JASON SMITH – CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 744

Website – https://yellowjackets.cedarville.edu/sports/womens-basketball

Email – jasonsmith@cedarville.edu

Twitter – @CedarvilleWBB

Jason Smith has been the women’s basketball head coach at Cedarville University since the beginning of the 2021-22 season.  He guided the Lady Jackets to records of 17-12 overall and 12-10 G-MAC during his first campaign while qualifying for the G-MAC Tournament.  Twelve of his players earned spots on the G-MAC Academic Team while another was voted to the All-G-MAC First Team.

Smith came to Cedarville after producing a notable ten-year run as head coach at Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn.  He produced an impressive resume at Bryan where he is the school’s all-time winningest coach.  Smith guided the Lions to an overall record of 219-85 including a 157-49 slate in the Appalachian Athletic Conference.  His teams claimed five regular season titles, four league tournament crowns, and made six appearances in the NAIA Division II National Tournament.  Following his final season, Smith earned his third consecutive AAC Coach of the Year honor after which his team posted a remarkable 78-7 record during that timespan featuring a perfect 64-0 conference mark. He produced nine consecutive winning campaigns including an 18-3 record during the 2020-21 COVID-abbreviated season.

Jason previously served as the head men’s basketball coach at both Calvary Bible College and San Diego Christian College.  As an undergraduate at Kansas he was a varsity manager and film technician for Head Coach Roy Williams.

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Be prepared with your notebook and pen as you listen to this episode with Jason Smith, women’s basketball head coach at Cedarville University.

What We Discuss with Jason Smith

• Why Larry Bird was an early basketball influence on him
• “I was a point guard so I saw the game from every angle in many ways. I wanted to know how every position worked.”
• His experience as a student manager for Kansas under Head Coach Roy Williams
• Starting his coaching career after graduating from Kansas at Wellsville High School in Kansas as an assistant
• Leaving coaching and going into sales to make more money
• How his wife helped reignite his dream of coaching basketball
• Taking some bible classes at Calvary Bible College and then getting an opportunity to coach there as a volunteer assistant
• “Practice is my time and game times are for my players.”
• Breaking down ways to beat a defender
• Using film of other players to show his players new moves for them to work on
• “Coaching women, I think you’ve really have to break it down on film and just repeat it over and over.”
• Becoming the head coach at Calvary Bible College after on year as a volunteer assistant
• Not realizing how hard it would be and how many good coaches there were at the small college level
• “I just kept asking good coaches, what do you do?”
• “Being humble enough to know that you don’t know everything is a good quality.”
• “I walk into my office every single day just to get a little bit better.”
• “If I’m not getting myself better, our team’s not getting better.”
• Learning and growing during his time as a head coach at San Diego Christian College
• Working a year of JUCO and realizing it wasn’t for him
• Moving to Bryan College in Tennessee for a part-time men’s assistant job
• The transition from coaching men to coaching women when he took over at Bryan as the Head Women’s Coach
• Building up women’s self-esteem
• Looking for players who are great teammates, not entitled, and have a chip on their shoulder
• The benefits of watching a player during AAU season
• “I’m going to go find the best teams, best high school teams in our area and we’re going to try to recruit their best players.”
• “I started looking at stats of all the teams that were winning at our level on the national scene and they all put the ball in the bucket at crazy numbers, right? They’re all scoring in the high eighties, low nineties, even high nineties. And I thought, well if we’re going to win, this is what we’re going to have to do.”
• Why he left Bryan for Cedarville
• Building relationships through simple human interaction
• The danger of making decisions out of fear
• Sharing adversity
• “What’s the most important thing you’re looking for in a school?” And almost every single one of them said, I just want to play with a team that likes each other and gets along.”
• “My job as your coach is to love you, but it’s your job to love each other.”
• They figured out winning games was actually fun. And you know what? I don’t need all those accolades because they’re just dust on a shelf at some point, right?”
• A player’s value has to be more than minutes or points

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THANKS, JASON SMITH

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JASON SMITH – CEDARVILLE UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 744

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by another Jason, Jason Smith, head women’s basketball coach at Cedarville University. Jason, welcome to the Hoop Pets Pod. Yeah,

[00:00:13] Jason Smith: Thanks Mike for having us and having me here.

I appreciate the opportunity just to share my story, and you guys have been doing a great job just reaching out to coaches and letting them have a voice it’s been awesome. So excited to have you. I wish Jason was here, but we’ll get her done without him, you know? But so you asked me like, how did I start my basketball career as a young kid?

I always tell people that I first grew up on a baseball field, to be honest with you. My dad was a baseball coach, a youth baseball coach, and Before I was even born, and me and my brother spent most of our time on a baseball field growing up. I think I spent every birthday of my life on a baseball field.

And then like any good dad, he just wanted to get us some involved in other sports. And he enrolled us into just a youth basketball league as a kid at the local Y M C A. And, and that was kind of my first introduction to basketball. And liked it. I baseball was my first love, but I liked basketball and just continued to develop the game and just play each year and get a little bit better every year.

But I’ll tell you, the love of basketball really started with Larry Bird, to be honest with you. Just start watching basketball and seeing Larry Bird play. I was just mesmerized and I thought, I want to be like that guy. And then shortly after that, I don’t know the timeframe, but my dad ended up buying me and my brother a basketball hoop and put it in the driveway.

And, and that was Katie Bar The door. At that point I was done . I mean, baseball was fun and all, but I was hooked on basketball from that moment. And I spent hours and hours and hours outside on the driveway perfecting the game myself. And I was always the Celtics I was always Larry Bird and we always played the Lakers and we always won, you know what I’m saying?

So and I just spent hours and my parents would’ve to drag me in the house at night saying, you’re going to wake the neighbors up. So as a kid, that’s just kind of what I did. I just gravitated to basketball at some point and, and I was, I was a little Pips Creek. I wasn’t very big, so I had to work for everything I did on the basketball court all my life.

But even from the age 12, I would probably tell people like, what are you going to, people would ask me like, what are you going to do with your life? I said, well, I’m going to probably be a basketball coach. That’s what I want to do. So from an early age, I kind of knew what I wanted to do.

[00:02:26] Mike Klinzing: Did you look at the game from a coaching perspective, even when you were young?

[00:02:29] Jason Smith: I think it was my junior high. You know, when I got into junior high and I had, I was on a really good junior high basketball team. I think I started seeing things from a coaching perspective. I mean, I was a point guard so I saw the game from every angle in many ways. I wanted to know how every position worked.

I wanted to know what every person’s supposed to be on the court at all the time. So I was in that learning mode early on. Definitely.

[00:02:58] Mike Klinzing: You were definitely thinking like a coach, because I think there’s two, what I found from the podcast, and it’s been interesting, is almost everybody falls into one of two camps.

They fall into the camp that you’re in, which is, I’ve been thinking about being a coach from the time I was young. I was the coach on the floor, I was the point guard. I was the kid that was drawing up plays in the dirt or on a napkin or whatever. And there’s those coaches, and then you have the other coaches who.

Maybe they were players or maybe they played another sport or whatever it was, and then they kind of get done and it looks like their athletic sort of playing career is done and then they look around and say, wow, maybe I want to coach just so I can stay involved in the game. Or maybe somebody that’s coached them, see something in them that they didn’t see in themselves.

I always think it’s interesting just to hear from the two different sides of that coin in terms of, well, wow, this guy’s been thinking about being a coach since he was 12 and then here’s another, here’s another guy who, maybe he was playing overseas and now he’s 35 and never even thought about coaching, and all of a sudden the game’s kind of being taken away.

And then you’re like, okay, man, now I have to go and I have to get into coaching because I want to keep the game close to me or, or as close to me as I can. All right, so I have to ask you about bird. So when I was a kid, I was a magic guy. Despised, despised the Celtics despised bird, couldn’t stand it. There you go. I, I understand, I understand.

Well, magic beat you in the in mind. So it’s all even, but it’s funny because you go back and I look and I always try to think about, well, why did I like magic and not bird again, looking at this as an adult. And then I transitioned eventually to Jordan and that became my, my number one guy become my number one guy.

And it is what it is. But I always try to think about him, like, why, what was it about magic that I liked more than Bird? Because even going back to like the Michigan State, Indiana State National Championship game, like I didn’t really know much necessarily about either those guys.

I was like eight or nine years old and for whatever reason I just gravitated to magic. And I kind of always, I guess as I look back on it, part of me, especially with the Jordan piece of it, and maybe magic to a certain degree, I always felt. . Well, bird is kind of like, I feel like I could kind of maybe do some of the things that Bird does.

Like he can’t jump. He’s kind of slow. Like I could kind of be like him. I’d rather be one of these guys that I have no chance of being that are Fast and Jordan can jump out of the gym. You know, I’m barely touching the rim at six three all these things. So it’s just interesting to kind of go back.

What was it about Bird? Was it just instantaneous? Something that you didn’t even really process, you just loved his passing?

[00:05:30] Jason Smith: What was it about Bird? Yeah. Honestly, I can’t think like exactly what it was at the moment. I think it was just, His whole aspect of this game. I mean, he knows, I still watch his highlights.

I mean, when the feed pops up on Facebook, still a two and a half minute video of all his best plays. I still watch it every time, even though I’ve seen it a thousand times. Right. He still mesmerizes me. Just the things that he was able to do with without the athleticism. And as I got older just to understand how he approached the game too really a lot of respect.

He was, he was the type of guy that hated to be disrespected. Right. And I think always coached and I’ve always played with a chip on my shoulder, so I think I kind of gravitated towards a little bit of his, his attitude and, and not wanting to be disrespected, you know?

[00:06:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. And I think when you go back into that era, I think everybody was either in the bird camp or you were in the magic camp.

