ANDY FARRELL – UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE HEAD COACH & RECRUITING COORDINATOR – EPISODE 711

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

Email – afarrell2@udayton.edu

Twitter – @CoachAFarrell

Andy Farrell is the Special Assistant to the Head Coach & Recruiting Coordinator at the University of Dayton.  After serving as the UD basketball program’s Director of Scouting and Program Development for two seasons, Farrell moved into his new role in the 2019-2020 season.

Andy has spent time as a Director of Basketball Operations, Assistant Coach and Recruiting Coordinator at DePaul University, Longwood University, and Southwest Mississippi Community College. Farrell is the Co-Founder and Senior Executive Director of Rising Coaches, a membership-based community for coaches that connects, develops and facilitates career advancement for its members.

A native of Dayton and 2007 UD grad, Farrell he served as a student manager for the men’s basketball program, as well as a marketing director and camp coordinator for the women’s program. Farrell then headed to VCU where he earned his master’s degree in Sports Leadership/Coaching and worked as a graduate assistant coach and video coordinator under current Dayton Head Coach Anthony Grant.

If you’re looking to improve your coaching please consider joining the Hoop Heads Mentorship Program.  We believe that having a mentor is the best way to maximize your potential and become a transformational coach. By matching you up with one of our experienced mentors you’ll develop a one on one relationship that will help your coaching, your team, your program, and your mindset.  The Hoop Heads Mentorship Program delivers mentoring services to basketball coaches at all levels through our team of experienced Head Coaches. Find out more at hoopheadspod.com or shoot me an email directly mike@hoopheadspod.com

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram @hoopheadspod for the latest updates on episodes, guests, and events from the Hoop Heads Pod and check out the Hoop Heads Podcast Network for more great basketball content including The Green Light, Courtside Culture and our team focused NBA Podcasts:  Knuck if you Buck, The 305 Culture, & Lakers Fast Break We’re looking for more NBA podcasters interested in hosting their own show centered on a particular team. Email us info@hoopheadspod.com if you’re interested in learning more and bringing your talent to our network.

Be sure to jot down some notes as you listen to this episode with Andy Farrell, Special Assistant to the Head Coach & Recruiting Coordinator at the University of Dayton. 

What We Discuss with Andy Farrell

• Growing up with Dayton Basketball and competing with his brothers
• The Dayton players he looked up to as a kid
• Being known for taking charges in high school
• Trying to walk on at the University of Dayton and being offered a manager position after the tryout
• Knowing that he wanted to coach after his first day as a student manager
• Coaching AAU Basketball in the summer while he was a student at Dayton
• “The more we can positively reinforce and encourage people to do the right thing or encourage them through mistakes, I think that’s huge.”
• “A crucial part of player development is making mistakes.”
• “One great thing about my time as being a manager is I had the opportunity to put what I learned into action right at the end of the season with my AAU team.”
• What he learned as a manager driving assistant coaches to their scouts
• “There’s two coaches going out recruiting, so you’re driving both of them and you can just be a fly on the wall to their conversations.”
• “A piece of advice I give to a lot of coaches as well is if you have a mentor, pick their brains on how they would approach you getting a job.”
• Building his network as a young coach and how that helped him land a GA job at VCU under Anthony Grant
• “Everything that I learned as a manager, I was able to just roll over to becoming a more efficient GA.”
• “Something can look really, really good on paper or on a dry erase board, but there’s bodies and there’s space and there’s timing and there’s other people there.”
• “Your team is constantly changing.  The game is constantly changing.”
• “While I’m putting together scouting edits for our staff, I’m finding stuff that I really, really like.”
• Why he prefers learning from FIBA games as opposed to the NBA
• “Taking opportunities to reflect after wins or losses to just try to detach my emotion from the actual game.”
• Getting reps at the JUCO level
• “It also helped like redefine my why in terms of doing this for the players, using the game of basketball as a vehicle to teach life lessons and to better the individual to be the best version of themselves.”
• Returning home to coach at Dayton and his day to day responsibilities
• “Analytics is taking numbers and turning it into data, data into information and information into coaching.”
• “How quickly can you take whatever your belief is and turn it into coaching? That is going to be a successful analytics program.”
• “Our staff is very, very elite at is figuring out how can we still get player development within the confines of a three on 0 drill that’s not designed for player development.”
• Understanding player rest and recovery
• The impact of NIL at Dayton
• “We’d rather be wrong on the kids that didn’t commit to us than the kids that did commit to us.”
• “I think that those three things you have to do. One is your, what is your need? Two is do they fit your style of play? And three, do they fit you, your program and your culture?”
• “Can you be good when what you do best isn’t at your best?”
• “If they’re not the best player on your team, can they still fit in and be fine and thrive in that role?”
• “Letting players know where they stand, right, wrong or indifferent is what they need. That’s what they want.”
• Starting Rising Coaches and what the organization has grown into today
• “We’re competing against our standard, and that’s going to enable success for us.”
• Work life balance and the importance of family

Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

Become a Patron!

We’re excited to partner with Dr. Dish, the world’s best shooting machine! Mention the Hoop Heads Podcast when you place your order and get $300 off a brand new state of the art Dr. Dish Shooting Machine!

Prepare like the pros with the all new FastDraw and FastScout. FastDraw has been the number one play diagramming software for coaches for years, and now with it’s integrated web platform, coaches have the ability to add video to plays and share them directly to their players Android and iPhones via their mobile app. Coaches can also create customized scouting reports,  upload and send game and practice film straight to the mobile app. Your players and staff have never been as prepared for games as they will after using FastDraw & FastScout. You’ll see quickly why FastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel.  Use Promo code HHP15 to save 15%

Your first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job.  A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies and, most of all, helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants.

The key to landing a new coaching job is to demonstrate to the hiring committee your attention to detail, level of preparedness, and your professionalism.  Not only does a coaching portfolio allow you to exhibit these qualities, it also allows you to present your personal philosophies on coaching, leadership, and program development in an organized manner.

The Coaching Portfolio Guide is an instructional, membership-based website that helps you develop a personalized portfolio.  Each section of the portfolio guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner.  The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify, and add to your personal portfolio.

United Basketball Plus has over 3,000 plays, 45 Deep Dive Courses with some of the best minds in the game including Tyler Coston, Paul Kelleher, Tobin Anderson, Dave Love and more. You can also view United Basketball Clinics, and receive 50% off in-person clinics. United Basketball Plus partnered with Jordan and Joe Stasyzyn from Unleashed Potential to create their Skill Development Curriculum. United Basketball Plus is a one stop shop to help you grow as a coach, leader and culture builder. Use the code ‘clinic’ and receive an annual membership for $50.  

THANKS, ANDY FARRELL

If you enjoyed this episode with Andy Farrell let him know by clicking on the link below and sending him a quick shoutout on Twitter:

Click here to thank Andy Farrell on Twitter!

Click here to let Mike & Jason know about your number one takeaway from this episode!

And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly NBA episodes, drop us a line at mike@hoopheadspod.com.

TRANSCRIPT FOR ANDY FARRELL – UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE HEAD COACH & RECRUITING COORDINATOR – EPISODE 711

[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 the University of Dayton, Andy Farrell, special assistant to the head coach and recruiting coordinator for the Dayton Flyers. Andy, welcome to the Hoops Pod.

[00:00:16] Andy Farrell: I appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me, Jason, Mike, you guys do a great job and appreciate being on, man,

[00:00:22] Mike Klinzing:  Well, thank you. It’s always nice to hear kind words and we are equally as excited to have you on the pod with us tonight and dive into all the things that you’ve been able to do in your coaching career. Want to start by going back in time to when you were a kid, Talk a little bit about some of your earliest memories with the game of basketball.

[00:00:41] Andy Farrell: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think I probably started playing probably in the first grade at least competitively. So I have a twin brother and then I have a brother that’s 16 months older than us. And so, I mean, we’re essentially all three the same age. And just growing up in the Dayton area, Dayton basketball is everything.

So I’m born and raised here in Dayton, Ohio. I remember going to games just, just as a kid, supposedly. I went to my first game at three months old. Obviously I don’t remember that, but Dayton basketball is everything. So you grow up, you’re watching games, you’re going to games. And then we actually had cousins that are a few years older than us and they were playing basketball at a place called the Dayton Salvation Army in downtown Dayton.

And the leagues started when you entered the fourth grade and our cousins were probably in the fifth or sixth grade at the time. And we were just in the first grade or second grade, whatever it was. And we were too young to play in the leagues, but they made exceptions for us. So my twin brother, myself and my older brother, we all played up like multiple years.

Just because we wanted to play ball. We wanted to do the same things our older cousins did. And we just started playing ball and ever since then we kind of got all hooked on it and loved playing the game. Obviously. We were looking up to our cousins, all three of us being the same age.

We had backyard basketball games that my brothers and I, we would play all the time. When my parents built a hoop in the backyard for us and put it in. So, just one of those things, man, we just, it became a love affair for us, especially in the city of Dayton. That is Basketball all the time, and we just started playing in first, second, third, fourth grade.

Eventually in the fourth grade, we got caught up to our age group and we just kept playing at the Salvation Army. We played on the in-house rec league teams. Played for some of their All Star teams which was pretty much what it was called before AAU existed. We played sometime at aau summer ball playing up a little bit or with our grades and just started loving it ever.

[00:02:41] Mike Klinzing: Were you guys killing each other at your house?

[00:02:43] Andy Farrell: Oh, all the time. All the time. I can’t remember. Do you have any sisters to mellow you out? No, not at all. My mom, I know what your house was like then. Oh, not nonstop. And my mom was hard on us. Like, we couldn’t, we couldn’t go inside and, and complaining about someone being too physical.

It’s like, go back outside, figure it out yourselves and the come back in after it’s resolved. So it was, it was nonstop. But I mean, my brothers and I, we were close then. We’re very, very close now. But there were some battles. There’s a lot of scars and, and broken bones beneath the surface.  Still to this day,

[00:03:17] Mike Klinzing: Any family I’ve ever been around that has just boys in the. Man, those households were crazy. I remember when I was a kid just going over, I had a couple buddies, there was three of ’em, three brothers, and their house was just, their house was just insane. And those brothers just killing each other.

[00:03:32] Andy Farrell: Yeah, nonstop. And we’re all right around the same age too. And I’m the youngest, so I’m technically the baby, so like, I wasn’t going to back down like, No, for sure. The birth order stuff is, is real. So like I wasn’t going to back down. There were some, some physical games but it was a lot of fun.

Man, we, we, that’s, that’s how we love the game.

[00:03:52] Mike Klinzing: Did you play anything else?

[00:03:52] Andy Farrell: Yeah. So my mom and, and dad put us in a ton of sports. So like, growing up every summer we were like constantly, like, we were probably like pool rats. Like we were nonstop just at the pool. There was a pool probably about a half mile from our house that we would walk to.

We were on the swim team, so we did like the 8:00 AM you know, the swim practice and then the 9:00 AM swim practice with the older kids afterwards. Just because mom didn’t want us just, just goofing off at home. So we just, for those,

Jason Sunkle:  Mike loves swim team, It’s Mike’s favorite.

[00:04:21] Mike Klinzing: I love being a swim team parent. Love being a swim team parent. Now, your kids are how old Andy?

[00:04:29] Andy Farrell: I have a little girl that’s four and a boy that’s one and a half. So we haven’t gotten there quite yet. Right. But I would love if they’re, if they’re going to be in swimming, I, we saying it just

[00:04:35] Jason Sunkle: Just so you know, he hate, he hates it as a as a parent.

