PETE ALEXANDROU & JASON FRANZEN – CLEARWATER ACADEMY INTERNATIONAL POST GRAD COACHES & 3RD SIDE BASKETBALL – EPISODE 612

Website – http://www.3rdsidebasketball.com/

Email – alexandroupeter@gmail.com    franzenj@pcsb.org

Twitter – @coachpete01 @franzenj07 @CAI_Postgrad

Pete Alexandrou & Jason Franzen are the co-owners of 3^rd Side Basketball.  They coach together at Clearwater Academy International High School & PostGrad.

Over the past 10 years Pete has served as both an assistant and head coach at the high school level in the Tampa, Florida area winning multiple district and County Conference titles.  Pete has developed numerous players into All-County selections from 3 different high schools.

In 2019 Pete accepted the position of Head Coach at Clearwater Academy International. In year one, the team earned a 21-7 record against one of the states toughest schedules, and helped get all five Post Grad players a college scholarship after the season.

Jason has been a High School Coach for 24 years in Tampa area, coaching under Randall Leath & David Thorpe. Jason took over a program that had lost 42 games in a row, and had not made the state playoffs in 15 years & had not won a state playoff game since 1967. In 4 years his team accomplished all those & more advancing to the State Sweet 16. Jason then left to work for a friend & hall of fame coach, Tom Shaneyfelt, with Pete. Pete & Jason went to help Clearwater Academy International start a basketball program & through that they fell into the post grad level of basketball.

Both Jason & Pete work with Coach David Thorpe training HS, College, & Pros during the offseason.

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Keep your notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Pete Alexandrou and Jason Franzen from Clearwater Academy International & 3^rd Side Basketball Academy.

What We Discuss with Pete Alexandrou & Jason Franzen

• Jason’s experience playing for David Thorpe in high school
• Pete’s experience playing for Jason in high school
• How their paths led them both to Clearwater International Academy
• The decision to go all Post Grad at Clearwater
• The time and money investment that players make to play post grad basketball in hopes of earning a college scholarship
• The differences between high school and post grad basketball
• “The stuff that we’re giving the kids all is high level training.”
• Putting together a schedule for post grad at Clearwater
• Getting player bios and highlights out to every college program in the country
• The number one goal is finding players a college basketball program that will be the right fit
• Using basketball to find yourself an affordable education
• The importance of good academics when it comes to opportunities to play college basketball
• “I wish I could talk to every single freshman, high school basketball player in the country and tell them that 3.0 or higher and strive to get a thousand on your SAT.”
• “It’s not about the level that you go to, it’s about the fit.”
• “When we get coaches that respond, we put them on a priority because a lot of coaches don’t respond at all.”
• Why they need a full game tape for each player on their team and not just their highlights
• “When I talk to a college coach they never ask how many points a kid scores.”
• “You have to be great on the bench, great to the refs, great to the coaches.”
• The ideal roster size and balancing winning with exposure for all their players
• The process for recruiting players into the post grad program at Clearwater
• Understanding the hard work it takes to be a successful student-athlete in college
• Building basketball IQ and reading actions on the floor
• “Less talk, more action.”
• “The best teacher is making mistakes.”
• Teaching and playing multiple defenses
• “We definitely have sacrificed wins to teach these guys how to play better.”
• “Basketball is super fun when everyone touches the ball.”
• What parents and players should look for in a post grad basketball program

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THANKS, PETE ALEXANDROU & JASON FRANZEN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR PETE ALEXANDROU & JASON FRANZEN – CLEARWATER INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY POST GRAD & 3RD SIDE BASKETBALL – EPISODE 612

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, and we are pleased to welcome from Clearwater International Academy. Jason Franzen and Pete Alexandrou, Jason and Pete. Welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:15] Pete Alexandrou: Thank you. Appreciate it.

[00:00:17] Jason Franzen: Absolutely looking forward to this,

[00:00:19] Mike Klinzing: Excited to be able to you dive into the world of postgrad basketball with you guys.

I want to start out though, by giving each of you a chance to tell us a little bit about your background so that we can kind of work our way up to where you guys are today. So we’re going to start with Jason. Just kind of give us a rundown, go back as far as you want in your life, where you think it’s relevant to tell us a little bit about your basketball journey, and then we’ll get Pete’s after that.

[00:00:43] Jason Franzen: Okay. I started actually, it probably started when I was in high school. I went to a, a pretty good high school basketball wise. I don’t know if you guys remember Dmitri Hill at University of Florida. So I played with him in high school and one of my coaches was David Thorpe who you guys had on your podcast I believe.

[00:01:03] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, David came on with us and we did some NBA stuff with him and did a whole regular episode with him as well.

[00:01:11] Jason Franzen: Yeah, so he was my, he was my JV coach great experience. He was phenomenal. Had a presence. You just knew he was a great coach and I just fell in love with basketball.

And then I really wasn’t good enough to play in college. I had good grades, smart. I went, I ended up going to University of Florida as a student. And during that time I had no idea what I wanted to do and kind of made in economics. And then I talked to coach Thorpe got back in touch with him and he was training high school kids and pros.

And we just, I just kind of started helping him out after I finished. And then I hooked up with, at Countryside high school. He introduced me to Randall Leaf. He was a, another Florida Gator player long time ago. And he was head coach at Countryside. And I became a JV coach and just kind of just launched from there.

David was helping us out as an assistant coach. And then the off season David started bringing in pros Udonis Haslem was coming in. Kevin Martin was in college at the time he was coming in the off season and just kind of started working with those guys, helping him out. And then at Countryside still, you have a really good year make state playoffs, all that stuff.

And then Randall leaves and I continue to coach, I’m helping Thorpe out doing some training stuff. And then opportunity comes up where I can kind of take over a program a program locally and they had lost 42 games in a row, something, something obscene. And I just kind of went in for the interview just to.

Just actually practiced the interview process and the principal just sold me on, on the job. He’s a great guy, great principal. So I took it, he offered me the job. I took it and I was there for four years, four years, five year, four years. And my last year you know, won a ton of games and went to state playoffs and went to the sweet 16 of the state playoffs.

First time they have done that since 60 something, 67, I think. And they had our new principal halfway through the year. I didn’t like them at all. So I resigned halfway through the year effective at the end of the season and then coach Pete and I started talking because I coached him in high school.

He’ll talk about that. And he was coaching another high school. Yeah. well, I’m not, that could be good or bad.

[00:03:49] Mike Klinzing: That could be, that could be, that could be good or bad. We’re going to have to wait and see.

[00:03:53] Jason Franzen:  So he was coaching at another high school, had he was having a successful run. And so one of our friends is a hall of fame coach at another local high school.

And he’s at the end of his career. He’s like, Hey guys, come on. Help me coach this last year. This is my last year here. Maybe we can hand the program down to, to Jason. And so we decided to do it. We both left where we’re at. We go in, help him out. We have a great year and Shaneyfelt and the principal decides to hire someone else.

 So which was actually a blessing in disguise because we ended up at Clearwater Academy trying to start their high school program and it kind of. Turned into like a half high school, half postgrad. And that’s how we started learning about this whole post grad deal. And we can kind of get into that, but yeah, it was crazy.

Just a crazy story, crazy run coach, a lot of great guys. You know, a lot of division one players, Coach Pete was one of ’em that I got a chance to coach a bunch more guys through Countryside and Clearwater and Dunedin places I was at. And it’s just been fun.

I hate traveling. So college coaching never really interested me at all. I like to be home as much as possible. So this is, this has just been perfect. So it’s kind of, it’s kind of it.

[00:05:13] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah, absolutely. So grew up here in Clearwater, Florida area. I played in a local high school.

My freshman year, I remember actually prior to my freshman year, they were having four days a week, 6:00 AM workouts over the summer. And I’m an eighth grader going in, like, what is going on here? We didn’t even make the team, like, what kind of like weird thing is this. I remember that. And but Rani was there like Jason, like Franzen said, I’m going to, I call him Franzen a lot.

And Franzen, you can just call me Pete, because you just talk all the time. So I say Franzen but he was, he was there and was there as well, but Franzen was a JV coach and I was an incoming freshman. And they kind of like really took me under my, the wings, like really early on, like focused on me, like, like helped me accountable for stuff.

I was known as like really just a shooter coming in and then France kind of said, you have to be a point guard. You’ll be able to finish. And you know, you sure as heck need to learn how to defend because he made it very known that I played no defense, but he was on what summer league he was that’s right.

Yeah. I remember one time, a quick story in the summer league. We’re playing. And our team is just no energy, no defense, not running back nothing. And there was four straight possessions where Franzen was like, if you guys want to play defense then you’re not going to play offense either. So he would ask me to pass him the ball out of bounds to turn the ball over.

And he did, I had to do that four times in a row. So we just didn’t have any offensive possessions, just play defense, because he’s like you guys have to wake up. So we had a really good JV team. After that coach, all of them left, I was part of the all abandonmentoach Franzen, Coach Lee, all left and new coach came in talent.

Wasn’t really there and everything, but had a good career. Three year start on varsity. I got a scholarship to Florida college Andi school in Tampa had a really good career there. It was a three time all American there. A really enjoyed it. My family’s Greek, so I was all ready to go play in Greece.

Unfortunately the end of my junior year, and then throughout my senior year, I had three knee surgeries on the same knee and that kind of like derailed that. So I started coaching I graduated in 2011, started coaching in 2012, 2013 with a old. A buddy of mine that I actually played against in college.

He was a couple years older than me. And we took a team one year we had a bunch of juniors and the next year we came back, kind of did a similar story to, to, to, to friends, except for his was way more impressive with the amount of time that the team has won. But we won the district title there.

And then basically when he said he just missed one part, but when he went and helped out the hall of fame coach, I was with him there, we had a great team. And then we both went back to countryside for about two and a half years. Yeah. And we helped a team when the first district title in school history.

I, yeah, a lot, lot years. And after that, we kind of wanted to do our own thing. And that’s where we, where, where fans and left off, basically the half post rat half high school independent team kind of, kind of got brought up to us. And here we are now.

[00:08:17] Mike Klinzing: So when you say got brought up to us, explain exactly what that looks like.

