MIKE GROSODONIA – ST. JOHN FISHER UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1186

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

Email – mgrosodonia@sjf.edu

Twitter/X – @mtgter

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Mike Grosodonia is the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at St. John Fisher University.  Now in his 9^th season, the Cardinals have won the Empire 8 championship and appeared in the NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Tournament twice under his direction. Fisher has won at least 15 games and posted a winning record in all but one of Grosodonia’s eight seasons. He served as Fisher’s top assistant under Rob Kornaker during the 2016-17 season before becoming the program’s head coach.

Before entering the collegiate coaching ranks, Grosodonia transformed the Aquinas High School basketball program into a high school powerhouse. Aquinas captured a New York State title (Class AA) for the first time in school history in 2016, made four State Final Four trips and won six Section V titles under Grosodonia, who went 194-38 over 10 seasons in charge of the Little Irish. He earned All-Greater Rochester Coach of the Year honors twice and Class AA Coach of the Year honors once. 

At Aquinas, Grosodonia coached Jalen Pickett, the 32nd overall pick by the Indiana Pacers in the 2023 NBA Draft.

On this episode Mike & Mike discuss the contrast between high school and college basketball environments, emphasizing that the heightened skill level of players at the collegiate level fosters a more intense and enjoyable practice atmosphere. He reflects on his coaching journey, from his formative experiences in high school to his current role, underscoring the importance of commitment and relationship-building in developing successful programs. Furthermore, Grosodonia shares insights into his practice design, highlighting the significance of skill development and competitive drills in preparing his team for the rigors of collegiate competition. Through this discussion, we not only hit on the intricacies of coaching at the collegiate level but also the impact of fostering strong relationships with players as a cornerstone of effective coaching.

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Have a notebook by your side as you listen to this episode with Mike Grosodonia, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at St. John Fisher University.

What We Discuss with Mike Grosodonia

• How and why the competitiveness of college basketball practices significantly surpasses that of high school
• Building strong relationships with players is essential for fostering a successful team culture and environment
• Practices should be designed to maximize player engagement and skill development through varied drills and competitive scenarios
• As a high school coach, commitment and presence positively influence a team’s motivation and performance
• Recruiting is a challenging endeavor, often resulting in more failures than successes
• Building a successful basketball program requires dedication from the coach, reflecting the effort expected from the players
• Continuous learning and adaptation to improve both individual and team performance
• The joy of coaching derives from witnessing player growth and fostering a love for the game
• Creating a culture of hard work

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THANKS, MIKE GROSODONIA

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MIKE GROSODONIA – ST. JOHN FISHER UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1186

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

[00:00:20] Mike Grosodonia: In high school. I put my starting five against my next five. 99% of the time, the starting five is going to dominate practice in college. That’s not the case. Your whole roster is good. My third team could beat my first team on any given day in a practice. So I think the competitiveness of practice in college is at such a higher level that it makes it so fun and it’s so intense.

And I enjoy practice so much more at the college level because it is so competitive, so much more at the high school, because of just every player is good there.

[00:00:59] Mike Klinzing: Mike Grosodonia is the men’s basketball head coach at St. John Fisher University now in his ninth season. The Cardinals have won the Empire eight Championship and appeared in the NCAA Division three men’s basketball tournament twice under his direction, Fisher has won at least 15 games and posted a winning record in all but one of Grosodonia’s eight seasons.

He previously served as Fisher’s Top assistant under Rob Kornaker during the 2016 17 season before becoming the program’s head coach. Before entering the collegiate coaching ranks, gross Adonia transformed the Aquinas High School basketball program into a high school powerhouse Aquinas captured a New York Class AA state title for the first time in school history in 2016, made four State Final four trips and won six section five titles under Grosodonia who went 194 and 38.

Over 10 seasons in charge of the little Irish, he earned all Greater Rochester. Coach of the Year honors twice and class AA. Coach of the Year honors once at Aquinas Grosodonia, coached Jalen Pickett. The 32nd overall pick by the Indiana Pacers in the 2023 NBA draft.

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have a notebook by your side as you listen to this episode with Mike Gross, men’s basketball head coach at St. John Fisher University. Hello and welcome to the WHO Pets podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Suckle tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by Mike Grossed. Head Men’s basketball coach at St. John Fisher. Mike, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:03:51] Mike Grosodonia:  Hey Mike, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

[00:03:57] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all of the interesting things that you’ve been able to do in your career thus far. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

What made you fall in love with it?

[00:04:17] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah, I mean, I was actually a really a baseball guy. Really enjoyed the game of baseball and I know a lot of kids think it’s boring nowadays, but the intricacies I really liked and  so really, so really liked baseball a lot. Started basketball when I was probably a third or fourth grader.

I think I won some free throw shooting competition. And that really got me on my path of, of really getting involved in it more and played it all the way up through the middle school and high school years. And I really learned a lot. I had really good coaches in high school.  my JV coach was a really good guy, Steve Deroy.

He’s actually one of my great mentors as a coach. Jimmy Johnson, who I’m, I’m sure a lot of people know, he was the JMac story. He was my head coach as well at the varsity level. So had some really good coaches. I was a pretty good player. I wouldn’t say I was the best player, but I was tough and got after it defensively.

And I did play with some good players. I probably should have passed the ball to more  as a player. I like to get my shots up. I played with Demon Stewart, who was a division one basketball player at Niagara. He was younger than me, but I probably should have passed it to him more.

But no, Mike, I had a good high school career. I was an all county kid, a, a second team, a GR player. Really had a great experience at Greece, Olympia High School, where I went to high school. And like I said, I had two really good coaches at the JV VAR C level that were, are really good mentors for me and really through them and actually my football coach I got into, I really was interested in coaching from there.

Although I didn’t really know I wanted to do it then, but I knew like I wanted to be involved with sports a little bit. But with that being said, I went to play college basketball after my, my senior year of high school and I went up to SUNY Potsdam and played, played as a freshman. And then just didn’t really vibe up there for me.

It went back to kind of where I live in, at SUNY Brockport. Was going to play there. Actually practiced all spring with the team. Kind of mid semester I transferred, so I practiced all spring, getting ready to play my, kind of my junior year coming back. And then, I don’t know, I just didn’t want to do the grind anymore, I guess.

And I really got into coaching right there. I was 19 years old. Went back to my old high school and like I said, those coaches that were there, they kind of let me come on as a, as a volunteer assistant to start. And really that’s kind of what started my coaching career is  while I was in college, started at a young age and really just fell in love with basketball because it’s basketball all the time.

 it’s, the practices are basketball in baseball you’re not always playing baseball in football. You’re not always playing football. So really just fell in love with being in the gym every day. And plus where I live in, in the  upstate New York, it’s cold outside which I’m not a huge fan of.

So being inside a gym and being able to practice and get shots up and compete at a high level on the court where it’s warm also was, was better for me moving forward. So that’s kind of my basketball journey of, as a player. I played in a bunch of men’s leagues as, as I got older and really enjoyed those.

Still play a little bit, even, almost, I’m approaching 50 years old here. I, we play some, some no hoops at the college with some of the other coaches on staff, but I do love the game and  I think it’s, it’s been a great journey for me as a player and now turn into a coach.

[00:07:53] Mike Klinzing: It’s good stuff that you’re still playing.  I retired at 42 and I tore my ACL. That was the end of my career, and then I haven’t, I still pick up a ball with my own kids, but I, but it’s, Hey, usually let’s see the old man injuries, you’re either, you’re either going to get to tear your ACL or you get to tear your Achilles. One of the two probably if you depending on how long you go.

Yeah. So I got, I’m not, I’m not going to, I’m knocking on wood for you, Mike, that you stay, that you stay healthy. Don’t have that. I appreci. Thank you. Don’t, I don’t want that. No, you don’t want, you don’t want that. You, you definitely, you definitely don’t. So when you think back to, you mentioned the influence of your high school basketball coaches.

