past summer.

And I asked him, I said, well, what makes, a WNBA player when you work with, worked with them versus when you work with players at the college level. And he sort of echoed in a different way, but sort of the same thing that Mark said, which was They are so well adapted to analyze their own performance.

They’ll go and whatever, watch film or they get done with the game and they know exactly what they did wrong and then what they have to do to fix it. And they have the mental toughness to not allow one poor performance or one poor practice or one poor drill to. deter them from what they know they need to do in order to have that kind of success.

And I think both of those two things go hand in hand, and it speaks to what you were talking about in terms of you’re trying to teach the girls on your team to A, first of all, be self aware about what they can and can’t do. And then once they understand that, to be able to continue to do it, even if you get a little bit off track, if you have a bad shooting game, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad shooter.

It just means, Hey, I had one game now I got to get back and continue on my same path and be able to do what I do. And that requires some resiliency and some mental toughness. I just thought those were two things that sort of jumped out at me after you were talking about that ability to be self aware.

[00:54:58] Jason Smith: Oh, very much. So I think those are right, right on. I mean, I hadn’t worked on the professional side of things but I can tell you that I think that on a skillset wise, I think that after watching enough college basketball lately. On a skill set, the difference, the hugest difference I see is just the handling of the basketball.

Okay. Just how much control the pros and the high D1 players have control of the basketball in their hand at all times. Right? Obviously their footwork and their athleticism and all that is, is huge. I know that, but just the amount of control they have with the basketball, especially on the men’s side. I mean, it’s unreal.

I mean, I, I watch one, I watch our men play and then you watch.  Iowa State Marquette play the other night, you just like, Holy cow. The control that those guys have with the ball in their hands is just unreal. Right. It’s just the difference. Right. So they’re not getting the ball knocked out of their hands at all moments, ?

So it’s just huge. And I think that shows up on the women’s side as well. Just the strength with the hands and being able to control the basketball through traffic is, is a huge difference. So when our players can’t do that. They literally can’t do it. A lot of them so it’s hard to build confidence in an area when there’s a lack of skill there.

 that makes sense.

[00:56:18] Mike Klinzing: No, it does. And I think those two things, right, go hand in hand, the, I always say to, especially parents of younger kids. And sometimes somebody will come to me and they’ll say, well Joey lacks confidence and that’s, that’s why they don’t do as much in the game. Like I’ll see him in practice or when they’re working out, whatever, and they’re super aggressive and they’re going to the basket and they do all this stuff and they’re super confident.

Then they get in a game, they just don’t want to do anything. And my response to that is always, well, what they have to do is they have to build their skill. Like you can’t have confidence in something. That you don’t have. If I don’t, if I don’t, if I don’t handle the ball, then of course, I’m not going to have confidence to do that.

What I have to do is I have to become a better ball handler first, and then the confidence flows from that. But especially with parents of, I think, I’m thinking about like upper elementary kids. So like fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. I remember when my kids were that age, I would have lots of parents coming up to me at various times that client came to my camp or whatever.

And they would ask me, they’d say, I just did you watch so and so play? And he’s just not playing confidently. I’m like, well, because he can’t do, or she can’t do some of the things that you think they should be doing as a parent. It’s not because they’re not confident. It’s because they don’t have the skill level.

To be able to do those. So you don’t want them being confident doing that because they’re going in and who knows what’s going to happen when they, when they drive in there, if they don’t have the ability to do it. So,

[00:57:46] Jason Smith: and I like the one where they, the players will tell me like, coach, you just don’t have any confidence in me.

You’re not building any confidence in me. And I’m like, well, you’re two for 25 from the three right now. Like, how am I supposed to build confidence in you when. You can’t shoot the ball. I mean, does that make sense? Like, at some point you have to build confidence in yourself. I can’t make the shot for you.

Now I can tweak your shot a little bit if it needs tweaked or give you some pointers, but I can’t put the ball in the bucket for you. Okay. So at some point I think players have to build their own confidence in many ways, right?

