CHRIS CAPKO – SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1175

Website – https://smumustangs.com/sports/mens-basketball

Email – ccapko@smu.edu

Twitter/X – https://x.com/ChrisCapko

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Chris Capko is the Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at Southern Methodist University where the Mustangs went 24-11 and earned a No.1 seed in the NIT in their first season under Head Coach Andy Enfield.  Capko has 18 years of college coaching experience and has helped lead two different programs to post season play while also developing 11 NBA players.
 
Prior to SMU, Capko helped USC to a 176-93 record in eight seasons from 2016 – 2024 as an assistant or associate head coach including and Elite Eight trip in 2021.   Capko, who served as USC Director of Operations during the 2013-15 seasons, returned to the Trojans after spending the 2015-16 season as an assistant coach at Florida International University (FIU). Capko also spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Georgia Southern (2011-13) and at Stetson University (2009-11). Prior to his stint at Stetson, Capko served as a graduate assistant at Marshall University.
 
As a student-athlete, Capko spent his first semester in the basketball program  at the University of Florida under head coach Billy Donovan, before transferring to the University of South Florida in Tampa where he played for three years. As a junior, he was fifth in the Big East in assists and as a senior he was the Bulls’ team captain. Capko earned Academic All-Big East honors as a junior and senior at USF. He was also the Bulls’ nominee for Big East Basketball Student-Athlete of the Year in 2007.

On this episode Mike & Chris discuss the nuances of coaching, including the importance of player development, the challenges of recruiting in the current landscape, and the significance of character in building a cohesive team. Capko shares his determination to ascend to a head coaching position, recognizing the formidable competition he faces from other candidates with extensive head coaching experience. He emphasizes the collective goal of revitalizing SMU’s presence in the NCAA Tournament, a feat not achieved since the 2016-2017 season. Ultimately, Capko reflects on the sheer joy of coaching basketball, underscoring his passion for the sport and his commitment to fostering growth in his players as they work towards shared objectives.

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Be sure to have pen and paper handy as you listen to this episode with Chris Capko, Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at Southern Methodist University.

What We Discuss with Chris Capko

• Growing up playing multiple sports, which he believes contributed to his overall athletic development and adaptability
• The importance of player development and building relationships with athletes to foster success
• Becoming a first time head coach involves overcoming significant competition from experienced head coaches
• Staying engaged in all aspects of the program as an assistant coach
• Keys to building cohesiveness amidst constant roster changes
• Effective scouting requires a deep understanding of both statistics and contextual game situations
• The goal of guiding SMU back into the NCAA Tournament
• Effective recruitment hinges on identifying players who not only possess talent but also demonstrate character
• Navigating the complexities of the transfer portal
• Creating a collaborative environment amongst the coaching staff
• Preparing for a future head coaching role by developing his philosophy and staying engaged in all aspects of the program
• Allowing kids to choose their own paths in sports, rather than being pushed by parents

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THANKS, CHRIS CAPKO

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TRANSCRIPT FOR CHRIS CAPKO – SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1175

[00:00:00] Narrator: The Hoop Heads podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

[00:00:21] Chris Capko: The challenge I think I have every day is trying to continue winning and keep this program going in the right direction, because the more we do that, the better. My chances are being a head coach, I mean, that’s my dream, right? I want to be a head coach. And so the challenge is beating out for a job, 10 other guys who have been a successful head coach somewhere, or have head coaching experience, and I’m an assistant coach, and that’s hard to do, right?

So I think that’s my biggest challenge. Individually, I think the biggest team challenge is getting SMU back into the NCAA tournament.

[00:00:49] Mike Klinzing: Chris Capko is entering his second season as the men’s basketball associate head coach at Southern Methodist University, where the Mustangs went 24 and 11 and earned a number one seat in the NIT in their first year under head coach Andy Enfield.

Capko has 18 years of college coaching experience and has helped lead two different programs to postseason play while also developing 11 NBA players Prior to SMU Capko helped USC to a 176 and 93 record in eight seasons from 2016 to 2024 as an assistant or associate head coach, including an Elite Eight trip in 2021.

Capko who served as USC Director of Operations during the 2013 through 2015. Seasons returned to the Trojans after spending the 2015-2016 season as an assistant coach at Florida International University. He also spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Georgia Southern from 2011 to 2013, and at Stetson University from 2009 to 2011.

Prior to his stint at Stetson, Capko served as a graduate assistant at Marshall University as a student athlete. Capko spent his first semester in the basketball program at the University of Florida under head coach Billy Donovan for transferring to the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he played for three years as a junior.

He was fifth in the Big East in Assist, and as a senior, he was the Bulls team Captain Capko earned academic, all Big East Earners as a junior and senior at USF. He was also the Bulls nominee for Big East Student Athlete of the Year in 2007.

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[00:03:05] Phil White: Hi, this is Phil White, author of The Leader’s Mind, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads podcast.

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Be sure to have pen and paper handy as you listen to this episode with Chris Capko, men’s basketball associate head coach at Southern Methodist University. Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunk tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by Chris Capko, men’s basketball assistant coach at Southern Methodist University.

Chris, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:04:16] Chris Capko: Thanks for having me, Mike.

[00:04:17] Mike Klinzing: Excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the interesting things that 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 a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.

What made you fall in love with it?

[00:04:29] Chris Capko: I’m probably unlike many of the people who got involved in basketball or are now in coaching, I, I was a little late to basketball. I grew up playing probably everything else but basketball and  sometimes you are kind of what you’re exposed to. And my family wasn’t really a basketball family or anything like that.

We lived by a park that you just. Our age or my age you would go to the park and play. So all I had to do was go out of my neighborhood across the street and I was at a, a blacktop where you would just go shoot and dribble and stuff like that. So I probably got started playing basketball, probably like middle school, right?

I don’t think I played organized basketball till right before high school, so like eighth grade.  my dad just kind of bought me a basketball and things like that and I would play with my friends randomly, but I probably started to get serious about it right before high school. And  fortunately enough I was athletic enough and I guess hardworking enough that I was able to kind of make up for some lost time and went to a really good high school.

Played for some really good coaches along the way there, and played with really good players at that point. They made me better too every day in practice and, and in games and things like that. And was fortunate enough to.  get recruited lightly enough. Were led to college and I had a great college experience, kind of at that point, knew I wanted to coach.

And then the rest is history.

[00:05:53] Mike Klinzing: When you think about growing up as a kid who came to basketball late, especially compared to kids today, right? Who were, we got ’em on travel teams when they’re in second, third grade and doing all that kind of stuff, and here you were playing multiple sports at that age and doing different things, and then coming to the game of basketball a little bit later in your life, how do you think that that impacted your development as.

Player, do you think there was benefits to that for you in terms of being a, I don’t even know if it’s a multi-sport athlete necessarily, but just doing all those different activities as a young kid just to kind of improve your athleticism. I always think about, again, I’m even older than you are and I always jump fences and climb trees and doing all those kinds of things that nowadays kids go to an athletic performance training person to, to help ’em to learn how to run or learn how to jump or land and all the kind of things that you and I kind of just did naturally in the neighborhood.

So how do you think about that in terms of your development as a player?

[00:06:54] Chris Capko: It’s a good question. I thought about it recently with my kids. I have a 4-year-old and now a 1-year-old. And  I still believe in playing everything. And the one thing I would tell you that I believe in is, is it’s have to come from them.

So like I’m going to try Tom. Help my kids expose ’em to different things and then when they figure out what they want to be good at is then when I’m going to try to help them be the best they can. So my dad never steered me one way or my mom never steered me one way. They just let me play whatever I wanted to play.

And then luckily I was in love, I was a better baseball player and played baseball all the way, even through high school. So I went straight from basketball to playing baseball. And during the basketball season, I would still work on I’d go to the batting cage on the weekends when we didn’t have games and stuff like that and hit and throw and all that stuff.

But I think the biggest thing, I deal with it from parents now, like, ’cause ’cause a lot of parents will want their kids to be so good, so bad and they almost want it more than their kids. And to me, the kid will hit a wall if he doesn’t want to be good at it and it doesn’t come from them.

So I do believe in playing multiple sports, but ultimately I want them to focus in on what they want to be good at. And then try to steer their development to that, if that makes sense. It

[00:08:11] Mike Klinzing: does. And that’s a really good point. And I think it’s one that I’ve given that advice to so many parents that will come to me and say, Hey, want my kid to be good at basketball?

I want this can, can you help them? And my response is always, basically just what you just said, that look, if your kid’s going to be good at basketball, it’s not going to be because you want them to be good at it, it’s going to be because they love it enough to practice and to get better and to do the things that it takes ultimately to be successful.

And I think that sometimes, and I will say that I have kids that are much further along than yours are. I have a 21-year-old, I have a 20-year-old and I have a 16-year-old. Going through and trying to raise them and have them find the things that they love. And then when it comes to basketball, obviously just like you’re at this point a basketball person, and so am I.

So my kids just naturally got more exposure to basketball than some other things. And my wife and I exposed ’em to lots of stuff. But when it came to basketball, even though I knew that advice that you just talked about and that I give out to other people, it’s sometimes very difficult. Especially like, okay, you have a gym, you have practice every day, you can have your kids coming with you.