When you think about some of the lessons that they taught you, maybe not just as a player, but when you think back now and kind of look at yourself and your coaching style, your philosophy, what are one or two things that you feel like you took from those guys that is still influencing you today when you look back on that experience?

[00:08:45] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah, I think my JV coach and actually Steve Deroy was his name and, he actually became the best man at my wedding. We became really, really good friends and I coached on his staff when I went back to Olympia and he became a varsity coach. And he actually passed away when he was 50 years old.

So I always try to talk about him because he was such a great mentor for me. But really the thing I learned from Steve was from just his work ethic. He was always prepared, always had his players prepared for games with scout reports and information. And  I really, that was the one thing I really took pride in as, as a young coach, was I was doing scouting reports when I took over the JV program at Olympia.

 and really no one was doing that in our area back then. I was going to JV games. I don’t know if this was legal. I was filming him and showing our guys film up in with a, with a camera in the stands. People probably thought I was, I was crazy. But that’s really the one thing from him I learned is like having your, having your guys prepared, having a great work ethic.

And really the second thing about him is he really just truly cared about his players off the court.  he would go pick guys up, he would loan them money  if they needed it just depending on who the kid was. And that really, like he, I knew he cared about me, but just seeing him kind of with other kids and coaches and guys that really needed kind of maybe a father figure type.

He was that guy. And I really tried to take those two things from him as a coach, as I’ve gotten older and  I think. Now, especially at the college level, when kids are away from home and far away from families, I think it’s even more important that you bring kind of that caring piece and let them know that you care about them.

 it’s not always about basketball, it’s about their lives and how they’re doing and all those types of things. And  I always tell recruits now, like my greatest achievement as a coach is when I get invited to a wedding after they graduate. ? And I think that’s the relationships I try to build.

And I’ve learned that from Steve through all the years that, that I was around him. God rest in peace. And  Jimmy Johnson was a, was a, was my first varsity coach or my only varsity coach as a basketball player. And  he had the same kind of preparation and always had to prepare.

But he was, he was a lot of off the court, like always keeping you invested in. Everything that was going on in your life. It wasn’t just about, it was basketball was important obviously, but  what goals did you set for yourself academically, basketball wise? It was a lot of stuff like that.

It wasn’t always just on the court with him. It was try to be a good person, try to be, treat other people with respect. He also was a very competitive guy, so I was, I used to try to challenge him one-on-one all the time. And I think he was my middle school PhysEd teacher too. So he used to, he used to make these t-shirts that were go, that were, I beat Coach Johnson one-on-one and once you beat him, you got one of those.

So nice. Once we got to about eighth or ninth grade, we used to kick, we used to kick his butt all the time. So he stopped playing us, but no, he was. He was really, he was really instrumental in me really staying in, involved in the game of basketball at a young age because he was my phys ed teacher in middle school.

And but like I said, he was, he was great at, he was a goal setter, really made you think about what you wanted to accomplish on and off the court each, each year and each season. And I think those things sometimes go by the wayside. because you’re so invested on what happens on the court and game by game.

You don’t think about the small short term goals that you want to create and then the long term goals you want to create, knowing that you can modify those at any time.  if something changes throughout the course of the season, you just adjust them and try to make new goals. So I really picked that up from him.

And those guys were, were really good influences on me and my becoming a high school coach and a college coach.

[00:12:50] Mike Klinzing: I want to jump back to the transition into coaching in just a second. But I want to touch on something that you just talked about there in terms of the relationships, right? And how those guys that coached you at the high school level, they had an impact on you because of the relationship and yeah, they coached you in basketball and the basketball piece of it obviously was important, but clearly what really impacted you is the time that they took getting to know you and having a relationship with you inside and outside of the game.

So when you think about your career, both first as a high school coach and then now as a college coach, what are some things that you do from an intentional level to really make sure that you’re investing in building those kinds of relationships each and every day with your guys?

[00:13:36] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah, that, that’s a great question.

 I think the, I think that all starts, especially at the college level, at the recruiting process it’s. I try to be as honest and upfront as I can. I want them to know it’s not just about the player, it’s about your family.  we try to communicate with the, with the family as much as we do with the player.

 obviously when they come on visits, we, we try to do a really good job of, of making them feel just as involved in that process as the player is.  and I think it, it’s an everyday thing. It’s  when they come into practice every day, it’s not just, Hey, go stretch and we’re practicing.

It’s you try to target and I don’t know if target’s a great word, but you try to approach four to five guys a day and, Hey, how’s, how’s, how’s your family doing? I know you’re far away from home, anything going on those type of questions. How’s the classes going? What, what are your plans this weekend when we’re off?

 like, I think you just try to get more invested in, in their, their outside lives and how’s your. How’s your significant other doing?  are you guys doing anything this weekend?  and just try to stay connected with them in that way. And they know, like they can come and I have an open door policy.

They know they can come and talk to me anytime, good or bad. Questions, answers. We also do the one-on-one meetings and you, yeah, basketball is a piece of it, but it’s also the same type of questions. How you doing in classes? How are you doing in the dorms? How’s your roommate?  those are always the fun questions.

How’s your roommate? You don’t know. You just met them. Right? So yeah, I think those, those small, right, right. Those small interactions I think carry weight and I think back, like you said, I think back to just the conversations I had with, with my coaches that really didn’t talk about basketball much.

It was, . How are you doing? How’s life, how’s your girlfriend doing?  things like that that you don’t really think about those things when you’re a kid, but when you get asked to asked about that stuff, I think it means a little bit more. It’s not just basketball, it’s not just win, win, win, win, compete.

It’s, we really do tr truly care about you. You’re a part of a family  this is how we treat family and this is how we want to have conversations and connect and create lifelong relationships. Honestly, that’s, that’s really what we all want to win. We’re all competitive we all want to win championships, but at the end of the day, it’s really it’s about those lifelong relationships and, and keeping those connections throughout the time they’re there and especially when they leave.

[00:16:19] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I always feel like. When I look back at my time as a player and then my time as a high school coach, you always, I’m always struck by the idea that what was most important to me in the moment, right? As a player or as a coach, I was always really concerned about what’s my performance? How am I preparing my team?

If I’m a coach to win or lose that next game as a player, what do I need to do to have myself ready to go to contribute to our team being successful? And some of those, again, small little interactions, right? The human connection or just the feel or the connection with your teammates, like all that stuff was there, but it sometimes got superseded by how important my performance was as a player, or what my team’s performance looked like as a coach.

And then you think back now with sort of the ability to have a longer term perspective stepping away from it, and you look back on it, you’re like. I got a really hard time remembering this game or that game. And obviously there are games that stick out in your mind for sure. But what you really remember is what was my experience like with my teammates?

What was my experience like with my coaches, with my players? And those are the memories and the things that, like you said, getting invited to a wedding or just within the last, like six weeks. I had a kid who played for me in high school that he got inducted into his college Hall of Fame. He played in a division two school and his, his entire team got elected into their hall of fame and he had called me up and invited me to go to the ceremony.

And because of some family things I had, I couldn’t make it to the ceremony. But then he and I, afterwards, like a week later, ended up connecting and having dinner and sitting down and I get to hang out with his kids and just. I mean, those kinds of things again are invaluable, but sometimes in the moment, right?

We just, the wins and losses and the prep for the next game and all that kind of stuff. We get, I don’t want to say caught up in it. because as you said, it’s really important and we’re all competitive and we want to win. But it’s interesting how time gives you a different perspective on how those things that seem little in the moment are actually probably the big things.