If you were an NBA fan in that era, you were kind of picking sides and deciding, all right, which one. Which one of those guys is my favorite. And so as you’re talking about the chip on your shoulder and you’re talking about a guy who I think maximized what he could do in terms of his skillset, when you think about yourself as a player, as you started to get more serious with the game and you got up into high school, what were some of the things that you were doing at that time?

Cause obviously it’s a lot different. The way kids grow up in the game today is far, far different than you grew up in the game, or I grew up in the game. So what were some of the things that you did to help make yourself a better player when you were in high school?

[00:07:02] Jason Smith: I mean obviously watching a lot of N B A basketball and college basketball.

I did a lot of that, to be honest with you. You know, the game was different. We didn’t have all the AAU summer ball stuff like we do now. And really it was just a lot of time in my driveway. I was small. I mean, at 16 I was five, six, a hundred ten pounds and I had to fight for everything I got to earn on the basketball court.

So that’s where that chip on the shoulder comes a little bit is, I had to work harder than everybody else to get minutes. Because I wasn’t gifted athletically necessarily. I was gifted with understanding the game and knowing what I’m supposed to be doing, but the athletic ability just wasn’t quite there.

So I just had to outthink people and outwork people and really it was just a lot of time in the driveway and watching film. I mean, my dad, he went to the University of Kansas so obviously there, and, and so did I. So growing up listening to the Jayhawks basketball on the radio I mean, we would listen to all the games on the radio and just, that was amazing.

I know that’s a long time ago when you listen to games on the radio, but just to hear these announcers, I mean, you’re just living this thing vicariously in your bedroom or you’re living room listening to a basketball game. It’s amazing.

[00:08:15] Mike Klinzing: Right? Yeah, absolutely. I think when I was a kid thinking about being on the driveway, I think about listening to Joe Tait, who was the Cavs longtime announcer here in Cleveland.

And then also I used to listen to a lot of baseball games on the radio while I was shooting on my driveway. And those are things that, again, I almost never do now, it’s just the, that radio call has almost gone away. Who was your guy from Kansas growing up when you were a kid? Who’d you like at Kansas?

[00:08:40] Jason Smith: Oh, there was a guy named Ron Kellogg.I don’t know if you remember Ron Kellogg? Yep. Yep. You know, he was a good shooter. He was a great shooter before the days of the three point line. You know, I think if the three point line out he would had some bigger numbers But he was my guy. You know, when listening to the radio to Jayhawk basketball as a kid yeah, it was Ron Kellogg draining shots from Everywhere.

[00:09:02] Mike Klinzing: Nice. There you go. Yeah. The game’s so different. I’m sure we’ll dive into that and talk a little bit about it as we get more into the coaching side of it, but wow, you look at the way that the game was when you played or when I played and it’s just, it’s almost unrecognizable in a lot of ways.

You go back. Oh, very much so. Yeah. And just with the emphasis on the three and the screen and roll, and that’s just the spacing. It’s just, it’s incredible almost when you go back and watch old games, you’re like, man, how did they not sort of figure that stuff? , yeah. Out a little bit sooner, but again, the game evolves and changes and people eventually start to figure it out, and I’m sure 10 years from now we’ll be having the same conversation of, man, I can’t believe we didn’t really think about that.

Or there’ll be some rule changes that’ll impact the game in some way. Oh, there’s no doubt. Go ahead. What’s your favorite memory of high school basketball?

[00:09:48] Jason Smith: I would say one of my favorite memories is stopping one of my friends that played on the rival across town. Right? I played baseball with this kid and he was a really good basketball player.

And, and I remember coach putting me in a game in the second quarter and he told him me to, you need to go stop Jeff Hirschman in this quarter. And I pretty much did. You know, so I’ll never forget that memory. Because it just meant a lot to me that the coach believed in me to go stop their best player and, and I did it, you know?

So I’ll always remember that memory and never forget it.

[00:10:27] Mike Klinzing: It’s funny the things that stand out, like I wonder if your coach remembers that moment.

[00:10:32] Jason Smith: I’m not for sure. You know, that’s probably not to be honest with you.  

[00:10:36] Mike Klinzing: It’s so interesting that you think about the things that we remember.

As players and then you think, man, these coaches don’t remember any of that stuff. Like I can think of four or five, six things that over the course of my playing career that a coach said to me that I’m sure if I went back to that coach and said, Hey, do you remember Coach when you said this to me?

They’d have no idea. But yet those things had a huge impact on me. And that’s something that I always think about as a coach, that when you’re talking to a kid, you never know what thing you’re going to say. And sometimes it could be positive and sometimes it, unfortunately, it could be negative that sticks with a kid.

And I think that’s something that I’ve always tried to be cognizant of when I’m coaching or when I’m saying something to a kid is this could be something that 40 years from now he’s talking about this on a podcast . That’s funny that, Hey, coach Mike said this to me. So it’s just kind of interesting, the things that we remember as players or things that coaches said to us that we have to think about that as coaches as well.

[00:11:32] Jason Smith: Yeah, there’s no doubt. I mean we always make mistakes and those are the things when you go back and go, I wish I would’ve not said that, or you said, I would’ve said that differently. We definitely have a huge impact on kids.

[00:11:44] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. There’s no doubt about that. All right. So as high school finishes, your dad went to the University of Kansas.

Talk about your college decision and what you were thinking as you were heading off to college in terms of what you wanted to do for a career.

[00:11:57] Jason Smith: I wanted to be a Jayhawk I grew up a Kansas fan, and, and that’s what I wanted to go to school. So I just decided that’s where I’m going to go to school.

And so enrolled in the University of Kansas and I went to be a high school basketball coach. I’ll be honest. I mean, I majored in physical education and that was my plan, Lisa that was the thing I was thinking I was going to do was go find my niche in college and be a high school basketball coach.

And when I got there I found other things that were more intriguing, to be honest with you. You know, like partying and girls. Those were easy to find, right?

[00:12:36] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Those were easy to find. Easy to find. And pretty attractive as well.

[00:12:37] Jason Smith: Yeah, and yeah, they definitely steered me the wrong way in many ways.

Right? But fortunately I was really I was very beneficially lucky and blessed in many ways, because I had a friend in college say, Hey Jason, you love basketball. Why don’t you why don’t you just go see if you can become a student manager for the, the men’s team at Kansas, right? So I said, what?

Yeah, why not? You know? So I just walked down to the men’s basketball office and just said, Hey, I want to apply to be a student manager. And they’re like, all right, here’s an application. I filled it out and next thing you know, I’m getting called down to get interviewed and, and, and all of a sudden I get offered a position as a student manager with and with Roy Williams staff, right?

Roy just been there a year. It was his first year. So his second year I was with him. And so I was a student manager for three years at University of Kansas for Coach Williams.

[00:13:32] Mike Klinzing: What was the interview process like? Do you remember like, who you talked to on the staff and were you nervous going into it or was it just something you’re like, well, if it works out, it works out?

If not, eh, where were you at mentally with that?

[00:13:42] Jason Smith: You know, honestly, I blanked that out. I cannot recall that interview process. I do remember talking with the head manager at the time, the head varsity manager. But other than that, I don’t remember meeting with any assistant coaches at that time, to be honest with you.

[00:13:59] Mike Klinzing: It’s interesting because I was playing college basketball in the same era while you were at Kansas. So I was at Kent State from 88 to 92. Okay. And we obviously had a bunch of different guys that were managers for our team. And looking back my perspective as a player, I realized. Now, and I’ve said this on the podcast a couple times, but I had no earthly idea that some of the guys that were managers, that they were interested or that it was even a route to becoming a coach, never even crossed my mind.

I’m like, oh, these guys, they just love basketball. They want to hang out with the players and be around the team. It’s really cool, blah, blah, blah. Never once did I consider that to be like a track for somebody who wanted to be a coach. And now you look back on it and you’re like, how did I not see that?

When you think about, and I don’t know how your experience was at Kansas, but our guys at Ken had a lot of access to our assistant coaches and they’re around and you’re having conversations and they’re in the office and they’re doing things. And obviously you’re just able to pick things up as you’re hearing conversations, but that’s something that as a player, never once crossed my mind.

So I’m curious to hear like what your experiences were like, and obviously each year you get a little bit more responsibility as they trust you a little bit more. But tell us a little bit about the process of just. What you did and how those relationships and what you got to do sort of built over time.

[00:15:20] Jason Smith: Yeah. Mike, I think you’re like the rest of the players, you guys are all single minded and privileged, like the rest of these players were right? Absolutely. Yeah. For sure. I think I’m a college basketball player, right. You know, who are these, for sure. These guys are just doing my laundry, like, who are these guys?

Right? And at Kansas it’s probably even bigger just the stage that we played on for sure. So it, like anything, it takes a while to build trust with people and building relationships. So, so you know, for the, when my first year there, these, these players and coaches are just trying to feel you out and none of them know you want to be a basketball coach.

Right. And, and I’m just a young guy thinking, I’m not telling these people I want to be a basketball coach I don’t want to embarrass myself. Right, right. Because I can remember. Few practices. I thought I knew the game of basketball and then all of a sudden I’m like, they’re talking terminology I’ve never heard of.

Right. Roy Williams is saying, I’m like, I don’t have a clue what he is talking about, Right. And he’s learned this stuff from Dean Smith, so I’m thinking, I’m so green I’m just going to be a fly on the wall and just sit back and just learn as much as I can. Right. So it just took a while to build relationships and the managers then we did a lot of drills.

We did a lot of drill prep as well and got involved in drills. And there’s times when we did scout team stuff as managers, so we got to play against the guys sometimes. Right. So that was always fun and it was always fun to score on them or Right. You’d gain respect from the players when you played hard.

