MICHAEL REJNIAK – SENIOR RECRUITING SPECIALIST AT NCSA, HEAD COACH / GM FOR WAE ARE D3 TBT, & FORMER COLLEGE COACH- EPISODE 1045

Website – https://www.ncsasports.org/ncsa-staff/michael-rejniak

Email – mrejniak@ncsasports.org

Twitter/X – @Coachrej

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Michael Rejniak is a Senior Recruiting Specialist at NCSA, the GM/Head Coach of the “We Are D3” team in the TBT tournament, and a former college coach.  Rejniak began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at The College of New Jersey from 2004-2006.  His next stop was an assistant coach at Plymouth State for one season before he joined Hall of Fame Coach Dave Hixon as an assistant at Amherst for four seasons from 2007-2011. 

Coach Rej got his first opportunity as a head coach at Suny New Paltz where his teams recorded the most conference wins (9) since 1999 during the 2013 and 2015 seasons and he coached 5 All-Conference student-athletes and 4 1,000 pt scorers. Off the court, his teams equally performed well in the classroom, receiving the NABC Academic Team Excellence Award (cumulative team GPA of 3.0) his final 3 seasons.  Following his six-year run at Suny New Paltz, Michael served as an assistant coach at Vassar College under BJ Dunne for one season before joining NCSA. 

Coach Rej has been the GM and Head Coach of the We are D3 TBT Team since 2018. The team competes annually in the TBT and is comprised of all former Division 3 All-Americans who are currently playing professionally.

On this episode Mike and Coach Rej discuss the evolving landscape of college basketball recruitment and the challenges faced by Division 3 athletes. Rejniak emphasizes the importance of understanding the recruiting process early and how it has shifted from high school to AAU tournaments, affecting athletes’ visibility to college coaches. He discusses his journey from coaching at various levels to advocating for Division 3 players, highlighting the need for quality instruction and the unique skills that set successful players apart. Michael also reflects on the dynamics of coaching his own children and the balance between being a parent and a coach. The conversation delves into the significance of mental resilience in athletes, the impact of NIL on college sports, and the ongoing mission to elevate the visibility of Division 3 basketball.

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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Michale Rejniak, Senior Recruiting Specialist at NCSA, the GM/Head Coach of the “We Are D3” team in the TBT tournament, and a former college coach.

What We Discuss with Michael Rejniak

• The importance of youth basketball coaching and the evolution it has undergone over the years
• How the recruiting landscape has changed drastically, with social media playing a significant role in athlete visibility
• The transition from high school to college basketball requires immense talent and dedication
• Coaching your own kids presents unique challenges, particularly in separating coaching from parenting roles
• The experience of competing in the TBT highlights the difference in skill levels between collegiate and professional players
• The necessity of teaching athletes how to effectively navigate the recruiting process
• The significant role of Division 3 basketball in helping players achieve professional opportunities
• How mentors played such a big role in his coaching career
• The importance of character and competitiveness when selecting players for a team
• Why the recruiting landscape now focuses on AAU events over traditional high school basketball
• Division 3 coaches often have to wear many hats, leading to unique insights and experiences
• His role at NCSA which involves educating families about the recruiting process and helping athletes navigate their college basketball opportunities
• Tactical discussions enhance coaching effectiveness
• Transitioning from assistant to head coach requires finding your own voice
• How NIL has changed the landscape of college sports
• The challenge college coaches face in adapting to constant roster changes
• Playing college basketball at any level is a significant achievement

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THANKS, MICHAEL REJNIAK

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MICHAEL REJNIAK – SENIOR RECRUITING SPECIALIST AT NCSA, HEAD COACH / GM FOR WAE ARE D3 TBT, & FORMER COLLEGE COACH- EPISODE 1045

[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 be joined by Michael Rejniak, recruiting specialist at NCSA, former longtime college basketball coach, also known as Coach Rej. Michael, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:18] Michael Rejniak: Hey, looking forward to it, brother.  Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:00:22] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. We are very excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all of the diverse and interesting things you’ve been able to do in your career. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.

How’d you get introduced to it? What made you fall in love with it?

[00:00:38] Michael Rejniak: Yeah. Like well, God, if you’re going back, I may look like I’m 10, but I’m going back like a long time here. Now I think, no, like I think  I got introduced to it through my, through my father and my mom. And I just remember, I actually got into it.  I kind of always played sports as a kid, but. I, I just remember like so many people in my generation I remember just one day watching Michael Jordan on NBC and I, and I just, I think it was one of those games where he like hit one of his billion game winners.

And then I thought that, well, that’s pretty darn cool. And then I get to learn more. And then my dad saw that I took a vested interest and like literally he would take me my dad was a machinist and every day after work. He would get home late and then we would just play and he would just teach me how to play.

And that kind of really fostered a love of the game.  and obviously I really enjoyed that time with my dad and teach me how to play. And he used to always play a lot of ball growing up with the UMass. I grew up in Western Massachusetts, so it kind of all fostered that. And then I, I just, as I got to grow within the game, it just really kind of fostered and I’ve it’s been a lifelong passion of mine, just like you and I kind of never have left.

[00:01:58] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s amazing how the game gets in your blood and it does not go away. There is no question about that. I always say, Michael, that without basketball, I mean, almost every Relationship, person, positive thing that’s happened to me in my life. Somehow I can tie back to the game of basketball, which is crazy.

[00:02:15] Michael Rejniak: It’s the same thing here. I would be, well, now that you say that, like literally I, I would be probably single living in a cardboard box right there with it.

[00:02:27] Mike Klinzing: So as you grow up in the game and you start to take it a little bit more seriously, and you think about the way that. youth basketball looks today versus the youth basketball environment that you grew up with.

Maybe compare and contrast and just talk about what you liked about your own development, your own opportunities in the game as a young player.

[00:02:51] Michael Rejniak: Yeah, I think Growing up late nineties, like that was back when a, a u was true regional. Like basically like we had one team in western Mass, it was a western mass team.

That was it, right? Like you didn’t have like 90 billion teams. Like basically you had to work your butt off to make this one team, and if not you were, you were sitting on the sidelines for a whole summer and actually like, I got cut. And that was probably the best thing for me. And I, I think I look back at my career, just  now over 30 plus years, like every failure that I’ve had it’s, it’s, it’s been amazing growth for me.

And I think like, that’s the biggest thing, like growing up, like we had local town band and one AAU team in Western Massachusetts, that was it. And so like growing within the game and kind of having those goals to achieve and I was able to achieve them. And it was then  regionally and, and kind of moving forward through college and things on those lines.

I was the first one in my family to go to college. So we didn’t know what we didn’t know. And I think like, that’s where like the recruiting process, my current job, what I do with we are D3 and just co coaching in college, like It is, if you’ve never been through, like, you and I are coaches, like, and our kids are going to be better because they know the process.

I didn’t know the process at all. Like, like, I wanted to play in college. I thought, like, maybe I would just try out. I don’t even know,  I didn’t even know recruiting was a thing.   growing up on a dirt road in Massachusetts, like, Literally, I was an only child. So my best friend growing up was a squirrel.

So it’s not exactly like I’m getting a lot of guidance. So I think like that  growing within that, the, the youth sport dynamic has vastly changed now where there’s everybody has, has their own team. The coaching is, is very hit or miss. But I, I think we could argue that across all levels, quite frankly.

So I think like, it’s one of those things where today’s day and age, you gotta find quality instruction.  I’m, I’m old school. So like, I believe in practice. Like, I, I think like that’s where. I forget who said it, it might have been Latino or, or somebody where they overseas they had a right where you’re practicing six days a week and you’re only playing once.

We got it all messed up over here where we’re playing six days a week and only practicing once. So  I, I think that’s where it’s really kind of changed significantly that I, I, I hope we get back to, but who knows.

[00:05:42] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s the cat is out of the bag, I think, on a lot of that in so many ways that when you just look at the youth sports business empire and trying to figure out, okay, how do we get that to back where kids are playing?

And it’s funny cause I was just having this conversation earlier tonight with my wife, just in the course of talking about our own kids experiences and just the fact that if you grew up in the game today, you’d never play. a game without coach, without parent in the stands, without a scoreboard attached to that.

And you think about the way, at least for me, that I grew up and sure, I mean, I played plenty of games with a scoreboard, but most of those didn’t happen in the summer or the spring. Those were times where I was at the playground or I was in my driveway or wherever. And when you’re just playing with your friends or you’re playing pickup games, you learn to do things and adapt and try stuff out because.

Nobody’s going to yell at you. Nobody’s going to talk to you in the car on the way home. And it’s just, it’s a completely different environment. Don’t get me wrong. I would have loved to have had when I was a kid, the gym access that kids have today. And as you said, the quality of coaching hit or miss if you got a hit, right?