[00:18:37] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah, I mean, 100%.  I think, like you said I think as a young coach too when I first started out, like that’s what it was about, right? Like, how, how can I win? How can I win championships and how can I make these guys compete at a high level? And  those things are still there.

But I think that’s just a small piece now. It, it really is. It’s it’s more about those relationships and especially at the college level. I think it’s, it’s really even more deeper because of the. Distance that guys might be away from home first time on their own a little bit. So I really you always get caught up a little bit still it’s still we’re all competitive people and  but I do think like having those connections and having those knowing that guys that come in my office anytime, like, and they’re not intimidated to have a conversation, I think that’s super important to me.

 I don’t care if it’s about playing time or something in the classroom, or maybe you made a mistake at campus and did something stupid in the dorms, like whatever it is, like knowing that, yeah, you might have done something wrong and you may have some discipline, but having that trust factor between me and my players I think means more to me than, than a lot of things that, that happen on the court.

Because at the end of the day it’s, it’s four years. Life. Right? So it’s, it’s not, it’s important, but it’s not the end game. Right? So I think that’s, that’s a big piece of it.

[00:20:09] Mike Klinzing: Alright. Take me back to that first experience. When you are in college still, you go back to your high school, you get an opportunity to volunteer, be a part of that staff and work with guys that you previously played for.

How quickly into that experience did  for sure you’re like, yeah, this is where I want to spend the rest of my life, is as a coach at, at whatever level. And I don’t know what your thought process was at the time. I’m assuming maybe you were thinking high school coach at that point, because that’s obviously where you ended up first, but just kind of walk me through that first experience of what it was like and what you loved about it.

[00:20:42] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah. So  like I, like I mentioned earlier, I really always loved sports. I was a die hard, watch it all the time, go in my front yard on my own and. Mimic a, a basketball game in my driveway, one on zero, but pretending that I was every college and NBA player that I could be. And same thing with baseball.

I was, I was a New York Yankee. I was playing shortstop and second base all in my front yard by myself just pretending like it was a major league game. So I just knew I loved sports and I just wanted to be involved. And I loved, really, my three sports were basketball, baseball, and football. So actually when I went back as a volunteer coach, that first year, the next year, all these openings kind of came open at all the same time.

It was kind of crazy. So I actually got hired to be the freshman basketball coach, the JV baseball coach, and I was a varsity assistant football coach, all as a 19, 20-year-old kid who had basically no idea what I was doing. By the way, other than what I’ve learned from the coaches that coach me  I wasn’t too much into football.

Like I liked football. I was more of like a secondary coach signaling the defense. I really wasn’t a, a play caller or anything like that. So I did that for a few years. But really basketball and baseball were more my cup of tea. And I did the freshmen for I think three years. And then I took over the JV job for a couple.

And then baseball. I was right into JV baseball. It was kind of crazy. I did that for about four or five years. But yeah, going, it was, it was funny because you go from being, I just graduated a couple years ago from high school and now the guys that coach me I’m working with and we’re, now we’re friends.

 it’s, it’s different. And the learning, the learning curve was, I just remember my first freshman practice and, . Varsity, we always pressed, we were, we did the Rick Patino, the black press, the white press 2, 2 1, 1 2, 1, 1 on the ball. And I was the point guard in it. So I was the one kind of controlling it all in high school.

And I was the guy scrambling over trapping guys. So I’m like, oh, I’m doing that for sure. First, first practice, we’re in there and I’m going to teach it all. And it’s like, I have no idea what I’m doing. Like I’m trying to teach this. I got guys in the wrong spots. I’m not, I’m not even sure what my role was when I played, other than I ran around and trapped everybody.

And I’m really just sitting there like, kind of like, I have no idea what I’m talking about right now. And then Steve Deroy walked in my my varsity, the varsity coach at the time. I’m like, Hey, you, you just remind me of how we do this. And it was kind of one of those moments where you’re like, oh, I have to make sure I’m a little more prepared next time I come into practice.

But but no, it was, it was a great. It was a great few years there at Reese Olympian. I really learned a lot from, from those guys being on the staff at all, all the different sports. But once I got into the basketball piece, I really knew that’s the route I wanted to take.  baseball was good, but I didn’t really, I mentioned earlier I didn’t really like being outside in the cold when it was March and April up and here in upstate New York.

Football was fun, but it really wasn’t my passion. But basketball was really a game I loved. And once I got the JV job there, I really, like I told you, I was doing scouting port and all these different types of fulfillment practices. Like I said, probably totally illegal back then, but I didn’t really pay attention to rules, I guess.

But I really, I really knew that’s, that’s kind of the route I wanted to take was be a. Be a varsity basketball coach. And I was going to Brockport to be a phys ed teacher. I figured that that’s what I wanted to be, again, the sports kind of background. And  I wanted to be, that was kind of my dream, like phys ed teacher, varsity basketball coach, and no, so that’s the route I kind of took.

 not, not a, it was an interesting path. because after those two years of jv, I actually moved to Buffalo and became an administrative assistant with Mike McDonald at Kenesha College. He was the head coach there, so I did one year at college, kind of in between everything. I moved out there because my wife went to UB and got a job.

So that was an unbelievable experience. Like doing those type of things. That was, that was eye-opening, like really learning. How hard those guys play at that next level compared to what I was doing at the high school level.  so lived to Buffalo a couple years, got a job out there, did some coaching after Kenesis, and then that’s what kind of brought me back to Rochester.

And to make a long story short I ended up getting a freshman basketball job at Aquinas, is where I got involved at Aquinas. And I, and I got the job in terrible circumstances. The coach there at the time ended up getting colon cancer. I took over VARs. I was actually coaching freshman and varsity basketball at the same time.

So I took over in the middle of the year which was, my wife was also, we had a 1-year-old and she was pregnant again. So she was real happy that I made that decision to do both. And then. He actually came back and I was doing freshman again, and he got, he got sick again. I took over again, same kind of thing.

And then he ended up stepping down and obviously those circumstances stink. But they ended up hiring me that next year, which was like 2006 to be the next varsity coach at Aquinas. And it’s kind of where I got my start.  really, really my start as a, as a varsity basketball player or coach.

[00:26:20] Mike Klinzing: How important were those reps as a freshman and JV head coach when you eventually got to be a head varsity coach? because a lot of times guys end up getting head coaching jobs, whether it’s at the high school level or even the college level, where they’ve been either only an assistant for their entire career or they’ve been a long time assistant.

And as you well know, the responsibilities of an assistant coach versus the responsibilities of a head coach. Are completely different. And even though again, you might say, well, how does being a freshman high school basketball coach compare to being a college hedge coach? There still is, right? Those decisions that you have to make in game or planning practice or just again, being sort of the ultimate voice for your team that you don’t get to have necessarily as an assistant.

So when you look back on those first experiences as a freshman in jv high school basketball coach, how important were those reps as you moved on in your career as a head coach?

[00:27:21] Mike Grosodonia: Well, I think they’re invaluable. I mean, I just think those reps, that’s how you learn. You learn by getting thrown in the fire and it doesn’t matter, like you said, it doesn’t matter if it’s freshman or jv.

You’re still coaching, you’re still the head coach, you’re still planning practice, you’re still teaching on the court, you’re still making end game decisions. You’re having to make the adjustments you’re having to. Go from practice to practice. What do we do well? What do we have to improve on?  tho those I can’t say enough how, how important those reps are to, to really run your own team, right?

Like, there’s a lot of assistance out there that never get that opportunity. And when they’re throwing in a fire, maybe they get a varsity job. It’s, it’s a different animal. It really is. And and I’ll even say that going from being a JV coach to a varsity coach, and now you are running the whole program, right?

You’re running, now, you’re in charge of everything. You’re in charge of the JV team, a freshman team, you’re modified team, the fundraisers organizing the THI stuff for the parents team dinners.  the JV coach isn’t doing that, right? You’re doing that as the varsity coach. So, like when I got to Aquinas, I’d never been a varsity coach.