You worked hard against him. And so it was fun. You know, the next couple years after that, you start building relationships with the players. I mean I got to be pretty close with Rex Walters he was in some of the same classes I was with, and Rex and I would shoot for a couple hours before game every game.

And you know, he liked to shoot for two hours before every game. So I was, so I would, I would rebound for him for two hours and then I would go take a shower and get in my suit and get back to the game, you know? But what a great experience. through a lot of coaches the first year I was a student manager for the JV team.

They had JV teams back then, right? Yeah. Wow. And Mark Turgeon was the JV coach. Right. And working for Mark was, was amazing. Right. He was just a young go-getter and I learned a lot from him that year. And then, I mean, just some of the people that was on his staff are been amazing. Like Jerry Green and Kevin Stallings and Matt Doherty and, and Chuck Robinson.

I mean, just the coaching staff. I mean, just to be able to learn from all of them was amazing.

[00:18:01] Mike Klinzing: When you think about Roy Williams as a head coach and obviously Hall of Famer National Champion has done everything you could ever possibly hope to do as a college basketball coach, what are some things that, when you look back on it now, made him who he was?

What was so special about him as a head coach?

[00:18:23] Jason Smith: Very disciplined, very organized. Just came in and took care of business. And it was built good relationships with his players. But it ultimately, it was just his discipline. I mean, he was just disciplined in life, you know? He ran every day with his coaches.

I mean, so, I mean, there’s just, there was just daily routines that Roy did that just made him successful in many ways.

[00:18:46] Mike Klinzing: What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities? Obviously you’re building relationships with the players, and you got a chance to shoot with Rex Walters and those kinds of things, but day-to-day, what was it like?

What were some of the things that you had to do, and I’m sure it changed over the years as you got more experience, you probably got a little bit. Responsibility. But just talk a little bit about some of the things day-to-day that you were doing.

[00:19:06] Jason Smith: Well, there’s always laundry, right? That’s the worst part, right?

Doing laundry cleaning the locker rooms up. I know this is going to be all glorification. You’re going to love all this, right?

[00:19:14] Mike Klinzing: No, it’s good.

[00:19:15] Jason Smith: It’s reality, right? There’s no glory in it. Right? It’s, which is amazing, right? You just go, you’re going to do the dirty work and it says clean in the locker room, doing the laundry.

I’m running the clock at practice. Running drills, getting we, we had kickbacks, you know those shot kickbacks? Yep. Oh, that’s, that’s old school, like most people. That’s old school. So kickbacks. So we had to set up kickbacks on the floor. We had sometimes run drills. One year I filmed all the games for him on the road, actually home games too.

So we so there’s a wide variety of stuff that we did.

[00:19:47] Mike Klinzing: When you think about film, right? And now you just plop the hudl camera up there in the rafters and all your film works taken care of. But back in the day for young coaches out there, film was a little bit different when you’re holding the camcorder.

And then you have to make sure you’re not making comments into the camcorder that people can hear. And then when you’re actually trying to use the film, I remember sitting in our locker room and watching film and coaches using the clicker on the VHS and being like, all right, we have to see that play again.

And hit and rewind and it would go like two minutes past the clip. Then you’d watch all this stuff that was of no that they didn’t want to show you again. You’d watch it and then they’d miss the clip again. It was just, it was so brutal compared to what we had today.

[00:20:30] Jason Smith: Oh, the equipment we had, Mike was ridiculous.

Like it was like a TV camera and then with the tripod was huge. Then you had to monitor and you had two DVD players you had to hook up together, so you’d have two recordings and we had to carry that up into the rafters. Yeah, right. It was crazy. I can tell you one story. We were at Nebraska one year.

And we lost an overtime, but the end of regulation one of KU players went up for a layup and Coach Williams thought he got fouled, he missed a layup. And then we ended up going to overtime and losing, right? So we’re getting on the bus to go home and Roy yells at me, he’s like, Jason, he goes, you got that videotape of the game, right?

And I said, yeah, I got it, and he wanted to watch it on the bus because he wanted, I know what he wanted to do. He wanted to go back and watch that play. Right. And so Max Falkinstein, I don’t even know Max, he was like the the old time radio guy for Kansas forever. He’s legendary. He is in the Hall of Fame, but Max was, I was sitting next to Max on the bus and he looks at me and he goes, Jason, I sure hope you got that on film , right?

And I go, I sure do too. You know, so I take up that video to Roy and he puts it in the v VHS there on the bus and watches. He just, he scrolls right to the end of the game, right. and I got it. And Max is like, good job, son. Good job. You know? Nice, nice. So I’ll never forget that moment either.

[00:21:46] Mike Klinzing: That’s funny. That’s one of those cases where you, you, no matter how good that relationship is, if that play hadn’t have been there, oh, I would’ve been in trouble, man. Yeah, it would’ve been in trouble. Absolutely would’ve been in trouble. It’s funny just thinking about those again, those relationships.

And I know, like when I think about like our managers and stuff, and sometimes coach would get mad at them because they’re running the scoreboard or doing whatever, doing the clock and you know, we need two minute whatever. And just, it’s funny just to think back again to the, to those times and just how different your perspective was as you said earlier, as your perspective as a player about.

You know, about what those guys were really doing and what they were all about.

[00:22:26] Jason Smith: Yeah, it was cool. I mean, yeah, just to see all the other coaches too was kind of really, because we were in the big eight then, right. And just to see, go to places and see all these different legendary coaches like Billy Tubbs and Norm Stewart.

I mean, I, I had a conversation with Billy Tubbs in the locker room before one of our games at Kansas. Right. It was one of those O U – K U games that were like, we’re number one, they’re number two kind of deal, you know? Yep, yep. And the Allen Fieldhouse is just rocking. And I remember walking into their visitor locker room to get something out of the closet and Billy Tubbs looks at me and he goes, we don’t have a chance tonight, do we?

And I said, probably not. Right? And so it’s just stuff like that, all those are memories that are just flood my brain all the time.

[00:23:07] Mike Klinzing: It’s really cool when you start talking about college basketball, obviously at that level and also at that time where college basketball arguably was as big as the NBA, I think now…

[00:23:19] Jason Smith: Oh, very much so.

[00:23:20] Mike Klinzing: Now I think with the way college basketball just has changed and you know, guys coming into the league early and are going to the G League or whatever it is, it’s just college basketball is not quite, it’s, it’s just not at the same level in terms of national interest and being able to follow it the way you follow teams in that era while you were there at Kansas.

So to be able to be a part of that and as you said, to see some of those legendary coaches and just to be at Allen Fieldhouse and just, I mean, all that stuff to be able to be a part of that I’m sure was super special. As you’re there, your original plan is, I want to be a high school coach and a teacher.

How does that plan progress as you’re going through school?

[00:24:00] Jason Smith: Yeah, I mean, some, I ended up getting an adapted PE minor, so I start, I, I went to work out of college at this developmental learning center in Olathe, Kansas and working, I was working as a paraprofessional in the with these development and delayed kids in the swimming pool doing, working the pool with them.

And, but I wanted to coach, right? So I obviously couldn’t coach there. So I found a coaching job down the road about 20 minutes down the road at a local high school, a small high school in Wellsville, Kansas, Wellsville High School. And I was the assistant varsity JV freshman coach, kind of just do it all.

And got to work for a, with a legendary high school coach there. His name was Kermit Dieting, you know. So again, just an opportunity to learn from someone who’s been doing it from a long time. And you’ll laugh, Mike because I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but he ran an old school run and jump. Right?

Okay. I still to this day have never seen anybody else run it. And we were very successful running it. You know, I’d love to go back and pick his brain if I could at some point, but it was amazing. So we had a good experience there coaching and eventually, to be honest, I just got dragged out of coaching.

You know, I had some friends that kept telling me, oh, you’re never going to make any money coaching, you’re never going to make any money teaching. And he, they were right about that, by the way. Yeah, they were, they were totally right about that. Right there, right there with you. And then I just kind of got swayed by the, the almighty dollar and decided to get out of coaching and chase a sales career.

So I got into sales for a while and, and it worked for a little while, but I was miserable for most of it, to be honest with you.

[00:25:45] Mike Klinzing: Coaching eventually called you back, right?

[00:25:47] Jason Smith: Very much so. Yeah. I mean and I met the right person I met my wife that I have now and she got me on the right track, to be honest with.

[00:25:56] Mike Klinzing: Just through conversation of, Hey, what do you want to do? And maybe she just saw that you weren’t happy day in, day out with the sales job. Is that kind of how it went?

[00:26:03] Jason Smith: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, she just like, what’s your dream? Like, what would be the dream? I mean, she had a great job. She was making great money, and I didn’t know that when I met her, but that was a bonus.

But yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But you know, she’s just like, oh, I make good money. Like, what’s your dream? Like, what would you want to do? And I just said, man, I just like to coach basketball and, and teach or coach basketball, but definitely coach basketball. And she goes, well, what’s stopping you?

You know? So just decided we’re going to find a new track to do that.

[00:26:34] Mike Klinzing: All right. So how’d you do

that?

[00:26:35] Jason Smith: Well, the first thing I think, I think the biggest change in my life was my late twenties. I mean, I have to say this is, I came to the Lord, right? I came to Jesus Christ as my savior, and that, that changed everything, right?

And so at that point when I met my wife I said, you know what, I’m just going to see what I can do. In the pastor that we were, my pastor, we were going to church at, he was an adjunct professor at this bible college in Kansas City, Calvary Bible College. And he kept saying, Jason, why don’t you just, why don’t you just enroll at Calvary and get into some Bible classes and learn more about that.

And I said, man, that’d be interesting. I’d love to do that. So I just went over there one day and started talking to them. And so I want to enroll in some Bible classes to learn more about the Bible. And, and they’re like, yeah, that you can do that. What else you want to do with your life?