[00:04:38] Mike Klinzing: No, look, swimming is great. Like for, for the, from the kid’s perspective. It’s awesome, but man, I despise those sports where like, your kid participates for three minutes and you have to be there for four hours. Those are the sports man. Those things drive me nuts,

[00:04:57] Andy Farrell: No, I can see it from a parent perspective for sure.  Like that’s no doubt about that. But like it was, it was fun to do as a kid. And then we played soccer we played baseball, t-ball, softball, whatever it was for the appropriate age group. Got into football one year in high school, but, but didn’t play too much, but it was, it was basketball then at the swimming pool they had like sand volleyball courts, so we played some sand volleyball.

You know, we would just mess around and do some golfing here and there. But, I mean, the love was always basketball, although we were pool rats nonstop in the summertime. played some soccer, a little bit of baseball, but it was always basketball. That was always the priority for us.

Who was your UD guy growing up? Whew. I’m going to make a lot of people mad when I start saying, I think, I think it goes to generations. Like, I would probably say like now, like if I had to probably Josh Serino merely because I had an opportunity to work with Josh. Gotcha. At Clemson and DePaul.

Okay. He was in my wedding. Like we were very, very close. But I remember Josh as a player and, and if he ever hears this, he knows he’s that much older than me. But, Josh was a great player. And fantastic coach, father, husband, like I’ve learned a lot from him about life.

So Josh was one of those guys that I. Early on me as a player watching him play. But I mean, we had, we had Ryan Perryman who led the nation in in, in rebounding. Colby Turner led the nation in three point shooting. Then you start getting closer guys to my age when you had like Ramad Marshall was really good.

Keith Wasowski Brooks Hall, those are all guys that are just a couple years older than me. Nate Green You know, the guys that I was at dating with when I was a student manager, the, the Brian Roberts, the Jimmy Benny’s Marcus Bennett, Logan White, Warren Williams you know, Chris Johnson and Chris Wright were guys that we recruited when I was a manager.

I never got to be a manager while they were playing. But then even one of my, a member of my family has been on the coaching staff at Dayton for 20 of the last 21 years. So even when I left Dayton to bounce all over the country, one of my brothers, if not both, my brothers were always on staff. So I always was around the program, talking about the program, invested in the program, being around the guys even if it was the Kyle Davis or the Jordan Cybers, like those are guys that, like I never coached.

My twin brother Eric was on the coaching staff with those guys, but I probably talked to those guys. You know, once every couple of weeks when, when, when they when they come back in town for the the, the TBT tournament, Scooch Smith, Kendall Poll, Josh Cunningham. I was able to coach Josh for two years.

Like all those guys, like I still were close with just because my brothers were on staff. I would come back in the summertime, I would go watch practices with whoever the coach was, just so I could learn and watch player development stuff and just stayed in touch with them. And then I was always the brother and then I became a coach when I was able to come back to Dayton six years ago.

[00:08:02] Mike Klinzing: It’s so cool to have that connection from the time you were a little kid, to be able to kind of have it come full circle to be able to be as involved in the program as you and your family have been. I mean, it’s have to be just an unbelievable experience. It’s funny as you go through and you’re thinking about, and I’m doing my prep and reading some things about you and just kind of looking over and, and thinking about like, what are, what are my memories from, from university dating and my, my big, the guy that I remember, More than anything.

And this is from when I was a kid. So I graduated from high school in 1988, but the guy that I always associate with Dayton basketball is Roosevelt Chapman. Oh yeah. Velvet all because of his, mostly now because of the free throw, right? That he stood off, stood off to the side, and I’m sure Jason doesn’t even know what I’m talking about.

But I could still remember like I whatever, using that as a there’s obviously things that we all, anybody who’s played no clue. Basketball, Basketball in general. There’s what’s talking about, just so know, I know to put, to put perspective, I was born knew

[00:09:03] Andy Farrell: Okay.

[00:09:05] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. So Roosevelt Chapman played before he were born, so, but he used to shoot his free throws off to the side so he would stand, like off towards the right elbow, if I’m not mistaken. But that’s one of those things that you’d see a guy shooting free throws that it wouldn’t be lined up in the center and be like, Dude, man, you’re going Roosevelt, Chapman, what’s the deal?

So it’s just kind of funny when I, when just going back and thinking. All right. What are some of my memories of Dayton basketball and just to how good he was as a player. But then it’s weird that in my mind, he’s still, what he’s famous for is that , you know that off to the side free throw.

[00:09:38] Andy Farrell: Yeah. Oh, he’s, he’s a legend. He’s, he’s still revered around here. You say Roosevelt Chapman, around these parts, man. Like you, there’s going to be stories after stories because of how great of a player he was. And probably one of those main ambassadors for the program  that really helped to continue to put Dayton on the map through the 1980s.

[00:10:01] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, for sure. I mean, again, it’s a name that, I mean, it’s such a great name, number one. And then just that free throw, the style and where he lined up was so unique that Yeah, it’s just one of those things that sticks, sticks in your memory probably probably forever when you think back to your experience.

in high school and being a high school basketball player. What’s your favorite memory from high school basketball?

[00:10:26] Andy Farrell: Ooh, from high school basketball. Man, that’s a great question. II would say probably just like the comraderie. Yeah. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t probably like a game or an instance or anything like that, but I’ll just say it was the camaraderie, like, We didn’t have any division one players on our program.

I don’t think anyone even played division two basketball, but just like the friendships you know, I think that’s the special thing about sports in general is the way you can just develop relationships. We had an okay team, like all my years in high school. I would say if I was known for anything and true story, if you would ask anybody that I grew up playing ball with, like whether I was playing in the fourth grade or when I was playing like a senior in high school, like the thing I was known for is I was going to take charges.

Like I was that guy that was like always going to take charges. I remember when I was in the fourth grade or second grade, whenever I first started playing, our coach would give us a dollar for every charge we took and I’m. Even to this day, I’m six foot, I’m not very athletic, wasn’t a great shooter.

And I played the post like I was a physical dude. I was going to outwork you all the time. And I just realized one of those advantages was, Well, I’m just going to, I’m going to make a dollar cause I’m going to take a charge. I have no problems taking a hit, so I would just take charges.

And there was one time and this isn’t high school, but this was in grade school where I think I took like six or seven charges in the game. Like when people tell the story, it just starts growing exponentially. But at the end of the tournament, I remember my coach just giving me a $20 bill. We went out to eat, we won the championship, we got to, and just gives me a $20 bill.

And you know, when you’re a kid that. A million dollars, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. He gave me a $20 bill. He’s like, Andy, I lost track, but like, you probably took this many charges during this tournament. And I think that’s probably one of my fondest memories because it’s kind of what I did. It was kind of one of those things I was known for.

And again, like if I run into any of the people I played with, or even some of their siblings, they’ll tell the story and like, the story gets fabricated all the time. It’s like Andy took 11 charges in one game and foul two players. I don’t think it was that like, but it was every bit of five or six charges in one game.

So those are the memories. Like they’re the lighthearted camaraderie, just fun things with the game because by no way, shape or form was I ever going to be a guy that was going to score 30 points and get a scholarship. That wasn’t me. But the relationships and the grittiness and the work hard type of things that’s the stuff that I did.

And those are the types of things I remember.

[00:12:56] Mike Klinzing: But taking charge is motivation. It’s funny that your price was a dollar when I was in high school. We had an assistant coach, he was our JV coach. I never played for him, but he would give out an orange juice to anybody who took a charge. And so it was like guys would be killing each other to get like this, you know?

It was like the carton of cafeteria. Yeah. Orange juice from the high school. But I can still remember, I mean, I still remember those conversations amongst guys in my grade that when I was playing on the varsity as a sophomore, and they were all sophomores on the JV and them just talking about, Hey, I got two orange juices from Coach Thompson the other day.

And it’s just like, those are things when you start talking about like, what are your memories? And just like you, you think about, yeah, maybe there’s a memorable game or two, but it’s more of those little Oh yes, silly things that you remember that stand out. And I think that’s important. And sometimes when you think about coaching and how much we get wrapped up in.

This and that wins and losses, which obviously is critically important when you’re talking about the college level, the professional level. That’s how ultimately everybody gets judged. But really you start thinking about those experiences and the camaraderie, as you said, and just putting everybody together in the same locker room all the time, and just the stories and the things and the relationships that build as a result of that.

And then you have these goofy little stories about getting a $20 bill or getting an orange juice for taking a charge. And those are, those are the things that we all remember and it’s just kind of funny how, how our memories work. When you got done with high school, what was your thought process in terms of going to school?

Was there anything that you ever considered besides going to Dayton and then at that time when you entered college, were you already thinking coaching was a direction that you wanted to go? Or where was your mindset at that point?

[00:14:39] Andy Farrell: Yeah, so I had two or three, I forget what it was at the time.

Offer to play and decided not to pursue that. Wanted to go to Dayton. I tried to walk on at Dayton, so I remember the first like two months of being at the University of Dayton. I would work out in the weight room and at the RECplex, like every single day, just like trying to get ready for the walk on tryouts.

It was 2003. It was Brian Gregory’s, first year as head coach at Dayton. And there was like 40 some people at tryouts. Like it was a ton of people at tryouts. And I remember after the tryout he came up to me, he didn’t come up to anyone else. He came up to me and he said, Hey, listen, like you’re not going to make the team.

And I was like, ultimate, like shot to the gut, like right away. Like, all right. Thanks, pg. Like going out of your way to tell me I’m not going to make the team. Like, cool dude. But he was like, But I can tell how much you love the game. Do you want to be a student manager? And I had never given that thought at all.

And took the weekend. Thought about it, prayed about it. Talked with some people that I believe always have my best interests in mind and people, one of ’em was my high school teachers, One of ’em was a guy that I had coached AAU basketball with. My mom, my brothers, my dad.

And it was like, maybe this is like God’s way of telling me, Hey, it’s time to, to hang the shoes up. There’s an opportunity for you to stay in the game and be involved in a program that you’ve always wanted to be a part of. And kind of took a leap of faith, became a student manager. And I remember after the first day of practice, I was driving back from practice with one of the assistant coaches, and he was like, So what’d you think?

And I was like, This is what I want to do. Like the passion, the love of the game, the way you guys interact with the players teaching the game. I want to do this. He’s like, You want to coach? I said, Yeah, this is what I Want to do. He’s like, All right. Like, there’s a lot you’re going to have to do now you’re just, you know you’re a manager, but like, I’m going to hold you accountable for this stuff. I said, Please do. And it was from then on, I was in the office every day whether it was cutting up video, learn how to do the mail out system, learn how to do scatter reports driving coaches to, to recruiting events late at night, like whatever it was, I was just all in it.

It’s what I wanted to do. I had previously gotten the coaching itch because after I was done playing high school basketball the JV coach was a really close family friend of ours, Kyle Yuker. And he had asked me, Hey, he was about to coach a fourth grade AAU team in the Dayton area, and he was like, Hey, do you want to be my assistant coach?

And this was when I was just finished my high school senior year season. And I was like, Yeah, sure. Like, I’ll be your assistant. And so it was a fourth grade team and I had the time of my life. It was so much fun. Went to AAU nationals. We didn’t do well by any means, but it was so fun.

So I had gotten the coaching itch a little bit, and then being a part of the Dayton basketball program as a student manager. I just knew that this is what I wanted to do and I was just, I was all in on it from, from the first day. So was a student manager four years at Dayton. I actually, he the Kyle, er, the guy that I coached AAU with, he moved on to, he took the fourth grade team the following year too.