Now I had a great mentor, Steve Deroy. I saw everything he did with, with all that stuff. He was the first guy in our area that did a  a faculty celebrate faculty night where every guy picked on the team, picked a faculty member that made an impact on him while they were in high school. He was the first guy in Rochester, New York, section five that did that.

And it’s the first thing I did when I went to Aquinas and I took over is I was like, oh, we’re doing a, a meet the faculty night and we’re going to do a, an a teacher appre. We called it a T-shirt appreciation night. And we did that and it was the first time Aquinas ever did it. And I taught everyone, I didn’t, I didn’t create it.

I learned from my mentor. He did it at Olympia. But yeah, like every level is so different. But I think having those reps as a freshman coach and a JV coach, before you even get to that next level you can. You can’t really imitate those anywhere. Like I think that really, really prepared me to be a varsity coach.

And like I said, I had a great mentor and Steve Deroy and I really learned a lot about off the court stuff with him, like those teacher appreciation nights and fundraisers and all those type of things that, that are also involved with it, right? When, when you become the man, when you become the main guy,

[00:30:02] Mike Klinzing: there’s no doubt about that.

There’s a lot of things that go into it that, again, people don’t always see, especially from the outside. I, whenever I think of high school coaches, I always, and not so much with you guys, don’t deal with it nearly as much at the college level, although probably more so than maybe you did in the past. But I always think of parents, right?

When you think of high school coaching, you think of just how involved the parents are in a high school basketball program just from. Standpoint of they’re involved with their kids, they want to be involved in the, everybody has opinions. There’s just, there, there’s a lot more of managing of, of the families and parents that you do as a high school coach.

And so that’s something again that I don’t think people, again, I don’t think parents realize how much of an impact parents have on, on a high school basketball program, just in terms of how it runs and what the coach has to do in order to be able to, to manage all that and still coach their team. And so I do think that when you take over a, a high school program, there’s things that if you haven’t been in that position that you don’t necessarily understand.

And to be able to have somebody that you were able to learn under and that you were able to watch, and you were able to see kind of how they handled those things, that obviously gives you at least a little bit of a headstart and a heads up. But by the same token, until you’re sitting in that chair. You don’t really know for sure exactly what that feels like.

So you obviously at Aquinas had a tremendous amount of success. You won a state championship, so you clearly built a very, very successful program. And so sitting here today, when you look back on your experience at Aquinas, if you had to point to one or two things that you think were really critically important to you building a great high school basketball program, what were those things and how would you sort of frame that as some advice that you might have for somebody else who’s, who’s coaching at the high school level right now?

[00:31:51] Mike Grosodonia: Man, that’s a great question. It, it really is.  I think as a as a high school coach, obviously, like I was at a private school, so I was fortunate enough to have some great athletes.  I’m not going to sit here and I mean, I had, I had Jalen Pickett, he’s playing for the Denver Nuggets right now.

So like, I had some really, really talented players. I had division one football players that were just. Animals and athletes everywhere, like they were crazy. But we also played teams like that too.  Bishop Kearney had a bunch of division one players. McQuaid had some division one so we played, played teams like that as well.

But I think when I look back on it, I really just think the commitment level that I demanded of myself and I don’t want this to sound like a selfish thing but I think at the time I was making $4,500 and for me it was a full-time job being the basketball coach, ? Yeah, I had a, a teaching job.

It was a private school, weren’t paying me a ton of money either. But I really just, I loved it so much that I had to treat it like that was my only job. I hope, hope none of my phys ed students are listening right now. But that’s what it was, right? Like basketball was more important to me, like, than teaching phys ed  and it’s, it sounds terrible to say because the money was the PhysEd and basketball wasn’t at the time, but it’s like but I was all in on it I was planning practice, we were watching film, we were in the weight room.

Basically everything I do at the college level, I was doing at the high school level.  and I was fortunate Aquinas, they had great facilities as well. My ad was super supportive. Who was, who was a really good friend of mine as well. Anthony Bianchi. Another, another good mentor. He was really valuable to me when I was at Aquinas, especially as a young, a young coach there first really helped guide me to.

To mature a little bit as, as a young first time varsity coach. But I just, I really think the commitment level, like if you really want to be successful, the kids have to see it. They have to see your commitment, your dedication  and they’ll follow you. They really will. Like, they’re very impressionable.

If they see you, they see you working hard, they see you in the gym all the time. Like, I’m not running open gyms and my assistants are there, I’m there when we’re in a weight room session, I’m not sending the strength coach. I’m in there with him. ? I think that’s what, when we had summer league, I was at summer league, I wasn’t sending my assistant.

I was like, I was like, I’m telling my wife we can’t go on vacation till summer, the weekends, I have to be there. That’s my team. I can’t make the kids go if I’m not going to be there. Like, I really think that was the biggest thing for me was I really loved it so much and I wanted the to be good. It was all about the commitment level for me.

Like I had to be everywhere that we, I was making the guys go or that I wanted them to commit to, whether it was an open gym, a lift a summer league game going to watch a football game during the football season. because we had so many guys on the team that played football at Aquinas.

I just think being visible w was the biggest thing for me. And and I think that was the number one impact.  I think that helped our program be successful. because those guys knew I cared just as much as they cared.  I think the other thing too is and this is just maybe coach talk, but just always trying to improve as a coach.

I really, even though I had great athletes and we won a lot of games I changed my philosophy year to year or every other year with. Depending on who we had. And I could only do that if I went to clinics. I talked to college coaches or other high school coaches. Always just trying to build knowledge and learn and  and I think that, I mean, I’ve run a hundred different types of offenses it’s quick hitters, dribble, drive, ball, screen continuity ISOs  whatever, whatever you can think of.

We’ve done it. The same thing on the defensive end. I’ve played a matchup three, two, I’ve played two, three. I’ve played run and jump, man. But you can’t do that, especially back then. You, you weren’t Google and all that stuff. Like you can now, but you had to go talk to coaches, you had to watch videos and, and those coaching DVDs that I have thousands of that are, can’t even use them anymore.

I don’t have a DVD player. Right. But  like, I think just keep improving as a coach and. I think that’s what helped me at Aquinas, that commitment level, constantly trying to get smarter and be more aware of, of how I can affect the team with their, what they do well and what we can do as, as a, as a team.

Really were the two things that helped our, our program build up.

[00:36:50] Mike Klinzing: I’ll say that the commitment level is something that I think is spot on when it comes to success at the high school level. And when I look around at the most successful high school programs that I’ve seen here in the Cleveland area, in the state of Ohio, it’s almost always led by somebody who is at that level of commitment that you just described, right?

They’re at the summer league, they’re at every single open gym. They’re around when there’s a lift. They’re providing their players with opportunities as much as they can within the confines of the state guidelines. It’s no secret, right? That if you want your players to make that kind of a commitment, that you as a coach have to make that type of commitment.

And sometimes you can get lucky, right, and have good talent and win despite that. But if you want to have a program that wins year in and year out, and I think that’s always the difference, right? When I look at somebody who’s a good coach and is running a great program that happens year after year, after year after year.

Maybe you have an up year and you win a state title. Maybe you have a, maybe you have a down year and  you’re, you’re, you’re winning whatever, two thirds of your games. But, but more often than not, you’re, you’re right there year in and year out consistently. And that only happens with a level of commitment like you’re talking about.

And I know that I’ve had this conversation with other high school coaches and college coaches too, for that matter. But that level of commitment, the baseline level of what you have to do as a high school coach in terms of. You talked about just the time and your family and your wife kind of being on board with allowing you to do those things.