And I said, I want to coach basketball. And they said, well, you can do that here. You know, I said, excuse me, I can do what listen to the counselor. I’m like, man, this is a great place, right? And I said, what do you mean by that? And he goes, well, I’m sure the basketball coach could always use more help.

So once you go down and talk to him, right? So I just strolled down to the gym and. Let’s just talked to the basketball coach and I said, Hey man, I’m going to take some classes over here and, and I just want to coach basketball. And he’s like, man, I don’t have any money to pay you. And I go, I don’t care about money, I just want to coach basketball.

Right. And so I talked to my wife and she’s, so I just volunteered my first year at Calvary Bible College, I was just a voluntary assistant coach. Right. And, and that’s how I got back into coaching.

[00:28:10] Mike Klinzing: What did you like there about getting back into it? Obviously now you’re at the college level, which you had some experience at Kansas, but clearly that experience that is similar in terms of the level of play, but then you, then you coached high school, now you’re back at the college level.

Just what about getting back into it? Were you immediately like, oh man, this is, this is where I belong,

[00:28:32] Jason Smith: I mean, it was a small college, so it was real similar to high school level in many ways. So it was just getting back on the floor and teaching the game of basketball again. You know, I feel like I always feel like practice is my time.

Right. and it’s my time to really infuse on what I’ve learned from all these great people I’ve been around and so I’ve practiced it was just getting on the practice court and going, teaching these guys the game of basketball, right? And how they can be more successful doing what they’re doing was just a lot of fun.

I always say practice is my time and game times are for my players. Right? So, just excited to get back on the practice court.

[00:29:10] Mike Klinzing: What was / is your favorite part of the game to teach? You like teaching defense, you like teaching offense, you like player development. What part of it is the most exciting to you in a practice?

When you get to really break it down.

[00:29:24] Jason Smith: And I think that changes it’s changed probably over the years. I think my style of play has evolved according to who we kind of have on the court and who we have in our program. So I can talk about that a little bit later. How’s that evolves in my career.

But Literally just breaking down ways to beat your defender, to be honest is exciting for me. You know, the jabs, the, the way you move your body, the way you look off players, the way you pass fake and watching players just pick that up, the little nuances of the game and picking that up and then using them in the game and being successful and they, they give you that little smile like down the corner.

Like I, yeah, okay. Coach actually does know what he is talking about a little bit. Right? And just that kind of light bulb that goes off in their head is real exciting.

[00:30:12] Mike Klinzing: How do you teach that? What does that look like when you’re trying to teach that to a player? Is it a combination of you demonstrating, showing them what they’re supposed to do and then having them look at it at film, on film?

I’m just curious, how do you work on those individual moves, those individual things that a player obviously needs and can use to be able to beat their defender, but how do you teach that?

[00:30:33] Jason Smith: Well, obviously you have to have some on court instruction. I think game film helps, what I usually find is I’ll find a player that will execute the skill that I want to get across to the player.

I’ll find that in another player on film and I’ll show that player like, okay, this is what I’m talking about. This is what we’re looking, this is what I want you to be able to learn to do. Okay. So once they see it on film from a different player, they’re l you can, you can see them go, oh, okay, now I know what you’re talking about.

And what I found with women coaching women is they don’t watch enough basketball like men do. Right? Okay. So when you, you can’t just tell them to go do something because they won’t understand it as much, or most of them, I’m not generalized for everybody, but, so you’ve got to really break it down on film.

And instruction on the court, and then you just have to keep repeating it over and over again. Whereas a guy, I think picks it up a little bit faster because they just watch more game film or watch more NBA or college basketball than women do.

[00:31:32] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s interesting when you think about, that’s something that I guess just hearing you say that makes a ton of sense, but it’s not really necessarily something that I’ve thought about before, but for sure, I think there’s, there’s learning from osmosis, right?

I mean, you grew up watching how many games over the course of your lifetime, whether it was in person or on tv, and you know, I was the same way. And I don’t think you consciously process, Hey, I’m learning as I’m doing this. But when you think about it, it makes a ton of sense, right? The amount of time that you’ve spent just kind of recognizing patterns.

It’s that old thing where Albert Pujols got struck out by Jenny Finch, the right, the soft, the softball player. And it’s, and it’s like it’s, he couldn’t read the cues because he just hadn’t seen that that wasn’t what he was used to. And I think when you’re talking about watching games and seeing it, obviously a player.

who’s watched a lot of basketball and watched a lot of film and taken in all that stuff, is probably better able to, to recognize those patterns. I think that’s a great point that you make that I really hadn’t thought about when it comes to, to coaching on the women’s side.

[00:32:34] Jason Smith: Yeah. I mean, I tell people, I learn how to play golf by watching the pga.

Right. Just watching it. No, serious. I mean, it’s like, yeah, no, I get it. You watch somebody swing and you start to emulate that swing and then because I watched enough film, I could do that. I mean, some people don’t learn that way. I get that. But I think a lot of people do. So but yeah, definitely coaching women.

I think you’ve really have to break it down on film and just repeat it over and over.

[00:32:59] Mike Klinzing: How long were you at Calvary before you became a paid

[00:33:02] Jason Smith: coach? One year. I, okay. So I was the volunteer assistant for the one year, and then after that the head coach got dismissed. Right. And, and next thing you know, I’m getting called into the office to be offered the job.

So here I am my second year into this whole deal, and I’m the head coach of this college Calvary Bible College. So it kind of happened way fast, more faster than I thought it would. Right.

[00:33:31] Mike Klinzing: What did you know, what did you didn’t, what didn’t at the time when you walked into it?

[00:33:36] Jason Smith: I didn’t know how hard it was going to be.

I didn’t know that there was a lot of good coaches. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Ultimately, I would say I didn’t know there was that many good coaches at small college level basketball. And then I learned really quickly that I have to figure this thing out, okay. Right. Really fast. Because if we’re going to lose a lot of games, if we don’t.

So that was probably my quickest thing is just learning. But it was all I did was implement all that I did know. Okay. So it was just all Roy Williams stuff? I was into secondary break. Right. I was into. Sideline baseline defense. Right? It was just like, I’m going to copy Roy Williams stuff that my first couple years and I’m thinking he did it.

Well, I can surely do the same. Right? And so that’s what I did and it, it kind of panned out for me.

[00:34:24] Mike Klinzing:  So as you grew as a coach, as the years went on and you start to kind of figure out your own style and what you wanted to do, and we’ll get into your other stops along the way, but just in general, how do you go about learning new things about the game?

Where are you going? What are your sources? Are you talking to other coaches? Are you going to clinics? Are you going to other teams, practices? Just what’s your process for improving and growing as a coach?

[00:34:51] Jason Smith: Well, early on one year at Calvary, I forget which year it was, but we ended up playing a game against Mid-American Nazarene.

And Rocky Lamar was the coach. I don’t know if you know Rocky, legendary coach. He just retired. Not too long ago, but the year we played them, actually they won the national championship, naya, that year they were loaded. Right? And so we go to their place early on and they just smack us, right? They just run the floor killing us.

And I called him up the next day or a couple days after, and I said, Rocky, is there any way I can just I come to your practices, right? And just watch your practices. And he’s like, sure, coach. Anytime You’re welcome. Anytime. Right? So I went to a few of his practices and just watched what they did, right?

And, and just gleaned so much information from that process. And really it’s just kept asking good coaches, what do you do? There was a, a coach down at Central Baptist Bible College in, in Springfield, Missouri. That was legendary. And I, I struck up a friendship with him and would just pick his brain, right?

So I think being humble enough to know that you don’t know everything is a good quality. It really is. And even now I’m the same way. I don’t know everything. Right. I want to, I still want to be in the learning process and learning game. You know, the game is changed in many ways and the kids have changed, right?

So everything is such more relationship based now than it used to be. So learning that aspect to coaching is, is probably my next step. And what I’m trying to learn is how do I be a better relational coach with my players versus just Xs and O’s and teaching the game. Right.

[00:36:36] Mike Klinzing: How has your approach changed in that regard, as you’re thinking about that and you’re starting to recognize that that’s something that’s different and it clearly is.

There’s no question when you go back to the era when you were at Kansas or the era when I was playing, that those relationships, not that they didn’t exist and not that there weren’t relationships, but it clearly was not something that I don’t think very many coaches were. Sitting around the coach’s office talking about how can we build better relationships with their players.

Now, sometimes those relationships develop naturally, but I don’t think there was a lot of time spent thinking about, Hey, we have to build a better relationship with Player X so that they can play better and we can get to know them. So just how is your approach to that changed as you start to realize that, hey, this relationship stuff is, is really important to not only having a good experience for our kids, but also it helps winning.

[00:37:25] Jason Smith: It can. Very much so. I think it’s tough for me to be honest with you because I’m that old school tough, gritty kind of coach where I’m going to get in your face and I don’t have much compassion for you when you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, you know? Yep. It’s just who I am and I was built that way.

Like I said, I have a chip on my shoulder and come on man. Like, that’s just the way I am. So changing that aspect about me has been hard. But I know that it’s something that needs to be done and I’m working on it. I think it’s surrounding yourself with good people. My assistant coach I got now has been really beneficial in helping me out through that process.

She’s been amazing about building relationships and how to do that. She had a psychology degree, so that’s helped. I’ve got a good friend of mine that’s a sports psychologist over at Cal Baptist that I lean a lot on, on just team building processes and he’s been great in helping me in that area.

But it’s a constant work. It’s something that I think you always have to work at.  I tell people I walk into my office every single day just to get just a little bit better. You know, half percent better. My job every day is to get our team better, and at the same time, I have to get myself better. You know, if I’m not getting myself better, our team’s not getting better.