[00:58:22] Mike Klinzing: There has to be evidence, right? There has to be evidence for you. to be

[00:58:25] Jason Smith: evidence of it.

Yeah.

[00:58:26] Mike Klinzing: For, for you as a coach, there has to be evidence, but for the player, They’re asked to have the evidence. And I think, again, this goes back to self awareness. And I think about players that I’ve seen, that I’ve worked with, that my kids have played with and against. And when you look at it, to me, the confidence is earned because of the amount of time that a player puts in working on their game.

And that’s how you really build confidence. If I go into a season and I know in the summer I’ve worked out two days a week and maybe I’ve shoot for 30 minutes twice a week. How confident can I be in the type of player I am when that is the amount of workload I put in versus another kid who spent all summer in the weight room and spent every day getting up shots and working on their game and playing and putting themselves in position like those players have then earned the right to be confident because again, they know they’ve put in the work, but then you have some players who They’re not self aware with what they’ve done, right?

They, they think, ah things are, things are great. Like I’m ready to go. And then you ask them, well, what’d you do this summer? And they tell you, and you’re like, Whoa, whoa.  how did you think that that was going to translate into any kind of success? And it’s just, as you well know, everybody comes at this game from a, from a different standpoint mentally and, and kind of in their viewpoint, and I just As someone who I think I’ve always been kind of self aware of what, who I am and what I am.

So I’ve tried to instill that in my kids. And obviously it’s not always easy to do, but I’m always amazed when you see kids who aren’t self aware and I’m just like, who is, is anybody talking to this kid and telling them kind of what’s going on and where they need to work on and what they need to improve or what they should be doing?

And it’s, I don’t know. No, the answer

[01:00:28] Jason Smith: to that’s no, Mike.

Yeah. Because no one likes to talk about the truth in today’s society, right? That is true. That is true. Everybody’s afraid to be confrontational and, and get in somebody’s face and say, Hey, here’s what’s going on and you need to work on this. They rather just praise him up and, and say good things about him which is good.

Don’t get me wrong. I mean, it’s good to encourage people. But at the same time, I think to be untruthful with kids.  people ask me, like, do you do private lessons for coaching? And I said, I will do private lessons for somebody. I think that is serious. That could actually play at a good high school level or college level, but I’m not going to take your money if you have no chance of doing that, because I think it’s a waste of time, it’s a waste of hard earned money.

 I’ll work out a kid a couple of times and then if I realized this kid has no shot at ever playing basketball, I’m going to look at the parent and go, I’m not wasting your money. Okay. We’re not going to do this. If you want to do this, you need to find somebody else. But my advice to you is spend your money somewhere else on your kid, right?

Get them involved in something else that they’re going to be more successful at, ? So I think that’s important. So no one’s telling the truth to these kids. And I think you can tell the truth in a loving way. In a way that actually hopefully gets them on the right track versus just continuing down a path that’s going to be unsuccessful with them, ?

So as a college coach, it’s frustrating to get a college player that doesn’t have some basic skills.  you’re like, wait a second. I mean some of these kids, their shot forms are unbelievable. I’m like, who taught you how to shoot like that? And wrong question. I probably shouldn’t ask that question because the next question is my dad.

And it’s like, you’re like, Oh my gosh, I just insulted her dad. ? So, so I don’t, I don’t ask that question anymore, ? So the frustrating part of it is like, like how does a college basketball kid shoot like that, or when did they learn how to shoot like that? So that’s a little bit frustrating sometimes, but That’s just part of the process at our level, I think.

[01:02:35] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that trust. That ability to tell the truth, I think is something that if you’re a good player, I think you want somebody to tell you the truth. Now, you don’t necessarily want him to scream it at you or, oh, no, put it, put, put it put, put it in that way. But I know that, like I think about my son, who, he’s a freshman in college this year, and he has, from the time he started taking the game seriously in eighth or ninth grade, like he’s just craved.

somebody to tell him like, Hey, what do I need to do to get better? What do I need to do to get more minutes? What do I need to do to be a more impactful player? And when he had coaches that didn’t give that to him, he would get frustrated that he’d go and ask and say, Hey, what do I need to do to, Whatever, earn more minutes or what do I need to do to have a bigger role?