I mean, I never had the type of coaching that some of the kids. That are growing up today, get an opportunity to be coached by people who really know what they’re doing and are able to instill good skills. So it’s, it’s a totally different world.

[00:07:13] Michael Rejniak: Ask

[00:07:13] Mike Klinzing: a kid today

[00:07:14] Michael Rejniak: what the game 21 is. Chances are, they might not know it.

Like, in a way, that’s where I would get my edge. I would click him on the tip back to get him back down to zero. But that’s like like, Those skills, right? In today’s day and age, how to kind of deal with contact, how to kind of go one on two. Like these are how to fight just in general. Like, I think like, that’s a, that’s a game.

Like I was talking about with a couple of my other coaching buddies, right? Like they don’t play that anymore. It’s all like, Hey, let’s get shots up on the gun and we’re good. With, with mom or dad filming me from the sidelines so that I can post it on Instagram.

[00:07:59] Mike Klinzing: There’s no doubt. It’s just, it’s a totally different experience for kids today.

And nobody knows, only us old guys know what it was like back in  back in the day. So tell me a little bit about that, then how you went about without having any recruiting knowledge, because I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you the story of my recruitment after you tell me yours, because I feel like I was in a very similar position in that, like, I had no idea what the process looked like.

My parents had no idea. My high school coach had never had anybody. Recruited at the level that I was. So I, I, I was completely unrealistic. So I’ll tell you my story, but just go through and kind of talk about how you tried to navigate. Again, there was no, you’re not on the line, online searching for all this information or whatever.

You were, you were completely flying blind. So I’m curious how you, how you made it. And it was

[00:08:49] Michael Rejniak: crappy dial up. So basically  I was, I wanted to play a similar situation. My high school coach very knowledgeable about the game, but it’s not exactly like my high school churned out college athletes, like across any sport really.

We were good in our area, but that’s, that’s it. I literally was like, okay I knew I wanted to be involved with basketball post high school. That’s, so I asked my coach, I was like, well, what did you major in to, to be a coach. And he goes, well, I majored in phys ed. And I was like, okay, cool.

I’m going to make sure it fits Ed. And  I looked up my parents we, we drove to like a couple of local schools, like in around me in Massachusetts, I didn’t want to go to a big school like UMass, which was close to me. And I knew obviously I couldn’t play there. Cause at that point they’re coming off the Calipari era and it’s like not looking good for me there.

So it’s like  but then I, I started doing just, I went to an open house at Springfield college, which was 40 minutes from my house.  I wanted to leave immediately when I got there. Cause I was like, this is but then my dad said for me to stay. And he always says like, it was the most expensive decision you ever made because  it’s a D3 private.

I stayed there. I got to know like, Hey, they had a phys ed degree. I found out that it was the birthplace of basketball. So like, that’s right in my wheelhouse. I was like, 100 percent all in. Once you said that, I was like done. And I talked to the, the, the grad assistant who was there. Ryan Eklund, I remember at the time was just there.

Just handing out brochures for the basketball program. And I was like, cool, let’s do that. And, and at that stage of the game, also at that time, there was JV programs and typically freshmen, you went on the JV program and at Springfield, so that’s kind of how it happened. Like, it wasn’t like, This, Hey, I’m entertaining seven offers.

It was like, no, Hey, phys ed, cool. Birthplace of basketball. Awesome. I love basketball and I can continue to play. And it was like 40 minutes from my house where I could get home if I needed to. So it was just like, kind of like the stars aligned and literally from there, that decision set everything else in my life in line to where I’m at today, which is crazy to me.

But that’s just how, how it kind of really happened. But that’s we

[00:11:31] Mike Klinzing: didn’t know anything,  what I mean? No, I know exactly. I mean, it’s just. I, so I’ll tell you my, I’ll tell you my story. I’ll try to do it quick cause I’ve told it on the story. I’ve told it on the pod, but I think it’ll be worth us having a conversation about it.

So I was being recruited by a couple of division one schools and Kent state was one of the schools. That’s where I ended up going, but they were recruiting me in, I guess it was a Ben coming out of my, coming out of my junior year. And they’re like, Hey, do you want to come down and take a visit?

I’m like, eh  I Duke and North Carolina and Ohio State, I’m sure are going to be calling me soon. And so.  I can’t waste one of my five official visits going to Kent. So I told him, Hey, I’ll come down, but we’ll just make it an unofficial visit. So I remember my mom and I went down and we talked to the coaching staff and then we took ourselves out to lunch at Wendy’s because obviously they weren’t paying for anything.

And so sitting there with my mom eating a hamburger, then we come back after the, after the visit and boom, nothing. I mean, didn’t hear they were, they were obviously done with me. They’re like, who’s this kid think think he is. And so went through my senior year and I had a very minimal interest from like one or two other places besides Kent.

In all honesty, I felt like Kent would be probably the best fit for me. So I called them back up. I’m like, Hey, you guys still, interested. They’re like, well maybe, I don’t know. And the head coach came out and saw me play in my last game as a senior. And then they had somebody transfer out. So I became the seventh freshman in a seven player class.

And again, if I probably hadn’t reached back out to them, they certainly probably wouldn’t have reached out to me, but I just didn’t know any better.  I mean, I had no idea that what level I could play at or whatever, because yeah, I just, I had no, I had no idea. I mean, I felt like. Guys that I was playing against that I felt like I was as good or better than were signing with division one schools.

I’m like, I’m better than this dude. Again, you don’t know, like I was in on athletic, not very fast, couldn’t jump a six, three, there’s not many six, three guards in division one that aren’t dunking the ball. And certainly I was, I was not doing that. So it’s just interesting how, again, today with social media and all the awareness, like I would have had a tremendous idea of exactly.

What level I could play at, who I should have targeted in terms of schools I could have gone to. Even earlier,

[00:14:01] Michael Rejniak:  you would be on it even earlier. I started halfway through my senior year. It’s just the awareness and we talk about information, but think about how the basketball as a game has grown because of information.

Like how many times do, do you or, or me or whoever, like, see, we go on our X or we go on Instagram. We see, Hey, oh, wow, that, that play from Ball State. Wow. That’s pretty baller. I like that. And I’ll run it with my Grinch team and I’ll run it with the TBT team and it like kills. I’m like, yo, that dude knows what’s up at Ball State.

No things like that. It’s crazy. Just how information in the game now is just so,

[00:14:45] Mike Klinzing: Acquired.

[00:14:45] Michael Rejniak: It’s weird.

[00:14:46] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. And everybody shares too. That’s one of the things that when I started the podcast, I guess I kind of knew that the number of people that are willing to share pretty much anything. I mean, obviously now you can’t really keep anything a secret with the way video is.

Maybe 30, maybe 30 years ago you could have said, Oh man, I’m not going to share my film with you. Or we’re keeping the, we’re keeping the doors to our practices closed and we don’t want to let our secrets out. Don’t exchange

[00:15:10] Michael Rejniak: the tape. Don’t exchange the VHS. Okay. All right. Exactly.

[00:15:15] Mike Klinzing: That’s it. But now, I mean, everything’s out there, so there’s no point in trying to hide whatever it is that you’re doing.

So everybody just, I think, is super willing to share. And to your point, obviously that’s grown the game in so many ways and brought some of those things that you see at a higher level that now it’s easy. Like you said, I can just, boom, I could take this, I can steal that. Now suddenly I’m running it with my fifth grade girls team or whatever it might be.

[00:15:37] Michael Rejniak: And it made coaches better. It made me better significantly because now, and I got started coaching. Early 2000 right on through and you had to now almost plan for counters and counters to the counters and it made you think 10 steps ahead and you either did it or you didn’t. And if not, then you got cooked because the other team knows what you’re running.

So then you hold everything out like. Was just a whole the, the game of kind mouse got got a lot more hurt,

[00:16:09] Mike Klinzing: a lot

[00:16:09] Michael Rejniak: more

[00:16:09] Mike Klinzing: in depth. So as you enter school, are you pretty sure, obviously you’re gonna major in, in phys ed, you kind of have this life plan that you’ve stolen from your high school coach of what you’re, what you’re gonna do.

Are you thinking at that point For sure that coaching. Is where you want to go? Or was there ever a thought of some other type of career?

[00:16:31] Michael Rejniak: I knew playing wise, prototypical 6’2 white guy that could shoot. Okay. Where am I,  what, but I wanted, like, I did love being involved in the game. I loved the strategy of the game.