So, yeah, it’s just engaging yourself in processes and just being aware of it, first of all. Like, you have to admit that you have a problem. You know what I’m saying? Absolutely. Like, okay, I don’t, I’m not good in this area. That’s your first step, and then maybe after you say that to yourself a few times, you go, maybe I should search out for some help.

[00:38:52] Mike Klinzing: I think that self-reflection and introspection, to me is one of the most important skills. I think just in general in life, I think it’s so beneficial. But I think in coaching it’s super important because if you’re not willing to take a look at yourself and what you’re doing, both in terms of how you’re building culture, in terms of what you’re doing, Xs and Os philosophy wise, , it’s really easy for things to fly past you that are really important because you’re so dialed in on, I think I have everything figured out.

And to your point, I think of myself as a young coach and I was one of those guys that thought, hey, I was a really good player, and that’s going to automatically make me a really good coach. And just like you talked about, hey, I did everything that Roy Williams did. Well, I did everything my high school coach did and my college coach did.

And other than that, I really didn’t know anything . That’s Yeah, that’s true. And I didn’t really care to know anything else, to be honest. I’m like, Hey, I played and I, I I, I got all this stuff and whatever, and now you look back on it and you just think, I, I know way less about the game now at age 52 than I did when I was 25, and I thought I knew everything.

It’s just right. Amazing how those things, how things change over time and how your perspective as you, I think the more you know, The, the more you realize that you don’t know very much, if that makes any sense.

[00:40:17] Jason Smith: Oh, it totally does. I feel lost many days in the last couple years. You know, like, what am I doing?

It’s like, I know  I’ve been doing this for a while. I know what I’m supposed to be doing, but there’s times I still feel like I’m lost.

[00:40:31] Mike Klinzing: All right. So let’s talk about the next opportunity after Calvary. You head out to San Diego, beautiful place to go.

[00:40:37] Jason Smith: Yeah. That was a crazy, beautiful

place to go.  Beautiful place to go. I just had a friend of mine applied for that job because he knew the vice president and he is like, Jason, Mandy, would you interested in coming out to San Diego to be my assistant coach? And I’m like, man, I would consider that. Right? And once a couple days later, he calls me up and he’s like, Jason, I don’t think I can do that.

I don’t want to go out there. And he goes, but my buddy, I’m going to tell my buddy they, they need to interview you, you know? And I said, you do that for me? He’s like, yeah. And so I sent my resume in and they interviewed me on the phone and then flew me out there and I got the job and everybody on the planet said, Jason, don’t take that job.

Right. It just wasn’t a good scenario at the time. But I did I didn’t listen to them. I moved my family, my wife, I had two little kids. Like actually my son was just born. I mean, he was a little baby. And so we moved to San Diego and, and yeah. You know, moving from a house in Kansas City with a $760 mortgage payment to San Diego with a $2,500 rent payment.

Right. You know, so it was crazy.

[00:41:45] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s a little bit, yeah. San Diego, I always tell people, I’m like that’s San Diego’s probably my favorite city in the. But I’m like, if I was living out there, I’d have to live in a shack and it wouldn’t really be the lifestyle I don’t think that I would want.

Although I don’t know if I could ever go to work if I lived in San Diego. So I’m not sure how you did it.

[00:42:00] Jason Smith: No, it was hard. I mean, it was like a vacation for three years. I tell people that sucked every dollar out of my savings account, but it was fun while it lasted and it was meant to be and I’m glad I went.

I don’t regret it at all. Right. It was a good times. Met some great people there and I was at San Diego Christian on the men’s side, still coaching men and, and you know, going into the gsac then that conference and was ridiculous. I mean, at the time that all those schools were still in the nei, they, they’ve all gone D two, a lot of them gone D two now.

Right. But I tell people that’s where I really learned how to coach the game of basketball because I had to go against coaches that were unbelievable. Right. You know, guys that won national championships and guys that won 800, 900 games. And you got the gamut of everything, right? You know, so Westmont would run the princeton and stuff, so I had to learn how to guard the princes and stuff, right?

Masters got into dribble drive stuff, so I had to guard the dribble, drive Zuzu was they double flare, backside. Viola was three out two in high low stuff. I mean, Concordia was in your face, like on the line, up the line defensively. So every team was unique and so you had to learn how to defend all that stuff.

And that’s why I tell people I had to learn how to do all that stuff, right? And so it taught me a lot. It wasn’t a great scenario, like I said basketball wise for me, but I learned a lot.

[00:43:26] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, going against all those different coaches and having a scheme against all those different types of systems, I’m sure helped you as you continue to progress in your career.

And then once you are done at San Diego, Christian, then what? You take a season off, is that right?

[00:43:42] Jason Smith: Well, I didn’t have a season off and  I went and helped a guy at Grossmont Community College in, in San Diego there for one year. My last year in San Diego Doug Weber, he was at Grossmont. He still is good guy.

Actually, the funny part about Doug and I was, we grew up next to each other, like less than a mile apart from each other in, in Kansas City, but never knew that. Right? Wow. And so here we are in San Diego coaching with each other, and that one year of JUCO was enough to tell me, I’m never going to do that again.

Right. That JUCO stuff was crazy, man. So at that point, I mean, I needed a full-time job. Obviously I had two wife and two little kids. My wife had to go back to work. And so a friend of mine calls me up and said, Hey man, there’s an opening for a women’s job at Bryan College in Tennessee. And he goes, I know the men’s coach there, and I know some people there.

I can probably get you an interview. And so I ended up getting an interview with him. They fly me out, right? And I thought everything went well. And they called me up one day and said they gave it to another guy, right? And so I was kind of shocked, but when I was out in Dayton, Tennessee, they were interviewing for the job.

I talked to the men’s coach and he was looking for an assistant coach, right? So I called my buddy and said, Hey, I didn’t get the job, but you think the head men’s coach would let me be the assistant? And he goes, oh man. In a heartbeat, right? So let me call him for you. So he called, called me back in 10 minutes.

Hey, he said, the job’s yours if you want it right. And it was a part-time job, Mike, right? Yeah. Paying like, I don’t know, $9,000 or something. And I looked at my wife and that’s a month of rent in San Diego. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so I looked at my wife and I was like, oh no, man.

She goes, no, we’re moving. Right? No, we’re going. Right. So we just packed up our stuff and moved to Dayton, Tennessee for a part-time job.

[00:45:37] Mike Klinzing: All right. So you go from being a head coach, which I always think is interesting because you have that year as an assistant at the juco. What was it like to transition from, again, head coach to these two assistant jobs?

[00:45:47] Jason Smith: I think it was good for me, right? Because it got me to really sit back and learn the game some more, right? From a different perspective without the stress of winning and losing, per se. Because when you when you go to a program that’s used to winning and you’re not, you have to struggle for a couple years. There’s a lot of pressure there. Right. For sure. It’s a lot of pressure from administration sometimes through alumni, all that process. And I always tell people that my seat’s always a little bit more stressful than 18 inches over. Right. And that’s just the way it is. So it was nice to be able to sit back and learn from a different coach and learn some different things.

And the men’s coach there at Bryan was really into defense, right? He was like, that was his deal. Like we want to be the best defensive team in the country. And so he really helped me solidify what my defense probably should look like going forward.

[00:46:41] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s amazing. Kind of, I always find it interesting when you talk to different coaches and how they pick up on one particular aspect of what eventually becomes their philosophy.

Sure. In other words, like I learned. some really great things from on defense from this guy, and I picked up this on offense from this guy, and I picked up this culture piece from, from this person. I always think that that’s interesting that as you go to every stop, and it’s a good lesson for young coaches that no matter who you’re working for, you can always find things you like.

And I’m sure at the same time, you can always find things that you’re like, Ugh, I I wouldn’t, if it was me, I wouldn’t necessarily do it that way. So you try to pick and choose, and then eventually as you mature as a coach, you start to get your own philosophy and sort of meld all those different things that you’ve learned into one.

[00:47:29] Jason Smith: Oh, most definitely. I mean, obviously you’re still your own person, right? So, you have to take what you like and what you don’t like, and then, and just hodgepodge the whole thing to, to build your own style of play or how you see the game of basketball. Right.

[00:47:43] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. All right.

Let’s talk about the transition from the men’s side of the game to the women’s side of Brian. And clearly you’ve grown up on the men’s side of the game. All your experience has been on the men’s side. So what makes you think that the women’s opportunity, I’m assuming the job opens up and you say, Hey, it’s an opportunity for me to get back and be a head coach.

But how were you feeling about, was there any trepidation in terms of, I’m going to go over and coach on the women’s side, just what was the thought process there?

[00:48:15] Jason Smith: Oh, very much so. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t want to coach women. I would’ve told all my friends and my family, that’s not something I desire to do or didn’t want to do, right?

Like, no, we’re not going to do that. So when the opportunity presented itself again, because the coach they hired was there for one year and it wasn’t going to work out. So the ad approached me one day and he is like, Jason, this women’s job’s going to come open again. And he goes, I’ve got to know you for the full year that you’ve been here and would love to offer you the job when it comes open again.

And I looked at him and said, I don’t want it. You know? And by that time the program was kind of in shambles a little bit. The girls didn’t have a great reputation on campus at the time. They ended up finishing last in the conference that year. So at that point I’m like, no, I don’t want no part of this business.

Right. And so he is all That’s fine, Jason, that’s fine. So it was a Friday night. I stopped by at this gym to go watch this basketball event and I ran into my vice president of the school and he looked at me and he goes, Jason, I want you to go home and talk to your wife about this job, and, and by Monday I want you to come back and give me a better definitive answer.

Right? He goes, I want to know why you wouldn’t take this job. So I go home that night and tell my wife, I just offered the women’s job again. You know, and she goes, you’re taking it right? And I go, no, I actually turned it down. And she looked at me, she goes, I trust you. But that’s kind of crazy, right?