And if the coach said to him, Hey, you’re doing it, you’re doing a great job keep it up, keep doing what you’re doing. Like he’d come home to me and he’d say like dad, like I, I don’t, I don’t, there’s no where I could take that. There’s nothing, there’s no actionable advice there that I could take to get better.

And conversely, when somebody would say, Hey, you need to be better catching the ball in the high post and ripping through and scoring. He’s like, okay, I can take that. And I can work on that. I know what I need to do. In order to improve that skill. And I think that again, that’s an ability of being self-aware and being confident and enough to know that no matter how good you are, there’s always something that you can improve upon.

And I think to your point, a lot of kids don’t ever hear that from coaches, especially when you think about how much the training business has exploded. If I’m a trainer, there aren’t that many trainers. Who have the philosophy that you just laid out, right? That if somebody is going to keep paying them, they’re going to keep taking the 50 bucks an hour or whatever it is, regardless of what that kid’s potential is.

And so I think that you make a great point that by the time kids get to the college level, that may be the first time that they hear the truth. And you think about the transfers both in the college level, but also at the high school level. There’s high school coaches who they don’t wanna lose the kids.

And so how blunt and truthful can I be with a player who’s one of my best players? If I think that if I coach this kid hard and everybody else is telling ’em how great they are, and I’m telling ’em, Hey, you gotta work on your left hand. Or, Hey, your, your jumper’s release needs to be faster or whatever.

And then that kid’s me like, well, I don’t wanna listen to this. I’m gonna go and chase the next thing over, transfer somewhere else over. And so, yeah. Oh,

[01:05:03] Jason Smith: I get it. I get that. Yeah. So there’s, there’s a lot going on there. I mean, there’s a, I know there’s a, a kid I recruited. She’s going to a D2 actually.

She’s committed somewhere else, but she, she has a trainer and her trainer puts a lot of her her workouts on, on social media on X and, and I watch her shoot a lot on there and, and her three ball is flat. Like almost every single one of them is flat. Then I watched her play about a week ago.

And a high school game and she’s out there shooting threes and her shot’s still flat. And I’m sitting there going, she’s spending a lot of money with a trainer that’s putting her on social media and she got a D2 scholarship, but guess what, her shot’s still flat and it still needs correction. Right. And I’m like, wait a second, like, is anybody going to tell this kid, maybe her college coach will.

I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like anybody else is telling this kid this and I feel bad for her in a way because she’s going to have, it’s going to hit her and when she gets to college, it’s going to affect her if she doesn’t fix it. Absolutely. And, but there’s a way to handle that. I don’t, I mean, there’s a loving way to handle that process with her and with with kids.

Going back to what you said earlier about your son and I have players ask me, come into my office and ask me that same question all the time. And I try to turn it back to them, to be honest with you, Mike. I’ll usually reverse the question right back to them. So what do you think you need to work on to get better, to get more planned time?

And what my experience has taught me is nine times out of 10, they already know. Sure. Absolutely. They already know. Okay. And to help them, to make them voice it and to come out of their mouth, I think it’s an important step. It’s again, it’s like you’re admitting you have a problem. Okay. It’s like, okay, I’m an alcoholic, so now I got to fix it.

So when they, when they say to you like, well I need to get,  better defensively. Great. You do. Let’s break that down now. Like what, like what aspect do you need to get better defensively? Hey, well my lateral quickness or I didn’t need to be a better on ball defender or whatever, whatever that person says is probably 1000 percent right.

Okay. So they already know the issues, but getting them to voice it and then kind of come up with a plan to give them, all right, here’s the plan for this, for you to get better in this. Okay. I had a kid that was recovering from an ACL injury. So I said, what’s a freshman actually. So I said, what’s your, what do you think your biggest obstacle for you to get on the basketball court?

She goes, well, my, my lateral quickness since my ACL has not been as good as it was. And I said, well, great. You’re 1000 percent correct. What’s the plan to change that? Are we just going to. Come to practice every day and expect it to change through osmosis or what’s the plan, ? So we drew up a plan.