I loved the game just, period. And I was very fortunate, Charlie Brock at that program he’s a D3 Hall of Famer and he’s head of the rules committee for the, the NCAA, NA, NABC. His mentorship kind of really fostered it. And when I came to, when it came to graduation, I wanted to stay at Springfield to be a graduate assistant coach.

And he had a spot for me, but it didn’t pay much, but I had another opportunity. He helped me connect with the College of New Jersey and he’s like, Reg, you gotta go. You can’t just stay at Springfield your entire career. And that was another piece of advice that I had never really been kind of, on that I consider New Jersey national, but like like I’ve never kind of really gone out of my home kind of state pretty much outside or for games.

So like to kind of do that and become a graduate assistant at the College of New Jersey, that was another piece of advice that, that was awesome. I got my master’s paid for in athletic administration and really, really kind of helped me diversify my portfolio and, and, and learning as a coach.

[00:18:01] Mike Klinzing: Did  right away that it was what you wanted to do? I mean, when you get in there and you start doing the job, because obviously When you’re not doing the job, there, there may be things that are different than what you perceive as a player. But when you first get in there, are you sold right away?

Yeah, 100%.

[00:18:17] Michael Rejniak:  I, I think I love the interaction and, and the growth and the same reason why, like, I love coaching my kids and love coaching their teams and, and, and and just helping the growth of, of, of the game within a person, I think is so cool. And I, and I think I, I always kind of knew it.

 and from there on in  it just really, I, I wanted, I got a taste of it and then I wanted to do more. I wanted to be able to do more on the court and I want to be able to learn more about the game and, and, and understand it more. Because it is such a beautiful game. Like when you, when you kind of, All of it is, is, it’s just so unique.

So I just wanted more. And then, then I kind of was like, all right, now what do I got to do? I’m graduating. What am I going to do now to be like paid or at least somewhat get something paid for my work?   like in, in nowadays, like. You’re not a full time assistant boss, but like, when I was at the College of New Jersey, you got your master’s degree paid for, but, and you only got a 3, 000 stipend, which is like, nothing for apartments and things like that.

And so like, you had to be real creative.  with it, but it was one of those things where kind of just cutting your teeth and like being on the road, recruiting all the time. I love the interaction of coaches. Like you and I talked about, like you would see the same assistant coaches at different events.

You start to get to know them, start to be your homies, all that types of stuff. And  I really enjoyed, enjoyed that. And it kind of just fostered that love. You’re pretty bad

[00:19:59] Mike Klinzing: at.

[00:20:02] Michael Rejniak: Everything. No, no, I, I think like I always had a good good teaching background because of Springfield College. Like I could teach. In terms of knowledge though, that’s different. Because I was so young and quite frankly, dumb in the game. So like I really was, I was good at tactics. I was good at X’s and O’s.

I was actually not very good early on at, at the training aspect to get you better as an individual player. And that’s something like I knew how to do myself, but to teach it to a center or big, to teach it to guard, how to create your shot. That wasn’t my shot, ? So like that individualized training aspect, I really had to study and learn.

And, and cause I, I could really read screens. I could teach X’s and O’s. But as far as that individual training aspect that was something I had to really learn and get better at and then do myself. So ultimately, I think I was way better basketball player, like around 25 ish, way better than what I was because I taught myself all these trainings that I had to learn so that I could teach it to my players.

So like, I think that’s where I really had to grow.

[00:21:27] Mike Klinzing: How’d you go to learn that stuff? How’d you go about gaining that knowledge? Were you going to video? Were you going to mentors? I worked a lot

[00:21:34] Michael Rejniak: of camps. I worked so many camps when I was a graduate assistant. My summer was, straight camps like Hoop Group down in New Jersey.

I would be literally day in day out for two and a half months straight, not a day off working camps. And they would bring in these great speakers like Bobby Hurley Senior Dave Hopla, who’s like the best shooter of like all time in my opinion. Like I learned how to teach shooting from him. I learned how to, like the defensive tactics.

For all these coaches that would come in and like, I was very fortunate that Hoot Group would do their it, at that, it was also called Eastern Elite there, East, East Coast Elite. And they would, their home campus was at College of New Jersey. So they would work, they would run like seven different sessions, but I would still sleep in my own apartment at home, which was sweet.

I didn’t have to stay in the dorms or anything because those dorms suck. They didn’t have an air conditioning or anything. It was awful. It’s

[00:22:39] Mike Klinzing: beautiful.

[00:22:40] Michael Rejniak: But, but they would bring in all these speakers. So I would continually pick their brains. I would continue to hang out with them during the week. I would be their host.

I would really, and I would learn a lot from all the old time coaches that would come in repeatedly, kind of like the generation above me work and, and pick their brain. And it was just such a, like a sponge moment for me in the game because I had all this knowledge and here I was thinking I was pretty good, but I didn’t know anything,  what I mean?

And I think I still feel that way in my, in my forties I’m still learning, but I, I think like at that point. It was all these speakers that would come in and it was typically the coach that maybe got let go. Like  how it works in those camp circuits. Like it’s the coach that gets let go, but still a high major coach.

So what they do for the summer is they’re the speaker at all the camps. Same thing here. So it was like one of those things where all those great minds I got to pick from during that time. And it was, it was such a, I asked him specifically, Dave Hopla, how do you teach shooting? Cause I I’m a pretty good shooter, but how do you teach it?

Cause you’re the best or defensively Bobby Hurley. Like, what do you do? Training your teams with minimal resources. I’m at a D three school. We have to do the very similar types of stuff. What do you do to get them better?  things like that.

[00:24:07] Mike Klinzing: So after that experience at the college of New Jersey, what’s the job search?

Like now you got your master’s degree. What do you remember about the process of finding that next job? I sent.

[00:24:19] Michael Rejniak: I think the, the final tally, okay, the final tally was 226 personal typed and then handwritten notes to every college program I wanted to work for. A lot of ’em were division one, don’t, because we all wanna work division one and things like that.

A lot of ’em were some local D twos and D three is kind of in New England and. Everyone, I didn’t know how the job process worked at that stage of the game you, you have coaches kind of help you, things like that, but everyone, I, I, I kept getting like, Oh, I guess I, I got a, I got a letter from Duke.

Okay. Well, I still signed, I still got it in my back of my office here. Hey, thank you. We’re filled. Best of luck in your search, stay hungry, Krzyzewski. Or hey, we failed at this time, blah, blah, blah. And there was a, what ended up shaking out, was, I got a notice at school, I didn’t even email.

But send the, send the note to was Plymouth state in New Hampshire. And literally coach called me  he told me he knew my coach and said, Hey I got a spot you’d have to work at a local elementary school. And I was like, well, I can either, I really don’t have anything else.

So I’m going to spin middle of New Hampshire. And I worked for John Scheinman up there. And, and it really. I worked that year with another assistant, Jay Harris, who’s now him and I work together with TBT and he’s the head coach at UMass Boston and that fostered my lifelong friendship with him and yeah, and then it’s just kind of a random kismet type of moment.

[00:26:10] Mike Klinzing: When you think about that time at Plymouth State, what do you do take away from that experience that helped you? Or that you utilize for the rest of your career.

[00:26:21] Michael Rejniak: Appreciating having nothing. And like literally it’s a, it’s a great school, but it was in the middle of nowhere. Like, I remember going recruiting and New Jersey is easy recruiting.

You drive like two hours, you’d hit up like 30 high schools. It was sweet. Plum Estate is in the middle of New Hampshire and you have to drive four hours to see kid, a kid who was even relatively talented. This would be. Completely honest, like Cooper flag did not exist in that area. There’s just nothing you have to go out of state to find good ballers.

It just was what it was. So like, I remember one day I was dry. I got in the rental car and it was negative five degrees. I was like, Oh, well, that’s, that’s pretty cold. When I, I went up to St. Johnsbury, Vermont. When I got into the car back after the game, I’ve seen the kid, it was negative 10. When I got back, it was negative 20.

It is so cold for negative 20. I’ve never experienced in my life where literally I spit and on the ground, it just froze. It was the craziest thing ever. And I was like, at that point, I was like, I don’t know how long I could stay up here but I love this game of basketball. At that point, like, I think just being humbled, And just cutting your teeth.

I think like coach Scheinman was a very demanding coach. And at the time I was like, what is going on here? This is crazy. If this is how coaching is, I don’t know. But what I realized later on in life, like we always do, like very similar, like with our own parents, probably a lot of it he was preparing me for the grind that was coaching.

And, and I think like learning how to handle that by yourself, because my parents, your parents, aren’t going to save you so like, if this is something you want to do, what does that look like? I think that was kind of understanding that the, the kind of how to thrive in adverse situation when literally your coach is demanding a lot out of you and you just got to figure it out because he doesn’t take no for an answer.