And then I took over that same team, the fourth grade team that we had for the fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, and then into eighth grade. So I was being a head, aau coach for a youth team while I was being a, a manager for the, the Dayton Men’s Basketball team. And it was just, it was perfect because it gave me an opportunity to get some, like real life experience, really teaching the game from the fundamental levels.

Like you’re talking about fourth and fifth grade, a best, like you can’t do too much with them. But it kind of gave me that itch, I learned. I was able to learn like that balance of coaching and teaching and just kind of being somebody that I remember. I looked up to when I was in the, the fourth grade, The fifth, third sixth grade.

And I remember my coaches, I remember every single one of my coaches then, and those were, were men that I looked up to a ton and I still have relationships with now. So I was able to be in that position for some younger kids while being a manager. And I was just hooked, man. I loved every minute of it.

[00:18:51] Mike Klinzing: What is something that’s universal about coaching that applies whether you’re coaching a fourth grade AAU team or you’re coaching a division one college basketball team? What’s something that It’s just a universal truth?

[00:19:06] Andy Farrell:  Positive reinforcement. Like positive reinforcement is, is so key. Like we’re human beings, right?

Like in, in the core of coaching, like we’re instructing another human being. So if we’re able to positively reinforce good behaviors, And try to correct negative behaviors or things that could be negative to their performance or that could lead to a turnover or something bad happening.

The more we can positively reinforce and encourage people to do the right thing or encourage them through mistakes, I think  that’s huge. Like when, when people can get out of their comfort zone, whether it’s in an individual training session or you’re doing a drill and someone’s making mistakes, and the natural instinct is to think that that’s a problem.

No, a crucial part of player development is making mistakes, like pushing yourself past your comfort zone. And that’s the truth for a fourth grader, a pro, a college player, a high school player, whatever it is, positively reinforcing behaviors to continue to push their limits in a positive direction.

Man, I think that’s the key. And I think that’s universal no matter what age you’re teaching and no matter what sport you’re coaching or any human interaction in general.

[00:20:27] Mike Klinzing: I love that. Cause I think it’s something that the coaching profession has definitely started to move in that direction.

You go back 30 years and I’m not sure that that is the first answer. Yeah. That a lot of coaches would’ve given, but I think today it makes a lot more sense. I think we’ve come to the understanding that we can get a lot more out of people, whether again they’re fourth graders or they’re college players or NBA players, that we can get a lot more out of people if we’re coming at them from a positive perspective as opposed to the constant criticism, the constant, my way or the highway, the constant.

You’re afraid to make a mistake. Because again, I don’t think anybody, and I’m sure you can attest to this, that nobody plays well. When they’re playing out of fear, you play much better when you’re playing loose and free and, and you know that you have somebody that’s sitting on the sideline that has your back.

That’s trying to be positive. And that’s not to say that you’re not coaching ’em hard and you’re not trying to get ’em better, and you’re not trying to make sure that they’re doing the things that they’re supposed to do. But I think when you’re coming at it from a positive perspective, it makes such a huge, huge difference.

Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about your time as a manager. I get the sense just from talking to you and the reading that I’ve done, that you’re one of those guys that you’re constantly trying to learn and grow and, and just absorb as much as stuff as you can. So while you’re there during those four years and you’re getting a chance to work alongside the coaching staff and you’re sitting in on meetings and you’re in there on at practice, what did you do to sort of record or catalog the things that you were learning along the way as you started to think, Hey, this is what I want to do for my profession?

Did you take notes and keep ’em on the computer? Obviously at the, at that time you, you have access to those things. You didn’t have access to a phone to be able to do that, but just what was your system for Yeah. Sort of keeping track of what was going on around you, So make sure that you could, you could internalize all that.

[00:22:27] Andy Farrell: Yeah, I remember taking a lot of notes. I if maybe it was considered journaling, but it, it was similar to like I had, I had a history class, so I had a notebook from my history class. Well, I had, I had a, I had a basketball notebook. And it was just something that I constantly kept, whether it was a saying that one of the coaches had, or it was, it was a play.

One great thing about my time as being a manager is I had the opportunity to put what I learned into action right at the end of the season with my AAU team. So it was almost like one of those things where like, you acquire skill, you’re learning, and then it’s like, boom, action.

So I was then able to, to take those things on a year in and year out basis from being a manager and try to put into action because like, I was able to see at a very high level coaches coaching high level basketball players in their way for what those players needed. That’s not my way and that’s not what my players needed.

So I had to learn on the fly, kind of that balance. I probably didn’t do as good of a job as I would probably do now that I’ve had more experience. But I was able to do that, and I was able to have a lot of practical experience because of that. So in addition to the notebook, I had practical experiences where they were, it was almost like a my own experiment, if you will, where I was able to figure out like my coaching voice, what worked, what didn’t work, how was I describing this play, How was I planning a practice, all those things.

I think one of the things I did as well was those coaches were very kind to me when I was like, Hey, Andy, like any of these files you’re working on or whatever we’re doing, like you can save this stuff. So I’m sure on one of my flash drives that I have I probably haven’t looked that in a while, but like I remember accessing those.

To look at, Hey, how do we design mailouts? What was our mailout system? Let me take a look at this stuff. I remember when I was at vcu, when I was at Clemson, I was referencing that stuff all the time. In order for me to kind of remember, Hey, how is this stuff organized? How are we able to accomplish those things?

Things now that are just part of my routine and rhythm of what I believe how to do things. But back then it was a massive reference point for me, and I would venture to say if I go to my house, you know where I grew up, my mom’s got a box full of some of my binders along with the history notebooks and some of the basketball notebooks.

I guarantee she has some of that stuff.

[00:24:46] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s funny when you think about just all the stuff. Over time, you, you’ve collected, I’m sure as a coach, and clearly there was a time where everybody was a three ring, three ring binder guy because there was, there wasn’t any other options unless you were, unless you were using your old Commodore 64 or Apple computer from those things.

Just you weren’t able to access it in the same way that the technology, I think the young coaches today have no idea, even from a video standpoint, like what coaches went through in the eighties, nineties, seventies, to try to be able to watch game film. It’s just, I mean, it’s ridiculous.

I remember sitting as a player and having coaches watch film and you’d have that VCR going, you’d hit the button and they’d rewind. It would rewind like two minutes past where they were trying to show you. So you’d have to watch that two minutes again, and then it would just you’d skip ahead and it was just the, the, I can’t even imagine like the frustration sitting on a stool as a player, but I can’t even imagine what it would’ve been like as a coach to have to try to.

Sit through and rewind and just, ah, just it’s, it’s amazing what the capabilities that we have now that extends to kind of what we were talking about where just your own personal library of things that you collect that it’s just so much easier to keep it organized and to access it as opposed to, okay, which one of my 27 free ring binders is his stuff in.

It’s just it’s just a totally different world today, the way that, the way that things are done. And I think it’s just clearly, clearly a much better situation than what we had in the past. No doubt. When you are sitting around as the manager and how much access did you get to be able to sit in on any meetings?

Just how did the staff at that time sort of incorporate managers? Cause this is something, Andy, that I, I’ve had this conversation with a couple other people on the podcast, like as a player when I was at Kent. I, we had managers obviously and guys that I’m friends with and continue to have friendships with, but I never once for one second ever looked at those guys and said, Oh, these are guys that want to get into coaching.

Yeah, like my thought was always, Oh these guys are managers. They must they like basketball, they just Want to hang around the team and you know, it’s kind of a cool job to be able to do that. I never once thought of it as a pathway to coaching and then obviously at some point you look back and you’re like, Wow, like if I wanted to get into coaching, it’s probably way better to be a manager because of, than it is to be even to be a player.

Because as a manager you’re sort of privy to some of those things behind the scenes, especially if you build a good relationship with the staff. So just talk about what that was like in terms. What you were able to do and see during your four years?

[00:27:26] Andy Farrell:  Yeah. I think one of the things my greatest asset that I was able to acquire was the, was the relationships that I had with the coaches on staff because I built their trust by just working hard and being around.

One of the things that I think I was privy to, because I did put myself out there a lot, was I would drive, whether it was the head coach or the assistant coaches to recruiting events. So maybe there was a game in Cleveland, well that’s a three hour drive. If the assistant coach had a scout they had an opportunity to work in their car for three hours, right? On the way there and on the way back if I would just drive them. So I did that a lot. And while you’re doing that, maybe the first time you don’t talk about much and they’re just working. But you do that over the course of a season or, or four years, you have some pretty awesome conversations.

Like you learn a lot of things. You can pick people’s brains at a very high level. Maybe there’s two coaches going out recruiting, so you’re driving both of them and you can just be a fly on the wall to their conversations. So I don’t think enough young coaches do that because it, it takes time, right?

Like, and it’s something you don’t think about. I couldn’t even go into those games. So I, I would drive a coach somewhere, even if it was just to Cincinnati or Columbus, which is an hour drive away, or even locally in Dayton where they, I could just spend time with ’em and I would just go get a bite to eat and they would, they would call me when the game was done, or I would just kind of estimate when the game was going to be done and just drive, pick ’em up and drive ’em back.

And, and I think that spending that type of time allows you to have opportunities that you wouldn’t otherwise have. Like you develop trust, you develop relationships, you can bounce ideas off of when the time is right. You can be a fly on the wall, and then those things are helping you acquire a ton of knowledge, engaging in conversations, building trust, building the relationships.

But then later down the, the line when you walk into the office or you’re actually working in the office and they need to have a closed door meeting about something. You don’t need to leave. No. Andy’s in here. He is fine. Andy. Just keep working. And then they’re talking about stuff. They’re talking about, Hey, we got this visit coming in, here’s what we’re going to do.

Or Hey this player has a discipline problem. Here’s how we’re going to handle it. Or Hey, we may need this guy to come off the bench instead of starting, here’s our thought process on, on making sure that he’s right. You know, with this change, you hear all that stuff just being a fly on the wall.

So I think putting myself out there, I was privy to that stuff just because I built trust. I don’t think that they the coaching staff was, was overly welcoming by any means, saying like, Oh, we have to have this meeting and Andy has to be in it right now. It was all just like now, like, it’s fine if Andy’s here, Andy’s just around, right?

[00:30:10] Mike Klinzing: Andy’s around, he’s fine.

[00:30:12] Andy Farrell: So  you just hear that stuff and, and I think that that’s really where the value came from and that’s those things that I’m very, very grateful for because I think it helped me learn at an exponential growth rate. Because I could just be a fly on the wall and listen those things and hear people bounce ideas off each other.

[00:30:29] Mike Klinzing: How many hours a week were you with the basketball team? Because keeping in mind that you are also a college student at this point. Yeah. So you’re going to class and you, you have the life of a, Well, a theoretical, normal college student. Yeah. But just talk about how much time you were spend. In the basketball office, on the practice floor during the time when you’re a manager?

[00:30:51] Andy Farrell: Yeah, it was a lot. I remember my senior year and I, I probably am going to get people in trouble with like, labor laws, . I was volunteering a lot of hours, so I, I remember I got paid every two weeks I got a check for $52. And my senior year I decided to calculate my hours. And, and I ended up making, I think it was 37 cents an hour is what my like rate was in season.

So whatever that became, like, I was putting in a lot of hours. I was putting in it’s called 70 to 80 hours a week. But if you think about it that time, you can learn a lot really, really quickly. You have to be there an hour before practice. It’s a two hour practice, and you have to be there an hour after practice.