And it, I had a similar ability to access facilities, right? And there’s times where I’m doing something, I’m like, Hey, you guys want to come along? And they’re like, no. And

[00:09:36] Chris Capko: mm-hmm.

[00:09:37] Mike Klinzing: I know what the right answer is. It’s just to say, okay, yeah, you guys can stay home. And yet there was a part of me that’s like, come on, like dad’s got keys to a gym.

Like we could just get in there and work on our game at any time. And I really had to. Dial myself back and make sure I understood and took my own advice, like what you just said. So it’s, it’s, it’s a lot harder to do than it is, than it is to say, you have to, you have to really hold yourself back, is what I found Chris, in those, in those cases with your own kids.

Yeah. It’s, it’s not always as easy as it seems.

[00:10:07] Chris Capko: Yeah. And it probably, as they get older, I may, I could sing a different tune right now like, I have a 4-year-old and I haven’t tried to get her going on basketball at all. And because she’s going to get exposed to the gym enough just by being around me.

Hopefully I’m coaching till she gets done with high school and all that stuff. But she’ll be, she’ll naturally get exposure to that. So like for instance, she’s taking up dance and gymnastics on her own. Like it’s what she just enjoys doing around the house. And if we didn’t steer toward that it’s on TV and then she just sees it randomly and then she just goes with it.

Right. So now we, she’s in gymnastics and that’s just a small example, but that it was something that she has shown interest in and now let’s help her try to be good at that. So it’s whatever it is like if she wants to be great at basketball, I probably have an inside track on helping her be good at basketball, but I’m not I, I get my fix in every day too, though, in terms of, I get, I enjoy what I do.

I’m, I’m at the gym, so if she doesn’t want to play basketball, and again, as they get older, I may feel different, but right now, like I’m still going to the gym every day. I’m still coaching. I watch a ton of hoops, whether she wants to do it or not. So I just want her help her to be good at whatever she wants, and then I’m going to really try to steer development towards that once she shows that this is what I want to be good at.

And that’s my advice to any kids even like who are high school, who I got friends now who have kids who are that age and, and things like that is like, man, just it’s have to come from them. It really has to. If, if they want to be good and you want ’em to be as good as they possibly can, it just has to come from them because you can’t make them go to the gym every single day.

We can as coaches. Make these guys want to really be great, it has to come from them. We try to identify that in recruiting. And you try to identify gym rats, right? People who love it. And for the guys on the margins like myself and like 98% of them who aren’t blessed with just such God-given ability that it just is overwhelming for other people.

So for the people on the margins, you better work, right? And that’s how you’re going to overcome being on those margins. And it comes from really, really putting time in your craft and being the best editor that you can be.

[00:12:10] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I mean that’s two good points there. I mean, one, when you talk about just you as a coach, right?

That  that you’ve had guys that you’ve coached over the course of your career that they didn’t love it and because they didn’t love it, they never got close to maximizing what their potential could have been. And then thinking about your daughter, right? With kids, I think to be able to have ’em.

In dance or gymnastics or baseball or soccer or basketball or whatever it is, like all the life lessons that you can teach and use basketball to be able to show your kids right, hard work and perseverance and all the things that it takes to be good at basketball, you can kind of translate those into any type of activity that they ultimately end up choosing.

And I think that’s one of the cool things about being a coach, right? Is that you understand what it takes to be great at, in this case, basketball. But those lessons are transferable to lots of things in life. And so then when you take it from a coach to that parent role and you’re just looking at, as you said, I want my kid to find something that they love, that they’re going to excel at because, not because you want ’em to do it, but because they want to do it.

And I always think that it’s, again, it’s a balance, especially if you have something in your life that you really love because right, you’ve, you’ve had a great life ’cause of the game of basketball where they’re playing or coaching it. And so there’s a natural tendency to be like. My experience was so good.

Follow me along this path. And yet you realize very quickly when you become a parent that the things that they’re interested in or the things that you may be interested in, don’t always, they don’t always intersect.

[00:13:43] Chris Capko: Right.

[00:13:44] Mike Klinzing: And that’s part of the cool part about being a parent is finding, finding something new that your kids love, that you get the chance to be exposed to.

And look sometimes, right? Sometimes it is basketball or sometimes it is, if you’re a football coach, sometimes it’s football or whatever. But oftentimes there’s, there’s differences. And that’s what’s cool about life and about being a parent, is you never really know what, what direction your kids are going to, what, what direction they’re going to go.

[00:14:10] Chris Capko: Yeah, for sure. I’m still looking forward to that as they get older, but Well, I’m going to let them tell me.

[00:14:16] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, exactly. Alright, I say that now. Tell me a little bit about, I say that now you I know, I know. Believe me. Believe me, it’s again, like I said, it’s much easier to say. Then it is to do, I can, I can find, I can go back many, many times having a conversation internally in my head as I’m walking out the door saying, should I drag these two with me to the gym tonight?

’cause otherwise they’re just going to be doing who knows what or do I let ’em this, ? So there’s, there’s a fine line between the push and, and then letting ’em be, letting ’em be kids and make their, make their own decisions. So. All right. Let’s go back to your time as a player, as a high school player and a college player, what did you do to improve your game?

How did you organize yourself in terms of workouts, pick up basketball? Obviously, as you said, you’re growing up in a different time than what we have today where kids are with a trainer and, and it’s more structured in that way. You’re more getting onto the playground and playing pickup basketball and just working on your own.

But just talk to me a little bit about your, your, your, your method for, for getting better as a player.

[00:15:21] Chris Capko: Yeah, I, I mean, it was just so much different than it was this year. I mean, we didn’t, you didn’t do anything else other than play. You just played all the time, every single day. You just found pickup games anywhere you possibly can.

I mean, I wish I and I was probably a little bit different. I didn’t have keys to the gym or anything. So you literally just had to go play play pickup, tried to play with as many older guys as possible.  when we were in high school, my high school team was nationally ranked. We had a bunch of division one players, two pros, two guys who won national championships at the division one level.

We would go play at the D two College, Florida Southern College, which was really good at the time. And so that’s where we would go other high schools. So yeah, there was no real secret to, other than just playing. And then as I got to be a little bit older in high school, and I did have some gym, like we didn’t have a gun I didn’t, I didn’t shoot on the gun until I got to college.

Most high schools have a gun now, right. To get extra shots up. So you literally had to go rebound your own shot. I hate to tell my age like that, but that’s the truth, right? Like, so stuff like that as I have to be older in high school and any gym time I get then, then you start to set up the co up the chairs, right, to work on your handle.

And you do different finishes and you would create everything you did on your own. I didn’t have my first individual workout with anyone other than a real coach until my junior year of college. And you won’t guess who that was. It was with Ryan Pone. Pone was the first guy who ever worked me out when he was a manager at USF and I was a player.

So that just, this just shows you how different it was that these kids are training with kids in high school and before that, far before that. And I didn’t even start thinking about having an individual workout with anyone other than a coach when we would just do team workouts by the time I was late into college.

So it was just the, just the landscape and, and everything was just so different, but you just played. Literally all the time. I mean, in the summer, play in the morning, find another pickup game in the afternoon. Right? During the in the summer when you couldn’t work out with your coaches, there was pickup at USF every day when I was at Florida’s pickup at Gainesville.

Every day. You just played Every single day you play. And that’s you just try to play. You played one-on-one, you played two on two. If you had two guys, you would play one-on-one as much as you could, right? If you had four guys, you would just play two on two. And so I see with our guys right now, I mean, just everything is so different.

Everything is more worked out, more trained, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I do as I reflect, wish I would’ve probably trained, I wish I would’ve found balance where I would’ve trained more and worked on my shot more and maybe worked on specific things more. But I also do think I benefited from playing a lot too.

So.

[00:18:04] Mike Klinzing: You think, do you ever feel bad for your guys that they don’t just get to experience what you got to experience in terms of pickup basketball and just sort of that pickup basketball culture?

[00:18:15] Chris Capko: I don’t feel bad for ’em as I’ve gotten older. I guess I’ve kind of accepted it, like when this thing was whole like transitioning, man, I don’t even remember when, but like I started to see the transition maybe like it, it maybe even more than five or six years ago, longer than that, like where kids just started playing less and we could see it with our guys when we were at USC is like, it got harder to have them play in the summer because they were so used to training as we would get ’em younger and younger, right?

This is what they did. They trained and so they just want to train in the summer. And so we stopped making it mandatory for ’em to play pickup in the summer. And then if they wanted to individually they could go find runs somewhere in LA because there was enough of them. But they were just, it was like ingrained in them just to train individually.

So I don’t know if I necessarily feel bad for ’em at this point. I do think, I wish we could find some, somehow find a balance and people could kind of make it cool again to play more, especially when you’re younger. I think the adults and the pros, they start to do that and you see some of the stuff that circulates online of guys playing and it makes it a little bit cooler, but the younger kids definitely don’t organize pickup, that’s for sure.

And and to my knowledge, a lot of people don’t organize that stuff for ’em. And I think there’s benefits to be had with just with having pick up and just playing and again, trying to play against older guys and do different things. And so I don’t feel bad for ’em, so to speak, but it’s just different.