So I think like that was a big moment.

[00:28:41] Mike Klinzing: How much do you credit working at the levels that you have in terms of, I know that some guys that start out at the division one level where the jobs are more specific. In other words, you don’t necessarily get your hands into as many things as you do at the lower levels.

How important do you think that was, or how, how do you reflect on that piece of it when you look forward in your career from just Get an opportunity to, I’m coaching on the floor. I’m recruiting. I, I’ve got my hands in almost every aspect of the program. I think

[00:29:18] Michael Rejniak: I, and, and this is where I, I fell in love with division three is you do everything.

You literally do everything. And that’s where, like, that’s a chip on my shoulder that I’ve always kind of worn. And that’s why, like, I, I do it with TBT and, and our brand with we are D3, like nothing. Is better to me than taking a team of non scholarship kids and a coach that had to do everything from ground zero and, and go up against schools like Kansas, Syracuse, and, and, and, and, and do pretty damn well.

So like, I think like that’s where I give division three coaches and I will further be there advocate, they’re the best coaches around. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s great coaches, but I mean, as far as like, coaches that have to do everything, that are hungry, and that have stayed at this level for a significant amount of time, not just use it as a going up to division one type of thing, I think those are the true best educators of the game.

And I worked, in my opinion, for the best at Dave Hickson at Amherst.

[00:30:29] Mike Klinzing: Talk about that experience with Coach Hickson. We were fortunate enough to have him on right after his election to the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame. I mean, obviously what he’s been able to accomplish in his career. And I just came away from that conversation, incredibly impressed.

And we’ve had several of his former players that played for him and just the experience that they had. And what basically, and I’m curious if your experience is the same, but what everyone told me was just that his ability to. connect with people. And again, not just players, not just assistant coaches, basically anybody that he’s coming in contact with and making that person feel like they’re the most important person in the room, setting aside whatever is in front of him in a moment when somebody walks into the office to talk to him.

And that was kind of, everybody had some type of story along those lines of, Hey, coach Hickson will, Drop everything when you as a human being show up in his office to, to show you that he cares and to demonstrate that, that the relationship part of it is most important. And that’s what I came away, I think the most impressed with in terms of my interaction with him.

And then just what the people that were around him have had to say. 100%. That

[00:31:48] Michael Rejniak: is, that is coach Hickson to, to the T. Now, one thing I didn’t mention earlier was growing up in Western Massachusetts, it’s my house. Is about maybe 30 minutes from Amherst college. And I used to go to his camp all the time. Like that was my, my family didn’t have a lot of money to send it, send me to five star and things like that.

I went to Western mass basketball camp where the trophy is a cup. It’s not, it’s not even a trophy. It’s a plastic cup that I still have. And I won several of those. And if you were. If you were like good in Western Massachusetts at that time, everybody knew you had a, you had a white and purple cup and that was it.

So flash forward when I’m leaving, I put my name in the hat for the Amherst college assistant job and they just literally came off of winning the national title. So it was basically, I don’t have a shot in hell of getting this assistant job because everybody wants it.  I’m coming from Plymouth state and we had a, A grinding year.

It was like one of those like learning years, like where you hover around 500, you lose, you win some games that you shouldn’t have, you lose some games you shouldn’t have, that type of year. So it wasn’t like we were like rock stars completely, . And I show up and, and I’ve, I, I interacted with him and, and, and he goes, ah, Mike, he goes, I remember you used to come to our camp all the time.

And, and, and I’m one of a a billion kids that have gone to his camp but he remembered me from as a seventh and eighth grader. That is crazy to me, all the interactions that he’s had. And I’ve been so fortunate enough, like I started working for him when I was 25, I’m now 42 and, and him and I We talk frequently, we golf when he’s up here in, in the Northeast when we can, we get together all the time.

And, and I’m just for so fortunate to have him as a, as a mentor and, and as a friend because he’s, he’s been there for me when certain people learn and things like that. And he’s always provided me that Coach at Bice, coach father at Bice. And I’ve been very fortunate enough to kind of grow.

And, and all the accolades that he received, they’re still not enough for, for what he’s done for me and what he’s done for his players and other assistants.

[00:34:22] Mike Klinzing: So going beyond that relationship piece, when you think about his success as a basketball coach, obviously building the relationships critical.

But when you think about him as a basketball tactician and what. His teams did on the floor and what you guys did during the time that you were with him, what were some of the keys to the basketball success again, beyond building the team culture and relationships?

[00:34:48] Michael Rejniak: It was, it was, well, first of all, he, he’s always thinking the game of basketball.

Like we would do, I would come up with this like great play in my head and I’d be like, we can do this kind of tweak here, coach here. And he would, he would just rip it to shreds. Like this is where the help is going to be here. What about here? Da da da. And, and like, I must have been old for my first, like 200 play calls that I was going to call at Amherst college with, with a national contender team, by the way.

So, like, I’m pretty sure, like, anything I put in, that team would’ve done great with. But he would just rip it to shreds. And then, I started to think the game better. And he would say, oh, that’s pretty good here. What about this? And we would have open dialogue about how to make certain tweaks. Like, okay, we’re playing Williams here the first time.

We’re gonna show this type of look. And then, We got to start teaching the game, teaching some different counters to it, because when we base them two weeks later, when it matters for conference play, we’re going to have to have something in the bag. So like, he’s always, he never was satisfied with where we, he had a system in place offensively that everybody knew we ran, but he was further thinking and tweaking that game and tweaking the X’s and O’s.

So like, we would have awesome discussions. I would, like, on his whiteboard, in his office, continually thinking the game. When you add that in with his ability to have relationships, like, that’s why he won national titles, quite frankly. But his ability to continue to challenge X’s and O’s and, and tweak certain things and have discussions, Was, was awesome.

Absolutely awesome.

[00:36:42] Mike Klinzing: So that experience, obviously with coach Hickson and with the success that you guys were able to have at Amherst gives you an opportunity to become a head coach. At what point are you thinking about becoming a head coach? Is that something that you had been? Actively seeking, or was it a situation where that job at SUNY, New Paltz opens up and somebody says, Hey, you should take a look at that.

Where were you in terms of your thought process, your mindset, as far as being prepared to be a head coach at that point?

[00:37:16] Michael Rejniak: Yeah, I was, I, I thought I was ready and I, and I, and I, and, and, and you never, I think moving that six inches over from assistant to head coach that’s a, that’s a big six inches. And, and was I ready at the time?

Absolutely. I think if I just, in retrospect, if I went from Springfield College to Amherst College being my first coaching endeavor, I would have had a fast sense of what coaching was. Cause we, I had to really grind at College of New Jersey and Plymouth State. And I think like that’s what led me to be a head coach.

It was something I was actively searching at the time. I started dating my wife at that time and, and things on those lines. And I wanted, I wanted the challenge. I saw some of my peers I was starting to interview for. A lot of jobs and I was always going to be the bridesmaid. I was, I was perennially second place in so many interviews and they said I was great and blah, blah, blah, types of stuff.

 the usual thing ADs say. And  I, I was very fortunate to get hired at, at, at SUNY New Paltz and that was another kind of learning piece for me as well, because the resources at a state university versus private are different. Admissions is different. I think at that stage in my voice of finding my voice as a, as a head coach I think I tried to be somewhat like coach Hickson, coach Scheinman, coach Costaldo, coach Brock all in one and not be coach Reg and the minute I let go of all of that, that’s when I started to become a really good coach.

When I started to become comfortable in my own voice, but to be honest, it took a while to figure it out. And I’m still figuring out and I’m in my forties so I think it’s one of those things where I had to let go of a lot of 20 I was third, I want to say I was a little bit shade under 30, 29, 28 at the time.

So I was like on that list of youngest head coaches in America. That’s not a good list to be on, by the way. I used to, I used to think it was as, as a, as a badge of honor, but that just like, is, is like, no, you’re going, you’re going to get, you learn here. Nobody, nobody wins a national title being youngest head coach in America, all divisions.

But I think once I let go of a lot of those insecurities that I think you have of constantly trying to prove yourself and I, I, I got better. And I think like that’s kind of just life in general. Like as you get older, like ego starts to kind of disperse like we talk about it as coaches and then you start to the service of others, not yourself and you’re not chasing the.

The, the coaching at Duke dream and things, and you’re comfortable, the ego leaves. And I think like minute that started happening to me that’s when I started to get good and start to kind of be where I’m at today.

[00:40:24] Mike Klinzing: When you think about taking over that program, what were some of the first steps that you felt like you had to take?