The baseline level of commitment that you have to have as a high school coach right now today compared to what it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. Again, just how much time for your, for your $4,500 check or your whatever, depending on what state you’re in or where you’re at, those checks compared to the amount of time that you have to put in if you want to be successful.

Those checks are, are pretty small. So I couldn’t agree with you more when it comes to the, comes to the high school it commitment piece of it piece, and I just think that you can’t, you can’t be successful without that level of, without that level of commitment. To me it just, there, there’s no way you can do it and have, and have a program again, year in and year out.

You can win occasionally because you just get good talent in the door. But for the most part, if you’re building a great program, you have to have that level of commitment that you talked about.

[00:39:26] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah. I mean, you’re, you’re spot on.  it’s definitely the high school piece is, is is challenging, right?

Like you said, the family family’s at home, you’re spending you’re, I’m teaching all day and you got practice, and I’m probably going out to scout right? When the season starts and you’re walking into the door at 10 30, 11 o’clock at night after you watch the game and  and you’re doing it all over the next day it’s it’s just a, it’s a cycle.

And it, if you love it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t seem like work, right? It, it just seems like Right. It’s fun.  it’s, I always, I always tell the recruits at Fisher, like, you come here. It’s a fun, full-time job, right? We’re going to demand a lot of you, you’re going to obviously go to class, you’re going to have practice, you’re going to lift, you’re going to watch film, you’re going to have.

Community service projects, we’re going to do other things together.  if you love it, you’ll enjoy it. If you don’t love it, it’s going to be hard. That is true. That is very true. What’s your favorite memory from the state championship? Oh man.  it’s it’s crazy because it was the third, it was the fourth, fourth time we were in the state, final Four.

 and if I bore you, it just cut me off. But I think the first time we were there, I had we were playing day one, Coleman and Tyler Kavanaugh from Jamesville dewitt, who both were high level division one players, Syracuse. Wait where did he go? I think he went to Wake Forest at first, and then gw, maybe Tyler.

We had good players too, right? Phil Viney went to Kenisha College and Trisha White, we, the Monmouth and they all played together in au in the summer, which was crazy. All four of those guys, which was so now they’re playing against each other and but one of my best players rolled his ankle in the first quarter and couldn’t play.

And we ended up losing that game by like two or three. So that was that game. We had another one the next year that we lost in the semis, and then we ended up, oh no, the next year we lost in the finals, the Mount Vernon and we actually had the MVP of the game. Phil Valenti scored 36 and we lost in the state finals to Mount Vernon, who was like a 10 time champion.

It was, it was a crazy game. We were down, we came back, had a couple chances to win and just couldn’t get it done. And we had a couple years off in there and then we got back, the year before we won the states, we got back to the state semis and played Brentwood out of Long Island, which is I guess the biggest state school in New York state.

And really we just didn’t play well. They, they dominated throughout  they were good. They had some really good players, but that, that next year it was funny because all those, the kids of the year before we graduated some but like Jalen Pickett was a sophomore, so he was only going to be a junior.

 what’s funny is, is about that, that first year we lost in the semi that year before we won it is we probably had 10, 11 guys that were all good players and honestly it was very challenging to try to play all of them. It really was. It was, we tried to really press a lot and use that as a, as a way to, to exhaust guys and get guys in and out and, I just, I thought when you look back on it, you were like, it was just hard to play that many guys in a high school basketball game. It really was. And then the next year we played only seven guys basically. And it was so much easier because you were playing your main guys the whole time and you had your two subs and then your eighth and ninth guy, they were ready just in case There was foul trouble.

You needed a defensive assignment. One guy was a shooter, so if you needed a three you could use him. But it was very, it was very, like, it was just, it’s easier to manage that group because you knew who the guys were.  it was a great, it was a great team.  like I said, we had, I had two division one football players.

Jalen Pickett, obviously in the NBA went to CNN Penn State. And then my fifth kid was just a tough. He would’ve been a D three basketball or football player. He just didn’t want to play. He was just a tough kid. And those were my main five. And the two guys off the bench were just great role players.

One, one could really shoot it and one was a tough defensive kid that could guard one through five at the high school level. But I think that the memory of that team was just, they hated losing. They really did. They hated it. Like every practice was competitive. Like they didn’t, the starting five didn’t want to play together in practice.

They wanted to go against each other. Like, so I would make a practice plan and pick the teams and they’d be like, coach, no, you have to switch the teams. Like, we can’t get better if we’re just going against the next five. Like, that was, that was who they were. Like they were just and those guys, the crazy thing is we we had six football players on that team.

They just want to stay tight on football the same year. So they, they literally won a state championship. I think it was like that Thanksgiving weekend on a Sunday. We had practice Monday. Every kid was there. Like they didn’t take a day off. They didn’t take the days off. They were in there and I was like, oh, you guys, they did every sprint, everything that I asked them to do, they did.

Like that’s how I knew that that team was special. Like all those kids were football players and they all showed up the day after they won a state title and they were at practice ready to go full go, didn’t need a day off.  and, but I think the memory you think of in that is, is beating Kevin Herder.

I mean, I don’t, I don’t know how I could say that any better is  we kind of ended his high school career. They had just won stay title the year before in that, at she, and we actually, we shoulda have lost the game. We were down, I think we were down five with under 30 seconds and we hit a three on a timeout.

We doubled herder so he couldn’t get the ball to make free throws. We followed another kid, he missed a front end of a one-on-one with like nine seconds. And one of my football guys got the rebound one coast to coast, laid in at the buzzer and then we won overtime. But  that was the semi and we’re like, oh, we thought we won the Super Bowl.

And you’re like, oh, we still have to play this state final. What the heck? But I think, I think that memory is, is always a fun one. Like Kevin, her was obviously a great NBA player. He is, he was a great high school player as well. And  winning that game when we thought we were kind of dead in the water.

And then kind of telling that story about the football team winning and being in practice the next day, like those are the things you think about with that group. And it’s no surprise that they won two state championships, football and basketball in the same year.

[00:46:17] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That mentality to be able to just.

Bounce back right after you win and come back and plant your feet and say, Hey, we’re going to get after it. And just switch gears from one sport to another and be able to do that. Sounds like it was a special group of kids, which obviously you’re going to win, win a state title.  clearly most of the time when you, when you get to that level, you’ve got a special group of guys.

And it sounds like from from day one, it was pretty clear that you had a special, that you had a special group. And obviously those memories that not everybody gets an opportunity to, to win a state title as a coach or as a player. And so those, when, when I talked earlier about the games and the memories that are etched in your mind that some of them disappear, but I’m sure those runs to the, to the state.

Final Four obviously are ones that, that you remember a lot of specifics from those games, which is, which is which is good stuff. So after you win that state title, you kind of have an an unusual. Situation in terms of the relationships that allowed you to have an opportunity to go to St. John Fisher.

So just talk a little bit about how that opportunity arose and what the relationship was that enabled you to, to consider taking that position.

[00:47:27] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah, so that, that previous year when  we had, we lost in the state semi Rob Knicker, who was the Fisher coach at the time, his son played for me at Aquinas.

 he was, I taught him in phys ed. He came to Aquinas and as an eighth grader all the way to his junior year. He he played in our program and me and Rob really became really like best friends throughout those or one of his best friends throughout those four or five years.

And we were very tight. I went to a lot of his games once I got, I started getting to know him a little bit and yeah, I mean it was just, it was crazy. We won the state title and  I think I was on I was, it was in the spring and his assistant, they had a full-time assistant at the time and his assistant Sean Coffee was at Utica now.

 took the Utica job and Rob reached out to me and he is like, listen, I’m not sure if you’re interested in this, but I have a full-time assistant opening with Sean leaving I’d love for you to, to, to be that guy. And Rob was honest with me. He really was. He was. He’s like, listen, Griffin’s probably not coming to Fisher and I don’t want to miss his college career.