You guys are doing your thing, and all of a sudden this school, this opportunity that you guys probably didn’t have a really good understanding at the time of what exactly it was or what it opportunity it might be. What was the discussion that the two of you had before you to make that jump? I don’t want to know who wants to take that question, but what was that discussion like?

[00:08:41] Pete Alexandrou: I’ll go first. Cause it kind of like. It went in stages and Franzen. And you can obviously jump on, but basically we were like, kind like me and Franzen were like, we wanted a coach, but like, what do we do? We knew postgrad was a thing. You know, we, we were talking a little bit, but coach dorp went and met with someone named Ben Patrick he’s knees over toes guy on Instagram.

He’s got like over 1.5 million follow. He was on Joe Rogan and he does like crazy strength training with flexibility and stuff. But he wanted coach do and coach do, was looking for a, a gym to help train pros that came in whatever. And they started talking and they had some talented kids on the team from like all over from like from Jersey, from California and then a little local kid.

And after spending a couple weeks there, they were like you know, Ben probably basically said like, I don’t want to, like, I’m not a basketball coach. Like I want to do this online training thing. Like, can you take over the program? Well, obviously the first person I called was Franen and I was like, look, it’s, it’s an independent, it’s like almost it’s an academy.

Right? So we make our own schedule. We do our own thing and let’s see what we can do to try to get these kids, local kids, like the best year they had. And we had a couple kids, coach ropes, son being one that chose to play for us over their high school, because they wanted like a really good experience and coach trusted us.

So we ended up getting five post grad kids, five high school kids. We set a schedule, we played the best postgrad teams. We could nationally ranked some of ’em. We played IMGs nationally ranked high school team and we were very successful. I’m like friends, you can kind of take over here halfway through the season.

You kind of just looked at me and he said, I think we need to do all post grad.

[00:10:25] Jason Franzen: Yeah. So the high school, the high school part kind of the, what Pete left out is we had these group of kids. And there a couple of ’em were very talented very talented players, but Pete and I were like, where are we going to get the rest of kids from?

And I, Pete, how many kids go to CAI? 200 kids maybe. Oh yeah, maybe

[00:10:47] Pete Alexandrou: 250. There’s like, there’s like a, there’s like 80 in high school and 45 of them are on the full.

[00:10:54] Jason Franzen: So, so we had no idea. We’re like, how we going to, we can’t have a team of just five kids. Like we have to get more players. And so we’re I I was still a teacher.

I’m still, I am a teacher at Clearwater high school. And I knew of a kid who graduated had just graduated and he was talented. Wasn’t going to go anywhere to play basketball. So I was like, Hey, do you want to. You know, play over the summer with us, do some AAU. He’s like, yeah, that sounds great.

Cause we’re going to do AAU and stuff over the summer. Just try to help the kid out, give him some exposure. And then he talked to some other kids and we got five postgrad. We’re like, let’s just make up. We have no rules that, that that’s abiding us. We’re not part of the high school athletic association in Florida.

So let’s just do whatever. So we had like this half post-grad half high school team and like Pete said, we played some really good high school teams only good high school teams. And then we played a post-grad schedule. And I’ll be honest with you. I did not like it at all at first it’s like you’re playing in you’re playing in rec centers.

There’s no crowds. There’s just no juice to the games. But then as we got into the season, I mean, the coaches are good. You know, you’re coaching against guys that are division one division, two level players. And it was just fun. Just real fun. We can kind of do our own thing.

There was no, there’s no politics involved above us because really at the administration let us do our own thing. And right now we how to do this post grad and, and we’re part of the school, but we’re separate if that makes sense. So we he’s not going to fire us for losing games or whatever.

Not that we are. but we want it strictly. We kind of do our own thing and, and it it’s been great. It’s been great.

[00:12:54] Mike Klinzing: All right. So let’s go to this question, Pete. Maybe you can answer this. So what’s the difference between for somebody who’s in our audience who maybe isn’t familiar or that familiar with post-grad basketball, what’s the difference between post-grad basketball and high school basketball?

Obviously one difference is the players have already graduated from high school, but give us, give us a breakdown of just what’s different between high school basketball and post-grad basketball.

[00:13:19] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you said the main difference, obviously they’ve all graduated, but like, it, it really stems down to what kind of program you go to so I can speak like ourselves.

When you’re in high school, you’re a student you’re taking academics all that kind of stuff. You, you’re still kind of a kid when you get to post grad, when you come with us, you’re making a time and money investment. And so is the family. So. Coach Francis says this all the time.

You know, you have to treat it like a job. Now, some of our kids have regular jobs part-time to make some money, because they’re local. Some of ’em take online classes at local community colleges here to just kind of get ahead and help their basically their resume for college coaches look a little bit better.

But with that, I mean like we, we, we go two, three times a day. It’s a very long season. We start like July and we finish playing at the end of February, beginning of March. We there’s strength and conditioning. There’s flexibility. With focus we do cognitive training with our good friend Tuck Taylor who ran Neuro Beast.

He’s all in the, the, the hand-eye coordination the mental fatigue basically of the game to try to improve your mental toughness of the game. He’s really into that. They get that they get individual work, skill work. Along with team practices. And with that, I mean, it’s also in high school you play 24, 25 games.

Here, I mean, we can play as many as we want. We can play 50-60 if you want. We usually play between 35 and 40 40 minute games, shock clock. The rules are different. The rules are different as far as five second rule. And when you can call a timeout and stuff like that, so you have to adjust and the kids were playing some of them are Juco they didn’t work out a Juco and they’re they’re trying to do one more year at Post Grad.

So some of these kids are like 21 years old. That’s the age limit here at the league that were in. And then we play in. So you’re looking at like a three, four year difference. So you’re playing, even if you might be more talented than the other person, they’re they’re three years more mature they’re stronger and, and, and, and, and, and faster usually, but it’s also.

Our whole purpose is to get the kids in college. So yes, winning games comes along by doing that. And we’ve done plenty of that, but we, we, we, we build a skill or enhance their skill. We build their basketball IQ with the way that we run our drills and their luck coach friends and, and myself have both been in the gym with coach, do doing NBA workouts and seeing them.

So the stuff that we’re giving the kids all is high level training. The basketball IQ with the way that we play offense and defense. And the biggest thing is just maximum exposure, which is unreal reach out that we have to do. As far as, as well as they get the highlight videos, the photos, and the whole marketing side of, so it’s really, I mean, yes, teams play for state titles or national titles or whatever it is, but when you’re in high school, you’re playing to win a district title or state title or conference title.

When you come to us like. We want to get everyone better. So we all look good and we all get film that coaches want to see, and then they want you to come to their school. That’s our sole purpose.

[00:16:22] Mike Klinzing: All right. So there’s a couple things that jump out from what you just said. One is when you’re thinking about the schedule and for people again, who maybe aren’t that familiar with post grad basketball, who are you playing on that schedule?

How far do you have to travel in order to be able to play the games? Where do you find opponents? I guess is my main question.

[00:16:43] Pete Alexandrou: So, yeah, so we’re in a league with local opponents in our area. And that league also has opponents throughout the whole state that we pick games with. And then the rest of it contacting schools, like we played IMG, which is rank top whatever, every single year we played ’em every year.

And. Luckily for us, Florida has very good postgrad and is very, there’s a lot of postgrads as well. We don’t have to travel far. We can go to Orlando, which is two hours away more Northern Florida, which is three, four hours away. But we attend also like showcases where a bunch of colleges are going to be in.

So if you’re going to be seen you be seen at those events, but the majority of our stuff is done through email and, and the video we play. So we play there’s post grad teams in our league, and then other post grads throughout the state, like they’re all over the place from Miami to the panhandle. So we’re lucky in the sense that we don’t really even have to go out of the state to get noticed or, or to know that we’re playing good competition

[00:17:43] Mike Klinzing: Before you guys got involved in this.

How aware of it were you and how much, when has it become big on the scene? Like if we were to go back in the state of Florida 10 years ago, how big or small is post-grad basketball compared to where it is today?

[00:18:01] Jason Franzen: Honestly no clue. Yeah, I did.  I knew it was somewhat a thing. One of our friends, Aaron Holmes runs Pete.

He is really good friends with them. They’re in the same graduating class for the most part. He, he started doing grad a few years ago and I’ve I heard ’em talk about it, seen some tweets about it. I just never thought it was like a it sounded really a thing. Until we until our year that we had this half high school, half post grad team and we started learning about it, you know I think, and coach Pete did a great job of talking to other coaches.

In between, like when we played these tournaments in between games you know, coaches is, is going to talk to these other coaches about what they’re doing, how they run their program. And we kind of took all this information in and said, well, heck like when we were in high school coaches, one thing that we constantly were complaining about was all the talent we saw and high school coaches, really not helping these kids out alive.

As far as sending out film and, and getting ’em exposure. And so if these kids weren’t in the right AAU program, then the, no one knew about ’em. So we’re like, we’re went through the season and I was like, Pete like, let’s just do this. Like, we’ve always talked about trying to get more kids exposure.

And this post grad thing is definitely a way to do it. And we also get to run it by our own terms. You know, just as far as what we schedule games, practices you know, funds and how we raise money and what we use it, like it, there was we’re the ones governing it. And it just was, it was awesome.

It’s a lot of work with the exposure part because I mean I was on the phone with a coach right before you guys sent me the email for the link to get on the podcast that coach called me so it it’s constantly texting and emails and phone. It’s now starting to pick up against the team seasons are ending and we have we have about five players we’re still trying to place.

So it’s definitely a lot of work. I mean, Pete can probably answer this, but between him and I we’ve probably sent out. 5,000 emails already. That was more it’s more than that. It’s yeah, I mean, I can’t even, it just, it’s ridiculous to, to count how many emails we send out and we do it. It’s not like if a kid is, if a, if we feel a kid is an AI level kid and he doesn’t care where plays, he’s like coach I’ll go anywhere to play coach Pete.

And I will literally send his bio and highlight clips to every coach in every program in the entire country. Not once, like legit, like

[00:20:59] Pete Alexandrou: Literally we have a, we have a database, sorry, France. We have a database with every single coach for every team from D one D two D three, NAIA, Juco.