Obviously the finding your voice piece, I think for anybody who Is going to become a head coach for the first time. I think that is obviously critical because you’re making the decision. You’re the, you’re, you’re the end maker in terms of this is it. I’m making the decision where as an assistant, you’re giving suggestions and somebody else is ultimately going to make that decision beyond, beyond finding that voice.

What do you remember about thinking, Hey, I’ve got to make sure that if we’re going to be successful, I’ve got to get X, Y, and Z in place. What were some of those things? You have to have

[00:41:04] Michael Rejniak: players. I, I think, I think recruiting is, is paramount. I think no matter how good a coach, coach Hickson is, if you give him my son’s second and third CYO team, they’re not going to win no matter how good.

And that’s a hall of fame coach. It just is what it is. And I think like, I learned that early on, you’ve got to have players. And if you don’t have an admissions department that supports that. It is no matter how good or motivated you are, it is very difficult to win. And, and that’s something that I wish like, cause I, I would battle back and forth as a young head coach.

And that’s where I think if I could give another research to young head coaches is, Do your research on, on kind of what the support is within the program. It’s, and I think that’s where a little bit of ego is too, right? Like you think you’re, you’re, you’re this hot, hot commodity coach. If you don’t have the players, you ain’t going to win.

It just is what it is. So I think that’s where I learned really quickly. No matter how good X’s and O’s I was, no matter how good educator I was, if you don’t have players that can compete. I, I think that’s, that’s, that’s a difficult thing that I had to learn because quite frankly, we lost a lot. And so like I had to learn how to, how to lose and get better at, and like what, what I have.

So I think like that’s, that was a big piece. I think understanding the landscape of at that stage, I, I think, and it’s still evolving, but just today’s student athlete. It’s way different than what it was when you and I balled. Very different. And I think how they think the game, how, how you connect, how you coach with them is different.

You can’t just put them on the line now repeatedly, just cause you said so, and they would listen, right? Nowadays, you got to get out your own pilot point. You got to say, this is why you got to do it. This is the important thing. And Hey, tap down the back. You’re, you’re still a great person. I all those types of stuff.

 so like that’s a I think evolving with today’s student athlete is important. I see it with my own kids as well and their peers and how you interact with them  is important as well.

[00:43:32] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I, I think when you, when you start talking about the changing landscape of what players are like today, which was again, players back in the day, there’s certainly the change in terms of the way that we coach and.

You think about the sort of that fire and brimstone, as you said, get on the line, my way or the highway. We’ve certainly evolved in the coaching profession in a way to be able to meet the needs of the kids that we’re coaching. And I certainly think that that’s been a positive development for, for the game of basketball without, without question.

And so being able to adapt to that as a head coach and get that in line so that you can deal with, as you said, The players and ultimately you got to have the right players coming into your program. How long did it take you in each one of your stops to get a feel for the type of player who a was going to fit the basketball part of it, but also fit the school, the institution, all the things that go along with that because obviously each school has a little bit of a different Culture, a little bit of a different kind of kid that’s going to thrive in that environment.

So how long as, as you go to your different stops, how long does it take you to get a feel for, this is the type of player that we’re looking for, for our institution. I mean,

[00:44:50] Michael Rejniak: college of New Jersey. I did a little bit of recruiting with Springfield college. It’s on the road with their assistants just to learn.

 Plymouth state that took some time. Because to figure out kind of the landscape of the person, where do we draw from the academic criteria that we can work with, types of stuff. Amherst College was, was literally easiest for me. Because I would go into a gym at some academic elite camp or something.

I would say, all right, who is literally the best player here? And I would go ask to that player. Like like I remember one time I recruited a player, Peter Casilla. He got MVP of an academic elite camp that Hooper was running in Pennsylvania. Okay, he played at St. Mark’s in Worcester behind two kids Murphy which ended up playing at Florida, and another kid that played at Georgetown, the coach’s kid.

I’m blinking on the name right now, but he basically got Two minutes a game at that high school, but he was the best big at that gym and I called him for months and didn’t hear anything. And then literally the night before Thanksgiving. He called me back finally and said, Hey, I’m thinking about taking a visit to Amherst like, so like Amherst was easy just kind of cause they won the national title.

So like you don’t want to be the assistant that really messes it up.  and, and coach Hickson will say like, Oh, I did miss a couple, but,   we, we really had a good kind of vibe recruiting as, as a team, as a coaching staff and coach was just the ultimate closer and, and he was tenacious with it, but I think like Amherst was the easiest, even though some people might think it was the hardest, it was actually the easiest.

And they also had a great admissions department that supported athletics, which is why they continue to win and do well and all that types of stuff that they do. But at New Pulse, it took me a while as well because it’s kind of it’s a state run institution that  caters to the higher academic, but they’re not, if you’re a super high academic, you’re going to go private.

If you’re not high academic, then you can’t get in. So you’re living in this really gray area. If you have in its state, so like you’re dealing with price too as well, but you can’t recruit out of the prep schools because if you’re, if you’re paying money to go to a prep school, you’re not paying money to go to a public university.

Right. So, right. It’s very, it’s a very unique niche. And, and at that time in the at that time of New Balls history, they were very stringent on transfers. Nowadays, like with COVID and admissions, like if you look at the squad, they do a nice job of getting some really high quality transfers, but that wasn’t the case when I was there.

So like, I, it took me a while to figure it out,

[00:47:52] Mike Klinzing: but Amherst was the easiest. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think what you start talking about. a school with Amherst, obviously, basketball reputation, and then you talk about the academics. I mean, clearly, one, the pool that you’re drawing from is pretty small, right?

To begin with, because of the academic requirements. And so now you’re looking at, okay, we just have this pool of players that were, We’re trying to look at from an academic standpoint. And now, again, because we’re one of the better programs in that niche. Now, as you said, you can go and be like, okay, we’re going after the best guys who fit sort of that criteria.

[00:48:26] Michael Rejniak: Or do you want to come out and win a national title or, or we got lucky one year, Aaron Toomey was national player of the year for us. I helped recruit him, but that was coach Hickson’s recruit. But we got lucky with Aaron Toomey because. Columbia was on him. They had a coaching change at that time.

The new coach dropped the ball and he had nothing going on. So Toomey came to see us and  it’s, it’s all said and done. And that’s the all time leading scorer at Amherst history.  so it’s, you’re dealing with the Ivy league type of, type of deal. And you’re either going to start or you want to win and play the degrees are pretty much the same.

[00:49:07] Mike Klinzing: How has the recruiting process changed from when you started to. Your role now at NCSA in terms of when I think about the recruiting changes in college basketball, I think about the fact of how important a high school basketball was and the importance of to a recruit of their performance in high school.

I think about college coaches coming to watch players play. In high school. And I remember saying back when my kids were young. So I’m talking about, this is my, my kids are whatever, 20, 19 years old. So I’m talking 15, 20 years ago, telling people that in high school basketball is what that’s, that’s the season that’s important.

All this silly stuff in the summer and AAU, like that stuff doesn’t matter. And yet I can tell you that my own son’s recruitment had zero. to do with his performance as a high school player. Now, coaches came to see him play when he was a senior, but those were coaches that already had seen him, already decided they were going to recruit him.

They were not there to evaluate him as a player. They were there to make sure he knew that they were interested in him as a player to get them to come. And so the shift from high school to. AAU in terms of evaluation. Just tell me a little bit about just how that’s changed over the course of your career and how you view that.

[00:50:33] Michael Rejniak: Yeah. Well, information is different, right? It’s, it’s more accessible. So as a college coach, you can do a lot of recruiting from your desk.  I saw it from just the evolution of my career. You can do a lot of recruiting from your desk. So you can do a lot of pre evaluation where you’re not sitting in a gym, looking at bums for eight hours.

 exactly who you’re going to see all that type of stuff, which has allowed with the amount of AAU tournaments and travel tournaments, coaches don’t like, they still recruit during their own seasons, but as far as like head coach at valuation talent. I know I can see you play against some really good talent in the summer when I have time where I’m not having to worry about how to teach Johnny how to read a screen.

Like I can really focus in and evaluate you and there’s opportunity for me to evaluate you against better players than what I’m going to see in high school. It just has significantly changed because I look at Like my own experience here in New York, like my daughter and son’s high school they’re solid.

But as far as like the best competition that they’re going to face, quite frankly, is going to be Intravable on CYO. And it didn’t used to be like that. It used to be high school was like the town all this type of stuff. Nowadays it’s like, are you on the Nike circuit? Are you on Under Armour?

Where are you playing nationals? You’re going to be in Vegas. You’re going to be in Orlando. What time are you in the gold bracket? You in the silver bracket or in the crappy bronze bracket. Okay. I don’t care if you’re in the bronze bracket, cause that means you’re not a winner, blah, blah, blah, types of stuff.