So like I could be gone after one year you’re here and you take over. And he said, even if Griffin does come here. You’re still full time, you’re still getting bene you’re still getting everything you need to pay and stuff like that. And then I’ll probably be done when he graduates anyways.

And then you’ll take over, ? So  obviously there was some other factors involved with college tuition. And I have three kids of my own, and they were all grown up and getting older, and I think there was a lot of factors. I’ll be honest with you, I really didn’t, I never really thought about being a college coach.

I mean, I was happy at Aquinas, obviously, we were winning. Phys ed job was a good job. It was fairly easy. But no, no New York State retirement in the, in the pri in the private schools for teaching.  the college tuition was obviously intriguing, but I really didn’t, I really, truly didn’t know if I wanted to make that jump.

I really didn’t. And, I think we were on, we were on a vacation at Cedar Point, actually in Sandusky. And  finally Rob called me, he’s like, Hey, Mike, I mean, I have to know, like I have to make a decision here. And I think I said no and yes, seven or eight times on the phone. And I finally looked at my wife and she she’s always been supportive of, of me and coaching.

And she’s just like, whatever you do, I’ll support you. If you want to stay, stay. If you want to go go. And I made the decision that, that if I never, if I didn’t take this opportunity, I probably would never have it again.  it’s not typical too much that you’re a high school coach and you jump right in to be a college assistant right off the bat.

I mean, I don’t see it too much like that. I know there’s some, some Nate out stories and stuff like that, but typically you have to be a young guy right out of college. Paying your dues to, to get those positions. And I was a 40-year-old high school basketball coach that had a great opportunity and I decided to do it.

Really didn’t know what I was getting into to be honest with you.  obviously I knew the basketball piece and stuff and didn’t realize how much admissions played a part and all these other things that I think Rob kind of hid for me so I would take the job. But yeah, that was kind of my my journey of, of getting there.

And like I said, it’s been not the easiest way to do it I think  but my wife’s been very supportive of it and  I’m 100% glad I did it. I think the toughest piece about the whole thing was knowing that I had Jalen Pickett coming back for his senior year, and I had to leave him.

 and there was another kid named Jason Hawks who was also a junior, who was a big part of that, that state title team. And having the conversations with the thing about Jalen was his brother played for me back in like 2007 or eight. Jalen was our ball boy since he was like a third or fourth grader.

So I was really tight with his mom too. And when I brought those them in to have that conversation, there was just a lot of tears. And I think that that was the toughest thing I had to do is talk to those two guys and Jaylen’s mom and let him know that I was leaving and  it was pretty emotional.

 we built some pretty good relationships there at Aquinas and, I with them and with people that I worked with all those years and my staff and all that. And it was, it was a, it was a tough decision, but I think in the long run it was, it was best for me and my family. And  and Rob was true on his word, right?

Griffin didn’t come and he left after a year and I was named interim. And the rest is history as they say. And  I think I’m there 10 years, nine, nine years overall as the head coach. So that was kind of kind of the strange journey that, that, that got me to, to St. John Fisher.

[00:52:47] Mike Klinzing: How did that year as an assistant compare to the year you spent at Kenesis?

When you think about those two experiences and kind of compare them back and forth and think about that, how did those two compare?

[00:53:00] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah, totally different.  kenesis, I didn’t do much on the floor. because he already had assistants and they, they had certain division one rules and titles of what I could do.

I was more just sitting in the stands watching. I could sit on the bench during games and stuff like that, but I couldn’t really coach on the floor during practice. But I did learn a lot.  Mike McDon, I think is one of the premier now division two coaches, is how smart he is. And what he does with his programs everywhere he goes, he is, he’s been successful.

So the beeline tree, like obviously very smart and knowledgeable and in everything they do, and we do a lot of stuff that he does. So he’s been great. But I think as an assistant at Fisher it was really hard because I wasn’t a head coach a varsity head coach before I went to Kenisha.

See, I did JV and freshman, and obviously that was good, but  when you’re a varsity coach for 10 years and you’re running, you’re in charge of everything. It was really hard to to sit back. Speed the guy sitting in the chair and not up on the sidelines.  practice was fine because Rob really gave me the reins to, to kind of do what I wanted to do.

And I think I was in charge of the offense that year. And we had a really good big kid named Keegan Ryan, who was an All American and we ran a lot of like high low stuff for him. And Rob kind of let me do that and coach that stuff. And really the offense he really handed to me. So practice was great I, but in the games it was really hard to sit there and not be the one standing up, running up and down the sideline.

And so that took me probably half a year to really, to really figure it out, to be honest with you. Is is I was getting through the, that process of it all and and then Rob. Let me do more and more as the year went on, I think he knew he was going to be leaving and really, I started running practices as the year went on and he was still the man.

He was still the guy and everyone knew that I don’t think anyone ever questioned that because he was such a great coach and  he’ll be a hall of famer there there someday. And but that, that was the toughest part is sitting in that chair after being on the sidelines for 10 years and being the guy that’s making all the decisions and  but it was a great learning experience as well because I got to see a really, really good college coach in action for, for a full year firsthand right in front of me.

And I really learned a lot from him. He was, again, he’s one of my best friends, but he’s also another one of my coaching mentors and, he was, he was very good at really getting his guys to play hard really challenging him and making them competitive. And  that’s the probably one of the biggest traits I learned from him.

And you talk about a guy that cares and he cares about his players, that he would do anything for him. And  I couldn’t ask for more than to, to kind of be under his wing for a year before he was, he was nice enough to really hand me the job. Before we dive into the details

[00:56:08] Mike Klinzing: of how you’ve built your program there, just one comparison question.

So when you think about being the head coach at the high school level versus being a head coach at the college level, highlight for me a difference or something that makes the two jobs different. Obviously there’s a lot of similarities, but I’m, I’m sure there’s a difference or two that you, that comes to mind when you think about being a head coach at the college level versus at a high school level.

[00:56:33] Mike Grosodonia: I think the first thing I think of is practice.  in high school typically, unless you’re at a, a prep school or something like that, like you have your, your top five guys that are your, your best players and you might have a couple that are your bench guys, that are, that are, could be basketball players, could be just good athletes.

Then the rest of your roster there, there may be young kids, there may be guys that play other sports that are just good athletes, but they’re not really basketball players or they’re guys that are just great kids and want to be a part of it. So practices sometimes aren’t super competitive at times.

Like I told you, like if If I put my starting five against my next five, 99% of the time, the starting five is going to dominate practice. Right. In college, that’s not the case. Your whole roster is good.  so like my third team could beat my first team on any given day in a practice. So like, I think the competitiveness of practice in college is at such a higher level that it makes it so fun and it’s so intense.

And I enjoy practice so much more at the college level because it is so competitive, so much more than the high school because of just every player’s good there.  every player’s a ba, they’re there for basketball, they’re there to be a basketball player, and they all want to be on, they all don’t want to get to the point where they’re getting those minutes in the game.

So they come to every practice, every day and they, they want to compete and they want to show that they belong on the court and not the bench if they’re not in that rotation. So to me, that’s the number one biggest difference from high school to college is practices are so intense and so competitive that it.

It just, it makes practice so much fun and and energetic where some high school practices, you can go there and can kind of be a a bad day and not, not as fun. And sometimes your starters don’t care as much because they know they’re going to win. So they don’t really compete at the highest level they can sometimes.

Which I think is just a natural, I remember I did that in high school too, when a kid that was guarding me I knew couldn’t guard me. Like I didn’t care as much. Right. Like, so to me that was the, that’s the biggest difference.  I think that the college game in general is just everyone’s good, man.