So that’s already four hours times, at least three days a week. Right, because they, and then you. Two game days. So you have to be there an hour before the shooting around, and then you’re there through the end of the game and the laundry. So those are, those are two minimally seven hour days. So that’s 14, that’s 14 hours, there’s 12 hours, and then you’re putting in office hours probably two, three hours a day in addition to the nights where after practice is over, I’m driving a coach somewhere like the hours start adding up very, very quickly.

But I never thought about it like that. It was always like, I didn’t, I don’t know what else I would want to do. Like, yeah, there was a lot of fun college stuff that I could be doing, but like, I loved it. Like basketball was such a passion for me. The players were my friends and the coaches were my mentors.

Like, it was, it was exactly what I wanted to be doing at all times. There was literally nothing else I would want to do. So it was, it was a ton of fun and I never thought about it like that, but it was, it was, it was 60, 78 hour, 80 hours per week depending on the week. But I tell our managers now, like they get paid great compared to what I made like it was unbelievable.

They better be grateful for every single hour they get in the office.

[00:32:50] Mike Klinzing: Well, I think the great lesson there, right, is putting in the time and going above and beyond what the job description, What the job description is. Yes. So you’re not only putting in your time in the office, you’re not only putting in the time on the practice floor, but then here you are a guy that’s saying, Hey, yeah, I’ll drive you to this event.

And I think any young coaches out there, and I’ve heard it so many times, Andy, from different coaches talking about the start of their career. And so many of ’em describe situations that are similar to what you experience where, look, I made 37 cents an hour, or I made nothing, or I lived in someone’s basement or, A coach took pity on me and gave me a thousand dollars so I could eat or whatever it is.

You know, there’s so many of those stories that are out there, and I think when you look at being a college coach, especially like that beginning part of your career is a challenge. Yeah. Because I think there’s a perception out there that, Oh, I just go here and I’m a manager there, or I’m doing this and all of a sudden I’m going to be in my dream job.

And as you and I both know that, that’s just not the case. And it takes a lot of hard work, It takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort to be able to get there. Yep. And it takes relationships, which you’ve talked about. So let’s jump off there where your college career is winding to an end you want to get into college coaching.

What’s the process like for you trying to get that first job? Who are you talking to? How do you go about doing that?

[00:34:22] Andy Farrell: Yeah. You know, one of the things that I was, I guess I was fortunate to have while I was at Dayton every year at least one of the assistant coaches left and went someplace else.

So I was able to have a decent network now by decent network. It’s a decent network for then for being a manager. But there were probably assistant coaches at four or five other schools that I had worked with before. So I think that a piece of advice I give to a lot of coaches as well is like if you have a mentor, pick their brains on how they would approach you getting a job.

Because one, you’re going to get some great advice, and two, it’s going to empower them to help you. So I did that with those assistant coaches and I just said if one of the assistant coaches that was with me was an assistant at Boston College, I was like, Hey, listen. If Boston College ends up having a GA position open, I would love to apply for it.

Keep me posted. And if not, then anyone else that you’ve worked with before, if they’re looking for a GA, please let me know. And I did that to all the coaches that I worked with in the past, all the coaches that was currently on staff at Dayton. But, and then actually the people that I knew, whether it was the guys that coached AU basketball with coached AAU basketball against, that’s actually how I got on at VCU.

I became a GA at VCU after being an undergraduate manager at Dayton because Anthony Grant was the head coach of VCU at the time. One of his college teammates at Dayton was a guy named Steve Pittman. Well, Steve Pittman coached an AAU basketball team in the Dayton area that was the same age group as the AAU team I coached.

We played each other in the finals of every single tournament, two Dayton teams. We would travel to Cleveland for an AAU tournament. We’d be in the finals, we’d travel to West Virginia and Indiana. We’d be in the finals. We were in the finals for everything. We spent a lot of time with each other in gyms because like we were going to play with each other.

Like we were watching each other’s games, like, All right, we’re going to play. So we became really close friends Pitt is a very close friend of mine and he and I were just talking one day and he was like, Hey, my boy just got the head job. This was my senior year of college. My boy just got the head coaching job at vcu.

Make sure you follow them. I think they’re going to do some really good things. So I kept that in the back of my mind. And then next thing you know, Anthony Grant’s doing a great job at vcu. And, and I just, I write a letter saying, Hey my, my name’s Andy Farrell a close friend of both of ours, Steve Pitman, recommended that I reach out to you, yada, yada, yada.

And here’s my resume. If you guys are looking for a GA please keep me in mind. It was a longer letter with, with some more information, but that was pretty much it. So like, it, it was, it was any contact I could think of that just happened to not name drop, but like to offer like real assistance to me.

I took ’em up on it and sure enough, they beat Duke in the NCAA tournament and they had stacks and stacks and stacks of people that wanted to be GA’s. But one of the skills that I had was video editing. That was one of the jobs I had for four years, and they needed somebody to help their video coordinator.

Being their video GA and they were like, Hey, are you using the same software we use? And the answer was yes. And I became a GA over there. So it was beating the pavement, but using every resource that I possibly had, even if it was a, a guy that I coached AAU basketball against. And we just befriended each other and he had some relationships that, that I was able to utilize and at least getting my foot in the door.

And then the skillset that I acquired being a manager was able to close it for me.

[00:38:04] Mike Klinzing: I think it’s one of the underrated things that not a lot of young people, and not just specific to coaching, but I think sometimes young people underestimate the need for building those relationships and building that network.

And clearly in coaching, it’s critical as your story describes, the more people that you get to know and the more people that you build a positive relationship with, the more people that you make. A positive impact on Yeah. That they see what you do, the more they’re going to be more willing to vouch for you when it comes to opportunities to get a job.

And I think sometimes as young people, you’ll see kids that will just, they’re so focused on, let’s say, developing that there’s their skills that they don’t necessarily take the time to invest in those relationships. And I, I think as we get older, we realize how valuable those relationships are. So I think I would say to any young coach who might be listening, make sure that in addition to working on your craft as a coach, that you’re also taking the time to build relationships, both with whatever people that you’re working with, but in your case, right?

Somebody that you were coaching against all the time. And so here you are, you build a relationship and that’s what leads you to this first opportunity at vcu. Gets you you know, to be able to, to interact and, and work under Coach Grant, which obviously has worked well for you moving forward in your career as well.

Talk about your time at vcu. Some of the things and responsibilities that you had. Obviously you’re in the video, video room a lot, but, but what was that first experience like where you, you move out of the, the manager ranks and, and on to the coaching staff?

[00:39:41] Andy Farrell: Yeah, it was really positive because again, I was able  to use a lot of those things that I learned as a manager and help become a better GA I was driving assistant coaches to go recruiting, right?

Like I was in the video room, I was putting together the video edits that the assistant coaches needed for scouting reports or, or postgame reports or, you know an offensive edit, defensive it or whatever it may be. I already had those experiences and I was able to do those things and take things off of other people’s plates because the experiences that I gained as a student manager, I knew how to do that stuff.

So naturally I built relationships and trust right away with the assistant coaches, the assistant coaches on staff. My year at VCU were all head coaches. Eventually Tony Phole, now that you know, the head coach at North Alabama out in Edwards, was formerly the head coach at Wyoming, is now an assistant coach at UMass.

John Brandon was the head coach at Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, and he’s on staff with us now. Those were guys like those, those were high level coaches. I was developing relationships with and working alongside, again, being a fly on the wall, listening to their conversations while I was working for them to try to make their jobs easier.

So everything that I learned as a manager, I was able to just roll over to becoming a more efficient GA and to help serve them as much as possible. Building the trust, being able to put the work in, in order to help them become good assistant coaches.

[00:41:15] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the coaching piece of it, what was something that you felt like you were really good at, sort of out of the gate, and then what was one thing that you feel like over the course of your career you’ve had to really work at to improve?

So something that you were good at right away, and then something that you felt like you had to work on.

[00:41:36] Andy Farrell: Yeah, I think the, the one thing that I was good at right away was the relationship piece. I think the player relationships was really, really important. I think that probably comes from me being extroverted individual, me realizing that I’m probably going to be the shortest and most unathletic guy on the court.

So there was a humbleness about me because I realized like, Hey, I’m going to be asking somebody to do something at a very high level, and they’re going to, like, their mistake is going to be better than me doing it really, really well. So I think that there was a humbleness to my approach with it.

And  I think that anyone that gets to know me or sits in a room with me, I think realizes that hopefully I have pure intentions and a good heart where I truly just want what’s best for somebody else. So player relationships was something that came natural to me. And I think that because I also have a hard work ethic.

I was around the gym a lot, so I built some credibility with some of the. So those were the types of things that kind of came natural to me. I would say the thing that I probably had to work on the most was developing the eye for the Xs and Os. I think as a young coach, even when I was being an AAU coach, you don’t get that experience.

Like something can look really, really good on paper or on a dry erase board, but there’s bodies and there’s space and there’s timing and there’s other people there. So like those types of experiences. And again, like I could have thought it would work perfectly. We just didn’t execute it properly because I had a sixth grade team for sure.

And that was probably my mentality was like, Oh, well they’re sixth graders. This will work if when I’m in college. No, it was just a bad play. Like the spacing didn’t work the time, there’s bodies in space. So I think that that’s thing that I’ve had to continuously work on and improve on.

And I think a lot of that just comes with the experience like, Having to do some of that stuff and make those mistakes. I gained a ton of that experience when I was at junior college, when I was coaching at junior college because the head coach that I worked for was an unbelievable boss. He literally said like, Andy, I can’t give you the title, but you’re going to be like co-head coach with me.

And I thought it was just like a really good, like, recruiting tactic on his part, but like, he was true to it. So, I just learned so much stuff on the fly. I made mistakes in like a pressure cooker environment where it’s like, Hey, let’s try this. Let’s try this, let’s try this. And like, I think I got better at that stuff.

But it’s something that you constantly have to improve with because, The bodies are going to change, Your team’s going to change. Like defensive schemes are going to change. Like you’ve got to be able to adapt some of those things with how the game is and what your team is. So I think continuously trying to improve the actual like XOs portion of it, because your team is constantly changing.  The game is constantly changing.

[00:44:33] Mike Klinzing: Are you watching other games? Are you watching pro games, college games, high school games? Like how are you picking up that xs and o knowledge? Is it that you’re going and talking to other people in the profession? Are you watching stuff? What’s your process for improving in that area?

What did you do? What do you continue to do to, to continue to learn and develop your X’s and O’s?

[00:44:57] Andy Farrell: Yeah, I think one of the things is while I’m putting together scouting edits for our staff, I’m finding stuff that I really, really like. Where it’s like, Hey, listen, this is really good action.

That I think is a trend of the game, regardless of what team you have. Say you’re undersized. Say you’re really, really big. Say you don’t have any shooters, like I, if I’m watching a game that I’m trying to put together a scouting edit for, and I see, and like I have a couple edits on my, on my computer.

It’s like, Hey, like that’s a great ball screen play, like drag drop that play. So like I constantly am updating those databases that I have in order to say like, Hey, I really like this stuff. And then just continuously like, look at that stuff. Hey, does that stuff make sense? The other thing that I do a ton of is I love watching the international game.

Here at Dayton, we recruit internationally quite a bit, so I love watching players that we’re evaluating. But I, the Pbu 17 U 18 games, I watched almost every single one of those games. And, and I just, I think the European game is really, really skill. So I think that there if you watch the nba, there’s so much great, great basketball players, but it’s high level athleticism and a lot of high level scores, and the action itself isn’t necessarily as good as some of the fiba stuff where they’re relying on skill and scheme because those athletes aren’t as great, those scoring abilities aren’t as great.

