NICK LORENSEN – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL GRADUATE ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 1261

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

Email – lorensennick@yahoo.com

Twitter/X – @nlorensensports

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Nick Lorensen just completed his second season on the La Salle University Men’s Basketball Staff as a graduate assistant under Fran Dunphy in year one and Darris Nichols in year two. Lorensen previously spent time on the sidelines as a coaching intern at Queens University (N.C.). Prior to his time at Queens, Lorensen had a focus on the media side of sports, with positions including scouting at The Portal Report, working as a Communications & Marketing Intern for the Bowie BaySox, and working as a communications intern for UMBC.

On this episode Mike and Nick discuss his initial fascination with the sport datingback to his childhood. He shares how his family, particularly his father, fostered an early love for basketball that eventually led him to engage with the game on a deeper level, despite not playing in high school. Through various interactions, including managing social media accounts for basketball programs, Nick cultivated a unique perspective on the sport, which he parlayed into a coaching career. The conversation further explores the evolving landscape of college basketball, particularly the impact of social media and the transfer portal on recruitment and player retention. Nick emphasizes the importance of building relationships, both with players and within the coaching community, as a key component of success in the coaching profession. He reflects on the challenges faced by coaches in today’s environment, where financial considerations often overshadow personal connections, and offers insights into maintaining a player-first philosophy amid these changes. the importance of relationships in coaching, emphasizing how genuine connections with players and staff can significantly influence team dynamics and individual growth. Finally, Nick reflects on the joy derived from witnessing athletes develop into better individuals, underscoring the transformative power of coaching.

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Be sure to grab your notebook before you listen to this episode with Nick Lorensen, Men’s Basketball Graduate Assistant at La Salle University.

What We Discuss with Nick Lorensen

• Leveraging various experiences in sports media to transition into coaching.
• The importance of seizing opportunities and utilizing social media to create professional connections within the basketball community
• The transition from traditional recruiting methods to a focus on retaining current players has become essential due to the impact of the transfer portal in college basketball
• Coaching under Fran Dunphy and Darris Nichols has provided Nick with invaluable insights into the importance of hard work and personal connections
• The evolving landscape of college basketball, particularly with NIL deals, presents new challenges for maintaining competitive rosters and cultivating lasting relationships with players
• The role of coaches in shaping character and integrity
• Why a commitment to hard work and continuous improvement is essential for success
• The cultivation and maintenance of relationships
• The value of humility and the impact of treating every individual with respect

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THANKS, NICK LORENSEN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR NICK LORENSEN – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL GRADUATE ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 1260

Mike Klinzing

00:00:14.240 – 00:00:17.520

The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball.

Nick Lorensen

00:00:20.400 – 00:00:29.120

It’s a relationships business more than it is a basketball business. You have to keep your people close, keep in contact with them, be a good person, do the right thing.

Mike Klinzing

00:00:30.160 – 00:01:44.540

Nick Lorenson just completed his second season on the La Salle University men’s basketball staff as a graduate assistant under Fran Dunphy in Year one and Darris Nichols in Year two. Lorenson previously spent time on the sidelines as a coaching intern at Queens University in North Carolina.

Prior to his time at Queens, Lorenson had a focus on the media side of sports with positions including scouting at the Portal Report, working as a communications and marketing intern for the Bowie Bay Sox, and working as a communications intern for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Give with Hoops is the first platform turning basketball analytics into fundraising impact Every stat tells a story and now every story drives sponsorship, engagement and team growth. Programs nationwide are transforming basketball stats into funding power.

Learn to use performance data to attract sponsors, engage fans and raise more with every play.

Give with Hoops will help you raise three times more money for your program as their stat based pledges consistently outperform traditional fundraisers. Visit givewithhoops.com hoop heads podcast to learn more and take your fundraising to the next level. Give With Hoops.

Ethan Stewart-Smith

00:01:48.550 – 00:01:52.670

Hi, this is Ethan Stewart Smith, Head Men’s basketball Coach at Washington and Jefferson College,and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

Mike Klinzing

00:01:57.990 – 00:03:22.100

Are you or an athlete you know Planning to go D3? Check out the D3 recruiting playbook from D3 Direct.

Their playbook gives you a clear step by step roadmap to the recruiting process, what coaches value, key milestones from early high school through application season, and how to build a targeted list of schools that fit your needs. The playbook demystifies researching D3 programs and how to stand out without chasing every camp or showcase.

The modules cover things like writing emails to coaches, building an effective highlight tape, using social media well planning camps and visits, and navigating application strategy. You’ll get templates, checklists and an outreach plan to communicate confidently. Learn how to compare financial packages and avoid common missteps.

By the end, you’ll have a prioritized school list and a decision framework you can use to land your best fit opportunity. Click on the link in the show notes to get your D3 recruiting playbook from D3 direct.

Be sure to grab your notebook as you listen to this episode with Nick Lawrenson, men’s basketball Graduate Assistant at La Salle University. Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

It’s Mike Clensing here without my co host, Jason Sunkel tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Nick Lawrenson, men’s basketball graduate assistant coach at La Salle University. Nick, welcome to the hoop heads pod.

Nick Lorensen

00:03:23.140 – 00:03:27.300

Thanks for having me, Mike. Many people don’t get my last name right on the first time. You did pretty good.

Mike Klinzing

00:03:27.300 – 00:03:39.700

All right, well, good Klinzing mine. People mess mine up all the time. I always get an extra G in the middle of my name, so I’m usually cling zing if people get it wrong.

What do people do with yours? I’m kind of surprised. What do people, how do people butcher yours?

Nick Lorensen

00:03:41.090 – 00:03:48.290

Lorenzen or. Yeah, it’s usually Zen, like, like the hefty lefty that, that played quarterback at Kentucky back.

Mike Klinzing

00:03:48.290 – 00:04:47.280

That’s funny. It’s hilarious because I look at it and I don’t, I don’t like, I don’t see that at all. But I guess you could see when people look at it quick.

Yeah, we, we all know our own name what, what the butcherings are that, that come at us. So I’m glad I got it right. That’s always the key as a podcaster.

That’s one of the things that when I get someone who’s on as a guest, who maybe I didn’t know previously, and they do have a name that I’m not sure about, that’s one of those questions that when you ask it, you feel a little bit bad, like, hey, how do I, how do I say your name? You feel a little bit.

But it’s much better to do that than it is to start the podcast and call somebody something that completely butchers their last name. So I’m glad I got it right without having to ask. So we’re, we’re off to a good start.

All right, Nick, let’s start here with going back to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball. How’d you fall in love with it? How’d you get connected to the game?

Who was kind of the driving force in introducing you to it?

Nick Lorensen

00:04:48.400 – 00:08:39.999

Yeah, I mean, like everyone or like most kids, I guess I played every sport. I was big into baseball. I still love baseball. I, I love college basketball. I love basketball, but I’d still probably say baseball’s my number one.

Anyone that’s ever worked with me can say that. I watch baseball non stop. I, I know what’s going on in the mlb. I know what’s going on in the minors, all that jazz, big football family as well.

But my dad Was going to go to Duquesne to play baseball. My grandfather was admissions director there since 1979. Dad and student life. So he had season tickets. He loved Duquesne basketball.

And that’s kind of where I first fell in love with this thing. I’d go up for Thanksgiving, we’d go ahead to do can game that Wednesday before, the Friday after, and I’d fall in love with college basketball.

And as time went on, I love college basketball more and more. And I started playing basketball a little bit. I wasn’t great at basketball.

I didn’t play in high school like everyone else, but I just fell in love with.

I started running social media accounts because I knew I’d be a little bit better at that in middle school and high school, and those did pretty well. And then I got lucky. When I grew up in Catonsville, Maryland, where UMBC is, they beat Virginia, obviously in the 2018 tournament, 16 over one.

And they pulled off that upset. And UMBC didn’t have an Instagram account. So instead of finding an account for them to tag, like the university or whatever, people were tagging me.

So we had USA Today, espn, Steph Curry, Jay Williams, Fortnite, all these huge accounts at the time tagging me for these posts. And the athletic department didn’t like it. They were like, why is this kid that goes down the street at a high school from us getting all this clout?

We aren’t getting anything on social media. Why don’t we have an Instagram account? So they reached out and they’re like, hey, can we buy that account off of you?

And my mom’s like, don’t do it unless they give you an internship.

So my last two years of high school at Kingsville High School, which is like right around the corner from umbc, they asked or I asked if I could have an internship there and ended up working the athletic department for two years. And from there I kind of got a little itch into writing.

And this is kind of where my basketball coaching journey starts, because I’m writing for Mid Major Madness for my senior and senior high school freshman year of college. And they always had pretty good practice presence on social media. And when it opened up my sophomore year, I reached out like, hey, can I.

Can I run the social media account? I run the Twitter account. And at about 20,000 followers, was doing really well.

A lot of people in college basketball knew what it was, and I took it over my sophomore year. I just gave it up this past fall and I quadrupled the following and it was just something I love. But I went to South Carolina.

I’m going all over the map with this story. And heading into my senior year, I need to graduate, or I needed a internship to graduate from with sports management at the university.

And I always wanted to get into recruiting. I always wanted to get into college basketball. So I reached out to a couple people.