Everyone, coaches are great.  every coach is good.  they just, everyone’s well prepared. Everyone’s recruiting to get good players.  I think that. You have to be ready to go every game. And  like, I dunno, if you saw our score last night, we weren’t ready to go.  we, we got kind of beat up last night.

So but coach is, every coach is good. Every roster is good. There’s no nights off. Yeah, you might win big some nights, but that means you played really, really well and maybe they didn’t. It’s really, really hard to win at this level.  so I think those are just the coaches, players. It’s hard to win at college level and the practices are so much more entertaining and fun just because of the competitive nature of everyone on the roster is so good.

Those would be my two biggest differences between that and the high school level.

[00:59:47] Mike Klinzing: What do you balance now in a college practice? How you put together the lineups that play together while you’re practicing, in other words, right. You got your. Starting five, or maybe you have your guys that are in your rotation.

How do you mix those whenever your, your guys six through nine, are you having guys six through 10 often play against your one through five? Are you mixing guys six, seven, and eight in with guys, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or just how do you think about putting together the lineups during practice to make sure that you’re getting the maximum out of it and making it as competitive as you were just describing?

[01:00:24] Mike Grosodonia: That’s a great question. I don’t think I’ve ever figured it out yet. I think we try, we try to do all those things and I don’t, I the wor the worst thing about college basketball, and I’ll jump back to what you’re asking me, is subbing. It’s really hard because everyone’s good. Everyone has a, has something they do well.

I’ll be honest with you, that’s, that’s probably my biggest weakness as a college coach is, is, is, is getting the guys in that we need to get in to play enough minutes. Starting five’s easy, right? Like those guys are starting, they’re going to be in and out. It’s that next, I say five to eight guys that it’s hard to play, it’s hard to play 12 to 13 guys, but those are the guys.

Those guys deserve to get it, get an opportunity. And you have to try to do that without taking the minutes away from the guys that you need to be on the court the most. And it’s not always easy.  but  kind of back to what your practice question is I think when we start, it’s a lot of mixture.

 I’ve just mixed guys together, see who plays well together. Once we figure out we got a feel for it. Usually a day or two before games, we try to get our starting five together, let them practice together a lot and we’ll get our next five, like our six through 10. We carry about 8, 16, 18 guys usually.

So we’ll have three teams in practice with some subs and then our next, our next five, it just depends. Like I might want my 10th and 11th or my 11th and 12th guy with one of those first two teams is subs, so they’re mixing in. And then the last five are kind of that, that other group.

But we kind of play them all equally against each other just to give them different looks. But we will intermix a little bit and  sometimes I like putting the eighth or ninth guy with the, I think one of my assistants is great. He is always like, you want your point guard and your, your big man always playing together if you can like your starters.

Yeah. And then the guys maybe you think are going to play the most minutes, kind of put them together, . So we have a couple groups like that sometimes where I might put my point guard in five man with like by six. 7, 8, 9 in that group. And then my, maybe my two or three guys are going to play the most minutes.

If it’s not those two guys, we’ll put them with a group in the, with maybe our backup point guard and our backup five. And try to mix those groups together a little bit. That usually seems to be how it might shake out in a game.  with the subbing and things like that, which I, like I said, I’m, I’m still terrible at, to be honest with you, I’m, that’s the one thing I really can’t figure out is how to sub and make it good for everybody.

[01:03:06] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. And it’s almost impossible, right? You’re not going to, you’re not going to make it good for everybody. because everybody wants to play 40 minutes regardless of what the situation is. And so as a coach, like you said, I know that that’s one of the things it’s interesting that you say that because I think about my own experience, and it goes back to what we talked about earlier in terms of the reps, right?

Of even when you’re a freshman coach, when you’re a JV coach, like you have to make those substitution. Decisions, and if that’s something that you haven’t done before, especially in game, I mean, you’re talking about just in practice and, but in game, it’s, you’re, you’re looking and you’re like, okay, I you want to have your best guys out on the floor, but then again, are they, if they’re a little bit fatigued, does getting them a minute or two here or there?

But then if you put a sub in for only a minute or two, then is that fair to that kid that you can’t even get a rhythm and then you have to take them back out? Like there’s just, there’s so many factors that, again, when you’re sitting in the stands and you’re not coaching and seeing those kids every day in practice and knowing what their strengths and weaknesses are and what their practice habits look like, and all the things that go into making a decision about who plays well with who and everything.

I think that, that’s so often lost that I think people again. Parents especially, I’m thinking about right, that they’re always want your kid, they always want their kid to play more minutes and they’re always thinking, oh, this coach, he’s he’s, he’s sticking it to my kid, or he is doing this, or Why isn’t that kid playing more or this or that?

And when you’re on the inside, you realize, one, that those decisions, A, are not easy and b, that you’re looking at it and going a lot of times, right? You’re, you’re splitting hairs between guy five and guy six, especially if they’re at at a similar position. It just is, again, it’s tough and you have to be able to figure out how to evaluate that.

And I can completely relate to the idea that subbing players is hard. because on the one hand. You’re like, Hey, my starters, these are my best guys. These guys deserve to play a lot of minutes. And then you’re looking at your guys on the bench and you’re like, these guys are working hard and they can help us win too.

And so how do you balance all that out? It’s not, it’s definitely not, it’s definitely not easy, that’s for sure. And there’s no question about that.

[01:05:18] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah. Yeah. Very challenging. And listen, I’d play everybody if it was easy. Right.  and it’s  that’s, yeah. Like I said, it’s still still a, it’s still a work in progress I’ve been doing it for nine years for sure.

And like I said, the toughest, toughest thing to me in high school was when I had too many good players in a high school game. It was tough to play. It was tough to play 10, 11 guys in a high school game. Yeah.  the game’s so much shorter too. So it’s still, still something I’m working on and trying to get better at.

And I ask coaches every summer. What is your subbing philosophy like  obviously you have to do it by your own personnel, but I think I try to learn a little bit something every year about how you can play 12 guys. And again, not equally, but  how do you get those 12 or 13 guys in where it that 12 or 13th guy, like, it’s, it’s meaningful minutes.

It’s not just going in and coming out for 30 seconds so. Right. It’s a work in progress for as, as as, as I get going.

[01:06:17] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about practice design and kind of how you put together a practice to, to get the most out of the time that you have on the floor with your guys.

[01:06:26] Mike Grosodonia: First of all, I think we let them stretch way too long to start practice.

But college athletes, like they, they love stretching. They really do. I didn’t stretch a day in my life which I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but but no design and you’re still, you’re, you’re still playing

[01:06:41] Mike Klinzing: at 50, you’re still playing at 50 years old, so you’re doing something right, man, forget the stretching.

You’re you’re, you’re fine, man. You’re still hooping at 50, so you’re good. Yeah,

[01:06:51] Mike Grosodonia: I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. But no, I think we try to balance it out with all the, all the different categories of, of what we think is important.  I’m a, I’m big on I’ve seen practices where coaches don’t do a lot of shooting.

I’m big on that. I think we should shoot all the time. I always try to we’ll usually start practice with some kind of full court drill, some kind of passing fundamental. We’ve really been, we call it like full court v cut passing. It’s really just working on coming and meeting the ball in the air, pivoting overhead passes.

It’s so funny, like in college, you think kids would know all these little fundamental things that, because you’re in college now, right? But you, you really don’t, you really don’t know where they’re coming from, what they’ve been taught. So you’re really doing a lot of teaching. You really are.

And because everyone’s been taught something different or maybe haven’t been taught something that you think may be very should be known. And they don’t really know it, whether it’s footwork or how they move and things like that. So but we try to do stuff, some kind of full court passing, finishing drill to get the blood flow.

And we always say at the end of the stretch, you have to be ready to go. Like, we’ve already wasted. Eight minutes in practice stretching.  so let’s, let’s go here. And then I like to do some kind of guard forward breakdown.  so I’ll send our post guys to one end with an assistant, our guards to another end, and we give them like whatever the category is for the day.