We have a database of everyone.

[00:21:13] Jason Franzen: And these aren’t, these aren’t like, I mean, these are individualized E emails. So coaches, if you just sent them this mass email, it’s going to their spam. You know, so we individualize every single email. It’s like, Hey coach. So and so, and here’s our guy, and then we give him the bio.

So, and then it’s not, once it’s not twice, it could be three and four times that we do this whole process until a coach finally says, Hey, I didn’t see that kid. And sometimes we’ll get a phone call, like, Hey, I just saw your, your kid. And this is the fourth time we’ve emailed. This school, right?

Yeah. So it’s, it’s a lot of work. I sometimes I think we’re doing way more work than other post grads, because I’ve, I’ve heard about what some of these other post grads do, but we’ve done a great job. I think pizza yesterday, I think we have like a 96% place rate into college and, and what, what we mean by that is not only placing them, but also our, our motto, our, our, what we try to live by is, is we understand that guys are going to have to pay, like when you’re playing at a division three division two, sometimes NAIA school, they’re only offering you partial scholarships.

We try to get it down to a point where if a kid is going to go, just be a student at a state school in Florida, and he’s, we try to get it at that point or below. If it’s beyond that point, then. We’re not sending the kid. We’re not going to send a kid to a school where he has to pay 20 grand a year, just so we can play basketball.

We’re not doing that.

[00:22:48] Pete Alexandrou: And just to piggyback on that, because I do know the numbers on that so far out of the, we have 21 in the last two and a half year or 21 kids place or whatever. The most someone is paying is 4,000 and wow, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. That’s and that school that he went to is 45,000 to go to.

So that’s been like, like that’s what we try to like pride ourselves on affordable education. If you’re going to use basketball as a way to go get a in education, this is what, this is where you want to be.

[00:23:21] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. That makes a ton of sense. I know that when you think about, look, I have a daughter who’s a senior, she’s not a basketball player at this point in her life, but.

Man, you start going through that college application process and looking at the sticker price of some of these private schools. And you’re talking about division three basketball, those schools, man, those, those bills, those bills add up really fast. And if you can, if you can find a way, whether it’s from a the combination of academics and athletics and there’s opportunities out there, I don’t think people realize that what you just described, where you could be at a school that costs $40,000.

And if you’re a good basketball player, and most often, if you’re a good student, you can oftentimes get that sticker price way, way down, because a coach wants you to be a part of their program. And I think sometimes people forget, or maybe don’t even realize that it’s not, not just at those higher levels where you can get again, it’s not called an athletic scholarship, but because you’re because you’re an athlete because you’re a basketball player, you have more opportunities.

I don’t think a lot of parents and players always, I don’t think they always realize that.

[00:24:25] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah, no, you’re a hundred percent, right? Because not, not only that, I mean, it’s a big thing. Like if you have a 3.2, five, and you did good on SAT and you’re going to a D2 or NAIA school, they can use academic money to layer on top of athletic money.

And then all of a sudden you have a free ride. Right. And it, it, it, that’s one of the biggest things. Like we have really, we talk about like weekly, we we’re, we’re lucky that we get to select kids and we’ve had an amazing group of kids since we started this. But when we get these kids that are like 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and then never took the SAT or took it one and did like, we, we just like cringe because like, if they just were got it’s, it’s not always the high school coaches’ fault or whatever, it’s a totally different, their mindset’s completely different. You know, they have to report to a principal, they have to win the team. You know, the school wants to win championships or whatnot, but it’s it’s to, if anyone’s listening, parents, players, whatever, if your GPA is above that 3.0, and you have a good SAT your sticker price,

[00:25:34] Jason Franzen: Your sticker standard already drops.

[00:25:40] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it really is. Like I said, I think people don’t oftentimes realize that, and it it’s something that I wish we could get out there to more people. And you guys know that there’s amongst players and especially families with the way AAU and with the way social media is today, there’s such a division.

One is the only lead thing that kids are thinking about. And look, I used to be a basketball player. So way back, way back in the day, I was the same. Like I, I wanted to be a division one player. I ended up getting one division, one scholarship offer, and guess where I ended up going to school, a place where I got that one division, one scholarship offer.

But. , but I think you look at it today and there’s so much out there, social media wise. And if you’re a kid you have to read probably 20 times a day, this kid I’m committed here and I’m signing there and this and that, and you have to watch. And it’s just, I can’t even imagine growing up and being under that kind of pressure.

And so you can see where from the social media side of it, from the AAU side of it, from the family pressure side of it, that kids can get locked into. Hey, there’s only one path for me to get, to go, to go, to go to school and, and get a scholarship and be able to have a, my college paid for. And I think you guys are doing a great thing by trying to educate people and help your kids to be able to understand that look, there’s more than one way to utilize the game of basketball, utilize your talents, utilize your academics in order to get an opportunity.

And I think that’s something that as you guys continue to do that, man, you’re making such an impact on kids’ lives. And obviously it’s going to, it’s going to pay off as you’re there longer. And you start to see the fruits of those labor, where you’ve been there five or 10 years. Now, all of a sudden you got guys coming back that have success.

And whether it’s as continue to have success as basketball players, just as they transition into real life.

[00:27:28] Jason Franzen: Well two things that I wanted to add in I, me personally, I wish I could talk to every single freshman, high school basketball player in the country and tell them that 3.0 or higher and strive to get a thousand on your SAT.

But that 3.0 is huge. Because if you ruin that if you you’re immature freshman, take a you bomb your grades, but then your next three years you get better. It’s hard to get above that 3.0 threshold. You know, so when, when we get guys come to us at postgrad and, and Pete said they have a two point 2.6, it’s so tough.

I mean the, just the, the options drop especially if a kid isn’t I is, is maybe talented to play division three basketball and have a good career, but he has a two, six. You know, it’s hard to find that division three school where I can get it down to a, a point where it’s, it’s financially worth it to go to school there.

It is very, very hard right now. I’m starting to do a database of, of division three schools that are 25 grand and less to put that in my pocket. So I know that these are the only schools I can target for this type of particular player, because the debt is the big thing.

Don’t want kids going into debt you know, graduating just to play basketball. And then the other thing with that is what you kind of touched on is we preach to the kids and to the parents before they even sign with us. It’s not about the level that you go to it’s about the fit, you know? So it doesn’t matter if you’re playing division one division two, three NAIA Juco it’s about the fit.

And we’re going to maximize your playing career, because most of our guys are going to play four years in college, maybe five with the red shirt year and that’s it. And so you want to play, you don’t want to go to a if, if you know, you go to a division one school and sit for two or three years, then maybe your players senior a year.

You know, I want, I wanted a kid to have a great fit. And so we kind of focus in on that, like the fit, the fit, the fit’s the most important thing and our kids, our kids and the families really buy into that. So they’re not locked into just division one division one division one. So so it’s a good thing.

You brought that up.

[00:29:52] Mike Klinzing: That makes sense. So, so how have you guys gone about building relationships with college coaches? Because obviously you have your database, you’re sending out emails, but the more you’re in this, the more you get to know coaches. Personally where you can pick up the phone and call and say, Hey, I got a kid for you.

Hey, this kid I think would be a great fit. What’s that process been like for you guys as you’ve transitioned from being high school coaches into this postgrad world?

[00:30:22] Pete Alexandrou: Oh yeah, go. I think it’s the same for, I mean, me personally, I like, I love to talk anyways. So like Franzen knows that like the two of who was I’m the talker for sure. I mean, Franzen knows how to talk to I just kind of just go free Willy, but yeah, I mean, it, it really all started if, if, if with our first group that half and half we had a kid that didn’t, it wasn’t even qualified.

You know, we went all the way up to, to, to having six letters of recommendation you know, helping him a little bit with his essay essay, and then yeah. And Talking to the assistant Dean of the school to vouch for this kid. And

[00:31:03] Jason Franzen: Now I’m going to, but in real quick, Pete this kid is a division one level player.

We couldn’t, that’s a whole nother thing we can talk about is just coaches in their evaluation, but process but, but division one level player, we got him a bunch of division two interest. And, but he had these low grades he had, but he had no interest coming out of high school. I mean, he wasn’t even going to, he wasn’t even going to go to college.

I don’t think. So you can kind of keep going that. Yeah,

[00:31:35] Pete Alexandrou: He played like the five in high school and, and, and, and, and we came in, you’re like coach do was there that day and, and, and Franzen, and we’re like, he’s have to be a guard he bought on fully short, short, long story short.

He is now in he was a second team. All conference in, in his conference at the division schools, the division two school that he’s at. And he was the only underclassman to, to, to get those honors. And he’s holding about a 3.0 grade point average. So that first year team him and along with the other five, six guys really excuse me, really like kind of gave us credibility.

And that, that first year we had like 30 coaches, 40 coaches in the gym just in one month. And they were really liking our workout. They would tell us we never really stay for a full practice or we love the way your kids are competing and love what you’re doing. A couple of you even said I’m going to steal that drill, you know?

And it’s, so they started seeing us as like, okay this is kind of like a program that maybe will get players that we’re interested in. And through all the emails they call us, we immediately save every number. If someone is having a good game, we immediately text, we’ll be in the hotel rooms overnight.

Hey, you text this group. I text for this person and we’re just blowing up these coaches, I mean, nonstop. And we’ve gotten to the point now where enough of our kids have been recruited or gone to school or they’ve seen us play been to has been to games wherever you have you that they’re starting to now give us an email or a text or a call in the beginning of our year to say, Hey, what kind of guys you have this year?

Should I be looking for anyone? So, so what, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. So like that, that really flipped a lot of the things like, even though like the amount of emails and outreach that we do, the, these coaches and we do the same thing. Like if they respond, even if it’s like looks great, but you know, already filled that spot for this year.

Keep in mind, they’ll remember our communication. They’ll remember seeing the highlights of the kids whatever they’ll come back around us and they’re more likely.

[00:33:46] Jason Franzen: It’s vice versa too. It’s vice versa too, because when we get coaches that respond, we put them on a priority because a lot of coaches either don’t respond at all or never respond.