So she’s spending more time with our athletic trainer doing extra work and it’s starting to ship, starting to pay off a little bit, ? So I think getting them to voice the issue and then actually coming up with a plan to help them And you and I know this, like sometimes the plan nine times out of 10, again, doesn’t happen faster, as fast as they want it to,  like, so your son might take him a year or two for it to totally kick in because he’s a freshman and he’s a boy.

Playing with men probably right now. So it might take him a little bit to grow into his body to actually catch up with that. And some kids aren’t willing to wait through that process, right? They’re not willing to do it.

[01:08:53] Mike Klinzing: And a lot of times they have bad advice around them too and they might, that’s,

[01:08:56] Jason Smith: that’s 1000 percent true but at some people and some people are just built differently mentally.

Right. I mean, my, my story, I tell everybody and I told some of my players again the other day. For the kids that aren’t playing right now that much. I told him the story about a kid that I had at Bryan. She came in as a freshman at Bryan and we had 15 kids in my varsity. And she started day one, probably 15th on the depth chart.

And I told her, Hey, you’re going to play in some JV games for us and practice with varsity. And she’s like, all right, anything I got to do coach I’ll do for you. And she did that. She didn’t get into, she didn’t get into a varsity game, Mike, until the eighth game of the season. Okay. And that was sparing minutes when I got her in.

By the 17th game of her freshman year, that’s only nine games later after that, she was in the starting lineup as a freshman and she never left the starting lineup for the rest of her career at Bryan. And she averaged four points a game for her career because she was the best defender I’ve ever coached.

And she started out 15th on the depth chart. And so I, I reminded my players that the other day, like where you’re at now may not be where you’re at later. The problem is the later may not be nine games from now. It may be 19 games from now. It may be 20 games from now. Could be 25, 30, 40 games from now.

But a lot of kids aren’t willing to go through the muck. And the adversity and the waiting, they’re so geared into self gratification instantly that they can’t. And I was telling you that on the phone the other day when we were talking, I think I’m not, I’m not raising happy children in my house and that’s not, that’s not important to me.

Okay. It’s really not. I mean, their happiness is meaningless in many ways to me. Okay. Cause that’s, they’re going to be leaving my house and that they want to be happy in their life later. That’s their responsibility. But it’s not my responsibility to raise happy children. My responsibility is to raise strong kids that are willing to, that can fight through anything in life that’s going to be thrown at them, ?

So, so when they leave my house, they’re ready to tackle whatever the world gives them. And hopefully they will be happy. Don’t get me wrong. And it’s the same thing with our players, right? So, and your son’s the same way, like fighting through adversity and fighting through these challenges is only going to make him stronger and a better person is going to make him stronger in his marriages, strong in his, his jobs, strong in his relationships and I think kids can’t see that.

I think they recognize it later in life. Cause I get these emails from ex players like, Oh, thanks for doing that.  I hated you before, but  thank you for pushing me through that. So I don’t need a self gratification instantly from him because I know it’s coming at some point but but I think it’s important cause I had a kid quit this week on our program and I think it’s, it’s just sad to see kids do that, ?

And not fight through some adversity and, and just because something doesn’t go exactly the way they wanted it to.

[01:12:12] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. And I do think that part of what that is all about is the people that are in their ear that are around them, whether that’s a parent, whether that’s whoever it may be, I think that the messaging that players need in those particular circumstances are, are always, well, what’s within.

your control. And there are some things that you can control. There’s some things that you can’t, you can’t control whether a coach plays you or not, but you can control how hard you play and what kind of attitude you bring and what kind of enthusiasm you have. in whatever it is that you’re being asked to do.