And I guess I’ve accepted that and.  tried to go with it, but we still, we still try to encourage ’em to play some level pickup to find run, especially in bigger cities like LA or Dallas, where there is stuff going on and you can, but it’s just, it’s different. So I don’t want to sound like the old guy, but it’s different.

[00:19:54] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s have to be a little bit, I, I just feel like it’s much more challenging, right, to find good games if you’re, if you’re a high level college player, to be able to find a game to play in that’s not, again, organized on your campus or that kind of thing. It’s just tough, man. It’s tough to find. It’s tough to find games.

Like my son, he’s a sophomore and plays division three here in Ohio and he had like a text chain of probably like 25 guys from the Cleveland area that were division one, division two, division three guys to try to get pickup games. And even with that many guys, it’s like they played like twice over the summer trying to get everybody to show up at the same place and play.

And you’re just like, man, like, I don’t know, I just always feel like. What’s fun about the game is playing, right? And again, I did my share of workouts and whatever when I was playing, but man, what, what you love to do is, is play. That’s why we all pick up the ball in the first place. And it still kind of blows my mind a little bit that that guys spend so much time again, working individually and like you said, it’s just the way it is, but man, just to, to be able to go out and just play the way you or I played where you’re playing for, you’re at a court for four hours and trying to win five or six games so you don’t have to sit for an hour.

There’s, to me, there was always nothing better than those kinds of experiences. And that’s what I feel bad sometimes for my son, that he missed out on getting an opportunity to do that. He’s just kind of in the gym by himself or with me working on this game. Like man, I was just playing all the time.

And so it’s a, it’s a different world for sure.

[00:21:22] Narrator: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:21:24] Mike Klinzing: Tell me little about when. You knew you wanted to be a coach. So you talked, said, hey  at some point you knew you wanted to, you wanted to get into coaching. When, when was that point? Did you always know as you were, while you were still playing that, Hey, I I I know I’m going to be a coach?

Or were you thinking the game like a coach? Because I know we talked to some guys that when they’re playing, they’re just kind of focused on being a player. They, they think the game like a player kind of from their own perspective and how that fits into the, the role of the team and what I have to do in my assignments.

And there’s other guys who kind of think the game more from a, a higher level sort of a coaching eye in the sky if you so to speak. So when did coaching get on your radar?

[00:22:04] Chris Capko: I knew I wanted to coach when I was in college. I don’t remember the specific year, but I knew I got to a point where it was just like, Hey, I know this is what I want to do.

 in high school I just wanted to get to play to college, to play in college. That was kinda always like my dream was playing in college because I knew I wasn’t going to play in the NBA. And like in my family there was no there was always very honest conversations, right? Like, I didn’t go home and my dad blamed the coach, or my mom blamed the coach for me not scoring a bunch of points or, or maybe being the star or whatever.

And my team was so good that I guess I found out at a young age you just had to find a way to get on the floor, right? So there was never like any disillusionment where I was like,  what? I’m going to make it to the NBA. So I always knew at kind of a young age there had to be a plan B.

And I think I kind of shifted to thinking about coaching as I got into college. And especially as I got to be older, so probably around my senior year I, I redshirted a year ’cause I transferred, so it gave me five years. And in my fifth year of college, I ended up getting a minor in finance. And my first job out of college was at JP Morgan Chase working as a performance analyst and.

I started to pursue that a little bit just because I wanted to make some money, but I kind of always knew in the back of my head that I wanted to coach and I didn’t necessarily know how to pursue that avenue either. Right? And so I end up working a real job. I go, I work in Manhattan, I’m working on Wall Street, and within a month or two months of like, I can’t do this.

This isn’t what I want to do. And in that timeframe, I also miss like the comradery practice. Some of the stuff I didn’t know if I would necessarily miss, even though I, I was kind of starting to change my attention to coaching, but I really missed it. Like, I missed just going to practice. It was the first time in my life I wasn’t going to practice in the fall, right?

I wasn’t preparing for a game. I wasn’t training to stay in shape.  a lot of the nuances that go with just once you get into the season. So I really started to miss that. I really, really missed it. I was going to like local games at St. Peter’s and I went, when USF went up and played scene hall one day, I went over there to Jersey and watched that.

And so I was just going to a lot of random college basketball games and watching a lot of college basketball and then just started reaching out to old coaches about getting into it. So I won’t get too far ahead of it, but basically I probably started shifting my focus towards coaching in college and then started to get more serious about it as I got older in college.

And it hit you that,  what, I have to start figuring out what I’m going to do next.

[00:24:33] Mike Klinzing: So what did those conversations look like when you started reaching out to former coaches and people that you thought could help you in the profession? What did those conversations sound like?

[00:24:43] Chris Capko: So, in the fall, and this was one of the  like early lessons that I still carry to this day as I talk to younger guys in the business is, .

How do you get into the business? And so I was, at least I knew, hey, there was GA’s and there were certain things and lower level entry positions. There’s not as, there wasn’t as many then as there is now. And so I started reaching out to some of my old coaches, like, do you have GA positions available?

And this is like probably in the fall or maybe winter time sometime, because I, I I had a general sense as of how the cycle worked, right? Like hey, I have to wait for school to get done this season, get done, then I can apply to school and get in all that stuff. And every coach I called, not that I had this huge network of people I knew, but I called three or four and everyone’s like, Hey I’m not sure what we’re going to have  just stay in touch with me as we get to the spring and summer.

So at that point I was like, dang, Meg, this is not going to be as easy as I thought. Right? No one said, Hey, I have one for you and just wait till the, till the summer, we can get you a job. I was like, man, these even GA positions are hard to get, ? And, luckily, Donnie Jones was the head coach. He was the assistant at Florida in my one year at Florida.

And I knew Coach Jones well and luckily he had a guy who was leaving and he took me on and that was my first start in it. But it was, it was kind of a reality check in terms of how competitive even those positions are to get. And I’ve maintained that thought as I’ve gotten older and I have people now reaching out to me about GA positions and it’s so many people we have two GA spots and I probably get hit via email and then as we go throughout the course of the year, if someone’s trying to help somebody out, 30, 40 people throughout the course of a year for two GA spots, right.

And you wouldn’t think that those spots would be as competitive as they are, but they’re very competitive. And so I was very, very fortunate to get on with Coach Jones. Luckily the timing worked out and he had someone leave and I got on with him and then became a GA at Marshall.

[00:26:38] Mike Klinzing: What do you remember about that first experience in terms of.

How it meshed with what your expectations were of being a college basketball coach versus what the reality of being a college basketball coach were. Did it match up kind of like what you thought or were you kind of surprised by some of the things that maybe you spent a lot of time doing it that you saw the staff do?

[00:26:59] Chris Capko: That’s a good question. I would say it was probably spot on. I think I had a good feel for what the job entailed.  and I, I, luckily I’ve worked for good people in the business, so him, coach Finney, Brett Nelson, Sean Finney, Brett Nelson, Darren Tillis, they were the staff, Tim Thomas. And they were just regular people who asked me to just work hard, come in, show up, be early, leave late, and just help anywhere I needed to.

And none of ’em none of those guys had us doing crazy things.  like me, myself and one of the other Gass were breaking down film. I had to do laundry, right? But hey, I knew there were managers and, and Gass when I was in school who, who helped with the laundry. I worked guys out. I was on the floor constantly.

I helped out at practice.  back then we didn’t have synergy and, and film exchange was a lot different. So sometimes, man, you’d have to drive a couple hours and exchange a DVD with someone to, to bring it back so we could watch it. So film exchange was a big priority and a big responsibility at the time.

And so that was bestowed on some of the younger guys. But it went almost how, how I thought it would go. I mean, I knew there were going to be hours involved. I wasn’t shocked by the hours.  we’re helping with recruiting. So there’s late nights with that. We’re not necessarily on the road, or I wasn’t evaluating at games, but I, I knew at the time and I knew the commitment that went into it.

I wasn’t shocked by that. And it went pretty much, how I thought it would go, I guess, to an extent. I don’t think there was really anything that kind of copied by surprise or anything that I hadn’t really dealt with or was not really sure of. After being in college for five years as an athlete  I think you start to kind of realize all the nuance, I guess, behind the scenes of it, right?

And you just start to see it from a different lens and a different perspective. But that was it. I think you just start to switch perspective from seeing as a player and hearing your, your, your teammates, what they have to say as opposed to hearing what coaches have to say when they’re really trying to win games and build teams and put teams together and stuff like that.

So I think it ultimately, it was just a perspective change for me going from a player to coach for the first time.

[00:28:59] Mike Klinzing: What would you say was your biggest area of growth or learning? In that first year that you came in and you’re like, man, I really have to dive deep on this or get better at this. Was it some part portion of the Xs and Os?

Was there a leadership piece? What, what was it that you felt like, man, I, when I come in here, this is an area that I’m really going to, that I really want to attack and improve and grow, grow in.

[00:29:23] Chris Capko: I didn’t have when I went in, I wasn’t like, this is what I’m going to attack. I think because of the rules at the time the coaches couldn’t get on the floor with you in the summer and then they could only get with on the floor with guys in groups of four up until a certain date in the fall.

Right. So now going back to the whole player development thing, I was on the floor constantly with guys working ’em out constantly. Individual workouts, groups of two. We used to have guys come in early in the morning, we’d have like a breakfast club guys get in the morning or early in the morning and we’d work out.