I put out a tweet, and Grant Leonard at Queens University sent me a text, and he’s like, why didn’t you just reach out to me? We talked a couple times before. I’ve been up there for a game. It was their second year at D1. And he’s like, yeah, I want you here.

I’ll pay you a little. Come join our staff for a year. So I did that for a year, and then I ended up getting on at LaSalle, but.

But not your normal journey of playing basketball. Just loving it like that.

I loved it from watching it with my grandfather and just watching it in this basement that I’m at home in Baltimore right now, just being a complete hoops sicko.

Mike Klinzing

00:08:40.879 – 00:10:42.310

So it’s funny just to hear that story, right, of the journey of how you got there. And I always relate this story from when I was playing and there were guys who were student managers back when I played.

Now, this is a long time ago, so we’re talking 1988 to 1992. So a long time ago. The job market, completely different. And.

But I always tell people that when I looked at our student managers, I never once in the four years that I played college basketball thought that those guys were on a path to become coaches. I did not see that as a stepping stone to becoming a coach.

I was always like, well, they must like hanging around the players, and they just like doing the things that they do. As a manager, I never looked at it as a career path to get into coaching.

And then obviously now, today, you see so many guys who are not college players, but who are student managers, student assistants while they’re still going to school. And then obviously, they are spending way more time, at least on a personal, like, communication level, with the coaches on the staff.

And so they’re building those relationships, and then that enables them to be able to get into the profession. And now your story is a whole nother story in terms of the social media side of it.

The media side of it, and then being able to take that and turn that into a coaching career. So I want to go through that kind of step by step.

But let’s work backwards and start with the social media side of it, how do you as a high school kid, what’s the process for you learning social media and taking it from the way that most teenagers use social media, which is I’m just using it to connect with my friends and see what other people are doing.

How do you take it from that to I have a good enough understanding of how this works to be able to build some of the things that you built that got you that attention that you talked about.

Nick Lorensen

00:10:43.590 – 00:12:22.360

Yeah, I mean it’s really all instilled into what my parents told me when I’m young. If you’re going to do anything, go full in on it. I mean, I was consistent. Whenever anyone asked me about social media, I just say be consistent.

College basketball is such a beautiful sport because every single night there’s anywhere from like 20 to like 200 games going on. So you could really talk about anything and get any kind of audience on there.

So in middle school I did middle school and high school, I didn’t focus on just the high major programs and I focused on mid major programs. And that ended up helping me in college because I focused solely on the mid major programs. And that’s kind of where if I in the hiring.

So I’m in the ir, I’m in the hiring cycle right now. The biggest things like hey, this kid knows more about mid major and low major basketball than anyone else.

Because I sit there and I’ll watch Cal State Florida and against CSUN at midnight on a Thursday night or I’ll watch a SWAC basketball game on Monday night at 11 o’. Clock.

People walked in, have walked into my apartment, walked in my office being like, what the hell is this kid doing watching Morgan State, South Carolina State at 4 o’ clock on a Monday? It’s just something I love.

So it’s, it’s really the key thing I’ve always told everyone is being consistent post about everyone, everything, especially the small programs. And I think that’s what really helped me take off because a lot of these programs don’t get the shine that they deserve.

Maybe they’re in a bigger market with bigger teams and they’re the third or fourth fiddle and they don’t really get people that go to every single game. But you have someone else sitting there tweeting about you with somewhat of a following.

It helps you out, it helps get, get you exposure and maybe, maybe build your program in the future.

Mike Klinzing

00:12:22.360 – 00:13:26.100

Yeah, absolutely. I do think that you’re right when people think about college basketball. Right.

The average person thinks about the power Five, they think about the teams that are top seeds in the NCAA tournament.

And yet you look at, not just at the Division 1 level where you have the mid majors and low majors, but then you think about Division two, Division three, just the number of schools that are out there that are playing college basketball that could benefit from what you’re describing, right. Of somebody that’s just putting it out in front of people for them to see it.

So when you’re sitting there and you’re watching those games, right, at some point, were you thinking about watching those games initially, just as a fan, like, hey, I just enjoy watching college basketball, watching these games.

And then at some point, obviously, as you start thinking about, hey, maybe I’m going to get into coaching, does your focus shift into how you watch the games from when you first started, obviously, to when you start thinking about getting into coaching? What’s the difference in how you watch the games five years ago versus how you watch games today?

Nick Lorensen

00:13:27.540 – 00:14:47.130

Yeah, five years ago, just watching it. As a fan, just tweeting out great plays, all that jazz.

And I’ll never forget, about a month into my time at Queens, Grant Leonard’s like, now that you’re watching all these games, do you watch them different, differently? Like, yeah, I mean, I’m watching them, I’m catching out plays, and it’s even different.

More different than two years ago now with the transfer portal being such a big thing. I watch these games and I put together a list. Hey, this kid’s pretty intriguing. Maybe he’s not putting up great numbers.

Maybe we can get him out of LaSalle.  it changes every single year.

And I don’t know if that’s a beautiful thing about college basketball right now or, or something that’s bad about college basketball, but with all these different games, you’re able to pick up something different every single time. And like, watch St. Mary’s when Randy Bennett was there, you just love watching all their offensive sets.

You watch a school like Belmont, you’re like, at a La Salle, we can’t get any of these guys, but they have eight dudes that are potentially high major players. It’s, it’s, it’s just there’s so many different things you can pick up from so many different programs.

And it’s really grown, like you mentioned, through these past five years, because now I feel I have more of a basketball acumen than I had then, because I’ve been around people that love the game, that have learned the game, that are growing in the game as long as well, as I am.

Mike Klinzing

00:14:47.450 – 00:15:08.010

Was there a light bulb moment for you when you’re doing your media stuff, when you’re doing your writing, where it clicked for you and you’re like, hey, I want to get into coaching. Or was it more of sort of a gradual lead up to. It seemed like the next step in the progression. Was it a moment or was it a gradual build to.

To get into coaching?

Nick Lorensen

00:15:09.470 – 00:16:20.450

I think it was gradual because I don’t really know if the way of media right now is going in the right direction. I don’t know how much longer people will be. They’ll be beat writers at most of these games. At high major test there will.

But when you look at the mid major programs, there’s not many of them. But I’ve always been interested in this side. Like my grandfather I mentioned was director, Admissions and Student life at Duquesne.

So he was big into recruiting kids into campus. And that’s always been something that I’ve wanted to do. Recruit kids into a campus. And you get to do it in a smaller scale.

With college basketball you only have 17 spots, 15 spots. 17 Spots that you can use to fill up a roster. So I’ve always been interested in that side.

High academics, recruiting kids into a campus to further their life. But it was more gradual because I could see the media stuff wasn’t going to work out for all too long. I’m really blessed I’ve gotten to work.

I even did it this year. I’ve done, I believe, four straight Final Fours. The first three I was sat right at half court, perfect seat.

I’m blessed with the media stuff and yeah, it was just a gradual climb.

Mike Klinzing

00:16:20.610 – 00:16:30.290

Tell me about the relationship with Grant Leonard. How do you first meet him and how does that relationship develop to the point where he invites you to come on and be a part of his staff?

Nick Lorensen

00:16:31.890 – 00:19:54.210

Yeah, so. And I believe I started doing it my junior year of college.

I’d have these Twitter, Twitter meets or whatever they’re called, where you have like all the people on there and you talk to them, you interview them. But I did one for every single league for a couple years and I did one for the A sign and it was their first year heading into D1.

I’m like, I should reach out to Grant Leonard. I should give him a little exposure about the program. We had a great 30 minute conversation and I had a co host on there.

I don’t remember exactly who it was, but we were talking about how well of a first season they were going to have. I don’t know If G wants me to really share this, but. But it was like, I’m like, I think they’ll have more than eight wins.

And the other guys, like, I think they’ll have less than eight wins. And he texted me right after, because he was still listening. He’s like, do you want to make a little side bet on this?

If we have more than eight wins in conference play, it might have been like 18 wins total or something like that. You owe me lunch at the Final Four. If we have less, I’ll owe you lunch. And they ended up having more than that.

So we ended up having lunch at the Final Four. But throughout that whole year, we talked. I came up to the game, saw them play.

Fgcu, had a nice little clip about Dan Bailey, who should be a great coach in this business. He’s been at Queens ever since they moved to D1. He’s the all time leading rebounder at Queens.

He’s proud, hopefully next in line to be the head coach at Queen’s University. But we just kept talking and talking and talking.

Then I reached out to a couple people that off season about getting an internship, and I put out a tweet one day, I’ll never forget. I was in Safeway with my mom. And he shoots me a text. He’s like, why didn’t you tell me you were doing this? I’m like, I didn’t really think about it.

He’s like, I would love to have you at Queens. I’m like, good. Well, that works because I could come up.

I was only planning on doing it the second half of the year because I still had to take classes the first half of the year. But Charlotte’s only about an hour and a half away from Columbia, South Carolina. I’d be able to be there all year, go to all the games.

He paid me pretty nicely. I had a pretty nice role because I knew that he knew what I can bring to the table. So I ended up accepting that.

And for the first half of the year, I was taking six classes, coming up every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And for the second half of the year, I was coming up every single day.