And I think that if you, if kids have those messages and they can start to internalize those, then you get to the point where you’re going to have a team full of mentally tough and resilient players. Even those kids who maybe aren’t, don’t have as big a role as, as they might want at a given time. And it’s hard though, because again, today in our society, so much of everything that we do is just based on what am I getting right now?

in the moment and how quickly can I get it? And the idea that maybe I have to be patient sometimes is lost on a certain population, on a certain population of the kids. Because again, part of it is what, what society messages to them. But also again, I think what you hear at home is, is so critically important in terms of being a good team member, being a good teammate, and being a part of a team and understanding where it is that that you’re at in your journey and whether that means you’re the star and you’re getting 15 shots a game or you’re the player that’s number 15 on the bench that never gets up and does anything except cheer for their teammates.

There’s value to be found in all those roles. And it’s really important as again, people who are around those players from a parent standpoint or a friend standpoint or a trainer standpoint, that, that the messaging, the messaging is clear. I think that I think the kids who are getting good messages, those are the kids that do end up fighting through it and making it however you want to define making it.

I think those are the kids that end up having the kinds of careers that, that you and I would love every college basketball player to have.

[01:14:22] Jason Smith: Yeah. And I

[01:14:22] Mike Klinzing: think

[01:14:23] Jason Smith: the challenge is, you Them personally trying to find value in themselves and how that connects with the team. Right. Cause I hear this all the time, even from the kid that quit this week was like, I just don’t, I don’t see any value in what I’m doing here.

I’m not helping the team at all. Right. And, and my point to that is everybody on our team brings value. Okay. And it can’t just be about playing minutes. Cause that’s impossible. I mean, think about this, Mike. It’s a, it can’t be because what happens when you get hurt, you’re not on the floor playing. So all of a sudden you just have no value to us all of a sudden.

That’s just a stupid comment, right? It’s when I say stupid, that’s, I probably should say ignorant, not stupid, but that’s just an ignorant comment because everybody brings some sort of value to a team, right? And so trying to address that with each individual player as we meet with them individually and say, Hey, outside of just playing minutes, what value do you bring to us, ?

And it helped them to address that. So when things don’t go right, you can bring them back to where you remember this is what you bring to our team. This is who we don’t have this if you’re not here. And and I think it’s really easy to forget that when you’re not playing or you’re not playing well.

All of a sudden you think you’re in, you bring no value there’s no reason I should even stick around here. And I, and again, it goes back to, I felt it, I felt like that I wasn’t being loved or accepted. Okay. In a place. And it hurt, man. It was just not a good feeling. Right. And so these kids are in the same place they’re 18 to 22 year old kids.

Every bad decision that they make and we make is usually because of either fear or insecurity, right? And so I know that. I know when these kids are making bad decisions, they’re either afraid of something, they’re fearing something, or they’re insecure and trying to help them manage that process. I mean, that was, I think that was part of the challenges at Cedarville.

 our kids were just fear, fear of change. And they fought it that was their kind of their flight or fight or flight mechanism,  so helping them to understand that everybody has value is, is challenging, but I think we, as coaches, we got to remember that because it’s easy just to think about winning a basketball game.

[01:16:43] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I agree. I think that’s one of those things where there’s a disconnect when the playing time’s not there that a kid just feels like. That the only way they can contribute to their team is through playing time. And obviously every kid wants to play and that’s why you play the game, right?

To be able to get an opportunity to, to get on the floor and help your team. And yet, I think as coaches that when we do have those conversations and try to, to make sure that look, everyone’s role may not be the same, but everyone’s value as a human being is the same. And that’s something that. Again, I don’t think kids always see, and sometimes in the midst of a season, that can get lost, and I think it’s just important for everybody to kind of realize that.

Again, I think the best, the best coaches  who’ve built those kinds of relationships with players, that’s really what we’re talking about here, is having the type of relationship where the kid knows that you don’t love the player scoring 20 points a game any more than you love the player who’s number 15 on your bench.

Both of them can be equally loved, even though their roles are different, if that makes any sense.

[01:17:51] Jason Smith: Oh, it makes total sense. What they don’t understand a lot of the times is the kid that plays 35 minutes a game that scores 30 points a game for you are some of the kids that I’ve disliked the most.  what I’m saying?