It could be face ups for the bigs and they’re working on playing off of two guards. It could be filling and fi some kind of finishing. And then usually after that, go into some kind of shooting whatever team shooting drill we have. It could be team verse team. It could be individual based.

And I try to hit all those fundamental stuff and shooting right at the beginning kind of gets the blood flowing a little bit. And then we get in kind of the meat of stuff.  it could be, we’re going into and we try to have like a. A little offensive breakdown segment, so maybe we’re in the flow of our offense, but there’s some actions we want to kind of show and maybe rep.

And then we’ll go into like a a full court game really focused on the offense. I really foc, I’m a defensive guy. I mean, I can do both, but I’m really focused on the defense. So my one assistant really is taking the offense and I really focus on the defense.  so we’ll, we’ll play some kind of,  we do like three minute games, rotate the teams, but we, we keep the score obviously we have consequences if you lose.

And usually everyone gets two games in those, in those cycles. Now we’ll do some kind of defensive breakdown.  I try to do closeouts and slides every day, even if it’s for two to three minutes just to rep them. Some kind of half court defensive breakdown where it’s. Maybe we’re working on ball screens, coverages, maybe we’re working on how we’re going to rotate out of a slot drive and we have to help some kind of half court breakdown.

And then usually some kind of half court defensive competition. I’m big on the two drills I really like the most are, we call it perfect possession. You have to exhaust the shot clock for 30 seconds.  so we have three teams. So one team’s have to stay on and exhaust that shot clock. So for, for coaches listening, if you don’t know, it’s basically you play defense.

If you get a stop and they’re still 18 seconds on the shot clock, the next team comes on and you have to play to exhaust that. And we give them rewards too. So if you get a deflection at the end of that segment, we take five seconds off the shot clock. If you force a turnover, another five seconds comes off, you take a charge.

It’s an automatic. You exhaust a 32nd shot clock. So we try to give them some, some rewards of things we like in practice. Turnovers, deflections charges. We were doing like live ball steals. We exhausted 10 seconds off. We always make them, if you get a live ball steal, we always go make them, dunk it at the other end just to have some fun.

And I usually run down there and chest pump somebody. Yes.  stuff like that.  we’ll try to throw some press segment in there and then usually we try to play at the end it could be a transition defensive segment, it could be a press. Then we might go like some four minute games.

This feels like a four hour practice, right? It’s only two. But we try to play at the end we’ll mix in some free throws.  I’m a big like. We’re actually not shooting free throws right now, so I have to figure very well right now, so I have to figure something out. But I really like shooting free throws because, and I like doing it like with some conditioning in it, ?

So for shooting one on ones, if you miss the front end, you got two down and backs within the five minute segment. We do it. If you miss the second one, you have to down and back. If you make them both, you don’t have to run. And that’s continuous for five minutes in groups of threes. But yeah, then we’ll play at the end in some kind of controlled function that might be four minute game, but we’re playing to a score or two so if the score comes first then, so now we’re getting live situations without making them planned live situations and  because planned live situations, sometimes guys are cheating to play and all that other stuff.

Yeah. You, we still do them. We still do them because you have to have them in how to foul. Stuff like that. But that’s kind of, that’s kind of how we run practice and  obviously mixing in drills and stuff like that every day.

[01:12:44] Mike Klinzing: How do you think about the pacing of getting your team ready? We’re early in the season right now, from day one of practice, obviously now with division three, the last couple years, getting your extra eight days.

But just how do you think about the pacing? Does it vary from year to year based on your team, or, or do you try to kind of keep the same, all right, we have to have this in by x number of days before our first game, or just how does that flow for you?

[01:13:07] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah, I think for, for me it’s, it’s year to year.  we’ve, we’ve really scaled back some of the things we’ve done in the past as far as offensive things were I used to be a big ball screen continuity, some two guard, but we’ve kind of gone to a more read and react type stuff, although we’re not really reading or reacting very well at this moment.  so I think it’s a work in progress. But  just trying to be less predictable offensively. So we’ve really scaled back what we do. We, we, we have some sets in and things like that, that we’ve run and we probably have to spend more time on and execution and stuff like that.

But I think every year is a little bit different defense. We, I try to stay on course. I think there’s certain things you have to cover  ball screen defense, how you rotate out of things  how you want to guard the ball, where are you forcing things like that. So defensively, I think we’re more on pace than.

Typically we we’re, we’re on schedule. But offensively I think it just varies year to year on, on what you’re trying to do. It always feels like there’s not enough time as you, as . Absolutely.  there’s always something you’re like, oh my gosh, we didn’t go over this. And then you’re playing your first game the next day.

So but you just have to hope that experience of players that they can, they can handle some of that stuff when they see it and or that you just have to hope the other team misses the shot.

[01:14:33] Mike Klinzing: There you go. All right, Mike, final two part question, part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every day as a college basketball head coach, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy?

[01:14:51] Mike Grosodonia: Man, it, that’s a good one. I mean, I always think the biggest challenge. Is the recruiting piece because there are so many good players out there and, but there is a, a heck of a lot of schools out there that are trying to get these good players and it’s, it’s, I always say recruiting’s a game of failure.

because you’re recruiting. We probably have about 40 guys on our board that we really, really like and we hope to get four of them, right? I mean, you’re going to fail on, on 36 of them.  so that’s, I think that’s my biggest challenge every year is trying to bring in the players that match the fit that we want, which is tough.

Want to compete want to get after it every day and love basketball. And want to win. So I think that’s the biggest challenge that I look at is trying to bring in the players that you want that match up with. I. Academic standards, your program, there’s obviously a financial piece with everybody. I think that that’s the biggest challenge.

And then with the joy I just love basketball. I really do. I love, I love the interaction with our guys. I love, I we lost bad the other day and I went in and we had some heart to hearts and I love that part of it too. Like, I love the challenge of can you bounce back from a bad loss?

 can you pro, can you go away this weekend? And whether you win or lose, can you come out and compete better than you did than you did the other night? And I just think that the everyday grind and the love of the game and the interaction with the players. Listen, we brought these players in and we love them and it’s our job to, to help them compete and be better people.

And I think that’s what I love about it. And I’ve met so many. Great young men in these past nine to 10 years. And  I wouldn’t trade that for anything. And  I just hope they, they think the same thing about me. And  that’s really, we talked about it earlier, the relationships, right?

That’s, that’s really the joy of it all. And the basketball piece is fun, but the relationships is everything.

[01:17:05] Mike Klinzing: That’s well said. And it kind of dovetails with the entire conversation, right? The basketball piece and the relationships. And when you combine those two things and then that’s when you have something special.

And so I couldn’t agree with you more on that. Before we get out, Mike, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, find out more about you, your program, whether you want to share social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:17:31] Mike Grosodonia: Yeah. I mean, St. John Fisher University, men’s basketball our website is pretty well done. My email, my cell phone are all on there. Feel free to reach out at any time. I have Twitter, social media Instagram. If you look up that, it’s a pretty uncommon name, so it should be pretty easy to find me or my wife on there.

 same thing. We have like a Twitter account for, I think it’s @SJFMBB for Twitter and Instagram. So yeah, anybody who’s interested and wants to have a conversation I’d love to learn from, from them. And if you have any questions for me, I’d love to have a conversation anytime.

And  just want to thank you, Mike, for having me on. And this was really great, it’s always fun to have a conversation about basketball and all these other things that are involved in coaching. And I truly can’t thank you enough for giving me the time to, to kind of hear my story.

[01:18:33] Mike Klinzing: Mike, the feeling is mutual. Again, can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on with us. Really appreciate it and to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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[01:19:37] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Heads Start Basketball.