So it was about three, four hours on the road every single day, driving up from Columbia, South Carolina to Charlotte to be there with him. And I think that really stuck with him, just that commitment to come up every single day, be the best I could.

And even at LaSalle, he helped me get the job. He called him and he’s like, this kid’s just different. Like, he commuted every single day. He Came up three, four hours. Like I, I, I.

He just always says good things. Like whenever he goes on a podcast and someone mentions me, calls me bloated contract but, but Gee’s great. I’m so happy.

They had a great year this year. He got his shine with all the sweaters that in during the Auburn game and during the NCAA tournament. But that’s a program on the rise.

They did a great job this year. They’ve done a great job the last couple years. They’re averaging 18 wins per season in these first four years.

You don’t get that much through these transition programs. Them in like St. Thomas. So he’s doing a great job. I’m super proud of him, super proud of the program.

And I’m, I’m really happy that I got to work there for a year. I’m super blessed to know Grant Leonard.

Mike Klinzing

00:19:54.210 – 00:22:08.370

I love the glamorous side of college basketball coaching. I always crack up again, right?

That like people again on the outside of the profession look at college basketball coaching and they look at it through the same lens that we talked about a minute ago, right? It’s power five.

It’s the people at the very top making millions of dollars and everybody says, wow, college basketball coaching, everybody’s making so much money and there it’s, it’s such a glamorous job. And then I think about the story that most people have, which is something again, similar to yours, right?

Here’s this job that I got to commute three or four hours every single day to show up and be paid probably what was enough to maybe pay for your gas and maybe you could have, maybe you could eat one sandwich a day on what you were, on what you were being paid.

And yet because of the passion that people have for the game of basketball and for the coaching profession, that’s what you have to do because so many people want to get into it. And if you love it, that’s what you’re willing to do in order to get there.

And I always again, kind of laugh at again just the idea that everybody gets this golden platter of it goes from here to here to here. I’m a player, then I’m gonna, then I’m a high level assistant. All of a sudden I’m coaching at Michigan State or wherever it is.

Those, those stories don’t happen. Your story is a much more common one of you have to fight for everything that you get in this profession.

You have to be able to, willing to go wherever it is that the job is. You have to be willing to work for nothing or next to nothing.

And even then you got to work really, really hard and do a really good job and where you are in order to be able to advance in your career. And I think there’s a lot of great lessons for young coaches in that story that you just shared with me.

So to piggyback kind of off where you left it and the relationship that you have with Coach Leonard, when you get in there for the first time and you get behind the scenes, for lack of a better way of saying it right, you’ve kind of seen college basketball from the outside. Now you’re kind of seeing it from the inside of a coaching staff.

What was something that was exactly what you expected and what was something that was different from what you expected?

Nick Lorensen

00:22:10.290 – 00:23:52.880

Yeah, just how hard everyone worked. I mean seeing it from media side, sometimes you hear staffs are never in the office.

Sometimes you hear staffs are in the office a whole bunch. But then I went to Queens and there were people in there from 8, 9am until 6, 7pm every night, just grinding film or they’re in the gym working out.

A guy who’s just consistent and non stop. And I didn’t really know what I was going to do, get into when I went there.

I remember being so nervous, meeting everyone first practice, like, like, all right, this is a little bit more my wheelhouse. Like I’ve been to practice this before. Like I know how this goes. Like, like this makes sense. But just seeing how hard everyone worked.

And then I always, everyone always says I don’t want to toot my own horn, that I’m a hard worker. But watching these people, I’m like, I gotta, I gotta work really, really hard if I want to be anything in this.

And I take a lot of it from Sean McClurg who’s now at West Virginia and he’s doing all their scouting stuff like he’d watched six games before every time we played to the other team. And he would write so many notes and I’d watch two, three games and I’d give him some notes and he’s like, you’ll get on my level someday.

And over time I finally got there where like I’m watching that much and I’m getting that much out of it, all of it. Charlie Wilson, who’s an assistant at Central Missouri, was in there at 8, 9am doing the same exact thing.

One guy did the offense, one guy did the defense. They would just be in there non stop trying to get any little thing that they could get out of film.

And I, I, that was my biggest thing I’ve picked up on and I’ve continued to try to work off of that ever since. I’ve seen that on my first day and throughout that whole first year at Queen’s University.

Mike Klinzing

00:23:52.880 – 00:25:35.320

I think the film piece of it is something that, for people on the outside, again, I don’t think they realize what the, the ability to learn from film.

And when you’re just sitting down and, and, and learning, first, learning how to watch film, number one, and learning what to watch for, what to look for.

And then secondly, I think when you’re sitting down, right, and you’re going through and you’re looking at tape of players that you’re maybe interested in recruiting, or when you’re looking at a player, when you’re looking at teams, right, and you’re, you’re scouting the opponent, but not only are you picking up things that are helpful to your team in terms of preparing for them as an opponent, but you’re also picking up things like, oh, I really like what that coach is doing here with this particular action, or, oh, here’s how they do this particular thing with their defense on switches or whatever it might be.

And so you just kind of keep picking up and putting things into your mental database of, hey, my knowledge of the game and the X’s and O’s is growing because watching the game as a fan on TV or even watching film, if you’re not coaching a particular team, completely different. So many people, I think players especially, right, have no idea how to watch film. They just don’t.

Everybody, if you’re, if you’re a player, you’re probably watching yourself and you’re not watching much of anything else that’s going on, right?

And, and so I think the learning curve of, of being able to watch film and, and being able to sit down and actually have somebody work through it with you, I think is invaluable.

If you had to point to one person on that initial staff that kind of helped you work through that idea of studying the film from a coaching perspective, who would you say that person would be and how did they help you?

Nick Lorensen

00:25:35.960 – 00:26:54.810

Yeah, it was Sean McClair, who’s on West Virginia staff now, does a lot of their scouting because he did. He’d watch every single game. I’d give him some personnel notes, but he would build off of that. He would watch six games.

I think he had the offense of the other team, so he’d have to pick out sets and it’d be long, long, long. Film sessions. I don’t know if I want to get that long, but I built off of that.

And like we mentioned a little bit earlier about how I watch games differently now, more than different five years ago.  I just pick up teams that I watch every single night. Like I watch St. Thomas every single time they play.

I have the Midco SN deal, I have every single streaming deal that you can ever think of. Isn’t that much of a hoops that go. I have flow sports, I have midco, I have ESPN Plus. But I, I love watching St. Thomas.

Johnny Tower is an outstanding coach. He’s done an outstanding job there. They moved from D3 to D1 and they’re winning 20 games every year. That doesn’t happen, that’s never happened.

But I want to give Johnny Towers flowers and Sean McClurg just, just.

He does an amazing job with the, with all the video stuff and it showed at North Texas in this one year there and through one year, West Virginia, they had a really good first year under Ross Hodge and Morganton.

Mike Klinzing

00:26:54.810 – 00:27:11.590

How long did it take you after taking that position at Queens to know that you had found the right place and what did you love about the coaching part of it right away? What was it about the coaching that you were like, oh yeah, I’m in the right spot. And how long did it take for you to realize that you were.

Nick Lorensen

00:27:13.830 – 00:30:07.460

So let’s see, I probably got in like 8, 9 o’ clock and we had practice probably at 2 o’. Clock. So probably between that because we got in there and G was just himself yelling at the players, teaching basketball.

It was just an environment that I love to be in. Everyone knows that you’re there to help. There’s very little toxicity, especially early on in the season where the hopes are high.

You think that you’re going to be, you’re going to have a great season.

I mean I just love being around basketball and being able to see the behind the scenes work and everyone being so open and free and telling their opinions. I’ve always been a very, I’ll tell you whatever comes to my mind. I am not a, I’m not going to hold back. And that, that just meant a lot.

I remember early on we, we have boot camp at Queens, so it’d be sprints. You pretty much just run sprints for two weeks straight. You start, I believe the first practice was maybe 8am or 7am every single morning.

It got like eight minutes earlier. So by the end of it all we started at 4:00am I want to say 3, 4, 5:00am on a Friday.

And I remember I drove back to Columbia the night before and it was 4am I’m not going to bed because it’s going to take two hours to get there. I’m going to leave at like 1:30, 2:00′, clock, 1:00 clock to get there. And that was, that was just.

I mean, just the grind that those two weeks were really helped put the team together and really helped me figure out even more than that first day. Like, hey, we’re in this together. We all love basketball. We want the best for each other. Like this, this. This is worth it.

And it continues like our second scrimmage. Our first scrimmage went awesome. We played VMI. We beat him by like 60. Like, that rocked. And then we went to Charleston. Up.

Always loved Cougars basketball. Like, that was probably the biggest team that I covered my first two years in major madness because they were top 25.

I could see them when I was back home in Baltimore. I could see them down in South Carolina and this pack. Kelsey did an outstanding job there, but we went there and we beat him. And Rain.

Rain, I forget his last name, but he was, he was a shooter. He went to Louisville. Australian. It was his birthday. It was day after his birthday.

Didn’t score a single point against us, and we ended up going into Charleston and beating him. I’m like, this rock, I think will be pretty good. Like. Like, this is fun.