Like they’re really hard kids to like sometimes and the kid that never plays that works her tail off or whatever and comes to my office and is fun to talk to. I like a lot. So they, they, they always equate playing time to how you like them. And it’s just absolutely wrong by the way but that is

[01:18:18] Mike Klinzing: true.

There’s. Sometimes your best players, the hardest one to coach, right? Hardest one to coach. And you just

[01:18:23] Jason Smith: like them the most because of their personality difference or whatever, like that just happens. And so it has nothing to do with personality or likability in many times. But I think of this quote from I don’t know, I’m, this is going to sound kind of crazy.

I like musicals. I don’t know if that’s nuts, but I do. I like from the greatest showman, it says no one ever made a difference by being like everybody else, ? And so. I don’t want carbon copy players so everybody has a different skill set or a talent or a gift to bring to a team, which makes it a team, right?

Like if everybody was the same. We’d be easy to guard and easy to play against. I mean, really would

[01:19:05] Mike Klinzing: bes easy to, easy to scout, right?

[01:19:06] Jason Smith: Oh, easy to scout. And there’s no doubt. So we’re looking for kids to be the best of who they are. And the best, best them and the best we ask them to be.

The best you can be. Not the best, what somebody else is gonna be. So, yeah. All

[01:19:22] Mike Klinzing: right. Let me ask you this final question it’s going to have I’m going to go, I’m going to go flip sides. There’s going to be two parts to it. So what, what has gone as close to script as you thought when you took the job? In other words, what’s gone when you drew up the plan or you thought, Hey, this is how I think this is going to go.

What’s gone closest to being on script. And then the second part is conversely. What’s something that you thought, Hey, this is going to go this way. And it ended up actually going and zagging the other way. So what’s gone, how you’ve expected and maybe what’s been unexpected at Tennessee Westland.

[01:20:05] Jason Smith: The first, I guess the first thing that’s kind of come to script is our players are kind of who they are like I’ve got so many of them that returners, 13, seven seniors they’re pretty ingrained in to who they are as basketball players.

So here’s what, and I’m going to give you the positives and one negative with that process is that our, our kids work hard they’ll do anything we ask them to do. They play hard culture wise. They love each other, man. They get along with, I’ve never had a group of kids actually love spending time together more than this group.

 you can just pass by the locker room and there’s just giggles and laughter and. And excitement to be around each other. I guess that’s a, maybe that’s a little bit unexpected. I didn’t expect it to be totally like that. So great group that away. And they work hard. I don’t have to get on them forever, not going hard.

I think I’ve yelled at them maybe one time for that issue. I mean, so seriously, they’re, they’re self motivating in many ways. The one challenge, I guess the negative, which turns out I kind of knew what they were, were, were sometimes offensively inept a little bit. We’re not the best offensive team.

I mean, we’ll run our offense, boy, we’ll run our offense. Okay. The ball just does not go in the bucket at an efficiency that I’m totally happy with, if that makes sense. Okay. The other night we went For 17 minutes of the game, the second quarter and the seven minutes of the first seven minutes of the third quarter, we went three for 29 from the field.

Okay. In those 17 minutes and we still won the game. So that tells you we were defending a little bit. And so that was the day before Christmas or the, not Christmas, a couple of days before Thanksgiving. So the whole Thanksgiving break, I was like, racking my brain on how am I going to fix this? Like, I’m going to have to put a new offense in.

I’m going to do all this stuff. Then I actually went back and watched the tape and realized, Oh no, our offense was great. We ran our offense. We got great looks. Ball just did not go in the bucket. Okay. And so now our girls will go chase it down. We’ll go get the offensive board.  so I mean, I’ll give them credit for that.

But, and my boss told me that, that there’s just going to be times when this team can’t score And so that was kind of gone to plan, to be honest with you. The good thing is that they’ll defend Mike. So we’re still in games, even when we can’t score, we’re still in games. So that’s one thing that’s gone to plan.

The one thing that I didn’t know how, what would happen is how well I was going to be received here, to be honest with you, I knew being the rival school and they kind of hated each other in many ways  I, Brian is kind of a five letter cuss word over here, ? So it’s just kind of a rival and coming over across the river, it’s like 30 minutes away from the other school that I coached at.