And so we understand that too. So it kind of works both ways with when it comes to that though.

[00:34:05] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah, no. And, and that’s really what it’s done. So being able to them, see us in person, them talk to us on the phone, just talk basketball, kind of tell ’em what we do and what we think of the players.

And they like the kind of culture that we kind of build focusing on their IQ and, and stuff like that. And being honest with you, it’s just really, yeah, we’re completely honest with them and it it’s, and just being transparent with them and, and, and that’s really how it’s, how it’s sparked and it’s and we anticipated to continue to grow.

[00:34:35] Mike Klinzing: So once you have a kid that you sort of. Identify as part of your program and okay. We think this kid is at this level. So you start reaching out via email to those coaches that you have in your database. You probably reach out via phone to coaches. You have maybe a more personal connection with talk a little about how you use highlights and social media to help your get even more exposure.

[00:35:01] Jason Franzen: Crazy. You can go. Okay. Okay. So first thing is we, so coach Pete and I, we have the kids we signed, we’ve kind of evaluated you know, throughout our preseason process. And we kind of get an idea, okay, this kid is, is division, maybe low major division one division two. This kid is, is division two.

This kid’s NAIA that’s kind of what we’re, that’s our baseline. Now the other thing is like, we can make highlights and that’s great. So we play a few games. We can get some highlights. But what we need is full games. Because the first thing a coach will ask is coach highlights look great. He’s what we’re looking for.

Can you send me a couple full games? Well, if I don’t have a full game of a guy, I can’t, I don’t even start. We don’t even start the email process. Right, right. You know, because I can’t say, Hey coach we’re halfway through our season. I don’t have a full game. I can really send you. So I, we just wait, we just hold off.

So you know, and we’re not talking about full games where a kid comes out and he is he scores 30 point. You know, I’m talking about a game where he scores a little bit, but he is efficient scoring the basketball he’s scoring in the spots that we’ve discussed and talked about within the flow of our offense.

He’s rebounding, he’s playing defense. He’s being a great teammate on video. You know, if we I have to tell we we’ve preached to the kids, Hey, look, you can have a great game, but if you’re barking at your teammates, you’re talking back to refs, you’re, you’re sitting on the bench and your body language is terrible.

I can’t sell this film. I can’t send this film out. It’s it’s going to kill you if I do that. So we it’s everything all the pieces have to fit for us to send out film because our camera catches everything. And we’re not, we’re not editing things out of the video. So, so that’s the biggest thing.

So it’s, it’s finding that film getting a game, getting two games, and once we get a game or two, then it’s on, then it’s, then it’s every coach in our level that we feel that player is at. And if we’re getting a lot of interest at that level, Pete. And I were like, well, let’s move up a level. And then we’ll start going there too.

So that starts the process. And what makes it tough is if we get a kid, a player this season we had to call players that didn’t really get filmed to the end of the season. And it was a, it, it was a struggle. You know, we’re, we’re playing guys that maybe we shouldn’t have played. And, but we’re trying to get film.

and that’s kind of where we’re at this, this year. This is the first year that we had to do that. Because we’re trying, you have to get full games, you have to get full games. And when I say full games is not just, like I said, shooting getting a bunch of points. Because I never, when I talked to a college coach and Pete will tell you this too, they never asked how many points is what does the average, that’s not the question they ask.

They, they ask, does he play defense? Does he rebound? Is he efficient scoring the basketball? Do you share

[00:38:12] Mike Klinzing: that with parents? yes. Yeah. All the time advice with parents. Cause I can go and sit in the stands at any high school game. And the only thing any parent cares about is how many points did my kids score?

That’s the only thing they care about.

[00:38:23] Jason Franzen: Well, we still that early we get in our kid we talk to the parents in, in our, in our initial interview signing the kids up and then what happens is we have kids, we play a first couple games and you know, our point guard this year one of our point card this year, I love him to death.

He, he was not happy. He looked he was down and come to find out. He had a bunch of people in his ear. Tell him you have to score points. You have to get buckets. You have to score points. So finally he bought in to just I’m telling him, you have to learn how to run a team, run our team and play.

Darn good defense. That’s that’s money. That’s free money for you, man. And he bought in, he stopped listening to the people in his ear. It’s not about getting buckets. It’s, it’s not about scoring points, getting buckets. That’s great. But usually when we get coaches that are interested in a guy, they kind of know that he can score, he can shoot you know, they want to see how efficient they are, you know?

Do they value the basketball? Are they making quick decisions on the catch? You know, are they playing defense? I mean, we had a kid last year or two years ago in our, he was, he was six, eight shot, 46% from three, and we’re not talking like one, three a game. We’re talking about three or five a game.

And just a very good player, three athlete, very good athlete. And we send film out and we’re getting a bunch of interest and coaches are telling us. Coach he’s six, eight. He’s not rebounding. we’re like, yep. telling him that.

[00:40:03] Pete Alexandrou: Right. Exactly. He’s not why he running the floor. We’ve been telling him that too.

[00:40:07] Jason Franzen: Yeah. So that’s what we talk about all the time. Like we have to put full games together and kids buy in. We’ve been lucky. Our, the, the three post grad teams we’ve had, they’ve really bought in to what we’re trying to tell them. Cause I think, I think we know the process well enough.

Even in high school because we would talk about some of the better players that we’re trying to get recruited about being a great teammate, having that on film because coaches, if a coach comes to see you if he travels, we had a point guard at, at countryside, he was division one level point guard.

We had us UCF was coming down to see him Wisconsin, Iowa. They’re on our I’m like you have to be a great teammate. You have to, you have to just be great on the bench, great to the refs, great to the coaches. They know you can play. That’s why they’re here. They just want to see all these other things about you.

So we kind of sell that to all our other kids in this post-grad level. So it’s tough, but it’s worked out for the three years so far.

[00:41:15] Mike Klinzing: What’s the ideal roster size for you guys. So you’re obviously trying to balance, look, if you have to get game film on player 12 or 13 on your roster, that can clearly be a challenge.

So when you guys look at where you are right now in the moment, and maybe where you want to take the program, as you look forward, what, it’s the ideal roster size to be able to help each one of the players to meet the goal that they have and that you have for them to be able to play college basketball at whatever level fits them.

[00:41:47] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah, I’ll start. And you can jump in Franzen, basically right now, the last three years, our, our, our ideal roster size has been around 12 coach. And I are like co-head coaches. So like sometimes I stand, sometimes he stands. Like it is what it is sometimes we both stand it’s post-grad the rules are different in games, but he does an amazing job of balancing minutes.

So a lot of these kids are coming as you know, the guys from their high school that are usually playing 30, out of 32 minutes. Well, we make it very well known, very early that the one it’s not healthy for you, right. Keeping them healthy is like the number one thing. It’s such a long year. There’s so much going on wear and tear all that kind of stuff.

But everyone’s here to try to get, to try to get to the next level. So our first nine averaged between 19 and 23 minutes a game. So we were able to balance that and and the the last three or so on the bench, they had games where they even started they, they were down at like 14, 15 minutes, so everyone is playing.

So right now that’s where we’ve been at, what we hope to continue. And what is kind of unfolding here slowly for us is we’re kind of like a blue collar, small gym, local players you know, last year we went, we walked into IMG national. They, they lost a game in like 30 games.

They had four, their four starters were in the top 30 of the, of the class or top 40. And we men, a bunch of kids from the bay area here we roll up and with 12 minutes left in the game we look up we’re up by two. We’re competing with players that will be in the NBA draft that are in March madness right now.

And so like small gym the kids usually live at home and all that kind of stuff. So we’re, we’re kind of special in that way, but you know, as things go so 12 to 14 is like the max and everyone gets the same. Everyone gets a bio, everyone gets highlights. You know, obviously you have to play well to get the highlights.

You have to play well to get the game film, but everyone has the same chance. And as we grow and then I’ll let friends and talk about it is we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re close to getting a much bigger facility. We’re close to getting housing, stuff like that. We could, we could do two teams because we have enough coaches in this area or people that want to coach and can buy into like what we do.

That will have multiple coaches. So there’s not just two of us doing this. There’s six of us doing this. Then you can have two teams of like, like 12 to 14 that you could really focus on not everyone’s going to get there. It’s just, it’s just the nature of the business, but there’s some that have 20, 30, 40 kids on their team.

And I just, I just wouldn’t know what to do. You know, like last year we sent seven to college and we had 900 team, one got hurt and couldn’t play. And the other one just kind of decided he wanted to just go to school. There’s a postgrad that has like 40 kids on their team and they sent seven kids to college.

So you, we want to be realistic here. We will not just take anyone because they’re paying or they want to do this. Like we want to make sure that like, we strongly feel that we can get you interest and, and get you something that will be, that will make sense for you and your family and friends. And you can add on to that.

[00:45:12] Jason Franzen: No. I mean, yeah, that’s a tough thing. The, the minutes minutes is tough guys have to learn how to buy in. We’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had a lot of great guys in our program. You know, the, the two years ago Pete’s talking about when we played IMG our starting point guard was, was a forward in col in high school, excuse me.

And he came into our gym and I’m looking at Pete. I’m like this kid’s 6’5”, he’s our starting, he’s going to be our starting court guard. And and he was, and he was a division one level player, but he fell in love with Saginaw Valley State. A division two school had a very good year this year.

It was his first year up there. And he bought into our system. And when he committed to Saginaw Valley and I talked about lowering his minutes a little bit. He’s like, no coach. He goes, yeah, absolutely. I want to get, I want to play. But. I want to get other guys scholarships now, like that’s my goal.

My goal is get other guys I want to make other guys better to help them get scholarships. You know, I remember one game he opted to we didn’t start ’em and then we sat ’em he only, I think he played maybe three minutes because other guys were having good game games. You know, other guys were, were having a good game and you know, we obviously could have won the game pretty easily if he played we ended up losing by a couple, but we ha we got, we got really great film for three other guys.

So we get guys really buy into what we’re selling. Minutes are a big thing for me because I don’t want to get guys hurt. This is this, I mean, we literally are last chance u. You we can the Netflix show, we literally are it for these basketball kids. Because if they don’t get anything after this year, That’s it the gap year’s over clock starts officially.