Then they come back later. We have times throughout the day. So player development, because the coaches were limited in what they could do.  we were on the floor constantly with guys and and then organizing pickup, because we were still playing pickup at the time. So it was kind of early in my coaching career was when there was a good balance between working out and then making sure guys played and was still in an era when guys played a little more.

But that was kind of the thing. We grabbed the bulls by the horn, the bull by the horn on, because the coaches were limited. So it’s where we could really cut the slack. And then the other part of, I want, don’t want to say that I went in there saying I was going to attack it, but it then ended up falling on me as this is just becomes, your job title is just film breakdown, right?

You’re, you’re creating edits for coaches all throughout the day. So you’re watching a lot of hoops now you’re really starting to dive into how different people do different things, what your coach wants, what they’re looking for, what they’re looking to, to get out of certain things. And, and that was pretty eyeopening as well to get those experiences.

[00:30:48] Mike Klinzing: What’s the first job search like after the GA position?

[00:30:53] Chris Capko: Yeah, I mean that was, that was eye-opening too. I had I was in, so I only, I, I was a GA for one year and my mindset going in was like, Hey, I want to get my master’s right. I’m getting it paid for, but I don’t want to be, the reason I don’t accept a job is because I have a semester left in my master’s.

So I finished my master’s in a year. I had the summer that I had to finish it and all summer credit to Coach Jones and coach to Donnie Jones, Sean Finney, who are at Stetson now and doing a great job. Anyone I asked them to call, they called anyone I asked them to reach out to and they knew and they had a relationship.

They did and they were great and really helped me a lot along the way, but I got a lot of nos. Or they knew what they were doing or.  just not the right time. And luckily the last job of the summer, Stetson had an assistant coach position open. And Coach w Derek Wall took his time and probably made a decision.

I don’t remember specifically when, but I know it was in August, close to when school started. Right. So if I don’t get this job, I’m going back to Marshall, which was fine. And I had finished my degree. I would probably just take classes just to get my stipend and stuff like that, but I ended up getting the job and the very last one, and again, coach Jones and Coach Finney were of huge help, really pushing me along.

And luckily it worked out and  but a lot of nos to the point where like, man, I guess I’m going to have to go back. And this is again from the same thing that when I was trying to be a ga I was like, man, I guess these roles are a lot harder than what they thought. And, and the funny thing was is I ended up being an assistant coach.

It was the only assistant coach position. That was actually available that I probably had some semblance of chance at the rest were ops jobs or video jobs or different administrative jobs within a program. And fortunate enough I was able to get on the road for my first assistant coaching position.

[00:32:50] Mike Klinzing: So that’s the first opportunity. Then you get to get into the recruiting piece of it. So what do you remember about getting on the road and recruiting for the first time?

[00:32:58] Chris Capko: Yeah, I mean that’s my two years at Stetson were probably the two years man. I really got to hone in on really make some mistakes and really, really learn the art of recruiting and evaluating.

Right. When I was at Marshall those guys recruited at a pretty high level and did a pretty good job evaluating and I kind of saw how they did things and, but you’re not talking to them, right? You’re not actually going to the games and when you’re there trying to say, Hey, this is a guy who fits how my coach wants to play within our style and within our scheme.

And so you’re going there and you’re one of my first jobs. You’re learning how your coach wants to play and what types of players he likes, and then you’re trying to identify that. Then on top of that, you’re learning who you can and can’t get. Right.  you may see a guy who you like, but I can’t waste my time recruiting him ’cause I know I can’t get him.

And I, I made a lot of those mistakes. Hey man, I can get this guy. Then when you get told no for the first time, you’re like, oh, this might be a lot harder than I thought it was. And then you get told no again and you get told no again. And then you start to find out real quick, hey, maybe I have to scale it back a little bit, not waste so much time over here and figure out who I can get.

Right. And I was so lucky because the coach, the staff I worked with really allowed me, and it’s probably just being young and just being, Hey man, I had no family, right? I was just getting on the road every day, going to watch whoever, going to see any game. I could literally every day of the week just going to games if we didn’t have one or we weren’t in town.

And then you start to identify guys you like for whatever reason. And one of the best things about being at Stetson is not too many people are calling you about a guy and most of the guys you’re recruiting aren’t on a list.  what I mean? So you’re going over there and really identifying with your eyes and just, Hey, I like this guy.

No one else is talking about him. There’s no hype, there’s no evaluation. And I just like this guy. And and I really thought it helped me sharpen my eye in terms of evaluating and get in a feel for guys who could fit, especially in the a sun. And then you start to see the league. Who’s been successful in this league, where they come from.

And so you’re starting to develop, hey, this kid can play at this level or he is doing really well at this level. And so I felt like that really helped me. And we signed in my year, two years there, we signed two really good classes of young kids. And in fact our last class we had got fired in my second year.

Coach Wa got let go and it was my second year and we had signed a kid, Corey Walden. Corey ended up going when we left the ass son or left Stetson, he was, I want to say all ass son, rookie team. And I had helped send him to junior college and he goes to Eastern Florida State for Jeremy Schulman, who’s now at Tennessee Martin.

Well anyways, Corey then goes to Eastern Kentucky, I who I kind of assisted him going there and he ends up being the OBC two time player of the year or maybe just one time player of the year, two time defensive player of the year. He had a great career there. Adam p and Chris Perez ended up staying there.

They were transfers who we had brought in. They ended up being all league at, at Stetson. And then we had two other guys, Steve Forbes and Louis Kobo who went to IPFW with John Kaufman, who was the assistant I took his spot at at Stetson. And they both ended up being all, no, all I’m trying to think of the league they’re in now.

Maybe it’s Horizon. But they were all conference in their league. And so five guys who ended up being all League. And I felt like those two years were so beneficial to me in terms of evaluating, recruiting, your messaging how you project, how you talk to kids, how you build relationships, how you build relationships with the parents, especially when you’re young.

And I felt like I was able to make a lot of mistakes, but in the end, two years later, really come out of that with a better message. Knowing how to talk, knowing how to identify, knowing how to go about really recruiting a kid at that level.

[00:36:54] Mike Klinzing: How long does it take you, when you get to a new spot to develop that understanding of.

Again, what type of player your head coach wants? Who are the types of players that you can get? What are the types of players that you need? ’cause obviously you’ve been at different levels of the game, right? Within division one, there’s clearly players that can play at one level that maybe can’t play at another.

So how long do you feel like it takes you to kind of get a feel for, all right, I know what my, I know what my guy wants here. I know who can play here. Is that something that now, after you’ve done it a few times, that it’s pretty seamless? And how was it maybe early in your career in those first couple jobs?

[00:37:33] Chris Capko: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know the exact time, but it takes a while. And it can be changing too, right?  you can have a bad experience with someone or feel like a team didn’t work out and position didn’t out and change it. And so you’re always having those conversations. But initially. I don’t know the right answer, but a full year at least, if not longer than that.

And, and you’re trying to get a sense of it on the fly and, and through conversation with your head coach and and asking questions.  my next job when I was at Georgia Southern, I worked for a guy Charlton Young, and he always talked about the type of players he wanted. And so I felt like identifying for him was a little easier.

Not that that’s right or wrong, right? But he always articulated what he wanted. And so when I was going out, I always thought, okay, at least I know what it is that I was looking for. Whereas sometime it can be different and then the job just change.  the, the job where you’re at and the type of kid you can get in and, and your recruiting base in those jobs can, can make who you get different to, right.

And the school you’re at and stuff like that. So that the academic profile of it, so just different things like that, but it’s, it’s ever changing. And I would say I, I don’t think it’s the, it takes 2, 3, 4, 5 years, but it can take some time to iron out and really get a good sense for who your boss wants and who they don’t want and who works for ’em and who doesn’t.

[00:38:53] Mike Klinzing: How much of it, when you think about when you’re out recruiting, what is it that attracts beyond just, again, obviously you have to recruit the type of players that your boss wants and they’re going to fit into your program. But just you, from a personal standpoint, what are some intangible things that you like about a guy that when you walk in a gym and you see somebody for the first time, something that makes that guy jump out to you again, provided they have all the other things and they’re at the level that you want.

What are some intangible things that you personally like in a player that you’re trying to recruit?

[00:39:21] Chris Capko: Yeah. As, as I’ve gotten older, I do more research on parents and kids than ever. And I like going to games still to this day. ’cause I like being able to evaluate the person and the people around them and just see the interaction.

Of who they are.  I think all of us as coaches do not want people who do not bring energy. People will talk about energy or vibes or whatever word is you want, but  it doesn’t take long to see someone who, who gives you negative energy, right? So I want to see it all. So you talk about intangibles, half the intangibles aren’t even on the floor.

I want to see when they make a mistake,  what, do they blame someone else for it? Do they take accountability for it? I watched their parents when they make a mistake. I want to see how they act. I want to see how they talk. I want to see who they blame, right? I want to see ’em play bad just as much as I want to see ’em play good, not just as much, right?

’cause they play bad all the time. I won’t recruit em. But but you, you do want to see em go through some level of adversity, because I feel like. For high school kids in particular, they really start to hit adversity when they go to college. And sometimes we don’t get to really see them go through that because the adversity for them in high school looks so different.