So coming on this side of the river and I didn’t know how I was going to be received by administration, alumni, the team. And I would say I’ve been, I’ve been flabbergasted. So every alumni that’s played here has been welcoming, have been supportive. They’re glad I’m here. Scene change in our basketball program already that they’re excited about.

So that’s been, again, goes back to the love and acceptance part I feel like, okay, cause I didn’t know I’ve been, I was burned a little bit before I was a little apprehensive. So but that this community has been great, been loving and accepting and, and I’m thankful to be here.

[01:23:43] Mike Klinzing: One of us instead of one of them.

That’s the way it goes. Oh, no

[01:23:46] Jason Smith: doubt. No doubt. Yeah. Yep.

[01:23:48] Mike Klinzing: Yep.

[01:23:48] Jason Smith: Exactly.

[01:23:49] Mike Klinzing: All right. Before we get out, Jason, I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you, find out more about your program, social media, email, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:24:02] Jason Smith: Oh my gosh. I think this is the last time you did this. I’m not, I’m not a social media guy, right? Like I literally I tell people When I’m done coaching basketball, I will be completely off social media. I’ll be off the grid and and I don’t even know what our website is. I mean, it’s actually twbulldogs.com is our website. Okay. There we go. I’m going to have to go find our Mike.

[01:24:29] Mike Klinzing: We’ll put it all in the show notes, Jason. We got you.

[01:24:33] Jason Smith: You take care of me, Mike? I need an assistant for that.

[01:24:37] Mike Klinzing: Exactly. And you’re supposed to have like you’re supposed to have just a digital assistant that does all this stuff. They just take care of making all your graphics, your game day graphics, your tweets, putting all that stuff out there. That’s what you, that’s what you need. Somebody that’s just. All that stuff. So I get it.

[01:24:54] Jason Smith: That’s why I don’t have a grad assistant this year. So my grad assistant would probably do that.  I had a great one at Bryan that did all that stuff for me. So it was great. Well,  what Tennessee Wesleyan, you go to Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs, you’ll find us you’ll figure us out. We’re like I said, I only have one Twitter or X account. That’s @TWUWBB

I don’t even have my own. I don’t even have my own single and never will. So sorry about that. But that’s just me because I want to hold myself accountable to what goes on social media.

[01:25:23] Mike Klinzing: Well, what skillset you’re looking to hire for when you hire that GA.  What one particular thing that they’re going to have to do well, right?

[01:25:33] Jason Smith: They got to do social media, they got to know how to work synergy a little bit, .

[01:25:36] Mike Klinzing: There we go. That’s it.

[01:25:37] Jason Smith: If they can do those two things and want to get paid with not very much money, they can come work for me and, and guess what? I’ll give them responsibility I tell everybody.

I’ll tell everybody, if you come work for me I’m going to I’m going to give you some accountability,  what I’m saying? I’m going to teach you some things. And if you want to be able to run some stuff, you can run some stuff. I’ll, you can talk to all my assistant coaches, man, like. First game of the year, I said you, you just, you start sending subs in the game.

And they’re like, seriously? Yeah. Just start sending ’em . Like, well, what happens if I send the wrong person? I said, I’ll get ’em back out no big deal. And it took them a while. It took them a while, but now we’re like seven games in and they’re like, they’re just sending people to the, to the table, which is great.

 get in, get in. I love it. And I just tell him, I said, if it, if it doesn’t go right, you just have to be willing to say my bad, ? I said, we’re good with that. If it goes well, I’m going to give you a high five and say, good call. Right. And we’ll do the same thing, but yeah.

[01:26:35] Mike Klinzing: Love it. All right. Well, send your resumes to coach Jason Smith. You’ll be all set. There you go. Got that job opening for a GA next year. And again, Jason can’t thank you enough for. Taking the time out of your schedule to jump back on for a second time and talk about all the variety of topics that we touched on tonight.

It was a lot of fun, take a lot of value in the conversation. So thank you. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.