So we talked about it over the weekend and. Decided, Hey, I don’t have a full-time job. You know, she made sense of the whole process for me, and she’s definitely smarter than I am. Right. I definitely married up and out, kicked my coverage with her. But so we decided I walked into my boss’s office on Monday and said, Hey, if the job’s still open, I’d love to take it.

You know? So, yeah. So I went in a little bit reluctantly, to be honest with you. And, but once I decided to take the job, I was heads in full, deep all the way, 100%.

[00:50:15] Mike Klinzing: Did you talk to people, did you talk to other men who were coaching women to get their perspective, to just kind of go in with a, try to go in with a fresh eye and maybe not talk to anybody, so they didn’t sort of cloud the way you were looking at it.

What was your thought process as you were heading into that first experience, the first meeting with the team after you take the job?

[00:50:34] Jason Smith: I definitely called some people.  I knew a couple coaches that had coached men before and then switched to the women’s game. So I definitely wanted some advice from them and I called them to talk to them.

And one of the coaches, I’ll never forget it, he said, he goes, Jason I just lied to my players every day. And I said to him, you see, you do what? He goes, I lied to my players every day. And I go, dude, I can’t do this. I’m a Christian, man, I can’t do that. Right? He goes, no. He goes, he goes, women, you just always have to encourage them and tell them that they’re better than they are.

Okay? Because they’re self-esteem that way. And he goes, guys, you get to, you have to tear them down a little bit before you build them up. And he says, women, you’re always have to tell them. Like, they, they never think they’re as good as they are, you know? So I got his point, right. And going in, I’m thinking that’s probably more my style of coaching anyway.

So I thought we can, we can make this work. And then I had another friend over at Lee University, Marty Rowe, he used to coach Men and then coach women. I asked him about recruiting, to be honest. I said, Marty, I know how to recruit men, but I don’t know this recruiting stuff for women. And he goes, I’ll give you one piece of advice.

He goes, don’t care what anybody says about it. Kid, if you like her, then recruit her. You know? So don’t listen to all the people. He goes, just trust your gut. And I said, well, it’s pretty much what we’ve done. So, great advice.

[00:51:49] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Interesting. When you think about the recruiting piece, let’s touch on that real quick.

When you’re out there looking for a player, what are some of the things, obviously there’s a certain requisite level of talent that they have to be able to play that they have to have to be able to play at. Again, whatever level it is that you’re coaching, and probably you want them to be capable of playing a level above if you really want to be successful.

But just as you’re looking at players, what are some of the qualities in a player, whether. Actual basketball skill type things that you’re looking for, maybe even more importantly, just intangibles that you look for in a player that you know are going to fit in well to your program?

[00:52:23] Jason Smith: Well, the first thing I’ve always said is we’re looking for great teammates.  You have to be a great teammate. So those are one of the questions I always ask the coach, is she a great teammate? And then we go into deal detail, what that actually means. Right. You know, I can never forget one of the kids we recruited at Bryan she was out her senior year with an acl, and we went, me and my assistant went and watched her team play and she wasn’t playing.

She was on the sideline and, but she was the first kid up getting water for her teammates right when they came off the floor. And that spoke volumes to me, right? Like, this kid’s a great teammate. So that’s, that’s the first quality is we want kids that are going to love each other well.  And then I think on the court I think I’m looking for players that were like me, to be honest with you, like players that had a chip on their shoulder and are not entitled, right.

Kids that are, we call them dogs, right? I’m looking for dogs. You know, kids that are going to get in your face defensively, they’re going to go crash the boards you know, the Dennis Rodman’s those kind of kids, right? Kids that just don’t have any entitlement and feel privileged. So those are the kids we’re ultimately looking for.

[00:53:37] Mike Klinzing: When you’re out on the road and you’re re recruiting, you’re looking at players, there’s obviously two main settings where you’re going to see them. You’re going to see them with their high school team, or you’re going to see them with their AAU team. And clearly this is one of the things that I think from a women’s basketball perspective, the rise of AAU has just been incredible.

Yeah. For the women’s game. Cause it just provides so many more opportunities for girls to play. Whereas when you go back to when you and I were playing, or you and I were in college, right There just wasn’t again, as a guy, I could go out and play pickup basketball all the time. And I feel like that system, for me personally, I would’ve enjoyed playing au, but I loved my time playing on the playground, doing all those things, but that just wasn’t available for girls and women that just, you couldn’t do those same things.

So as now you have so many more opportunities, but when you think about going out and watching players and you’re watching them with their high school team, you’re watching them with their AAU team, do you have a preference of which one you like to see them in? And, and also do you, what do you look at, do you look for different things when you’re watching with their high school team versus aau?

Just talk about the balance of trying to evaluate a player in those two environments.

[00:54:40] Jason Smith: Yeah, I think the AAU is probably more beneficial right now. One is you can watch more kids in, in one setting, to be honest. I mean, so it’s a time saver for sure. Instead of driving to a high school game and watching a kid play for 32 minutes or may or may not play, depends who they’re playing that be playing a bad team so they only play 12 minutes, right. Stuff like that happens all the time. So I think the AAU is a more beneficial. Second of all, an AAU is the kids you’re looking at are playing a stiffer competition night in and night out, and they’re playing with better players around them, right?

So a kid goes to a high school game that might have 25 points and you’re going, well, they play the horrible team. Right? So surely she has 25 points. Of course she does. Right? So it’s hard to evaluate that process in my way, but when you’re watching AAU you’re watching a kid play against really good players.

So you’re going to see them in that kind of setting and kind of see them, how they react around good players. Right?

[00:55:38] Mike Klinzing: It’s really interesting just how, and I don’t know if it’s really shifted all that much since AAU has grown to be so much bigger, but the number of coaches who kind of have that same idea that you have, that being able to evaluate in AAU because of a, the ease of it, obviously there’s a huge.

Benefit to be able to go to some venue that has 10 courts and you can just walk and see 10 or 15 or 20 players as opposed to, as you said, driving, who knows how far to go see a high school game. That may or may not be something that’s worth seeing. It’s just really an interesting piece of the recruiting process that, again, going back to a long time ago it was, it was the high school season, it was the high school coach, and now you’ve got much more involvement from the players AAU coach and along with their high school coaches.

Just interesting how those things have shifted. Sure. And changed over time. All right, so as you’re trying to build that program at Brian, you take over, you’re getting used to and adapting to Right. Coaching the women’s game, and you’re trying to get the program to where you want it to go, and ultimately you end up building it into a powerhouse, a team that you had a ton of success there, won lots of conference championships.

What was. I guess if you look at it, if you had to boil it down to a couple things that you think you did really well that enabled you to build that program into what it became, what would you say are those most important things that allowed you to do that?

[00:57:01] Jason Smith: Well, obviously you have to recruit good players.

I mean, you’re not going to do it without good players. And so I knew that going in, we’ve have to get better. We have to recruit better players. So what I figured out is, like in our area I’m going to go find the best teams, best high school teams in our area and we’re going to try to recruit their best players.

And if their best players are too good for us, right, we’re going to recruit their second best players or their third best players. Because these kids have been taught well, they’re learning they’re playing on a good team every year, going to state and all. So that’s what we kind of focused on to begin with.

And it starts with one or two kids like Coach K would say Johnny Dawkins changed his program, right? Yeah. And I will say it started with one kid. It started with a kid named Keila Mont from Bradley Central High School in Cleveland, Tennessee. You know, she walked in from day one and said, coach, we’ll, never ever going to have a losing record while long as I’m here.

Right? And, and that was just the attitude that the rest of the team decided to take on at some point. So sometimes it just starts with one kid like that. And she started four years at point Guard for us and was defensive player of the year a couple times. And then you just keep building on that process of finding kids like that.

And you have to be a little lucky sometimes and find the right kids and catch lightning in a bottle.

[00:58:23] Mike Klinzing: But ultimately you’re recruiting winning, right? I mean, that’s really what it comes down to is you’re trying to get as many kids from. winning programs, whether that’s winning at the high school level, sure.

Players who win at the AAU level, if you’re winning at those levels, you’re much more likely to have that be able to translate than a player who maybe is scoring big numbers, but their team isn’t successful. I, I think coaches that, that I’ve talked to all tell me, Hey, we want to try to recruit players from winning teams.

We want them to be winning in high school. We want them to be winning in aau.  That translates.

[00:58:56] Jason Smith: Early on there, I learned that we had to defend, right? So because we weren’t very talented offensively, so we got really good defensively the first couple years at Bryan. And then each year I just decided we’re going to start getting better offensively by recruiting better offensive players.

And we slowly got better offensively every single year. And unfortunately some of our defense went away, but you know, I started looking at stats of all the teams that were winning at our level on the national scene. And they all put the ball in the bucket at crazy numbers, right?

They’re all scoring in the high eighties, low nineties, even high nineties. And I thought, well if we’re going to win, this is what we’re going to have to do. Right? And we kind of fell into our evolution of a game by accident in many ways. We didn’t purposely fall into it. We recruited a couple kids one year that could shoot it, right?

They were really good shooters and one of the kids could shoot it really deep. She’d be shooting behind the volleyball line at a really high rate. And so we just started, like every kid on our team could shoot threes, right? So we talked earlier about the evolution of the game, like Steph Curry changed the game, right?

So we started recruiting players that every single kid can shoot it. If you can’t shoot it, we’re not recruiting you, you know? Right. And I don’t care if you’re a five or whatever. If you’re a five, you’re going to go out and shoot it. So that kind of became our style because the crowds just started coming out when our kid was making threes from 30 feet.

Right. You know? Yeah. And absolutely. And I remember, wait a second, these girls can’t dunk. The only thing that they can do exciting is just rain it from the three, you know. So we started doing that and I’ll never forget, we were at Pikeville one time and she pulled it from two steps over half court one time and drained it.