And so they, their parents probably don’t want to make another investment into doing another post grad here. So, so this is it. And so guys, we’ve, we’ve been fortunate to, to get the right group of guys, to buy into what we’re trying to do. So,

[00:47:15] Mike Klinzing: All right. So we’ve talked about the back end of kids are in the program.

They go through the year, you guys are helping ’em to get to schools. Let’s go back to the front end. How do you guys identify the players that you think might be a good fit to bring into your program? What does that scouting recruiting process look like as you think about who’s coming in rather than what you’re doing for the guys that are going out.

[00:47:41] Jason Franzen: So can I start  this and then you can take over

I don’t want to say anything bad about anybody. I think it’s very easy for us here because the Tampa bay area is so under recruited. Not just nationally, but also by local schools. Local our local division one school who does even contact us and quite a few division two schools that don’t even look at our players or guys in the area, not just our players, but just guys in the area in general.

So the whole area I feel is, is just under recruited which is good for us. So there’s a lot to choose from and with Pete and I it’s only been the two of us. So we haven’t had a chance to really go out to a bunch of high school games. We see film, we see social media you know, I’ll, I’ll read clippings and, and some of the writings on, on some of the local websites about games.

And then we just kind of start making a list throughout the year. and then when the year’s over, we started having open gyms and bringing those guys in and then zoom calls and talking to players. But we’ve been very fortunate because we’ve had such a, a big group of guys that are just, just no one knows about Pete.

[00:48:58] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah. Yeah. So there, there there’s two ways. The, the one way is obviously how we’ve been able to social media, Twitter you know, former players referring kids to us, former parents referring kids to us. I mean, our inbox right now on Twitter we have to clear it up, but it’s probably got like 40, it’s probably got like 40 to 50 unread messages from kids reaching out to us.

So it’s happening all over. But if we find someone. And we think that they’re a fit. Like we think, okay, we can get ’em to somewhere. We start having open gyms and just kind of letting them play at first, getting, getting a kind of vibe, see how they are they going to defend or are they going to just pound the ball?

You know, all those things.

[00:49:39] Jason Franzen: They interact with the other kids. Correct.

[00:49:41] Pete Alexandrou: That’s a big thing. You have to be, you have to get along with everyone. And then we have more, or like skill style workouts where like half of it will be skilled and play. So we do as much evaluating in person trying to get to know these kids as possible.

If we feel comfortable, we will then set up a zoom call with their, with their family. We just kind of go over everything we offer for our program and what we think we can do to them answer any questions at they have and then send over the, the contract. And then they get back to us and say I signed the contract.

I want to, I want to spend my gap a year with you and that’s it, you know? And then we kind of go through it. You know, the first year it took, I took literally a. Excuse me on our first year, last year. And I remember Francis saying, it’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. I’m like, dude, we’re like in like June, like we have to go.

It took us less than a month and a half. And we got 11 kids all from this area. And so like coach said, it’s, it’s, we’re very lucky to have it’s under recruited. And there’s just a lot of talent to, and there’s a lot of schools and there’s a lot of players that have a lot of skill, but you know, might need that extra exposure.

You know, that that’s really like the key it’s, it’s, it’s our ability to contact and the work to contact coaches from all over. We have kids in Maine, Michigan, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, one’s going to Montana, Boston, Illinois. You know what I mean?

[00:51:03] Jason Franzen: Yeah. Like, so Pete, can I, can I step in before, just before I forget, it’s also it’s also about seeing players.

That play a position in high school. There there’s no way they’re going to play that position in college. So for example, the, our point guard two years ago, he was playing forward as a six five kid. Now he’s he played in a very successful high school program. It went to the state final four, four years in a row.

He was a starter on each one of those teams. Freshman to senior, he played with Kevin Knox, who’s in the NBA now. You know, but he had nothing, no exposure, nothing, because he was a forward. This kid, this kid was a point guard. He super High IQ can read the game very well. Just needed to work on ball handling and, and having often is to do it.

And then we had another kid a couple years ago who was strictly a post player, just coach put him in the post. He was the biggest kid in their team. He was a wing he’s going to be a wing in college. So we turned him into a wing and he’s playing at a very. Good division two school now. So it’s, it’s also about that too.

You know, finding those guys that are essentially out of position for college, because they had to help their high school team to play a certain position. So it’s really not that hard finding players. Luckily the only thing that we’re dealing with now is with post grad becoming more popular, there’s a bunch of popping up now.

And the one thing that, that I tell our guys to focus on, like, even if they’re not going to sign with us just watch it, because some of ’em are money grabs. You know, we had five post grad teams in the area close up halfway through the season, they shut down. And so we had guys calling us, asking if they can play on our team and we just.

You know, we can’t it’s it’s we just, we can’t do that. You know? So you know, it’s, it’s tough it’s but there is plenty of players and that’s a, that’s a good thing.

[00:53:04] Mike Klinzing: What does the conversation look like? Not just the player, but obviously a big part of this is talking to families. Right? You have to talk to parents and make sure parents understand what they’re getting into, because I’m sure, just like a lot of us out there there’s parents of these players are like postgrad.

I don’t even know what that is. So you probably have to educate families on what it is and then why a postgrad year is good in and of itself. And then not only that, but now you said there’s all these other programs that you’re having to compete against. You’re having to sell yourself against. So just talk a little bit about what those conversations are like with families as you get into the process where you’ve identified a kid or a kid’s come to you and you’re like, yeah, this kid would be a good fit.

But then you kind of have to close the deal and educate the parents. So just talk a little about what that process looks like.

[00:53:57] Pete Alexandrou: I got this locked in.

[00:53:58] Jason Franzen: I got this locked in real quick. If you don’t mind. Yep. Yep.

[00:54:00] Pete Alexandrou: We’ve had a million of these, these conversations. So first things first, then this is for everyone, parents, coaches, kids, players.

Post-grad is not an opportunity for them to make up eight to 10 classes that they messed up in high school to get their grades up. That’s a big misconception. They think they can just get their grades up. You can only, you can only basically retake one class unless you’re labeled ESC where you can take up to three classes.

That’s it. The, and for most, unless you’re at a 2.9, eight, nine, it’s not going to move your GPA to a place you want that you need. So that’s the first thing. So it’s we tell ’em that right off. And that’s why we, we, we encourage and we have a rule. If you have under a 3.0, take, you have to take, you have to be a half time student, take two classes each semester in college, because that helps you.

But with the parents and, and, and, and with the kids, but the parents especially it’s look, this is what we do. This is what we’ve done. This is how we like to do things, right. We give ’em a whole layout of how we do things. And at the end of the day, It’s an investment. Are you paying whatever the money is to come to us?

And we are by far the least expensive. I mean, we got programs 30, 40, 50, $60,000 a year ago too, which we’re not even like in the same conversation, but any type of money, especially in this time is still an investment, right. Even if it’s two grand, two grand is two grand that they’re not going to get back.

So we want them to first trust us. So we build a relationship with both of them, the parents and the, and the kids, but it’s about, okay, but now your son is going to college for free. And the tuition at that college is 50 E grand. So your $2,000 investment on us just saved you $250,000 on a college education.

Like that is what it always comes down to.

[00:55:54] Jason Franzen: Our program isn’t $2,000. That’s just if, if there’s a situation yeah. That was just a number.

[00:56:01] Mike Klinzing: Right. Understood, understood. .

[00:56:05] Pete Alexandrou: But yeah, so that’s what it’s all about. It’s they want to continue their passion.

They might have been hurt. They need to get their SATs up. They just need to get a little better, get more exposure. Okay. Here’s what we know we’re going to do. If your son buys in there’s a very good chance that he can get somewhere and that this time and, and, and money and, and, and all this time this gap year is important.

Plus you don’t lose the year of eligibility. Also. Pete, can I add a free year? Yes,

[00:56:39] Jason Franzen: Pete, can I add another conversation that we have to add with, to parents, especially after our first year doing this is not only. You’re going to make a, an investment for the post grad year. So you’re going to going to make a financial investment in some capacity, but also you have to have an honest conversation between the parent and the, and the kid, the player to see if this is really what he wants to do, because you know, we’ve had, in our first year we had a, a guy that or even last year that went away to college.

And then after a semester, after a year, they’re like, yeah, I don’t want to play basketball anymore. I just want to be a student so how serious are you? Because you know, don’t just do this just to play a post grad year. Don’t just do this because you want to think you’re being a college athlete.

It’s, I mean, we talk about it being a job on postgrad. It’s even more of a job when you’re an athlete. I mean Mike, you know that oh for sure, man. It’s, it’s, it’s, you’re not a normal student there’s, there’s a lot less partying going on. There’s a lot less social scene going on. You know, it’s a tough, tough situation, especially if you’re playing at a at a school where there’s not as much fanfare, maybe.

And so we really try to tell the parents, like don’t just invest for this year, talk about the next four years, because you don’t want your son to play for us. And we get him a, a, a slot in college and then he plays a year and then quits that’s an honest conversation you have to have.

[00:58:11] Mike Klinzing: I think people, I just had a conversation that I thought our episode that went out, I guess, by the time we aired this one, it’ll be like a week and a half ago. But with Andrew Petcash who played at Boston University and he and I kind of into just the division one summer basketball program and how much guys are on campus and the workouts and just all this stuff.

And you talked a little bit about how man, they just, I think back to when I was playing and. I got done with my season as a division one player, and they handed me like a two page, little ditto worksheet, man. Here’s your workout. We’ll see you back here in September. Yeah. And now those guys are on campus.

You’re basically on campus 11 months of the year. And you know, if you’re not, if you’re not built for that, and even guys that, that are built for it and some can ACEs to me, it seems like, man, that is, that is a lot of time listening to some, one guy chirping in your ear. All the time. It feels like man, you could, you could use a break so I can totally understand your point where look, you have to understand what college athletics is all about and it’s not, it’s not all fun and games.

There’s great parts of it. And it’s a lot of fun, but I could speak from firsthand experience that it’s, there’s a grind aspect to it too, that you better be willing to put the time in, in order to do it. And so, to be able to understand for you guys, to be able to understand a kid’s mentality and then also be able to help the family understand that, look, this isn’t just, Hey, we’re just we’re just rolling balls out and playing some ball on the playground.