I love college basketball and I love being at this part where we can enjoy and celebrate. Even though it was a scrimmage win against the Charleston program, that’s been outstanding.

And they, they were top 25 the year before and they lost a couple guys like, this still means something to someone.

Mike Klinzing

00:30:07.460 – 00:32:28.880

Absolutely. I think that’s. I always think back when you talk about that to John Schulman, who’s at the University of Central Arkansas now.

And I remember the first time that I talked to Shulman on the podcast. One of the things that he said in that interview was just, you got to make where you are the big time. Right? That where you are has to be big time.

And at the same time, you have to also realize in keeping it in perspective that at the time he was at, he was at the McAuley School in, in Tennessee. And he said we. We have our big rivalry game and here we’re playing. And he goes, have you ever heard of our school?

I’m like, no, not really. He’s like, do you care at all? He’s like, do you care at all about whatever our big rivalry game. I’m like, no.

He’s like, well, that’s kind of what I have to. I have to hold those two things kind of in in. In opposition, right? That it has to be.

This has to be the biggest thing that we’re doing regardless of where we’re at. At the same time, you have to keep it in perspective that there are, again, you got to move on. Win, lose, whatever you got to.

It’s got to be about more than just those wins and losses. And when you do that and you can keep those two things in perspective, then you’re probably in a healthy position as a coach.

And I think that that is really a good way to look at it, that wherever you’re at, man, you can make. You can make it the big time. And it has to, Matt, it has to matter to you.

And I think that’s kind of the point that that you’re getting there when you get excited about, hey, man, these first two scrimmages, and, man, I’m in the business and this is awesome and I love it. I think that something else that goes along with that, which you kind of hinted at a little bit, it was talking about the players, right.

And being out on the floor and getting to, hey, between 9am and then that first practice when we’re getting out on the court. Tell me a little bit about the relationship that you’ve been able to build over the couple years that you’ve been in college basketball with players.

Obviously, as a young guy, you’re close in age to the players that you’re coaching, which has some positives and potentially has some drawbacks. When you look at how you build that relationship, and you said something that really struck me, which is you want.

The players want to get better, right?

And they know that you want them to get better and that you’re able to help them, then they’re going to respect you and they’re going to know that, hey, this guy’s on our side. So just talk a little about from your perspective, building relationships with the players on your team, both at Queens and then Atlasal as well.

Nick Lorensen

00:32:30.560 – 00:36:23.860

Yeah, I’m super blessed and I think in my role, like, I don’t have to be as hard on them as other people, which really helps me out.

Like, it’s going through my three years, I’ve probably talked to pretty much every single one of them at least once every three months, and that’s something I’ve always, you got to keep these. It’s A relationships business more than it is basketball, but basketball business.

You have to keep your people close, keep in contact with them, be a good person, do the right thing. But yeah, I have a. I’ve been super blessed to have a really good relationship dating back to Queens.

Dayton Albert, who just finished his last season at New Mexico. He left me a ticket during the Final Four for the NIT Final Four. They’re playing against Tulsa, so I went there.

Jordan Neville, who was our walk on that year, he, he called me a couple weeks ago about his recruitment. He was at Garden City shooting 40% from 3 and then at Queens or then at La Salle. Like, I still talk to pretty much everyone from that first team.

Still talk. Obviously I’ve been around everyone from the second team because they’re, they’re, they’re still there.

But like it’s really easy to get, get across these guys because I have a good relationship with them. The story that always, that I always think about is we were at Duquesne this past year in February and Eric Acker was on both LaSalle teams.

He was the only guy to be on both LaSalle teams under Fran Dunphy, under Darius Nichols. And we, we started really rocky relationship.

One day I was class checking he was going to be late for class and he’s like, either I’m going to be late for class or pick up my food from the union. And I went and I picked up his food from the union. And the director of ops, Michael, who hired me, just got the head gig at Delaware Valley.

Super proud, super happy for him. He’s like, what are you doing? I’m like, I’m class check in. I’m picking up EA suiter. And I was like picking up his food.

That’s not, you’re not supposed to. Don’t do that. That’s not in your job title. You’re not doing that. Okay, so I have to text Eric. I’m like, mike called me, I can’t pick up your food.

And then I go down to the locker room later and he gets real heated with me. But ever since that moment, we’ve gotten really, really, really tight. He’s going to Northern Kentucky now.

I think he’s going to do really well under Darren Horn. Play that zone, shoot three ball. But he was going through a patch this year where he was really struggling.

He didn’t play much early in non conference and we’re playing Duquesne late February and we’re down to like seven players, so injuries. He needs to come in, he needs to make Some big shots. And I could just see out there like he wasn’t. He wasn’t himself.

Like he was pissed off he didn’t want to play basketball. And Shane Nichols, our associate head coach, is like, I don’t like how EA looks right now. So I pull him aside.

When we get up from the huddle, just smack him in the butt. I’m like, have fun. Go out there, have fun. And he scores seven points just like this. And one was a steal dunk. Duquesne called a timeout.

We ended up going up 5 late in the game. And I don’t think that would have happened if I didn’t have that relationship with him.

So having real relationships and being close with every single guy on your roster really means something if you want to get all that you can out of them. I’d say get close with them. Don’t just make it a business relationship. EA and I, we go back and forth. We send TikToks, we, we.

We send Instagram reels back and forth. That’s just the way of the world right now. You gotta. You gotta show the love on social media as well as in person.

So relationships are key in this business. And that’s not just. That’s not just with the players, but that’s when it comes to getting coaching jobs as well and staying in coaching.

Because that’s the only way that you’re gonna grow or move up in this business is by being good to good people.

Mike Klinzing

00:36:23.860 – 00:38:02.970

Yeah, that’s a really good point. And it’s one that we’ve hit on numerous times on the pod.

And when I think about that, I think about, right being where your feet are and doing the best job that you can at the job that you’re in right now.

Because so often I think you see or hear of people kind of moving up the career ladder in coaching, and the only way that you can do that is by doing exactly what you said, which is building relationships with the people that you get a chance to interact with, which is mainly the people right on your staff that are seeing you every day. If you’re not the kind of guy that somebody would want around, right, they’re not going to recommend you to anybody else.

And then have somebody come back and say, hey, why’d you, Why’d you recommend Mike to us? The guy doesn’t work hard and he doesn’t do this.

Versus if you are in your job, whatever that role is, whatever it is that you need to do on a day to day basis, if you’re doing it to the best of your ability. Right. Just like a player star in your role.

You might be the ninth guy on a team and only play five minutes a game, but can you maximize that five minutes? And on a staff, your job might be to pick up lunch for the other coaches, or your job might be to make sure all the balls are inflated.

Or your job might be to follow up with recruits and. And send them a social media clip or whatever it is.

If you do that to the best of your ability, it gives you an opportunity to get your next chance because somebody’s going to vouch for you. And I think that you make a really good point there when it comes to that. And so let’s extend that to the opportunity from Queens to LaSalle.

I know you touched on it a little bit earlier, but just go into a little bit more detail of how the opportunity to move from Queens to La Salle. How does that come to you?

Nick Lorensen

00:38:04.570 – 00:40:36.490

Yeah, once again, social media. Everyone always talks about how bad social media is, but it’s been really, really good to me.

I was talking to a couple schools, and then I saw a post on social media from Mike Doyle like, hey, we need graduate assistance on a cell. I’m like, this would be pretty nice. I’ve always loved the A10. I’m a Duquesne family. It’s close to home.

It’s only about two hours away from where I grew up in Baltimore. Like, this would be a really, really nice setup.

So I sent my resume, and I heard back a couple of days later, and we hopped on the phone, and I made, I guess, a really good impression. I remember talking about he went to Cabrini Rest in. Rest in peace. Cabrini. Really good school. Really good basketball school.

Marcus Kahn, who just won the national championship at Mary Washington, was their head coach there before they. Before they got bought by Villanova. But he played there. Really good player.

And I remember just talking on the phone about Cabrini, because one of my best friends from South Carolina grew up right around the corner from there. And I talk about the Chipotle that he went to when he went to college. And we were going back and forth for 10, 15 minutes, hung up.

And then the next day, John Cox, who is now the head coach at Germantown Academy in Philadelphia, he was a really good player. Played at San Francisco in their hall of Fame. Cousin of Kobe Bryant, only male cousin to Kobe Bryant, called me. He’s like, we’re gonna hire you.

Mikey’s gonna call you in a couple days. Like, we were really, really impressed. And I went up there. And I, I got there in June. It was long, it was very long days.

When I first started, because we were getting a new gym, they were redoing the gym. So get there at 7am it wouldn’t be done usually until 9pm but a lot of that time you’re not doing much because of summer.

So you’re just sitting around for 14 hours a day around Fran Dunphy and all these guys, and you’re really picking up on a lot. But it was the power of social media.

Grant Leonard back, that mentioned it a little bit earlier, called Mike and putting a really good word for me, which really helped. Just the power of these relationships that you build in the business. He wanted what was best for me.

I remember leaving the office and I go back to him in a heartbeat, but he’s like, you’re going to be great. Like, I know that you’re going to do a lot. You’re going to, you’re going to really move up the flatter really quick.