So little things like that, I want to see if they play hard. I want to see if they practice hard. I want to see if they’re in time, they’re on time. I want to see if they’re, they’re on time, ready to go. Again, what type of energy are they bringing in the practice? How do they congratulate their teammates? Do they root for their teammates?

What kind of energy do they give off? How do they comprehend what’s being taught to them? So all times of intangible stuff away from actually playing. And then you try to, and then sometimes it can be backwards. I may see a kid who I really like, I saw this game one time, now it’s, okay, let me dig into who this person is.

Right? And so I, all that stuff I just said is cliche, but it matters, right? All that stuff matters. And I don’t think parents realize it matters as much as it does, but it matters. And  so try to hone in as to a lot of that stuff as you possibly cand then try to put context to it also, right?

Because there could be now we’re in a a time where kids transfer more than ever in high school in AU before when I was growing up, you never left or you left one time and that was it. So you’re trying to put context to why all this stuff happens. Well, why’d you leave this place to go to this place?

Why’d you leave this place to go to this place? And, and it’s just like anything. I think you’re trying to do as much homework as you can, apply context to it, and then come out with a rational decision at the end of this as to why this person can help you win games at your level.

[00:41:46] Mike Klinzing: How does a portal affect the way that you approach recruiting?

Clearly, you go back 10 years ago, nobody could have seen what the landscape of college basketball looks like today, when at that point you’re primarily recruiting high school kids. Now. There’s certainly at worst an equal emphasis on the portal, if not more in many cases. So how do you think about the portal in terms of doing those same kinds of evaluations?

Now, you not only are you have, you have some of their college experience that you can go on, just how has that affected the way that you approach recruiting?

[00:42:22] Chris Capko: I think she think it’s made it easier, to be honest with you. It, it easier in a sense of, I think we get a better sense of who we’re getting and we can, like, when you can see someone transfer from the division, a division one school to another division one school, particularly at the same level, you got a pretty sense, pretty good sense from a basketball standpoint how they’re going to fit in.

Right now. I can also call friends in the business who have seen ’em go through the struggles at this level or maybe not even that many struggles. They’ve had success. More kids transfer with success now than they ever had,  what I mean? So some kids have had success in. And I feel like I can get a really accurate depiction as to who this person is and what their daily habits look like and what type of player they are in the portal.

 like even if a kid is transferring from a lower level up, the chances are they’ve played a high major school and I can go back and see them play someone in our league and see how they’ve fared and how they’ve handled things right. Whereas with high school kids, there’s just a bunch of unknown, there’s a lot of unknown.

That has always been the case, but now when you can pick a kid who’s been in, in the portal and you can see the context that’s been there, it’s harder to apply that context to, to high school kids. ’cause like I was saying earlier is a lot of times as you move up level, the competition becomes that much more intense.

Right. And for kids, we’re signing at the high major level right now. For the most part, they’re by far and away the best player in their program. So they’re playing through all kinds of mistakes and there’s not the same onus on making mistakes and the consequence that comes with it as there is when they get to us, right?

So now they get to us and they’re freshmen. And like for instance, we have freshmen right now who are in our program, but we got seven upperclassmen who have all played high, major, high level college basketball. They’re older, they’re more physical. So now the talent is really starting to catch up to them.

And you have guys who have played at this level who probably and should have a better feel and know how as to what’s being asked of them to do things right. So now it’s not as easy. More things are being thrown at ’em, and now we’re starting to see a little bit of adversity here and we don’t know how that’s going to happen.

Right. So certain things you just can’t tell until you get ’em there and you get around them every day. And then how they react to that stuff. So that’s one case where I think the portal has made it easier. Now, the other part where I think it’s made it difficult is just even the kids. You do take who when you’ve applied context to ’em and you got a better feel for ’em, you’re still learning them every day.

Even when you get there,  when you get them there every day and you’re still figuring out how to coach ’em, and two months in, three months in, four months in, you’re still learning them, right? Last year we took a team full of kids from the portal, and I think how we thought we were going to play in November, we were probably playing a little bit different in April.

Right now, we won 24 games, but we had to learn our guys on the fly as well and figure all those guys out as well, and where they can score, and how they can score who guards this action better? Who doesn’t guard this action better? What’s our best defensive lineup?  what I mean? So you’re figuring a new team out more often.

Having to teach more from a year to year basis to teach what you want to do as opposed to when you used to have kids in your program for three or four years. And that’s just, it just doesn’t happen like that anymore. Routinely at least.

[00:45:45] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Obviously as you said, you’re trying to teach the basketball piece of it right year to year, and you don’t have that carryover where you’re like, man, we got a really great freshman class and can’t wait till those guys are upperclassmen.

And then the team kind of runs itself and everybody knows the expectations and you, you’re kind of building for that. And now it’s more of a one year thing, Hey, I got this group for this year and we have to maximize it and do all those things. So you’re having to teach the basketball part of it, but there’s also the part of building a cohesive team that’s together, right?

That that roots for each other, that you guys are connected. How has that changed and how do you guys try to handle that at SMU in terms of building a group that is not just. 12 individual guys, but it’s a team that is always pulling for, pulling for one another. With, again, you have the specter of the, of the portal and all the thing, all the challenges that go along with sort of having a, a quote one year team.

[00:46:41] Chris Capko: Yeah. I think that’s where  it’s, it is, it’s just challenging. And I think it goes back to the, the recruiting process and the evaluating process of evaluating people is just trying to find the best people, the best people. Because we used to say this within our staff last year is, is we had guys on our team who were examples of why character matters.

Because we had a couple older guys who, and by older seniors and a junior who were probably guy 9, 10, 11, who were starting not to play, but  what, they showed up every day ready to work. They still cheered on their teammates and they did not cause a distraction even when things did not go well for them.

But when we recruited ’em and we evaluated ’em, we knew 100% they were good people, right? And so we could count on that and there was no way that they were going to take the team in the opposite direction ’cause they weren’t those type of people. We had evaluated that. We had that on record. People we had trusted who told us that, that we were getting the right people in our program, right?

So that’s why that stuff matters and that’s why I think more than anything in this day and age, with the financial aspect, the financial component of this is making sure you are bringing in people who their history says that they are the right people. That they are about the right stuff. They still go to class, they care about doing things the way you ask ’em to do it.

They care about being successful and they just care about doing the right thing. And that stuff matters more than anything. And if you get those right people, at least they’re all going to be pushing in the right way. Now you still have to figure.  your rotations or what this guy does. Yeah. You’ve seen it on film, but you haven’t been around him every day.

You’re still learning certain nuances about his game or how these two play together, or how these three play together are best five man lineups. So there’s certain basketball components of it, but in terms of building a cohesive team, right? I think when you have a one year team, the, the basketball pieces, that’s where it really gets hard to fit.

But in terms of a, a cohesiveness, right? The people you bring I think are just as important. And I think when you do build a one I think some of it’s catching lightning in a bottle when again, you’ve got the right people, but really finding the five pieces that stick together when you’re doing it or really, really gel well together on the floor that’s the hard part when you’re doing all this on a one year basis and sometimes you’re having to sign 5, 6, 7 guys, right?

Not just one person who can compliment for. But trying to find five new, like we had three starters back. And two freshmen, two red shirt freshmen. So we had five. So we brought in, we have 13th, we brought in eight new people, right? It’s hard to bring in eight people who you’ve never been with on a day-to-day basis to compliment the five guys who were coming back.

It didn’t used to be like that. And so again, you’re trying to find the right people. You think you’re evaluating the right kids. Again, it’s where you go to the portal because you can see them at the division one level. But again some of it’s going to be a shot in the dark too until you get them there every single day.

[00:49:35] Mike Klinzing: What does the process look like for putting together the basketball piece of it, going through the summer, heading into the fall preseason practice where we are now. It’s October 29th season. Oprah’s coming up quickly. What’s the process? What are the conversations like in the coach’s office? How are you guys attempting to put together how you want to play?

What does that look like in terms of evaluating each individual guy? You said, evaluating how this guy fits with that guy. What do those conversations sound like as you guys are going through summer fall, trying to figure out how you want your team to play and what you want it to look like?

[00:50:14] Chris Capko: Yeah, so we, I mean, we meet when we get done with the season.

I mean, we all, at this point, we’ve, I’ve been with Coach for so long, I know how he wants to play. I know in particular what he wants positionally, right? And some of the stuff we find now, again, the challenge is, is, is you’re going to get told no a couple times and still trying to identify the right stuff that matters to you, even after being told no.

But. I think we, first thing is, is hey, figure out who’s staying and who’s going. Once you’ve identified who’s actually staying now who do you project out of? Who is staying where they within your roster? One of the first things we do with our guys is we have this thing called just play.

We, we do a player development plan with our, our guys based on their strengths and weaknesses and things that we want to attack in the summer with them and as we move up into the fall and into the regular season. And then with that, you’re trying to identify the pieces that can compliment those guys. So one of our guys coming back right, was BPI Miller, third team, all a CCC point guard, I think might have been second in the league in assist, if not third.

Really, really, really good point guard in terms of finding guys, making the game easier for other dudes.  his backward May was BJ Edwards, who is not quite the offensive threat, but really good defensively, right? So we felt like we needed to go get a bigger. Scorer and shooter who could score with the ball in his hands and probably break you down.