We’re, we’re actually trying to, we’re actually trying to get you somewhere where you can use basketball to help you get an education, but the there’s, there’s some work that’s going to be involved in making that happen.

[00:59:47] Jason Franzen: You know, tthat’s funny. You brought that, you said how much I grind is we try to get our players because it’s a gap year for them.

So they’re not going to if they have over a three, oh we don’t mandate they them going to school. So some of ’em don’t. And coach and I are always telling ’em dude, you have to get up, have a routine. You know, if we don’t have a morning workout, you have to get up. And, and I don’t want you playing video games till three in the morning and then sleep until noon.

You have to get up, you have to go do a shooting, workout with yourself, get a job, go work. You had one player who was he was walking horses. I tell the story all the time. He was walking horses at the local horse track Tampa downs. And he had to be there at like four what?

4:30 Pete? 4:45? Yeah,

[01:00:38] Pete Alexandrou: 4:30 It started at, he was five to 10 was his work schedule.

[01:00:41] Jason Franzen: Yeah. And when we had to work five him, but he had to be there at like 4:45, every single morning, seven days a week. now we went away to tournaments. We would go to Orlando or Jacksonville or Gainesville, whatever. He would come up with us and then leave after the game to come home.

So he can sleep at home to walk the horses and then drive immediately when he is done to meet us back up at the game and then drive. So, and you know, his mom his, his, his mom’s like can he do this blah, blah. I’m like, this is a great story. You know, when we, he ended up going to play at a division three school in Maine and the coach was like, is he going to he’s from Florida?

Is he going to be okay? You know, coming up here, I’m like, coach, this is what he, this is what he sacrificed just to play basketball. And he, he he’s up there. He’s in his second year. He’s had a great two years. Coaches love him. He’s having a he loves it up there. I mean, that’s what he sacrificed to, to, to, to play college basketball.

And so we tell our guys like, look we want to hear what you’re doing during the day. That’s part of your story that we can sell. You know, I don’t want to hear you just sitting around playing video games. I want, I want you to tell me we had the kid this year, who’s driving an hour and a half to and from practice every single they’re on time every day that’s, that’s the stories that we have to sell to, to coaches.

That’s, that’s how much that they, these guys want to play college basketball. So, so yeah,

[01:02:20] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I mean, I could see where if you could relay a story about a kid that demonstrates their work ethic, their dedication, that’s something that when you look at the transfer portal, just as an example, and you look at how that’s impacting high school kids.

And so if you’re a college coach, you got a kid in the transfer portal, right. And that kid comes from another school where they’ve already had success. They’ve already sort of proven that they can. Handle the grind on whatever level it is that they were versus an unknown was a high school kid who, yeah.

Maybe even that kid has the history of having a great work ethic. You still don’t know until you get ’em into your program until you get ’em out to the college, do they, do they adjust to the academics, the social piece of it? Everything it’s tough. You can see where, yeah. It’s just for kids in this little, a window where, until things normalize in another year or two with the extra year of eligibility and all this, but that work ethic piece is something that look you.

And I both know that the value of understanding that when you bring a kid into your program, that, that kid’s going to show up for the things that you have, they’re going to show up on time. They’re going to work hard. They’re going to be a great teammate. All the things you guys have been talking about. If you can get that message across to the kids and then conversely, they demonstrate that, and then you can show it to coaches, man.

That’s there’s, there’s no better selling point. I mean, obviously you have to have a certain level of talent to play at whatever level it is. You’re going to play at the college game, but we all know that those intangible pieces. look, if you have a team that has equal talent, you have 15 talented guys on team X and 15 talented teams on guy on team Y and team X has a bunch of guys that has great intangibles and team.

Y has a bunch of knucklehead. I mean, huge difference in what kind of success you can have.

[01:03:58] Jason Franzen: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:04:02] Mike Klinzing: Talk a little bit about what makes you go, go ahead. Go ahead.

[01:04:04] Jason Franzen: Go ahead. Go ahead. And no, no, no, no, no. I’m probably going to even go into a different aspect, so you’re probably going to touch on it.

Go ahead. all right.

[01:04:12] Mike Klinzing: So my next, so my next point was, let’s talk a little bit about what makes you guys unique and let’s talk, first of all, on the basketball floor. Let’s talk a little bit about how you, you go about running your program, what you do actually out on the floor and Jason, why don’t you take what you guys like to do offensively out on the floor, and then Pete, you can jump in and talk a little bit about your defense and how you guys try to run your program.

So it prepares guys for the next level, the.

[01:04:41] Jason Franzen: So actually this is exactly the, the tangent I was going to go into. Yeah, we, what we try to do is, is another point of our program is to build basketball IQ. And so I’ve been fortunate and, and coach Pete as well we get to I’ve known David Thorpe since I was 14 years old.

And so him doing what he does he sits and watches pro games every, every day, every morning he gets up and he breaks down different games at the NBA European level G league level. And so what I at Dunedin, I was always thinking, how can I make the game? Just our guys just play organically.

And I tried to do it in just me being me just. How do I do this? And I kind of did it in a small way. And I talked to David when we were at Clearwater high school. And then over the countryside, when we kind of went back there with, with me and Pete and at countryside, I was able to run the offense and Pete ran the defense for this, this head coach that we worked for.

And we incorporated all these different concepts of just these basic actions that the kids, the kids run organically, and each action, the kids make a read based upon what the defense is doing. And we can piece these and the kids can put these actions together. You know, and it’s kind of like they’re running a play, right?

So it’s, it’s, it’s where modern basketball is. Now, if you watch NBA, if you watch high level college basketball, that’s kind of what they’re doing. They’re not coming down every time and running a play, they’re running just a bunch of actions and, and the offenses are reacting. And reading it in a way that how the defense is playing it.

And then, so that’s what we’re trying to teach the kids. It’s very, very hard at first you know, building IQ, because most of our kids come from a high school program where they come down the court and they run a set play every time. And so we try to give in that free flow thought process where we.

We’re trying to get them to read the game you know, get into an action, whether it’s you know, a, a pick and roll, a DHO, a flip action. But then they can kind of put these actions together. And our biggest key is obviously pace of the game we want to, we want to have a good pace. They want to make sure the court is spaced out properly.

But other than that, there’s really no rules. If a kid makes a pass, he can cut and go screen away. He can make the catch shoot, make the catch go right into a screen and roll. You know, it’s really it’s really, these are all options that coach teaches.

[01:07:33] Pete Alexandrou: Like they’re all options. So like he said, like with our coaching and our teaching and the repetition, our hopes is that they’re going to start making these plays organically. Like, like France said,

[01:07:47] Jason Franzen: So we’re doing a lot of in practice. We do a lot of small sided games two on two, three on three you know, more so than four and four and four on and four and four and five on five to get these guys to make the, the proper reads, but they’re doing all these actions on their own.

The only time I call a play is out of a free throw timeout or dead ball and, and my play calls are just putting actions together so we can be in a timeout. And if I see the defense is, is doing something and I’ll put actions together that we haven’t necessarily practiced, but the kids know, right.

These three actions we’ve run, but I’m drawing ’em up here. This is what we’re going to do. And they understand it you, and I know, and everyone, all the coaches listening you can’t just draw a play up from either blue in the huddle and have your high school kids go out and run it. That’s probably not going to happen.

It’s something that you practiced over and over and over and over and over again. So with these different actions that we run, I can put actions in place out of a time out that we may not have run in that combination, but because we’ve done it over and over and over again, they know what to do.

And it’s very cool to see because we can really change what we’re doing on the fly. And, and actually what’s really cool to see is how our guys will adjust themselves on the fly while they’re playing. So for example, if we’re running a lot of screen and rolls with our five and our, our one and our five can shoot and they’re they’re doing a hard hedge on a screen and roll that our, our five notices, he starts ghosting it on his own and slips the screen and gets it wide open three.

And it’s not something that we call, it’s something that they’ve read during the game. So it’s, it’s really cool to teach and, and it’s great when our kids go away to college, you know David Thorpe’s son, Max Thorpe is a walk on preferred walk on a Florida State. And you know, his first year there, their offense, he knew exactly it was different terminology, but he knew exactly what they were doing.

And he understood everything because it’s, it’s really the same thing that we were doing in high school for him. So it’s our guys have a good transition when they get to college. I think. So that’s, I, hopefully I explained it. It’s easier to do it visually.

[01:10:16] Mike Klinzing: No, you did. Absolutely. I mean, I get it. So the question that I always like to ask when we talk about, obviously this is from my own philosophy and from the way that basketball is trending, everything that you just described, Jason is.

Look, we’re teaching the kids how to play. We’re trying to build their IQ. We’re trying to build their ability to react in a dynamic environment. We’re not just trying to make ’em robots and have ’em follow because that way, when they know how to play, you can plug ’em into any system at the college level and they can be successful.

So in the process of doing that in practice, one of the, of things that you talked about, small sided games, and then what I always wonder about, and this is something that myself, as a coach, even when I’m coaching my own kids and their travel basketball, and I’m trying to get this balance of, I want to teach ’em how to play and I want to be able to instruct, and yet at the same time, I want there to be a flow to what’s happening.

So how do you be balance and think about letting them go through the actions and make decisions, make mistakes, go through what they see, what they don’t see. And yet you’re still able to. Teach and interject, how do you balance how much you talk versus how much you let them experiment and figure things out in the context of whatever it is, the small side of game, the practice drill that you’re putting together for them.

How do you make that balance?

[01:11:41] Jason Franzen: Less talk more action. I can get really wordy and talk but I’ve realized the best teacher is making mistakes. And so we, Pete and I preach and practice mistakes are awesome. We love mistakes. Cause that means mistakes. You got guys thinking they’re trying, they’re pushing themselves.

Now if it’s at stake, a guy has made four, five times in a row. That’s a different thing. And that’s where we have to stop, stop things, adjust, talk, discuss. But we, we, we encourage mistakes, especially early on in practice to get guys to think and read. And that’s why our cognitive training that we do with, with tuck Taylor is so important because he gets our guys to, to think faster.