I’d love to have you back, but I know that you’d be able to be like really impactful for, for a staff like LaSalle in a league like the Atlantic 10. But power social media, it gets a lot of, it gets a lot of hit, but it’s really helped me a lot in my career.

Mike Klinzing

00:40:36.490 – 00:42:44.070

It’s kind of crazy when you think about just the connections that social media is able to build and the way that you can get immediately connected to somebody that maybe you don’t have a connection with prior. And a simple interaction via social media makes those things happen. And in a roundabout way, that’s how you and I have been connected.

So I randomly reached out to, to George Michalowski from the Portal Report on Twitter. He responds to me, comes on, he recommends, hey, you should talk to Nick.

And now here we are having no previous connection, but through the magic of social media, here we are sitting together doing a podcast and I just think that in so many ways it works.

I’ll never forget Nick, and this is a funny story from my experience with the podcast at Dwayne Killings on who’s at Albany when he was at Marquette and had Dwayne on and did a, an episode with him.

And then later when he got the Albany job, I had him back on and he’s like, hey, I just wanted to say thanks because my appearance on your podcast helped me to get the head coaching job at Albany because my AD here at Albany listened to the episode and felt like he got a feel for the kind of person that I was, and that kind of cemented the idea that they’re going to hire me. I’m like, Dwayne, I think you’re giving me a little too much credit maybe here.

I think you’re overselling how much of an influence the podcast may or may not have had. But I appreciate the sentiment, and I’m sure that his ad did listen to it.

But again, it’s just what we can do with technology from that standpoint of connecting. And as you said, there’s obviously pluses and minuses, and there’s all different ways that it can be used for good and for negative.

But for the most part, if you utilize it in the right way, the ability to connect with people, that there’s really nothing like it that can take you from no relationship to a relationship where you and I are going to sit down now for an hour and a half and be connected, hopefully for a long time after this.

Nick Lorensen

00:42:45.750 – 00:43:22.510

It’s pretty much every relationship I have in college basketball outside of the ones that have grown up. LaSalle and Queens have been over social media. Like, I’m blessed that I probably have 10, 15 sitting head coaches that I text regularly every week.

And that wouldn’t have happened without the power of social media, because none of those guys From Queens or LaSalle become head coaches at other places. So, yeah, I mean, there’s. It’s always talked about the negatives, but in a business like college basketball, Twitter is key.

If you want to be getting the coaching, you don’t have a Twitter, I don’t know what you’re doing. Because that’s really where all relationships start in college basketball.

Mike Klinzing

00:43:22.660 – 00:44:22.110

There’s no doubt about that. When you look at, from a coaching standpoint, just the, the community that’s been built on Twitter with the basketball community, I, I think is.

Is stronger there, obviously, than anywhere else. And you can certainly reach out and, and get connected to almost anybody through that. Right.

When you think about either directly or connecting with somebody who’s then connected to someone else, and it allows you to have. Have those relationships.

Talk to me a little bit about going to LaSalle and just Philadelphia basketball, which anybody that I’ve ever talked to that’s coached at one of the Philadelphia schools just talks about how special, right? The Big Five and the Palestra and just everything that goes along with the history of the city of Philadelphia.

So just talk a little bit about how that kind of influences you personally, but you guys as a staff and how that can be a selling point for the program and a strength and just again, to be able to tap into the talent that. That’s there in Philly.

Nick Lorensen

00:44:22.750 – 00:50:19.230

Yeah. I mean, first, coming from South Carolina to LaSalle, those couldn’t be two opposite ends of the spectrum in location and everything.

So I had no idea what I was getting into when I went to La Salle. It’s gritty. It’s about as gritty of a college campus as you can get in the top seven conferences in college basketball. So I go there.

I know, I know the Big Five’s awesome. I’ve been to the Palestro a couple times. I know Fran Dunphy is the winningest coach in Big 5 basketball history. He’s the man.

He’s the one you want to be around if you want to work in Philly basketball or just college basketball in general. And I remember being super excited for the first Big Five game. We played Drexel at Drexel.

My parents came up from Baltimore and we ended up winning and we went, I think, the 50 on the year, and that was cool. And then we went to Daytona beach and had a little stumble. But then Temple came into town and Dunfadden beat Temple.

Since he left Temple in a couple years prior, he’d been at La Salle. This was probably. I think it was his fourth year. And you could just tell the game meant a lot for a lot of people.

Trey Lowe, our player development guy, play played at Temple. Jaleel White, our starting forward, played four years at Temple and transferred lasalle. Like, this game meant a lot for a lot of people.

And by the time it was tip off, that whole entire Glacier Arena, La Salle was either cherry and white or yellow and blue. Our student section was going out after. After everyone’s necks. And it just. You could just tell the game meant more.

You could tell that at Drexel, but you could tell that even more when Temple. La Salle played five miles apart from each other. The two North Philly schools like this meant something. I hate Temple. I hate Temple.

It’s up there with Clemson, with me. Like, I can’t stand that school. I don’t know. I. I’d understand why people go to Clemson.

My buddies from South Carolina would be like, why would you say that, Nick? But I can understand why people go to school at Clemson. I don’t understand it with Temple, but we play that game and we win. And just the.

Everyone on social media going crazy, everyone in the crowd. That game was talked about for the next month about how we beat Temple. And then we go to the Big 5 Classic championship.

Because we beat Drexel and we beat Temple and it’s a whole week around. We didn’t play anyone else the week before. It’s just a whole week around. Hey, we’re playing St. Joe’s at least three times this year.

We hate St. Joe’s I can’t stand anything that happened that happens at St. Joe’s Joe Mahalik. Joe Mahalik played at LaSalle. He can’t stand St. Joe’s he brings it up every five minutes that week leading up to the game.

And we go there and we’re playing at Wells Fargo Arena. There’s two games before us, Temple, Villanova right before us, obviously the two big schools in the city.

So they’re going to draw a little, little bit of a crowd. But then we play. And that whole NBA arena is filled for two A10 teams playing on a Saturday in December.

Just shows how special the city is when it comes to college basketball. And  Dunff made it always super important. This is another championship you can win. You can hang up a banner for winning a Big 5 title.

Many teams don’t, aren’t able to do that. You don’t hang up banners for winning MTE’s, you hang up titles. You hang up banners for winning the title of the best school in Philadelphia.

That year we fell short, but it was an awesome environment. And it’s just, it’s just different. Like that whole team, most of that team were from the area, so they understood how important it was.

 there’s a lot of returners. So over the summer they’d go and they play, pick up a pen.

So they knew these guys from playing at the Palestra throughout the summer, throughout the fall, getting their runs in and it made it different. Like going into this year, I’m telling these guys, like, these games are just different. Like I hate Temple.

Like I know we’re two and oh, but this game is going to mean something to Adam Fisher. Adam Fisher’s been around the block. He just lost us last year. Like they’re going to come in with a vengeance.

They have a couple dudes returning and we end up losing my 30, 40. And over time they started to figure out like, hey, like this is the real deal.

We went from playing in the championship game to playing in the fifth place game or yeah, fifth place game at Wells Fargo this year where we beat Drexel and just, I think that was our best, our best all out performance because I realized how important it was. Our best time in the locker room. We enjoyed ourselves. We had such a blast just celebrating it.

And it was something that we talked about the rest of the year. Our 131 zone against Drexel. How about how much we put their mind into a pretzel? But those wins in Philly just mean so much more.

We played three games at the Balestri this year. I’d obviously been there to cover games before I went to the first Ivy League championship tournament championship with my mom back in high school.

Like, those were special environments. Just walking around, walking on the court, walking around the concourse.

But being there, being able to be on the court three days straight, just meant more. And then this year, I also went to the Catholic League championship. Sat up in the corner with Fran Dunphy, and that whole place is packed.

You got the two student sections going back and forth. There’s not a better championship in high school basketball in the country, in my opinion, because you have that small gym.

It’s really loud and big moments. All the Catholic League schools, they hate each other. It just means more. Philly basketball is a different breed. Like, I love Baltimore basketball.

I love DMV basketball. I’ve always brought up about how great it is, all these schools in the area, they need to play each other.

Like, it’s a really, really, really good scene. But nothing, nothing in the world. Maybe, like, European soccer is the only thing higher than Big 5 basketball, in my opinion.

Mike Klinzing

00:50:19.310 – 00:51:18.040

I think what always strikes me about that is when you have the interconnectedness, and I think you can take this to any league, you can take it to the high school level.

When you have schools and players on those teams that know each other outside of the relationship, on their college team or outside of their high school team.

When those kids see each other in the summertime when they play pickup with each other all year round, and then those teams step on the floor against one another in the regular season or in a tournament setting or whatever it is. Yeah, that stuff means way, way more when you’re playing against somebody, that it’s personal. It’s not just, hey, we’re playing against Temple. It’s.

And I gotta look at this dude all year round. Play him in pickup games. Yeah, that game becomes a lot more important. And I think that’s something that, again, you can’t.

If you’re not in it, I don’t think you can understand it. I really don’t.

Nick Lorensen

00:51:19.470 – 00:52:14.950

That’s any rivalry in the world of net rankings.  everyone wants to get their metrics up and get an NCAA tournament and have the best net number possible.