And when things get tough, score a little more. So we go sign Jerome Pierre from Jacksonville State. He was the conference, USA player of the year. Right. We felt like he complimented those guys. Well, and then we end up signing a guy from Wichita State who was second team all A, a C because we felt like he, we had a really good glue guy last year named Matt Cross.

Average 12 and eight. Well, this guy average 13 to seven at Wichita State. And feel like he brings a lot of that same stuff that we really value with Matt Cross. His name’s Cory Washington, and he could feel that goal. Right? So there’s we do, we have all these advanced analytics that we use that we try to model or that we use from a model to try to determine what these things are that will compliment the pieces that we have in place.

And then when you’re using freshmen, some of it is you’re projecting what you think they can do. So obviously just trying to mix and match and make the puzzle pieces fit as best as you can in the summer and conducive to how you want to play and, and stuff like that. Obviously the monetary component of it now, it’s have to fit within our budget and what we can spend.

And so that becomes a whole nother challenge that all of us are trying to navigate through. We probably do less practice now. You can actually practice with your team four hours. In the summer we had a couple guys banged up, so we scaled back and did more individual stuff in the summer. And we probably have scaled back in the summer more so than most programs and felt like we stayed fresh later on in the year longer than others.

Case important or example of that is when we made the elite A USC in 20 20, 20 21, because of the COVID restrictions in California. We couldn’t get on the, in the gym with our guys until October, right. And sure enough, we hit. Some, some schools, some places in the country were still getting in the gym in the summer or whatever and  sure enough we hit March and we felt good.

Like no one had never felt like a grind. And so we kind of used that experience to like, now that you can get with your team in the summer, in the fall, and then when you start practice, that’s a lot. We got enough time now, to be honest with you, to the point where like, I feel like even more so this year, talking to some of my friends throughout the country, so many teams are battling injuries ’cause we’re going so hard for so long that it just wears on you.

We even got to the season, so think about where some of these guys are in January and February, right? So trying to find balance to that. And then when we get ’em here in the fall is when we really start introducing more concepts, more offensive concepts, defensive concepts, because we still had that span from when school starts to, I think it was September 15th this year where we still had four hours with our guys.

So we were maximizing the four hours with them going over some conceptual things. Then we start practice September 15th. We had our first scrimmage October 18th, so we still have four more weeks of full practice to implement everything. So we had enough time to do things and as we get into that phase from September 15th to our first scrimmage, October 18th, now we’re implementing continuing to install concepts on both sides of the ball offense, defense, working on our shell defense, working on our pick and roll coverage, working on guarding the ball, working on our, our shell defense offense, working on all the concepts we want, working on our secondary break, working on our crash offense  and just some of the stuff that we want to make sure we accomplish.

And having said that, we play on October 18th, we then have another scrimmage on the 25th, and we’ve had this full week to practice on some stuff that we want to clean up before we tip off on Monday. So

[00:55:04] Mike Klinzing: yeah, you make a great point about the scaling back to some degree in the summertime. It’s one of those things that I’ve talked to a bunch of different coaches.

About that. And I think back to my experience a long, long time ago as a player and even your experience as a player where summertime was off limits, right? I mean, you’re not having an opportunity as a coaching staff to, to do anything with your players. I always joke that when I got done with my season playing a Kent and they would hand me, here’s your, here’s your two page ditto workout of stuff we’ll see you back here and we’ll see you back here in August.

And that was it. And you just were kind of on your own, expected to do what you did. And I always go back to, and it kind of circles back to the beginning of our conversation of just playing pickup basketball and wanting to work on work on my game and kind of just refresh, right? Your enthusiasm for the season.

And I always feel like if you’re going that hard all summer and then all through the fall and your guys are hearing the same voices over and over and over again, and then from your perspective, right, you’re. You’re, you’re working with the guys nonstop all the time. It’s like, when do you ever get a chance to recharge your battery and come back not only fresh, physically, right?

Which is kind of what you’re talking about, of, of being ready at the end of the season, but also just to recharge yourself mentally to be able to bring the kind of energy that everyone knows that it takes in order to be successful and what you have to bring every day as a coach or as a player at the level that you’re coaching at.

Right? I mean, you can’t just walk into the gym and not be ready to go and not have that kind of energy. And to be able to sustain that for 12 months of the year at, at such a high at such a high rate, always seems to me like it would be super challenging. So it’s I think scaling back to me, to some degree sounds like it’s the right thing to do, and yet I know that’s have to be incredibly hard because when you have that time

[00:56:58] Chris Capko: mm-hmm.

[00:56:59] Mike Klinzing: And then to say we’re going to scale it back a little bit. There, there’s some, again, I think trepidation on the part of some coaches, it’s like, Hey, we got the time, we have to use it. And it sounds like you guys are just trying to evaluate what’s best for us and our program and not worry about what these what the, what the supposed limits are.

If that makes any sense.

[00:57:18] Chris Capko: Yeah, no, I, I get it. Yeah. I mean, I keep going back to my playing days, but in this back then, no one had no coaches had access for you in the summer, right? So you weren’t doing team, so you’re just playing pickup. Right.  now I know people they’re starting to introduce stuff in the summer.

They’re going pretty hard in the summer too,  what I mean? And then you bring it back in the fall, like I said, like six weeks for two games is a lot of practice time, essentially what we have. Right. Like I saw Steve for, I don’t know Steve Forbes that well, but I saw him. Talking about all the practice time we have for only two scrimmages or a scrimmage in an exhibition.

And your guys definitely get, I mean, we’ve gone hard, right? Like we’ve gone hard these days and we’ve been banged up a little bit. And when you’re going hard every five days a week, which is what you basically do five days a week for six weeks, that’s a lot of practice. And it, it’s actually enough time to get pretty much it, everything you want to get in, get in and and so yeah, that’s why we’ve scaled back in the summer because then also it used to be in the fall, you, you could do no more than groups of four guys on the floor at a time for maybe two hours a week or something.

I don’t even remember what it was now. But you couldn’t get your whole team on again, right? So we can actually get our team together again for four hours at a time. So sometimes it feels like even from the start of the school year, it could be a long time because again, we have all this practice time for only two scrimmages until you get up to, to tip off.

[00:58:38] Mike Klinzing: You can see where again you’ll, you’re never going to hear coaches complain about having too much access. Right. But in a, in a certain degree, you can see where, again, everybody can get you talked about the dog days, right? There’s just times where when you’re, when there, when there isn’t that game, when there is that scrimmage, you’re practicing five straight days against your own guys, beating each other up, and every, everybody’s ready to compete against against, against somebody else.

And mm-hmm.  it’s like, it’s finding, finding that balance, I think is, is key when it comes to that. Tell me a little bit about how you guys divvy up roles. How does Coach Einfeld divide up the roles amongst you guys on the staff? And sort of what’s the philosophy of, of delegating things to assistant coaches?

[00:59:20] Chris Capko: Yeah. Coach gives a lot of freedom and he relies on everyone, and he lets everybody talk, right? So he will divvy up our scouts pretty much. One every three, I have every third scout myself, Dana Ford, and Jay Morris. And then Eric Mobley will have some scouts sprinkled in there as well.  I’ve been with him for so long now that I trend more towards our defense, but everyone has a say in their defense.

I don’t call myself the defensive coordinator other than I just have a feel for what we’re doing defensively, again, because he gives everyone that say and the same thing offensively. We have one of our other assistant coaches, Kurt Carris, who, who trends more toward the offense. But again, everyone has a say in the offense and what we’re doing and the drills we’re doing and the breakdown we’re doing and things like that.

So we collaborate on all this stuff together. And to coaches credit I think is what makes everyone feel empowered in our program, is that he allows everyone to talk and have a voice and have an opinion and give ideas whether he agrees with ’em or not. Right? He’s going to allow you to do that and, and, and get that stuff off.

So I think everyone feels empowered to go out there and study and work hard ’cause they know that they’re going to have a role in what we’re doing and what we’re preparing for. As an assistant coach as one of the assistant coaches, I might have one of the scouts and I know what’s going on offensively and defensively.

Coach Caris is preparing still our offense, but  I, Jay Morris or Dana Ford or Eric Mo, one of those guys want to say something about offense or bring up an idea or concept or whatever the case may be, or play or  whatever. All of them know they have the freedom to do that. So, and then the same thing with recruiting.

All of us recruit all of us go out on the road, all of us get on the phone with guys, all of us we get into the, to the season. We divvy up our players. Each coach has two or three players for player development. I do think as an assistant coach, it’s still important to get on the floor with guys and sweat with guys and.

Especially for the guys who might every player is going through something at some point throughout the year. To be able to get on the floor and let ’em know that you still believe in ’em and, and just have conversation with ’em, I think is important. So we divvy up that and we pretty much split everything basically through pretty much evenly throughout our, our program.

And I think everyone feels empowered because of that. And having been coaches ops guy before, I still keep some administrative things that keep me busy. Like I still do our schedule. I still am a part-time lead liaison to academics. I actually help coach with our salary cap so there’s still some things.

I think because of our relationship and how long we’ve been with each other, that administratively probably still fall on me as an associate head coach that I don’t know if normally they would, but I’m okay with that and it’s actually helped prepare me to be a head coach more so than probably anything is that.