Right. And the crowd, the crowd went nuts, . And I’m like, Hey man, this is fun. So we just started recruiting to that process.

[01:00:52] Mike Klinzing: Right. It takes a different sort of mentality as a coach, right. You kind of rewire your brain.

[01:00:57] Jason Smith: Oh, really much. So you had to live with a few bad shots. You know, but, but I also realized like teams started to guard her out there, which was stupid by the way, but because it just opened up the basket.

Right. And so we were scoring layups galore at that point too.

[01:01:15] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s amazing what the spacing has done in the shooting and it’ll be interesting to see how the game continues to evolve and whether there’s rule changes or whether sometime at some point they move the line, continue, well, the line back or what’s going to happen.

[01:01:28] Jason Smith: I think the line going back for us this last couple years has hurt, hurt the game a little bit. I, because I think it’s too big of a jump for the high school kids right now. Yeah, I agree. I mean, when it was just the one before and I think they transitioned pretty easily, but now it takes our freshman a little while to get transitioned into that.

[01:01:45] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I’m sure, I can imagine that. All right, let’s go from Bryan to Cedarville. Tell us about leaving what you had built there at Brian for this new opportunity at Cedarville. What made it the right job at the right time?

[01:02:02] Jason Smith: Honestly, Mike, it was, I mean, I just felt like led by the Lord to come here, you know?

Cause I think I had it pretty, I had it going good at Bryan. I mean, I tell people I could have stayed there and probably kept winning championships there for until I retired, to be honest with you. We had it rolling pretty good. It, it got to be pretty easy. And I guess I just needed another challenge in my life to ultimately.

And then I think there’s always a part of you that thinks, okay, can you do it at another level? You know? So there was a, just a time for a new adventure in our lives, to be honest. And it was the right fit personally and professionally for my viewpoints in life and my worldview in life.

And so it was just the right fit at the right time.

[01:02:47] Mike Klinzing: What was the first thing they had to do when you came in and you started looking at the job and trying to decide, Hey, I’m going to take it, and you make the decision. This is where we’re supposed to be. , what were the first one or three, two things on your radar that you felt like you had to get going right away to get the program moving in the direction you wanted it to?

[01:03:04] Jason Smith: Well, I think it’s I don’t, I don’t know if that’s a good question for me, to be honest with you, because I think the program had been in a good place and it probably was still in a good place when I took it over. So I think I didn’t want to take some just rebuild job to be honest with you. But there was a lot of challenges with our team last year with things.

We had three acls early on last year. Three of our top six players we lost within the first five games of the year. And still found a way to finish 17 and 12 fourth in our conference. So I’m proud of that. But honestly then we lost four seniors off that team. So we’re almost like right back in the rebuild quicker than I thought we were going to be in the rebuild, if that makes sense.

So I’m almost back in first days at Bryan where we’re at right now. So it’s going to be a little bit longer process than I thought it was to get back to the top of our conference, to be honest.

[01:04:00] Mike Klinzing: So how much of it is recruiting and then how much of it is what you need to do in terms of what you’re putting together on the floor and the culture?  How do you balance those two?

[01:04:09] Jason Smith: Oh my gosh, that’s, that’s difficult. Okay. Very difficult. Because they’re simultaneous, right? Because culture changes faster nowadays than ever. And you have to stay on top of culture or you’ll lose it within 30 seconds or to a day sometimes. I know that sounds really bad, but it’s true.

I think it obviously starts with recruiting. You know, you’ve have to have good enough players to compete at this level or you’re not going to compete, right? I mean, that’s really right. I mean, we’re just at a point where right now we’ve got to just find more talented players. But within the same process, there’s always culture building.

When you come into a new program, you’ve got kids that you didn’t recruit, they, they didn’t come for you, you know? Some of those kids will buy into what you’re doing, some won’t. And there’s nothing you can do about that. Right? The only kids that are going to buy ultimately into your program are your own kids.

So you just have to go find your own kids.

[01:05:11] Mike Klinzing: What do you do with the ones that are returning, the ones that do buy in, and what is it, what do you try to build with them and then combine them with the new recruits that you’re bringing in? When you think about building the type of culture that you want to build day in, day out, what does that look like?

What are some small actions that you take that you want your players to take? In order to build the kind of culture that you need

[01:05:35] Jason Smith: There are conversations you have to have conversations over and over and over again. Like, I had a player in my office this afternoon just talking about culture going forward making sure that she knows exactly what we’re looking for and being specific and giving her specific things to do on a day-to-day basis.

So you have to be specific with them and give them almost like a detailed list. Like, oh, you need to do this, this, and this this week. You know? Because I, I’ll be honest, these kids, I mean, Cedarville is a tough school academically, right, and we want kids to do well in the classroom here, and we recruit.

And the demand on their classwork’s high. And we want them to succeed here, right? Academically. Because ultimately they’re not going pro, most of our kids aren’t going pro. So they need to be able to get good jobs and have good careers. So there’s a demand on them and they’re going to focus high on that process.

And sometimes they’ll forget about basketball stuff, right? Or building relationships. So we just have to constantly remind them.

[01:06:48] Mike Klinzing: So beyond that academic piece of, hey, you’ve have to make sure you’re taking care of your classwork or you have to make sure that you’re on the court doing whatever, what are some things that, when you talk about some things that you need to do on a weekly basis, so gimme an example of conversation that you have with a player of like, culture wise, here’s a couple things that we need to get done in the next few days.

[01:07:07] Jason Smith: What’s it, this is funny because my dad taught me this. My dad worked for Hallmark Cards for 30 some years, right? And he managed a lot of people. I’ve learned a lot from my dad in the business world about things. And one of the things he told me was Jason as a coach, you have to find win-wins for your players, right?

On the court, off the court. Whatever’s a win-win win for you and win for them. And so we find ways to do that in many ways, right? You know, if we want to get a shooting drill done in practice, and, and sometimes we’ll just ask them, what shooting drill do you, would you prefer to do? As long as he accomplishes the same goal we’re going to do it.

And the same thing off the court. So one of the things how my dad used to manage people at Hallmark was he, he’d manage people by just the random pop-in, right? He would just pop into their cubicle and just visit with them. and, and get to know them and understand them. He very seldom ever called an employee into his office.

Right. Cause it puts them on the defensive. So we, and so I, unfortunately I have to call kids into my office cause I have nowhere else to meet them . But I can’t do the pop in unfortunately because I’m a man coaching women. But we try to do with our players is we try to teach them to, they’re the ones indeed doing the pop-ins.

And so as an upperclassmen we have some townhouses, so upperclassmen live on townhouses and I tell our upperclassmen, like, the one today you just need to pop into our underclass men’s dorm room. You know, just do the random pop-in. And I know that sounds so silly, but it’s so worth so much right.

Of just building an impromptu relationship. Then they’re like, what do I say? Just pop in and say, Hey, what’s going on in your day today? You know, how, how was your day today? And just let them talk. And try to teach them to ask questions and just shut up and listen. Right I mean, basic human interaction.

So sometimes it’s just teaching those skills and then try to teach them to always give their teammates the benefit of the doubt. Right. I think we’re so quick to judge in today’s society that instead of giving our brothers and sisters just a benefit of the doubt. Right. And if they say something silly, but just we teach our players to work it out.

You know, go up to them and say, what did you mean by that? You know, here’s what I heard. So simple relationship building thing. I think this world needs more of that.

[01:09:22] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it does for sure. And I think that it’s something that we, oftentimes, I think as adults, we forget or maybe we take for granted that kids at all age.

They need some of that guidance. They need some of that talk about, well, what does that look like? Because so often we say, I think this is something that happens with a lot of coaches where you’re talking about, Hey, you hear coaches complain a lot about we need more leaders on our team, right? You hear leadership as something that our team’s lacking.

But then oftentimes you look at it and you say, okay, well what does that really mean? Like the kids, it’s easy to get confused because coach wants me to be a leader, but I don’t really know what that means. Or coach doesn’t create space for me to be a leader or a coach doesn’t explain to me what being a leader looks like and how all of a sudden I’m just kind of left floundering in terms of what I’m going to do.

So I think what you just said about having those conversations of explaining, okay, we want you to pop in, but what does that actually look like? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? And I think by giving kids that guidance, now you’ve given them a framework to sort of build off and then they can inject their own personality into it.

And I think that’s when obviously, as a coach, you want your players to be taking the lead on the culture. That’s when you really know you have things going, like you talked about when you get that one or two or that class that comes in and they just get it and they’re able to kind of take that and run with it and then boom, now you really got it flowing.

It sounds like that’s kind of where you’re headed, what you were able to do at Bryan, where you’re headed here with Cedarville.

[01:10:48] Jason Smith: We sure hope so. I mean, I think kids operate out of fear so much, right? Because I think most of the decisions that, most bad decisions are made from an insecurity or from fear, right?

And, and trying to understand that as a coach at my age is not easy to do. Right, but my wife’s been really good at teaching me that process. Like she will just always say, Jason, they’re, they’re making that decision out of fear, right? Their fear of fail failure or fear of being embarrassed or fear of whatever, right?

And it makes total sense, right? But trying to change that mindset. and get them in a different frame of mind is the process that we’re, I’m trying to implement. I’m not going to say it’s easy, it’s a hard process. But ultimately I think that’s ultimately more rewarding than winning basketball games.

[01:11:37] Mike Klinzing: How important is your assistant coach in making that happen?

[01:11:40] Jason Smith: Well, right now she’s big in that process just because she’s way better at that relationship building than I am, to be honest with you. , she’s really good at it so, and she’s done a great job of building that into them as well. But it takes time, right?