But  like I’ve been putting together all these mixtapes for George and  I’m watching like Belmont Lipscomb. Like that game still means a lot.

The Battle of the Boulevard still means a lot to the city of Nashville because those schools are literally right next to each other. They see each other every single day. You’re not going to get the same Duke, Arizona, I know they’re top 10 in the country.

They probably played a lot of AAU together, but you’re not going to get the same as A Duke and NC Central. I know that the game might be a 70 point blowout, but the schools are 10 miles or so apart from each other in the same exact city.

Like it means something. Like these are people you’re going to be able to brag about.

Like say NC Central is able to pull off the ups that Coppin State pulled off an upset against Maryland in 1980. And they talk about it, I’m sure.

Mike Klinzing

00:52:15.190 – 00:53:16.090

Absolutely. There is no doubt about that. That is something that you will carry with you for the rest of your life as a win in a rivalry game.

I could think of games in high school that played against guys that played with me on teams in the summertime that I played against all the time. And yeah, if you win those games, bragging rights for life.

I’m 56 years old and there’s still a guy or two that if I saw him, I’d still probably remind about, hey, you remember that game in 1988 when such and such happened? Yeah. It means a lot more when you know the people that you’re playing against. Without a doubt. I want to ask you a little bit about Coach Dunphy.

You’ve mentioned him a couple times and obviously get an opportunity to learn from him and under him, hall of Fame coach, his career record and everything that he’s done in the game obviously speaks for itself.

But just tell me a little bit about some of the things that you learned from either watching him or that you learned in conversation with him directly and the impact that he had on you during the time that you were able to work with him.

Nick Lorensen

00:53:17.530 – 00:58:08.690

Yeah, just how important people are every once in a while who bring up the saying, it’s not about me. And I’ve gotten. I’ve been really blessed to get pretty close with Dolph. Everyone feels like they’re pretty close with Dolph.

So I might just be saying that, like, his friends reach out to me. I talk to his friends on a weekly basis. Like his friends from his hometown. He goes golfing with. And. And I mean, he’s. He’s just a different person.

So I went out to dinner with one of his friends a week before I left LaSalle. And we sat there and talked about for about two hours.

And him and his friend George came to every single one of our practices our year at La Salle together. And George would bring about a hundred to two hundred Philly pretzel factory pretzels every single day. He completely overdid it, but super blessed.

Like, he. He ended up falling down the stairs this last year so he couldn’t come to our practices. Like, I’d continue inviting him out.

And he’s like, here, just take my card. Get pretzels. I do it once a week. I bring back pretzels. But he calls me last week and he’s like, nick, I have a question for you.

I’m like, okay, can you get me in contact with President Allen’s secretary, the president of the university? Dan Allen’s secretary? I’m like, of course, Beth. Beth came to a lot of her. She’s come to a lot of our games on the road.

Like, she’s a really good girl. Like, I’ll set it up. He’s. He’s like, I want to do something for D. He wants nothing to do with this.

I want to interview people that might have had it. He might have had an impact on in their career and see why he’s such a different and special human being. And Dump’s like, I don’t want to do that.

And his wife reads like, you should do that. That’s a good idea, George. But that just, like, shows like, it’s not about him. And if other people want to talk about him, he’s like, no.

So I went to the Philly game with the Phillies game a couple days later with him, and I brought it up to him. He’s like, yeah, I hate that. I would never do that. Someone wanted to write a book about me a couple years ago. I’m like, I don’t want to do it.

I’m still going to do it. And after a week, they quit. They’re like, you’re the most uncooperative person about talking about yourself that I’ve ever figured out.

But everyone loves them. That’s the thing. Like, it’s not about him. He makes it about other people. Like I mentioned, he’s everyone’s best friend.

We go to the Civilies game and we’re eating dinner. I this spot I’ve never seen at a baseball stadium. It’s like, for Friends and family. It’s like, sit down restaurant. We had a bone in fish.

It was absolutely insane for a Tuesday A’s against Phillies game to sit there. But we sit there, and Scott Fransky, who does radio, comes up and talks to him. We walk in the concourse, people are stopping them.

Duff, Duff, can I take a picture? Blah, blah, blah. And he’s just. He. He does it. He talks to them for a couple minutes, then he goes and he talks like the usher. Where do.

Where’d you go to high school? Dan Baker, the PA announcer, stops in the hallway. Like he has to rush because he goes from down on the. I don’t know why he does this.

He goes down from the field and he announces the lineups, and then he goes up before the first batter. Like absolutely insane work for him to do. But he stopped. He talked in between that.

Get stopped by the guy that does the pre and post game show and the concourse. Just. Everyone in the city of Philadelphia knows Fran Dunphy.

He has an impact on anyone that you talk about that you’ve talked to in their life for the good. Like anyone you ever talk to who’s run across Fran Dunphy.

It’d be really, really hard to find someone say a bad word about him just because he makes it about other people, not himself. And maybe it’s not always about basketball. Like, he’s not the greatest actors in those mud.

He knows that he’s not the greatest exist in those months, but he’s always made it about other people. And that’s what’s made him such a winner in his career, because he’s able to get the best out of different people.

Like this past year, I’ve learned so much out of Darius Nichols and everyone else on just sets defenses. But I don’t know if I really had that through my first year with Randolph. It was just more like, hey, you should.

You should get to know people’s names when you talk to them. Like, address them by their names. Stuff like that makes a difference.

So just being around him every day, I still talk to him pretty much every single day. It’s like. It’s like a dream come true, you know? He broke my heart when I was a little kid. The 20089 final day 10 tournament. They beat Duquesne.

The furthest they got before this little run these last couple of years. But, yeah, I’m super blessed. There’s no one like friend Alfie, and he treats every person like the soul.

Mike Klinzing

00:58:08.690 – 01:00:40.090

It was awesome when he came on the podcast with me and just again, I remember coming away from that conversation with the exact feeling that you just described in that. It’s kind of ironic in a sense of, here’s somebody who’s so willing to talk to everyone, right?

And to make an impact and to make every person feel heard, feel valued. It’s one of those things that. Right. That’s what gives you charisma. Is the person who.

I can have a conversation with you, Nick, and we could be in a crowded room, and you think that I’m making you feel like you’re the only person in the room that matters. I’m not talking to you and looking at, okay, where’s my next conversation coming from?

And I get the sense from your description and just from what I’ve heard and read and my own experience with Coach Dunphy, that that’s sort of the way he operates.

But the irony is, is that you do that with all those people, and then somebody wants to write a book and talk about that impact, and then you’re like, yeah, no, that’s not. That’s not really what I want. But I think those two things, as strange as it sounds, those two things kind of go hand in hand, right? It’s.

It’s the humility to be willing to have a conversation and to help someone, like even Nick Lawrence and. Right. Like, you’re a young guy just trying to get into the business.

Fran Dunphy’s a Hall of Famer, a guy who’s had a tremendous amount of success in his career.

It’d be very easy for him to just be like, oh, there’s Nick whatever, versus, hey, now, here’s a guy who’s probably for the rest of your career, going to be a mentor that’s going to help you throughout your career. Somebody that you talk to on a daily basis that speaks a lot about who he is as a person.

And I think it goes back to the question that I asked you of. What do you remember about your first interactions with him? What do you take away from him?

And, man, what a great lesson to be able to take away from someone not just as a basketball coach, but just as a human being, right? That, hey, I stop and I talk to the usher, I talk to the PA Guy, I talk to this person.

I give my time to the president’s secretary, whoever it is, right? I’m willing to be able to give of my time and. And to give that person my full attention.

And, look, if we could all learn that lesson from this conversation through Fran Dunphy, that probably exponentially accelerate the value of this podcast, even after I’ve known it for eight years, if everybody just got that lesson, man, we. We’d be doing something, Nick.

Nick Lorensen

01:00:41.450 – 01:01:05.900

And it always starts with one question.

And if this first question came across when I was interviewing Keith Danbrot, when I was doing the social media stuff, it always starts with, where’d you go to high school? These. These older coaches, they’ve been everywhere, especially. I mean, Dump’s lived in Philly his whole life.

So, like, you go to a Phillies game, and he’s obviously gonna know the high school. But it always starts with that question, and you know this guy, you know this guy, you know this guy. It’s all relationships.

Mike Klinzing

01:01:05.900 – 01:02:24.990

That’s. That’s hilarious. It really is funny when you think about, again, just the longer you’ve been in the business, the more connections you make.

And now when Dunphy started, obviously social media wasn’t a thing, right? You were actually physically shaking somebody’s hand and looking them in the eye and meeting them that way.

And now you take that, and you can almost put it on steroids. With social media, it’s so easy to be able to meet and build the relationships like we talked about earlier.

And so I think, as you said, the basketball coaching world is a relationship business first. And in order to be able to build those relationships, you have to be doing a great job at what you do.

But being able to build those relationships is critical to that happening. That leads to a transition, right, from Coach Dunphy to Coach Nichols, who we’ve also been able to have on the podcast. So I’ve had both your.

Both your head coaches at LaSalle on the Pod, so that’s very cool. And just talk a little bit about what it’s like as a person who is working on the staff, and you’re underneath one person.