Know, I’ve, I’ve probably had I, not probably, I have had my hands in everything, in every part of a program and developed my own philosophy for that. And how I think it should look and how we should approach things with everything from academics to basketball, to salary capped to NIL, to scheduling, to player development, to just everything.

So

[01:02:24] Mike Klinzing: tell me a little bit about that, about that prep for the eventuality of you getting an opportunity to be a head coach. What does that look like for you in terms of putting together your philosophy? Are you a Google Drive guy? Are you an old school, three ring binder guy? Are you, what, what’s are you a journaler?

How do you go about keeping track of the things as you’re starting to build? Your philosophy of what you would want a program to look like, that you were the head coach of? How have you collected the things that you want to incorporate into what eventually when you get an opportunity to run your own program, what that might look like?

[01:03:04] Chris Capko: Yeah. I mean, I, because I have been a video coordinator too I still show my scouts right when it’s my turn. I don’t give it to the video coordinator. I use my computer. I get up there, I run it all and all that stuff. So I’m not the most technically sound, but I’m technically sound enough. And so I do keep I have hard drives of stuff.

I keep things that I’ve done over the years or seen over the years that I have on a hard drive. I do keep notes from different clinics and during, throughout the season and  so I have a database of things electronically and I have a notebook of things. I have a lot of my old stuff that I had when I was playing like notebooks.

And just different things I’ve had throughout the year. I keep all the coaches’ practice plans just as a frame of reference. And so a little bit of everything to answer your question. Then constantly kind of thinking about things and then the same thing off the court.

Administratively, just I think where I’ve tried to change my thinking is with coaches is. I think I found myself, I don’t even know when it was, but maybe six, seven years when I was a little bit younger, like coach asking me a question, me maybe not having an answer for him and leaving it up saying, Hey  however you want to do a coach.

Whereas now I try to have pretty direct answers for him. Now, whether he uses him or not, coach, I think we should do this, I think we should do this. I’ve been thinking about things in advance for him. I think that I try to have answers ready for him in terms of what my thoughts for the program should be, but just to try to keep make sure I’m ready to answer him and just have results or solutions for him.

As opposed to just creating another question for him are important. And so I try to think about it in that sense knowing that he may say no to him or something like that, but at least, hey, we’ve thought about this. Or if something had come up and I wanted to bring to his attention and hey, would you want to do this?

Or something like that. And so I think that’s the biggest transition for me is just the thought process of going to, thinking like a head coach as opposed to thinking like an assistant coach, right. And trying to assist him in that way.

[01:05:01] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It sounds like being proactive as opposed to reactive, right?

You’re trying to think about, Hey, this situation may come up, or here’s something that I’m seeing. Let me come up with an answer or a solution for that before coach comes to me and ask me, Hey, what do you think? And then all of a sudden you’re like, well, I have to, now I have to consider it. You’ve already started to think through those things and provide solutions.

I do think that from, from talking to enough head coaches and assistant coaches, that’s one of. I think the most valued characteristics of an assistant coach is somebody who is going to provide solutions. And I think the part of it that goes along with that right, is, and you said it, that you have to be ready as an assistant coach to know that a lot of times the answer that you give is going to be met with a no, or, Hey, we’re going to go a different direction.

And you have to be okay ego wise with being able to give lots of suggestions and have your suggestions rejected and not take those things personally and just understand that ultimately your head coach is the guy who, his name is attached to the record and it, it’s his program. So he’s ultimately going to make the decision.

But it’s your job as an assistant to provide as many potential solutions and answers to problems that you can, as opposed to, like you said, you don’t want to ask, answer a question with a question. Right. Because then you’re just throwing it back and you’re, you’re not really, you’re not really being helpful.

[01:06:17] Chris Capko: Yeah. It’s not, it’s not providing an, a different opinion for him to think about or just something different for him to, to. To weigh on, right? Like that’s what you just want to give him a difference in opinion again. Or it could be the same opinion, right? I don’t, I don’t know what he may be thinking in certain instances, but at least it’s something for him to think about and use as opposed to, Hey, what do you think coach?

 ? And so just, I think that’s where, again, trying to, I put a lot of thought into what I want to do with my program, and not that I try to instill that on, on Coach, but because of that, when things come up or  like scheduling like I’ve started on our schedule and a lot of times I put my thought into what I think our schedule should look like, and then I bring it to him with the certain games where it ha in terms of what I think.

And then he may shoot it back and say, no, but I have the skeleton for days and I have certain teams lined up on certain days, and now it’s just up to him to say yes, and now why should we say yes or whatever. But really specific things for him to just kind of think about as opposed to saying, Hey coach, heres.

Schools, we could play this game. We could play a high major game on this team, or a low major game on this. And the coach, Hey,  this open at night. Historically, this is what we’ve done. Here’s two schools, here’s what their five year net has been. Bam, tell me what you want to do. Right? And so just try to be more specific with him, just so he can answer.

He just can give me answers. I can give him solutions and he can sign off on those solutions.  one way or another, at least we get some clarity on what we need to do and we can be more efficient as a staff.

[01:07:51] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that makes sense. Plus you get some feedback right, on your ideas. So maybe again, not only is he getting feedback from you, but you’re getting feedback from him when you bring him an idea and he may say, well, hey, let’s think about it this way.

And that may bring something up that maybe you hadn’t thought about. I’m assuming that probably happens too, when you’re scouting a team and you have a scout where you bring something, you’re like, Hey, I see this, or let’s talk about that, and then you guys are bouncing ideas off each other and then everybody’s learning and growing as a result of that.

Tell me about your process. For scouting a team, what does that look like when it’s your scout? What are the steps that you go through to prepare first yourself for being able to present the scout, but then what you’re presenting to Coach Enfield and also to your guys so that they can be prepared to play the game?

What does that look like?

[01:08:34] Chris Capko: Yes. I mean, we could talk about it in real time right now. I mean, we we open up on Monday with Tarleton State. One of the other assistants has escal and then we play Texas a m Corpus Christi I guess three days later, right? And so they returned three guys. The rest of their team is new.

So literally today I combed through their roster, find out where the guys had been at, track down their stats for all the other stops they had been at, then went on Synergy, pulled up clips so I could watch them to get a better feel to provide context to the numbers I saw. Now, I’ll see you visually. Started to create a personnel edit for all the guys. They played one game where their stats were online. So I pulled the box score for that, saw their starters, did a deeper dive on the five guys. They started, right? So started to organize the player personnel clips for those five guys, and then I think they brought four, four or five guys off the bench and played significant minutes and did, did deep dive on that, right?

So now I’ve, I’m not going to be able to watch that game, but I got a feel for the 10 guys they played in that game. Right? And I’ve gone back and, and watched the, those guys, those individuals for the past couple years in their clips on Synergy. Then probably what I’ll do is pull up three, four games from, from last season to get a sense of how they played at different times of the year too, to see if, if there’s things that they were doing in the middle of the year that they did to the end of the year is probably how this coach plays.

Right? Right. Like whether they played man all the time or, they ran this specific play, they were doing a midway through the year, they ran it three quarters of the way through, and then they ran their conference tournament. It’s probably a, a, historically a set that they run a lot, and if it’s the same head coach, this is probably something he’s going to do early in the season, right?

So let’s just get a, try to get the best feel for how they play throughout the course of the year that I possibly can. Go look at their metrics, how they played last year, what they were good at, what they weren’t good at and condense it all. And then we’ll, what we usually end up doing is we’ll play Monday again Thursday.

So then we will review the ton State game on Monday, and then as a staff have the box. So, Texas a m Corpus Christi will play on that. Monday. I’ll have the box score, I’ll have that game from Synergy, have that broken up, have the personnel edits from that game, their offensive sets, what they did defensively, how they guarded certain things.

From that game pulled up for coach, we’ll go through all their offense, we’ll go through all their defense, we’ll go through all their personnel as we go through certain things. Once we get done with their offense, we’ll talk about how we’re going to guard certain actions that we saw in their offense. Then as we go through their defense, we’ll talk about certain plays we think we can run that can attack their defense.

Then we’ll talk about special teams. So baseline, out of bounds, free throw, defense press tip ball, jump ball, sorry, some teams run offense on jump ball sideline out of bounds, anything else within the margins of the game. Talk about how we’re going to attack that. Then we’ll talk about practice, what we think the most important things are.

We need to work on practice, probably how our guys are feeling first. So how much we need to, how hard we should actually go the next day.  and then what. Defensively we need to address what offensively we need to address after we’ve determined how long we probably need to go try to get in and out as hard as we can.

Probably an hour and a half, somewhere around that. And and that will be it. So

[01:11:53] Mike Klinzing: how much of that scout do you share in terms of the film with your players? Obviously you’re doing stuff on the floor to be able to walk ’em through and show ’em the, the actions and stuff that you’re talking about. How much of the film for a given opponent are they watching?

Obviously early in the season when it’s not really even when the team is just, it’s just random clips of the guys they may guard, but just how much do you guys usually share the film with the scout, with, with the players?

[01:12:20] Chris Capko:  it just depends. I think it depends like probably that Tuesday, right when we get done playing Charleston State, we’ll review our review will probably, generally when we go, we try to give ’em review like a hard 15 minutes.