It just takes a lot of time of relationship building. I mean, I can look back on some of my kids I had at Bryan and, and we walked the walk, we cried tears together in offices. We laughed together in offices, right? So there’s something. There’s a shared experience when you go through adversity as well, Mike in that locker room, like when you share it wins and you share adversity.

There’s just something about it that should draw you closer to one another, right?

[01:12:22] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it absolutely should. I think in the best cultures, that’s what happens, right? In the best cultures, adversity brings you together, and in a culture that’s not healthy, adversity tears you apart. And I think as a coach, that’s one of those things that if you can get your team, get your program to the point where when things don’t go well, you kind of circle the wagons and figure it out, that’s when you know you’ve got something and you know that your team is going to be headed in the right direction.

And it’s not always easy to do. I mean, it takes time and it takes, takes effort, it takes energy. And like you said, it’s a process that I don’t think anybody out there, I don’t care whether you’re in the business world or whether you’re coach, whatever it is, that it’s not easy. That stuff doesn’t happen.

By accident, like your family with your own kids. I always, my wife and I always had this conversation about just kids being polite as an example. Like that doesn’t happen by accident. Like when you see kids who are polite their parents have spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours getting those kids to be polite and modeling that for them.

And I think coaching and culture in a lot of ways is, is very similar to that. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people see a culture in a game on a Saturday afternoon and you’re like, wow, look at that team. They’re together, they’re playing, and they Right, they love each other and okay, great, but you didn’t see all the work they went in to make sure making sure that that actually was what, what we’re, what we’re putting out there for the public to see.

[01:13:40] Jason Smith: Yeah, it’s really interesting because when I was at Bryan in the recruiting process I just started asking every recruit this question was, Hey, what’s the most important thing you’re looking for in a school? And you know what, almost every single one of them said, they said, I just want to play with a team that likes each other and gets along.

[01:14:02] Mike Klinzing: Wow. Wow. That’s, that’s powerful. That’s powerful. It’s

[01:14:05] Jason Smith: It’s powerful. I heard that over and over. And that was with women. I don’t think men would ever say that, but and they just kept saying it over and over. And I’m thinking there’s something to that, obviously. So I said if that’s what you want, that’s what we’re going to try to produce, and that’s what we’re going to recruit too, and that’s what we’re going to create.

And I go back to one practice, I don’t even remember when it was. I just remember something coming out of my mouth, and it sounded really good when I said it , I said, ladies, this my job as your coach to love you, but it’s your job to love each other. You know? And that kind of became our mantra, like, that’s kind of my mantra in coaching, right?

It’s my job to love them that don’t, that looks in different ways, or comes out in different ways, but ultimately it’s their job to love each other. And so we we’re trying to get that process going here at Cedarville.

[01:14:54] Mike Klinzing: That’s really well said. I think that hearing you say that, that so many of your recruits said that they want to plan a team where everybody gets along, where the players love each other.

Like that to me is such a powerful statement because I know that you’ve been around or seen teams where that’s not the case. I’ve been around and seen teams where that’s not the case. And even if you’re the leading scorer on that team and you’re getting every shot you want, you’re playing 39 minutes.

If your team isn’t getting along and doesn’t like each other, it’s not really a fun experience versus, now, look, everybody likes to win, but you can have a positive experience with teams that maybe aren’t as talented, that maybe don’t win as much, but you know, as a coach that you can have just a blast coaching a team that’s together and plays for each other.

And it’s, it’s a powerful thing and it’s amazing that. kids. I, I’m kind of surprised that they articulate it in quite that way. And I, like I said, I’m not sure as you said that maybe boys wouldn’t say it in the same way, but I think probably if you do, if you, if you dug deep enough, I think they’d probably say the same thing.

[01:16:05] Jason Smith: They might, I just haven’t coached them for so long, so Yeah, I get it. But you know, at Bryan we got to be pretty darn good. So it was, we just told players when we recruited them, Hey, you know what, you may not win very many awards as an individual, but you’re going to win a lot of games. You’re going to play 20 to 25 minutes at the most.

Okay. Because we’re going to spread the ball and share the ball. And you might score 15 one night and five the next, but we’re going to win a bunch of games. And, and you know what’s funny is they all bought into that process, right? They figured out winning games was actually fun. Absolutely. And you know what? I don’t need all those accolades because they’re just dust on a shelf at some point, right?

[01:16:42] Mike Klinzing: Right. And at some point, I think the biggest thing is, there has to be communication from the coaching staff about what that’s all about. Because I think kids, players, they judge themselves by how many minutes do they get? How many points do I score? That’s what everybody asks them about. And so it takes us sort of rewiring of the brain in order for kids to really come to that.

Now, some kids have it naturally, but a lot of kids sort of have to be rewired, and I think as a coach, the way you do that is you have to constantly be communicating. You have to be constantly making sure that kids understand the value, whether they’re playing 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 25 minutes, whether they’re getting 15 shots a game or they’re getting three.

You have to constantly communicating the value that those kids bring to the table and making them understand what their role is in that whole bigger machine of, Hey, we’re all together. We love each other, and we’re going to win some games along the way. Sure.

[01:17:37] Jason Smith: I think you hit something on the head when you’re talking about value, right?

I think every kid on your team has value. . I mean, first of all, as a Christian man, myself, I mean, every one of my kids is made in the image of God. So that’s how I’m going to treat them. Right. So, but they all have value, right? Be and their value has to be more than minutes or points, right?

That fluctuates every game, right? So there’s no way you, as a coach could say, oh, so-and-so player, I value more than so-and-so player. I had a young lady in my office not too long ago, because she hasn’t played much. And I just had to remind her that she still has value, right?

She still brings value to the team and just had to get that out of her. Like, what value do you think you bring to the team? And when she answered it properly and I said, well, there you go. Right? Just because you’re not playing minutes doesn’t mean you don’t bring value.

[01:18:32] Mike Klinzing: And you have to be intentional as a coach about that.

[01:18:33] Jason Smith: It’s hard because some kids will talk to you about it and some won’t. Right? So some kids come to your office and some won’t. That’s just the way it is. Again, the fear thing, right? My office is always open and the more conversations we have or the better I got one of my players, it just needs a weekly reset.

She just comes in my office every week and just goes, Hey, fix my head coach. Fix my head. That’s funny. And guess what? She leaves every, I’m telling you, every practice. The next practice after she comes to my office is she has great practice.

[01:19:01] Mike Klinzing: That’s cool. That is very cool that she knows herself.

[01:19:04] Jason Smith: She knows herself.

And like again, we had to reset a kid kind of mentally this week. She was struggling and just not playing well and not having good practices. And then Monday came along and I looked at her and I said, we’re resetting you, you know. She’s like, what do you mean? And I’m like, she goes, I don’t know how to fix my game.

But I said, but I do . And I said, here. And she goes, well, how? And I told her, I said, here’s what you do. You just do this one thing today in practice. And so she did it. And then the next day I said, well, you, now you do this thing and then she did that. And then Wednesday she had a great practice.

And this night, tonight, we ended up losing the game. But she ended up having 18 points, right? Her best game of the season. Completely just reset the whole her own mindset confidence.  So much of his confidence then you think, well, if all my kids would do that, maybe we would be on track, right?

[01:19:56] Mike Klinzing: Yep. Absolutely. All right. We are headed Jason, towards an hour and a half. So I want to wrap up one final question, two-parter. So part one is, when you think ahead to the next year or two, what’s your biggest challenge on the horizon? And then number two, when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and your biggest joy.

[01:20:15] Jason Smith: I think the biggest challenge is just finding enough players that will fit into our school and that can help us win basketball games. You know, I think we’ve got a good incoming class next year, but they’re still going to be freshmen, right? And in our league, freshmen don’t, it’s a junior, senior led lead for the most part.

So freshmen usually don’t come in and dominate by any means. So I know it’s just going to take some time. I mean, we’re two or three years away. So it’s just being patient is probably the biggest challenge for me and for anybody that works here. Administration and vice versa and then the things that get me the joy is just getting better.

Like the resetting that kid’s mind this week and watching her go perform tonight, that’s basically what gets me going, right? That brings me back the next day thinking, okay, there’s something there, right? This, there’s don’t give up on this kid. Right? She’s obviously, I recruited her for some reason and my dad will tell me, you obviously recruited her for some reason, Jason.

And I said, yeah, and I saw it tonight. Right? So those are the fun times we’ve been able to have those conversations. And ultimately just seeing the light bulb go off with kids, like the conversation I had with one of my players in my office today. Just great conversation about culture going forward.

Those are the things that I really enjoy talking about.

[01:21:42] Mike Klinzing: Well said. Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how people can find out more about your program, how they can reach out to you, connect with you, whether you want to share social media, website, email, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that, I will jump back in and wrap things.

[01:21:57] Jason Smith: Our website is yellowjackets.edu. Cedarville University. I mean, you go check out our University University’s growing, doing some great things. We’re one of the few schools that’s actually growing when our enrollment’s going through the roof.

So come check us out, cedarville.edu and yellowjackets.edu. You know, personally, I’m on Twitter just for women’s basketball. Once I’m done coaching basketball, Mike, I’m off social media for the rest of my life.

[01:22:22] Mike Klinzing: I understand.

[01:22:23] Jason Smith: You can follow our Twitter page. I don’t even, I don’t even know where our handle for our Twitter page.

That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? I just, I don’t even do it very much, but we’ll do some research. You can figure it out. Okay. You guys are more savvy than I, but then my email’s JasonSmith@Cedarville.edu You guys are more than happy to reach out to me and I love to visit with coaches. Like I said earlier, I got so much more to learn, especially if you got anything about relationship building. I need to know that stuff, so send it to me.

[01:22:53] Mike Klinzing:  Perfect. Jason, can I thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump out with us? Really appreciate it and to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.