And a lot of times, right, coaching staffs completely turn over when a head coach goes out the door. So just talk a little bit about the transition, what it was like for you personally, and then what it’s like now working under Coach Nichols.

Nick Lorensen

01:02:26.750 – 01:07:06.650

Yeah, I mean, I was super blessed. It keeps going back to social media.

Like, I knew Darius Nichols through social media because I’d watch Radford games, we would talk about him, his two assistants, his brother Shane, and James Herring that he brought along with him from Radford. We had really close relationships. Like, their conference tournament would be in Charlotte, and they’d be the first people I’d seek out.

I’d go and I’d talk to them, and we’d sit courtside before a game and we would just, we would chop it up. So we had a little bit of a relationship there, which made it really, really nice. That was maybe someone that, that I knew a little bit.

I knew that he was a defensive minded coach. I knew that he played for Bobby Huggins. Like, I knew that was the way he was gonna roll.

He was gonna be a little bit different than Dump, but in a good way. Like, I’ve really enjoyed working under him the last year. I mentioned a little bit earlier, like, my X’s and O’s have grown exponentially.

Probably tons of thousand under him. We added so many sets throughout the year. We played like seven defenses.

But the way they have a relationship with everyone on the team is just different, special, and something I’ll probably bring with me the rest of my career. So they made it pretty much mandatory to come to the office and chop it up with everyone.

So like we’ll have players in the office come 30 minutes, hour, hour and a half, and we’re just going back and forth. And I think that was a big reason why Rob Dockery ended up returning. Averaged like 15, 16 points in 8, 10 play.

And in the world of the transfer portal, obviously everyone’s open game. He I’m, I was on this. The last podcast I was on before here was with two alumni of the university. We were talking about the NCAA tournament.

I was just spitting ball about the mid major teams. And I go on my phone and I’m like, rob Dockery enters the transfer portal. We already said that he’s coming back.

Like, I didn’t know that this was happening. And our athletic director was texting me about something else. And I texted him, like, rob, enter the transfer portal.

He’s like, yeah, I have no clue about this and no one on staff has any clue about this. And then I’m home covering the NCAA tournament in D.C. and I come back in the office on Monday and Rob walks in like nothing happened.

Like, Rob comes over. Nick, what’s up, Dask? Me up. Like, I’m good, whatever. He goes to the back of the office. I’m like, what the hell is happening here?

Like, he has like a normal relationship with everyone. And then Shane Nicholas comes back. I’m like, what’s Rob doing up here? After he just entered the transfer portal, he’s like, he’s coming back.

And I don’t think he would have come back if it wasn’t for those relationships and the trust that he had. He was at Texas A and M for two years. He barely played. He got, I believe, hurt the first year, second year, ended up leaving pretty early.

And he really struggled in conference play or non conference play with us. And he was turning the ball over. He’s top 40 in the country and turning the ball over. Really, really poor. It’s just a turnover ratio.

And then he started listening. He was going downhill and he took off in conference play. And that was because he trusted.

It took him a couple months to trust what we were giving him, and he trusted it. And he comes in the office every single day. He talks to everyone in our office.

He goes down to the academics office, talks to everyone in that office forever. He had a really good relationship with our past ad.

Everyone loves Doc, and I don’t think he would have been that outgoing if it wasn’t for our staff and their willingness to have everyone in the office every single day. A lot of coaches really say it’s a player first program.

And I think at La Salle really is because just you can have a real relationship outside of basketball with these guys. And that means a lot because you’re in basketball so much during the season and the off season, that’s all you can think about.

For you to come up and able to talk about the Steeler game or the Raven game.

And  I’m a Steeler fan, as you can see behind me, and Josiah Harris, who played with them for a couple years, is a Ravens fan from Wilmington, Delaware. I don’t understand that.

But  like we would just, they, they would egg us on in the group chats like butt heads when the Ravens will lose or when the Steelers will lose or when they were playing each other.

So just to be able to have the relationship outside of basketball during the basketball season with these guys, have them in the office, talk about different things, is just, is different as, as we’ve said a million times, it’s all about relationships really. In college basketball you can be the greatest exes in those minds.

But to really succeed in this business, you need to have a good, good relationship with good people.

Mike Klinzing

01:07:06.650 – 01:08:09.320

Do you think that?

And again, you don’t maybe have as much to compare it to as somebody who’s been in the business longer, but just when I think about the portal and the situation of where it is now, where not only in the past, staffs had to spend a lot of time recruiting new players, now you’re spending a lot of your time recruiting your guys who are already on your roster and making sure that they’re happy, that they’re comfortable, that they Want to come back and play again for your team. So do you think that the conversations that you just described, right.

Daily getting guys coming in the office and sitting down and talking, how much of what you guys do on that front is intentional to be able to help to keep and retain guys on the roster?

What are the conversations that you guys have as a staff about forget about recruiting new guys out of the portal or high school kids or whatever, but just retaining your own players? What is, what are those conversations sound like in the coach’s office?

Nick Lorensen

01:08:10.760 – 01:10:51.430

Yeah, nothing is guaranteed.

Everyone’s on a one year deal and we know that like if you want to have someone back, like you can’t mess it up, like own up to your mistakes if you didn’t sub correctly. You keep in conversation with them, ask them what they like, what they want to do different. Like Jaden Johnson’s returning for LaSalle.

He was a great leader. He didn’t play in non conference because he had a foot issue.

And then he came to conference play and our assistant turnovers went through the roof and we started playing really good passing offense. Noah Collier. But the thing with Jaden Johnson going back to that, it’s like they had a relationship out of high school. He committed to ODU over them.

And then when he entered the transportal he’s like, I want to come here. Like I know that this staff’s going to like have a good relationship with me. Let me do what I want to do. Like I like these guys.

Noah Collier was at Pitt, then he was at William and Mary and then he was at LaSalle.

Like he came into LaSalle where like there’s probably zero chance you’re going to play a non conference music tours ACL at William and Mary in February and he ended up playing in November and he maybe put too much. He not maybe he did put too much of a load on his ACL and he ended up playing the rest of the year.

But he trusted the staff enough because we had consistent talks about him like, hey, when you come back next year, like you’re going to be the starting five.

We know what you can bring to a program because we saw it in year two at William and Mary and how well you did in your in in under a new scheme and that was able to get him back. BO and Beatty, like he’s just the ultimate people person.

He’s coming back to LaSalle maybe not because of basketball but because of what he can bring to the team. Just like his constant leadership, constant enthusiasm, constant happiness. Like he’s the, he’s Big Bird.

That’s what we kind of call him around the office. He’s Big Bird. He’s a seven footer from Australia. He was just a super jolly and happy guy to be around.

Like he owns up to his mistakes if he makes them. But it’s just, you got to recruit these guys every day. Every single day. You got to own up to your mistakes.

Everyone’s on a one year deal in a transfer portal.

I mentioned a little bit earlier, when I watch all these games, like I keep a running list of players I like and I just assume that they’re all going to enter the transfer portal because that’s just the, that’s what we’re at right now. It’s like 70% of the guys are entering the transfer portal. So I’m like, this guy’s probably gonna enter. Let me put this on this list.

And then I’ll send to someone like a couple weeks later. They’re like, is he in the transfer portal? I’m like, probably not. But like I assume he will be.

Mike Klinzing

01:10:52.470 – 01:12:59.110

It’s so crazy, honestly, when you think about just the way that college basketball has changed over the last five years, both in terms of the portal and in terms of nil and the number of guys that a go into the portal and then be just the way that’s impacted every staff’s recruiting, right? You’re the first place, 95% of the programs in the country, the first place they’re going to go and recruit is recruit out of the portal.

Which again makes sense if you can find a guy who’s already been to college, gone through that adjustment, somebody who’s been productive at the college level versus taking a chance on a high school kid who you don’t know socially, academically, athletically, whether or not that kid’s going to be able to, to, to do what they need to do in order to have success versus a guy who’s already went through that whole process as a college player. It completely, it completely makes sense.

But like we talked about, it also completely changes the way that you have to operate on a year to year basis, building the relationship much quicker. Right? The relationship doesn’t build anymore over four years now.

It’s still occasionally can, but you have to get to that relationship, the depth of it much quicker because you may only have that guy for a season or at least you only have one season to make an impression on that guy in order to keep him around and keep him in your program. And that’s certainly, I think, a challenge Talk a little bit about the nil situation at La Salle and how you guys approach that.

And just in terms of how much of the recruiting.

I know, I’ve talked to a couple coaches that have told me that one of the things that they, they don’t like about the recruiting process the way it is now, whether it’s out of the port or whether it’s out of high school, that a lot of times it just does come down to, hey, I got five schools interested in me. Which one of those schools is offering me the most money.

And my relationship with the coach or my potential role on the team sometimes just becomes secondary to the, the bottom line dollar figure. But just tell me a little bit about how you guys handle the nil situation at, at La Salle.

Nick Lorensen

01:13:00.310 – 01:15:50.120

Yeah, it’s really tough to see it happen. And it does happen a lot where people just choose money over spots. And it happens a lot with the mid major guys. When they go to high majors.

They do some of that high major clout like hey, I’m at South Carolina. Like I’d rather be the 15th guy at South Carolina than everyday starter at VCU, you know.