You don’t have the Kevin Durant and LeBron James out there, so you need action that’s going to create a little bit more separation, a little bit quicker timing in order for that player who is inferior, right, wrong or indifferent, to get that shot off and still be a high percentage shot. That’s why I love watching the Fiba game.

I think it’s so much more relatable for me right now as I continue to try to enhance that part of like my eye.

[00:47:00] Mike Klinzing: Well, and as we talked about, how much easier is it to do that today? Than it would’ve been when you starting your career. I mean, that just makes it the access that we all have today to be able to watch games and to be able to, to see European basketball where even 10 years ago would’ve been almost impossible for us to be able to do that.

Now you have access to just about anything that you could ever want. So if you had, it’s almost like a, a playground for coaches where you can just go on and you can, you can find anything that you Want to find to continue to grow yourself and improve and get better. After you get done at vcu you move on.

You’ve got four more stops before you get back to Dayton. Yeah. Let’s just talk a little bit about, I’m going to, I’m going to just kind of give you the, give you the floor to share maybe a thing or two that you learned along the way through those four staffs from Clemson to DePaul to Longwood to, You already talked about a little bit your junior college experience at Southwest Mississippi, but just talk about some of the things that you learned along the way.

That that got you to the point that have prepared you for, for your current position at Dayton?

[00:48:05] Andy Farrell: Yeah, so I was able to when I left vcu, I went to, to Clemson for two years, DePaul for three, all with head coach Oliver Parnell. So after my second year at Clemson, he left, he got the head coaching job at DePaul and the thing OP was elite at, like Oliver Parnell is such a good basketball coach.

He still loved here in, in the Dayton community for what he was able to do and resurrect the program here at Dayton. But he had an eye for rebuilding. But the thing that OP did an unbelievable job of is he never got too high and he never got too low at the end of every single game. During my five years with him, and I’m sure anyone that’s ever worked with OP will attest this.

After the game was done, we went out to eat as a staff and very rarely did we ever talk about the game. Maybe, maybe. At the end of the meal, he was like, Well, we didn’t rebound the ball. Make sure we get, let’s make sure we get an edit about rebounding the ball and, and if, if our, whoever our next opponent is is really good offensive rebounding team, we better drill that or make that emphasis like that’s it, that’s all the conversation would be.

Because he never wanted to like, have emotion play a factor in his evaluation and he did it. He, he was able to detach so well, but then the next day critically analyze at a high level and an efficient way, what went well, what we failed at doing, and how we need to get better. It was just, it was so impressive.

And just his mindset after the game was just like, especially after we, we’ve all been there. When we have a game where we win, we play bad, we win by four and we’re all pissed off. He would just be so even keeled with like, guys, like the purpose of the game was to win. It’s not a game of perfect.

We won the game, we’ve have to get better at these areas. We’re going to get exposed later. But we won the game, so like, let’s, let’s leave it at that and let’s enjoy this evening together. And then the next day he was able to analyze, figure it out, scheme and plan practice. And that was so impressive for me. And it’s given me as it was, it gave me as a young coach, and it gives me now opportunities to reflect after wins or losses to just try to detach my emotion from the actual game where we allow our standards or whatever the analytics are, or how we want to run offense, whatever we’re holding ourselves to.

Let’s let that be the results of the game and not the emotion that we attach to it. And OP did such a great job of it.

[00:50:45] Mike Klinzing: Man, that’s hard. That’s have to be hard to do. I mean, I can’t, I mean, you just think about, It’s funny because listening to you tell that story, it’s one of the things that as a coach, and mostly since I stopped coaching high school back in, I don’t know, 2008, 2009, I’ve coached my own kids and I’m coaching at levels again that are elementary school, middle school, as I’m coaching my own kids teams.

And you’re just, you get so wrapped up in it and you’re like, Hey man, this is a fifth grade girl basketball game. It might be, it might be time to calm down . And you just, you lose a game and you know you can’t sleep and you’re thinking about it and Hey, what could we have done differently and this and that.

And then when you become just a basketball parent and I sit in the stands, my perspective completely flips where, Look, I want the kids to do well. I want their team to win, but five minutes after it’s over. I’m able to put it aside, but when you’re coaching, man, the, the ability to do what Pernell was able to do and step away from that, that’s, that’s a tremendous skill to be able to have for, for your life so that you can, Yeah.

So that you could be functional. I can’t even imagine being able to do that now.

[00:51:59] Andy Farrell: It was almost like a form of STO system. Like he was able to detach so well, but then still be like critically analyzing it the next day and be efficient with his process. Like it was, it was really good. Yeah.

You know, jumping ahead to my junior college time I strongly encourage any young coach to coach at junior college. I, I tell people with our Rising Coaches organization all the time, like, Go Coach at junior college, you literally, , your, your, your growth becomes exponential at the junior college level because you have to do everything.

You don’t have a director of basketball operations, a video coordinator, multiple assistant coaches. Like it was, it was the head coach, myself and a volunteer assistant for all three years there. Like, I had to learn to do the budget. I was an academic advisor. I was a pastor, I was a, I did every defense. I did every scout for three years.

I did over a hundred scouts in my three years there. And like anyone that knows me, I’m not going to just like watch one game. Like I would watch five or six of the opponents games. I would break it down. I knew their playbook inside and out. I knew their play calls. I knew their player tendencies for a hundred different games that we had that year.

And like the amount of experience and reps you get, like the advice, I had an opportunity when I got fired from Longwood. Could coach at division two, division three be a ga or I’m sorry, be a video guy at a high major program, be it ops guy at a mid-major program and advice from Cornell Mann who’s now the head coach at Grand Valley State.

He said to me, he’s like, Andy, you’re a young coach. We tell our players all the time that they need to get reps in the gym when they’re not good at something or if they’re struggling in something or they’re in a funk with something, He’s like, Andy, you need reps, man. Like, go to a place that you’re going to get reps.

He’s like the junior college route. You’re going to get a ton of reps at everything. And he was absolutely right. Like I loved the junior college route. It also helped like redefine my why in terms of like doing this for the players, Like making, like using the game of basketball as a vehicle to teach life lessons and to better the individual to be the best version of themselves.

Like it helped redefine my why. And. because there were days like I was literally on, my only job was their academic advisor. My only job was to be their, their pastor or their counselor. And sometimes I was their basketball coach or their player development coach or their defense coach or the guy with the clipboard writing of offense players.

You had to do everything and it helped my growth exponentially as a coach and it helped like redefine my why.

[00:54:42] Mike Klinzing: I love what you said there because it’s something that is a theme that’s sort of run through the podcast and I hear it come from a lot of guys that we talk to, which is that using the game of basketball to be able to impact the young people that you coach.

And it’s such a privilege to be able to use something that you love in the game of basketball to be able to make it impact. And that’s what I hear you saying is that that experience just. Reopened your eyes, that that’s why you’re out there, that’s what you’re doing, and you get to do it with something that you love, but still you’re getting to make that positive impact.

And not just on making the kid a better player, but also making them a better person. Yeah. Which ultimately, I think when you start talking about coaching, and we talked about a little off the top, that obviously at some point we’re all judged on wins and losses, but there’s also that other piece of it, that building that relationship with that kid and, and, and seeing ’em develop as a student and seeing them develop as a person.

Then eventually, five, 10 years down the road, when you hear from them and you’re, you’re in touch with them and you go to their wedding or you they’re, they’re sharing with you a new job or they’re just calling you up to say, Hey, coach, like those conversations and those, those phone calls, there’s really nothing.

There’s nothing better than that as a coach. And, and it speaks to, again, why we’re in the business and yeah, winning is always going to be a part of it and anybody who’s competitive certainly wants to win, but those other pieces, I think sometimes are easy to get lost in that day-to-day minutia, which I think happens to anybody who’s coaching.

You get so caught up in the moment and the next scout and the next film, and the next practice and the next game that it’s good to be able to sometimes reenter yourself and think about, Hey, this is really, this is really what it’s all about. And then for you get an opportunity to return back to Dayton, which has been just a huge part of you and your family’s life.

Talk a little bit about how that came to pass and just why that was so important to you and why you think it was the right moment in your career for you to be able to come back.

[00:56:43] Andy Farrell: Yeah, absolutely. So while I was at junior college, there were some opportunities that that came. my way that I turned down just because I truly was very happy.

The boss I was working with Thomas Gray, who’s an assistant at Magnes now is fan. He was of unbelievable boss to work for, and he’d be pissed at me if I called him my boss because he, he never viewed himself as that. So I wasn’t just going to take any job. And, and when Anthony Grant got the head job at Dayton, one is Anthony Grant, as a man is as good as it gets.

That’s why I left Dayton. I was called to him because the man he is, the father, the husband, the coach, and I just felt connected to him when I left Dayton to go to vcu. And when he got the job at Dayton, it was him and it was Dayton, and it was like the perfect coming together in order for when he called me, he said, Hey, Andy, do you Want to come back home?

Like, the answer was without hesitation, like, Yes. It was tough for me to leave Mississippi because the relationships that I built and the opportunities that I had there and the program that we had established at Southwest Mississippi Community College on and off the court, But coming back to Dayton was special, like being born and raised here, my whole family being up here, my wife’s family my wife and I had gotten married my last year in Mississippi.

So she moved from Chicago to Mississippi to getting closer to her family here in the Midwest. It was all really, really important and, and obviously, The, the history and the prestige of what Dayton basketball is, they had come off of four straight NCAA tournaments. It’s one of the best arenas in the country.

Right? When we got the job, they announced a three year 75 million transformation of the arena. So there were so many things going in the right direction for a program that already had a long established history and a lot of positive things to it. So it was just a perfect time in order to come back home and work for a man and for a program that I love and admire.

[00:58:44] Mike Klinzing: All right. So I want to talk about the two different titles that you’ve had and how your responsibilities have shifted between those two titles. So let’s go with the one that you started which is you’re the director of scouting and program development. So what does that mean? What does that mean for your day to day role?

[00:59:01] Andy Farrell: Yeah, I think that that one was just like a jack of all trades, master of none, because, because I was so familiar with Dayton, the interworkings of the athletic department, the city, the community, how things ran. Hey, for games, like this is where our coaches need to park. Like like, hey, if we need gear, this is the place to get gear.

Like, I just knew those things because of my relationships. I was literally just the jack of all trades, master of none. So if you look at like, my job, like title, it didn’t match up with like the job description because like similar to when I was at junior college, I had a ton of job responsibilities, whether it was facilities, scheduling practice, Compliance paperwork, assisting the coaches with the recruiting database, the mailouts, self scouting opponent, scouting while I was assisting the assistant coaches.

Like all those types of things. So that job title was, was probably just an embellished because it was like, Hey, you’re kind of just going to be a jack of all trades. Like what do you want to be? But the director of scouting, one of the things I did is I did a lot of self scouting for us and I think that that led way to eventually, one of the job responsibilities I have now is I kind of spearhead our analytics.

Which I think that having the director of scouting title, kind of almost like coach empowered me to like kind of figure. How we were going to operate from an analytics standpoint, because he had just come from the NBA with the Oklahoma City Thunder Analytics is still probably not as big in the college level it is as it is at the in the pro level.

And it’s like, all right, what do we want to do with this? He had some ideas and we were able to, to kind of mesh and, and marriage some ideas that are trending in, in the NBA of how it can translate to the college level some ideas that he’s used before as a head coach and some ideas that some of our other staff members and myself were able to bring to the table.