So 15 minutes on the clock, if we don’t get it done in those 15 minutes, then time to move on. Right. You only have so much for their attention spans and you, you have to be honest about that, I think is one of the biggest things is I think everyone is probably at one point or another really had these long film sessions.

If you’re honest with yourself, how much do you really feel like you get out of that? How much are your guys comprehending? Right? So, but on that Tuesday, by the time you review Tarleton State and what you feel like you need to show them versus when you’re going into Texas AM Corpus Christi, I would say we’ll probably end up going 30 minutes give or take a little bit.

 I think what we try to, we do a pretty good job of is we try to have substance to our video scouts, right? So for each player, we don’t have these long drawn out. Written up tendencies that each guy does when a guy averages eight points a game, right? Are you a catch and shoot guy? Can you shoot it?

Okay? Yeah, you can. Well this affects how we close out on you. And that’s essentially your scout, right? You’re not going between the legs, you’re not, Hey, you, he spins right? Anytime you cut him off left, then he likes to finish with his right hand, but it’ll pump fake. You go left. There’s only one or two guys who they run offense for who really might have some type of offensive game that they have to get to that you need to know their tendencies like that, right?

The rest of it’s how do they space, how do they play off the best players on the floor? How are you closing out to ’em? How are you challenging their shot? Things like that. And so I think we try to just kind of address that and don’t  just put like a lot of word diarrhea up there on the screen about who this guy is and just try to get to the nuts and bolts of it.

And then for the whole offensive standpoint in terms of their sets or their play or their, their style of play. Just really. Probably the three most important ones with a couple clips that show that talk about how we’re going to guard it. And then the same thing when we get into their defense show plays that we feel, or I’m sorry, show defensive examples of how we can attack them offensively.

 whether it’s through some play, maybe same action we saw the night before. Same pick and roll coverage. We saw the last game, how we attacked it. This is maybe how another team attacked it with an action or a play similar to what we have. And this is how we did it. We get in out. And then I think for our group, especially this year, most of these guys comprehended the best when they can see it on the floor.

And we can walk through stuff on the floor and go through some of our corrections on the floor. But everyone’s different in that regard too, right? So some players may comprehend it a little bit better on the film or, or visually than they do actually on the floor. But and then let’s say that’s Tuesday, on Wednesday as we’re just, we’re not doing Tarleton anymore.

We’re just doing Texas a and m, Corpus Christi. I’d say we probably go 15, 20 minutes max in the film room, and then we’re out.

[01:15:14] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think you make a great point about just, again, the ability to take what is in the scout and to be able to apply it as a player. There’s a limit to how much you can take in, take in as a player, and then still play the game instinctively and just not be overthinking what it is that you’re trying to do out there.

So you obviously want your guys to be. Aware of what’s going on, both from an individual matchup standpoint and what the team does. But at the same time, you don’t want ’em overwhelmed. You want ’em to be able to just play and do the things that you guys have been teaching ’em in terms of what you’re trying to scheme offensively and defensively and not be overwhelmed by, as you said, putting all the words in front of ’em that may or may not help ’em perform better when all is said and done.

So, alright. I want to ask you final two part question here, Chris. Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day as a college basketball coach, thinking back to working at JP Morgan and changing careers and, and getting to be a basketball coach and do that every day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy?

[01:16:21] Chris Capko: I think my biggest challenge, that’s a great question. Probably individually, my, my biggest challenge is being a head coach. Right. I don’t find it as a challenge to navigate. I think people would say all the challenges going on with college basketball.

I don’t see that as a challenge. ’cause we’re all, it’s, it’s relative. We’re all doing it, right? Like, I don’t think I’m fighting this uphill battle that nobody else is fighting.  what I mean? So we’re all adjusting on the fly. I think  the biggest challenge for any assistant, I think is just to be a head coach.

Man. They’re so hard to get and they’re so competitive is the challenge I think I have every day is, is, and it’s not even a challenge, but just trying to continue winning and keep this program going in the right direction. Because the more we do that, the better. My chances are being a head coach, I mean, that’s my dream, right?

I want to be a head coach. And so the challenge is beating out for a job, 10 other guys who have been a successful head coach, some where have head coaching experience, and I’m an assistant coach and that’s a, that’s hard to do, right? So I think that’s my biggest challenge Individually, I think.

Biggest team challenge is getting SMU back into the, the NCA tournament. And that’s important to me as well. It’s important for me to do that. The last time SMU was in the tournament was the 1617 season when they actually lost to us at USC and they were really good and it’s not easy to get to the tournament, so they haven’t been back since then.

And that’s when we took the job that was something we had talked about and it’s important to us so individually is to be a head coach, but as being part of this team is to get SMU back to the NCA tournament. And that’s been a huge goal of ours, of our team, of our staff this year and talking about a lot.

And guys know what’s at stake and  how happy would make everybody around here, the alumni base, the fans, stuff like that and how it would rejuvenate the program. And really, SME has a lot of potential and if we can do that, I really feel like it will help that really the university meet the potential where it’s at and hopefully springboard this thing to a whole nother level.

And that would really help do it. And so that’s really important individually and then from a team standpoint, ’cause I’m in this as, I’m a part of a team and people are relying on me as well. And so it’s important for me to fill, fulfill my individual goals. I got other people who are relying on me as well, who I need to help do their, do my part of my job and help them as well.

And hopefully collectively we can, we can reach the goals that we set here at SMU to do and everybody will benefit from that. So what was the last part? I’m sorry?

[01:18:45] Mike Klinzing: Second, second part was your biggest joy about being a college basketball coach, which, what brings you the most joy?

[01:18:51] Chris Capko: Yeah. I, I don’t work a real job.

That’s what brings me the most joy to be honest with you. I most days I go to work with my shoes untied with shorts on a t-shirt. And I then go in, I watch our practice from the day before. I then get on the floor again and rebound and work out guys. We then go into a staff meeting and talk about our upcoming opponent.

We then talk about recruiting or maybe salary cap. And then maybe I go to a game at night or I watch another basketball. I don’t work a real job. I’ve never felt like that since. I’ve worked a real job before and I’ve never felt like I’ve worked a real job since I’ve been in coaching. I’m passionate about it.

I love basketball. I love hoops. I love talking hoops. I love watching hoops. And I just love being around the boys. I love being in the office. I love being on the floor. I love interacting with our guys. I like seeing guys succeed. I like seeing guys get better. And so the joy I get out of is that I don’t work a real job and I’m happy I’m fulfilled.

And I enjoy going to work and being around good people every day. And for me, that’s what I get out of it. I’ve heard people say, if you find something you’re passionate about, you never work a day in your life. And I resonate with that, resonates with me because I don’t work. I’m doing something. It’s insane that I get paid to do what I get paid to do because there’s stress that comes with it.

There’s pressure that comes with it. But I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t choose to do anything else because of the passion that I have for that and the people I’ve been around and the experiences that come with it. I, all my experiences in life are through basketball, and it’s created such a great life for me and my family.

It’s given me incredible experiences. It’s taught me incredible life lessons. It’s introduced me to wonderful people  incredible people. People who are lifelong friends, people who are family, people who I love. And I’ve benefited so much from it and I’ve benefited so much from my profession and I couldn’t be happier.

So even though there’s these new challenges going on with, with this business, this profession, it’s still the best job in the world and it’s not even really a job. So, Mike, there you go.

[01:20:48] Mike Klinzing: That is well said, well said. Chris. I, I think when you start talking about the game of basketball, I always say that I can never give back to the game what it’s given me.

No matter I can, I can do millions and millions of things to try to help the game of basketball, and it can never. Gimme back. I can never give back to it. What it’s given me in terms of, I, I, I, I echo your sentiment in terms of, I feel like all the good things in my life that in some way, shape, or form, I could tie ’em all back to basketball.

Whether it’s just indirectly from the lessons that I learned as part of the game or directly between the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had. And I couldn’t agree more with everything that that you shared. It’s just, there’s nothing, there’s nothing like the game and the people that are a part of it.

So again, before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, social media, email, whatever, find out more about what you guys are building at SMU. Just share that. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:21:44] Chris Capko: That’s a great question because I don’t even know my social media handle.

Hold on.

[01:21:48] Mike Klinzing: Well, that’s why we got show notes, Chris. So if once you find it or if you don’t find it, we’ll put it in the, we’ll, we’ll throw it in the show notes.

[01:21:55] Chris Capko: Well, my wife is my, she’s been the one who’s been on me about being on social media. So she actually started my Instagram so that you can find me on Instagram at Coach Capko.

And I’m not sure if my Twitter handle is the same, to be honest with you. I don’t put out the most content. I’m not the most active. And she’s a daily reminder. She tells me daily that I need to do more. All right, so you can find me on Instagram at Coach Capko. You can find me on Twitter @ChrisCapko or you can always email me.

I respond to anyone who emails me directly. When I could tell that I’m on part of a chain or part of a mass email, I don’t respond, but when someone emails me directly, I respond to everybody. So if you want, send me an email at ccapko@smu.edu and I will make sure I respond to you. Get back to you.

[01:22:42] Mike Klinzing: Chris, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next. Episode, thanks.

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[01:23:44] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.