But heading into the first year under Darius, it was really tough. We had double, so Fordham had double the money that we had and Fordham was the next worst team in the whole nil of the 810. So it was really tough.

We were just putting things together and it’s, it’s even more tough because you had to put together a whole new roster. We only had one player returning, so I mean that was tough. That was tough. And safecastrath’s done an outstanding job this last year.

Really fundraising every single day, getting that money up. Now we’re still worse than the 810, but our figures over a million now, which makes us able to compete with teams in the league.

We are actually more than just a Mac program now in that landscape because a lot of times we would be competing with teams in the 2AMac because that’s what the money we had. But I feel like now we have a full A10 roster and I, I mean the Fed, I just, I just. The FET’s done an outstanding job this last year.

I just want to keep drilling that in. Like just going out every single day, going to lunch, getting coffee with these guys, building up these relationships so you can have more money.

Like obviously I’m not a huge fan of like paying these guys thousands of dollars for one year. The money is just going to completely disappear after that.

Like what’s the point of Having one year commitments to these programs, giving them all these money, all this money when they’re not going to stick around. But the NIL has been elevated.

It’s probably going to continue to elevate, which is just crazy to think that these rosters, they’re spending millions of dollars on these rosters for one year and like 15 wins because everyone in the 8, 10 spending over $1 million on their roster. Like there’s going to be four teams that still play in the pillow fight every year.

It’s, it’s, it’s just an insane commitment to college basketball and college football that you’re giving away all this money for your university.

And we’re seeing a lot of programs either drop down a level or two, or there’s been talks of some, some teams or some programs even just dropping all sports. It’s an insane landscape right now.

But Safet’s done a great job really elevating our nil, even though we’re still worse than the 810 because there’s just some teams like VCU and Dayton that are just otherworldly tough.

Mike Klinzing

01:15:50.200 – 01:18:48.180

And I just look at it from the outside and I always just wonder if it’s sustainable. And I think your point about the, the one year thing with the money and where does that money then go?

What does it really bring to the university when it’s a guy on a one year deal and you think about asking alumni for a contribution, right?

And in the past, if you came to, your alum said, hey, we want to build a new practice facility, or hey, we want to upgrade the locker room, or hey, we want to get two new shooting machines, or hey, we want to get three new sets of alternate uniforms. Can you give us a donation?

Well, now, right, I make that donation and I know that hey, it contributed to the new practice facility or it contributed to the locker room rebuild. And there’s sort of a, a lasting, tangible thing that I could see that my money went to. Whereas now it’s like, well, what did your money go to?

Well, it went to pay this 18 year old high school kid who was there for a year and was the 11th man on the team and scored 27 points over the course of the entire season. It doesn’t have the same feel. And to your point, I, I just wonder, where are we? Where’s the end point for how this all shakes out?

And I think the honest truth is none of us have any idea where this thing is going to eventually settle.

Where does it completely disrupt the whole landscape of college sports and we have whatever the top 30 or 40 schools that go and do completely their own thing. And then everybody else kind of reorganizes below that. Do we continue to stay in the same. We have.

And the money sort of finds an equilibrium where players can still get paid, but it’s not the ridiculous sums that we’re talking about now. And I always say that it feels like to me that managing that as a coaching staff. Right.

It’s already difficult enough to manage personalities and manage playing time and the chemistry that goes along with all those things. And now you throw the money piece of it on top of it with 18, 19, 20 year old kids who, some of them are mature enough to handle that stuff.

I’m sure there are some of them that have a hard time handling that kind of money. And then you think about what money does with families and people who have influence outside of the player themselves.

And you’re trying to figure all that out.

I can’t even imagine being in a locker room on a coaching staff trying to navigate all that in addition to trying to coach your team and help guys get better and help your team win. It’s a complicated business.

And so I think that’s one of those things that coaches are still trying to figure out, hey, what does that look like as the landscape continues to kind of shift under your feet and you’re, you’re really trying to figure it out. Let me just ask you about your role day to day as a GA at LaSalle. What are some of the tasks that you have on a daily basis?

What are the things that you get to do that you like to do as part of your role there at LaSalle?

Nick Lorensen

01:18:49.010 – 01:20:13.130

A lot of it was video stuff. I really enjoy doing that every day. Picking apart film, helping coaches out, scouts. It was something I’ve done ever since I was at Queens, really.

Just watching film and helping them pick it apart and doing that every day. I didn’t do much of it my first year under Fran Dunphy, but Darius came in, he’s like, we’ve always liked to have a GA do the video stuff.

And I was able to do that. And I mean, I just had so much fun. I learned so much being able to do that this last year. So it was a lot of that.

It was a lot of operations stuff small staff, obviously the biggest program at the university. So we have a lot on our plate and a lot of people to please throughout.

So you go around campus and be able to talk to people about different things about the program, try to Help us out book flights, put together gear, get food every single day, all that Jazz. Because we didn’t have the biggest manager crew either. So, like, we didn’t make them come every single day.

So it was really doing operations every day. It was Mike Doyle, who’s now the head coach at Delaware Valley, Brody Dempsey, who was the other GA and myself. So it was. It was a.

It was a really, really small little group that was doing a lot of stuff every single day to helping the program continue to be the best that it can be.

Mike Klinzing

01:20:13.130 – 01:20:57.760

That’s what it’s all about, right? That’s what we talked about earlier, that whatever it is that your role is, do it to the best of your ability.

And that’s how you end up a helping yourself to have success in the place where you’re at, helping your team and your program and your head coach have success. And then that’s ultimately what gets you the opportunity to get the next chance to get a job and advance in your career.

And that’s really what it’s all about. Before we get out, Nick, I want to ask you a final two part question.

So 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 coach, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy?

Nick Lorensen

01:20:59.440 – 01:22:08.210

So I’m in my biggest challenge right now that finishing my graduate degree, trying to find a new spot to be at. I think that’s the biggest challenge.

Just trying to navigate this whole coaching cycle right now, figuring out what jobs are open, where I can be, who I can reach out to, help me get these jobs, if it’s feasible to get these jobs with I wasn’t a player, so I got to pay for all these loans and all that jazz. My biggest joy is just seeing the athletes every single day, like, growing and become better human beings. It’s not.

To me, it’s never really been about basketball. I love basketball. I love sports.

Like sports my whole life, I can always say that, like, I’m gonna hop off of here, I’m gonna watch the Pirates play at 12:30. But just seeing young men grow every single day, hopefully becoming better human beings, that means more than anything to me.

I don’t care if you’re going on to really be a professional basketball player. I just want to see you be a good human being.

Good to your family, good to women, good to Everyone biggest joy in life, seeing other people grow to become better human beings.

Mike Klinzing

01:22:08.210 – 01:23:17.290

Well said and something. It’s a theme that I’ve come back to over and over on the podcast.

I always say that the opportunity to use basketball as the vehicle to be able to have an impact on people’s lives. Love the game of basketball. I can tell from our conversation you feel the same way.

And to be able to utilize that in such a way that can do what you just described, right, to make somebody a better human being, that’s really what coaching is all about. Sure, it’s about wins and losses.

Sure, it’s about developing them as basketball players, but ultimately, 20 years from now, developing them as people is what. What it’s really all about.

There has never been anyone set up better to answer this last question than you in terms of our setup of this whole entire conversation. So the last thing is always, how can people reach out to you? How can people get in touch with you? How can people connect with you?

And I always say, share social media, share email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And inevitably there’s always, I’d say like 50% of the coaches are like, I don’t remember what my Twitter is.

And I’m always like, ah, don’t worry, we’ll get in the show Notes. I have extreme confidence, Nick, that you will have every one of your things lined up of how people can reach out with you. So go ahead.

Nick Lorensen

01:23:18.980 – 01:24:18.530

Yeah, you can always reach out to me on Twitter. Give me a follow. Send me a DM at N lawrenceports. N L O R E N S E N Sports. My Instagram’s always open too. Just my name, Nick Lawrence.

N I C K L O R E N SCN and my email. My email, if we want to do that too, is my last name Lawrence Nick. So there’s two ends there in the middle.

One for the nice at the end of my last name, one at the beginning of my name. But yeah, I’m always open to answering any questions. I just love college basketball. I love my major, basketball.

So I’m always down to talk about basketball too, if you need someone to talk to. And baseball. And baseball.  I watched so many different teams for so many different people in the business.

I just, that’s how I keep in contact with people in the off season. Hey, this is how the Giants did. This is how the Orioles did today. So anything anyone needs I’m always free to talk.  So reach out in one of those three areas and. And I’m all good.

Mike Klinzing

01:24:18.690 – 01:24:52.620

KUDOS to you for still following baseball. It’s one of those things that when I was a kid, I could, I could still name for you probably the starting lineup of the 1979 Baltimore Orioles.

But if you asked me to, if you asked me to name a player on the Arizona Diamondbacks today, I’m not sure I. I’m not sure I could do it. So kudos to you for continuing your baseball fandom. But to the rest of everybody out there in our audience, we really appreciate you listening.

Nick, we thank you for your time today, jumping on. Really been a lot of fun to have this conversation. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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Narrator

01:24:54

Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.