Hey, how can we marry all this together in order to come up with our analytics program that we are going to value at a very, very high level here at Dayton, Hold players accountable to it and we’re able to use in order to help win games for us. Having that director scouting background kind of led way to me spearheading a lot of that stuff under the supervision and, and advice from all the people within our coaching staff.

[01:01:28] Mike Klinzing: All right. I don’t want you to give away any secrets, but let me ask you just a general question. In terms of analytics, when you think about how you use it with your team and within your coaching staff, and then how you relay that information to players, just talk about the difference in what you share or what you discuss as a coaching staff, and then how you use that to be informative with the players, if that question makes any sense.

In other words, what are the players seeing or what are you learning from analytics that you can then relay to players to help them improve their performance?

[01:02:09] Andy Farrell: Yeah, I think when you look at analytics as a whole, Analytics is taking numbers and turning it into data, data into information and information into coaching.

So I’m going to say that one more time. Like analytics is taking numbers and you turn it into data, data into information and information into coaching. If you’re able to streamline that where it’s seamless and you can get to the coaching part of it quickly, your analytics program works. So, I know that’s a very vague answer, but if you look at analytics in generalsomebody could value the three point shot as the, the, the ultimate, you know thing that they want to value their analytics reports on, whether it’s offensively or defensively, the volume of three point shooting, the frequency of three point shooting, the percentage of three point shooting offensively, defensively, fine if that’s what you believe in.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Like go all in with that. If you think that the offensive rebounding rate offensively and defensively, like how, how other teams are doing it against you. When you’re on the defense, on the floor, if you feel as though that is your staple of analytics, fine. Run with it.

Like go with it. Like how quickly can you take whatever your belief is and turn it into coaching? That is going to be a successful analytics program. So whatever we believe at Dayton is going to make Dayton successful. And we can have numbers that can back it up and we can turn it into data where it’s like, Hey, over a prolonged period of time, or can we extrapolate certain things?

Can we do certain studies? And then generally speaking, what is this information? How can we make our offensive or defense philosophies be based off of this data and numbers that we believe and we’ve extrapolated and we’ve studied, but then ultimately, how can we turn this into coaching? How can we design our Defensive principles. How can we design our defensive drills in order to make this whole thing come together? That is what I believe is the essence of analytics. I think too many people get caught up on like, Well, this number or this number, all those numbers are, you could justify a ton of numbers, impact winning, and you can be right, like multiple people can be right about this stuff.

But there’s so many different ways to skin a cat. Do you Want to play fast? Do you Want to play slow? So do you Want to play, man? Do you Want to play zone, Like there’s so many different ways to, to play the game of basketball. And it’s the same thing with analytics. I can make any number matter, but how can I make my players believe that?

And how can I coach to that on a daily basis in my drills as my point of emphasis, as my game plans for games and in my offensive defensive philosophies? I think Coach Grant has done an exceptional job of figuring that stuff out for our offensive and defensive identity. And we stick to that for everything that we do.

And I think that is the secret sauce to, to our analytics. And I think that’s the secret sauce to anybody’s analytics is can you take numbers and turn it into data? Data into information and information into coaching.

[01:05:24] Mike Klinzing: So most of what you guys are doing, I’m guessing, is done more on the team level as opposed to analytics with individual players.

Is there anything that you’re doing with an individual guy where you’re looking at maybe which direction they drive or how they locations on the floor where they shoot better? Just is there anything individual with players that you guys are looking at?

[01:05:46] Andy Farrell: Yeah, I would say that that’s probably a case by case basis.

Like if a guy is really, really successful in one year, what can you look at in order to maintain that level of success. Or if a guy struggled at something, why did he struggle? You know, if, if a guy shot 37% from the three point line his freshman year and then shot 24% his sophomore year, okay, what changed?

Was he taking bad shots? And I think that that’s where the coaching aspect of it can be more important than the actual numbers. Can you get the quantitative and qualitative information to line up with one another where our eyes are saying, Wow, he took, from a quantitative standpoint, he shot poorly than a qualitative standpoint.

Well, he took bad shots. Why were they bad shots? Well, look at the rhythm of shots. He wasn’t going left right. He was going right, left. Hey, you look at some of the stuff we were having him come off of ball screens. Teams were going under, he was taking that shot. Probably wasn’t the best shot for him to take.

Can you look at the quantitative and qualitative where now the coaching. Can help the individual on an individual basis. So I think that programmatically analytics can be really, really good for the individuals and team. And I think it’s so case by case with individual players on like, where can they stay efficient?

Where can their best be elite and where can their bad be good.

[01:07:16] Mike Klinzing: How much player development are you dealing with guys during the season?

[01:07:20] Andy Farrell: Coach Grant’s huge on player development. Like even if it’s just a small segment of practice, and I’m not talking about like a shooting drill where like guys are just getting shots up.

Coach Grant’s big on that stuff, whether it’s like ball handling or passing. And, and he does such a great job and our assistant coaches do such a great job of making every drill highly functional. What I mean by that is like, say, say you’re doing like a, a passing drill. A guard can get multiple passes in the same rep, a big can get multiple passes in the same rep.

He can go, he can catch the ball at the slot, reverse it, you know to the wing and go set a ball screen. You know, one, he’s already made one pass. Two, he’s going into the motion of a ball screen. Three, he catches the ball from a pop or he’s in the pocket or a short role, and then he can then cut back, middle and make one more pass, or go baseline and throw a hammer pass.

Like our coaches do such a great job of being very efficient with their drills, so that by default you’re getting player development in just a simple drill, whether it’s a five on o drill, a two on O drill, a three on O drill, or like a one-on-one drill. I would say being intentional about player development.

We do a really good job of, and we touch it every single practice, but where I think our staff is very, very elite at is figuring out how can we still get player development within the confines of a three on 0 drill that’s not designed for player development. They do such a great job of that.

[01:08:52] Mike Klinzing: Yeah.  That ability to be creative and create things that touch on multiple skills or multiple concepts. To me it you’re talking about trying to be efficient in practice and obviously I think when you look at the game today and you look at our understanding of just making sure that our players, not only that we’re working on ’em and we’re getting ’em better and we’re getting our team better, but also having an understanding of we can’t run these guys into the ground again.

I’ll go back. A long time ago when I was playing and that that was not something that was ever factored in. We weren’t at all concerned at that point with, Hey, how tired are our guys going into this game versus that, Do you guys have metrics analytics? Do you guys, are you guys measuring rest and recovery to make sure that you’re peaking on game days?

[01:09:41] Andy Farrell: Our strength conditioning coach he kind of monitors all that. With a Catapult, which is like almost like a, a sports bra that the guys wear with a like an accelerometer in it. Yep. And it’s just, it’s measuring a, it’s measuring hundreds of data points that the guys have between heart acceleration, heart rate, whatever that those things may be.

And, he’s constantly monitoring that stuff. That was one of the first purchases Coach Grant had after coming from the NBA because of how big they are on that stuff. And Coach Grant, the thing he does at an elite level, people ask all the time, what makes Coach Grant so good? He has such a pulse on what the guys need physically and mentally at all times.

It’s unbelievable. He had that when he was at VCU in, in 2008 when I was with him. And he has that now. And I think because he’s so aware, he realizes that the, the guys’ bodies are so important and if we can get an advantage on, on our opponents or throughout the course of the season by being very mindful from a scientific standpoint, from a sports science standpoint of monitoring their bodies and the loads that they have on a day in and day out basis, our strength coach utilizing that resource, our trainer, what he’s saying from the feedback standpoint, again, the qualitative and quantitative information being married together.

Yeah. We utilize that at a very, very, very high level.

[01:11:05] Mike Klinzing: What do those conversations look like with individual players? So when you’re getting that data, obviously as a coaching staff, you’re discussing it, you’re looking at it, you’re seeing, Hey, what is this impact in terms of the workload that we’re putting on our guys?

But how do you have those conversations with individual players in terms of their data? Is that something that you’re talking to, talking to them about? Or is that something that more you’re talking about amongst your staff and then you’re kind of giving the. Not necessarily the data, but the players are just sort of seeing the results of what you guys are discussing as coaches

[01:11:36] Andy Farrell:  Yeah. I would say that it’s probably not a conversation. Again, I don’t know what some of the individual conversations coaches had behind closed doors with some of the guys, but I would say like in general, it’s, we don’t need to bother the guys with this information because they have so much other stuff that they need to be worried about.

Coach just does a great job of, hey, listen, like maybe it’s, it’s starters getting one of three reps, so starters get the first. Second team gets the second reps the, the third rep goes through, Hey guys, have to play multiple positions. Switch, switch, switch, two walk-ons, you guys are in at these other positions.

Go. And like, he’s just so conscious of that stuff. Our strength coach is constantly in coach’s ear during, during practices, especially as we start peeking into the games where it’s like, Hey, you have this left in practice, maybe you scale back here. Or, Hey, you probably can push ’em a little bit more here.

Hey, what are your thoughts here? They, they’re in constant communication and Coach Grant is so receptive to all those things. Like he, he’s not a guy that’s like completely set in his ways. Like he wants feedback at the end day. He’s going to make the decision that he thinks at best, but he wants all the information prior to, So he does a good job of managing that stuff without having to, to bother or, or take the, the mental capacity from the guys of saying like, Hey, you’re going to rest a little bit more here and here.

Nah, he’s just, he, he’s just going to do it on his own. Because the players trust him so much that they know he has their best interests in mind. And whatever Coach says is going to be what’s best for the program.

[01:13:07] Mike Klinzing: Are you saying those guys got a lot on their plate? Is that what you’re trying to say?

[01:13:10] Andy Farrell: To say the least?  To say the least.

[01:13:13] Mike Klinzing: All right. Well, one of the new things that’s on their plate is NIL. How’s that going? What are you guys doing there and just how have you handled it as a staff?

[01:13:21] Andy Farrell: It’s one of those things that’s ever changing right now. I think that we are a little over a year into NIL being a thing.

It’s been highly successful for our players here at Dayton. I think one of the things that we do at a very, very high level is we constantly are educating our guys. Whether it’s the people in our marketing department, social media department whoever it is, they’re educating the guys on the dos and don’ts to make sure that they’re representing themselves at a very high level.

It’s stuff that probably every program has done for the past 20 years in the first meeting when players get on campus and then never touch it again. Our, our, our team, Here’s those messages nonstop from marketing, social media whoever it may be. That’s like bringing it to the guy’s attention. Hey, here’s some of the do’s and don’ts.

Here’s some of the trends. Here’s the things in order to make sure that you’re, you’re representing yourself, your family, and your program in the best way possible. And the other things that we’re doing is we educate ourselves and we educate the players on the new legislation. Like stuff is passing all the time, whether it’s for the international kids, the stuff with collectives, like all that stuff’s constantly changing as the NCAA continues to have a grasp on how is everything transpiring right now.

So we’re just, we’re, we’re constantly updating the guys with those types of things and we’re able to hopefully have them use that education as a vehicle for them to take advantage of whatever opportunities are trending or whatever opportunities come their way.

[01:14:50] Mike Klinzing: Has the impact of it been more or less than what you would’ve thought as you guys realized it was coming down the pike?

[01:14:59] Andy Farrell: I think it’s probably just for me, I was a finance and econ double major. Like, I understand it from the business perspective.  I think it’s exactly where I thought it would be. I think you’re going to have the handful of people that are the 10 athletes that are getting a million plus dollars, right?