So that. Evaluation has, has drastically shift. Now, I think a lot of things have been lost in transit translation with that. I think sometimes coaches do rely too much on film. I think film is the one that gets you in the door live evaluation. And this is where I’m going to be getting on my soapbox where you got to see.

Who’s going to be able to fight in that foxhole with you. And the only way you can do that is by seeing that player play in person in a game that like where they’re going to be challenged. And I think a lot of those opportunities happen in the summer.  not so much in high school anymore where it didn’t used to be the case.

[00:53:03] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think that’s definitely true. And then I think the other thing too, is from an efficiency standpoint, right? I can go show up at an AAU tournament and. There might be 15 kids that I could seriously consider recruiting versus I could show up at a high school gym and the kid I’m going to watch is in foul trouble and plays, plays four minutes.

And there’s nobody else even remotely close to anybody that I would be interested in, in that game. And so you just think about it from an efficiency standpoint, it makes sense. I think that’s one of the big reasons why there’s been the explosion of AAU is just because. Again, kids can all be in that same venue to be able to compete and coaches have the opportunity to evaluate so many kids in one fell swoop.

And that’s where for me, with

[00:53:49] Michael Rejniak: TBT and the we RD three team, it took me, I, I, I, I think we figured out the key to everything. The, the, the, the, the code. I, I think I tacked it, but, got it. You gotta, you gotta. have kind of that, that evaluation of a, of a, of a dog in you like what everybody says, a dog, what’s a dog?

Yeah. No, it’s like that person, like when you’re in that foxhole, when your back’s up against the wall, they’re not gonna, when you’re in an arena of 30, 000 whatever people, how many people we played in Brown, whatever. Is like, you’re not going to crap your pants and you’re going to be cool and you’re going to be confident in yourself.

That is a tough thing to quantify. And that’s where like these coaches, I think some of these AU events, they can start to quantify that. Like, Cooper Flagg, all right, you’re a baller no matter where you are, whether you’re training with Brian Scalabrini or in the national tournament. You’re, you’re awesome.

Okay, but what about, like, that, that seventh, eighth person? Like, that might be their only time where they’re going to play in front of that crowd. How are they going to react and things on those lines? And that’s something that I’ve had to really focus in on and evaluate with my guys that I coach. Like, how do you quantify that so that when we’re playing a team like Kansas or Syracuse, That they’re able to rise to the challenge.

[00:55:19] Mike Klinzing: Let’s talk a little bit about the TBT. How did you get involved in that? How does that opportunity come to you? And then just tell me a little bit about that experience, what it’s been like and how you guys go about putting together the team and just kind of walk me through the process.

[00:55:33] Michael Rejniak: Yeah. Well, like I, I was a couple of things.

I was looking, I had younger kids at that time. I wanted to stay involved in coaching, but. The way landscape was, my wife had a great job around the area. I was looking to be, spend more time with my family. I wasn’t ready to move all over the country and kind of chase it. Like I started to let my ego go a little bit.

I didn’t need to kind of chase as much. And I was watching it previous summer and I was like, I was sitting with a couple of buddies my fellow assistant Matt Droney, who’s now a head coach at a prep school Dexter in Massachusetts, but he was, he won a national championship with Babson D3.

And I was like,  what? I think a lot of D3 guys, cause they’re hungrier could do well in this million dollar tournament. And I just started and he’s like,  what?  you’re, you’re right. And it could have been the, the coolers light talking. But like, I was like, okay let’s do this.

And cause I’ve always, one thing that has always stayed with me was even when we were at our best at Amherst college we had national players a year, like Andrew Olson, who’s the trainer, obviously with the Cavs and things like that, getting him to be looked at the national player of the year because of the stigma of division three was like crazy to me, he was the best player I’ve ever seen in my life.

And we couldn’t even get him a sniff from some Ben town in Bosnia so like that has always stuck with me, that kind of negative connotation. This was the best our division had to offer. So I’ve seen the best of what our division has to offer. And I know it could do well against, for lack of a better term, division one, prima donnas and several  we, we, I started talking with the TBT guys and I was like I’m thinking of putting a team together that will only be division three alums.

We’re not going to have the high profile names. I’m not going to tarnish the brand. And we’re going to keep it D3. They said, we love that idea, but you gotta get in. And at that point in time, you had to get voted in. And division three, we have a lot of support. We got voted in. I called every one of my coaching buddies, all that types of stuff.

And we got in and then from there on in that first year, like we played UCLA at UCLA and we were up or we were tied, we were up at halftime, tied at third quarter. And then we got the doors blown off  at the fifth quarter. But at that point in time, improved a concept. That we could hang with certain things.

And I knew I could do certain pieces. Then the next year  first of all, this is like TBT finally last year gave us, gave us some good seeding, like, listen to this. So first year we played UCLA at UCLA. Second year, Syracuse at Syracuse Wichita state at Wichita state. So basically a division one all star team, which which was Challenge ALS, which went to the finals.

And then Kansas at Kansas, and then last year we played a team Sweet Home, Alabama in Dagan, and then we played the defending champs, but, like, they gave us the gauntlet, right? So like in those environments NBA draft pick versus somebody who basically, he went to a Division III school and did really well and now plays in Ireland.

 things like that. So that was, it improved the concept and then it’s grown every year since then, like, and it’s been my mission to kind of further help out with the voice of division three in those regards, whether now we run two pro combines that last year we had 16 of our people that attended of, of 32 get pro contracts, awesome.

Love that, that we can do that. This year we’re running two of them. And then we’re further kind of helping the brand and we have NIL stuff going on. So the brand is growing to have kind of this big mission. And we’ve been very fortunate to have a great supporter in, in Hardy Strong, which is the foundation where Justin Hardy, the Wash Washington university player that passed away from cancer.

His family. And, and, and us have been, they’ve been so supportive of us and kind of that mission when second year in, maybe I was talking with Justin about potentially being with us on the team and then unfortunately  we passed and kind of we’ve taken him with us because I think his story deserves to live on forever and who he was as a person.

And so to have him kind of with us, kind of right here. All throughout has been awesome. And it wouldn’t have been, they’ve continued to help kind of fundraise for us and they’ve been, they’ve been great supporters, but it continues to grow. And it’s been absolutely an awesome experience and a ride.

And I, I can’t wait to see where it continues to take us.

[01:00:37] Mike Klinzing: Tell me a little bit about the NIL piece. I’m curious as to how you guys have approached that, because I’ve talked to several people, you In different roles about NIL, about their experience with it, about how people can take advantage of it.

So I’m just curious, from your perspective, how are you guys thinking about that?

[01:00:57] Michael Rejniak: Yeah, yeah. So, with us, first of all, I can do and say a lot more things now that I don’t work for an AD. So it’s awesome. But like like I, I vote for the top 25 and things like that. I can tell them my speed, not even care and be political, all that stuff anymore.

So it’s a lot easier now, but with the NIL stuff, like I had an idea, we had an idea, kind of like with the team, we wanted to grow the brand. That’s just the way the landscape now, and there’s nothing out there for helping support division three athletes. There’s nothing. So like with us  coach Harris, who’s a head coach at Boston from my time at Plymouth State he does a great job  with gear and, and branding and things on those lines.

And I was like, well, what if he had a great idea of kind of like bringing it to the masses of division three? So we have I reached out to several athletes and they, they get a cut. Of, of what they sell or whatever. And we give them the money so that at least then like they can get at least a little bit of something  for what they do and their, their brand at, at their school.

So it’s been just a way for us to give back. It’s, it’s mostly on the student athlete. Like we, it’s not like we’re like going crazy with it. It’s just another Avenue for them to help support their own selves. Like when they’re in season, they can still be making some money on the side I think nowadays, like that’s the way it’s, the land I don’t necessarily agree with kind of where it is with all these extra years of eligibility, NIL, all that types of stuff.

I think that we squeezed the toothpaste out and now we can’t get it back in. And they’re trying to. But like Juco now no, it doesn’t count against you. I mean, crap. Like I could go back to school, I think, and have like eligibility left. I’m sure some, some button team in the middle of Arkansas will take me.

Maybe, but like, so it’s, it’s a landscape that we’re figuring out as well. Just like, I think the rest of the country is. But for us specifically, it’s been a way for us to get back to Division 3 athletes, not just basketball, we work with football now, a couple football players, a couple women’s basketball players just to kind of help support kind of the mission of, of, of what we’re about.

[01:03:15] Mike Klinzing: No, that makes sense. I, it’ll be interesting to see where NIL ends up five, 10 years from now, because as you said, that toothpaste is clearly, clearly way out of the tube. And I don’t think anybody anticipated that what that landscape looks like, nobody thought it was going to become what it’s become. And I just, every time I talk to a college coach, especially when you start talking about guys that like the mid major level of division one, I don’t know how you even begin to manage a roster.