And so cognitive training is huge. Now I think in basketball because the game is so fast paced and because of the way it’s gone with this read and react stuff. But, but yeah, mistakes are great. And we want them, I want more action, less talk. Pete can probably Pete can probably talk, touch on that too, but yeah, we, we, we want to practice and then we don’t stop him with every single mistake.

We kind of let him go, let him go, let him go. And then we’ll stop and talk and say, okay, this is what happened here. This is what happened here. And obviously this mistakes keeps getting made. We’re, we’re building a drill immediately and we’re stopping a three on three practice and we’re turning into a drill because we made the same mistake three or four times.

And we, we build drills on the flying practice. All the time

[01:13:22] Mike Klinzing: I’ve been there. I believe so. All right, Pete, you want to jump in on the defensive side of it?

[01:13:29] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah. So defensively, it’s a very similar concept. We like to, I mean, pace, we like to play fast anyways. And, and defensively, we’re all about switching it up and coach, do you know when you start a Clearwater, like kind of gave me taught me this number system where, you know like a 50, 55 is half court and then 75 is something else.

Then a hundred is something else. And basically it follows like a scheme of the second, the last number on what we do on the full and half. And so with that terminology, we’re able to switch on the fly. We go full court, man. Then the next time we’ll zone a zone press you, then we’ll play a little bit of zone on the half court.

Then we’ll show full court press, and then we’ll trap you on the half court. You know, all these different calls, one we still want to like win games and get the kids go. We, we don’t ever want, have to worry about it. Like scouting a team in depth. Like they should play to our pace, right?

If, if a team presses us, we should be fine with it because we do that at practice and on the switch side, if they’re not doing it in practice all the time and they want to play slow, but now we’re dictating them. We don’t want them to run their offense. So there’s a lot of, it’s a little bit more talking on defense is, well, it’s probably the same early on because we want to, we have different principles.

How we, where we want the traps, how we want it. Like all these things to think about, like help the helper rotation. And it’s all small sided. Again, one on one full court, one on one on with situation two on two, three on three. Half court one side of the floor, other side of the floor, whatever it may be.

But it it’s really about just continuously changing the defenses, picking up the pace and getting them to like really enjoy and, and, and, and, and fly around. And also we want to play a lot of defenses because we don’t know where they’re going to go to college. So we want them to be comfortable. If a team plays more of like a one through one or, oh, that team runs a press similar to what we did last year, I can pick up on this.

Oh, that’s similar terminology. Like we’ll guard, ball screens, four different ways in every game.

[01:15:35] Jason Franzen: Just by a call. He’s changed it three times in possession.

[01:15:38] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah, we do it in possessions. You know, we’ll blitz it. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll hard hedge. We’ll low hedge. We’ll switch it like. And it’s just like call and it, yeah.

Keep, keep them doing it. And, and so we’re just on the, like, just like we’re building the IQ on basketball on the, on the, on the offensive end. It’s a hundred percent the same thing on the defensive end.

[01:15:58] Mike Klinzing: When you put all that together and you start thinking about building up a player’s ability to read situations.

I think so much of what players think about is when I have the ball, right? When you go to an individual trainer, if a player has a trainer, what do they spend? 99% of their time on the balls, in their hands. And yet what I just heard you guys describe and talk about, and we all know as coaches, that there’s very few players, even if you’re the player that has the ball in your hands all the time, even if you’re Luca Doncic, if you’re LeBron, right.

And you have the ball in your hands all the time, you still relative to the amount of time you’re on the floor, you really have it very little. And I think that. Teaching the defensive end of the floor and then conversely teaching how to play without the ball offensively. That’s one of the things that I think is the most difficult to get kids, to understand how important it is, and then also get them to make the right reads.

Like I often think it’s easier to teach a kid how to make the right read with the ball than it is to know, Hey, look, if you just would’ve cut this way, or you would’ve seen the guy turn his head and you could’ve gone back door or screen. Right.

[01:17:14] Pete Alexandrou: Right. Exactly.

[01:17:15] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Right. Or what angle should I take to screen?

Whether I’m screening on the ball or screening off the ball? Like there’s so many little things like that, that I think that so get overlooked. And that’s one of the things that I personally, as a coach have always found the most difficult to teach because as a player. I guess when I think back to myself as a player, which is a long, long time ago now, but you think back to that time and you’re like, I just kind of, I just kind of knew or felt like I knew where I should be.

And so when you see players who don’t intuitively kind of know where to be, those are always the hardest players for me to coach.

[01:17:54] Jason Franzen: It’s tough. You know, because you’re thinking, man, how do you not see this? But then being a teacher I think it helps me a ton. It does. Yeah. You’re, I’ve been teaching 23 years.

So you got all these kids with different levels of education and what they know and what they don’t know. I just assume they don’t know anything and you know, Pete and I really start off in being super basic like. Real basic, like kind of explaining just in a drill, this is exactly, and we are we’re you talked about being wordy.

We’re wordy at the beginning of the season in preseason talking about drills and breaking ’em down and discussing them. And then once we get into that and the kids, the kids understand, then we start letting ’em do a little bit. But yeah, it’s, it’s super important about off the ball. Like we talk all the time about we work on our pin down action, pin downs, pin ins, slipping, the screen slipping seal and kids just don’t get it a lot.

So it’s huge we talk the I think the most, then we look at the five guys on the floor the dunker spot is probably the toughest position to, to teach because that’s a player that never has the ball, his hands, or hardly ever. But he may be the most important because he’s making about five or six different reads that he can go through in one movement.

As far as in our offense, he can, he can go ball screen, he can set a flex screen. He can duck in for a post. He can sit back, he can, he can screen out off a pin. And so it’s a lot of different reasons for that individual. And so that is probably the toughest guy, him being off the ball so much. But it helps them a ton once they get to college and they’re still playing that same position.

But yeah, it’s hard and you know, we definitely have sacrificed wins to teach these guys how to play better. And that’s kind of a sacrifice that we’re willing to make, because you know, Pete, and I don’t have much of an ego at all. That’s why it doesn’t matter. Who stands homework, coaching. You know, we kind of make decision, like what’s more important to this game, offense or defense.

If it’s defense, he’s standing, if it’s offense, then I’m standing. Usually it’s defense, so it’s most time Pete’s standing, but I mean, it’s true, but I mean you know, so because we don’t have much ego, we’re not, we’re, we’re totally fine with sacrificing a win to teach these guys how to play better, because we know it’s going to help them out in the long run.

[01:20:35] Pete Alexandrou: we all go ahead. I just, I, if I may, I want to, like, you kind of said like, what does it look like? Right. And coach Franzen is just like perfectly, but here’s some like examples when like the, the ball is moving on offense and it’s just bang, bang, bang flying around. Right. We get, when we buy Clearwater six years ago, wherever it was, we had seven kids averaging, double figures.

Yeah. In high school, we had numerous games where everyone on our team scored. Yeah. Because everyone bought in and there was, and, and we had like nine leading scores throughout the year for games. So you couldn’t really like if you, if you take away quote unquote, our two better offensive players.

We had a whole list of kids lined up, ready to do it because they knew what they needed to do. And on the flip side, defensively we were playing the number three rank team in the state at a shootout over Christmas. And we are just flipping presses on ’em nonstop. They like to play slow.

They like to run sets and all that. They didn’t run a single set the first half. And we’re up by 22. Like everyone was like, what is going on? And my, my last story is one of my favorite is actually a kid that did a postgrad for us when we were at countryside the year before. We beat him pretty good on our senior night.

Like we were up at like 35, like early in the third, we just like smoked him. But when we talked to him, when he played for us like, how was it? Because, because we were, cause we were doing the same thing defensively and he said, he goes honesty. Like none of us wanted to dribble the ball past half court.

We didn’t know when the trap was coming. Like that’s the like the big picture, like those kind of things when like everyone buys it on both sides.

[01:22:15] Mike Klinzing: And I would think the other thing that goes along with that too, right. Is you guys talked about it earlier that you might have a kid that played a particular position in high school and now they’re coming into your program and you’re like, okay, we have to transition you from being in the post to being out on the wing or we have to transition you from the w to be in a point guard or whatever it might be so that you can be prepared for the next level.

And so there, you’re talking about. Not only is the kid going to just make normal mistakes as they’re stepping up a level and being in a different environment. But they’re also playing a position that maybe they’ve spent very, very little time at. And so, as you’ve talked about that progression of, Hey, early on, we’ve have to talk a little bit more.

We’ve have to walk you through it. And then as the season goes on on, as those players start to get more comfortable in their new roles, I’m sure things that sort of even out and, and begin to go in the direction that you’re hoping they’re going to go.

[01:23:06] Jason Franzen: It is. And, and, and the kids definitely at, at the beginning of our I would say season, but we really start in July.

Kids are like, all right.  They’re not bought in completely yet. But when they, once they realize like we’re doing everything that we do is going to benefit them individually, they buy into this whole concept and they also realize too on offense, at least. It’s super fun when everyone touches the ball.

When that ball goes from second side to third side to four side it’s awesome because everyone’s getting touches. Everyone has a chance to make a read. They understand it’s not about just getting buckets. It’s about it’s about making the right read. I mean, I’ve, I’ve had, I’ve sold guys on for scholarships that they made, right.

Reads off of a, a hockey assist getting a bunch of hockey assist making the pass to get the pass, to get a score. And so kids start buying into that and it’s fun basketball too, you know?

[01:24:10] Mike Klinzing: So you need to put that you need to put that on a sign and post it in every gym am in America.

yeah, yeah. Seriously. Right. It’s it’s fun. It’s fun. When the ball moves and everybody gets a chance to touch it. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, boy, you see so many, you see so many games players, teams that, that that’s is, that is the exact Opposite of what you see. And even if you see a kid who’s super talented, that that just scores all the time and, but has the ball in their hands and doesn’t give the ball up and you can just see their teammates.

You can just see their shoulders sag. And it’s just not a fun look, you and I both know anybody who’s ever played the game of basketball. I say this all the time when I don’t really play my much anymore, but you get out on a pickup game and you play with a guy and within like three minutes I never ever want to play with this guy again.