Like, you’re going to get those. But at some point, businesses want an roi. They want their return on investment. Like they’re not going to put their, their marketing dollars into an 18 or 22 year old who’s on a college campus. Who knows what they’re going to be doing on weekends just because they’re a star player and who knows what that return on investment’s going to be. So one, it could potentially already be a risk if they don’t know the individual. And two, they want to see a return on their investment. So the market is going to normalize, the market is going to correct itself. And I think that we’re slowly starting to see it.

So yeah, you’re going to have those 10 kids that are going to get a million dollars because they can command it because they have the social media presence, they have the visibility and marketability where that is justifiable. You’re going to have those hundred players that are getting between a hundred thousand and $250,000.

Now I’m talking about all sports right now. Right? Not just men’s basketball because they can demand it. And you’re going to have a handful of those. There’s going to be a small sample of those, and right, wrong or indifferent, they’re going to be people, a booster just going to write ’em a check because they were going to write ’em a check regardless.

And now it’s just legal to do so. So just calling it like it is . Right. And then you have the rest of the population who, hey, they can get a $50 gift card to a restaurant if they show up inside some autographs. Cool. Like that’s great. I think the best thing for NIL is that people aren’t getting violations for something silly.

Somebody retweets one of their friends from back home is now selling sweatshirts and he just retweets is saying like, Proud of you bro. And now that’s a violation because he is endorsing something. No, like that’s why NIL has been really, really good because you’re eliminating some violations that that shouldn’t be taking place.

And some of these student athletes are able to capitalize on their fair market value.

[01:17:08] Mike Klinzing: I think that’s a great point just about the little things when you think about all the minutiae that I’m sure you guys as coaches have to be and had to be on top of when it came to that kind of stuff. And, and clearly this is, as you said, you have to educate yourself and it adds a whole nother layer of something that you have.

Be able to manage so that you can help your student athletes that we’ve talked about. Just like you’re helping ’em on the floor, you’re helping ’em the classroom, you’re helping the community. Well now you’re helping ’em in the business world and you’re helping ’em to be able to navigate that and understand how they can best go through and chart a course for how it’s going to benefit them as much as, as they possibly can.

And so I think it’s, it’s been interesting to see just from talking to different coaches and, and their opinion, I think most people feel like that it, it’s, it hasn’t been disruptive, that it’s been something that they look at as a positive, which I think anybody who’s looking at it from the outside like I am, says, Man, that’s the kind of thing that you’d want it, that’s what you’d want to hear.

Yeah. Cause I think that if it was done wrong, there’s the possibility it could be that it could be divisive in certain ways. And I think that there was some worry that that was what was going to tra transpire. And from everybody that I’ve talked to, at least Andy, it doesn’t seem like that’s been the case at all.

It seems like. People have been able to sort of figure out and navigate it and make it work. And that’s not to say I’m sure it’s perfect. And as you said, the market is going to eventually correct itself and I think settle down and companies will start to figure out where they can best get that roi like you were talking about.

And it may not look exactly the same as it does today, but eventually it’s going to settle out. And I think everybody will just become, it’ll just become the status quo. It’s just the way it is. We won’t even, we don’t, we won’t even remember the day where athletes weren’t able to be able to, to take advantage of, of what they can as college players.

So I think it’s a good, I think it’s a good move. I was a little, I was a little concerned about it going in just from a coaching standpoint and the things that coaching staffs would’ve had to deal with. But I think overall the execution of it has been, I would say, probably better than I would’ve guessed, in all honesty.

[01:19:08] Andy Farrell: I would agree. I definitely would agree.

[01:19:14] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let’s talk a little recruiting. Tell me a little bit about, just let’s go start to finish. How do you go about, first of all, identifying guys that. You Want to recruit? And then as you go through the process, what does it look like in terms of what atmosphere do you like to see ’em in?

Do you prefer seeing ’em with aau? Do you prefer seeing ’em in their high school setting? Who do you need to build relationships in order to eventually be able to get a guy to come onto campus and, and enroll? Just just take us from the, the beginning of how do you identify a guy all the way through this guy’s now signing a letter of intent.

[01:19:44] Andy Farrell: Yeah, absolutely. So I’m going to go back a little bit and just reflect kind of on my days when I was an assistant coach at Southwest Mississippi Community College, because I think that’s the most tangible, because that’s when I could actually go out on the road recruiting. Sure, sure. And that’s when, like, I didn’t have, Hey, when can you call a kid?

When can you not call a kid? What, what can I text a kid? What can I not text a kid? So from a recruiting standpoint, when I was in junior college, I think the first thing that we needed to, to, to do was identify what are the needs of the class. Knowing that. If there’s a far superior talent that we can get regardless of what the needs are, you’re going to take, right?

So like maybe you can get like the best point guard in the state and you don’t need a point guard. Well, we’re going to take that point guard if he wants to commit to us and we’re going to play two guards at the same time. Like, we’re perfectly fine with that. So I think identifying what the needs of the program are.

And then I think the other thing that you have to do is you have to figure out like, can the kid fit in your system and style of play? And I think that’s something sometimes we, as coaches, we tend to not look at and like, well they can fit in. Well no. Like you can’t always fit a, a square peg into a round hole.

Like you just can’t do it. And I think that that’s sometimes where you make mistakes. Going back to your style of play, going back to your analytics, what do you value from a numbers standpoint, if a kid scores the ball a ton, but shoots a ton of mid-range jump shots and that’s not what you do. Don’t recruit that kid, because now you’re going to take what he does really well and you’re going to put him into a system that you’re not valuing that or you don’t want to value that, or your offense isn’t designed to value that, where you’re not sitting a ton of pin downs and they’re coming off and curling you or whatever it may be.

Like, don’t put yourself in a position or the kid in a position where why you recruited him to score the ball. Now you’re not valuing what he does. So I think one is positional need. Two, do they fit your style and system of play? And I think that that’s something, again, like very, very overlooked or undervalued.

And then the third component is, do they fit the culture? Like do they want to do the things that your program has the standards for? And every program’s different. When I was at junior college, we told the kids straight up and it sometimes scared the ones off, but that’s fine.

We’d rather be wrong on the kids that didn’t commit to us than the kids that did commit to us. We told the kids every single day, again, this is when I was at junior college, Hey, listen, you have to go to every class. You have to sit in the first two rows of every class. You can’t wear a hat, a hood, or headphones when you walk into a classroom building.

And if you missed any academic appointment, whether it was a tutor or a class, your punishment was two times as bad as it would be if you are late or miss a practice or a weightlifting session. Because we valued education at a very, very high level. Again, it was junior college. We had to set those standards for the guys, and half the guys that we had weren’t qualifiers.

We wanted to show them, Hey, listen, the reason why you’re here is because you weren’t good academically and this needs to be a priority for you. That’s not for everyone. I like having those hard conversations out front because like I don’t Want to waste my time and I didn’t Want to waste the kids time and I didn’t Want to waste my boss’s time either.

So I think that those three things you have to do. One is your, what is your need? Two is do they fit your style of play? And three, do they fit you, your program and your culture? And if all those three things are yeses, then you can start talking about like, are they better than what you have? What role can they be?

Are they a starter? Are they coming off the bench? Are they just the three and D type of guy? Or can they be a pick and pop four? Like all those things. But I think once you can get all three of those yeses, you can start evaluating more and more. I love seeing them in high school and AAU settings personally.

Just because it’s different competition. Like high school, it was more of the structure. They’re probably like the best player on their team. Aau, not necessarily. I also loved when kids didn’t have good games, like I evaluated them nonstop. And maybe it’s just like the old school kind of guy in me for being a younger guy.

But like, I loved when the kid got a couple fouls early that I knew was good enough and talented enough. But it’s like, all right, like if he gets three fouls in the first quarter, is he still making eye contact? Is he still cheering his team on? Is he having an attitude with the ref? What can he do as soon as he steps on the court?

Is he jacking a shot or is he trying to feel himself into the game? Is he getting stops on the defense within the floor? Like all those things were important parts of the evaluation process for me as an assistant coach, because I want to make sure that I was able to give a complete 360 view to my head coach when push came to shove and we’re sitting in that recruiting meeting and it’s like, okay, this player or this player who’s coming on the first visit, I Want to be able to, to say with full confidence which one I believed in. Now, was I wrong at times? Yeah, absolutely. But I’d rather be wrong again on the guys that we don’t take rather than being wrong on guys that we do take.

[01:24:49] Mike Klinzing: What’s the hardest piece to evaluate when it comes to players? Is it work ethic? Is it attitude? Is it what? What is it?

Obviously the basketball piece of it, Maybe there’s something there, but it seems to me it would be more like those intangibles. You can see a kid has talent on the floor. You can see they have the athleticism or the skill or whatever it may be, but it seems like there’s some of those intangible pieces would be the most difficult.

Is there anything that when you’re thinking about it, you’re trying to evaluate a kid that you’re like, Man, that’s, Sometimes it’s just hard to tell about this.

[01:25:21] Andy Farrell: Yeah, I think that that’s why I liked watching them in multiple settings, because I think the hardest thing to do is seeing somebody in a role where they’re not at their best, right? Like, Yep. Can this kid be successful as being our fourth best player or can he be our seventh best player this year as he continues to progress and mature at the college level to be able to be our fourth best player the following year, our second best player the next year. Like, that’s the thing.

Coach Grant says it at a very, very high level. He says, Can you be good when what you do best isn’t at your best? Like, can you be good when what you do best isn’t at your best? And I think that’s the hardest thing as an evaluator to, to, to, to, to see. Because if they’re not the best player on your team, can they still fit in and be fine and thrive in that role?

Because they may say yes or they may say no, right? And until you’re there, like again, like it all goes back to like literally one of the first things that you and I just talked about. There is a human element to this, right? Like, so like a kid is used to taking 14 shots a game and now he’s taking only seven.

Is he truly in his heart of hearts going to be fine with that? And can you as a coach be able to have the relationship with him where you’re saying, Hey, you taking these seven shots is actually going to be better for you because we’re going to learn to be more efficient. You can focus on doing some of the other things.

And if you star in this role right now, next year, you’re going to get 12. Because, and not guaranteeing them that, but like, hey, as you progress and as you develop and as you start understanding where your advantages and disadvantages are within our offense and within your abilities, can we continue to grow your game?

I think that is probably the hardest thing to evaluate because there is a massive question mark with that because it is the human element to it.

[01:27:26] Mike Klinzing: I’m guessing not only through the recruiting process, but then once you get ’em on campus, that’s a huge part of making sure that you have everybody on the same page, is having those difficult conversations with kids constantly all the time, I’m guessing, where you’re just updating ’em on, Hey, here’s where you stand.

Here’s your role, here’s where we see you, here’s where we project you moving forward. Because I think otherwise, if kids don’t know that, then that’s when you’re sort of sowing confusion. That’s when problems start coming up.

[01:27:57] Andy Farrell: Yeah. Especially if you look at, and I hate breaking it down to like millennials and Gen Z, but like one of the big things with Gen Z is closing the feedback loop.

Like that, that’s something that like numerous studies show, especially for this generation right now, is like you have to be able to close the feedback loop with this younger generation. So letting them know where they stand, right, wrong or indifferent is what they need. That’s what they want.

They want to hear that. So whether they’re doing something and they’re not getting what they want, they need to hear, Hey, you’re not going to get you what you want. Because if not, that the ambiguity is even more detrimental than hearing, Hey, you’re not playing this game, or, Hey, you’re only getting two shots more than likely, because what else we have in there?

The ambiguity and the uncertainness is far more like torture for them than the actual facts of the matter because the feedback loop has to be closed for Gen Z.