You just, I think what it is is you have to reset your mentality. You coach, you coach here, coach one year, you coach one year, you coach this, this is my team this year. And maybe a couple of guys are going to come back. Maybe they’re not. Who knows? And next year it’s going to be a completely different team.

You just have to reset that mindset to that

[01:04:04] Michael Rejniak: program. Like it’s, it’s like literally you coach your team and that’s it. So all levels now, like if you’re that D3 coach or D2 coach. You recruit a kid out of nowhere, even though it’s tough to be under the radar now, but maybe you develop that player into something like where up until junior year, then all of a sudden they become player of the conference.

They’re gone. Like, like, like they are absolutely gone. So how do you navigate that? Right. As a coach at the division one level, you can’t. Maybe D2 and D3 you have that built in loyalty and  maybe but it’s you’re resetting every year.  transfer, it’s going to look, it’s going to look different, but it’s going to look similar to hockey because in hockey, right, like you graduate, nobody, the good pro no program really takes kids fresh out of high school.

You typically, if in hockey, you go to a junior’s program, you go to one of the prep programs, whatever, and then you get the, the 24 year old freshmen. That’s going to be the lay of the land now in basketball. I really feel outside of the, outside of the abolition. Why wouldn’t you go, if you’re not, you can get your credits out of the way.

You can develop your sport develop within your sport of junior college or whatever, and then go to four year. I know I, I have a young birthday and that’s kind of what I, the excuse that I always make.  I could, I could definitely benefited from two years and get my credits out of the way and then go to a four year.

[01:05:43] Mike Klinzing: Well, and it’s two more years to play, right? I mean, again, everybody always talks about like, for all of us, the ball stops bouncing at some point. Most kids who are playing college basketball are not going to be professional players. But if you told me at the beginning of my college career, and you can play six years, Of college basketball versus four.

I mean, I would have signed up for that immediately. In a

[01:06:06] Michael Rejniak: heartbeat, in a heartbeat, right? Like it’s like a no brainer. And I think like how you navigate that. Schools probably are gonna like we’ll see landscape of division three, like schools that have graduate programs. I can sell you for like, hey, six years, you can play all six years, get your masters.

We’re going to have a great time. We’re going to win a lot. Okay. You’re going to pay a boatload of money and only go for four, Matt. Why do you want to do that? Exactly. So it’s going to be, it’s going to be I I’m very interested to see how it goes. I’m very thankful that I’m not in it.  and I can just deal with the pro side of things cause coaching the pros, like those guys are easy and it’s, and it’s  and I kinda am able to talk with, agents and things on those lines and work with them in those regards.

It’s a lot easier coaching the pros than it is coaching college right now. 100%.

[01:07:02] Mike Klinzing: I could see that. Tell me about the selection process for the team. Yeah.

[01:07:07] Michael Rejniak: Literally, Year one it was I wanted, I’ve always gone to with the mindset of like, I wanted it to be like almost like a division three dream team, right?

You have your Jordans of the world, you have your Karma, you have  Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and then you have like one Christian Laitner.  like the kid fresh out of college. Cause Literally year one, it was like a dream team in those regards, but there were players that necessarily didn’t play that year, things like that.

So we learned kind of after that fourth quarter blowout that you had to play. You had to be playing, you had to be a current pro. You can’t just be really good, but take a year off. Basketball shape is we all know, trust me, I can run a 5k, but if you put me on a basketball court right now, I’d be, I’d be done in about like two, two up and downs.

That’s it. So basketball shape’s basketball shape, right? And so the next year we evolved, we lost to Syracuse on free throws and I started to kind of, that was a piece, right? And then I started to look at, okay, it’s not necessarily, as we started to play really aggressive really well coached, but these are teams, Kansas, there’s a clear, clear Line of separation between Kansas Division I and everybody else Division I.

There is a clear difference and, and you don’t understand it until you see it up close in person. It is like, hey, it is like the difference between an all conference player at Division I and an NBA draft pick, oh my gosh, 100%. And so like it, and even I saw it when with the Cavs and all that type stuff too when I, when I was there.

But one of those things where I think the, how do you combat that? If we’re going to stay true to our brand, which in my I have made sure like we’ve stayed with our brand, like with, to be a part of, we are D3, you have to have played division three basketball, at least for one game. I can sell it one game division three.

Yeah. That’s it. I’m not going to have it be, Hey, these are for the D3 guys. And the rest of them played at, at UMass and, and Kansas and Syracuse. It’s, it doesn’t, we lose all of our cred. So how do you combat a team of non scholarship athletes that are good, that are playing pro versus NBA caliber? And to kind of, it’s not necessarily the, the guys that,  for lack of it, it’s going to come out wrong, but play pretty, like you just shoot the three  what I found in TBT, because it is so quick, you have got to be able to play defense and you’ve got to be confident in yourself.

And how do you quantify that? The quantifying confident in yourself and being in that competitive spirit, that is tough to find. I’ve been very fortunate enough to find it in several of the returners that are with us. Ty Nichols, Marcus Azor. Alex Sobol, Demetrius Underwood, Josh Trebwell, Daquan Davis, the Mechanics of the World, Thomas Corey.

Like, the team that we won last year with, these are players that are so competitive. That’s the number one thing that I look for. Like, I’m assuming you can score, I’m assuming you can do this, you’re the best, you have all these accolades, you’re playing pro. But when, when, when you’re in the foxhole with me and we got 30, 000 fans that want us to, that want to kick our ass, are you going to be able to fight and not be intimidated by the guy that got drafted ahead of LeBron or something like that, right?

Like that, that NBA pick that somehow is playing overseas. So like, that’s how I make up the team. And, and myself, Jay Harris, who’s my who works with me and, and David Clark. Timeshelf we call him, character, love him. We sit down and we watch a lot of film. We talk to them. We do a lot of interviews.

I ask them questions and these are guys that I’ve watched for a long time to kind of really get to know. That’s why when we’re compiling the team, it’s really like 10 guys that have played pro that are playing pro. And I’ll take one guy. One, maybe two that are graduating college and to kind of help jumpstart their pro career reality is in my experiences with TBT, the players that have been fresh out of college to compete and play, I can’t count less on, on one hand like they’re there.

It’s so tough to compete at that level, no matter how good you are to level from college to pro is a huge jump. And that’s, I think what has kept it refreshing for me as a coach. I’m going from D3 to pro. Well, now I’m coaching against pros. So now how I talk to you, how I teach you, that’s been refreshing as well.

And kind of learning those nuances. But I think like that’s where that jump I only take one, maybe two college kids. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be the national player of the year or things like that. It’s who I think will have a better pro career and things on those lines, but it’s a lot of evaluation that I’ve known.

And I’ve evaluated

[01:12:46] Mike Klinzing: throughout the years. I mean that leap, right? I think when you go any level, people don’t necessarily understand the differences between levels. When you talk about going from high school to college, and I know you’ve sat in many AAU tournaments and You listen to parents, you listen to players, and everybody thinks that they have a college player on their hands.

And I just consistently say to people, like, you have no idea. how good you have to be to play college basketball on any level. And then that goes to what you’re talking about. Now you take it from college to pro, people have no idea how good you have to be to be able to play professionally anywhere in the world.

Zero idea. How good the skill level is. And there’s no way you can convey that. And then I think the other thing that, that sticks with me is when you start talking about, okay, the difference between here we are, we’re trying to compete with. Non scholarship players, guys who are playing overseas who are tremendous, tremendous players.

And then you’re talking about a guy that was drafted in the NBA who just has physical tools and size that the normal human being just cannot. You just cannot. I can’t train that.

[01:14:07] Michael Rejniak: Right. We can’t train that. So how do you combat that? Right. It’s like the old David versus Goliath thing. Well, then you gotta have some fight in you.

Right. And you better like, like value that basketball like it’s your life and like, you can’t just like freak out. So like, that’s how you like I talked about maybe figuring out the formula, I think. Right. That’s a big piece of it because it is a blessing and you touched on it and I tell families this all the time.

And even my town, it is a blessing to play any sort of college basketball. It is so, you have to be so incredibly good, whether you’re going Juco, NAIA, D3, D2, D1, all that type of stuff. You have to be, you have to be blessed with basketball talent. I don’t care. And there’s margins and we can argue about whatever, but you have to be.

You have to be good. Then, you amplify that by about a billion degrees. Okay, now you’ve become the best of your whatever arena you’re in. And then, you have to go compete with everybody else, because here’s the thing with pros. People don’t graduate in pro. You, you have turnover in college, you don’t have turnover.