I would never ever want to play with him because he’s just wanted dribble between his legs, 14 times and James harden. Yeah, there you go. There’s there’s Hey, there’s Jason. So yeah, I mean, you just like, it’s just not, who wants to play, who wants to play? Who wants to play with a guy like that? Nobody. And immediately as a player who those guys are.

[01:25:19] Jason Franzen: And, and you know what college coaches don’t want to see that either I can’t sell you to coach when you’re pounding the life out of the basketball for 20 seconds in the shot clock. And then you make a pass to get us into our offense, or then you take a shot, you know? And that’s tough because a lot of those guys that we get, that’s what they’re allow to do in high school, in many case, especially these guards that we’re getting.

And so it’s a, it’s a tough, like that’s, that’s their muscle memory, like their brain and their body. That’s what they know like this is, this is what’s been successful for me. And we try to sell them well, it’s not been successful for you because you’re not in college right now.  so yep. Do it our way and we’ll get you into college.

And so they kind of buy in. The outside noise is tough sometimes. Like we talked about before right earlier. But it’s a total buy-in process, man, like

[01:26:14] Pete Alexandrou: We’re not screamer yellers. We will hold you accountable. Like we want to get the best out of you. Like it, it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t coach the out of you every single time we saw you.

But like, we also try to like, build those relationships. Like, you know what I mean? Our kids are still three years ago, they’re still contacting us checking in they’re still asking, Hey, I’m back time for summer. You guys doing runs come in. So eventually what the buy-in comes like the trust and, and kind of like we’re new coaches and they only have us for a year.

So not even a year 10, 8, 9, 10 months, whatever it is. And it’s important for us to like, make them know and let them know that like, we really do care. This is why. Like, we’re not, it’s so cliche, but like coaches said it over and over again. It’s so right. No, one’s asking how many points you scored.

I mean, we had a six, nine freak athlete. That’s shot 46% from three last year. And I got, we got three separate emails from schools saying, coach, he’s got all the skill in the world, but I can’t take a chance on a, on a full scholarship. If I don’t know if the kid has a motor. You, yeah, that’s all he said.

That was it. That was, that was, that was the breaking point. So, and, and on the flip side this year, we had the little guard that we talked about and he bought in, he started defending full court, making his little shots when he was open, making the right passes and coaches fell in love with it. And he was scoring like six points a game,

[01:27:39] Mike Klinzing: Those intangibles coaches, I think coaches know that players don’t always recognize and understand that.

It’s not just about your ability to put the ball in the basket. There’s so much more to the game, especially when you start looking at. and it goes back to what I said a minute ago about there’s very few guys at any level of basketball that just get to have the ball in their hands all the time. So you better be able to do other things on the floor.

And especially in today’s game, you look at how skilled players are compared to you in 10 or 15 years ago, the players are just, I, I watched a, my son, we played in a little open gym with some of his AAU teammates tonight. And the way that kids shoot the ball is just incredible. I mean, it’s, it’s absolutely incredible.

And the handle that they have, and I look at them, I’m like, man, I don’t know if I could do some of this stuff. And I was a college player and these guys are like sophomores in high school and that’s right. But by the same token, like, because everybody can do that, then you better be able to do some other things besides just be able to shake dudes and hit threes.

You have to be able to do some other things in order to be able to get on the floor, especially when you’re talking about college basketball.

[01:28:46] Jason Franzen: Yeah. Well talking about that, how talented. You know, we’re usually the least talented team because we play teams that most teams we play have guys from all around the country and we have Tampa kids.

Right. So we’re usually the least talented team on the court. So we need to do things a little bit better than what they do. I mean, we played against great players. You know, the, the, the Murray brothers at Illinois are at Iowa right now. They were playing a DME postgrad. You know, we played against them.

Kenyon Martin Jr. Was at IMG.  

[01:29:24] Pete Alexandrou: Rick Reed is at LSU. Yeah. Williams at duke, Michigan. Yeah.

[01:29:32] Jason Franzen: I mean,Ssprayer. Yeah. Yeah. Springer. Like we’re not, we’re playing against like usually the teams we play against there’s at least one or two division, one level. Guys on the floor. You know, so we have to play the right way and our guys have to know because you know, we don’t have that usually.

You know, we’ve been lucky to guys bought into our system, but they have to buy into our system. Because if not, if you dribble the ball for 30 25 seconds of shot clock, you’re not getting a shot off, you know? So you know, so it’s sometimes the struggle. We’ve lost some games because you know, our guys have kind of fallen back into old habits.

That usually happens early in the season. They fall back into high school habits dribble, dribble, catch, and dribble catch and dribble, dribble, dribble, dribble and it’s kind of stand, stand, stand. So that’s when we have to show film and kind of break it down, like, guys, we need to do this differently.

[01:30:36] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. It makes a ton of sense. We have blown by an hour and a half and I just looked at the time and I’m like, oh my gosh, we are at an hour and a half. So here’s what I want to do. This has been awesome. I want you guys to finish up by giving some advice out there for any players or parents who may be listening, or a lot of our audiences, high school coaches, a high school coach who might be listening, who maybe wants to give some advice to players about what kind of things they should look for.

If they’re considering a post-grad year. And what they should look for in a postgrad program. So maybe let’s finish there with just some questions or some advice you would have for players, parents who might be considering a postgrad year, what should they be looking for? What should they be thinking about

[01:31:22] Pete Alexandrou: Pete?

Fir first, most like you want to get to know the coaches you want get to know the program, what are they do? And I mean, you’re there for one reason is try to get a college scholarship. So you want to know where they’ve placed kids where they’ve actually placed kids. You want to know what are they offering?

We film every single game with a very high tech camera that shoots from above breaks down all the film, everything for us we, we play teams that. Ask for our film after the game, because they don’t record games. What kind of skill work do you they do? What kind of what are they doing to, to get the next level?

What kind of exposure are they doing? Are they just posting on Twitter? Are they just calling some coaching friends they have, or are they just like putting in the absolute leg work that we afterwards and, and, and it’s really asked questions and we’re also, and Fran will say this we’ve guided kids that we don’t even coach like, like if, if, if anyone has questions that can reach out to us on our Twitter account or, or whatever it is, but like.

You want to know what, what is a track record of the school that you’re going to? Wh how, where and who do they play and what are the basic, what is the culture? Is it to win games? Is it to help my son get to college? Is it to help him be more accountable on and off the court? Like, take it seriously? Like those are all the things that, that I think are truly important.

[01:32:47] Jason Franzen: Yeah. To add to that. You want to know how they’re going to handle your recruitment. You know, I’ve had kids come to me from other programs, say, Hey you know, coach can you help helped me out? The postgrad I played for, they handed me a, a flash drive with my games, or they gave me a huddle account with my games.

I have to make my own highlights. And I have to email coaches myself. You know, to me talking to college coaches, a lot of college coaches don’t answer emails from parents or players. They just, they just don’t. It’s like, well, if the coach isn’t work, if the coach isn’t going to email me, then it’s the kid’s not worth it.

So we handle all our recruitment for the kids. So we tell the kids if you’re not going to go with us, ask them how they’re going to handle your recruitment, are you doing yourself? Are they going to all for you? Another thing is how long they’ve been in existence and how many guys that they’ve landed in college.

And not only that, but how much are those guys paying to go to school? You know, because if you look at our Twitter account, we don’t, we don’t post off first at all. And we have our kids not post offers. So if a, if a school offers one of our guys, our guys don’t post it on Twitter, on social media. The only time we post anything is if a kid.

Commits and signs. Then we’ll do a graphic and, and the kid will post it and we’ll post it. But you know, we want it to be a legitimate offer a committable offer and something to where it’s not going to be financially you know, a financial burden on them and their just to play basketball. So they want to ask those questions like, yeah, those, these kids, these kids went to school, but you know, how much are they paying on average?

Are they paying 10 grand, a year, five grand a year, four grand a year? You know, because like I said, our goal is to get it under a, a state college education. If you’re just a normal student, that’s our, that’s our ultimate goal. Because if, and if, if we can’t do that, then we’ll tell the family and the kids like, Hey, your best option is, is to go to a state school just to be a student.

So that’s, that’s another big question that I would ask you. And I think that’s I think, I think those are the two biggest things that we’ve seen in the postgrad realm that and, and, and Pete’s right, you guys can, kids can reach out to us. A kid reach out to me last week and said he was looking to play Juco in Florida.

And so I just sent him a list of all the junior college coaches and their emails just to help the kid out. So if a kid wants to and his dad’s going to email the coaches and whatever. So if, yeah, if a kid wants to just, just to help get help we’re more, no willing to help or to talk to ’em about their recruitment process.

We have no problem with that. Either

[01:35:41] Mike Klinzing: Fellas, this has been great stuff it’s been. First of all in enlightening conversation, learned a ton about post-grad basketball. And then just the willingness that you guys have to be able to share your knowledge with us, with our audience. It’s been great before we get out, give people an opportunity to tell ’em where they can reach out to you share social media website, email, whatever you guys feel comfortable or want to share.

So people can reach out to you learn more about what you guys are doing.

[01:36:10] Pete Alexandrou: Yeah, so our Twitter is @CAI_postgrad. And if you go there, our individual Twitters are both in the little top section or whatever the bio and then our phone numbers are there. So @CAI_postgrad is where you can contact us to the easiest.

We’re working on finishing up our website soon, which is called third side basketball academy, which is like our business where we run it out of.

[01:36:39] Jason Franzen: No, our website and, and the Twitter, account’s the best way. Like, I don’t think we even have to follow with our Twitter account.

You can just message us and we’ll we’re starting to go through, a bunch of, a bunch of once I went through a bunch of today, I know Pete’s been going through ’em too. So you know it, if we don’t get to you immediately, we’ll definitely get to you. But yeah, that’s the best way to get in touch with us

[01:37:04] Mike Klinzing: Guys cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on with us.

Like I said, it’s been a great conversation. We really appreciate it. We appreciate coach Thorpe connecting us with the two of you. It’s been a lot of fun to have a conversation and look forward to staying in touch as we move forward here and to everyone out there. Thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode.  Thanks.