[01:28:55] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a great way to put it. And I think when you look at teams that I’ve been around and you have role confusion that’s usually where you end up with lots and lots of problems. You end up with players sort of having infighting because they don’t know where they stand amongst themselves. And then you have, Well, coach isn’t letting me know this and that, and it just that. Those are always situations where I think that proactive communication and getting in front of it early and making sure that you’re a hundred percent transparent, that to me, solves so many potential issues.

I think most of the time, and I’m sure you can attest to this, that if you’re honest with guys up front, they may not necessarily like what you have to say, but at least they know where they stand and they know where they have to put in work, and they know what they have to do in order to get to where they want to go.

Whereas if there is no communication, then what happens, at least in my experiences, Those guys start stewing, they start getting mad, their effort drops off, and before you know it, you kind of lost those kids. And I think that communication piece is so important.

[01:30:02] Andy Farrell: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.

[01:30:04] Mike Klinzing: All right, let’s talk a little Rising Coaches before we wrap up.

Yeah. Tell me about you and Adam getting that thing started, the process. Just, just gimme the, gimme the short, gimme the short, gimme the short version. The, the condensed version of just what you guys were thinking and, and how, why it’s, why it’s grown into, into such a great organization like it is today.

[01:30:22] Andy Farrell: Yeah. I appreciate you saying that, and it’s been fun, man. I think we’re going on 12 years now of, of running rising coaches and it’s kind of transformed from where it started in the infancy stages to, to where it is now. You know, it’s, we started it as an opportunity for, for young coaches who didn’t have a network like you and I talked about before, to get to know one another and to build genuine relationships while trying to help each other out in the beginning stages of their career.

In the heart of hearts and the essence of what it is today, it’s the same thing. We’ve just expanded it, we’ve grown it, we’ve made it more accessible, and we’ve added a lot of more layers to it to where members that we have through our Rising Coaches organization and the membership that they’re able to have is not just that, but it’s access to jobs, it’s access to member only zooms, it’s access to message boards where you can post and, and bounce ideas off of one another.

So it’s just, it’s just grown exponentially in order to help the coaching community. We had over, I would say like 80 to 90 live active jobs posted on our member website this year, Not jobs where like you see a posting forward and everybody knows some of those websites or the Twitter feeds where it’s like, Hey, a job’s posted.

Does anyone know? Well, this job’s already filled, like it’s just posted from an HR standpoint, right? We had 80 to 90 like live jobs where an assistant coach or the head coach hit us up saying, Hey, we need this position. What candidates do you have? And they’ll ask us for, Hey, can you just post this to your board and we’ll take the candidates?

Hey, we just need your top five candidates for this job. So that’s something that because we have been able to do this for so long, our experience and our network, and I guess our credibility within the profession has allowed and afford us the opportunity to help programs and to help our members with these active live jobs.

We can get some people’s foot in the door. We can give ’em the information. They’ve have to get the jobs themselves. We’re never going to guarantee that. But those are, those are real, tangible job opportunities that they have. Some of the member only Zooms that we have whether it was the book club that I started I love reading.

So I started book club. Or we have like Mark Phelps does stuff now that we, we’ve hired Mark Phelps, former division one head coach and he’s done some unbelievable member zooms with current head coaches, great assistant coaches. And those are all opportunities for our members to grow with one another, grow them personally and professionally, and continue to utilize the Rising Coaches network for their own personal and professional growth.

[01:33:11] Mike Klinzing: I think that what you guys have done with Rising Coaches is really almost nothing short of incredible when you think about starting it from scratch and the fact that you guys have been able to build up this community. Of coaches that are there to be able to support one another, but then what you guys are able to provide from a services standpoint, as you mentioned with the jobs and just the information and your events, and of course Brian’s hosting the podcast and there’s just a ton of things that are out there that you guys are doing that enable young coaches to, as you said, to be able to build that network that, as we talked about earlier, is just so critically important in your career.

And so when you put that community in front of people, if you’re a young coach and you’re out there and you’re listening or you’re a coach at any level, I don’t care if you’re a high school level, you’re an AAU coach, you’re a college coach, I, I think it’s well worth your time and effort to, to get involved with, with rising coaches because I just think that what you guys have provided in terms of, as I said, the content that you put out there, the services that you have out there, the ability to network, the ability to find.

Potential employment opportunities. I just think that it’s second to none what you and Adam have been able to put together. And I would, again, I would just, I would highly recommend to any coach that get out there and get involved with rising coaches if you can. I Want to wrap up, Andy, we’re going past an hour and a half.

I want to ask you one final two part question. So part, part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see in front of you as being your biggest challenge? And you can take that professionally, you can take that with your team there at Dayton, however you Want to take that question. And the second part is, When you get up every day and you get out of bed, what brings you the most joy about what you get to do?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:35:04] Andy Farrell: Yeah. I would say for our Dayton basketball team we have a young team this year. We were the youngest team in the country last year. We have a lot of expectations on our shoulders, like external expectations. So our guys need to make sure that they’re keeping the main thing, the main thing.

And if we can have continued success, continue to realize what, what got us there and keep the external voices out of our head. Keep the external expectations, away from what we need to do on a day in, day out basis. Because we’re competing against our standard, and that’s going to enable success for us.

The thing from a personal level, a challenge for me that I actually, I got a text message from a dear friend of mine who’s a high school coach, and it was a Bible passage and, and kind of like a, a reflection of devotional, and it talked about the work life balance for, for specifically for college coaches.

So, one of the things that I know that I actually, I sent it to my wife and I told her, Please hold me accountable to this because I need this. That is one of my personal challenges for myself is as my daughter’s four, my son is a year and a half as they’re continuing to grow and as I still strive to advance my professional career and, and for us to win championships here at Dayton is I’ve have to have that work-life balance.

Because, and then to answer your second question, the thing that wakes me up every single morning, puts a smile on my face are my kids. Because like, they, the, the beauty that I see through their eyes, we, we got smacked this year this past season at home. We, we bought a game. It was one of our early games a year.

We lost by double digits. It was a terrible game. My wife kept my kids after the game was a late game. My wife kept them out there just so I could she kept them there so that I could see them. After the game was done, after we talked to the team in the locker room, and you know how that was a long talk.

I walked out of the locker room and my daughter gave me the biggest kiss and a hug, and she said that she was so happy because she got to see the cheerleaders and it just gave me such a, a smile on my face after the worst beat down in embarrassment that, that I’ve had in recent time.

And they are my why. They bring such a joy and a smile to my life on a daily basis that that is what wakes me up every single day and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

[01:37:32] Mike Klinzing: It’s well said Andy, and I think that it’s something that. All of us realize when you’re talking about your career and the things that we do outside of the home, which are all really important to us, but ultimately when you come home, your wife, your kids, your spouse, that’s really what it’s all about.

And it’s why you do what you do. And so I think that’s, that’s very well said. Before we wrap up, I Want to give you a chance to share how people can reach out to you, connect with you, whether you Want to share social media, email, whatever you feel comfortable with, and then I’ll jump back in and wrap things.

[01:38:03] Andy Farrell: Yeah, absolutely. So my social handles on both Twitter and Instagram is @CoachAFarrell for both Twitter and Instagram. And my email address is andy.farrell@udayton.edu. Honestly, if you just go to the Dayton Men’s basketball website, my email address is on there, I love connecting with coaches. I get dozens of cold emails every month from people saying, Hey, would love to connect, heard you on a podcast or a high school coach just looking to try to expand my network. I respond to every single one of those. If someone wants a phone call with me, I would love to just because again, like rising coaches, that’s kind of like why we started it.

If people want advice, like, I have no problems. Like when I’m driving to work or driving home from work, I’ll hop on the call with anybody. So I would love to do that. And then if, if you’re listening to this the other thing that you may or may not know about me is like, I love reading. Like, I absolutely love reading.

It’s one of my like things that like, it’s just, it’s therapeutic for me and I just, I enjoy it. So if anyone has any good book recommendations, drop me an email, drop me a line on social media. Like, I would love to know what you guys are reading out there what your thoughts are on some of the, the books that you’ve read, Old, new good, bad, and different.

Like, I would love to hear it and, and add to my collection. So please feel free. I would love to hear any.

[01:39:24] Mike Klinzing: All right. I lied. One more question. All right, Go for it. So gimme a book recommendation. I’ll give you one.

[01:39:29] Andy Farrell: Right. So actually so one of our student managers asked me, he said, Andy, what’s the best novel you’ve read?

And I was like, Oh, man. Like, that’s, that’s a tough one. If you phrase it like that. I chose a Man’s Search for Meeting by Victor Frankel.  I absolutely love it. One of my favorite books of all time. But then I said like, so like when you talk about novels, like A Man’s Search For Meaning is probably one of the most profound books I’ve ever read in my life from a coaching standpoint.

Obviously that’s still a great book to read, but, but Legacy is a really, really good one that, that I highly recommend. Extreme Ownership is a really, really good one that I highly recommend. But one that I’ve gotten into a lot these days. And it’s a little bit more out there, but it’s all about like trying  to enhance flow state and if that’s something you like to, to nerd out on the Rise of Superman.

Is like a phenomenal book. If you want to talk about flow state, what flow state is, how you can try to generate flow state quicker. And just like the neuroscience behind it, it’s phenomenal. So what’s your recommendation?

[01:40:30] Mike Klinzing: All right, so mine is a book called Willpower Doesn’t Work and it’s sort of a personal development book, but there’s a lot of things I think that are applicable to both coaches and players.

But I think for anybody you pick up that a copy of that book and I try to reread it honestly ever since I read it the first time, which is probably like, I dunno, I’ve been four or five years ago, I’ve reread it at least once every year just because it kind of wow brings me back and says, Hey, reminds me of some things that I should be doing.

Sometimes I’ll get some habits that I don’t stick with all the time and it’ll just remind me that, hey, I have to kind of design, like a lot of it’s about designing your environment to make things easier for yourself and how, how you design your environment. And I just find that kind of stuff fascinating.

Will power doesn’t work. The author is Benjamin Hardy.

[01:41:17] Andy Farrell: Benjamin Hardy I’m literally going to order from Amazon tomorrow, Benjamin Hardy. That’s interesting. The first time I heard about designing like your space in order to help daily habits and routine was in Atomic Habits by James Clear.

And he talks about that and it’s like, Oh wow. Like that’s, it’s so true. Like if you have apples in your room, you’re going to be more prone to eat apples. But if you have the cookie jar right there, then you’re going to be more pro like. So move the cookie jar into a place where you have to like step on a stool to get the cookies right and put your apples on the table.

Like, Oh wow. Like that actually makes a ton of sense.

[01:41:54] Mike Klinzing: So yeah, those two books are very, they’re not similar in their writing style. I would say the theme of the two books is similar, but both authors kind of approach it from a slightly different perspective, but they just have a different writing style.

I was lucky enough to have James Clear on the podcast early on because Alan Stein, shout out to Alan. Thank you for connecting me to James Clear among tons of other people, but we are lucky enough to have James on and talk to him for about an hour about the book. That was a fascinating conversation.

So anybody who’s listening to this one, you Want to go back and listen. You Want to go back and listen to the James Clear one, just search the library. That’s definitely one of the best ones we’ve done. Again, not necessarily coaching specific, but if you’re just interested in improving yourself, that’s a great one to go back and listen to.

So again, Andy cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump out with us. It’s been a ton of fun to be able to talk to you tonight and learn more about your story and just pick your brain on all the great things that you’ve been able to do in your career and to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.