There are some old dudes overseas that are kicking butt and taking names that you’re like, dude, I used to play you on NBA live like 1995 version or whatever. Like that are still overseas doing well. Like there was a Jeff Gibbs, who played at Otterbein, who won the national title, I think in 2001 or 2000, whatever.

He is just retiring from playing in Japan, and he was an all star over there. So we’re talking like, he’s been over there for like a million years. And now you have all these players, and especially with advancements and  medical treatment, how you take care of your body. Careers are getting longer.

And we see that with LeBron and, and, and he’s a, he’s a absolute enigma, but we see that also like with the greats, right? Tom Brady, all the times, everybody’s starting to take care of their bodies more. So careers are long. Now you got to go against that. When you’re graduating college, get out of town. It is difficult as hell.

So everybody’s got to be

[01:16:27] Mike Klinzing: appreciative of the offers that they get. Yep. No question. There is no doubt. All right, let’s transition into your role at NCSA. Tell me a little bit about. What you do day to day, how you help kids and families be able to navigate this world that we’ve kind of been talking about.

[01:16:44] Michael Rejniak: Yeah. Yeah. So NCSA IMG Academy in Florida we’re one in the same. So like NCSA is like the recruiting arm to IMG Academy. We when I NCSA. It’s been around for about 25 years and, and essentially like, we’re like matchmaker. We’re going to sell a combo for athletes. Like coaches come to us and say, Hey, we need this.

We have fit. We have the pool of kids that say, Hey, this, and we piece it together like a puzzle. And during the course of my kind of day to day, like I’m, I’m talking with families from not just basketball, but other sports as well. And basically saying, all right, this is where we’re at in the process with you.

This is the reality of what it is. Cause everybody’s going to tell me, Hey, I want to play at Duke. And be like, okay, what answers do you have as a junior? And they’re like, well, we haven’t done anything. Well, dude, you’ve been behind the game for three years now, ? And that’s something that I have to educate families on.

It’s not coach Reggie’s rules. It’s not coach Mike’s rules. It’s the NCAA says you are a recruit when you turn 13 years of age. Do I agree with it? No, because I have my daughter’s 11, two years down the line.  as good as a hooper as she is, as a softball player, I can’t envision like talking to a college like, cause she could barely like like brush her hair the right way.

Things like that. Right. Right. But that’s not my rule. That’s the NCAA’s rule. And that’s the game that, that we all play. Right? Like it’s this game of arms race that started with the internet, that started with it, that, that now is further amplified with NIL and eligibility and all that type of stuff.

My job is to educate them on the reality of their situation. And a lot of families are like very similar to you. And, and eyes growing up where they don’t have that background or they might have a a parent that went to college, but if you’re going to college just for academics, you don’t have to do anything until end of junior year, maybe take a visit or two in the summer and apply like athletics, it just ramps up that, that flywheel.

And so my job is to talk with you as a family, be like, figure out where this disconnect is and then say, Hey. This is how we can help. And this is what we got to do to fix it. So it’s kind of like, and, and for me, it’s almost like recruiting, like my my I, I talk with families I liken everyone to a recruiting visit, can I get them to see the light at, at, at the end of our call?

Are they in a better spot versus when I talked to them, do they know about the process? Do they know what to expect? And so I talk with families kind of in those regards where they’re at, Not whether or not they’re recruitable. I, my job is to see where the, not to say like, Hey, you can talk. My job isn’t to say, Hey, you can play at Duke or not.

My job is to say like, are they, are there things that they can be doing to put them in the best situation possible so that they’re having that college opportunity? Because it is such a gift.

[01:20:05] Mike Klinzing: Thanks for the process versus outcome. Just like we talk about as coaches, right? You’re trying to help them to understand.

Yeah. The process and what they need to be doing to put themselves in the best position to be able to have an opportunity, which makes a ton of sense. Tell me about coaching your own kids. I want to keep this relatively brief. So give me your best piece of advice, because there are so many coaches out there who, regardless of what their regular coaching position might be, they inevitably end up coaching their kids in some way, shape, or form.

So if you had to give somebody. One piece of advice when it comes to coaching your own kids. What would that one piece of advice be?

[01:20:44] Michael Rejniak: Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna plead. Oh God. I can’t just give, give one, but I’m going to give two. I’ll give two. Okay. Perfect. One, no matter how qualified of a coach you are, you got to let them have another voice.

Teach them. And that’s, that’s tough. That’s very tough for me as, as a father and kind of my background and your background, right? We know there are times in the gym where you’re, you are the smartest basketball mind in that gym. And  sometimes you got to let other others teach your own son, daughter.

I think that’s important. Having another voice. I think I have a rule

in my house where I don’t talk about the game or whatever. On the car ride home. No matter good, bad, or different I might be smirking and things like that, but like, even though I coach my kids, like that whistle is blown, now I’m your, back to your father. And I think like that’s so important to come from a, Yes, I’m competitive and hey, I’m not going to beat you down because you didn’t make a cut the right way or you passed up an open shot or you traveled in the open court, which by the way, like my son travels like all the time and he doesn’t tie his shoelaces.

It drives me nuts. But like I think knowing the line of coaching and, and, and parent is important. And I think that that has helped me process making that rule, having that time to calm down from the energy of a game as a coach, like we get into it. And I think that’s where I can then come back at it more as father coach rather than coach father.

And I think like that’s Tough to do and I’m still learning how to navigate that with my own kids, but I, I think that’s, that’s important. And  yes  it’s, it’s been one of my, it’s been the greatest gift. Like I would, I would turn and not coach college 100 percent out of 100%. To coach my own kids.

It is my greatest joy. And let me tell you, I’m a better coach coaching second and third grade CYO. Cause the schemes you want to talk about, there’s great coaches everywhere. There’s this one dude a shout out to Tommy Bergadamo. In New York, where he runs a great program, and he runs a great 1 2 2, man.

Great 1 2 2, we can’t run necessarily at the college level because they’ll just skip past it. But I’m telling you, in you sports, if you’re not running a 1 2 2 man to man, like, matchup type of zone, you’re missing out, because you combine that with man to man, oh, it’s dirty. I think like, there’s I would say those two things.

If you can have somebody train your kid or coach your kid with a different voice I think that’s important. I think learning how to separate the core from your role as being a parent is, is important because then you can even be a better coach to your son or daughter.

[01:23:49] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely, that’s well said.

All right, final two part question. Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then secondly, when you think about Your career, you think about what you get to do every day. What brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

My biggest

[01:24:09] Michael Rejniak: challenge. I think it’s continuing to grow as a coach, grow the brand and, and in today’s landscape of, of now AI and crap like that, and, and like I manage all the feeds and things like that. So like, that is a big challenge and, and cause you do what Luke said kind of all the social all that type stuff.

That’s a challenge, right? And growing right within that. It’s kind of appalling because I think that’s probably simplest terms. Continuing to evolve is a challenge. The greatest joy in my day to day is being able to share. I’ve, I’ve been very fortunate enough to be just like all of us. We’ve all been a part of sport our entire life and to be continuing to have that be a part of my daily life.

That is, that brings the joy and to see others have that joy, whether it be coaching my daughter’s team and having the light bulb go off with some of them and have that joy or Like talking to some random family in Nebraska to help them realize their joy of playing or to help a pro team, a pro player have a better opportunity, make more money for their family.

That brings me joy. So I think that’s, that’s been that, that’s the greatest joy of my day to day and kind of through the lens of sport, which is pretty cool.

[01:25:38] Mike Klinzing: All right, final thing before we get out, share how people can reach out to you, connected to you, whether you want to share social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

[01:25:53] Michael Rejniak: Yeah, so everybody can reach me at@Coachrej on socials Instagram, X Twitter, whatever it’s called now, X. Yeah, I’m already dating myself by calling it Twitter. When it comes to the WeareD3 brand on both socials, it’s @WeareD3TBT, which we could probably now get rid of the TBT because we’re now more of a national brand now different but @WeareD3TBT message me, message my team,  I love talking hoops with anybody.

I’m very thankful that you brought me on. Obviously, a lifelong listener, first time caller type of deal, which is great. And  I love furthering bonds and through basketball and getting to know, cause I think we’re all better because of that. And feel free to always DM me.

I will always respond or you can email me at rejniak3223@gmail.com I’m not going to give out my super secretive work email, because they like watch over me like big brother. But rejniak3223@gmail.com. My number was 32 because 23 was already taken and I wanted to be Michael Jordan and I’m not.  So 3223.

[01:27:17] Mike Klinzing: There you go. You got it. Rej, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on with us. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.